kundalini's log

[kundalini]

Finished book 12. I'm now halfway through the Iliad. I've been putting in a fairly intense effort into reading the Iliad for the past several months, dedicating much of my free time, and writing down something like 3000 Greek words in my notebooks. So this feels like a good place to pause, and I think I'll take a few days, or perhaps a few weeks, to consolidate vocabulary and re-read some passages as well. I began this log two years ago, and stopped a couple of times, but this time around, I have hopefully built up enough momentum to finish the poem in a reasonable amount of time.

This might sound a bit weird, but while I take a breather from the Iliad, I'm going to try my hand at, um, an entirely different type of language -- the Structured Query Language (a computer/database language).

Book 12: 471 / 471

[kundalini]

I realize that logging this is very unorthodox for this forum, but I began studying SQL today, using SQL Pocket Guide by Alice Zhao, mostly as an experiment to see whether I can successfully bring some of the same intensity and learning tactics to a programming language that I used to read Homer. I figure that computer languages also have their own vocabulary and grammar that I'll have to contend with, though, of course, there are some real differences as well, one being that they tend to be much more exacting than human languages. I have had exposure to SQL before, without becoming very comfortable with it. Hopefully that will change. Will my experience with the Iliad carry over to a brand new subject?

So I'm curious to see how they experiment goes, and I won't rest until I'm able to express my hopes, fears, and dreams in Structured Query Language! Well, maybe I won't go quite that far.

SQL Pocket Guide: 63 / 315

[rdearman]

SELECT hopes, fears FROM dreams ORDER BY hopes DESC;

[kundalini]

SELECT hopes, fears FROM dreams ORDER BY hopes DESC;

Another way to say the same thing that I learned today:

SELECT hopes, fears
FROM dreams
ORDER BY 1 DESC;

Today's update:
SQL Pocket Guide: 110 / 315

[kundalini]

I reviewed vocab from the Iliad today, and studied another 50 or so pages of the SQL book.

SQL Pocket Guide: 164 / 315

[kundalini]

Didn't review Greek today, but studied another 60 pages of the Structured Query Language book. I'm no closer to being able to express my deepest feelings in SQL than when I started, but I did learn a bunch of useful functions, such as STRPOS (find the position of a piece of text), SUBSTR (retrieve the text at a given position), LEAST/GREATEST (find smallest or largest values in a row), etc. etc.

SQL Pocket Guide: 221 / 315

[kundalini]

Didn't feel too well today, so I took it relatively easy. Re-committed 12 forgotten Greek words to memory, and went through 20 pages of SQL book.

SQL Pocket Guide: 241 / 315

[kundalini]

Still not feeling great. Re-memorized 30 forgotten Greek words, and read 10 pages of SQL today.

SQL Pocket Guide: 252 / 315

[kundalini]

Re-memorized 12 Greek words today, and studied 40 pages of the SQL book.

SQL Pocket Guide: 292 / 315

[kundalini]

Re-memorized 10 Greek words today, and finished the SQL book. I enjoyed the process of learning a computer language with some of the same methods that I've been using to study Homer. In some ways, I've found learning SQL to be easier than learning Homeric vocabulary. There are vastly fewer words to memorize, and there is more consistency tying the words and ideas together. The Iliad, in contrast, threw so many unknown words at me every day that it was difficult to keep up sometimes.

One thing that I've found helpful is updating the progress bar frequently in this log. With the Iliad, I set a progress bar for each chapter, which took me anywhere from a couple of days to slightly more than a week to finish. The SQL book, too, I finished in a week. It's been gratifying to be able to see visible progress with each update. So a task I can finish in about a week feels manageable, and in the future as well, I think I'll subdivide bigger projects into smaller chunks.

Learning both types of languages during the past week has been fun. I'll continue to update the log with both.

SQL Pocket Guide: 315 / 315