I know I haven't updated in awhile when I have to go 3-4 pages back to find my log! What have I been doing? The short answer is not enough, the long answer below.
I've been working on the study and creating mailing lists, working on the instructions, rewriting the instructions, and attempting to write instructions for subs2srs with screenshots. Working through Anki decks, grammar books, FSI French, watching films and listening to audio... oh, and I work full time. I'm thinking I should knock that last one on the head, it takes up far to much of my time!
I watched Pulp Fiction in French. This showed me a whole lot of new words.
But I'm not going to bother to learn them, I have that particular bad habit in English, I don't need to swear like a sailor in other languages too. Still it was a interesting movie to watch when I know so much of the dialogue.
I drove about 4 hours north this week to meet with some collegues from one of our sister companies in France. I managed to get a few sentences in but mostly it was all done in English. We were doing a tour of a warehouse, so it was fun to eaves drop on the conversations they were having among themselves when walking around.
The no English rule in my car is still in force, which in reality means I mostly just drive in silence. I did about 28 hours in the car last week, I'm really sick of driving. I now default to the Belgium radio station I can get, but I've given up on the Michel Thomas, it just annoys me. On the drive up north I did relisten to "TinTin" but only the first 30 minutes, then I couldn't be bothered. I've listened to it far to many times for it to hold my attention. Working on a theme here, podcasts seem to have gone out the window too. There were a couple that were mildly interesting, one which everyone raved about "
Captain Web" but was really p*ss*ng me off. One of the four presenters mike was really high, and he shouted everything he said, everyone else seemed to mumble or speak softly, so I kept cranking my sound up to listen and try to work out what was going on, then this guy would shout out something and blast my eardrums. In the end I gave up, I still have a couple of newer episodes to listen to, so I might try again and just see if it was a one-off screw up by the sound guy.
The other podcasts are political (and therefore boring for me) so I'll probably drop them. I really need to keep looking around, I'd prefer something with only one or two speakers where the sound levels aren't switching radically, and they talk about a topic which interests me. One of the political ones I could understand, it was a woman interviewing a man from Sengal, and another from South America. I understood the African fellow, and the Spanish speaker better than the French woman. I could tell the one guy had a very heavy Spanish accent to his French, but he spoke very clearly for me.
In my old car I used to be able to get 3-4 French radio stations too, but I don't know if it is just the antena in this car is crap, or they change the French stations to digital or something.
I've managed to whittle down my anki deck into something which can be done in about an hour a day. One of the old French deck had ~2000 cards to review, and I've pushed myself through so yesterday I ended the day with zero cards. It took a full 2 weeks to get it so I could end the day with nothing. Today I'm back to 600 cards for review, but that isn't a problem. The D&D deck is interesting, but the google translate is a bit poor, I know why and I know enough French to understand. But it is serving it's purpose, and it has actually helped me with some words in a YA fantasy novel I'm reading at the moment called
La Quête d'Ewilan, so it all renforces each other.
Back in procrastination ville, I found a method of transfering laser printed images onto cloth, and so I've put covers on to the three books I made.
basicfantasywithcover.png
You can tell they are very homemade, but their fairly robust and would work well for playing a game or two. All three were done with slightly different methods, but still they came out ok, I'm alright with them. When we do the LLORG meetup in London I'm planning to give them away to anyone who wants one. So a little incentive for showing up and playing the game in French. BTW, this got me thinking of a really interesting twist on this book. I could do another set of books, but make the back cover longer by about 2-3 mm and then create a "box" on this where you keep your dice. The idea being that the book and the dice come as an assembly. Nice idea, and I have all the stuff, only thing missing is the time to implement.
FSI is going slowly, but I am still perservering. The problem is I'm not doing it daily or regularly enough. It is a bit of a pain for me but only from a logistical point of view. I have printed out the PDF, and I like to have the printout with me, while I drill. I also need some privacy, because otherwise I risk getting a lot of moaning from my family and "Can't you do that somewhere else? I'm trying to ..."
I've booked an extra lesson a week with my local French tutor, but I still haven't spent any of the money which I sunk into iTalki. It is easier with my local tutor, because she rocks up to my house, and I have to do it. But I don't seem to be able to bring myself to schedule a time to work with an iTalki person. This is all down to me and I'll take the plunge soon, but even the iTalki computer seems to have noticed because it keeps sending me notifications like "You have points but haven't booked in lessons, what about an Italian lesson with Alice who is online right now..."
Well, just re-read this post, and it reminded me of a quote: "No man is ever to busy to stop and tell you how busy he is." so, time to stop moaning and get back to it.
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