Rdearman 2016-24 You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too.

[DaveAgain]

Merci ! Although in reality I should be writing books, not reading them. I'm being lazy.

How long do your legionnaire books take to write?

[rdearman]

Merci ! Although in reality I should be writing books, not reading them. I'm being lazy.

How long do your legionnaire books take to write?

That is a good question. The physical act of writing a first draft probably only take about a month writing each day. However, before that I make 2-3 outlines with about 70-100 scenes and this takes a couple of months due to all the changing things around and messing with the plot. After the first draft I let it sit on the computer for another month and then go back and read it again. And to quote Hemingway.

The first draft of anything is shit.

So I do one or two reviews and revisions checking for continuity errors and factual inaccuracies and other mistakes. Then I normally get someone else to read it and point out even more errors, then I put it through 3-4 difference grammar checkers and finally send it to a copy editor. So it ends up being about 8-10 months all in.

Then it gets published and someone informs me I misspelt something.

[IronMike]

...So it ends up being about 8-10 months all in.

Then it gets published and someone informs me I misspelt something.

Wait...what? Please PM me a link to your books on Amazon...

[cjareck]

Some time ago, I read in your log about Gradint. I've installed the program on my laptop under Windows and waited about a month. Today I added a phrase and tested the lesson. It looks very promising, but I need it on my Android phone. The instruction on the website didn't solve my problem. I needed some library (with .so ending). Having Gradint on the phone seems to be much more useful than on the computer. Did you install it on Android and can give some advice on the topic?

(edit)
OK. I found another solution - Gradint allows making mp3 for a lesson, so I will prepare some in advance!

[rdearman]

That was the solution I used. I simply generated 10 lessons as MP3 then generated more when I ran out. So basically use the computer only to generate audio lessons I use on the phone.

[cjareck]

Thanks! That helped a lot, but if you don't mind, I would like to ask how to generate more lessons with new words. I put into samples 15 recordings, set the ratio 5 new words for 30 minutes and it generated only one lesson. So I presume they contain the phrases 1-5. How shall I create lessons with 6-10 and 10-15? Just create new ones and Gradint will remember which ones are added?

[rdearman]

Thanks! That helped a lot, but if you don't mind, I would like to ask how to generate more lessons with new words. I put into samples 15 recordings, set the ratio 5 new words for 30 minutes and it generated only one lesson. So I presume they contain the phrases 1-5. How shall I create lessons with 6-10 and 10-15? Just create new ones and Gradint will remember which ones are added?

Yes, just create the new ones. It logs the number of lessons and words it previously generated. So as long as you don't delete the logs you'll be fine. You can also increase the number of words (or phrases) it teaches in 30 minutes, but if you go above 8 it starts to give warning dialogues.

You can also do what I did and just generate them in a batch. (I'm using Linux)

Code: Select all

for i in {13..100};
do
python3 gradint.py "outputFile='./output/lesson$i.mp3'";
done


This generated lessons 13-100 for me, since I had already manually done 1-12. You should be able to do a for loop in Windows, but I'd have to look up the syntax.

[cjareck]

You can also do what I did and just generate them in a batch. (I'm using Linux)

Thanks for the detailed explanation! I installed Gradint both on Linux and Windows. I can't create mp3 on Linux even if I installed everything they wanted me to install. WAVs work perfectly.
Since there is only one poor video on YouTube about Gradint (at least I found only one), you could create your tutorial for the program. That would surely help any other interested language learners!

[rdearman]

You can also do what I did and just generate them in a batch. (I'm using Linux)

Thanks for the detailed explanation! I installed Gradint both on Linux and Windows. I can't create mp3 on Linux even if I installed everything they wanted me to install. WAVs work perfectly.
Since there is only one poor video on YouTube about Gradint (at least I found only one), you could create your tutorial for the program. That would surely help any other interested language learners!

I had a lot of problems on Linux as well and the author of the program helped me out. I was using Python3 so needed to make sure MP3 support was loaded. You need to have LAME installed on your machine. To quote the program author:

So the quickest way to make this problem go away is just to install madplay or mpg123 or libsox-fmt-all on your system.

You can read the problems I had in the issues thread on the GitHub site:https://github.com/ssb22/gradint/issues/1

Yes, I should do a tutorial.

[rdearman]

OK, Chinese Mandarin is actually annoying me now. Doing 30 minutes a day is becoming a right royal pain in the backside. I find myself "zoning out" when listening and end up doing it again. I need to think about doing some work with writing perhaps instead. Still, I carry on doing the 30 minutes, but I don't know if I'll be able to do the entire year. It was easier when I was commuting because I simply did it when I was in the car, and I was forced to be in the car at the same time each day so it was a habit. But even in the car Pimsleur was getting old. I probably should spend some time talking to Dandelion in China and try "speaking from day one".

I have done 295 days of Clozemaster Italian and 222 days of 500+ points per day.

I did a video about how to use Docker and the docker files I put onto GitHub to create an LWT instance on your machine. I actually used docker for Windows to do the video and it worked. Which is a little surprising to me because I haven't had a lot of success moving stuff between platforms.

Received a note from the Polyglot organizers asking if I'd be willing to do my presentation online, so I agreed to that. Hopefully, people will be able to login and watch.

I have been reading some graded readers in French. They are pretty easy, so I'm planning on reading something more difficult. I have plugged in a Sci-Fi book into LWT and just using it to go through the book. I think I might hold out for a little while until the SC starts up and then I'll just try to ramp up the reading. I've got a ton of books to read and time to read them, I'm just not. However, I have spent a couple of hours each day outlining books to write, so at least some productivity is happening!