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

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rdearman
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Thu Sep 29, 2022 9:34 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
rdearman wrote:Right, I'm off to listen to a Korean podcast while mentally memorising the 20-times multiplication table and building a wind turbine charge controller. (Surely there is something I could do with my feet at the same time?)

Do you memorize passwords with your methods? Surely you have scads of them like I do, and so I use a password manager.

On websites, I generally allow my browser to assign random complex passwords and then just let it remember them. For passwords that I really want to keep, I use my brain, to remember those, but those are only the ones critical to my own network, and anything to do with banking or money.

For the workplace, e.g. not my personal network, I have a system whereby I take my favourite book, favourite film, favourite song, and a random 3 digit number and type them in. Each month when I get prompted to change my password, I simply change the order to film, song, book, number. If I work somewhere that doesn't allow the same password after X months, it normally isn't a problem because this gives me 24 combinations. This is typically 50+ characters, so I pretty confident it is a strong password, and I change the film, song, number or book on occasion.

I did consider memorising a lot of random strings to use as a password, but seemed simpler to just remember films or books, etc. BTW, although I say password I never actually use passwords, I always use passphrases.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Fri Sep 30, 2022 5:35 pm

rdearman wrote:BTW, although I say password I never actually use passwords, I always use passphrases.

Good to know. I use a combination of passwords that I let the password manager generate and of passphrases that are based on something that happened to me and that only I or a very few others now deceased know about. For example, once as a teen I went out hunting small game with an uncle since deceased with exceptional vision. The rifle, just a .22, had a scope. As we walked along my uncle spotted a groundhog in the distance, but that I needed the scope to see.
Easy to Remember Passphrase: ##myUnclesawthingsIneededscopetosee22
(Needless to say, I don´t and won´t use this passphrase. ;)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Fri Sep 30, 2022 6:11 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
rdearman wrote:BTW, although I say password I never actually use passwords, I always use passphrases.

Good to know. I use a combination of passwords that I let the password manager generate and of passphrases that are based on something that happened to me and that only I or a very few others now deceased know about. For example, once as a teen I went out hunting small game with an uncle since deceased with exceptional vision. The rifle, just a .22, had a scope. As we walked along my uncle spotted a groundhog in the distance, but that I needed the scope to see.
Easy to Remember Passphrase: ##myUnclesawthingsIneededscopetosee22
(Needless to say, I don´t and won´t use this passphrase. ;)

You should use spaces. They are counted as special characters, they add more characters to the phrase and make it even harder to crack. If that was my passphrase it would be:
My uncle saw things that I needed a 22 scope to see!
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat Oct 01, 2022 5:24 pm

rdearman wrote:You should use spaces. They are counted as special characters, they add more characters to the phrase and make it even harder to crack. If that was my passphrase it would be:
My uncle saw things that I needed a 22 scope to see!

I did not know that about spaces. Good to know. Thanks.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Tue Oct 04, 2022 11:49 am


Done!

This is a excellent book and I recommend it. I believe they have made it into a film now. The story is about a murder in an elevator in a block of flats in Rome. The victim is hated by everyone, and the main suspect is the most well liked person in the building, who many people are surprised to find out is an immigrant. The story is broken into chapters, and each chapter is the testimony of one of the residents of the building. They talk about their interactions with the victim and the suspect. Most of the characters are racists or fanatics, or just very sad people. The book is very well done and very interesting.

Next on the list. Note I have the actual book, not the ebook in the photo, but the cover is the same otherwise. :) This book is double the length of the last one, but hopefully if I am a little more persistant, and watch a few less Korean dramas and spend a little more time reading I will get it done faster.

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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Wed Oct 05, 2022 10:12 pm

Mandarin
Did a couple of Language exchanges, one of them with a teacher of mandarin. She has started me off with some basics, which is easy because I'm a false beginner, and she seems determined to teach me.

Korean
My lesson dates got screwed up somehow, and my tutor has informed me today that he doesn't earn enough from iTalki to continue to teach, so he is looking for a job and will update his schedule if he has any time slots where he'll continue to teach. This is a major setback for me. I'll need to work around it for a little while and either find a new tutor or buckle down and do some self-study.

Meanwhile, my memory of words continues to fail. I think my tutor is a bit exasperated with me anyway, since he told me. "Rick, a teacher can show you how to fish, but you have to catch the fish yourself!" :oops: :oops: :oops:

He is of course correct, so I'm going to work up some lessons for myself. I already know that I've forgotten counting, or at least I'm under performing in things like:
  • I'll have 4 coffees please.
  • I am 56 years old.
  • My daughter is 33.
  • I have ₩2,353.

I've knocked-up a spreadsheet with a random number generator and practice making sentences. Basically, I generate random sentences in English and try to do some translations. This worked well for sentences such as:
Anna is 20 years old.
안나 나이는 스무살 이에요.

Please, may I have 41 beers
맥주 사십일잔 주세요?

We have 33 kiwi fruits
키위 삼십삼 있어요.

I plan to get my sentences checked by a native speaker during my exchanges. I still struggle to know when to use sino-Korean numbers or pure Korean numbers. There doesn't seem to be any hard and fast rules, it seems to be just one of those things you "know" if you're a native, or you pick up eventually.

Italian
Couple of language exchanges and I continue to read. Nothing exciting to report here.

I've been reaching out to people on conversation exchange who live in Milan because I've got a trip booked there in November, assuming nothing comes up. I was hoping to try to find someone to speak to face-to-face while I'm there.

French
You remember when I did that massive binge reading of all the French books in my house in order to make space and get rid of them all? Well, my neighbour just dumped another batch of French books on me. Sigh...

General Stuff
Generally I'm going well on the reading front, although mostly in English. French once again has attacked me from behind in the form of my neighbour trying to drown me in books. But I'm getting rid of books faster than I'm collecting them at the moment, so that is a bonus. I have just under 50 books on my "to read" list, and I have now read about 19% of them. So I feel I am doing well on these books. The one taking a lot of time is actually a book in English called, "Introduction to programming in Emacs Lisp", although 조지,마법의 약일 만들다 by Roald Dahl is actually taking the longest, since I've only managed about 2 pages in about 4 weeks. :(

I'm still working on getting things into memory, currently working on remembering:
  • Fifteen points of information for each member of my family.
  • Two Robert Frost Poems
  • List of Shakespeare’s plays in chronological order.
  • Commands for the GNU Screen program
  • Resistor band colours
  • Chinese zodiac signs
  • Countries in the UN and their populations as of 2019
  • The 20-times table
  • Squares up to 25 (I used to know this, so it is a refresher)
  • Korean vocabulary (this is just an ongoing thing)

I go into more detail on the other forum. But if anyone is interested in memory palaces, or other mnemonic methods, they have a free e-book you can read.

I think that not having a Korean class for a couple of weeks might be a benefit to me, IF I spend the time consolidating what I know. So working the memory palaces and anki decks hard in order to absorb the vocabulary which I've been taught. Really using my language exchange partners and consuming my 30 minutes rather than just chatting with them in English. I think I might need to get some more exchange partners for Korean. I did ask my wife if I could just get a Korean girlfriend, but she said no again. Honestly! She is so selfish.

But since I will not have a Korean girlfriend or a tutor for the foreseeable future, I'm going to have to rely on myself to keep progressing. Which is a bit like storing your grain in a rat's nest, it isn't the best strategy.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby lingua » Wed Oct 05, 2022 11:00 pm

I read that Lakhous book a few years ago and also thought it was good. I'm sorry he hasn't written many books since though Divorzio all'islamica a viale Marconi could be interesting and is something I'll eventually read.
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Super Challenge 2022-23:
DE: books: 0 / 2500 film: 1654 / 4500
IT: books: 3065 / 5000 film: 5031 / 9000
PT: books: 2921 / 5000 film: 5010 / 9000

Output Challenge 2023:
IT: write: 0 / 50000 record: 84 / 3000
PT: write: 0 / 50000 record: 0 / 3000

PT: Read 100 books: 28 / 100

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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Wed Oct 05, 2022 11:05 pm

lingua wrote:I read that Lakhous book a few years ago and also thought it was good. I'm sorry he hasn't written many books since though Divorzio all'islamica a viale Marconi could be interesting and is something I'll eventually read.

BTW, I'm impressed with your output challenge scores.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Wed Oct 12, 2022 9:38 am

Mandarin
I had to cancel all my LE's this week in Mandarin because I have the builders around the house fitting archway doors.

Italian
Cancelled LEs due to builders.

Still reading in Italian, albeit slowly.

French
Cancelled LEs due to builders.

Korean
I've found another LE partner in Korean, which makes four at the moment. However, two of them are very sporadic, so I am trying to ensure I have at least two LEs every week in Korean. I did not cancel these, I just muddled through with drilling noises in the background.

Since my tutor is now offline, I've taken more time doing sentence translations. I have a stack of notes which I took during my tutoring sessions, as well as lots of screenshots of the blackboard he used for teaching. I'm generating random sentences, either by looking at the word list and coming up with a sentence, or using random sentence generators on the Internet or in a spreadsheet. I take the English sentence and try to translate it into Korean. I check it with Google Translate. Sometimes they are correct (according to Google) and sometimes they are completely wrong, or slightly wrong. By slightly wrong, I mean that the meaning I was trying to convey isn't quite right. Some examples:

  1. The gimbap was spicy and hot, but the rice was cold.
    김밥는 매워고 더워기만 밥 추워요. <=(correct)
  2. Sit near the fire to stay warm.
    불 옆에에사 앉다 따뜻해요. <= (not quite right)
  3. I taught them English the ungrateful pigs.
    그들은 배은망덕한 돼지 나는 영어 가르치어요. <= (wrong!)
  4. It was getting dark, and we weren't there yet.
    그것은 어두운 되아고 우리 아직 도착하지 않기 위해 <= (google corrected phrase, but need explanation of last part)

I can only go so far with Google Translate because it can be too forgiving and doesn't force you to always use the correct count markers, or object markers, etc. So to overcome this I have been relying on my LE partners to check the correct answers are grammatically correct, and to explain to me (if they can) things like the last phrase where Google added some words at the end to make the sentence correct. I clicked on the "did you mean to type this?" button to see how Google would translate it.

Also, during my 30 minutes of the LE I try to read each sentence and get my partner to correct my pronunciation. I'm not capable of spontaneous sentences or speech, so this is about all I can do with my half of the LE. Hopefully soon I'll progress to making spontaneous phrases on the fly during an exchange. But that is a long way off.

Reading in Korean halted this week because I was concentrating on making sentences. But it occurred to me that I could attempt to translate the Korean sentences in the book into English, picking out any words I know, and then using the dictionary to fill-in-the-blanks, of which there will be many.

I am considering using a modified form of StringerBell's method.
StringerBell wrote:Step 1: Intensive Reading - read 5 pages, look up unknown words, idioms, confusing grammar
Step 2: Extensive Reading - reread those same 5 pages
Step 3: Extensive Reading - reread those same 5 pages
Step 4: Extensive Reading - every time I read 50 pages, go back and reread the last 50 pages
Step 5: Extensive Reading - when I finish the book, reread the whole book from start to finish


I would need to change pages to sentences and change book to chapter. So for me it would look more like this:

  1. Intensive Reading - read 5 sentences, look up unknown words, idioms, confusing grammar
  2. Extensive Reading - reread those same 5 sentences
  3. Extensive Reading - reread those same 5 sentences
  4. Extensive Reading - every time I read 2 pages, go back and reread the last 2 pages
  5. Extensive Reading - when I finish a chapter, reread the whole chapter from start to finish

General Stuff
I recently came across some story cubes while looking through the boardgames area in a bookshop. (Yes I found a bricks and mortar store still in existence!). These are just dice with icons on them instead of numbers. Being tighter than a fish's arse (e.g. water tight) I decided to 3D print my own versions. I can upload the STL files if anyone wants to print them for yourselves, there are two more dice which I have designed by not yet printed. I want to have eight in total.
aaaaa20221012_094728.png

The idea here is to use the symbols as prompts for a story. It can be used to help generate sentences, for example if I used the 3 dice at the bottom of the picture I might come up with a sentence like: "When he was young, the Buddha grew flowers for money." or use the top 3 dice you might come up with "John hallucinated riding a horse and sailing a ship while he was eating mushrooms."

Of course, most people using story cubes are inventing stories not sentences, so you might write a short story which incorporates the elements on the dice.

I continue to try and plough through books. I carry a paperback with me all the time and try to read whenever I get a chance. (a pro-tip from Stephen King for how to read more)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Oct 12, 2022 10:04 am

rdearman wrote:I can only go so far with Google Translate because it can be too forgiving and doesn't force you to always use the correct count markers, or object markers, etc. So to overcome this I have been relying on my LE partners to check the correct answers are grammatically correct, and to explain to me (if they can) things like the last phrase where Google added some words at the end to make the sentence correct. I clicked on the "did you mean to type this?" button to see how Google would translate it.
I remember reading a book about a British lady's time in France during WW2. She had weak French, and one thing she did to improve was double translation. She had some books in both French and English editions so used those to check her work.
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