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

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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Sun Dec 12, 2021 5:51 pm

zenmonkey wrote:
I'm impressed you're doing Korean.

Me too.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Tue Dec 14, 2021 8:36 am

The Korean alphabet (Hangul, 한글) is the native script of Korea, created in the mid fifteenth century by King Sejong, who said:
"A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days."


I appear to be in the latter category. :roll:
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:20 pm

Frequent visitors to this log might remember I recently made a list of all the stuff I wanted to do, but was going to firmly park a load of stuff and focus on just 5 things.

The original list was:

  • Learning Korean and taking 3 lessons per week with 1 language exchange
  • 1 French Language exchange each week, plus trying to complete my mission to read 22 books in French
  • Create 1 YT video per week. (I have 24 hours to do this week or forfeit)
  • Write a chess notation program in arm assembler which will convert PGN notation into ICCF notation and vis versa
  • Create a breadboard chess clock programmed with a ATMEGA168PA chip as the controller, (although in C++ so easier than the above)
  • Get my 3D printer working or returned to manufacturer.
  • Write a desklet application to do countdown timing for Linux Mint desktop. (On hold because of a bug in the Cinnamon desktop software)
  • Work for a living (this is a big time sink, believe it or not)
  • Complete writing the sequel to my last book, although why I don't know.
  • Complete writing of a new draft of a book
  • Finish assembling a computer using breadboards and an 6502 CPU chip, and do some programs. (I'm building a computer just to write assembler programs, rather than just use a virtual machine like a normal person)
  • 2 Italian language exchange per week
  • Memorize PI to 1000 digits (I'm already at a hundred, but haven't done anything for a week or two)
  • Work on my mental maths
  • Start season 4 of my Podcast
  • Write a new game in Godot, with 3D objects made in blender
  • Learn Kicad or EasyEDA and create circuit board for an "irritate" board.
  • Learn Mandarin (already on a back-burner)
  • Complete reading the shelf full of maths books
Sadly, I've added more to the list not less.
  • Learn R programming because I need to generate some statistical analysis.
  • Learn lisp programming (I sorta know some of this already, but need to make an emacs function)
  • Memorize some chess openings
  • Practice making 3D models in blender.
  • Memorize 50+ stock phrases from my lonely planet Korean phrasebook.
And there was all the stuff I'd forgotten to add to the list (but should have been on the first list.)
  • Complete the 22 French books I've challenged myself to read
  • Complete the 17 Italian books I've challenged myself to read.
  • Complete the 40+ English books I've challenged myself to read.
  • Complete the 5 Chinese books I've challenged myself to read.

So I'm thinking I need to declare what I will do in a massive and dramatic way, like PeterMollenburg, then basically ignore that and do something completely different. (Just teasing Peter!)

Anyway, these are the 5 things I have decided to do! Only these 5 things. THESE 5 AND NO MORE!

  1. Languages
    - Learning Korean and taking 3 lessons per week with 1 language exchange
    - Memorize 50+ stock phrases from my lonely planet Korean phrasebook.
    - French Language exchange each week
    - 2 Italian language exchanges per week
    - Learn Mandarin (already on a back-burner)
    - Complete the 22 French books I've challenged myself to read
    - Complete the 17 Italian books I've challenged myself to read.
    - Complete the 40+ English books I've challenged myself to read.
    - Complete the 5 Chinese books I've challenged myself to read.
  2. Programming
    - Write a chess notation program in arm assembler which will convert PGN notation into ICCF notation and vis versa
    - Write a desklet application to do countdown timing for Linux Mint desktop. (On hold because of a bug in the Cinnamon desktop software)
    - Write a new game in Godot, with 3D objects made in blender
    - Learn R programming because I need to generate some statistical analysis.
    - Learn lisp programming (I sorta know some of this already, but need to make an emacs function)
  3. Electronics
    - Create a breadboard chess clock programmed with a ATMEGA168PA chip as the controller, (although in C++ so easier than the above)
    - Finish assembling a computer using breadboards and an 6502 CPU chip, and do some programs. (I'm building a computer just to write assembler programs, rather than just use a virtual machine like a normal person)
    - Learn Kicad or EasyEDA and create circuit board for an "irritate" board.
  4. Creative Stuff
    - Complete writing the sequel to my last book, although why I don't know.
    - Complete writing of a new draft of a book
    - Practice making 3D models in blender. Do the 30-day Zero to Hero challenge.
  5. Maths
    - Memorize PI to 1000 digits (I'm already at a hundred, but haven't done anything for a week or two)
    - Work on my mental maths
    - Complete reading the shelf full of maths books
  6. Miscellaneous
    - Work for a living (this is a big time sink, believe it or not)
    - Start season 4 of my Podcast
    - Memorize some chess openings

I know what you're going to say. You're going to say, "Hey! There are six things there!" and you are correct, I might need to look at stopping Miscellaneous, but my wife wants me to carry on doing it. In all seriousness, however, I will probably only do the first item under Languages, Programming, and Miscellaneous. These will suck up my time. I plan to ignore all languages except Korean until the day I fly to Seoul. I might read an Italian book on the flight over. :)

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!


I want to learn Korean, but don't enjoy the process. I have to work to live. But I enjoy programming, so that is why it stays on the list. :)

So all of you waiting in eager anticipation of the Podcast & YT updates, well..... Probably not going to get much before April now. (Not that anyone is waiting with baited breathe I'm sure)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby Le Baron » Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:25 pm

Have you thought of perhaps working out how to acquire a couple of extra lifetimes? That way you can relax and forget about the time constraints and planning. Then it's just plain procrastinating and chopping and changing all the way. Luxury.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Fri Dec 17, 2021 8:48 am

Le Baron wrote:Have you thought of perhaps working out how to acquire a couple of extra lifetimes? That way you can relax and forget about the time constraints and planning. Then it's just plain procrastinating and chopping and changing all the way. Luxury.

Oddly, I will probably complete most of this list by the end of next year. I have found that most people overestimate what they can do in a week, but underestimate what they can do in a year. Over the last decade or so, I have made lists of things I want to do, then forgotten the list. Sometimes I find the list later on my computer or in a drawer and realize that even without looking at the list for ages, I've ticked off most of it.

I think just the fact that I wrote down a desire to do it makes my subconscious start tracking the list and prompting me to do it once in a while. Looking over the list with this in mind, I figure that I'll probably get to "tourist Korean" before my trip and probably never look at it again. I'll probably pick up mandarin again, but continue the slow process of learning. French & Italian language exchanges are more of a habit than something I would need to think abuot, and language partners will keep pestering me to talk anyway. I'll continue to pick my way slowly through the books. Programming and Electronics are fun for me and a diversion, so those will almost certainly be completed and much more besides.

I need the 3D modelling to do 3D printing, so that will happen, although how good I'll be is debatable. Books will be written, or rather I will at some point knuckle down and complete the 3 drafts of 3 books I already have. Memorization and maths has been a thing for a few years, and I'll keep plodding on with it.

The podcast might suffer, mainly because, as I said previously, I'm running out of ideas for what to cover in future episodes and seasons. So might come to a natural end. And my wife will continue to force me to do the whole "work for a living" thing. If only someone had told me the advice I give to my daughters. "It is just as easy to fall in love with a rich person as a poor one." :lol:
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Sun Dec 19, 2021 2:12 pm


Done!
OK while this book was more up my street than the others, it did have some difficulties for me. The primary one being the author was adding in a little colour into the book by interjecting "alien" words and phrases into the book. For French natives this wouldn't be a real problem, but for me, it was difficult to work out if the author was using actual French words which I didn't yet know, or if this was just some made up stuff. Mostly I could work it out, but on occasion I did ponder a long time, or in one case end up trying to look up a fictitious word on Google Translate. The book itself was good as far as 1960's space operas go. I never did figure out the logic behind part of the story where the main character now is engaged to the hot blonde alien just because he was on the same planet as her when her fiancé died. But hey, it was the 60's.

So for a few nanoseconds I considered completing the last book in my collection from my nemesis Stendhal, titled "La Chartreuse de Parme", but I think I shall leave that one toward the last. Instead, I have decided to read a play by Marivaux


(I couldn't find the cover of my book, but this is close enough)
I'm probably not going to read the physical book, since this is old enough to be on the Project Gutenberg website. So I'm just going to dump it onto the Kindle and read it that way. When I eventually get around to reading my mate Stendhal's other book, I'll probably download that one on the Kindle as well.

Quick Korean Update
I have started to use Anki again in response to another thread where someone else said they were quitting it. It is useful for me and I have less than 60 words or phrases I'm doing at the moment, so it isn't a big issue. I'm also attempting to memorize about 100 stock phrases from my Lonely Planet phrasebook for Korean. Remember, my goal is A1 or A2, not any sort of fluency. Although using the Study Time Calculator I'm never going to reach my goal before I fly to Korea.

Sometimes this depresses me and I think I'll stop, but then I figure knowing a little and butchering the crap out of someone's language shows respect? :lol: Oh well, I will still have the same problem I had when I first visited Italy, I can ask a question, but never understand the answer. :(
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Tue Dec 21, 2021 2:57 pm

I wanted to talk a little about memorisation. I have been doing a lot with "the method of loci" and "dominic method" for remembering things. I've been using this approach, but also using Anki. I've noticed a considerable difference in some of the words I'm trying to remember. However, because I started the method of Loci before the Anki deck, my observations might be skewed.

The method of loci is basically you walk through a building or other route that you know well, and you place images in various locations along the way, and you just walk the journey occasionally to refresh the memory.

    학생 - Student (A Uni student standing in front of the house I lived in as a child)
    선생님 - Teacher (in the foyer of the entrance, [foyer being a fancy word for coat and shoe storage])
    의사 - Doctor in white opening the door into the next room
    가수 - Singer - A child's castle singing in the middle of the room. (Helps with sound and translation)
    물 - Water spouting from an old radio
    맥주 - Beer spout inside a dart board, pouring out beer
    군인 - Soldier, Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) dressed in combat fatigues, opening the next door.

So in the images above I also "hear" the sound of the word being said as part of the image. More recently, I have plugged in the new vocabulary into Anki, and I've been using that. So some observations I have had about my own memory are.

I remember better using the method of loci the meaning of words and the sound of the words, but the written form of the word is hazy and vague. With Anki because I'm seeing the written Korean word, and hear the computerized voice I recognize more word forms. The computer generated voice is not as useful as you'd think, and I'm probably better off just sounding out the word myself.

Now, it might be a function of having a head start that the loci method makes recalling those words easier than the ones I see in the anki deck. Or it might be because when I'm using the loci that I'm actually visualizing the object for the most part (other than the singing castle, for example). So in my head I'm seeing a desk, pen, pencil, etc, or the Japanese flag when I visualize 일본 (Japan)

It also helps in I don't need my phone or computer, I don't even need any lights or anything other than my brain. I just have to walk through the journey and if I forget something then I review it later. But normally I remember everything, and it is just sitting in a chair imagining my little journey. Anki, I normally do while walking the dog. I put in some headsets and do the cards and occasionally throw the ball for the dog. All my vocabulary is in the Anki deck, but I stopped doing the loci thing about 75% of the way through my teacher's vocabulary.

But the loci words seem to have "stuck" better than the anki words, and the ones I remembered that way seem to pop into my mind quicker than the anki ones. So for example when my teacher asked me today; "Do you remember how to say, Notebook?" It was easy, because 공책 (notebook) is sitting on the 책상 (desk) beside the 연필 (pencil) in my imagination and I just said the word. Then he asked me; "Do you remember how to say, Movie?" and I could picture a sort of hazy collection of letters beginning with 영 ... But couldn't get 영화.

When I'm required to spell some of the words I have memorized with the loci method, it isn't too difficult to come up with the written word or near too it, because with the image is the sound of the word, so I can sound out each letter in order to spell the word. But with the Anki thing, it is more difficult because although I see the word with each review, and I hear the computer voice, this doesn't seem to be as internalized as the loci words.

I'm taking a short break from lessons during the holidays because there will be too much going on for me to get up at 5:30 AM to have a lesson at 6:00, so I'm going to take all the vocabulary I have been given and complete the journey around my old house and add all the new ones with images and sound. I've also extracted about 50-60 phrases that I want to memorize from my Lonely Planet Phrasebook. So I'm building an imaginary Korean town, and I'm populating it with vocabulary. I've started with a restaurant and on the window outside in a menu.

  • 고기
  • 닭고기
  • 돼지 고기
  • 소고기
  • 채소

Then as I move around the restaurant things like "Can I see the menu", "Table for two", then things like, knife, fork, spoon, bowl, chopsticks, plate.

I'll have another buildings for other words, bank, police department, doctor's office, train station, airport and my plan is to stick words and phrases that are likely to turn up in those places into that imaginary building in the imaginary town.

Anybody else used these types of memory techniques? Did they work better or worse than SRS for you?

EDIT: I just hit 128 subscribers on YT. This is pretty significant for a computer guy. Now I want 256 ! :)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Dec 23, 2021 3:39 am

I use the Method of loci (or Cicero's memory palace) for basic shopping and task lists. I found it didn't really help me with language learning because for me my recall was slow. But you might like the book Moonwalking with Einstein - since you are also memorizing pi.

It's a great book - I really enjoyed the topics.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby Dr Mack Rettosy » Thu Dec 23, 2021 7:18 pm

As a geneticist I can also get behind your enthusiasm for log base 2. Plus, that means more milestones to celebrate!
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Thu Dec 30, 2021 11:15 am

I have booked more Korean lessons which take me up to the 25th of January, the plan is to do a couple of lessons each week until April. I committed to the 365-day challenge in Korean, and my plan is to simply take a lesson or study for at the same time each day. So one hour each day knocked out in the morning should easily get me over the 365 challenge, but it isn't going to teach me Korean. According to the Study Time calculator, just getting to A1 on 1 hour per day will take 8 or 9 months. (Which I don't have)

At the A1 CEFR level, a language learner:
– Can understand and use very basic expressions to satisfy concrete needs.
– Can introduce themselves and others, ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, people they know and things they have.
– Can interact simply as long as the other person speaks slowly and clearly.


So I'm going to be relying heavily on English.

Thinking about what I want to do next year, like everyone else, I suppose. I'm not great with resolutions, mainly because I don't accomplish them, and then it annoys me. I also have a big, long list of stuff I want to do, so adding even more stuff and calling it a resolution is just a recipe for disaster. But what I do "resolve" to do is to pick up some new habits. Like studying for an hour, or reading a little each day.

I have continued to plod through the French book.



It is ok, the plot is a little predictable, but this might just be the jaded modern reader, since it might have been a fresh and unique plot a couple of hundred years ago.

I'm also reading:

Actually re-reading, but I got a copy for Christmas, so just dipping in and out of it. It is in English (this is probably the only website where I would need to specify the language). I do like this book, and it has reminded me of a lot of quotes from MA that I used to have memorized, and Epictetus.

I'm also reading sporatically:


Dr Mack Rettosy wrote:As a geneticist I can also get behind your enthusiasm for log base 2. Plus, that means more milestones to celebrate!

I also give out my age in hexadecimal, makes you look a lot younger. For example, if I make it to 70 (decimal) then I'll be telling people I'm 46 (hexadecimal). Although you might get the odd look if you tell someone your 2F years old. :)
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