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

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

Postby rdearman » Wed Dec 21, 2022 7:36 pm

OK, so not much to report regarding Korean. I've restarted using my anki decks, so I'm now in the "use them" part of the "use them and burn out" cycle of SRS. I am really missing my Korean lessons, mainly because they kept me honest and forced me to learn new stuff each day. I continue to read a chapter of my Korean grammar book each day.

I had a LE in Korean today, which once again is just me speaking to a Korean person in English and a few moments of Korean is used. However, I am still watching a ton of Korean. At the moment, I've switched focus from K-Dramas to YouTubers. I have been binge-watching a woman called Rirang (리랑) https://www.youtube.com/@RirangOnAir who goes camping. They have excellent subtitles, and a lot of what she is saying is very repetitive between each video. So lots of this repetitive vocabulary is sticking to my Teflon coated brain. I've also purchased a good quality notebook, and I plan to start the new year by writing a diary in Korean. It will obviously be short, crap entries, but hopefully it will help, and it will be some contact with the language every day.

I've started doing some French language exchanges with a woman whose daughter married an American, and she is pretty driven to perfect her English. So we've been doing daily language exchanges. Today we agreed to talk about Christmas, and then spent over an hour talking about gardening, slugs, and mosquitos. "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley"

My Italian LE's were cancelled due to Christmas as my LE partner has her family visiting and doesn't have time. I have had offers for Mandarin exchanges, but I cannot get dragged down that rabbit hole again!

On a general note, I have given up on the memorisation thing. Although it worked, I didn't really have anything of interest to memorise. I have a couple of Robert Frost poems memorised and one from the Italian poetry book I bought in Milan, but I'm going to park that now due to lack of interest. Although the next time I'm in the dentist chair, I'll probably wish I had memorised more stuff to keep me occupied.

As for my reading, I have completed 33 books since the 2nd of September, and I'll be making a new reading list for 2023 this week. Half of the remaining books on the current list probably will not make the cut, and I'll just give those away to friends or neighbours or put them up for adoption here. I've worked out that I'm averaging ~3.36 days per book, so doing 100 books in a year should be achievable, since this works out to about 108 books per year at that rate. The good news about that is it means I'll clear all the current backlog of books off my shelf in July or August. To clarify that further, I'll clear the backlog of English and French books, part of the Italian books and possibly 1 of the Korean books, and zero of the Mandarin ones.

Which means sometime in February or March I can start collecting even more books to clutter up my bookshelves! It did occur to me if I went back to the bad old days of commuting I would get through the books a lot quicker, since being stuck on a train for 15 hours a week gives a lot of time for reading. So that is me done. Oh, I did come up with a rather interesting prompt for the ChatGPT AI program which you might want to try out if you write stories.

https://chat.openai.com/chat

Code: Select all

I want you to act as a creative writing coach. I want you to generate a detailed writing prompt for me. The prompt will be for a different randomly selected genre of story, eg sci-fi, romance, mystery, fantasy, etc. You should add to this list of genres as appropriate. You should set the prompt to have word count targets, some character or situations which are required and some which are optional. You will generate a new prompt each time I say "again"

As a general rule, however, your prompt for a story should answer the following questions:

    Who is the main character?
    What does the main character want?
    What prevents the main character from getting what they want?
    The plot idea, e.g. “what happens” in the story
    Setting: the time, place and world that the story is set in

Draw creativity from puns, word play, alliterations, and onomatopoeias or any area you find available. Avoid clichés such as love interests. Characters need depth and should each have conflicting goals.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Wed Dec 21, 2022 11:46 pm

Swift update on the Itlian reading. Completed another one: A ciascuno il suo.



It was ok. It was a little too difficult for me but I did manage it. Don' know which book I'll start next. This brings me up to 34 books read this year. :)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Thu Dec 29, 2022 12:48 pm

I'm not going to complete any more books before the end of the year, so I thought I would post a small update. Although this isn't strictly language related, although I have many different languages on my list, I though people here are more likely to be interested in reading. :)

I read 38 books between 02/09/22 (2nd Sept) and today. So not too shabby, but I want to read 2500+ more books before I kick the bucket, and statistically I don't have a lot of time left, so the clock is ticking!

My plan is to read 125 books per year. This is a bloody difficult target, but should mean I can hit my 2500+ book target before the cold hand of death gets me. :evil: The only problem is I don't think I can realistically read more than 117 books a year (I did the maths). So I need to live longer. :)

But regardless, the benefits of having a good reading habit go beyond just racking up numbers on a spreadsheet. I'm learning a lot since I'm not just reading fiction, but maths books, Korean grammar books, books on philosophy, religion, history, computer science, etc. I should also clear the backlog on my bookshelves relatively early in the new year, and then I can bring in more books and explore more subjects. I don't have a "Forever Project" I want to explore yet, but I'm sure I will go down many rabbit holes. For example, I asked for and got "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" which is (apparently) a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more. This book came up when looking at other maths books.

I've only got 68 books on the list for 2023, so need to add another 57 books on to the list. That is the nice part, the fact that I'll be able to go out and start looking for more books, more topics, more things to learn. Because remember, if you aren't learning something new every day, then all you're doing is dying.

If you don't have a reading list for the new year, then I encourage you to start one, you don't want to be an old person racing death to read a few thousand books. If you include self-published authors, you’re looking at close to 4 million new book titles published each year! At 100 books a year, I'm only reading 0.25% of the 4 million books published in 2023. So if you guys could read the rest of them, that would be great. (I plan to publish one of those 4 million too)

2022Reading.png


EDIT: I should note that the chart above is sorted by language, so English at the top, then French, then Italian. I didn't complete any other books in other languages, so they aren't on the chart, but are on the list!
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby daveprine » Sun Jan 01, 2023 12:32 am

Best of luck to you, although I doubt you'll need it. You're quite a voracious reader.

I'm shooting for 100 books in 2023, mainly just to get rid of all the books that have been piling up. If I make it to 50, I won't complain.

Happy New Year!
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Sun Jan 01, 2023 4:16 pm

OK, New Year, new targets. I hesitate to call them resolutions, since I know I'm not going to manage to do many of them. But here we are. These targets should cover off all the challenges I'm involved in this year too, e.g. Output Challenge, Super Challenge, 365 Challenge.

Korean:
  1. Write in my diary each day. I have noted down a minimum entry, which includes, date & time, weather, give the day a colour, and explain why that day is that colour.
  2. Record myself reading my diary entry.
  3. Clozemaster & Anki each day (this is the one I'm most likely to ignore)
  4. Read a page in Korean each day.
  5. Read Korean grammar books
  6. Watch Korean YT or Film each week

French:
  1. Language Exchanges weekly
  2. Possibly do another diary in French (but probably not)
  3. Find a podcast to listen to each week.

Italian:
  1. Read all the books on my shelves!
  2. Find a podcast to listen to each week.

Mandarin:
  1. Read some books if I have time.

Most of my targets for this year are more health related and also more reading. A lot of the challenges and resolutions I have are mutually reinforcing, so my target of reading 125 books includes books in multiple languages. Writing helps with memory and retention, etc. TBH I'm probably not really doing anything which I wasn't doing before, I'm just trying to be a bit more systematic about it all.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Thu Jan 05, 2023 11:52 am

Italian
Still doing language exchanges in Italian, and reading my Italian book. Italian language exchanges are easy to have, I'm inundated daily with requests for language exchanges.

French
My French language exchanges should start up again next week. I have two primary partners who I speak to at the moment, and both are away until next week.

Korean
I am watching a lot of YT videos from a vlogger who goes camping. I think I need to now go back and watch them again with no subtitles. I don't understand anything without subtitles. Sometimes I despair of ever learning this language. I've been at this for probably about 18 months now, and honestly I can't understand a single thing anyone says to me or at me. I can barely string together a simple sentence.

Calvin Coolidge wrote:“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On!' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”


Octavia Butler wrote:“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.”


So, with that in mind, I trudge on.

I have been writing in my diary every day since the 1st of January. Before I started the diary, I wrote down a minimum entry requirement. I can write more than the minimum, but each day I have to write:
  • Date and time
  • Day of the week
  • Time of the entry
  • Plan for day (or what I did if I write it at night)
  • One sentence using a randomly picked word from a random word generator on the Internet.
  • Assign the day a colour, and explain why this day is that colour.
  • A short 2-4 sentence dialogue between myself and someone else.

The reason for these are simple. I need to be able to remember dates, days-of-the-week, and hours and minutes. The plan for the day is some common activity and useful for common words. A random word so I'm not just doing the same old thing each day. I want to remember colours because they come in handy, so I use this to assign common colours, and it is repetitive, so I will get familiar with them. The simple dialogue are things I would find useful while travelling. Can I have... Do you have... Where is the...

This is handwritten, so none of that copy and paste nonsense! I take a photo and send the page off to one of my LE partners, who has agreed to give me some corrections. I only write in Korean on the right-hand page, because when I have done a full week of entries I will start phase two, which is to go back to the first entry and try to translate what I wrote back into English on the left-hand side. Likewise, I will also record myself reading the Korean for that date and send it to my Korean LE partner. (We're both doing diaries, and we've agreed to give corrections).

This diary thing eats up a significant amount of time, but it does mean I can hit my 365 day 30+ minutes in Korean easily. Especially since I'm watching YT videos and doing Anki cards as well. Maybe one day this language will make sense to me. :oops: :cry:

General Stuff
Modern life, and my mobile phone, have eroded my concentration. Reading has become something of a chore for me, whereas before I got one of these bloody phones I had no problems with concentration. I could happily lose myself in a book for hours on end. Now I find myself stopping every couple of pages and picking up the phone. Last night it was terrible, and my mind kept wandering to the phone. Tonight I have decided that before I start to read, I'm going to turn off my phone, put it downstairs on the charger and go upstairs to read. This is so that to "just check the phone" I would have to get up, go downstairs, turn it on and wait for it to start, which will hopefully make it not worth the effort. I did watch a video so some woman who switched to an old-fashioned dumb phone and was super happy to have got her life back. She wasn't an oldy like me either, she was like 25.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby Iversen » Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:14 pm

You will certainly be aware of Flynn's revised law? The original version proclaimed that each generation would be a bit smarter than the previous one - which means that "British children's average scores on the Raven's Progressive Matrices test rose by 14 IQ points from 1942 to 2008" (cfr. Wikipedia). But then the mobile phone was invented, and now the trend has reversed in a host of countries, including my own.

To be fair, Wikipedia tries frantically to calm the waters by stating that "Meta-analyses indicate that, overall, the Flynn effect continues," - but "meta-analyses" is just another word for "explaining troublesome facts away". Because of their gadgets people don't read and don't calculate in their heads any more - they just press buttons. I watched a Danish quiz yesterday, where two persons should find the prime number among 36,37,38 and 39 - and one of them said that she couldn't see any number that 39 could be divided by - so they had to spend a 'lifeline' to choose between 37 and 39. I couldn't bear watching the outcome ...
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Thu Jan 05, 2023 1:40 pm

Iversen wrote:You will certainly be aware of Flynn's revised law?

Actually, I wasn't, but your link leads me down some fascinating rabbit holes! Thanks!
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Fri Jan 06, 2023 12:23 am

Iversen wrote:I watched a Danish quiz yesterday, where two persons should find the prime number among 36,37,38 and 39 - and one of them said that she couldn't see any number that 39 could be divided by - so they had to spend a 'lifeline' to choose between 37 and 39. I couldn't bear watching the outcome ...

You certainly don't need the Sieve of Eratosthenes to work that out! But I think they pick stupid people for gameshows so they don't have to payout the money. :ugeek:
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby stell » Fri Jan 06, 2023 2:49 am

rdearman wrote:Modern life, and my mobile phone, have eroded my concentration. Reading has become something of a chore for me, whereas before I got one of these bloody phones I had no problems with concentration. I could happily lose myself in a book for hours on end. Now I find myself stopping every couple of pages and picking up the phone. Last night it was terrible, and my mind kept wandering to the phone. Tonight I have decided that before I start to read, I'm going to turn off my phone, put it downstairs on the charger and go upstairs to read. This is so that to "just check the phone" I would have to get up, go downstairs, turn it on and wait for it to start, which will hopefully make it not worth the effort. I did watch a video so some woman who switched to an old-fashioned dumb phone and was super happy to have got her life back. She wasn't an oldy like me either, she was like 25.

Oh, do I feel this! My phone has even eroded my sleep habits. I've always been a bit of a poor sleeper, waking up often. But somehow over the past few years, I've started picking up my phone when I can't sleep in the middle of the night, and scrolling for an hour or two. It is a PROBLEM! Last night I put my phone on the other side of the room, and when I woke up in the middle of the night (at what time? Dunno. My phone was on the other side of the room), instead of scrolling, I actually just laid quietly and eventually just...fell back asleep. Shocking, I know!
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