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Re: Super Challenge 2016-17 DISCUSSION THREAD
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 7:23 am
by EmmaC02
NoManches wrote:Question:
Is anybody else logging in minutes rather than number of movies watched?
I don't want to deviate too far away from what the Super Challenge is (movies and books in your TL), but at the same time I don't like the idea of checking off numbers of movies after I've watched them. I've been watching a lot of TV shows lately and to be conservative and to keep myself honest, I have been rounding the tv show minutes down and have been keeping a running tally of the minutes watched.
So for example, if I watch a 45 minute show I only count it as 40 minutes (because of commercials and whatnot). Since the Super Challenge comes down to 9,000 minutes of TV/Movies, can't I just log in the minutes as I go?? I ask because I could seriously use the input from youtube videos where people use colloquial language and speak very fast. Why couldn't I log in minutes from videos and count it towards the Super Challenge? Anybody else doing this?
If I intensively watch a 10 minute youtube video, can't that count towards my 9,000 minutes?
I'm logging in minutes. I watch all of my tv and films online anyways (commercial free), so I just look at how long the video is. Shows that are an hour long on TV, tend to be ~42-43 minutes, from what I've seen, so I log that. I'm planning on doing that with films as well. I recently started the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and considering they're all almost 3 hours each, I'm sure as hell logging the minutes
.
I've also been logging minutes I spend watching ~25-30 minute videos on Youtube, that aren't tv shows or movies, but rather a native speaker narrating something or discussing something. I think they have to be >= 10 minutes to count. I don't see why it shouldn't count, considering most of these Youtube videos contain much more actual content than tv or movies! I watch them mainly to hear how real people my age speak, because old war movies sure as hell won't!
Re: Super Challenge 2016-17 DISCUSSION THREAD
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 11:19 am
by zhuzilu
I also always count TV series/films (in some cases maybe Coursera lectures) and always count them in minutes (normally I watch everything in my laptop so if I watch a full season of 23 episodes of an average of 22minutes each, just a simple math 23*22= 506 minutes to log). It depends if I consider it's a particular "silent" movie, or movie with a lot of silents. For example, Ting shuo 《 听说》 a Taiwanese film featuring a hearing impaired, I would count less minutes... I never counted Youtube videos, although I watch a lot of them, maybe I should consider it....
And for the reading part I normally just do books, I don't count reading the internet or other sources...., but because I prefer to focus on just that Books and Films/TV series.
Re: Super Challenge 2016-17 DISCUSSION THREAD
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 12:11 pm
by sfuqua
Some ebook readers will give you a word count or even a character count for a book. Just divide the number of words by 250 to get a page count for the book. For an ereader program such as Moon+, which does not give useful page counts, I just find the number of words in the book and divide by 250.
Re: Super Challenge 2016-17 DISCUSSION THREAD
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 12:37 pm
by Kerrie
For books, most of my reading is on my Kindle or ReadLang. I normally just look up how many pages are in the book (on Amazon or GoodReads, for example), and log the book when I'm done.
If you're trying to log what you read every week and don't want to wait until you are done with a book, you can always use the percentage (most eBook readers will have locations and or percentages to keep track of where you are). If I'm at 15% of a 200 page book, then I'm around page 30.
Re: Super Challenge 2016-17 DISCUSSION THREAD
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 3:45 pm
by zhuzilu
Kerrie wrote:For books, most of my reading is on my Kindle or ReadLang. I normally just look up how many pages are in the book (on Amazon or GoodReads, for example), and log the book when I'm done.
If you're trying to log what you read every week and don't want to wait until you are done with a book, you can always use the percentage (most eBook readers will have locations and or percentages to keep track of where you are). If I'm at 15% of a 200 page book, then I'm around page 30.
Yep, that's true! I do that all the time, actually today I post 2 books that I'm reading at the same time and just reach 50% of both. I also look on Amazon or Goodreads the number of pages, then I'll normally wait until I'm at 25%, 50% or 75%. So the maths would be easier... Maths is not my strongest point
Re: Super Challenge 2016-17 DISCUSSION THREAD
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 9:59 pm
by NoManches
zhuzilu wrote:Kerrie wrote:For books, most of my reading is on my Kindle or ReadLang. I normally just look up how many pages are in the book (on Amazon or GoodReads, for example), and log the book when I'm done.
If you're trying to log what you read every week and don't want to wait until you are done with a book, you can always use the percentage (most eBook readers will have locations and or percentages to keep track of where you are). If I'm at 15% of a 200 page book, then I'm around page 30.
Yep, that's true! I do that all the time, actually today I post 2 books that I'm reading at the same time and just reach 50% of both. I also look on Amazon or Goodreads the number of pages, then I'll normally wait until I'm at 25%, 50% or 75%. So the maths would be easier... Maths is not my strongest point
For books on my Kindle I just wait till I'm done and then add the page numbers to my total (k check the page numbers of the paperback version on Amazon ).
I never thought to look at the percentage read and then calculate how many pages you've done. I always thought this would be inaccurate because it probably takes into account the table of contents, bibliography, random dedication pages, etc. But....now that I think about it, those pages would only make up a very small portion of the book.
Re: Super Challenge 2016-17 DISCUSSION THREAD
Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2016 9:22 am
by zhuzilu
NoManches wrote:zhuzilu wrote:Kerrie wrote:For books, most of my reading is on my Kindle or ReadLang. I normally just look up how many pages are in the book (on Amazon or GoodReads, for example), and log the book when I'm done.
If you're trying to log what you read every week and don't want to wait until you are done with a book, you can always use the percentage (most eBook readers will have locations and or percentages to keep track of where you are). If I'm at 15% of a 200 page book, then I'm around page 30.
Yep, that's true! I do that all the time, actually today I post 2 books that I'm reading at the same time and just reach 50% of both. I also look on Amazon or Goodreads the number of pages, then I'll normally wait until I'm at 25%, 50% or 75%. So the maths would be easier... Maths is not my strongest point
For books on my Kindle I just wait till I'm done and then add the page numbers to my total (k check the page numbers of the paperback version on Amazon ).
I never thought to look at the percentage read and then calculate how many pages you've done. I always thought this would be inaccurate because it probably takes into account the table of contents, bibliography, random dedication pages, etc. But....now that I think about it, those pages would only make up a very small portion of the book.
If you think about, we're actually logging the same number of pages, let's say we both read Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone. I'll look it up on goodreads/amazon, goodreads says it's 332 pages, and amazon 352 pages. I'll go for the average so let's say 342 pages. I'll log, maybe, the first half 50% (171 pages), and later the other 50% (another 171 pages). Total = 171+171= 342 pages. And you instead will log 342 pages.
The result is the same. The thing is if it's taking you too long to read a book (or you're reading a +600pages book) you won't log in a really long time, and it will discourage you, even though maybe at that moment you have already read the equivalent to 5 Superchallenge books.... Besides, if you want to keep the current streak ribbon you need to log at least every week, so that would help you log earlier...
Either way, I think it could be really helpful, especially at the early stages...
Re: Super Challenge 2016-17 DISCUSSION THREAD
Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2016 2:10 pm
by lingua
I prefer to log the # of pages for a book after I complete it. I do the majority of my reading on the Kindle. Amazon now gives page numbers for eBooks but in the past they did not. I bought the short book I'm reading now 4-5 years ago and it has no size, no pages, no nothing. I even went to inMondadori to see if I could find the number of pages for the hard copy of the book but it wasn't there. So I loaded it on the iPad and made the font really small until I had about 600 words on the screen. I then actually scrolled through counting pages in increments of 1 or 2 because this book is about 1/3 recipes and I didn't count the pages with recipes since I wasn't planning to read most of them. I did read the list of ingredients however but that can hardly count for much.
Re: Super Challenge 2016-17 DISCUSSION THREAD
Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2016 10:46 am
by steyyan
There seems to be 15-20 Kindle positions per page for most books (written in the roman alphabet) I've been reading. Try dividing the kindle position by 20 for a conservative estimate.
Re: Super Challenge 2016-17 DISCUSSION THREAD
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 5:46 am
by sfuqua
I think I'm going to lay off Tagalog reading for a while. The Tagalog reading I did had a nice effect on my speaking, but it was mostly waking up old skills that I had before. I'm having a hard time finding things I want to read in Tagalog. I'll be heading to the Philippines in about three weeks; I'll look for more stuff there.
I was quite happily doing extensive listening and reading before the super challenge started. I've been less happy with my program since it started; I think because of Tagalog. Adding Tagalog to my schedule breaks up my Spanish reading and slows it down, and the stuff I'm reading in Tagalog is less interesting than what I'm reading in Spanish. I'm going to be a Spanish guy for a few weeks.