Hoyo ~ It’s been a few days since I’ve done any sort of studying. It’s a long weekend, what can I say. I managed to binge watch through Better Call Saul though.

I feel like the first time I did programming, back in high school, I didn’t really “get it”. I instead made the decision to get into doing artwork, which over time evolved into visual effects. I’ve been lucky to get to dabble with scripting while doing a job that is largely creative, and now that I’m returning to some basic C++, I feel like I have a much better understanding of it. Ben is doing a great job teaching the course so far, and it’s enjoyable to follow the lessons. That said, time to jump in with the note taking. Read More >

Alright, I’ve been so focused on Japanese recently, it’s easy to forget that I have other things I want to do too! Yesterday is the first day in close to a month that I decided to just go with the flow, not do anything planned after work, and ended up watching the first two episodes of Better Call Saul. It starts off great! I’d love to binge watch the rest of it, but all play and no work makes for an empty blog.

It’s been a week since I last followed along with the coursework over on Udemy, so lets get back into gear:

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It’s been a while since playing any video games, and the urge was strong tonight. I’m currently trying to figure out if there’s a good option for me to play in Japanese. Either via PS3, or import on DS. Both of which I own and can easily play games on from other markets. I’m tempted to look into emulation options too so that I can check out the Japanese versions of some of the NES or SNES games I grew up with. In the meantime though, I was able to scratch a little of my itch by picking up Influent again. Read More >

It’s very vocabulary heavy learning a new language… it’s horrible to want to race through chapters and take in as much as my grey matter will allow, however it’s also quite difficult to store any of this into long term memory when I keep getting new words every day. A couple of them will stick, but not enough I’m afraid. Maybe I need to start entering the words into Anki or Memrise or something so that I can start memorizing them before I continue bombarding myself with more new stuff.

I was able to find sometime to re-listen to Pimsleur 1-11 today in addition to doing new stuff. So, especially having taken notes yesterday, I feel like I was able to listen better today. But then I went and also made it though two chapters of Human Japanese, and another new Pimsleur session.

Let’s start with the Human Japanese stuff first: Read More >

Exercising while sick isn’t fun. I felt a little light headed afterward actually, and had to reduce the speed of that treadmill just a smidge. But I still did it! That’s three full weeks of going to the gym now, and I’ve managed to drop almost 3 kg so far (unfortunately my bathroom scale is in lbs… so I’ll have to say 6lbs). I’m not going to let a little cold get in my way of continuing to reach for my target. I, of course, managed another Pimsleur session at the same time. I also managed to bring my katakana memorization up a notch.

Pimsleur Level 1, Unit 11

This class is mostly about asking when you want to do something. Want to eat dinner at my place tonight? That sort of thing.

Something that was interesting in the teaching style of this lesson, is that the phrases きいてください and くりかえしてください were both introduced without being introduced. The audio was just slammed into my ear, and it actually threw me off quite a bit. It was jarring to have phrases spoken, and I wasn’t able to have it repeated immediately so I could try to decypher it. Apparently they’re going to do more of that as time goes on.

I’ve got 20 more lessons to go to finish up Level 1, so at the rate I’m going that might be another 7 weeks.

Phrases
– なんじですか。 – what time is it?
– いまなんじですか。 – what time is it, now?
– さんじにのみたいです。 – at 3 o’clock I want to eat.
– いえいまのみたくありません。 – no, I don’t want to drink right now.
– いつのみますか。 – when would you like to eat?
– じゃあしちじに。 – well then, seven o’clock?
– こんばんすずきさんとたべたいです。 – This evening, I’d like to eat with Suzuki-san.
– ばんごはんをたべませんか。 – Won’t you eat dinner?
– こんばんじゅうじにばんごはんをたべます。 – I’m going to have dinner at 10PM
– あしたのばんたなかさんとばんごはんをたべます。 – tomorrow night, I want to have dinner with Tanaka-san.
– わたしとばんごはんをたべませんか。 – Won’t you have dinner with me?
– ありがとうございますでもきょうわちょっと。 – thank you, but today is a bit…
– こんばんのみませんか。 – won’t you have a drink this evening?
– こんばんあにをしますか。 – what are you doing this evening?
– コーヒーをのみます。 – I will drink coffee.
– じゃあまたあした。 – See you tomorrow.

Human Japanese Chapter 11/12

Chapter 11 was simply a page on Japanese bathing habits.

Chapter 12 introduces more vocabulary:

and the lesson ends with some more katakana:

マ – 2 strokes – it’s easy to remember this one as a triangular flag on a stick (just imagine the line extending the rest of the way up)
ミ – 3 strokes – another way to say the number 3 is mittsu. Just as ni is two lines, mi is three. They’re also slightly angled downward.
ム – 2 strokes – This one might be like the lid opening on a box. or something? It’s triangular shaped.
メ – 2 strokes – this is an extremely abbreviated version of it’s hiragana version: め. It shouldn’t look like an x
モ – 3 strokes – It’s a lot like it’s cousin too. The stroke order is different though, as in Hiragana, the vertical line goes first. も

Yay! I practiced the katakana today for a bit with Obenkyo, and it seems to have made a difference. During the review here, テ was the only one that threw me off. Memorizing these won’t be so bad after all 🙂

ヤ – 2 strokes – This is very similar to や, but it’s more angular and missing a stroke.
ユ – 3 strokes – the vertical portion of the first stroke should veer slightly left, never to the right.
ヨ – 3 strokes – it’s a backward E, The lower arms are drawn left to right.

these of course don’t use ten-ten, but they work just as their hiragana counterparts to make extended sounds such as kya キャ, shu　シュ, and cho　チョ. And are very easy to take in.

There’s not enough hours in a day. Jobs are the worst. I should totally just have a gofundme or some bullshit so that I don’t have to work anymore. Then I’ll just learn stuff all day and feel stressed because there’s still not enough time in a day.

Ok, so I left off at some ungodly hour (like I do every night) a while back half-way through Human Japanese Chapter 10. I should try and finish that since I’ve found myself attempting to learn kanji. I don’t even have a good grasp on katakana! That said I managed to also spend a bunch of time looking into a strategy for learning Kanji today, so expect a look at that before the week is out. Since I can only memorize so much a day, I’m going to hold off on it just until I finish enough Human Japanese that I feel that I’ve got katakana down. In the meantime, I’ll be using Obenkyo to test myself a couple of times a day to help pound the kana into that noggin. Read More >

I hadn’t managed to get to the gym Thursday or Friday, but I managed to squeeze in a session tonight after 妻と赤ちゃん went to sleep. That means I was able to get in not only a little bit of muscle exhaustion, but some mental exhaustion. Pimsleur lesson 10 actually isn’t so bad as there was only really one new piece of vocabulary たい and the negative version of たく, but it’s still jarring to be pulled back to a different language that you’ve taken a few days off from studying. I’ll go ahead and include past vocabulary which was featured in this lesson, even though it’s been noted previously on this blog. Read More >

Back in early November, I decided to throw some money at a Kickstarter campaign which was created to launch some Unreal Engine training. Mildly silly since I’m now working with Unreal Engine at work. But the thing is, I always like learning new things, and have an interest in learning how to do stuff with UE aside from VFX. The tutorial is designed both to cover UE, and C++.

Unlike a good percentage of the Kickstarter projects I’ve backed, the developer of this content has a good track record for getting stuff delivered, and has so far been releasing the course in segments on Udemy.com as it’s created. Not only am I going to fill up my site with notes on Japanese, but now you’re going to see notes about this course which I’ll be attempting to keep up with as content gets released.

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I’ve been cooped up a lot since the kid was born, and recently focusing a lot on either Japanese, or on Houdini. So it was a nice change of pace to get a chance to catch up with some of the gang from college on Wednesday night. I managed to do some Japanese during lunch that day, but visits made me miss out on my nightly update.

It’s satisfying to finally be doing some jogging on the treadmill. It’s amazing how difficult even that is after a long period of no exercise! I’m definitely trying to ease into it since I know I’m not in shape, but even after 3 weeks I’m starting to see some results. So far the hill settings with a weight vest have been enough, but I’ve managed to lose 5lbs so far, and Wednesday was the first time I’ve actually done any jogging in a longtime. Another couple of weeks and I should be able to do some solid jogging for the whole 30 minutes!

And of course, the Pimsleur Japanese that I learned included:

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The most annoying part about writing these notes is that there’s a part of me that really wants to adhere to style guide. I mean… I wrote this sentence explicitly because I couldn’t think of an image to add as my header, and so that the text would align better once I start writing my notes. Damned brain.

It’s decidedly difficult to pay attention to Pimsleur when not on the treadmill. I try to work out muscles two days a week… which results in counting and concentrating　what I’m doing just enough so that every now and then my attention is decidedly not on the audio. I guess on these days, I should probable either re-listen to what I did the previous day… or on the following day I should re-listen to whatever it is that I’m not confident I took in. At any rate, here’s the vocabulary from the eighth lesson.

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