BishBashBosh: Cram Apprentice 1 items and recent failures

Alright, so I’ve been procrastinating again. This is a tool which combines my precise use-case for the self-study script, and my approach to using physical flashcards.

The intended purpose is to try to force myself to remember new items a bit better (so they don’t just bounce between A1 and A3 for weeks) and possibly also to catch some problem items on the way back down to Apprentice. I’m trying to be quite careful not to break SRS, hence the focus on A1 items and stuff I’ve just seen anyway (“Recently failed” is failed reviews from the past 3 hours.)

(If this seems unnecessary, a waste of time, even counterproductive, then you have a much better memory than I do. How lovely, I envy you!)

Anyway, just in case some of you find it useful, it is here:

>> BISHBASHBOSH <<

Quick explanation:

Boring details
  • Won’t work on IE, no idea about Safari
  • Might work on phones/tablets to some extent
  • Stuff you know goes by quickly (answer perfectly twice, it’s done)
  • The more trouble you have with something, the more you’ll see it
  • Meanings can cope with a typo or two, a bit like WK itself
  • Readings must be perfect to be correct, however if you’re close it’ll give you another chance (based on Levenshtein distance between romaji-fied input & answers)
  • Right at the end, two items you know will stick around if there’s still one item you’ve having problems with - it’s not a bug, it’s just so you don’t have a single item over and over again which is a bit too easy.
  • For testing purposes, “1” is always correct, “2” is always wrong.

Good ideas welcome, bug reports entirely unwelcome but grudgingly accepted.

Updates:
2019-07-31: “Privacy Badger” and similar extensions may cause problems, try disabling them for this site if it’s not working. I promise I’m not tracking anyone, I’m far too lazy.
2019-08-02: Added “All that stuff” option to cram everything at once. Auto-focus input field. Cramming a single item is possible (but not very effective).
2019-08-06: Added “+4 ancient gurus” which is the same as “all that stuff” plus four of the twenty oldest gurus, started at least 10 weeks ago, last seen in WK more than 2 days ago. Should this just be in “all that stuff”…?

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Oh my! This is exactly what I needed. Thank you!

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I put my API v2 key in and it says there’s nothing found to cram? How come? I just KNOW I have A1 items weighing me down from like, level 4 lol

Hmm… That’s curious, it should only say that if it can’t fetch two or more assignments. I don’t suppose you accidentally switched it to “Recently failed”, right? If you don’t mind sending me your API key (should be a tiny “bug?” rollover in the bottom right corner) I can figure out what’s wrong.

Same for me. Doesn‘t work…

bbberror
I keep getting this error when I enter my API key… was the API changed?

Oh, I missed this while I was away - it’s perfect for what I need, thank you! Kind of wish I’d discovered it four weeks ago, but what can you do :sweat_smile:

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@snow-pine Hmm… Still works for me, I just improved the error messages a bit - any extra clues? You can force it to refresh everything if you switch to a nonsense API token then back to your real one, that might help. You can also post your API token (or a temporary one) here or email it to the address in the “bug?” rollover on the bottom right corner and I’ll debug properly.

@Radish8 Good to know! Glad it’s working for someone, clearly I rely too much on testers finding my bugs for me.

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It’s exactly what I wanted in a cramming tool. Focusing on just failed reviews is perfect for looking at those Enlightened items which you just failed but otherwise won’t see again for two weeks (which is stupid if you’d completely forgotten them), and I love the concern for not messing up the SRS.

Am I right in thinking you can only select one of the three categories to cram at a time? I think it might be helpful if you could select multiple categories to mix things up together. I don’t really have any apprentice 1 items at the moment because I’m on a lessons break, so they’re going to be a bit lonely whenever the odd one does turn up :grin: just a suggestion though - it’s still fab.

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I tried clearing my cookies for the site and entering nonsense API keys but it looks like those didn’t work. I sent you an email!

I just failed お構いなく, but it’s telling me there’s nothing to cram when I load ‘recently failed’. Otherwise seems to have been working perfectly - not sure whether it’s a bug with this specific item or something more generally has gone wrong.

I’m getting the error “failed to fetch”. I’m putting the Default read-only token, should generate a new token to use with this?

Hello, apologies, I went away for a few days and have been fighting my review count since I got back.

So, thanks to @snow-pine I’ve learned that the ‘Privacy Badger’ extension can mistakenly get the impression that the WK API is a nasty tracker thing and block it. It’s possible other similar extensions can do that too, @0_0 this may apply to you…? Definitely no need for a new token, the default one is fine.

@Radish8 If it was only one thing you failed then it may be mistakenly telling you there’s nothing to cram because it currently requires at least two items. I’ve put this on my to-do list to change, but honestly cramming a single item over and over again is a bit too easy. Your earlier idea for mixing multiple categories together… Yeah maybe, although personally I tend to want to do either stuff I’ve just failed or stuff I’ve just learned. I can definitely add a fourth option which gets everything the other options get and smushes them together, would that suffice?

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Don’t worry about it, life happens ^^

Aah, that’s probably it. I agree there’s little point cramming one thing on its own; I was just concerned it was a bug because of the ‘nothing found to cram’ wording.

To be honest… I would appreciate that feature, but I don’t think I’d appreciate it enough to warrant the time it would take you :grin: if I occasionally can’t cram the odd item it doesn’t really matter.

I would quite like it if the cursor would auto-focus on the input box when the page is loaded, if that wouldn’t be too annoying to implement…?

Also, you should implement a tip jar :blush:

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@Radish8 Your wishes have been granted in about 10 lines of code, hopefully I haven’t broken anything.

No tip jar, when people pay they start expecting things! :slight_smile:

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Yaaay, thank you! :blush:

Haha, fair enough :joy:

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Hello again :grin: I don’t suppose you’d be able to make it so that it won’t let you input a reading if there is a non-Japanese character in the string? E.g. if you accidentally type something like えんbな instead of えんばん.

I can’t tell you how helpful this little tool has been to me over the last few months. Thank you so much.

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I thought I might be the only one still using it! Good to know there’s two of us, glad it’s useful :slight_smile:

Yep, can do that - probably sometime this week, work’s a bit manic at the moment. It should already catch some typos like that but it doesn’t specifically look for non-kana input.

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Not at all, I’m an avid user even if I am the only one, haha!

Thank you! No rush at all, don’t want to add to work stress - just thought I’d mention it.

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:wave: hey, just wondering if you’ve updated anything recently? It seems to be a bit broken this morning.

I submit the first meaning correctly, but then the input field doesn’t clear or load a new question, and it won’t let me resubmit or anything so I can’t progress.