A post of random things today.
Badges
I recently got a new badge, and I’m not certain whether it’s a good one or not…
Funny thing is, that same day, my computer’s main hard drive (OS+applications on it) died. My emergency back-up hard drive (OS+minimal applications) it turns out doesn’t work either. My other option, booting from a DVD (OS+minimal applications) would have been a good way to be able to at least access my files, except my DVD drive died last year…
After putting it off for several months, I went out and bought a new DVD drive for my computer. I have plenty of spare hard drives, so I used an install DVD to get the OS+applications installed, and was mostly back up and running in a day. My devotee streak did not break before I had a chance to get the notification about the badge!
Lessons and Review
Speaking of streaks, I like to see my streak go up for consecutive days reviewed, and more recently lessons. Especially since I’ve done a minimum of one lesson every single day for a few months now.
I have no idea how I missed a day!
My lessons streak ended at 119 days.
Considering that I did six the next day, I wonder if it was a timing issue where I did lessons at night and they counted for the next day. (Once upon a time, I had my iKnow 583 day review streak break when a daylight saving time change pushed my evening review into a different day for the server’s time.)
Well, time to build it back up again. At least I’ve not missed a beat with my reviews!
WaniKani Level
Streaks aside, I’m nearing 50 days on level 26, with another 22 kanji to learn.
Part of me wants to pick up the pace a bit, especially since two of the kanji I looked up in today’s reading were level 27 and level 28 kanji. But at the same time, I want to keep my apprentice down. I’ve done well at keeping it around 50, so I upped my lessons a little here and there to get it apprentice toward 60, then suddenly in a day it jumped from 60 to 70 (not my best review session).
Considering my leeches are at 411 (which they’ve hovered around for two months now), I probably won’t speed things up too much just yet.
I’ve recently started using BishBashBosh for its “10 oldest apprentices” review, but I’m not using it frequently enough, as I only get to it maybe once a day every two or three days. I hope this will help me move some leeches out of apprentice, but also hopefully they don’t all come crashing back in from guru later.
I’m at 57 apprentice leeches, which is 81.4%. I really want to bring that number down. I just haven’t found a method that works for me yet.
Reading
Reading has been going fairly smoothly. I’ve kept at one chapter per day.
I’m not yet certain where I’ll fit trying to read “Your Name.” into my schedule. Maybe Saturdays, now that we’re at the end of 「ふらいんぐうぃっち」 (until the next volume comes out). Otherwise, I’ll may get back to reading 「おじさまと猫」, and maybe using Saturdays also as my 「わんわん探偵団おかわり」 reading day. There’s also another volume of 「よつばと！」 coming out, but I might fit that into Wednesdays with Pokemon since the Pokemon chapters are only 15 pages.
My Sundays are one chapter (about eight pages) of 「ひとりぼっちの○○生活」, which takes forever due to the amount of kanji look-ups I have to do. I end up splitting it into about four to five 20-minute sessions across the day. (I should probably lean on Copyfish more to speed things up.)
I found out that the last volume of 「三ツ星カラーズ」 that I read last year is…the last volume of 「三ツ星カラーズ」.
I was hoping to read more, but instead I get another hole in my schedule to fill with something else.
Sentence Cards
At 38 days into the year, I have 39 sentence cards in Anki. That sounds good (at a one-card-per-day pace), but I’ve had days where I added multiple cards. I was doing a good job of adding cards near-daily early on, but lately I haven’t been finding many +1 sentences while reading.
Part of the problem is I’ve been looking for kanji words I don’t know, but use only kanji I do know (without having any other unknown kanji/words in the sentence, preferably the whole manga panel). I think I need to open this to non-kanji words I don’t know.
I learned こっそり as a lesson in iKnow the other day, and it’s already come up in two manga I’ve read in the days since. And I know I’m always seeing kana words that I look up, then forget by the next panel. Sometimes the same word comes up two or three times in a chapter, and I have to look it up each time because I don’t recognize having just seen it a couple pages prior. Formally making a sentence card and starting reviews should help with retention.
Anime Watching Listening Practice
I’m not technically doing listening practice, but now that I have new DVD drive for my computer, I’m back to being able to watch Sailormoon. I’d been watching in Japanese without subtitles, then later watching the same episode in English (old dub and new).
I’ve started the second season (two episodes in), and I feel I’m following along better than when I started the first season. But the mini-series that begins season two is one I’m extra familiar with (as I recorded it from TV way back then, then later bought the series on VHS), so it may be giving me a false sense of comprehension. Once I get through the part of season two where the English dub originally stopped, that’s when the training wheels come up, but it’ll be a while before I get there.
. But I think I need to stop trying.
