Question words and Moving

I'm going to be moving to Idaho soon, so with this blog post I'm beginning to fall behind, as I've been so busy...

Today at iKnow I got a little done - nothing special.

The new-ish words were:

駅 - eki - railway station
おいしい(oishii) - tasty
大きい - ookii - big
男 - otoko - man,male
大人 - otona - adult

I picked a few good ones out of the sentences, though.
野球 - yakyuu - baseball
昼過ぎ - hirusugi - lunch
バラ - rose

要る and 空く (iru and suku) are the two that I've had trouble with of late.
The first is "to need/require", and the latter is "to be empty".
They're so short they feel generic and are hard to assign a way to be remembered

Today I've seen a lot of question/object words, and I need them sorted out.
So I'll make a list.

誰 - dare - who
何 - nan(i) - what
どこ (doko) - where
いつ (itsu) - when
どうして (doushite) - why

ここ (koko) - here
そこ (soko) - there
あそこ (asoko) - over there

この (kono) - this
その (sono) - that

Recognition... and More Numbers

Today at iKnow I covered a few interesting words. I'm at 33%! a third of the way...

酸っぱい - suppai - sour
細い - hosoi - thin,slender,narrow
違う - chigau - wrong, different

I've never handled right/wrong before... now I have "wrong".
I wonder what "correct/right" is... maybe I heard it and forgot...
I reviewed つける(tsukeru) - "switch on" today... I also know 消す-kesu-"switch off".

I got two non-vocab words out of the sentences I picked out:
葡萄/ぶどう(budou) - grape(s)
美味しい - oishii - delicious

Hmm... bet I could make a sentence for practice...
この ぶどう が 美味しい です。
kono budou ga oishii desu.
these grapes are delicious.

There were two I keep screwing up on...
渇く - kawaku - to be thirsty (can't seem to remember)
ミーティング - mi-teingu - meeting (pain in the butt to spell)

I forgot about the # of things words last post... they're: (1-10)
一つ - hitotsu
二つ - futatsu
三つ - mittsu
四つ - yottsu
五つ - itsutsu
六つ - muttsu
七つ - nanatsu
八つ - yattsu
九つ - kokonotsu
十 - too
I think the numbers afterward are plain 訓読み ones, juuichi, juuni, juusan, etc.


Also on a last note, I had brand-new sentence I understood before I first saw the translation:
カップ を 三つ 買いました。
cappu o mittsu kaimashita.
I bought three cups.

I'm getting better! I might try to find some serious reading material...

Practice and Improvement

Today I did a lot of work on my guitar. I played a little GH, but nothing mentionable.

I didn't create much, but I played all I know.
I got Hey There, Delilah back in shape.
It's a good song.

My fingers are killing me right now, particularly the ones on my left hand.

I'm getting better, but I need to keep going. I feel like I've almost slacked off.
I think I might head off to Guitar Cardio to do some exercises.

That should help.

I just had a thought recently... Eliza's older sister Abi is getting married this summer.
I'll be there.
I bet I'm going to be asked to play her a song... I might have one written by then anyway.
Scary thought. I might actually have to play in front of a crowd. I've never done that!

Anyway, I'll keep chugging along.
Here's the awesome vid.

Moving on to Difficult

I finally am posting my ones left behind again... this is the last for today.

At Guitar Cardio I just tried to do one on the level "difficult". It wasn't very... well, difficult.
It looks like the main difference is It was far higher notes.

Medium went anywhere from 1 to 11 on the fretboard.
The one I just did used 11,13, and 14.

I have to say, though... one I did was different. It was "double skip" triplets in C#, and they're a little more confusing.

I think the rule of thumb is to stay away from Medium until you're ready/capable of barring chords, and stay away from difficult until you've mastered every kind of chord in any position (like me, i suppose)

I bet Guitar Cardio would have helped me a lot more had I found it years ago...
But I'm obligated to make up for lost time if I wanna be good, then...

I'm proud of myself, tho... to be told I can handle anything cheers me up considerably.
It's nice to have a second opinion on your skill level.

The best guitarists don't tell people they're good... people just know.

Another Day of Practice...

Today all I did was practice, again... I want to do something cool, but I haven't had the time...

For those of you who play guitar, and haven't been to Guitar Cardio.com, you're missing out.
The practice you can get there can't be replaced by anything else...

It's like every mathematically possible practice exercise in one place, and you can grab one randomly. It's getting my fingers stronger, I can tell already.

Also, you'll notice a few theory things along the way...
I found a neat little movable two octaves today, like on a piano:

---------------------------1-2-
-----------------------2-4-----
-----------------1-3-4---------
-----------1-3-4---------------
-----1-2-4---------------------
-2-4---------------------------

That can be slid to any position on the guitar. Add -1 for E, 0 for F, 2 for G, all the way up to +11 for E again!

I'm glad I've gone back there... I forget how much it helps me...

Continuing to Write

Nothing new to report in the Japanese department.
I am still writing the grade 1 kanji over and over... how tedious.

I know many of them by memory.

一、二、三、四、五、六、七、八，九、十、百、千
日、月、火、水、木、金、土
子、人
大、中、小、出、右、左
赤、白、青
学、校、本、先、生、年
天、気
足、手、見、
山、
早、空、
円

These are some on the list I know how to say without looking.
Most of the ones I can't I know how they look and mean, just not a word with them off the top of my head.
If there's any you wanted to know, once again you'd find them in The First 80 Kanji.

Smart.fm Habits and Writing the Kanji

Lately I've had trouble with Smart.fm/iKnow always wanting to be down. They have issues to work out - having moved their servers from Japan to San Fran in a day, and I'm not mad... still - it makes it hard to maintain my habit of practice when I don't know when I'll be able to.

Today had a ridiculous amount of review.
All that was new was 2 each time. I covered these:
始まる - hajimaru - to begin
食べ物 - tabemono - food
ゲーム (ge-mu) - game
十 - juu - 10
天気 - tenki - weather
暑い - atsui - hot, warm

Desperate for for new material, I identified these along the way.
かゆい (kayui) - itchy
海 - umi - sea, beach
窓 - mado - window
ビデオゲーム (bideoge-mu) videogame
近所 - kinjo - neighborhood
皿 - sara - plate, dish

Hopefully next time I'll see more new.

These are the 80 Grade one Kanji I've been working on writing. I've done the first four columns so far. I'm writing them repetitively kindergarten-style. I've seen marked improvement in my ability to see them in my head - recognizing and reproducing are two different things.
I'm learning to "write" better now!
You can find the meanings in my First 80 Kanji Post.

Credit for these goes to http://www.learn-japanese.info/

Repetitive Repetitiveness

Say that three times fast.

In all seriousness, today I saw something both surprising and irritating.
iKnow expects me to keep practicing the stuff I've passed off.

I didn't think it was so bad at first - it handed me:
持つ - motsu - to have
A very important one I'd "finished".
Then on the third and last block of the day I got four!:
置く - oku - to put
住む - sumu - to live(reside)
続く - tsuduku - to continue
分かる - wakaru - to understand

All of this gets kinda old. Review is nice, but there are other things I could be working on.
There were only three words marked as urgent/important...
出来る - dekiru - to be able/good at ...screwed this up a while back
引く - hiku - to pull, draw (like a door) ...a new one I was fuzzy on
寝る - neru - to sleep ...kinda new, but hah! I know this well.


In desperation for something original, I did pull a few in-sentence non-vocab ones:
靴 - kutsu - shoe
鳥 - tori - bird
意味 - imi - meaning
...and an often reoccurring
たくさん(takusan) - many, much, several, lots, etc.

Today's Hated Homophone (yay!) is "kiru".
着る - kiru - to wear
切る - kiru - to cut

I have spied enough "year" words I'm need to get them straight:
年 - toshi - year
今年 - kotoshi - this year
去年 - kyonen - last year
来年 - rainen - next year

Oh, and I found a cool and easy sentence for today:
I've been confused by early infinitive verb usage... it helped me.
私 は 絵 を 見る の が 好き です。
watashi wa e o miru no ga suki desu.
I (=t) pictures (=o) look at (=s) like to. t=topic p., s=subject p., o=object p.
I like to look at pictures

Peeking at Unit Two

At iKnow I did all my practice today.
I'm at 70%, and I have 20 completed.
I've said before, I'm finished "starting" all the words.

I started a new section, even though my first one isn't finished.
I did this just to see what lies ahead.

I'm doing the Core 2000 series, and there are 10-200 blocks.
I started "step 2" just to preview what's next, even though I'm still on the first one.

It gave me ten new ones... I really wasn't ready, but oh well.
閉じる - tojiru - to close
楽しい - pleasure, fun
時 - toki - time
米 - kome - rice
後ろ - ushiro - behind
嬉しい - ureshii - happy
切る - kiru - to cut
決まる - kimaru - to be decided
線 - sen - line
服 - fuku

The last three I'd forgotten and had to go find. I managed to remember the rest, though. That's good- it means I'm retaining most of what I'm learning.

Waltzing Around... And Still Practicing.

This Valentine's Day I'm going to be co-teaching people to waltz at the little dance/ball thing I'm going to. I went and worked on it all with friends tonight. I'm a bit rusty, but I'm far better off than I was beforehand.

Today I worked on my blog code. I spent a lot of time, and didn't get much to show done. Oh well. Stuff is in the works. That's always something.


That's been most of my day - I haven't done much more with my guitar than what I'm doing now.
I'm just practicing speed and technique - nothing interesting.

It's stuff from Guitar Cardio. You really should check it out, those of you that play or are learning guitar.
It makes you better - significantly. Dunno if I said this before, but it's akin to the Hanon series for piano.

I played I Will Follow You Into The Dark the best I ever have tonight.
My singing is improving.
That's saying something. Vocal chords aren't something to be "fixed" magically.
I've learned not looking at my guitar helps.

What I'm concerned about is how sloppy I seem lately. maybe something's amiss. I just need to figure out what.
It could be the strings - maybe one just need tuning... i'll deal with it tomorrow.
It may be I'm just tired - or more observant than usual.

I have had trouble barring chords - namely the D string. Maybe I'm just improving from dead to flat or weak.
It could be a good thing, in a twisted way. I'm not thinking straight, tho.

I guess I'll head to bed.

How To Practice Guitar!

I dug up an excellent / incredible website.
It makes practice exercises for you, based on how you specify.

My StumbleUpon button yielded a list of guitar practicing websites, all I was aware of, except for this one.
At the website, guitarcardio.com, you're given options of root notes, scales, modes, and difficulty. You tell it how many you want it to generate, and it generates them.

The exercises are clearly helping me. They're a challenge - that's key to improving.
I'm doing medium difficulty ones. Some are harder, some are easier - it's about where I'm at. It's clearly helping my fingers to be more coordinated.

It seems to be the guitar equivalent of my Hanon piano books.

Traffic In The Sky

and it doesn't seem to be getting much better...

I found a new song already - it was one of those stuck-in-my-head, learn-to-forget ones.
I have started learning it because I don't know the lyrics, which embeds it in my head until I learn them.

It happened to cover material I needed - more individual-string finger-picking.
I am trying to learn things that will teach me something. This covers stuff I needed.

Switching to and from the movable broken x1312x chord.
The two it uses are the second and fourth of this verse:

D - 557775
... - x 9 11 9 10 x
C - 335553
... - x 7 9 7 8 x

It's a good song - not incredibly difficult.
I just need to work on holding down those mysterious chords better.

The Finished And The Forgotten

I finally have ...Follow You Into The Dark by DCfC perfect!
I'm glad to have another one down.

Something happened tonight to irritate me slightly... I realized something depressing...

I've forgotten a lot of the earlier things I learned.

Eliza showed me a song of Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat tonight, Lucky.
It was pretty cool.

I used to know how to play Mraz's Prettiest Friend.
I've forgotten, and re-learning it isn't going to be easy - I had to figure it out by ear. Somewhere I wrote it down, though... Hopefully I can find out where.

Also, I used to be able to play Hey, There Delilah by Plain White T's.

I'm kinda thrown now... I feel obligated to go back... Once I do, I'll pick up something new, though. I still practice the more recent old stuff regularly, for practice's sake.

Cheating at Practice / GreenSmoke

Practicing in Photoshop is hard, when you take it seriously.

I need to start being a little more hones with my photoshop posts... Sometimes I do a review piece, instead of going out and doing a project.
Sometimes I just don't have the time... and today is one of those times.

I did this piece before my blog even existed. It's the prototype for the one called Crimson Chaos, which is the basis of my blog background. That makes this GreenSmoke ancient. I don't remember all that went in to it... Let's just say that you can do an almost unlimited number of things with filter> render> clouds. It's not incredible, but it was the most effort I had put into a piece yet at the time... like I said, it's pre-TLC.

In other news, I didn't know TLC was my blog's name abbreviated. How cliché.