There's a thing I hadn't yet noticed on iKnow that I tried using...
I couldn't figure out how to open it, but now I've started playing with it.
It's called "dictation". It gives me a word or two missing in 10 sentences, and gets me to fill in the pronunciation. Easy enough, huh?
The second half is each of the sentences entirely blank. I have to learn how some of the longer words in the sentences are spelled... it gets rather tricky - even frustrating. It gives you 3/4 chances to make a mistake or ask for a hint, though.
I'm still playing with it - I don't know if I'll keep using it... it might help train my ears, though.
We'll see. I do need work on listening/comprehending. I think I'll do better once my vocabulary course is "complete". It's at 44% completion right now.
Latest words:
電車 - densha - train
自転車 - jitensha - bicycle
探す - sagasu - to search for, look for
紙 - kami - paper
歌う - utau - to sing
遅い - osoi - slow, late
densha/jitensha would be very confusing w/ their rhyme, if it weren't for the fact that I already knew densha.
I practiced 言う - iu - to say/tell today.
It's the companion to "to speak" - 話す - hanasu...
I found this "say vs. speak" pair confusing in spanish once upon a time...
to speak - hablar - 話す/hanasu
to say - decir - 言う/iu
Friday, January 9, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
I Will... Into the Dark II
I have the chords/lyrics to DCfC's I Will Follow You Into The Dark. I'm learning it today, like I said I was planning on doing.
It's not easy, but it isn't as difficult to understand as I thought it would be.
It uses:
Dm - x00231
F - 133211
Bb - 113331
Bbm - 113321
A -002220
C - 032010
C(bar) - 335553
It's just there's no "pattern", so there's a lot more to remember.
The intro is this:
Dm F Bb F C
Dm F C(Bar)
Dm F A Dm-C Bbx2 Bbmx2
It's not easy, but it isn't as difficult to understand as I thought it would be.
It uses:
Dm - x00231
F - 133211
Bb - 113331
Bbm - 113321
A -002220
C - 032010
C(bar) - 335553
It's just there's no "pattern", so there's a lot more to remember.
The intro is this:
Dm F Bb F C
Dm F C(Bar)
Dm F A Dm-C Bbx2 Bbmx2
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Eliza's Nebulae
Yay! I love projects that aren't an entire flop! This one did okay.
This evening I spent the whole time on the phone with a dear friend, and afterward I was sitting on the couch in the quiet living room - everyone was gone at the time. My laptop was sitting there. I looked at it. It looked back at me. I thought to myself... hmm...
I opened it to my FireFox and there it was! The perfect tutorial. If anyone's interested, you can find it here at PSD Vault. It's a rather silly how-to-make-a-nebula thingy, but I like my end result. Keep in mind tutorals are guidelines (I don't keep the rules) , but it covers basically how I did it.
I did the first main piece twice however, rather than using the clone stamp as suggested. I thought his clone stamp use was rather lame. You have to be more subtle than that when using the clone stamp, else the reoccurences make it repetitive and yucky.
The tutorial asked you to make a new brush - I added it to my personal collection.
It's a neat little grainy star maker.
I also used my own brush trick on the coloring part - I used a giant blue soft brush with color dynamics. If you understand color dynamics (see The Brush Technique How-To if you're curious) you can use good colors, without consciously deciding specifically what to use. Plus, I love randomness!
This evening I spent the whole time on the phone with a dear friend, and afterward I was sitting on the couch in the quiet living room - everyone was gone at the time. My laptop was sitting there. I looked at it. It looked back at me. I thought to myself... hmm...I opened it to my FireFox and there it was! The perfect tutorial. If anyone's interested, you can find it here at PSD Vault. It's a rather silly how-to-make-a-nebula thingy, but I like my end result. Keep in mind tutorals are guidelines (I don't keep the rules) , but it covers basically how I did it.
I did the first main piece twice however, rather than using the clone stamp as suggested. I thought his clone stamp use was rather lame. You have to be more subtle than that when using the clone stamp, else the reoccurences make it repetitive and yucky.
The tutorial asked you to make a new brush - I added it to my personal collection.
It's a neat little grainy star maker.
I also used my own brush trick on the coloring part - I used a giant blue soft brush with color dynamics. If you understand color dynamics (see The Brush Technique How-To if you're curious) you can use good colors, without consciously deciding specifically what to use. Plus, I love randomness!
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Typing In Any Language!
Well... iKnow didn't yell at me today. It only wanted me to do 30.
Today I have:
着る - kiru - to wear
笑う - warau - to smile
一番 - ichiban - most
授業 - jugyou - class, lesson
週 - shuu - week
and... wait for it... 漢字 - kanji !!!
I "completed" my first kanji, 持つ - motsu - to have
My mom wanted me to look into some French stuff for her, since I was able to find lots of easy Japanese resources. I found a handy trick to typing in any of the romantic languages. For those of you interested, you can set your language bar so it will type any character for French, German, Spanish, etc.
If you know how to open your language bar settings, (right-click start-bar> toolbars> language bar> click triangle on bottom right> settings...) Do so and click add. scroll down to look for the English one already checked and find U.S. - International.
Also, another set of instructions are here: http://www.conted.und.edu/coursedev/span1012006/TypeSpanish.htm
That will give your language bar a second option. If selected, you can type español, français, and deutsch characters that you couldn't otherwise, like ñ, ç, á,é,í,ó,ú, à,è,ì,ò,ù, ä,ë,ï,ö,ü,
You can set shortcuts to switch between language settings, too.
What you do is type with the [~ / `], [" / '], and [^ / (no 6)] keys. It will wait for you to hit space for a regular BUT instead you let go, and then type the letter. For ¡ and ¿ hold RIGHT alt and then press then type the normal ones.
Try pressing everything with right-alt!
numbers and punctuation -¡ ² ³ ¤ € ¼ ½ ¾ ‘ ’ ¥ × « » ¬ ¶ ´ ¿ ç
QWERTYUIOP=äåé®þüúíóö
ASD=áßð L=ø
Z=æ NM=ñµ
Today I have:
着る - kiru - to wear
笑う - warau - to smile
一番 - ichiban - most
授業 - jugyou - class, lesson
週 - shuu - week
and... wait for it... 漢字 - kanji !!!
I "completed" my first kanji, 持つ - motsu - to have
My mom wanted me to look into some French stuff for her, since I was able to find lots of easy Japanese resources. I found a handy trick to typing in any of the romantic languages. For those of you interested, you can set your language bar so it will type any character for French, German, Spanish, etc.
If you know how to open your language bar settings, (right-click start-bar> toolbars> language bar> click triangle on bottom right> settings...) Do so and click add. scroll down to look for the English one already checked and find U.S. - International.
Also, another set of instructions are here: http://www.conted.und.edu/coursedev/span1012006/TypeSpanish.htm
That will give your language bar a second option. If selected, you can type español, français, and deutsch characters that you couldn't otherwise, like ñ, ç, á,é,í,ó,ú, à,è,ì,ò,ù, ä,ë,ï,ö,ü,
You can set shortcuts to switch between language settings, too.
What you do is type with the [~ / `], [" / '], and [^ / (no 6)] keys. It will wait for you to hit space for a regular BUT instead you let go, and then type the letter. For ¡ and ¿ hold RIGHT alt and then press then type the normal ones.
Try pressing everything with right-alt!
numbers and punctuation -¡ ² ³ ¤ € ¼ ½ ¾ ‘ ’ ¥ × « » ¬ ¶ ´ ¿ ç
QWERTYUIOP=äåé®þüúíóö
ASD=áßð L=ø
Z=æ NM=ñµ
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