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A Change of Story
Sep. 1st, 2018 07:36 am After probably a month of using it I finally just had an emotional breakdown last night because of AnkiDroid.
In a nutshell, the app assigns you new flashcards each day, along with review cards. For the kanji deck I was using it was set to twenty new cards and between 50 and as many as 85 review cards daily. Anki has something users sometimes call the Anki Avalanche, where cards pile up each day and, of course there's no way to just dismiss them. There's also no way to pause or suspend a deck, so I started feeling locked in to this daily thing, I didn't feel like I was learning as much as I could because the deck controls are not even remotely easy to use, and it was creating a constant daily psychic & emotional pressure that finally came to a head around eight last night. I tend to start winding down at eight and actually go to bed at nine, if this gives you some idea of how things were going.
After combing Reddit and various support forums and manuals I found a way to kinda sorta suspend my deck. I think a lot of the support info I found related to Anki Desktop, where I'm using Anki Droid for my Chromebook, as the big trick for suspending an entire deck didn't work. Now, if I wanted to suspend each card I could do that - but there are 2,200 kanji. I am NOT long clicking and suspending over two thousand cards one. at.
a.
time.
So after blowing up at Fox, throwing a headset, and almost throwing a laptop, I ended up deleting the stupid app entirely. Fuck it. I don't need this - I feel like I have too many things demanding my attention each day, and only part of them are things I really want to do and look forward to. Japanese practice is not one of those because I feel like I'm making no progress, and being able to read the kanji for "cat," "four," or "deceased" isn't going to get me that far in Tokyo. Duolingo at least has a speaking element, but I know native speakers will sound a lot different from a curated language learning program's voice which is probably designed to be easily understandable.
Fox helped me dump the app after listening to me go off and reminded me I have physical flashcards that go at whatever pace I want, and I hope felt less attacked after learning I was angry about shitty app developers who can't bother implementing a feature users have apparently been requesting since at least 2016. He also pointed out that with this particular deck, people are probably studying to pass the Japanese language proficiency test, and it might not be the right thing for someone who isn't looking to move to Japan and get a job. Besides, as I found out after using them for a while this morning, the printed cards (from White Rabbit Press) have more of the different kanji meanings, where the Anki deck was relying almost entirely on James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji - the source of the "kanji stories" I mentioned.
ANYWAY. Fall is almost here! But P'shaw, it's just September 1, it's not even technically Labor Day yet, you say. I TELL YOU IT'S ALMOST FALL.
I saw two large Orb Weaver webs yesterday, and typically the Orb Weavers don't come out and get active much until autumn is on the way. It's one of the signs I've learned to recognize that mean cooler weather is coming. I just hope it cools off sooner than it did last year, but with climate change and such I'm not getting my hopes up. But I'd like it to cool off enough to run a 5k at racing pace before the 10k this October - I did one on the treadmill but outside is much different and I'd like to know what my actual speed is, instead of my speed with no wind resistance and a road that moves for me.
This is also the time of year for us (Florida) when hurricane season is at its worst - usually. The last two years we've had some bad storms around this time but, fingers crossed, everything looks quiet right now. There's a wave way out in the Atlantic but the models have it going up towards Bermuda and hopefully that's what happens.
In a nutshell, the app assigns you new flashcards each day, along with review cards. For the kanji deck I was using it was set to twenty new cards and between 50 and as many as 85 review cards daily. Anki has something users sometimes call the Anki Avalanche, where cards pile up each day and, of course there's no way to just dismiss them. There's also no way to pause or suspend a deck, so I started feeling locked in to this daily thing, I didn't feel like I was learning as much as I could because the deck controls are not even remotely easy to use, and it was creating a constant daily psychic & emotional pressure that finally came to a head around eight last night. I tend to start winding down at eight and actually go to bed at nine, if this gives you some idea of how things were going.
After combing Reddit and various support forums and manuals I found a way to kinda sorta suspend my deck. I think a lot of the support info I found related to Anki Desktop, where I'm using Anki Droid for my Chromebook, as the big trick for suspending an entire deck didn't work. Now, if I wanted to suspend each card I could do that - but there are 2,200 kanji. I am NOT long clicking and suspending over two thousand cards one. at.
a.
time.
So after blowing up at Fox, throwing a headset, and almost throwing a laptop, I ended up deleting the stupid app entirely. Fuck it. I don't need this - I feel like I have too many things demanding my attention each day, and only part of them are things I really want to do and look forward to. Japanese practice is not one of those because I feel like I'm making no progress, and being able to read the kanji for "cat," "four," or "deceased" isn't going to get me that far in Tokyo. Duolingo at least has a speaking element, but I know native speakers will sound a lot different from a curated language learning program's voice which is probably designed to be easily understandable.
Fox helped me dump the app after listening to me go off and reminded me I have physical flashcards that go at whatever pace I want, and I hope felt less attacked after learning I was angry about shitty app developers who can't bother implementing a feature users have apparently been requesting since at least 2016. He also pointed out that with this particular deck, people are probably studying to pass the Japanese language proficiency test, and it might not be the right thing for someone who isn't looking to move to Japan and get a job. Besides, as I found out after using them for a while this morning, the printed cards (from White Rabbit Press) have more of the different kanji meanings, where the Anki deck was relying almost entirely on James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji - the source of the "kanji stories" I mentioned.
ANYWAY. Fall is almost here! But P'shaw, it's just September 1, it's not even technically Labor Day yet, you say. I TELL YOU IT'S ALMOST FALL.
I saw two large Orb Weaver webs yesterday, and typically the Orb Weavers don't come out and get active much until autumn is on the way. It's one of the signs I've learned to recognize that mean cooler weather is coming. I just hope it cools off sooner than it did last year, but with climate change and such I'm not getting my hopes up. But I'd like it to cool off enough to run a 5k at racing pace before the 10k this October - I did one on the treadmill but outside is much different and I'd like to know what my actual speed is, instead of my speed with no wind resistance and a road that moves for me.
This is also the time of year for us (Florida) when hurricane season is at its worst - usually. The last two years we've had some bad storms around this time but, fingers crossed, everything looks quiet right now. There's a wave way out in the Atlantic but the models have it going up towards Bermuda and hopefully that's what happens.
