Wicked Words
31/03/2017 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaNathan Lozeron is the King of Productivity Porn. Nothing like teaching a concept to others to make sure that you understand it deeply yourself.
If there is any justice in the world, he should become President or at least rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Or maybe he will continue on his present path of sharing the golden nuggets of wisdom for free rather than hogging them all for himself.
But back to Word of the Day
The concept is suspiciously close to those dreaded and woeful vision and mission statements but not quite. More like North on a compass than some cheesy happy claptrap to be hung in a foyer to impress the gullible idiots.
It would be fun for folks to suggest suitable one word mantras for each other and see if there is any overlap.
So far GAMES and MAGIC come to mind for certain serpent associates
Had been meaning to do a proper post about this and a whole bunch of other things not to mention replying to an assortment of thought provoking posts (Catness is the culprit behind most of those) but those days seem to be well and truly over lately.
At present this peeved python's word would run along the lines of PISSED OFF but such pity parties are no path for a bright shiny future.
When the choice is between pecking the letters on a tiny but properly functioning smart phone or using a real keyboard attached to a temperamental and veritably senile Big Mac, then the good intentions do not last long at all.
After the first 15 minutes of jumping through hoops, spinning beach balls and freeze frames, all desire to squiggle rapidly evaporates only to be replaced by murderous frustration and rage. And the problem with anger or fear is that it makes you irrational and stupid. Brain dead. Totally and completely brain dead.
It is a miracle I ever managed to keep the new monthly resolution beginning in March of writing ten minutes or 300 words per day for 21 days this month.
Most of it turned out to be snarling hissing rants about what a worthless POS the Big Mac is turning into. Did also squiggle a bit more cheerfully in the gorgeous green Slytherin diary but that doesn't count because there is no word count.
But the content is completely irrelevant. The point is the ritual and the habit.
Did manage to clock up between 400 to 500 words in the 10 minutes (nearly always timed it) so it should not be too much of a stretch to add another 10 minutes per day to reach a quota capable of reaching April's Camp Nano target of 25,000 words.
Next month's habit is infinitely more ambitious. Getting up around 7am 6 mornings a week and going to bed by 11pm.
While pottering around some of the productivity porn pages on habits, came across some one who is learning French for just 5 minutes a day on Duolingo. Figured on the spur of the moment that would be an interesting experiment - to start a language from scratch with just 5 mins a day and no particular effort outside of the app and see what sorts of progress I make. Clever buggers have gamified the site. Most geeks would see straight through it but simple serpents are easily pleased.
So far I have a 7 day run. You get bonus points for that sort of thing. Sneaky buggers.
Even more amusing was consulting the Oracle of Google to learn about the business model because there just did not seem to be any obvious means to make money from a free language learning course. Especially one that displays no adverts of any kind unless they are all on the app which I do not have because the Google store keeps saying that there's insufficient space in spite of having a nearly empty 16gb SD card in the thing.
It is so much easier to take teenie weenie baby steps and make progress that way than to go for grandiose projects which only serves to awake the inner beast who never misses a chance to sabotage any grand serpent plans.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-01 08:50 am (UTC)I think it's only gonna be worse with the Big Mac... Perhaps it's time to consider a low-budget alternative? I know you must hate Windows as much as any geek, but I guess even a regular low-end PC endarkened with Windows would be preferable to a shiny Mac that doesn't work... Plus, when you get sick of Windows, it can be replaced with Linux hopefully without too much headache, and then it can continue working for another few years.
Btw the Duolingo app can be moved to SD card, as well as many other apps - have you tried to clean up the memory? e.g. http://www.tomsguide.com/us/move-android-apps-to-sd-card,news-21279.html Beware that it may make the phone unstable; my phone used to crash a few times a day until I moved everything back to memory, but it may depend on the apps (I tried to run Pokemon Go from SD card, I guess it's too heavy).
The mobile version contains ads, but even so, it seems that most of the people use the mobile version. (When I was regularly lurking on Duolingo subreddits, most of the posted screenshots were from phones.) But IMHO the desktop version is better. For example, the mobile version replaces typing exercises with multiple choice; it's much easier, but what can you learn from that?? As for the speaking exercises, the app accepts pretty much almost anything you say.
Ah, early to bed and early to rise makes this cat grumpy, braindead and morose, and fucking murderous. Funny how I still associate getting up early with productivity. Maybe it's the whole "starting the day with success" thing. Usually getting out of bed is not much of an achievement, unless it requires serious willpower. (But then, they say that willpower is a limited resource, and the more you use on daily chores, the less is left for stuff that matters.) Maybe it works better for those who can control their bedtime.
(A sidenote: when I type a comment in the comment box on my friends feed and then click for "more options" to see the preview, it more often than not clears up the comment field. I imagine it would be devastating with your creepy-crawley Mac :( I wonder if it depends on the user's style. Anyway, I've learned to compose all nontrivial comments in an external editor, and then copy/paste.)
Games without Frontiers
Date: 2017-04-01 04:07 pm (UTC)So we can tweet the new rules and lurk around but gotta be in the serpent sack before the clock strikes midnight.
About the one word - what about GAMING or Big game hunting? I do notice you have a weakness for novelty also. Always playing with the bright shiny new toys.
Now what should be the serpent word? There are a few that come to mind but only one that covers almost all the weirdness
About the bad Big Mac. Strange that tonight it has been very well behaved. I guess it got worried it might get the chop and the thought of being divorced for a new Windoze machine must be totally terrifying. Turns out I do have a dusty old Toshiba Windoze laptop which I got to do that stupid tax course back in early 2013.
If the worst comes to the worst it is a last option but without antivirus software it is likely to be even worse than the ancient Big Bad Mac.
Still not sure why the ancient Apple should be so slow because it does have 4GB of memory. The processor is 2.93 Ghz so not sure if that is snail speed these days. It seems to be the wifi signal that is on a go slow lately along with Firefox especially if there are any tabs open with Twitter in them. The critter will not allow me to update to the latest Apple OS even though I have heard many rumours well at least concerning the iPhone that upgrades are evilly designed to slow down the older models to the point of obsolescence
From trial and error, I have sussed out that the Big Mac HATES Twitter. Firefox is much buggier than Safari. Chrome is OK but I got the boring Muggle email there so no use for catching up on interesting owls.
So tonight I stayed away from Twitter and the infernal beast acted almost normal.
Thanks for the link to the Android SD card guide. This particular phone is measlier than those in the example having only 8GB rather than the usual 16 of so called internal memory.
I regularly move over all media and new photos but noticed than any app connected to Motorola, Android or Google simply does not have an SD option and now being down to some sad and pathetic 200mb or so spare space - not even possible to download and then move to the SD card. But perfectly happy with the Duolingo website so no rush. I did notice that there are sometimes multiple choice Qs but had never joined the dots to see that they are only when doing stuff on the phone and not the Big Mac.
There is something about actually writing an answer that cements it in memory far more than the passive box ticking of multiple choice.
So which languages are you learning with Duolingo and how do you find it?
Yessss. Lost more than my fair share of posts to cranky websites but far more likely to be Gmail than Dreamwidth though that has happened occasionally. So like you I have learned the hard way to squiggle stuff elsewhere (and sneakily using it as part of word count) and then copying and pasting.
Did manage to clock up 1,000 proper Camp Nano words today but the muse is missing in action so far. It was supposed to be part 2 of The Art of the Steal but in spite of all the Dodgy Donald stalking and stuff, the old grey cells are just not inspired. But usually it takes a week or so to get into the swing of things.
But most important of all is the habit of turning up every day and getting the quota. Eventually the muses will work out that this serpent is serious and finally make an appearance.
Re: Games without Frontiers
Date: 2017-04-01 06:02 pm (UTC)Oh, right, you have an old laptop; yeah, an antivirus would kill the performance for sure, but it could be a perfect opportunity to try out Linux (after checking online that your model is supported). The world of Linux distributions is confusing, but one that comes to mind is Linux Mint, it's known to be fast and user-friendly. I use Ubuntu MATE on my 8(?)years old Dell netbook (I like Ubuntu because whenever developers port their Windows software to other platforms, Ubuntu is the first (and often the only one) distribution they support).
(The Linux version of Scrivener is free, but unsupported, and not as functional as the official versions.)
But maybe it's indeed not the computer problem but the Wi-Fi? Does it work fine without the Internet? Oh and how about not using the browser-based version of Twitter but installing a standalone app, there's a bunch of them (e.g. Tweetdeck)?
Yeah, Google's own apps insist to stay in memory, no way to get rid of them without rooting the phone. Btw I got it mixed up - there are multiple choice questions in both versions of Duolingo, but writing exercises on the phone are replaced with building a sentence with already provided words, you just have to reorganize them in correct order. Slightly more challenging than choosing 1 out of 4 questions, but still a poor alternative to writing.
I used to learn German with Duolingo (Haha, me and my learning German... on and off for years, and still as far from the goal as ever), and was quite excited about it, but got bored after completing my tree. Then it's just repeating the same lessons over and over to keep them "golden"; and even though I still made mistakes, I didn't feel it was helping anymore. The authorities (real teachers) also say that Duolingo is just the first step, and it doesn't replace real studying; after completing the tree, there's no sense to stick with it, you should move forward.
The problem is, there are no other sites that are as nicely gamified as Duolingo. It's either boring old exercises which may not even keep your score, or games for total beginners. I know I should grow up, and just read more... I can read articles on familiar subjects almost without help - like this one - https://www.klopfers-web.de/blog_1371 (not buying the game yet, until the price drops, but looking forward to it ;) but mostly it's too much work, and without any external rewards like points and streaks and little ding sounds it's all so non-motivating... :(
(So yes, Duolingo is helpful, but only to some extent)
I missed Duolingo gamification so much that I started another course - Swedish ;) It was all right in the beginning, though considerably harder than German (maybe these years of sorta-learning were not completely useless), and then I lost motivation again :/ Also, I feel so guilty by spending time on non-essential things (not that I spend it on essential things instead, but at least I have more time for whining ;) Anyway, I guess if I'd plan to visit Sweden again, it's better to learn Arabic :( (Actually I wouldn't mind, as it's so useful overall, but I don't believe I'd ever get the hang of the script. If Duolingo ever adds the Arabic course, I'm game.)
Re: Games without Frontiers
Date: 2017-04-03 02:03 pm (UTC)But back to those words. If we could choose ANTI words - I guess yours would be Commitment ;)
Does SHINY or TOYS make the grade?
The serpent words - well neither creativity or Greenlight. Not even curiosity though it would make it in the top 10
Funny. Ages ago long before seeing that video, it was actually on the plane to Amsterdam, I had the idea of thinking of such a list of words and came up with
Monsters, cartoons, politics, power, patterns, puzzles and paradoxes (and I don’t even LIKE the letter P - too aggressive and vulgar - s and z are far more subtle)
Trimming it down to one - it would have to be Patterns as it sort of covers nearly all the others.
Strange about twitter. Yesterday was on Safari and got told I was offline and could either try to reload the page or resort to the reading list. Didn’t even know there was one. Went to reload and it turns out that there was not just a reading lust but bookmarks and a little column with a @ icon
So it’s some sort of twitter feed but with just the names and text and a link to the proper tweet.
Looks like the Twitter bosses have been doing lots of tweeking lately. New features include not counting the reply user names in the word count and offering a data saver option on mobile devices. Turned it on to see that all the images appear blurry and each one has a load button and a number indicating the size of the image. There’s nothing under 100kb. So no wonder the Big Mac was struggling. It’s information overload on steroids!
Will need to check to see if this option is available on desktops.
So it looks like you have planted a forest of Duolingo trees! What sort of proficiency in a language do you feel that you have after completing a whole tree? I guess it would be sufficient to be able to dive in the deep end or to get by in the language without needing to switch back and forth to the language you learnt it in.
I’ve signed up for Spanish only and so far got an 8 day run. No need to be greedy especially now that it’s Camp Nano time. I will try Russian next since I’ve gotten ridiculously rusty and Putin makes such a marvellous role model. He is such a Master of the Dark Arts.
Must be off to read your book recommendation. Dying to know what inspiration you find in its pages.