karanguni: (RUFUS looks)
K ([personal profile] karanguni) wrote2018-01-18 08:11 pm

I promise this post isn't about Japanese

... at least, not 100%. I'm amazed at how productive it's made me, though, and how much parts of my brain that I haven't used in 5 years have suddenly reactivated. In the last week I have:

* Read a whole article of Japanese end-to-end with minimal dictionary lookup and at least got the jist of it;
* Written a lesson that even I don't think is absolute crap;
* Got back on Lang-8, burning all embarrassment I have to the ground in the process and finding that it helps tremendously to be shameless. I am sad that they no longer accept new users: it's tremendously helpful

In non-Japanese-land, I have:

* Failed to do any canon viewing for my Chocolatebox assignment, but have reserved the weekend for it;
* Read Reflections on Trusting Trust by Ken Thompson, a 1984 article on why you, well, can't trust anyone but the ones you trust. It's very short, very funny, very articulate, and accessible to most anyone: even if you can't read code, I encourage you to give it a look. It's got me interested in compilers-compiling-themselves, and just the lower layers of code in general. I am such an utter generalist it is absurd, but maybe this will be the start of some proper computer science reading for me.
* On that same note, I recently read this blog post by the (Italian, I believe) dev behind Redis. You don't need to know or care about Redis: this is a non-technical post about him learning English, and by god. I want to incrementally get to this point with Japanese: jambalaya, but intelligent and information-dense flailing. The quip on accents and UK English makes me cackle, too.
* I have made absolutely shit progress on anything else in my life, except hitting up the gym twice and mangling/unmangling the easy part of a sock. Sometimes you just take the little victories.

What have y'all been up to?
chagrined: Marvel comics: zombie!Spider-Man, holding playing cards, saying "Brains?" (brains?)

[personal profile] chagrined 2018-01-19 05:06 am (UTC)(link)
Huh, I had no idea lang-8 stopped accepting new users, that sucks. Can't rec it to people anymore I guess...
rosefox: Green books on library shelves. (Default)

[personal profile] rosefox 2018-01-19 06:39 am (UTC)(link)
Sleep, eat, work, repeat. I managed to squeeze some writing in but it's been so hard while being ill. :( But I think I'm FINALLY getting over being sick—my throat doesn't hurt at all, even after a day of talking—so hopefully I can do some on Saturday or Sunday night and finish my ridiculous going-to-be-at-least-8k Chocobox story.
rosefox: Green books on library shelves. (Default)

[personal profile] rosefox 2018-01-22 01:14 am (UTC)(link)
You're not the only one in that boat!

I just shook my gift and it looks amazing so I have a lot of incentive to finish now!
momijizukamori: Grey tabby cat with paws on keyboard and mouse. The text reads 'code cat is on the job', lolcats-style (CODE CAT)

[personal profile] momijizukamori 2018-01-19 01:49 pm (UTC)(link)
~moving~! Which is frankly exhausting, but unfortunately necessary.

If you're interested in lower-level stuff, I can see if I still have the course materials for my high-level CS classes - there was one on implementation and some compiler stuff, though I didn't take the full compilers class. Still very interesting, and I learned a lot about structure doing it. Also the professor was this older Linux-hippy type who wore lots of ugly scarves and referred to C as 'God's language'.