Archive for the ‘Languages’ Category

Books I’m reading at the moment… November 2018

Saturday, November 3rd, 2018

攻殻機動隊 1.5 Human Error Processor by Masamune Shirow

The Last Ringbearer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer)

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant part III by Stephen R. Donaldson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant)

The Long Walk by Stephen King / Richard Bachman
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Walk)
I read that book in German as a teenager and I wanted to re-read it to see how it holds up and whether I would discover something new about it.

The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_eyes_of_the_dragon)
I read this book at around the same time as the Long Walk and it was a nice re-read.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gods)
I picked this up in used books shop. I “know” Neil Gaiman from his collaboration on Good Omens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Omens) with the late Terry Pratchett. It’s good to hold a physical book in the hand while reading because I mostly read e-books on my tablet, but it’s just not the same.

PADI Tec Deep Diver Manual
Not sure if I will ever do this… but it’s interesting to read about it, at least at the moment.

潜水士試験:合格

Thursday, October 11th, 2018

What a mess that was… everything completely in Japanese and out of more than 300 testees, I was the only non-Asian person. Well, I passed and that’s what counts.

Above: I was testee #0047

Looking at the list, most people passed but there were some who failed. Anyway, most people used more or less the same textbooks, I will post mine here later. There does not seem to be so much variety of textbooks on this subject.

Next step: Find employment as part-time scuba diving instructor?

Anyway, time for a celebratory beer…

 

Books I’m reading at the moment… October 2018

Tuesday, October 9th, 2018

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything) – finished

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant part I by Stephen R. Donaldson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant) – finished

攻殻機動隊 1.5 Human Error Processor by Masamune Shirow

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant part II by Stephen R. Donaldson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant) – finished

The Last Ringbearer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer)

My first self-created course on memrise.com

Friday, September 28th, 2018

I’ve been posting about memrise on a couple of occasions. This time rather than bragging how many words I’ve learned and how many points I made, I created my own course:

https://www.memrise.com/course/2053021/qian-shui-shi-shi-yan-nodan-yu/

It’s a Japanese -> English course supposed to help you with vocabulary required to help passing the Japanese dive theory test called 潜水士試験

(I have no idea why the URL uses the Mandarin pinyin pronounciation for the test… I’ve inputted Japanese kanji – I also opened a help call with memrise but no reaction so far)

Creating the course was not difficult but you need to prepare the list(s) ahead and put the colums in the right order if you want to mass-import the lists.

Good luck, give it a try yourself (the course as well as creating your own course ^^)

Replacement pen for the Casio EX-word Dataplus 6 XD-D10000

Saturday, August 18th, 2018

Nowadays, everything breaks… somehow I even managed to break the pen for my Casio EX-word 電子辞書… somehow. Don’t ask me how because I don’t know either…

Anyway, finding a replacement was not easy… the Casio homepage is less than helpful. But accidentally I’ve found some replacement pens that are 98% perfect (not 100% because the replacements are slightly loose in the penholder incorporated in the main body of the device).

Here they are:

If you need replacement pens too, maybe this will help.

A memrise milestone…

Wednesday, July 18th, 2018

Recently surpassed a streak of 10^3 consecutive days of learning on memrise… don’t think I’m going to be able to keep this up until I hit 10^4… and guess what, no rewards or points or anything for it.

Here’s a screenshot:

Which also means that slightly more than 1000 days ago, the app and the website didn’t work and I lost a 350ish day streak. Nobody ever said sorry about that then.

CPE result

Monday, January 29th, 2018

Last week (or maybe two weeks back), the result of the CPE came in. I passed with a grade of A and with a score slightly higher than 220 although I messed up the writing part somehow. Given the minimal preparation I spent on this test, probably quite a decent result.

Oh, at my current employer I had to take an obligatory speaking test (automated): Verdant. Verdict:  a very valiant 78 of 80 points.

CPE… the last test this year

Monday, December 4th, 2017

Last week I took the Cambridge Proficiency Test, the whole package (English in use, Writing, Listening, Speaking). The result should come in around December 10th which is refreshingly quick. I’m not unduly worried but it won’t be a perfect score this time, definitely not.

Still, for anyone out there on a reasonably good level in English should take up this challenge. You can do it!

PADI Assistant Instructor – done and dusted

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2017

While still doing the PADI Divemaster internship, I started and recently finished the PADI Assistant Instructor course. The certification card should be on its way.

Whereas the Divemaster has a lot of practical aspects, the next step in the PADI career focuses on teaching, teaching techniques, structuring lessons and applied lessons in confined water and open water.

First time supervising an open water lesson was pretty stressful. All of a sudden you have to deal with things such as bottom topography and current, which you don’t really have to take into consideration in a pool.

One of the most painful lessons I learned was the aspect of control – even if you have an assistant, you need to constantly monitor everyone around you, even the assistant – unless you know him/her pretty well and you make a good team.

I have to say, I really enjoyed the first dive *after* the course because after weeks and weeks of tasks, homework, assignments and such I finally got the chance to enjoy a quiet, no-pressure dive again. Felt good…

(Edit on 2017/08/25: corrected three typos)

Schnapszahl* anniversary on memrise

Monday, April 10th, 2017

I’m a cautiosly avid user of memrise (memrise.com) – every tool has its advantages and disadvantages. So far, memrise has worked well for me and this weekend I was able to celebrate a 555 day streak (everyday continous learning). Something to be a little proud of.

This means two things:

  1. I have used a computer/tablet/smartphone for 555 days straight
  2. 556 days ago, the memrise app login and the website were not available, I just could not login which ruined my previous 300+ streak. Thanks a lot, memrise. By the way, there was never an apology or even an explanation about the outage. Well, it’s a free tool so I guess I can’t complain.

*What’s a Schnapszahl, you ask? Apparently there’s no direct translation in English. It’s defined as a number which consists of several equal numbers such as the above 555. Before trying to find a translation and checking the definition I though it also included patterns e.g. 737737, but this could be a regional difference.