The Stupid American Tourist

Iversen’s Method, Vocabulary, Japanese, Kanji, and Anki

After seeing this post by Vosmiura on the RtK forums, I’m going to try Iversen’s method of learning lists of vocabulary before entering them into Anki.

I’m not usually obsessed with getting particularly high pass rates or having high long-term retention percentages (mine is already around 96%), but I’ve been noticing lately that there are certain words that just don’t seem to stick, no matter how often I see them, and it’s bugging the crap out of me.

If you jump down a few posts later on, Vosmiura provides graphical evidence of how his retention rates improved in Anki over a 47-day period. It improved for short, medium, and long-term retention, so that’s not too shabby.

The basic gist of Iversen’s method is simple. I’m paraphrasing from his post here. (Scroll down about halfway down to the big post.)

Take a list of 5-7 words in foreign language X you want to learn, which have corresponding meanings in your native language Y.

Write the words in foreign language X in a column on a piece of paper in one color of ink. Then learn all of the meanings in your native language Y, and only write them down in the next column when you know all of them and can write them without hesitation.

So if you go down your list of 5-7 words, and you keep missing one, don’t write down the translations for any of them yet. If you have to struggle to remember one word in your native language Y, don’t write anything down yet. Keep going at it until you can. If you have to look stuff up, then look stuff up.

Once you can remember everything, then write down all of the translations in your Y language in a different color ink.

Now go and cover up the original words in the foreign language X column. Based only on the words you see in your Y language column, use the 3rd column to reconstruct the X column the same way you had to construct the Y column. That is, you can’t write anything down until you can write everything down correctly.

So when you’re done, your sheet looks something like this:

X language --> Y language --> X language

With one column for each.

Now comes the tricky bit: applying it to Japanese, which has kana and kanji for a lot of words. If a word has no kanji, you’re fine. It’s just English and kana. Not a problem. But kanji will complicate matters, as they always do.

Vosmiura’s approach is to break it down like this:

Kanji --- Kana --- English

He covers the kana and English columns while looking at the kanji. That way he makes sure he has the meaning and the reading correct.

He also varies the way he tests the list. If the list is a-b-c-d-e-f-g, he doesn’t always test abcdefg. He often tests gfedcba, or acfedgb, or any other random order.

I think it’s a good idea to avoid getting the cde words lost in the middle. Remember, we’re good at remembering firsts and lasts, but horrible at remembering stuff in the middle.

I’m going to try messing with the order a little to fit my models better, and see how it works. It may work, it may fail spectacularly.

So I’m going to try setting it up like this for now:

Kana --- Kanji --- English --- Kana --- Kanji

That way, I get Iversen’s X-Y-X pattern, and I get my production needs met. Although in this case I guess it’s more of a X-X’-Y-X-X’ method.

Monolingual types will probably froth at the mouth a bit, but I’m not a monolingual zealot. Whatever gets my error rate down is cool with me.

I am becoming more and more “theory agnostic” and am just using whatever works best for me.

Oh, and the mountains are still gorgeous.

Links:

• Vosmiura’s adaptation of Iversen’s method: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=66174#p66174
• Iversen’s method explained by Iversen (scroll halfway down): http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3435&PN=0&TPN=4
• Keith Lucas’ adaptation of a modified version of Iversen’s Method for Japanese: http://natural-language-acquisition.blogspot.com/2008/06/iversen-method.php
• Wikia article on word lists: http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Word_lists

Posted in Foreign Languages, Japanese Language | 2 Comments »

Bele Chere

I’m in Asheville for the weekend, and I decided to take in the Bele Chere festival today. Yes, that’s how it’s spelled. According to the official website FAQ, it’s Scottish for something along the lines of “have fun.”

It’s definitely not a misspelling of the French phrase that refers to your beautiful loved one. Nope. Not at all.

(Yeah, I don’t really buy that either.)

All disputes about spelling aside, this year’s festival was very enjoyable. Tons of arts and crafts, lots of food, and good music. The best part was that finding parking was relatively painless, in spite of the maps provided on the website.

I hope they provide a better map next year– or at least one that shows the approaches to downtown, rather than just showing where all of the roadblocks will be. For those of us coming in from out-of-town, it’s a little confusing to just see a small grid full of roadblocks, without any real clues as to what’s what.

I took some photos, but nothing really jumped out at me. There wasn’t a “wow” moment that I just had to get a picture of. Oh well.

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Dis-AAdvantaged

I just had a shocking discovery– my AAdvantage miles have been taken away from me. American Airlines pulled the rug out from under me when I wasn’t paying attention and expired them, since I haven’t flown American in the last 18 months.

So the 23,500 miles I had so diligently hoarded in hopes of getting a first-class upgrade are gone.

Well, sort of.

You see, if I’m willing to fork over the tiny little sum of approximately $290 (of which $30 goes to Uncle Sam), American Airlines promises to give me back my miles.

But I’m not sure if I’m going to fork over the money.

Even if I pay the fee,  if I let my account go inactive for another 18 months, they’ll take my beloved miles away again for good this time, because American is discontinuing this deal on December 31, 2009.

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F-stop Bard is in the House

My Bard arrived from F-stop yesterday, and it is a very spiffy bag. It came with a free F-stop Sporty camera strap (a $20 value). Thanks for the strap! I already have a very comfortable camera strap made out of some kind of soft, squishy stuff that I wouldn’t part with. I’ll make sure the Sporty gets a good home.

Now, on to the bag. In short: it’s a great bag, and at $99, it’s a great deal.

The inner dividers are all attached to the inside of the bag with velcro, and are freely removable and adjustable. That kind of versatility makes the Bard really useful as a multimedia news-gathering bag.

I adjusted one of the dividers for a snug fit for my giant Canon 80-200 mm f 2.8/L (with lens hood) in one slot on one side, and shrank one of the slots on the other side to fit the stock 18-55 mm f.3.5-5.6 IS lens that came with my Rebel XSi. My 50mm f 1.8 pops in on top of the 18-55 with plenty of room.

I’ll remove the stock lens when I go shooting in the real world, and replace it with my digital audio recorder. It’s just to give you an idea of how much you can fit in the bag.

The Rebel XSi fit easily in the middle, with a 17-55 f 2.8 IS lens and hood attached, so the camera is ready to pull out of the bag and shoot.  There’s still room for a 550EX speedlite flash next to the two smaller lenses.

My 13″ laptop fits easily in the laptop slot in the back, with room to spare. I could probably fit a 15″ laptop in there instead.  But if I put a 15″ laptop in, I’m not sure if I could fit the power brick in without losing space somewhere else.

There’s still plenty of room to pack things on top of the camera gear, but then that defeats the purpose of having a bag you can quickly yank your camera out of.

The inner pocket that covers the main compartment would be even better if  it could be zippered out of the bag, making access to the camera a little faster.

As it is now, you have to open the main flap of the bag, push the little flap out of the way, and then grab your camera.

There are lots of little extra zippered compartments to put things like lens filters, cleaning equipment, spare batteries, chargers, and whatnot. (Digital cameras spawn whatnot like nobody’s business.)

The sides of the bag are good and rigid. I’m not a fan of mushy-sided bags, which is why I decided to skip going down the “Build your own camera bag” route.

I’ll be interested to see if the Bard will actually fit underneath an airline seat. The top will “squish” down about three to four inches, so as long as you don’t overpack, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t fit… unless my spatial perception is completely broken.

Nice bag. Worth the wait.

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Waiting on the Bard

For the two or three of you wondering why I haven’t said anything about the F-stop Bard yet, that’s because it still hasn’t arrived. I ordered it on July 2nd, and didn’t actually get a message from F-stop saying that the order had been filled until the 7th. When I checked with UPS, the order hadn’t been shipped until the 9th. So it’s not here yet.

On the upside, F-stop apparently threw in a free camera strap worth $20. We’ll see how good it is. It would have been nice to get some sort of message from them explaining why it took them a week to ship the bag. I understand July 4 is a big holiday, but if you’re trying to sell to professionals, you need to turn over a lot faster than a week. Or you need to at least tell people why you’re not shipping right away.

Site News: The site appearance is probably going to change a bit over the next few weeks. I’m getting ready to create my own template for this site.

Posted in Photography, Site Maintenance | No Comments »

Camera Bag Hunting

I’ve been hunting for a new camera bag. Specifically, I’m looking for a camera bag that doesn’t scream, “Hey, I’m a CAMERA bag, full of expensive CAMERAS and equipment you just might want to steal!”

I also don’t want the bag to scream, “Hey, this guy has a CAMERA. He could be a JOURNALIST. You might want to walk over and HASSLE him,” to any rent-a-cop in the area.

I know there are arguments both pro and con for the nondescript camera bag. Some people say it’s idiotic, because as soon as you pull out a big, expensive camera, a good thief will mark you. True enough.

People have related having their diaper bag camera bags stolen, even full of dirty diapers. (You need to scroll halfway down to the page to find the story.) But there’s nothing you can do about that. Once you’re marked, you’re marked.

For me, it’s about what I look like when I’m not shooting, and when I’m walking from place to place. I want a bag that just says, “I’m a bag. The droids you’re looking for aren’t here. This person can move along.”

The only bags I have right now don’t serve that purpose. They say, “Hi! I’m full of cameras!” or “Hi! I’m full of EXPENSIVE cameras!” I don’t even have to pull out a camera to have to worry about being marked. And they also look regrettably dorky.

ThinkTank Urban Disguise

The first place I checked was my local camera store, because I’m a big believer in buying local. I took a look at the ThinkTank Urban Disguise models they had there, but I dunno… they just felt clumsy. I know some people swear by them, but trying out the bag just felt a little awkward. It also looked about as inconspicuous as a heart attack.

“Hey mister, what’s in that HUGE black bag?” “What, this tiny thing? It’s nothing, nothing!” Yeah, I don’t buy it either.

It doesn’t look like any other kind of bag I’ve ever seen before, which would make me very, very suspicious of the person carrying it.

Crumpler

I’m a big fan of messenger bags, because you can dump a lot of stuff in them, throw them over your shoulder and go on your merry way. So I started looking at messenger bag style camera bags, and this is where it led me.

I looked at the Crumpler bags. They’re nice, but good God are they expensive. $150-$200 for a basic bag just doesn’t cut it. Also, they have the problem of being well-known as camera bags. (Everyone knows Crumpler is a camera bag maker now.) Their website didn’t really win me over, either. I don’t like those “cute” flash app websites that are all glamor and no substance. Give me data. Facts and figures. Not a toy. It was so freakin’ annoying.

The actual bags… I’m sure they’re great and all, but very spendy and a bit on the flashy side. Maybe if I were a celebrity photographer, it would work, but I’m not.

Naneu

I took a look at the Naneu bags on a reccomendation of someone who liked them. They’re excellent backpack bags, but not quite what I need. I like how the camera compartment faces your back, so it can only be accessed by removing the pack from your back. That way, nobody can lift your camera if you have your pack on. But it’s just not easy to just pull out your camera that way.

I need speed and ease of access, which is why I want a messenger bag-style bag in the first place. Nice for when I climb Mt. Everest, though.

Lowepro Classified

I also took a look at Lowepro’s Classified series… it looks pretty much like the ThinkTank, only it’s by Lowepro.  I’m sure it’s a great bag, but I don’t carry the Empire State Building in my bag. I just want something a little more… inconspicuous. That Black Monster ain’t it.

Make Your Own Camera Bag

I found this post on just building my own camera bag with a messenger bag and some Domke inserts. Others have discussed the idea as well. Timbuk2 has a similar take on how to build your own camera bag, based on a flickr discussion.

Here’s another flickr discussion on using Tenba inserts instead of the Domke inserts.

But in the long run, I think both setups are going to be a little on the janky side, and frankly, a good Timbuk2 bag isn’t that cheap to begin with. That alone will run in the $100-$150 range. By the time you add in the inserts, you’re staring $200 in the eye again. Where are the savings?

Frustrated, I stumbled across this thread on flickr.

F-Stop Bard and Maverick

Now I must admit that I really like the look of the Bard and Maverick by F-Stop. They typically make a lot of adventure-type gear bags that you’d see people use for stuff like mountain climbing or skateboarding, or surfing on lava or something. But both the Bard and the Maverick have the kind of look I’ve been trying to find. Something that looks like a messenger bag, that has good padding, will hold my gear, and doesn’t scream “CAMERA BAG!”

The only downside might be the logos on the gear, but those can be covered with stickers. No biggie there. The pricing is good, too. The Bard runs $99 on their website, and Maverick runs $129.

This comparison of the Domke F2 and the Bard really got me interested. And Skye Nacel’s posts on the F-Stop site gave a lot of useful info on the Maverick and also his comparison shots with the Bard. He also posted some good short reviews on YouTube of both the Bard and the Maverick.

But I still didn’t have enough info to make a decision on which bag to go with, so I wound up having to contact the company. Suggestion: use e-mail. They respond very quickly to e-mails.  I had trouble getting through over the phone.

I went ahead and ordered a Bard, because I want something as small as possible. If I need something bigger, I was assured I could exchange it for a Maverick.

I’ll post a review in a few days/weeks when the bag shows up. I’m hoping it’ll be small enough to fit under an airplane seat… that may be wishful thinking. But the price sure is right: $117, and that includes UPS ground shipping.

Posted in Photography | 2 Comments »

Feeling Genki

I had a really nice lunch with my sister, brother-in-law, nephew, and my cousin Tuesday at a great sushi shop in Wilmington called Genki Sushi. It’s my new favorite Japanese restaurant in the whole state. It’s sort of like a cross between a sushi bar and an izakaya (which is kind of like a Japanese pub).

Coming here really does feel like coming to a real Japanese restaurant, and Sugi-san and his wife do an excellent job of making you feel right at home. The menu is full of good stuff, too. From good fresh sushi to those dishes that make you feel a little 懐かしい (natsukashii) for good old Japanese food.  It’s not the stuff you get in the steak houses, and it’s not some fancy fusion stuff. This is good, solid 和食 (washoku), which means traditional Japanese food. The good stuff.

I had some tuna sushi (nigiri, of course), with fried squid legs, and a great tonkatsu plate. And of course, a bowl of Sugi-san’s excellent rice. He makes the best rice I’ve ever had. (And I’ve had some excellent rice.)

No trip to Wrightsville Beach is complete without Trolly Stop hot dogs either. I had a couple of  Carolina dogs on Wednesday for lunch. Those are just the best hot dogs in the world.

A Carolina dog is a hot dog with chili and cole slaw on it, but for some reason, the chili and cole slaw at the Trolly Stop just goes really well together.  I love to add a dash of mustard and ketchup. (Not too much.)

Oh yeah, the beach was wonderful, too. Hey, it’s the beach. Of course it’s great. The beaches in North Carolina are hard to beat. (Except, of course, when you’re in the middle of a hurricane…)

It’s good being with the whole extended family, but it will be good to get home and take a break from all of the travleing for a few weeks. It’ll also be time to stop eating so much, and get back on a more sane diet.

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I Hate I-95 (But My GPS Loves It.)

I made it safely to Wrightsville Beach, NC, where we have a big family get-together every year. It involves eating way too much food and a lot of staring at the ocean. There’s also a lot of setback involved.

Setback is a card game that apparently only the people in my family know how to play. I’ve never met another soul who knows how to play it. More importantly, it requires four people, and that means it requires a family gathering of some sort to get enough people to play it properly. The best way to describe it is “Redneck Bridge,” and I’ll just leave it at that.

But getting there is half the fun, or so they say.

I managed to get out of the hotel in Baltimore at about 12:30, and made it on to the highway okay, only to get caught in the usual Sunday gridlock just south of DC on I-95.

Of course, as I approached DC, my TomTom tried to tell me about all of these great shortcuts, but this time I ignored it. No more shortcuts through hospital parking lots, thanks.

Why do I use it then? Mostly as a trip computer, or for when I get lost. It’s really handy for those sorts of things. I also use it to find places I don’t know how to get to, but I don’t particularly like relying on it alone.

It’s an uncomfortable feeling not knowing where I am, and just relying on a random black box to tell me where to go. I always keep a few maps lying around the car. I don’t use them, but I have them, just in case. (And AAA gives them to me for free.)

So as I fled DC, I got stuck in the usual I-95 southbound gridlock. It lasted for about 10 miles, and can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to get through. There’s no particular reason for it, other than that there isn’t any other way to get the heck out of DC and go south.

After crawling through Northern Virginia, I wound up grabbing some junk food along the highway south of Petersburg at some anonymous truck stop that had a Burger King nearby. Sometimes hunger trumps common sense. At least I won’t have to eat there ever again. It was a good reminder that making your own food is a lot smarter than trusing a faceless corporation to do it for you.

As I headed into North Carolina, I started looking for the exit for I-795, which is a shortcut. It cuts about 30 minutes off of your travel time to Wilmington, and, more importantly, gets me off of I-95, which is full of people falling asleep at the wheel or driving like maniacs at this point.

If you’re not familiar with I-95, it’s the main freeway from Maine to Miami along the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. For people driving from New York to Florida, North Carolina is the state where many of them tend to fall asleep and run into things. The news here is full of reports of these kinds of accidents. The results are not usually very pretty.

So while I was looking for I-795, I wasn’t seeing any signs for it. The problem was that nobody in the NC Department of Transportation had decided to put up a sign for the road until the last second, so I missed my exit. The sign was actually nailed onto the exit sign as an afterthought. Thanks, guys. Way to put my tax dollars to work.

Actually, I could have made the exit if somebody in a van from NY would have let me pull over, but instead she honked at me and gave me the finger. Thanks.

Of course, the GPS wanted me to stay on I-95. It wasn’t convinced that I-795 would save me any time. So I took the next exit, pulled out my map, and managed to find I-795.

Or so I thought.

When I saw the signs suddenly saying I was on US 264 East, headed to the Outer Banks, I realized that the score was now NCDOT 2, Rich 0.

At this point I admitted defeat, and started listening to the GPS. “Fine, I give up. Just get me back on a road that will lead to Wilmington. I’ll even go on your stupid I-95.”

The little box started leading me on all kinds of back roads for about 15 minutes, until by some miracle, I wound up on I-795. Amazing. It really does exist! And this time, I didn’t have to go through a single hospital parking lot.

About 20 minutes later, I was on I-40, zooming towards the beach.

So I guess these things do eventually work out… sometimes. I finally got to the beach at about 8:30 that night, so I only lost about half an hour overall.

I highly recommend taking I-795 as a shortcut. That is, if you can find it.

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Cannoli Quest

Tonight I completed a dangerous and important task. I got cannoli for the big family get-together in Wrightsville Beach, NC. Since I’m in Baltimore, I might as well find an Italian bakery and give it a shot, right?

I decided to try to find one of the branches of Vaccaro’s Italian Pastries, which just happens to have a store in Little Italy, about a 10 minute walk from my hotel.

Now I’m going to talk about my iPhone for a second. It may seem like a non-sequitur, but it’s actually important. Without it, I may not have found the store. Just using the web browser and the Google maps apps on the phone, I managed to hunt down the store.

The iPhone is a lot easier to carry around than a big bulky GPS, and it can do searches right on the Internet as you’re walking around. I didn’t drink the iPhone Kool-Aid at first, but now I’m somewhat happy with it.

After wandering and playing hide-and-seek with the iPhone, I found Vaccaro’s. The lower level is closed due to construction, so everyone was jammed into the upper floor, which is a tight fit. That meant the eating area, take-out area, and the kitchen were all stuffed into one small space. Luckily, I got there just before the after-dinner rush, because within about 10-15 minutes, the line of people waiting to get take-out from the bakery was going down the stairs and out the door.

I got 12 mini-cannoli for the family and a tiramisu for tonight, and headed back to the Irish pub for more fish and chips.

After that, I headed back to the room for some tiramisu (which was excellent) and some Survivorman reruns. Les Stroud amazes me, not because he can survive for a week on some twigs and grass he finds, but because he gets some incredible shots while surviving on just some twigs and grass.

Tomorrow the conference winds up, and then I have a 420 mile drive ahead of me.

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Baltimore is Expenive, and Other Obvious Things.

I’ve got some extra time to kill, since I’m skipping some of the Organized Fun Events at the conference, and instead just being a tourist here in Baltimore. I’ve only ever spent the night in Baltimore once, about 8-9 years ago, so I want to take the chance to see the sights around the Inner Harbor where I’m staying.

On Thursday night I thought about heading to the ESPN Zone and seeing what all the fuss was about, but after reading some not-too-glowing reviews on tripadvisor, I decided to walk around and look around the neighborhood and see what else there was. I was really in the mood for seafood, so I tried to target some of the seafood restaurants around my hotel, the Marriott Baltimore Waterfront, but when I saw $45 for a plate of crab cakes, I decided to just find someplace that wouldn’t eat my wallet.

I wound up at James Joyce’s Irish Pub (I think that’s the name), and had a plate of calamari and fried fish for half the cost of those crab cakes. They were pretty good, too.

The Inner Harbor area is very much the tourist trap, and very expensive. You’ll find all sorts of theme restaurants and chains all over the place, and all of them will be happy to liberate your cash from your wallet. So be warned.

But it’s architecturally pleasing, so that counts for something.

If you want really good Italian food, you’re supposed to go to Little Italy, which is right in the same area. I’m going to try going to one of the Italian bakeries to bring some cannoli to the beach for my relatives. I’ll save that for Saturday night.

Tonight (Friday) I went to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Let’s get this out of the way. It’s expensive. Outrageously so. $25 just to see the fish. $30 if you want the “full experience.” I didn’t want the “full experience,” so I just took the $25 hit in the wallet. I can’t really say that I got my money’s worth.

I realize that it’s an aquarium, and all aquariums have fish in them, but this place had that “funky” odor of not being well maintained. I’ve been to a number of aquariums in my time– notably the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, and the Kaiyukan in Osaka, and both blow this place out of the water in both exhibit quality and overall fit and finish. I just kept feeling like I wanted to wash my hands, and I don’t know why.

One of the most irritating things was that the fish in the tank and the fish pictures around the tank never seemed to match up. It was almost as if they had decided to just take all of the explanation cards and shuffle them all up, just to confuse me. Or maybe the main fish were on vacation or something.

There were some cool things to see– the sharks were impressive. And there was a cute cowfish who kept chasing this one guy’s digital camera and jumping in front of the other fish to be in the picture. The Australian exhibit was nice, albeit kind of short, as was the rain forest exhibit, but overall $25 is a lot to ask for this particular aquarium trip.

I stopped by the snack bar to see if I could get a quick bite (because I was starving), but the prices were so ridiculous, I just suffered. $3.00 for a bottle of water is just nuts. $6.75 for an object that barely resembles a sandwich, doubly so. There’s a gift shop, too.

After that, I wandered around the Inner Harbor some more, taking pictures of the ships at anchor, and looking around at some of the buildings. It’s a nice place, but it’s expensive. I wound up eating dinner in my room, thanks to the power of my portable electric cooler and some pre-trip planning, and had dessert at Haagen-Dasz… which was also expensive.

I’m sensing a pattern here.

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