{"id":1294,"date":"2013-07-25T21:05:13","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T02:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=1294"},"modified":"2014-01-23T20:44:20","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T01:44:20","slug":"progress-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=1294","title":{"rendered":"Progress Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I start a lot of projects on this blog, and some get finished, some don’t. I use David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” approach to constantly examine what I want<\/em> to do vs. what I can<\/em> do. GTD is a lifesaver in that regard. It helps keep me focused when sometimes it feels like I’m being torn apart by ducks.<\/p>\n

So here are some short updates on projects I’ve been wanting to work on\/finish.<\/p>\n

The Grammar Songs<\/h3>\n

I discovered that in order to make it work, I need to improve both my Japanese and my music production skills. I studied music from 4th grade all the way through college, so I know a lot about performing music, but I don’t know as much as I should about composing and producing it, which are two entirely different skill sets.<\/p>\n

I’ve been using Coursera to work on the production side, and now I need to work more on the composition side. And when it comes to writing lyrics, that’s the result of daily writing exercises.<\/p>\n

My Japanese is pretty good, but it’s not quite at that level yet, so I’m working on it. Same goes for melodies. I’m looking for a way to get more music theory under my belt.<\/p>\n

Japanese Studies<\/h3>\n

Those are going pretty well. JOI makes it easy to load up on classes for grammar, conversation, and vocabulary when I need to, and they meet my level, which is a godsend. Being an advanced student in a room full of beginners can be helpful sometimes, but it’s hard to make progress that way. So I’m glad JOI has classes that meet my needs. That’s going well so far.<\/p>\n

Also, because of work, I work with Japanese people on a pretty regular basis. The only downside is that since we’re in the US, we mostly speak English and follow US business customs. Not all the time, but a lot of it. Those times when I need to slip into Japanese Mode it comes in really handy.<\/p>\n

3D and 2D Art<\/h3>\n

Well… that had to get put on the “I’ll do it after the JLPT” pile. There’s just too much going on right now, and too many projects require my attention, so I find it’s best to whittle it down to what I can handle. I still want to get into it, but I need to find the right time\/place to do it.<\/p>\n

I sketch whenever I can. I’m not very good at it, but it’s relaxing, and it’s fun. It also helps me with my photography, and my eye for how I want to compose photos.<\/p>\n

Where ARE the Photos?<\/h3>\n

That’s another thing that’s being put on the shelf for now. I have a giant pile of photos to edit, and just no time to do it. Editing requires big chunks of time for me, and unless I’m getting paid to do it, I just do it when I can. I’m going through the older stuff and gradually adding it, though. I don’t know of a good way to bump old posts up to the top of the site just because they have new material. Maybe I’ll create a new tag?<\/p>\n

Calligraphy\/Shodo<\/h3>\n

Well, ever since my class in Raleigh ended, I’ve been going to my usual calligraphy classes. Before the classes in Raleigh ended, though, I spent some time studying Edo-moji, and that was a lot of fun. Now I’m trying to decide what to do next in calligraphy\/shodo.<\/p>\n

Other Site Stuff<\/h3>\n

I recently moved the site over to Suffusion, and I like it as far as CMS\/frameworks go. I can’t really call it a template, because it’s more like a framework you have to set up and tweak yourself to get it to really sing. My current design is a little Spartan, but I’m from the Jakob Nielsen<\/a> school of web design. It needs to be easy to read, and accessible first above everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I bring up a lot of ideas for personal projects… so what’s going on with them? Well, some are moving forward, and some are on the shelf for now. GTD helps me figure out what I have the energy and time to work on, and what I don’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[634,4,664,7,75,120],"tags":[715,709,698,660,12,143,722,699,903,898,611,728,729],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-japanese-language-study","category-music","category-news","category-photography","category-technology","tag-2d-graphics","tag-3d-graphics","tag-coursera","tag-gtd","tag-japanese","tag-jlpt","tag-joi","tag-mooc","tag-music","tag-photography","tag-shodo","tag-suffusion","tag-wordpress","category-634-id","category-4-id","category-664-id","category-7-id","category-75-id","category-120-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1301,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions\/1301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}