Michael

I Am A Diamond

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My nephew Mason started studying French via Duolingo. You may not know about Duolingo. You may not believe in it. How can a gamified, free app really teach a language? My answer: work, lots of work. If you call spending time with Duo “work.”

If you spend around 110 hours studying with Duolingo you will have about the same results as two years of college language classes. Same results, half of the time spent studying. After taking in how Duolingo tracks how they do, believe it. There are other videos on Duolingo. You may want to watch the guy who invented Duolingo talking about Duo and how far it has come. There is another bunch of interesting ones on YouTube in Duolingo’s DuoCon 2020 Playlist. I could recommend some of the other videos beyond the two so far. I could, but then you would have them all recommended. So Go Watch Them!

You may have figured out that I am a Duolingo user and fan. I have been studying with Duolingo since December of 2013. That was pretty early in their history, publicly available since June of 2012. I can report that I’ve been OK with my Spanish. I’ve used it in Spain, Colombia, Argentina, and Mexico. However, I have had two problems.

Number one is hearing. And not just Spanish, English too. I have hearing aides and they help but they don’t do it all. I can’t understand English in social contexts. Spanish in some contexts I’m lost. But, when my wife, who has excellent hearing, is there to repeat or translate something for me and get me on the track, then I am off to conversing with them. Like the subject of getting change at a museum, they didn’t have it. Once I knew they were referring to change I could ask them about that and go from there. So once I get started, we’re good.

My second item is having a stroke. In my case a big issue is coming up with words. I just lose the vocabulary. And I fumble, come up with synonyms, describe what I’m after and whatever it takes to unstick my brain and express myself. I had a streak of 700+ in March of 2018. I’m not sure what I was up to before my stroke. And I am not sure what effect it has had on my Spanish. But I’m back at it and mostly got my Spanish vocabulary. This adventure was one of my medical outages. It was the biggest.

Those are the two things that I perceive as my Duolingo issues. I am still able to get most words correct, a stroke or not a stroke. What does this have to do with my nephew Mason? I heard he wanted to study French. I recommended Duolingo. He picked it up and is going great on it. So I added French to my Duolingo list. I had already started on Latin because, well why not? So I was up to three languages. My wife decided she wanted to freshen up her Norwegian. When she started that I added it to my list. Four is enough for now. I think.

I also got into a discussion with Mason. I suggested he get to the first check point as quickly as possible. Then he could do stories. He stuck to his strategy of working each skill set to the max. Which got me to thinking about what works best with Duolingo. Where is what they recommend. This is important. And I eventually settled in on a strategy for working largely based on Duo’s recommendation.

I am slowly building up through the languages. Spanish, which I had at one time completed to everything Duolingo had to offer, A Golden Own, then they changed. They added more content. They improved the content that they had. So I started again. Took some time out for medical time outs. And I’m not working to have it all, all of the offerings from Duolingo.

What does that have to do with calling myself a Diamond? Duolingo has 10 levels of achievement. If you study a lot and are one of the Top Ten you advance. I was stuck at the Ruby level before my cooperation with Mason. Now I’m at the Diamond level. As far as I know, the highest level.

Off to more adventures!

Another View of Me

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I have just launched My Typed Page it is kinda blog like. I try to update it daily with more random thoughts. But these are done on a typewriter. In this case the typewriter is currently one of

  • Hermes 3000, my favorite typewriter, a find at Ace Typewriter
  • Hermes Baby, a Spanish language typer, thanks to Kent Peterson who gifted it to me
  • Olympia SM5, another great one, this from a Craigslist
  • Royal KMM, a beast of a typewriter, with a 14″ platen and it weighs 50 pounds or so. I got it from SCRAP.

You can view all of these at my Typewriter Database Gallery. They range in age from 1940 (Royal KMM) to 1967 (Hemes 3000). The Royal was used by a local TV station and had it’s platen replaced let in life, so it has plenty of life left.

Enough digression, go visit it here.

Happy Equinox

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Yes, this is the day that we transition from summer to autumn. Or we are entering the dark months. Only six months left until we’re back on the bright side of life.

I did go out today, to view a photo show from Bobby Abrahamson. It was an outdoor show of North Portland Polaroids. This was the first outing, actual social event, I have had since February 27. Wow, over six months without any social events. I’m not counting having a pair of couples over for their visits, my sister was here for my birthday, and I’ve gone out to eat a meal or two with my wife. But to go out and just be someplace for the pleasure, this was a first.

Oh my wow. What a string of life.

What I Keep

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What I wrote for One Typed Page.

2020-09-20 Portland, Oregon Hermes 3000

If you feel carefully, you can detect the perforations of where the paper was ripped from its neighbors and the side stuff with the holes for tractor feeds. How old did the paper need to be for that? When was the last time I had tractor feed paper? In the 1990s? Why did I keep this paper? Why did I buy paper and not use this paper?

It is not the only thing I have here at home from a long time ago. And I mean things that are part of the making stuff group. I have some pencils, 4H, such as those from 1982 or so. 4H is a grading spec. This is a hard pencil for light lines, usually used in sketching and stuff like that. I have some tubes of paint. Oil paints in 200ml tubes. Cad Red Deep, Prussian Blue, Cad Yellow Pale, Phthalo Blue, and Alizeran Crimson. All in boxes, ready to go. There are other bits and pieces from my past, all ready to use. I like things like this, things that stay ready to use. You cannot do that with foodstuffs. Foodstuffs rot. It takes a different kind of liking to like that kind of thing.

I have words too. Words like those that you read here. They never rot. You can use words over and over.

I hope to use words well. Here is a sample, not from me.

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.

~ Rebecca Elson

Those are the opening words to ANTIDOTES TO FEAR OF DEATH
by Rebecca Elson. What words those are! Someday!

— MichaelRpdx :: h3k