Hiragana Basics

Today I am again studying in my CHU, laying on my bed. When I get back home hopefully I’ll have a comfortable place to study as well. So now I’ll go over what I learned today. I keep a language log which is very similar to these blog posts. Except they are slimmed down and note orientated. I keep them on Evernote so I can sync them across all my computers and devices. Anyways….

Japanese vowels almost make up the same as ours. Though they are very solid and aren’t as flexible. They consist of:

• あ (a)
• い (i)
• う (u)
• え (e)
• お (o)

All “kanas” (kana is the word for Japanese characters) consist of a consonant and vowel (in english terms) with the exception of ん (n) which is the only consonant-only kana.

The “t” section has two pronunciation exceptions:

• ち (chi) – instead of “ti”
• つ (tsu) – instead of “tu”

The “y” section only consists of three kana:

• や (ya)
• ゆ (yu)
• よ (yo)

The “w” section only consists of two kana:

• わ (wa)
• を (wo)

The total “letter sections” use these english consonants:

• k
• s
• t
• n
• h
• m
• y
• r
• w

Each section is made up of that english letter and one of the Japanese vowels (wa, su, ri, ect.). There are two more kana sections that make up the Hiragana “alphabet”: Combo Hiragana and Dakuten. I have no idea what those are (the first one is easily guessable) but that is for the next couple of sections ahead. We’ll just have to wait and see!

The “r” section is pronounced really weird. It’s like a combination of “L” and “R” with nice sprinkling of “D”. I was having troubles with it but I think I have it down decently now. Tomorrow I’m just going to spend 15 minutes or so with my pronunciations. The day after I’ll move on to the next section of learning. I am quite impressed with TextFugu. The way the book is formatted is to be instructional and informational while still ensuring that your retaining what is being taught. An artistic blend of these three things is what makes this such a successful learning resource. Well that’s all I did for today. It isn’t much but it’s best to learn in 30 – 60 minutes increments each day versus 8 hours in one day. Now to watch some anime….. 

Why Japanese?

I have always been interested in Japanese Culture which I think goes hand-in-hand with interest in the language. Of course my interest originally started with being introduced to Anime via a friend. However I love traveling and absolutely adore Japan’s geographic attractions. Very zen-like and yet busy at the same time (how intriguing).

Scenic Japan

I have tried a couple of times and failed at learning Japanese. Mainly due to not making the time and general laziness kicking in. I am determined to learn this time. After taking Spanish for three years and not enjoying the language I discovered that in order to become fluent you must have an actual interest in the subject of study.

I have used Rosetta Stone to initially start learning but i found that it didn’t properly introduce the language. I did not like it. So actually as of today I was researching into finding another learning source and discovered Tofugu.com via Youtube! After reading several posts I was fascinated and was ultimately directed here for a highly recommended source for self-learning. So essentially I want to thank Koichi for his wonderful site and collection of resources that have been made available.

Well now…. this looks oddly familiar

Hmmm,

It’s been quite a while now since my last post on here. I’m not even sure what to put on here any more. I’ve been posting to my personal site blog for quite some time now. Though I have dismantled that site and doing a complete make over in preparation for switching to a new host. So until that happens (which will be for an extended amount of time) I will be putting up new posts here again.

Trash Can Cleanliness: Not Very Dirty

Weekend Venture Into The Labyrinth

So this weekend started off pretty decent. Friday I wake up feeling awesome! Get to my engineering class about 9 and then run over to a gas station to buy something to drink. I see it! Thats what I want! Oh yah you know what it was! 32 oz of pure deliciousness!! The BFC of RockStars! Quadruple shot of energy baby! I looked at the price and see “2 for $3.24”. OMFG!!! I was ecstatic. I run back to class and pound those flippin suckers! first one was down in about 20 seconds. second one right after that! I was off the walls till like 5th period. hit 11:45 and I crash…. I was dead. lol felt like shit and freakn’ had a huge headache. I dealt with it for the rest of the day. got home early cleaned the kitchen installed Ubuntu on my parents computer for them to try.

Matt came over and hung out for a little then we headed out just as all my sister’s friends showed up for her birthday party. We went and picked up Rowdy and headed over to Matt’s house. I brought my 360 so we could all play the Halo Reach Beta. We played Reach for a long time! and we hung out and played on our computers. lol about 10:00 pm we decide to get dinner and head out to Windy’s. I still had a bad headache. After we got back tried watching Inglorious bastards but it was having troubles playing it. So we searched for a while and found Labyrinth. Now Rowdy said we should watch it. I remember watching this movie when I was like 6 or 7. You ever have those moments where you remember a movie you watched when you were a kid? In your mind you remember it as funny or awesome and can still see it as you did when you first watched it in your childhood. Lol then you watch it and the graphics are lame and the movie was totally stupid and your like “wtf? that just ruined my childhood memory of that show!” yah well this movie is different.

I remember vaguely that it was about a girl who was mad and wished her brother would be taken by goblins so she could have a perfect life. And then they do and she has to travel through a labyrinth to get to the castle to rescue him right? All other details I couldn’t remember. Now I’m not sure what I was thinking of when I watched this at 6 but I must of been out of my mind!!!! I was tripping off this movie so bad at 1am that it fried my brain!! I was laughing the whole time out of sheer consternation. My mind was in such a state of perplexity that it seriously just when Poof! It broke my mind thats how crazy that movie was. My mind  was broked. If Steve Ballmer could somehow travel backwards in time and jumped into the scene yelling “WAHOOOOOOO!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOO!!!!!! DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS!!!!” My mind would have exploded!

So now here I sit on my bed and my mind is pretty much like this:

I’m not sure what I’m going to do right now but I can’t stop laughing.

Much Success On Website Production

Well I finally conquered a major issue I was having with my site. I needed an automated process for taking my articles on my website to RSS as soon as they are posted. I used PHP and databases to form a pre-structure used for the XML file. using PHP to take information from a dedicated area (i.e. the container for the article) and form into a temp RSS structure and add it as a new entry in the RSS. The reason I have spent so much time building and researching this is because I am not using a pre-made site structure (like WordPress for example). Many people say this is not a good idea seeming as how I only use the site to post articles on updates on news and tutorials. But I’m doing it my way so that I learn more of Web Design and Development on the way. I will eventually switch over to WordPress (like this blog) when I extensively learn WordPress. Until then this is all being done from scratch as I mentioned above for learning.

Thanks everyone for reading this is Reevine signing off with a piece of Trash in my growing Trash Can.

Relationships

Unfortunately things end sooner than you hope or perhaps even without you expecting it. So my status yet again changes. It was awesome for the short time it existed. But it was mutual and may end up continuing when I come back.

Read This If You Have Humor

Hello peeps! For those who have a good sense of humor I want to redirect you to a freakn’ hilarious blog that is managed by a very funny women. Her art coupled with the flow of sentence structure and injected humor brings things to a respective light that shines on her acquired level of intuitiveness and absolute disregard for substandard entertainment.

High regards for the master of making people laugh constantly and making them sound like schools girls… on crack…(don’t ask). I present to you!….. Allie Brosh! : http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

Funny Dramatic IM

Computer Refresh

Just wiped my computer and did a complete DoD security lvl force wipe. Ugh i wished i had a recovery partition of Windows 7 instead of Vista (it would save much time on my semi-annual restores) and installed most of my needed programs. I wish i could compile all my software into one install package but the programs are updated so much that i would have to update them anyways and it would take twice as long.