The whole arrangement seemed so straightforward. We bloggers simply shared what we thought was interesting or helpful, and whoever agreed would congregate around, and we’d have a good talk about it, or maybe just think about it at work that day. The blog was just a microphone, and the internet only an aid to sharing our thoughts, like we had always done, in cars, in pubs, in school.

From: Let's Talk Like We Used To on Raptitude

This is one of my favorite parts of being on an IndieWeb: that posts don't have to be life-changing to be worth posting. It makes me a bit sad when people decry the rise of selfies food photos, because those posts are just small bids for discussion. A tiny bit of a life shared.

This week I decided to get serious with studying Japanese and started with Wanikani, an online system for learning kanji. Using a system of mnemonics and spaced repetition software (SRS) WK is designed to help you learn radicals, kanji, and compounds. First, you cram the new material into your brain, and then a few hours later WK will quiz you. Do well, and it'll extend the time until it asks you again. Miss one, and you'll see it again sooner. Repeat, repeat, repeat until learned.

What seems so promising about WK is that while it's relatively easy to learn a single use for a kanji, I've never had a system that was good about teaching me multiple uses of that kanji. I would learn that 上 is the preposition for UP, pronounced ue, and then off to the next kanji. When I'd see that 上 in a sentence, half the time it was being used in a sense I hadn't learned yet, a grammatical brick wall. WK isn't going to let me off so easy–instead, it makes me learn 上, 上がる, 上げる, and 上手 (up, to rise, to raise, and skilled) in rapid succession.

I'm also currently working on my preliminary literature review, linking affective experiences, conceptual schema, cognitive structures and language, and narrative. One part of this is looking at how language develops, and how the metaphoric words we use expose the way we've grouped ideas (schema). The idea of an UP is inherently linked to the experience we have as a person; UP requires a perspective, a vantage from which UP can be above. And having that sense of the relative direction, we have linked it to positive concepts: HAPPY IS UP so we can feel up and our spirits can rise, and GOOD IS UP so things can look up and hit a peak. These categories are complex, built from our physical experiences into a net of understanding, with tiny differences between UP, OVER, ABOVE, OUT, and ALONGSIDE all having linked but different ideas. In her book Story of Over, Claudia Brugman reportedly found over 100 related meanings for the word OVER! (More on all of this in Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff.)

Which brings me back to my friend 上. Japanese kanji are inherently visual, and there's a visible representation in 上 as UP (especially when compared to down/下), so when I look at the vocabulary I'm learning I can see abstractly the connection. But I haven't internalized these connections quite yet. Instead, WK is teaching me mnemonics that make what is abstract to me now be relatable to my existing English-based mind. Today, I'm memorizing a toe on the ground (seriously!) but someday soon the words will form into internal links of meaning.

And so I keep going, day by day, using brute force to build the schema connections in my mind, all to the end that these meanings can become as natural and opaque as cognitive structures in my native language.

Which is all to say that researching the process while experiencing it is fascinating...enough so that I feel the urge to HAPPY IS UP jump for joy!

#mood

On the road

Previously, I outlined how to use AutoHotKey (AHK) to speed up access to searches in the study abroad software Terra Dotta, and speed up various other functions. AHK is only available for PC, but luckily it turns out that we can use Keyboard Maestro to replicate the same functions.

First, the sad news is that Keyboard Maestro isn't a free option like AHK. Initially, I tried implementing the functions through the oldie-but-a-goodie open-source program Quicksilver. Some functions worked okay, including the searches, but many things like paste without formatting didn't. Ultimately, after messing around with multiple solutions, I decided that I preferred to have a single solution even if it required paying for it (and now I can feel good about supporting well-deserving programmers too).

The way Keyboard Maestro is set up, you can set up a trigger for an action, and then a series of steps. It's a little more difficult to copy and paste these over, so below I've included images showing the sequence of steps if you'd like to put them together yourself manually. I've also included downloadable .kmmacros, which you can open and edit to fit your site and needs. In that case, be sure to change the URLs in the files to your particular Terra Dotta install URL.

Download Macro File: Find student with control-shift-s   

Download Macro File: Find program brochure page with control-shift-d

Download Macro File: Find program edit page with control-shift-f

Download Macro File: Universal paste without Formatting

Download Macro File: Open Calculator

Download Macro File: Text substitution (short snippet)
For short text, it works more reliably to have KM type the text, but it gets a little laggy with long text. For that reason, I have the text substitution separated out with one method for short text substitutions and long text substitutions.

Download Macro File: Text substitution (long snippet)

The one shortcut I haven't duplicated on my Mac is the transformation of a selection of email addresses from having a serial comma to having a serial semi-colon. I have no doubt that Keyboard Maestro would make that possible, but I haven't needed it because I have been using the combination of Postbox + Fantastical instead of the perpetually buggy Outlook.

Happy shortcutting!