しあわせ » update

Flashcards Deluxe 2.7

ロバート — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 13:23:15 +0000

Flashcards Deluxe is a standalone app for the iPhone, iPod or iPad. I’ve been using it to learn Japanese vocabulary and kanji since I first got my iPod Touch. I thoroughly recommend it.

Today sees an update to version 2.7

The most noticeable change is there is now some eyecandy in the form of themes for your cards. This makes it a bit more pleasant but isn’t really earth shattering. Although I’m very fond of the Deep Blue theme that is a graded background from Black to Dark Blue, which is more pleasant than the solid black I was using. More notable changes have been quietly made to the interface. The icons used are now more consistent with the iOS look and feel. There are extra options as to what information is displayed with a card and although I no longer have the previous version to compare it with I feel the preferences panes have been more consolidated. Also welcome are two modes in preferences so the advanced preferences are initially hidden from basic users.

The major change is the help files which have been vastly improved and are now also searchable. The help and documentation were some of the weaker points of this app previously. This is no longer the case, the contextual help is now quite comprehensive. I like that it is in the application itself and doesn’t require the user to go to a web site.
All my favourites are still in the app.

Spaced Repetition.
The ability to make and edit decks and cards on the iPod itself.
Editing and making decks on a desktop only requires a text editor or for slightly more convenience a spreadsheet.
A drawing area that is very useful when learning kanji.
 Although drawing with your figure ( or thumb if using it one handed) is not ideal it reinforces the kanji and also makes sure you are actually remembering all the strokes correctly.
Multiple sides to cards. Each having their own statistics.
Export of decks including statistics via a txt file.
Relatively simple and uncomplicated.
No computer needed.

The remaining weak point in the app is importing decks from your PC or Mac. At the moment it’s done through a server the developer keeps for this purpose or through connecting to a shared folder on your computer via Wi-Fi. I think it would be more straightforward if import and export via iTunes could be implemented. According to the developer he is working on Dropbox and GoogleDocs support which should probably go a long way to bridging this gap.

The developer, Ernie, seems very approachable, helpful and willing to listen to what users say about his app and how they use it. The overhaul of the help system and inclusion of a demo deck is testament to this. I’ve never seen a RTFM reply from him on the support forums. He keeps a forum for support and suggestions and the one time I emailed him a got a very prompt reply. He’s just one guy developing a tool based on his own needs. I hope he is making more than beer money from it on the App Store. (I’ve been put off by the apparent elitism of Anki. It’s ethos seems to be that it’s only for the truly dedicated, with the implication that if you don’t use it you’re not dedicated and only good enough for inferior simpler apps. Simplicity in application design is actually hard to achieve. If many users are reporting problems it’s time for some usability testing and interface design. No-one really reads manuals, and no-one wants to spend time learning a program to achieve a simple task.)

I’m toying with the idea of putting together a FileMaker solution to make deck creation and editing a bit easier. I already have the option to export wordlists from Kanji Sieve to Flashcards Deluxe via the developer’s servers.

Check out Flashcards Deluxe at the very reasonable price of $3.99 (£2.39) . If you want to try before you buy there is also a light version limited to 4 decks of 4 cards.

I’m looking forward to version 2.8 already.

Kanji Sieve 0.5 released

ロバート — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:17:10 +0000

Now with added Kanji Notebook.

New features in this iteration

option to turn off tooltips
click to display kanji information in statistics view
shift-click for options on some buttons
October 2010 standard Jyouyou kanji
User defined keywords
preferred language preference
Spanish keywords
French keywords
Spanish, French and German automatic lookup on wwwjdic
added Hispadic and Wadoku to list of online dictionaries
Chuta.jp queried for English and preferred language
sieve for custom list of kanji
searched word in waeijiten is highlighted (verbs and adjectives decline)
minor interface improvements
improved character count for more accurate overall statistics
Kanji Notebook (2010 Jyouyou, KKLD kanji, Kanji Oddysey)
phonetic data (work in progress – 75 groups at present)
Import images
Images and Audio copied to media folder
Image Editor from pixlr.com

The kanji in the statistics panes can be clicked to get basic information about the kanji, its keyword and the KKLD index. there is also a checkbox to mark it as known.
Kanji Notebook contains more data on 2537 kanji, covering the 2010 Jyouyou, KKLD kanji, and Kanji Odyssey lists. My motivation to build Kanji Notebook was to get a sort of dictionary that showed the data I wanted, and allowed me to add my own notes and importantly change the keyword. The dataset from EDRDG originally started with keywords from Heisig. These are still there as the first word and were driving me crazy. Jim Breen said he was going to clear up these entries way back in 1995 but I still want to scream when I see “old boy” for 君. The keywords from KKLD are better, or sometimes my own keyword. I haven’t included KKLD keywords but there is the option to add them yourself. The KKLD index from EDRDG‘s data is included to help with a look-up. (If you managed to get the iPhone app before it disappeared putting a ~ before the index number allows you to search for it)
The example words are from vocabulary extracted from records in Kanji Sieve. Therefore all vocabulary should be relevant to your interests.

There is automated look-up of Internet dictionaries for a kanji. I find it interesting to search google images to see if I can guess a clear meaning or see how it is being used. You can explore kanji using the browse tab, to get lists by grade, radical, phonetic, kakitorikun screen, or Kanji Odyssey group.
Kakitorikun is a great piece of software for the Nintendo DS. It’s main drawback is it’s completely in Japanese. With Kanji Notebook I can at least easily put an English keyword to kanji on a given screen.
Kanji Odyssey from Coscom is an excellent e-book based on the frequency of use of kanji. It has many examples and recordings of native speech. I recommend it. An added bonus is their completely free update program. Recently I got a new CD from them when they updated for the 2010 Jyouyou. Absolutely free, not even postage costs. That’s a rare service these days.

There is the beginnings of language support for languages other than English. Spanish and French keywords are included. They will be displayed in preference to English when the preferred language is set in preferences. This also controls what language is used to query chuta.jp. However I found that the returns are very short so English is also submitted. wwwjdic will use the preferred language when searching for vocabulary.
Complete translations of the interface are unlikely at the moment however.

That’s it for now. Next potential release will be January. I really need to spend some more time on documentation! …

Downloads

More about Kanji Sieve

Kanji Sieve v0.4 released

ロバート — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 13:10:07 +0000

Another month another set of improvements to Kanji Sieve.
In this release I concentrated on getting data in and out of the program.

It is possible to import records from a previous version.
As I strongly believe that the data belongs to the user it can all be exported in a variety of formats to be used elsewhere.
You can use a built-in mini browser to search for texts at your favourite sites.
Plain text and audio can be imported.
Chuta can now be viewed online on PCs and Macs
There is a choice of 7 online dictionaries to search for word meanings
Individual dictionary lookups are automated
The layout is now more flexible
There is a full screen mode for reading
There is an online help system (in progress)
The interface colour has been toned down
Interface and navigation improvements

I was hesitant about using Chuta online display. It was the only way at the moment to implement it for the PC. Chuta only stores a search for a limited time and while chuta is fast it does take a while to compile the custom page. I would prefer to work with cached data. What I do in the online display is check to see if the remote cache has expired and if it has fetch it again. It’s not ideal when loading the Chuta pane in the program but it is the best for now. I also had to sacrifice some screen real estate to get feedback that the program hadn’t frozen. After the first time your own cache should speed loading. Mac users can still work with the cached data by setting a preference.

There are now several dictionary urls to chose from. I think jisho.org (denshi jisho) in a mobile phone version or risukun are the fastest and cleanest. Jim Breen’s wwwjdic is comprehensive but you need to pare down the interface via the preferences to avoid information overload and clutter. The Japanese dictionaries from Wordbank, Yahoo, Goo and ALC all have ads to a varying degree. ALC is the worst, which makes for a very cluttered window without expanding it.
As I like to automate where I can you can submit a search just by clicking a button in the wordlist. You don’t have to type or copy and paste if you don’t want to. Owing to the imprecision of looking up words automatically you have to chose the correct version from the results and paste that into your wordlist yourself.

There is a mini-browser to help with getting text into the program. I dislike jumping from program to program so I wanted something “right there”. However it’s not as capable as a proper browser like Safari or Firefox (and on the PC you’re stuck with the dreadful Internet Explorer engine). And there is no ad filtering. One way around this is to use Evernote and your usual browser to collect interesting text then access your Evernote account from with Kanji Sieve. ( note: Kanji Sieve does not store or access any passwords, history etc. This is all handled by your computers browser software and stored elsewhere on your system. (Safari on the Mac, IE on Windows) Apart from accessing the help files through a browser, the software does not in any way call home. The only data going out are submissions to chuta.jp and dictionary sites for word lookups.)

I am happier with the PC version this time around. Overall I really think this is becoming a usable and useful tool.

The online help is a work in progress. I will be writing it over the next month or so. After that it will be on to version 0.5 to release sometime in November.

The downloads are here.

––update 04Oct10––
bug release v0.4.1 released 3 Oct

Kanji Sieve 0.4 progress

ロバート — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:11:03 +0000

I’ve been working away at Kanji Sieve whenever I get the opportunity.
Printing has now been added. It will now print the text, stats and vocab for a record properly.
As I don’t like jumping from application to application I’ve added the capability to browse your favourite sites within Kanji Sieve to find new texts.
Although the base layout is designed for small screens I’ve made the screens more flexible for larger screen sizes.
When making new records you can now import a text file. I’ve also added search and replace including regular expression abilities in New Record and Edit Record to clean up texts, removing furigana in brackets for instance. (I may look into the optional display of furigana at a later date.)
I’ve cleared up a couple of bugs. I’ve made popup windows modal to stop users going astray by accident.
I’ve updated the version of 360 Works Scriptmaster bundled in the runtime.

Windows still has me stumped to an extent. As this is a hobby project not a commercial one, and to be honest not many people seem to be downloading Kanji Sieve, I can’t justify the cost of setting up a Windows system just to chase down the glitches. (I looked at cheap netbooks but it doesn’t help that Windows 7 has a confusing array of flavours and I’m not sure at which point you get Japanese support. I prefer Mac’s system of buy once get everything.) So while I realise a lot of people are on Windows, I’m doing this firstly for myself and I use a Mac.

I should have something by the end of this month. As soon as I sort out data transfer from version to version I’ll post the update. I might need to consider a data separation model where the user data is kept in a separate file but this may have to wait until I stop adding to the solution.

Kanji Sieve Windows coming soon

ロバート — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:04:46 +0000

I may have more time again to develop my little application Kanji Sieve.
While I still can’t solve my display problem on the PC to allow use of the Chuta dictionary, I can parse returns from Chuta so text can be broken down into words. Therefore for the time being (maybe longer. sorry) I’ve bypassed this feature and PC Users will have to use another dictionary and do searches manually. Once I’ve gotten the cleanup done for PC (and maybe toned down the colour for perhaps my only user!) I’ll post Kanji Sieve 0.3 for Windows within the next week or two.

In related news, FileMaker have released Filemaker Go. This is an app for iOS4 to allow you to run FileMaker databases on iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. I think this is potentially exciting. It’s at the more expensive end of the app price scale (£13, $20) but it looks fantastic and can open runtime solutions. It certainly had none of the issues I had going from Mac to PC. I tried Kanji Notebook on it and was surprised at how it looked and behaved. Mostly it behaves and looks exactly as it does on my MacBook, although because of the screen size you need to zoom around like in the iPhone version of Safari. The transfer was quick and easy, and according to the manuals the unsupported features are quite few. Lack of support for plugins though means that Kanji Sieve wouldn’t work as I really on external grep functions and Internet routines. On a more standard solution initially the bigger drawbacks are the lack of support for top to bottom Japanese text and a speed issue in running some scripts. But with a bit of thought and design specifically for an iPhone I might be able to make some useful and portable applications.

Leaving Certificate Japanese

ロバート — Mon, 31 May 2010 16:21:22 +0000

Amy Murphy has started a web site guide to Leaving Certificate Japanese. Having taught herself Japanese successfully for the 2009 Leaving, she is now passing on her enthusiasm and insights to other candidates.
If you live in Ireland, Leaving Cert Japanese is worth a look.
Self-motivated and self-led learning is a completely different experience to the rigidity of most secondary school language programs.

FileMaker Kanji Project – progress 2

ロバート — Tue, 11 May 2010 16:02:20 +0000

Now with added Kanji Sieve. Or rather the way Kanji Sieve has evolved means I’ll be incorporating my Kanji NoteBook project with it.
Unfortunately I think the direction I’m heading in means an awful lot of work on the interface. And a lot of time I don’t have to spare at the moment, but I am working on it and am excited about the way it’s progressing.
The next Kanji Sieve will have multiple records, so you will save you pieces of text for future use. I’m dropping the keywords as completely futile for reading or understanding a text (although useful when first learning a kanji. I have a blog post in progress about this). I’m fairly confident of parsing text automatically to build word lists. This is why I’ve decided it makes sense to incorporate Kanji Notebook with it, if not in v0.3 at least by v0.4.

I will also automatically generate and manage lists for a flashcard system. Primarily as a tab separated text file so you can import to the tool of your choice rather than my trying to re-invent something that others are doing quite well. I have a basic flash card solution but as I have other tools that work better for my purposes I won’t be pursuing it.
I’m thinking about how to aggregate statistics across the database. I would like to rank unknown kanji and words by how frequent they are overall in the pieces of text you store in Kanji Sieve. This would mean needing a listing of known kanji and vocabulary that can be filtered. That might then give an indication of what words are personally more important to learn. Again maybe one for v0.4 when Kanji Notebook is incorporated.

Most of the functions I want are in place. I can make it work for my own needs but I need to make it work for other people before I release it. I also have to think now about how data will transfer across successive future builds.
In the meantime here’s a pic of the NoteBook.

Kanji Sieve v0.2

ロバート — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 18:39:56 +0000

It has taken me a little longer than I thought to get to version 0.2 of Kanji Sieve. Mainly due to getting it to look better cross platform and avoiding problems for a user that wouldn’t be an issue for me as the developer.
However, as someone actually downloaded, looked at and commented on my initial little solution I looked at Kanji Sieve again. A little encouragement will always prompt me to continue projects.This time I’ve taken a bit more care over the look for the Windows file. On the suggestion of Tom Hodgers I used the Meiryo font and allowed the user to change the font size of the sample text.

I added non-Jyouyou kanji and katakana words to the sieve. This may be a bit indiscriminate. What I’m doing with katakana is searching for runs of katakana and hoping these are words. They may not be. For non-Jyouyou I try to eliminate all roman characters, kana, Jyouyou kanji, and punctuation. What’s left over in a Japanese text should be non-Jyouyou kanji. Again strange punctuation and foreign characters may appear here. I do have some plans to try to refine this panel though.

Trying it out I was surprised at the amount of non-jyouyou a friend of mine used in her mixi diary. I would have thought a larger amount of kana and jyouyou kanji in a personal diary. I wonder if it is due to using a word processor, it’s easier to generate those kanji and presumably she can expect ordinary friends to read them easily. If she was writing by hand it might be different.

Lastly I incorporated a little hack I put together to replace kanji with keywords. I did this to demonstrate how little meaning you get from just keywords. Especially when the most popular keywords in English that appear as the first entry in Kanjidict are a bit dreadful at times. These panels may or may not survive into the next version. If my notebook ever sees the light of day I’d generate the keywords from the users input which may at least be more useful and perhaps generate an xml file with the keyword furigana as pop-ups.

Further plans
I’d at least like to solve exporting. At the moment I have an issue with the flow of records of unknown length in printouts. It may just have to be an xml export.
I may make it into a multi-record solution.
I also found something very similar at the reading tutor web site at Tokyo International University. Which has the added benefit of producing custom glossaries for articles. If I could understand how they can parse for individual words I’d implement this myself.

Download from my new permanent Kanji Sieve page.

––update 11Apr10––
I’ve corrected the oversight I made in not filtering for half width kana or full width roman characters. non-Jyouyou and katakana should work a bit better now.

Crack appears in Mixi’s exclusion method

ロバート — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:29:23 +0000

Two years ago mixi started requiring a Japanese email address in order to sign up to mixi. It seems that what they are doing is filtering for undesirable domains. Hence google mail etc are being barred, Japanese keitai are not.
Koichi at Tofugu has found an apparent crack in mixi’s filters. dot-edu domain addresses are not being blocked. (for the moment). Which is good news if you have a .edu email address. He has even found a way to get a .edu address via an Australian site. Details can be found on Tofugu.
Apparently (I haven’t checked) .ac.uk addresses work as well.
You also don’t need an invite to join mixi anymore according to Tofugu. But play nice please; mixi is different from Facebook et al. and the social conventions around friend requests are different.
I wouldn’t liken it to the Black Ships yet. No one is forcing mixi to open up (and no-one should really). More like some Jesuits being snuck in.

New JLPT – more information

ロバート — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:57:12 +0000

I found some more information about the new JLPT exams starting in 2010.

Firstly it seems not every exam centre will have twice yearly exams. It looks as if only centres in Japan,China and Korea will definitely offer it twice a year. SOAS in London seems to be keeping to December only. It’ll be worth checking with your nearest centre. It may also help them gauge interest and encourage them to offer it biannually. Hopefully the Japan Foundation will update its listings soon.

More interestingly, although official workbooks won’t appear until 2012 according to the official JLPT site, Bonjinsha already has a few textbooks available for the new JLPT specifications. They aren’t part of the full listing on Bonjinsha’s site. However I did find them under their (unweildy) Japanese title 新しい「日本語能力試験」ガイドブック概要版と問題例集 (New Japanese-Language Proficiency Test Guidebook: An Executive Summary, and Sample Questions).

Finally, although this isn’t exactly new, Ireland now has it’s own JLPT exam centre at DCU. Although they have the typically rubbish websites common to a lot of universities.