I'm not sure what happened in March that had me drop off of updating this site, but I do know some shiny things that came later to distract me.

I've turned 40 since then, and I noticed on the whole that I've been getting into hobbies I loved as a teenager (mid-life crisis?), like this site project. One of the other things is getting back into learning Japanese. When I was 15/16, I taught myself hiragana using charts on the internet and started transcribing romanized anime song lyrics. A few things got in the way and discouraged me, not just the fact that I had no structured way to learn for free.

So I started Duolingo 86 days ago, and I started supplementing with chatgpt to better understand the context of the grammar it teaches. Duo does not actually give you a framework but rather expects you to figure it out; meanwhile, they give incomplete, inconsistent translations for things. For me, it became necessary to analyze everything to fully understand it. I started writing everything down.

I'm not even sure what I can gain from this new language, but it's a great challenge. I like being able to pick up on translation differences in anime (I've also finally um, expanded my anime watch library beyond just Sailor Moon), and it is a great source of dopamine.

Did I learn anything today?

Nah, but I had to figure out how to get back into this directory and run the automations to create a post and a new tag!

What's next?