JapanesePod101.com

Blog / May 2007

  • 27 May 2007Today's update & kanji practice pages

    You've probably noticed already, I added links above the "quick summary" buttons on this page (when you are logged in), so you can go directly to a review session of all expired flashcards (the orange link), or to the first failed flashcard in the Study area (whereas the Study button now takes you to the default page where you can read the quick introduction).

    Kanji Practice Pages

    Schmuel Fomberg wrote to me about a program he's made for generating practice pages and self-test pages for the Remembering the Kanji book.

    You can use his program to print pages with keywords from RtK with spaces for writing the corresponding kanji. Schmuel is also looking for some feedback.
  • 20 May 2007Study area: Kanji in search bar

    In the Study area, you can now see the kanji in the search field's drop-down list. This should save some time when you are looking for a particular kanji but don't remember the exact keyword.

    Please post any comments or problems to the Search Bar - Kanji Preview topic over at the forums, thanks.

  • 15 May 2007Update to the grid and a fix for Opera

    For users of Mac + Firefox browser : I've updated the grid display on the flashcard review page, so that the kanji should now line up correctly with the grid. It may still be slightly off, I don't have easy access to a Mac for testing, so please bear with me.

    As a side-bonus I finally fixed a problem of font selection in the Opera browser. It will now display the kanji with the "Mincho" font, instead of the blocky "Gothic" font.

    The "Gothic" font is meant for readability at small font sizes, but doesn't look good at large sizes.

    The "Mincho" font is the one with variable-width strokes, it looks more natural, with the end of strokes tapered. This font is difficult to read at small sizes on a computer monitor, but is much better for the flashcards, since you can tell where strokes begin and where they end.

  • 12 May 2007Grid displayed under the kanji during reviews

    You can now get a grid displayed under the kanji to help you draw the character with the right balance and proportions. Click this small icon
    during a Review to toggle the grid on and off.

    To get the most of it, you might want to use a bisected grid paper like this.


    Even if you don't use grid paper, you might like the larger kanji display.

    Thanks to member dingomick for the suggestion.

  • 7 May 2007Tokyo RtK meetup & website update

    Here it is at last!

    The third RtK meetup took place in Tokyo on April 21st. Thanks to everyone who attended. It was great to meet you all! I wish we'd had more time to talk but I guess the weather was too good to allow us to sit around a table.

    Head over to the forums for a quick sum up of the afternoon from Andy and Scott.



    From left to right we have members: Fabrice (yours truly), Mario (woelpad), Chris (Katsuo), Scott (scooterinjapan), Christoph (christoph), Andy (synewave) and Bryan (brose).

    Special thanks to Mario, Scott and Jeffrey (who is not on the photo), with whom I've stayed during the later part of my holidays in Japan, from April 21 to April 28! Also thanks to Andy who offered to lodge me as well.

    I hope to put up a gallery of photos from my trip in Japan, probably link to it from the About page... but this might take a while.

    In the meantime I took a handful of photos that afternoon in Ueno park, which I'll upload to a flickr account. Including a quizz, and a monkey! ^_^ Stay tuned!

    Today's update

    After more consideration, and listening to your comments on the forum, I decided to switch over the method for adding new flashcards. I also finally added an option to delete flashcards. Both options take a frame number from the book, rather than the number of cards to add or delete.

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