Progress Report: Summer 2022

JAPANESE

Read a book every month

I’ve finished two books and reviewed them on there entertainment and learning. In July, I read Digimon: Last Kizuna Evolution. I used to hate it when I couldn’t go watch anime movies in theaters due to it being a one or two day thing. Luckily, with these novelizations, I get to enjoy the story.

Got to enjoy some Black Organization stories with this Detective Conan novel I got from Kinokuniya.

I still have about 6 chapters of 少年探偵団 to read but I should be able to finish it before the month is over. Just like the Detective Conan novel, even though it has furigana it’s hard to read. The vocabulary is relatively old (they had to explain some terms here and there in the Aotori Bunko version and relate how much money some things would cost in our time). I’ll get into more detail about this book in the review later this month.

Beat Kingdom Hearts in Japanese

I successfully beat Kingdom Hearts on Proud Mode. It was a fantastic experience going through the game on my own. You know, instead of scripting dialogue, translating, making explanations, etc. on substack. Great experience and it gave me an even greater appreciation for people who work in translation and localization teams. I think I’ll write up a separate review for this game.

Right after finishing that, I started playing one of my least favorite games out of the series: Re: Chain of Memories. Forgot it has a lot of text and no cut-scenes when you are going to the different worlds. For the most part, I was able to understand majority of the text so I guess that’s good.

Finish Reading Kanji de Manga: Yojijukugo

This was a fun book to look over and I bookmarked a few of them for future reference. I talked a bit about it on a Japanese Event a while back here if you are interested.

PROGRAMMING

Finish Python Crash Course Book

Decided to focus only on Python. I got through the chapters and the first two projects. The Django project is a whole other beast. I think I might have to do it all over again.

While struggling through the last project, I found a useful YouTube channel called Learning Python. Tried getting it connected to the server… And it didn’t work. I’m so used to Pycharm Community Version taking care of everything so running the command prompt was out of my reach.

If you are going through this book I do recommend his playlist. Just be careful with the command prompt stuff when you get to the Django project. He uses a Mac and the commands are somewhat different from Windows.

I did make a small program that makes a monthly reading plan. I have it set up where it asks the user how many pages are in the book, how many pages they want to read each day, etc. It tells the user whether that is possible or not. If it is then it puts out a monthly reading plan. There are many things I still want to do with it but here’s a screenshot of the results when I used it for the Detective Conan book.

Since I got a lot of python books from Humble Bundle, I think I’ll give Automate the Boring Stuff a try like Michael suggested. Or the Impractical Projects. Now that I have the basics, I’m looking forward to what else I can make.

Shogi

Solve 5-move Tsume Puzzles

Solved all 63 puzzles in the Tsume Shogi Book. They were harder to figure out but they were fun to do. Even found myself solving more than two a day.