Justin-Klein.com – Life of a Traveling Programmer – Page 67

Life at Home

Apr 142009

My little buddy keeping me company as I struggle to solve FP3D’s latest challenge.

Well, it’s certainly been awhile, hasn’t it?

It may come as little surprise that life back here at home is significantly less exciting, and thus significantly less interesting to write about, than life backpacking through Asia, South America, and the Middle East. But I suppose reality has to catch up with you sometime, so here I am doing my best to beat it back as quickly and thoroughly as possible 😛

So far, this bout in Los Angeles has consisted of five (main) rounds. The first of which is FP3D…

Over the past year or so, I’ve frequently referred to a coding project that Peder and I have been developing part time – interleaved with our other jobs and various international adventures. Finishing this project was one of my biggest factors in deciding to fly back from China this February; I figured it’s high time I really kick it into overdrive and push as far towards that final goal as possible.
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Anki: Memorization Reborn

Public, USA 10 Responses »

Mar 212009

Those few of you who’ve been reading since the early days might recall way back in 2005, when I first started studying Japanese in Kyoto. It wasn’t long after my arrival that I discovered a revolutionary method for effectively learning Kanji: namely, the Heisig Method (referred to in posts here and here).

In brief, the Heisig method ditches traditional rote-memorization, instead teaching the student to utilize each character’s constituent parts along with a mnemonic device he calls “imaginative memory.” By sorting the characters in a very deliberate order, and by assigning each with a unique keyword (that approximates its scope of meaning as best as possible), a scene or story can be constructed to connect its meaning with the meanings of all the elements used to write it. Continue reading »

Ken Tanaka

Public, USA 4 Responses »

Mar 172009

I stumbled on a great YouTube channel the other day.

This guy, who goes by the name of Ken Tanaka, claims to be a white American who was adopted by a Japanese family and spent his entire life growing up in Shimane prefecture. Now, in his early adulthood, he’s returned to the United States to search for his birth parents – Jonathan and Linda Smith.

At first I was skeptical – it seemed like too perfect a basis upon which to build yet another amusing YouTube narrative. But after watching a few of his clips, his extraordinary Japanese ability coupled with his perfect understanding of the Japanese-English speech disfluencies made me doubt my skepticism. After all, there really isn’t anything that implausible about his story, right?
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China Wrap-Up

China, Public 5 Responses »

Mar 172009

After our day’s outing at Shijiazhuang Ski Park, Andy and I joined Leo and a group of family friends for a big Chinese dinner party. It turned out to be a gathering of powerful and wealthy men among Shijiazhuang’s political and economic circles – all of whom were both friendly and interesting – but more interesting to me was the opportunity to witness Leo doing something at which he truly shines. Continue reading »

Skiing…Sort Of

China, Public 11 Responses »

Mar 132009

January 29th was a particularly amusing day in the recent history of my life. Leo and his family took Andy and I for a day’s outing at Shijiazhuang Ski Park. The scene could only be described as…Three (thousand) Stooges.

Let’s start from the beginning.

When we pulled up in front of the ski park, our first order of business was, of course, the procurement of rental equipment. We headed straight for the ticket counter which had surprisingly short and orderly lines. We soon learned why. No more available skiis…or boots…or poles. If we wanted equipment, we’d have to wait “over there” – in that crowd of 1000 rambunctious locals pushing-and-shoving to get ahold of a return from a retiring patron.

Since it was still very early in the morning and thus unlikely that we’d find anyone coming off the mountain, Andy and I decided to stroll around and take in the resort’s various offerings. Continue reading »

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