Singularity on the Plane

Go

Still humming trough the 2nd iteration of goproblems.com difficulty 41-50. No playing except on YIC meeting since SIC is laggy and I don’t have money to play on internet cafes.

Japanese

I’ve extracted these words from a song:

And another song:

Which makes my word list increase to 923. My current plan is to add words until the count reaches 1500. I’ll probably be extracting words from songs, adding thematic words at will (for example planet names), and documenting words I accidentaly stumbled upon.

After that I plan to review my writing skills of hiragana, katakana, and grade 1 and 2 kanji. It will then be followed by the memorization of grade 3 kanji.

GTK#

I’ve played a bit with GTK#. Its layouting system is a blessing, since I now don’t have to hardcode layouting logic like I used to do with winforms 1.0 (winforms 2.0 has a similar layouting system but I’m not inclined to learn it).

University

The first mid exam is on 4th April and the last one on 11th April. Gotta start making a study plan soon…

Misc

Ubuntu Dapper is going to be delayed to make it more polished. Although it is sad to wait longer, I think they made the correct choice since Dapper is meant to be enterprise ready. 6.04 will be 6.06.

Btw, my plan is that with Dapper I’ll try to force myself using it as my primary OS. If things go well, in the next 1 or 2 Ubuntu release(s) Windows (Vista probably) will be relegated to Xen.

Mba Shinda and Mas Jiyuu from YIC aired on UTY’s Japan-related air show today on 5 PM. Overall it’s great, but sadly they didn’t know much about go’s history (in China, Japan, Indonesia) so questions about it wasn’t answered satisfyingly (I also don’t know much either so me being there wouldn’t really help much).

For my TK2, I’ve downloaded Mono 1.1.13 for Windows, The Mono Handbook which contains a GTK# tutorial, and a GTK# tutorial in flash.

Japanese

At last the Mnemosyne synchronization is complete! Now I’m starting to add new words to Mnemosyne. I’m currently taking them from song lyrics. Here’s the new words I salvaged from a song:

The song title is deliberately concealed.

Go

Still 16k, still reading Fuseki on Your Side (chapter 3 now).

University 

For TK2 (Tugas Khusus 2 = Special Project 2) I decided to make a kanji dictionary using GTK#. The advisor, Mr. Medi, agreed to it and asked me to just give him the end result.

I don’t know GTK# so need to start learning it. I will also download kanji dictionary programs as a reference.

Japanese

Mnemosyne synchronization is now at word 700 (out of 831).

Btw I got the PV of Houkiboshi (ほう星), Motto Futari de (もっとふたりで), and Touch (タッチ) from my friend. I really like Motto Futari de, and Houkiboshi is also nice. I’ve got the lyrics on hand (songs are a great vocabulary building tool).

Go

My friends at YIC suggested that I make a “how to play go” syllabus, so that any members can easily teach a newcomer. I remembered that I’ve used a LaTeX go package before, so gave it a try. After some days of writing, I’ve completed a 13-page “Cara Bermain Igo” (How to Play Go) which can be downloaded at http://yic.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/Cara_Bermain_Igo.pdf. It’s interesting to know that a wandering soul bought one for Rp. 1000,00 at YIC’s Wednesday meeting.

I’m still stuck at 16k. I need to limit my net play anyway since I’m running thin on financial matters :). Playing on SIC proves problematic because it’s awfully laggy. I’ll just focus on doing goproblems.com (still at difficulty 41-50) and reading Fuseki on Your Side (still on chapter 2).

Go

I’m still doing goproblems.com difficulty 41-50. Need to really master those tsumegos before moving on. My rank on KGS is still 16k.

Japanese

The Mnemosyne synchronization has now reached around word 400 (out of around 800).

My new policy when on internet cafe is to play on KGS before browsing the web. This is because I’ve been sloppy lately and spend all my time browsing the web, playing no games.

It seems to work well today. I already played a game and won bt 25.5 points :). It was mainly about destroying each other’s moyo.

In playing go now, I’m trying to consciously apply the concepts in Fuseki on Your Side by Charles Matthews. The attitude is to think hard about my choices when playing a game, and then critically reviewing and comparing it to the book after the game. I hope it will improve my play.

I’m also starting to sychronize my Mnemosyne items to my Japanese word list. It mainly involves removing duplicates (for example the word hito may have both the hiragana and kanji version - I removed the hiragana version in that case) and changing the answer to match the EDICT-synchronized word list. I have synchronized around 150 items (out of around 800).

I welcome two YIC newest members, Nanda and Putra.

They came on the Sunday meeting and asked for a go tutorial. I gave the materials from Hiroki Mori’s Interactive Way to Go (only the subset enough to play a real go game since the full material would take too long). After that session they joined YIC :).
Some members suggested that I make a module that could be used by any members to teach the rules of go. It seems like a great idea and I’ll probably make one later on.

For this month, it means that I will change my running specification. Here’s the changelog:

• Start time changed to 15:30 (previously 16:00)
• Running time changed to 25 minutes (previously 20 minutes)
• Time for each warming up and cooling down sequence changed to 50 seconds (previously 40 seconds)

For the last month, I felt that 20 minutes of running isn’t painful anymore. Therefore I felt that it was time to push my limit again. I changed the start time to be earlier so that I wouldn’t need to rush for Maghrib prayer.

My plan is to increase the running time to 30 minutes after one or two months. After that I don’t think I will increase the time anymore. However I will try to run faster and faster within that 30 minutes period.

All talk, but actually I’ve been absent in running for three periods. I was because I had a little bit of cold. Next Tuesday should be the first 25 minutes running period in my history.

About go, this month I ended up being 16k on KGS. Here’s the history:

last day of September 2005: 19k
last day of October 2005: 18k
last day of November 2005: 18k?
last day of December 2005: 17k
last day of January 2005: 17k?
last day of February 2005: 16k

Objectively, it is clear that my go skills are improving, albeit at a sluggish rate. However I really don’t feel like I’m being better. Well, maybe that’s called gradual improvement. I improve little by little, so subtle that I don’t feel the improvement. Constrast this to leveling up in RPG games where the improvement is discreet: every level up increases stats visible and bring new skills on the table. Probably I can really see my improvement by looking at my old games (too see how worse I really was). I’ll do it some time in the future.

I’ve finished my second drill of goproblems.com difficulty 41-50. I’m now on the third drill. Frustratingly, I still make mistakes! Sometimes I even made mistake on a problem that I previously solved correctly. Guess that the patterns haven’t internalized so I couldn’t solve it by heart. I believe that I’ll master those problems though. A clear cut evidence is that I can recognize the squeeze tesuji instantly now, eventhough I was bedazzled for the first few times of my encounter.

Can’t surrender now… Need to keep on going and reach 15k!

My Japanese study is quite neglected because I’m prioritizing on my go right now. Well, at least those Mnemosyne drills are holding me back from complete oblivion.

Having lots of losses while being 15k, I’m now back at 16k. It’s late now so this is the only report :). Yes, lame blog entry.

Try to guess the original songs…

hilang mataku
hilang harapanku
yang kupupuk sejak dulu kala
aku tak mengerti
mengapa terjadi
pada saat aku semeai

di sini mati, di sana mati
di mana-mana batuku mati
di tengah mati, di pojok mati
di mana-mana batuku mati
la la la la la la la
la la la la la la la
la la la la la la la
la la la la
la la la la la la la
la la la la la la la
la la la la la la la
la la la la

Tak, tak, tak
bunyi batu di atas papan
musuhnya hebat, tidak terkira
cobalah tengok, tengah dan samping
batu-batuku mati semua

Satu, satu, aku gagal hidup
Dua, dua, buat lima kapak
Tiga, tiga, musuh mulai ngakak
Satu dua tiga, mati semuanya

lihat papanku
penuh dengan batu
ada yang mati
dan ada yang belum
setiap saat
kujaga semua
tapi akhirnya
semuanya mati

sahabatku apa yang kau impikan
kerjamu hanya melamun saja
tak berguna kau bersedih hati
percayalah kawan
buat apa susah
buat apa susah
lebih baik kamu resign saja
buat apa susah
buat apa susah
lebih baik kita main baru saja

aku punya teman
teman sepermainan
di mana ada dia selalu ada aku
dia memang pintar
dan juga baik hati
tak henti-hentinya dia
mengajariku go
namun aku bingung
ketika dia minta undo
lebih jago dari aku
tapi kok malah minta undo
cukuplah saja bemain denganku
janganlah kau meminta undo
ku tak mungkin membolehkanmu
kita bermain saja
main tanpa undo
ku memang kasihan pada dirimu
namun kusangat ingin memang
lebih baik kita teruskan
kita bermain saja
main tanpa undo