Wednesday, March 25, 2015

How to Hack an Ocarina - Simplify the Keys

Making it easier to play an instrument.

Prologue:

In the past, I learned a little piano---barely---before stopping at something like level 1 I think (is there a level 0?).  It was only recently during a trip to Taiwan that I decided to try out a different instrument.  An ocarina.  An ocarina is a wind instrument that works basically like a recorder (remember learning those in elementary?), but made from clay.  Once I saw it, I decided to try out learning how to play it.  Why?  It reminded me of Link's Ocarina of Time from the Zelda video games*.  :)  Imagine playing mysterious melodies and being all deep and "mystically-like"...

Hey ocarina, ocarina, ocarina
Anyways, while learning to play it, I discovered that the way just to play different notes is not straightforward. 

Ocarina front:  3 left-hand holes + 3 right-hand holes.  Ocarina back right:  2 holes.
Problem:

The instructions were not intuitive.  At least to me.  Something like:  "1st Right, 2nd Right, 1st+2nd Right, Add 1st Left, Add 2nd Left...???" (more on this later on).  This is way different from how the notes on a piano are arranged "linearly", like a number line.  Remembering the notes in the instructions was like trying to memorize how to play different notes on a recorder, which is much more complicated, and is like a jumbled-up number line.  Or like learning notes on a guitar, which--if you also know how the keys on a piano work--is like having the line of keys of a piano folded over each other at seemingly random intervals and places (like a number line folded at strange intervals).  This is besides the fact that any words in the instructions were in Chinese.

The instructions that reminded me of recorders and guitars.
Solution:

So once upon a time, I decided to hack my ocarina.  No, not chop it into smithereens.  No ragequit here.  What I did was I started experimenting making notes.  Simple.  After a little time, I found that I could make the notes "linear", just like how higher notes are raised "higher up" towards the right of a piano, and lower notes are "lower down" towards the left.  By just trying to make it "linear", the notes just happened to work themselves out, and I could start playing tunes right away.
Number line.  Linear row.  Bigger numbers to the right.  Simple.  Linear intuition.

Explanation:

Why/how does it work?  From my limited music knowledge, I think it has something to do with a shift in musical key signature.  That means I might not be playing the exact same notes as the next person, but at least playing solo I can have an internally consistent set of notes for a song, and---here's the payoff---I can now have an intuitive sense of how to play the next note, just because I visually re-mapped the notes and finger positions so that "up" = "up", and that "down" = "down" (mostly).  How's that for experimenting?  It's just play.

Mapping Details:

In order from left to right, from the point of view of the person playing:

Left:  1, 2, 3,
Right:  4, 5,      7   

Back:           6,     8
I have recently been tweaking the higher notes for accuracy, but this is pretty much a stable 
set for my ocarina.  

Compare this to the original instructions' fingering for notes:

Something like


Left:  6, 5, 4,
Right:  1/3, 2/3,   7
Back:  8
Back:          9,   10

The idea is that it's not neat/linear, some use "half-coverings", the 3rd note is a combination of 1 and 2.  All of which is just complicated.  I like my version better; it's much simpler to remember, and I can get to playing songs faster instead of memorizing strange finger configurations.


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*P.S.:  I've never played the game myself, but somehow I remember seeing some walk-through guidebooks over 5 years ago at a friend's house.  I actually don't really play video games that much, only when I'm with friends who actually play or have game consoles.  By the way, my ocarina model I have isn't exactly the same as the model in the game, which looks like this: 


The actual Ocarina of Time

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

How to Motivate Yourself to Finish Required Reading Materials

Ever had trouble reading through a dry textbook?  A long powerpoint your professor posted?  But with tons of text?  Or a lengthy research paper?  I have.  Just think of a wall of text.
Wall of text.  Bland.
Our brains quickly find text boring once we get past the initial curiosity when we first learned the alphabet and how to read.

Besides, we're simply better at processing pictures than blocks of text.  It takes less time for us to understand a visual cue, than to understand the same message communicated in pure text [1].  Speaking of which, here's a picture to illustrate:
A picture can save you from rocks falling down a red mountain. (Image from [1].)
FAST                  VS.                 SLOW

In other words, a picture can "read" much faster than words.

But seriously, when it comes to required reading material, sometimes we're just stuck with what we're given---long walls of text.  Okay, sometimes there's a couple graphs dispersed in the text, but usually there's no clear indication as to which sentence talks about those graphs in the long stretches of text. 

This all comes at a risk of decreasing or at least slowing down comprehension and retention of what the text is even talking about.  Simply because it's not as engaging as it could be.

So what I want to share here is a specific implementation of a technique I've been trying out with active readinga "picture" technique.  Basically a fun way to annotate or "illuminate" your reading material.
To support this "picture" technique, I find it helpful to have a framework of two other things:  space and time.


That is, breaking down the amount of reading material, and the stretch of time spent reading, into manageable chunks.

It's important to manage these other two aspects of reading since they go hand in hand, and will only help to enhance the efficiency of the active reading technique.

Now if you're short on time, here's a quick summary of this blog post:
1) "Time"
--> Customized Pomodoro technique:  manageable time chunks to read & take breaks.  Manage energy like an athlete.  Start small.  Alternate 20 5 20 5...

2) "Space"
--> "Game levels":  Use existing text structure to delineate sections as "game levels" 1, 2, 3, etc. out of total # of sections.  Target critical sections to read.
--> Progress bars:  Track to feel your progression through the text "levels".  Tangible feels good.

3) "Picture" technique
--> Actively understand what you read by annotating/summarizing chunks of text with quick drawings/symbols.  Current comprehension.  Future quick review.
--> Use a toolbox of essential symbols to express the essentials of the text sections.  (Computer icons, street signs, semantic primitives list, Toki Pona word list, iConji, Google images.)  Add details as needed, but sparingly.

Remember:  Pictures > Text
--> Engage --> Understand + Remember --> Practice

Got time to read into the details?  Well, let's start with...


TIME                                                                       Level 1/3
Bite-sized chunks of time.
Have you ever tried to read for, say, four hours straight---only to afterwards feel a strange need to compensate with an overly-long (or infinite) break to reward yourself after that four hours of reading?

It's great if you only have four hours of reading to do for the rest of your life, but that's not likely.  Or sustainable in the long run. 

A more sustainable way is to have a well thought-out structure that lets you build breaks in.

Even though we say "time management", you really should be managing your energy and attention, not time itself.

According to Scott H Young:
"Time is not your most precious resource. In fact, it isn’t really a resource at all ... Energy is your most precious resource." [2]
We all have 24 hours in a day.  Time is constant---your energy, not so much.  Think of it like exercising.

You can try the Pomodoro technique to balance work and short breaks to restore energy.  I've tried intervals of 20 minutes of work, and 10 minutes of break, and then repeat.  Here's a link to a timer using Scratch that you can use to do this, or tweak the intervals to your needs.

Just get yourself to start.  Promise yourself you'll do at least x minutes of reading, and that after that you'll have 5-10 minutes of break time.  To move around.  Or stretch.  Or play a serious game like Memrise.  Something quick.

You can adjust the time intervals once you find you can handle longer stretches.  But I'd start with lower expectations to first focus on sustainable stretches of reading, to make it a sustainable habit.  But then again, if you happen to get "into the flow" beyond your self-set reading interval, then by all means keep going.

I'd start with manageable, bite-sized chunks of time to read, with short breaks in between as mini-rewards.

Now let's look at the other aspect of reading: 


TEXT SPACE                                                         Level 2/3

Bite-sized chunks of space.
The other part to the thought-out structure with breaks mentioned earlier is to give your brain a sense of progress.  Just like you need to integrate breaks into stretches of time, you also need to integrate "breaks" into stretches of text.

You can do this by organizing the amount of text you have to "traverse" (i.e. read) into chunks of text.

Most modern books and research papers have structure built into them, with natural breaks and hierarchy levels we can make use of:
  • pages or section headings
  • subsections
  • paragraphs
You could think of these levels literally like "levels" in a game.  Each paragraph is a mini-level.  Completing one whole section (or page, depending on the way your reading material is structured) is like finishing a boss level.  Remember you have those breaks built into your system too.  Chunk it!

Example:
This post itself has 3 main sections:  "Time", "Text Space", and "The Picture Technique".  Under each section are short paragraphs.  Like this one.  This is getting meta.

Example 2:
Here are zoomed-in screen shots of a pdf that I was reading, while tracking the sections as "levels" 1, 2, 3, etc. out of 18:

Level 1 out of 18 quickly turns into...
...levels 10 and 11 out of 18!!!
See the horizontal lines?  I drew them before I read, so I could easily see them from the corner of my eye while reading, and just seeing those lines would motivate me with feedback on how close I was to finishing a "level" in the text.

Another way you could keep track of your progress in reading is to use progress bars.

We humans seem to have some impulse for completion.  There seems to be some affinity to finish the progress bar in a game.  Or finish colouring inside the lines of some arbitrary shape, like drawings in a colouring book, or one of your favourite scantron circles.  And tangible just feels good sometimes.
Progress bar tracker for multiple readings for a physiology exam.
I prefer squares to circles, and the hatching technique to colouring.
All this setup is actually pretty easy, you just count the number of sections, and it takes just a quick skim of the main contents of your reading material and headings.

The added benefit of quickly skimming the headings is that it also helps you get the "big picture" of the text as a whole, but you also give yourself the chance to decide which parts you want to read (like skipping parts of this post... :)

And finally, the meat of the active reading technique:



THE "PICTURE" TECHNIQUE                              Level 3/3

Hungry for knowledge?
Actively understand what you read by annotating or "illuminating" your reading material.

Besides using a timer to manage your energy levels,
and besides using progress bars to give yourself a sense of progression,
it's also important to get some comprehension and retention along the way.

Sometimes I would draw things related to what I read, just to keep myself focused and plow through a reading, but I found it actually comes with an added bonus of making me actually process what I'm reading.

Basically, it's almost like a personal game of pictionary with myself.

Or like adding illustrations to a story.

In all truth, I end up putting a summary of main ideas next to each paragraph.  But instead of a normal summary, which would just add more text, I use a mix of pictures, symbols and minimal text.
You could also draw on a seperate paper if you prefer,
but I prefer my v
isual summaries next to their paragraphs.

So when I look at my notes, I can "read" through the pictures and actually get the ideas faster than I would if I re-read everything (including highlighted "key" words).

Like I mentioned at the beginning, visuals are helpful.  With the right set of symbols, you can get the main ideas and communicate faster than with words.

And the pictures don't even have to be that good-looking.  They just have to instantly remind you of the main ideas you need to know for, say, when you do practice problems. 

But how can you conjure up drawings or symbols to transcribe each new idea?  Wouldn't that be like learning to write Chinese?

Well, actually, you already know a lot of symbols.  Just think of how many apps or logos you can recognize instantly.  Not to mention computer icons.  Or street symbols.

And a lot of ideas keep re-using the same basic elements, just in combination.  There are actually only about 60 semantic primitives for English, basically around 60 basic building blocks of meaning to combine to make any word or concept.

There's even a constructed language called Toki Pona with a minimal 120 words in the whole language.  The idea is to combine essential concepts to communicate the essence of what is to be said to say the same thing.  We can do this in English: 
  • "Commence", "initiate", and "debut" are essentially just "start".  
  • "Terminate" and "discontinue" can just be "end" or "stop". 
  • "Sight", "vision", "viewing", "surveillance", "observation", etc. all have something to do with "seeing" (or the eye, at least in an abstract sense). 
  • A kitten is in essence just a cat.  Or pet.  Or animal.  It depends on the message.
Pictures communicate these instantly, in a compact form:


Speaking of compact form, in math we write 1 + 1 = 2, and not "one plus one equals two", which takes longer to read and actually understand.  We can visualize the idea of "1+1=2" right away.

The key is to break an idea down into the relevant essentials for what you need to know, and to have a few common reusable "stock" symbols.  An essential toolbox of symbols.  Then you add more detail as needed (combinations, letters, lines, arrows, etc.).

It does take some creative practice, but you can speed things up by getting ideas for symbols by looking at icons on your computer or smart device screens.  Or pay more attention to street signs.  Or search in iConji Explorer.  Or just use Google images.

I also tested the idea of "essential" symbols by seeing if I could think of symbols for all the words in the Toki Pona word list:
Example symbols for Toki Pona word list.
Click to enlarge.

Of course, some common concepts are more compact if they have their own "stock" symbol, like email, phone, laptop, etc., instead of breaking them down into basic concepts.



Finally, to finish things off, I'd like to give an example that uses all 3 techniques in this blog post: 

Here's the "before" document that a guest lecturer gave my class to read on MRI physics (though to their credit, the text includes some diagrams, but the pdf file still felt quite long, especially when combined with my other readings before an exam)

...and...

My annotated "after" document.  If you look closely, you'll see I counted and kept track of 18 "levels", one level for each of the 18 sections of this pdf I had to read.  The act of writing down your progress just has some kind of game-like feel to it.  The little sketches I also added are like visual "prompts" for me to get the main ideas or take-aways.  In any case, doing the reading this way was more enjoyable than it otherwise would've been.

That's it!  Thanks for reading all the way down here.  :)


If you want more general explanations on study techniques including active reading, there's Thomas Frank's blog, which you should totally check out if you're in uni or college.  In one of his blog posts on "Study Less, Learn More", he created a video that takes an hour-long lecture from youtube, and summarizes it into about 6 minutes.  He even posted summary notes.  For kicks, I made my own summary notes of his summary notes of the lecture, as a visual high-level summary:

An idiosyncratic summary that helps me remember, and hence practice what I read.
Remember:  Pictures + minimal text > Text only and in hordes
--> Engage your mind --> Understand + Remember better --> Practice what you learn
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LINKS TO OTHER STUFF ON MY BLOG:
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OTHER COOL REFERENCES:
  1. "Interactive Infographic - 13 Reasons Why Your Brain Craves Infographics" NeoMam Studios. neomam.com/interactive/13reasons
  2. "Energy VS Time." Scott H Young. www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2006/08/15/energy-vs-time
  3.  "College Info Geek Thomas Frank(ly). collegeinfogeek.com
  4. "Study Less, Study Smart - An Hour Of Sage Advice Packed Into 6 Minutes." Also from Thomas Frank(ly). collegeinfogeek.com/study-less-study-smart
  5. "Easily Distracted? Use Orienting Tasks While Learning." Scott H Young. www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2014/11/26/orienting-tasks
  6. James Clear. jamesclear.com (Some helpful habit tips.)
  7. "Doodle Revolution." Sunni Brown. sunnibrown.com/doodlerevolution
  8. "Gamification." Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification
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