[Jarric]

  

On 12/30/2021 at 6:32 PM, Jarric said:

2022 Road Map

 

Usually I start a year by making a roadmap for the year, and then create my first challenge with that roadmap in mind. This year is no different, but rather than running a battle log for my roadmap I want it at the top of every challenge so I remember what I'm trying to do (looking back over my 2021 roadmap just now I was surprised to find out what some of my goals were!).

 

Goals for 2022

I've been trying to decide what my goals should be for the year, and that's proving quite difficult. I have the option to enter a few endurance races - I'll be doing Rat Race Dirty Weekend that clocks in at 20 miles, and then there's Nuclear Oblivion Extreme (6.5 hours), Nuclear Oblivion Maxx (13 hours). I could add in Europe's Toughest Mudder (12 hours) and even Quarry Events Longest day (16 hours 38 minutes). The trouble is I don't know if I really want to do endurance events; they're really hard work! At the same time I don't know what I would want to focus on if not that; there was talk of the Spartan European Championships being held in the UK this year, but I can find precious little information about that at the moment.

 

With that said, I can always decide these goals later in the year. This arbitrary change of date doesn't have to be the time that I plan to do something cool in the future, so if I do find something that really captures my imagination I'll add it here.

 

Edit - June 2022: I've finally picked a goal! I'm going to run in the Open Wave of the Spartan European Championships in October. My training between now and then will be focussed on getting the best possible result in the Beast that weekend. After that I'll start looking at events for 2023; maybe something with some more swimming, or an adventure race or something.

 

The 5 pillars

So I don't really have any big goals in the same way as I had in previous years. But I've been thinking recently about what's important to me, and I worked out that it falls quite well into 5 pillars. And then I worked out that I could map the 5 pillars to RPG stats, which made it much more exciting. So my goal for the year is to advance as much as possible in the following:

 

Exercise (Strength) this includes everything I do physically - climbing, OCR, lifting, crossfit, running etc. I really enjoy seeing progress in all of these areas, and as long as I stick with them I'm bound to improve. I couldn't really separate what would fall under STR and what would fall under DEX, and I don't think it's really a useful distinction for the kind of things I do, so I just chucked everything under STR.

 

Nutrition (Constitution) this is about putting the right things in my body (you heard!). That includes food that fuels me well, but also things like moderating caffeine and alcohol intake, and generally balancing anything else I consume.

 

Creativity (Charisma) being creative is really good for me, and it's a side of myself I want to foster. That includes drawing, playing music, and writing. I still want to write and publish some basic D&D stuff, so hopefully I can incorporate that at some point.

 

Self-care (Sanity) this is really just about doing the basic stuff that I know keeps me ticking over - cleaning my teeth, cleaning and tidying my house, keeping in touch with friends. Really basic stuff, but it has such an impact on the way that I feel, so it deserves its own category. Arguably I could have stuck with core D&D stats and put this under WIS, but SAN makes more sense to me for this goal. Also, I'm a super low-WIS person; I have very little awareness a lot of the time, and it's not something I'm really interested in working on (or even know how to work on) right now.

 

Learning (Intelligence) I feel like it wouldn't ne Nerd Fitness without an INT goal. I want to get through the professional qualifications I'm doing (which feels easier said than done right now, as I've somehow ended up working on three units concurrently). I also just love learning things. I'd like to get back into learning French, which I did a good chunk of on Duolingo for a while last year. Really, all learning is good.

 

Under the hood

The plan is that my goals for each challenge will have stats assigned to them, and over this course of this year I'll try and get each of these stats as high as possible. I'll start everything at 0, and hopefully by the end of the year I'll have a decent looking stat array. To tie this in with my previous format, I'll be looking at levelling up backwards compared to most systems. Every stat point will be equivalent to 5XP under my old system, and every 20 stat points I will level up. That should mean I can gain 3-5 levels in a year, which feels about right.

 

I don't have to hit every stat every challenge (though I am for the first challenge of the year as it happens). If I want 3 STR goals one month or need all my goals to be SAN based another month, that's all fine; it'll work itself out over the course of the year.

 

July edit: I have a new mechanism with this. I've previously tried to bet money on my goals, but that falls down at the end of the week or the end of the challenge when I don't have the cash to pay the bet. So, new plan: I've budgeted £250 per month to bet on my goals. On payday each month, I'll take that £250, plus any leftover money in my account, and bet it against my goals over the past month (using only the full weeks since last payday). For the percentage of challenge goals I hit, I get to spend that money, or put it in my savings. For the percentage I fail, I use the money to pay off my mortgage. This means that the bets won't line up with challenge dates, but they will line up with me having money and that's more useful.

 

So "what happened last challenge?", I hear you cry (silently). Well...

 

Spoiler

Challenge wrap-up

This is very late as I thought I'd already done this, but here we go!

 

Barbarian

21/35 (6, 5, 4, 3, 3) = 60% = +1 STR

 

As my knee got better I got worse at doing the physio, which I think is pretty natural and not overly surprising. The important thing is that my knee is substantially better (though not quite 100% of the way there perhaps), I've been signed off by the physio and I feel like I can move forward with a less strict regimen.

 

Druid

28/30 (6, 6, 5, 6, 5) = 93% = +3 CON

 

I was generally able to stick to this. It's a bit of a weird goal, because I was going out and drinking quite a lot, and the only thing I was planning to avoid was drinking at home. I'm not sure that I've learned much from this, or that I'm going to take anything forward, but I've ticked the box for this challenge.

 

Bard

14/35 (4, 4, 2, 2, 2) = 40% = +1 CHA

 

I think I need either a better plan structure to my drawing in order to get more done, or I need to lower this goal to a more realistic expectation of what I can do in a week. I'll likely drop this goal for next challenge, but I'll do Inktober so the latter half of next challenge should have a good bit of drawing in it.

 

Sorcerer

10.5/20 (2.5, 2, 4, 2, 0) = 53% = +1 INT

 

The good news is that I finished one of my essays, so I go into next challenge needing to write 4 rather than 5. The bad news is I really wanted to make a decent start on the next essay, and I haven't done that. The worse news is that if I'd have hit my goal I would have smashed through that essay. In week 5 work got busy and that cost me a couple of hours of study, but I really need to focus on the home study sessions if I want to get this done.

 

Paladin

12/35 (3, 1, 2, 5, 1) = 34% = no stat increase

 

I just need to do better at this, plain and simple. Maybe I need to wager a little more against it; make the stakes a little higher.

 

Overall not a bad challenge; I got through and some of the stuff got done. I also managed 2 races, which I should really report on at some point if I can still remember what happened!

 

Jarric's race season 4-week challenge

 

In what would have been week 1 of this challenge, I was on holiday in York with WW (short of Wonder Woman; my fiancée). And in hindsight, I think I was pretty burned out too. So having not even looked at the forums for that week, I'm starting a challenge now to run for 4 weeks and line up with everyone again next time round.

 

It's also race season; I had Nuts Challenge the week before last, Nuclear Blast last week, and I've had this weekend off. Next weekend is a Tough Mudder, then a weekend off, then the end of my week 3 will be the big one, a Spartan Trifecta. It's also the Spartan European Championships, so it'll be cool to see some really excellent people start in the pro waves before I head off on my own, and maybe see the podiums too.

 

Track Calories - +3 CON

This is simple, track everything I eat in My Fitness Pal. The idea is that the next 4 weeks of tracking and weighing myself will allow me to establish a pretty accurate weekly energy expenditure. Next challenge I'm going to go on a short cut, and then for the following couple of challenges I'll be bulking up (because lets face it I'll be eating plenty over Christmas anyway!).

 

Physical maintenance - +2 STR

Whilst I don't have specific physio exercises for my knee, I do need to keep an eye on it. I've also been having some tightness in my neck and right shoulder, which I want to work on. And of course there's the constant possibility of injury coming from the races I'm doing and from general crossfit and bouldering sessions.

 

So the goal is to simply do something intentional every day to help with physical maintenance. That could be stretching, foam rolling, strengthening/activation exercises; really whatever. It's just about intentional care.

 

Study - +2 INT

I now have 4 more 3,500 word essays to write for my professional qualification. As a minimum I would like to get one of those scratched off this challenge. The goal itself is 4 hours study per week. I do get 2 hours of study time in the working day each week, so really it's about fitting in the other 2 hours on evenings and weekends.

 

Languages - +2 INT

I've recently started learning Dutch on Duolingo, as I'm hoping to go and run a race in The Netherlands next year with some nerds here and some of Willy's IRL friends. I've also just got back into working on my French, mostly thanks to @Keladris mentioning an excellent free resource called Language Transfer. For this goal I need to practice both languages every day (the plan is that Dutch will be Duolingo and French will be Language Transfer, but any practice counts for this challenge).

 

Teeth = +2 SAN

Brush my teeth twice per day, including electric brush and interdental cleaning in the evening. I have done poorly at this recently, so I'm upping the stat points associated with it in the hope that that's a bit of a better incentive.

[ManicSpider]

Good luck, I like your goals! What professional qualification are you doing? 

[Jarric]

3 hours ago, ManicSpider said:

Good luck, I like your goals! What professional qualification are you doing? 

 

Thank you! I work in insurance; the last modules I have to do are strategic underwriting and marketing insurance products. Neither are very applicable to my day-to-day work unfortunately, but now I've got down the technique for writing the essays they're pretty manageable. 

[Jarric]

Summer Nuts 2022 - race report

 

A little while ago, on my last challenge, @DarK_RaideR asked me for a race recap of Summer Nuts Challenge. I started writing it whilst on a train, then ran out of time, and I've left it since. I'll pick up from what I had, and we'll see what else I can remember!

 

It was a good day for a race, warm and dry without being too hot. I was running with two guys from work, lets call them Tall and Wide for ease of reference (man I'm bad at coming up with names ). Tall drove us to the race. When we picked Wide up he told us he'd had 11 pints of beer the night before, which seemed like a bad omen. He spent a lot of time before the race joking (or half-joking) that he wasn't going to do it, and most of the first lap joking he wouldn't run a second.

 

When we lined up at the start line we found ourselves at the front of the group, and as we lead out Wide picked up the pace to give us what we hoped was a  great photo of us leading the race for the first few hundred yards. Here's how it came out:

 

 

It quickly became apparent that Tall wasn't keeping up with us, so I dropped back to run with him, and after the initial burst of speed Wide dropped back with us too. Once the initial pack split (mostly overtaking us) it was weirdly quiet on course. We were in quite an early wave, and there would be times when we'd run for a couple of minutes without seeing any other runners.

 

Nuts doesn't have a lot of technical obstacles, as OCRs go, unless you run in the competitive wave where you get access to the technical area. The start of the run was mostly woodland, interspersed with walls to climb over, beams to jump, and other low-level wooden obstacles. Tall, to his credit, leapt over the walls with no real technique but apparently massive springs in his legs, which was cool to see. An early highlight was a traverse wall, with rock climbing holds on a board above a big net. Everyone got across, with Tall even taking on the harder wall behind me.

 

Being a 7km lap, there's never far between obstacles. The longest running section usually takes you up a big hill through some woodland, but when we got to that section of the course we found it closed. I was a bit disappointed at that, as it's quite picturesque, but Wide was extremely pleased to avoid the hill run.

 

The course then leads into the river, where you spend a lot of time climbing into the river, running along the river bed, then clambering up the bank before dropping back in. The water wasn't too high due to the recent droughts, but this was a fun section. At one point you have to drag yourself up a thin narrow tube to come out of the river - an obstacle that Tall was dreading but that he completed confidently, which was pretty cool. Here's me coming out of the tube on lap 2:

 

 

The most challenging obstacle is probably the rope traverse. It's long enough that it takes a while to get through, but also at the far end it's almost impossible to climb on to the far bank unless you're on top of the rope. Usually on a traverse I would hang under the rope like a sloth, but unless you can manage a rope regain (something I can't do) then that's useless at the far end. So instead I had to crawl on top of the rope the whole way across, which requires a lot more shoulders and is quite a bit more painful!

 

The last section of the course has you crossing the lake a couple of times, first on some wooden pontoons, then on some massive rubber rings, and finally on some big yellow blocks. The pontoons and the blocks are a bit of a leap of faith, but pretty straightforward. The rings however are surprisingly tiring, as you haul yourself crawling across them. Here's me pretending that they aren't as tough as they are:

 

 

Lap 2 was better than lap 1. Whilst I was flagging, Wide found a second wind as his hangover wore off, and we all said it felt shorter knowing exactly what was coming the whole way round. There were also a fair few more people by the time the second lap rolled around, which made the course feel a little more lively and fun.

 

On our way round, we'd talked about the fact that it would probably take about 3.5 hours to do the course. As we got out of the lake the second time I looked at my watch, and realised we had two minutes to beat that goal. We legged it for the end, despite being pretty tired, and all managed to get to the end inside 3:29.

 

All in all, it was a fun race, and it was nice to do it with some other people rather than running solo. Also nice to run with people I don't usually run with - I've never done a race with Tall and it was his second race ever. After we showered (well, hosed off) and changed we went for a pint and some food at a local pub. I think went home and had a beer in the bath, which felt excellent.

 

Finally, a couple of bonus photos:

 

 

 

[starpuck]

Man you get the BEST pictures from your races Jarric!   Almost makes me want to run those things again.   LOL.    I'll have to settle for trying to get good enough with my music to get some epic jam session pics I think - which you also probably have from back in the day!

Glad to see ya got a challenge up and running even if ya had to adapt it a bit.  That's what we do!  Rangers FTW.

 

Eager to follow along as always.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Respect to your beard game. You are one well groomed individual.

[Jarric]

42 minutes ago, starpuck said:

Man you get the BEST pictures from your races Jarric!   Almost makes me want to run those things again.   LOL.    I'll have to settle for trying to get good enough with my music to get some epic jam session pics I think - which you also probably have from back in the day!

Glad to see ya got a challenge up and running even if ya had to adapt it a bit.  That's what we do!  Rangers FTW.

 

Eager to follow along as always.

 

I just make sure I'm in a lot of photos, and then I only share the good ones  You should do another race though! You know you'd rock it. 

 

All of my musician pics are of me as a skinny teen/twentysomething; it's not the best look to be honest

 

4 minutes ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Respect to your beard game. You are one well groomed individual.

 

Thank you sir - you are too kind.

[DarK_RaideR]

2 hours ago, Jarric said:

I work in insurance

In sewer ants? Now that sounds unusual!

 

20 minutes ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Respect to your beard game. You are one well groomed individual.

Ain't just his beard game. @starpuck hit the nail on the head, man is ridiculously photogenic, even in the middle of an OCR.

[Jarric]

15 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

In sewer ants? Now that sounds unusual!

 

Now there's a reference I haven't heard in too long!

 

15 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

 

Ain't just his beard game. @starpuck hit the nail on the head, man is ridiculously photogenic, even in the middle of an OCR.

 

Stop it - you'll make me blush!

[Jarric]

Monday - Week A Day 1

I've decided to designate my weeks A-D, given that my numbering would be out of step with everyone else

 

Track calories: 🥩 - - - - - -

Physical maintenance: 💪 - - - - - -

Study: - - - -

Languages: 🦉 - - - - - -

Teeth: 🪥 - - - - - -

 

Yesterday was a good day. It was a public holiday for the Queen's funeral, so I had a full day to get stuff sorted after being away on holiday. Most of the free time was spent wrapping up last challenge, writing my new challenge, and downloading race photos.

 

First though I had Crossfit in the morning, and it was leg day. Squats at 90kg (198#) x 3, 80kg x 5 and 75kg x 7, then 4 rounds for time of 10 lunges, 15 kettlebell swings, 200m run. I did front rack barbell lunges at 40kg, a 28kg kettlebell, and finished in 9'49". Because of holidays and races this was my first leg day in a few weeks, and man am I sore now!

 

Around lunchtime my mum called. We'd bought her an afternoon tea for her birthday, and she was supposed to be going with my dad. He'd dropped out last minute as he wasn't feeling well, so Mum asked if I would like to go. We had a lovely time at a beautiful old hotel, and a ludicrous lunch. It didn't look like much as everything was so small, but after cucumber sandwiches, salmon sandwiches, prawn rolls, sausage rolls, mini quiche, a fruit scone with raspberry jam and clotted cream, a plain scone with lemon curd on one half, and raspberry jam on the other, a fruit tartlet, a slice of battenburg, a pistachio macaron, and a sort of lemon curd profiterole, I was absolutely stuffed.

 

In the evening we watched Marvel's What If?, and I carried on updating stuff here. I also boiled eggs for breakfasts, and did some rolling of my back for my maintenance goal. Calories came in at 3,093, but with most things being very sugary I only managed 99g of protein. Language study was done throughout the day, and teeth brushed before bed.

[Jarric]

Tuesday - Week A Day 2

Track calories: 🥩 🥩 - - - - -

Physical maintenance: 💪 💪 - - - - -

Study: - - - -

Languages: 🦉 🦉 - - - - -

Teeth: 🪥 🪥 - - - - -

 

Yesterday was a good day. Really unusually for our Crossfit gym, we actually did an old Open workout:

 

 

This was vastly too much work for 9 minutes for the entire class. I went for 80kg (176#) deadlifts, with a plan to do 100kg (220#) in the second half, but I didn't get that far. I used two ab mats on the handstand pushups, and even then I spent most of my time on those, finishing the workout just shy of the half way point at 87 reps. I felt like my handstand pushup technique improved throughout, and I got good and worn out over 9 minutes, so all in all it's good. Would have liked some time to work on handwalking though.

 

That was followed by some l-sit practice, which was nice as it's something I'd love to be better at.

 

It was my first day back at work, which meant a lot of e-mails to clear and trying to work out what I'd missed. That was fine, until mid-afternoon when I suddenly got really stressed for no apparent reason and just lost it. I don't know why, but after that I felt really drained all day.

 

In the evening I cooked sausages with baked mixed beans and crushed potatoes (AKA marginally posh sausage and mash). Then we went out for Pathfinder. I had a really nice evening, and my mood improved loads, even though I'm pretty sure we've killed the NPC we were trying to save

 

I found some time to do some little bits of foams rolling and stretching throughout the day, and to do some Duolingo. Listened to my French lesson whilst going for a walk at lunch time. Teeth were done, and calories tracked at 2,490 (seems a bit low) and 154g protein. Tuesday should have been a day when I studied at work, but being the first day back at work that didn't happen.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Marginally Posh sounds like a great band name.

[Jarric]

15 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Marginally Posh sounds like a great band name.

 

It does! I imagine them as a sort of indie guitar band who were big in the 00s.

 

My go to for a fake band name is Furry Membrane - pretty sure they're punk.

[Jarric]

Nuclear Blast 2022 - race report

Still working on catching up with race reports, so here's another!

 

Nuclear Blast this year just so happened to be the day after my work's summer party. The day before had been spent drinking and playing silly outdoor games, followed by drinking and talking. Amazingly I didn't feel too horrendous the following morning, and thankfully I'd had the sense to book myself into the 1.30pm wave so I could get a bit of a lie in.

 

Lie in I did, possibly too much, and with that and a general lack of organisation I was running pretty tight on time by the time I arrived on site. I briefly chatted to someone I had been marshalling with the week before at Nuts Challenge, whilst frantically trying to get myself ready to run, but managed to get to the starting pen in plenty of time.

 

Part of the race for me was a bit of an experiment with glasses. Usually I just take them off when I run, but as my eyesight gradually gets worse I've been starting to think about how nice it would be to see where I'm going. One option would be to spend £75 or so on a pair of sports glasses designed for things like squash, and hope to goodness that I don't lose or break them. I went the other route, which was to spend £19 on the cheapest, smallest glasses I could find, and tie them to my head. I didn't lose them, and they didn't break, so I'd call it at least a partial success. The main issue was that they were covered in mud for a lot of the time, so I still couldn't see that well. At least the mud was in focus...

 

Nuclear Blast is a lapped race at 5k per lap, and you have to start your final lap within 2 hours of starting your first. I was determined to do no more than 2 laps, both because I wanted to protect my knee for future races, and because of the heavy night before. I finished my second lap after 2 hours and 1 minute, and I'm absolutely certain I could have shaved a couple of minutes off there and done a third lap if I had wanted to. I think I made the right call though.

 

The course itself was pretty fun. Lots of mud, quite a bit of it deep, sticky, and draining. There were some good fun obstacles, and a couple of moderately challenging things like longish monkey bars and some interesting rigs. The hardest thing was probably the space hoppers - they may be a kids toy but they definitely wear you out fast!.

 

There were also a lot of slides.

 

 

And finally, the last obstacle on course and the big ticket new obstacle for this year was the travelator. It was fun because quite frankly, who doesn't enjoy a travelator? It could have been faster though; I went up the fastest one both times without too much hassle.

 

 

The second lap was a little tougher than the first, but it was overall a nice day and I had fun. At the finish I milled around for my finisher photo, picked up my finisher's cup of tea and free mug, and then had some food and a beer before heading home.

 

 

[starpuck]

1 hour ago, Jarric said:

 

It does! I imagine them as a sort of indie guitar band who were big in the 00s.

 

My go to for a fake band name is Furry Membrane - pretty sure they're punk.

 

The band name I am probably going with for my vampires soon to be band is, "Hemlock Groove"  hehe, but I also really liked "Wolf Cries Red" (a play on boy who cried wolf and little red riding hood, but suggesting it is Red who is in fact the monster.)

 

Also that picture of you on the travelator is epic.   Could be an action movie pose reference for future drawing ideas.

 

Nice work on everything and great job making the smart call!

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Oh my, you are at Barney Stinson levels of can't-take-a-bad-picture.

[DarK_RaideR]

3 hours ago, starpuck said:

"Wolf Cries Red"

Ew, metalcore

[Jarric]

3 hours ago, starpuck said:

 

The band name I am probably going with for my vampires soon to be band is, "Hemlock Groove"  hehe, but I also really liked "Wolf Cries Red" (a play on boy who cried wolf and little red riding hood, but suggesting it is Red who is in fact the monster.)

 

Oo I like both of those. Hemlock Groove is very grungy. I think @DarK_RaideR has nailed the genre for Wolf Cries Red

 

3 hours ago, starpuck said:

 

Also that picture of you on the travelator is epic.   Could be an action movie pose reference for future drawing ideas.

 

Nice work on everything and great job making the smart call!

 

Thank you! Feel free to draw it if you like

 

3 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Oh my, you are at Barney Stinson levels of can't-take-a-bad-picture.

 

Nah, I'm just my own editor. Those 3 are good, but I left the other 8 on the cutting room floor

 

6 minutes ago, DarK_RaideR said:

Ew, metalcore

 

 I'm imagining the spiky white writing on a black background as their logo now

 

[Jarric]

Wednesday - Week A Day 3

Track calories: 🥩 🥩 🥩 - - - -

Physical maintenance: 💪 💪 ☠️ - - - -

Study: - - - -

Languages: 🦉 🦉 🦉 - - - -

Teeth: 🪥 🪥 🪥 - - - -

 

Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit first thing started with a workout of muscle ups and burpees. I was hoping to get through it doing muscle ups (so that I wouldn't get too many rounds, and therefore not have too many burpees), but the muscle ups ran out after a grand total of 2 so it was ring pullups and too many burpees. That was followed by sprints on the ski erg, where I spent time trying not to vomit.

 

Work was ok, first time in the office for a while so it was nice to see some people. In the evening I made time to do Duolingo, and then WW cooked chicken teriyaki with rice and we chilled in front of bake off. After WW went to bed I decided to stay up with a beer and watch an episode of The Boys. One episode turned into three, and I ended up going to bed at 2am. Woops.

 

Calories came in at 3,467, thanks to the beer, with 182g protein. I could have very easily done some stretching or something in front of the TV, but I didn't, so that's a fail.

[WhiteGhost]

Great race write-ups  I almost makes me want to go back and do another one

[Jarric]

56 minutes ago, WhiteGhost said:

Great race write-ups  I almost makes me want to go back and do another one

 

Thank you mate! Why only almost?

[Jarric]

Thursday - Week A Day 4

Track calories: 🥩 🥩 🥩 🥩 - - -

Physical maintenance: 💪 💪 ☠️ 💪 - - -

Study: 📖 - - -

Languages: 🦉 🦉 🦉 🦉 - - -

Teeth: 🪥 🪥 🪥 🪥 - - -

 

Yesterday was a good day. I got up a little late, following the very late night on Wednesday, but still made time for a little yoga and some calf stretches for my maintenance goal. I've got a Tough Mudder on Saturday, so yoga was always the plan as I rest for that.

 

Work was ok. Working from home is better for goals, as I don't have to worry about annoying people when I do Duolingo while I'm making the tea. I also did a couple of French lessons in Language Transfer walking to the shop and back at lunchtime, and learned the etymology of the word 'monster', amongst other things.

 

I also managed to finally get in a study session at work, so that's 1 hour ticked off (probably more like 45 minutes actually, but it's awkward tracking by the minute so I'll give myself a pass this time).

 

In the evening I made pork and apple burgers with some cinnamon and paprika for good measure, and we caught up on Late Night Mash. It's a comedy news show, and whilst it is funny I have to say that politics here feels fucking bleak right now. I'll spare you the rant, but it's pretty scary.

 

Calories were tracked at 2,283, with 173g of protein. I'm actually surprised at how low the calorie numbers are; I thought I was eating more! 

[WhiteGhost]

13 hours ago, Jarric said:

 

Thank you mate! Why only almost?

Because I know that any OCR in China is very likely to be a disaster due to poor management and the unfortunate understanding that maximizing profit at the cost of user experience is a better business model when you have an almost unlimited supply of potential participants  

[deftona]

Bonjour! 

 

Jumping on the Jarric train late but it's nice to see you doing some good stuff! I am also picking French back up (I used it quite a bit on holiday and I was eavesdropping lots of conversations in it and I was shocked at how OK I am at it) and this has spurred me on so I will check out Language Transfer. When we're more advanced at it do you fancy a PM/video sesh entirely in French? I feel like something like this is the best way to develop language. 

 

[Jarric]

On 9/24/2022 at 2:16 AM, WhiteGhost said:

Because I know that any OCR in China is very likely to be a disaster due to poor management and the unfortunate understanding that maximizing profit at the cost of user experience is a better business model when you have an almost unlimited supply of potential participants  

 

Ah that sucks. I hope you get the chance to run a decent one again at some point mate.

 

1 hour ago, deftona said:

Bonjour! 

 

Jumping on the Jarric train late but it's nice to see you doing some good stuff! I am also picking French back up (I used it quite a bit on holiday and I was eavesdropping lots of conversations in it and I was shocked at how OK I am at it) and this has spurred me on so I will check out Language Transfer. When we're more advanced at it do you fancy a PM/video sesh entirely in French? I feel like something like this is the best way to develop language. 

 

 

Yeah, that sounds great! My French is not great, so not sure how much I'll be able to stumble through, but definitely sounds like a good way to practice.

 

Oh, while I think of it, I've been listening to some Dutch radio - mainly because it's a good station for music but also hoping that at some point I'll start to understand what the presenter is saying. I've not found something similar I can listen to in French though; don't suppose you've come across anything?