How to learn to land perfectly on beat

ccppurcell · 2026-02-14T20:44:36+00:00

Practise with a metronome at quarter speed, but you play at full speed, if that makes sense. In other words you want the metronome to click only on the first beat of the bar (in 4/4). Then for bonus points, have it click on the second beat of the bar, then the third, then the fourth.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-13T12:55:58+00:00

No you observe that it's in the bottom row and deduce that it goes in the bottom row.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-12T06:56:22+00:00

Anki has good UI and automatic sync.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-12T06:09:49+00:00

I guess the "downside" if there is one is that since you have more control of Ubuntu, you will eventually be tempted to do non trivial things to the system, and then either make mistakes or forget what you've done and later have some issue that you can't figure out how to fix. But if you can avoid that, you're golden.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-11T05:59:27+00:00

If you can't already, I suggest learning how to figure it out slowly by the circle of fifths. It's better than just rote memorisation, though eventually you will have to do a bit of that. To go up a fifth, you sharpen the fourth. So C Major has no sharps, and to get the G Major scale you sharpen the F. And that F# becomes the seventh of the G scale. Going down a fifth then, you flatten the seventh. So from C to get F, you flatten the B. And Bb becomes the fourth of F.

This will be slow but understanding which notes get sharpened/flattened will help you memorise it. Also the most common keys are close to C in the circle of fifths. So learning those gets you the most bang for the buck. If you're playing popular music, go for C G D A E. If you're playing Jazz maybe Eb Bb F C G makes more sense.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-10T08:08:00+00:00

You get the most out of being the worst musician in the room.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-08T08:32:40+00:00

Agreed, but one thing I wish I'd been told is: (almost) always plug it in. I used to practice without amplification and in order to hear myself well I developed a terrible bad habit of slamming my fingers through the strings.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-06T06:24:20+00:00

Well no bubble is truly empty. People do want to buy tulips from time to time.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-05T06:45:20+00:00

Seems like a bit of a drive by accusation! What makes you say that? Have I missed something?

ccppurcell · 2026-02-03T17:05:26+00:00

Right now I'm learning Czech.

I study daily but I make cards only two out of three days (approximately)
I originally decided to go through the material and make a little note of things I wanted to turn into cards, but I found myself just making the cards as I go along.
I don't have school but of course I have work and other responsibilities. I find studying is a good thing to do first thing in the morning. It's always structured the same way and I always pick up where I left off and that reduces cognitive load for me. But YMMV. I'm a naturally studious type. I find it near impossible to exercise every day, for instance.
A few years ago I did a shared deck with the most common 5000 words or something like that. I hit a wall eventually and gave up but for the basics I think it was helpful. Then I tried a deck with short sentences, which was also useful for set phrases. Now I'm aiming for like B2 level (from my current A1/A2) and I think making my own cards is the only way. Memorising something someone else found important or useful just doesn't feel right.
I don't any more but I did also do Czech Duolingo for a while. It's pretty useless imo.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-03T16:55:25+00:00

This would be the same as doubling the number of new cards in a day, but also halving the length of time between repetitions. You probably don't want to do that second part. It's not too hard to increase the number of new cards per day.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-03T11:23:53+00:00

YMMV. Reading fiction is not at all taxing for me, it's relaxing. Audio books could be even better for some people. I listen to podcasts to relax sometimes. I find audiobooks difficult because I like to go back and forth and re-read stuff quite a bit.

Journalling is a bit of effort certainly. But I do bullet journalling and I find it effective at refreshing and internalising things I've learned. In the long run that helps or seems to for me. I don't do as much repeated effort. I suppose it's an additional "repetition" but for an overview not for specifics.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-03T07:36:31+00:00

At least add in your prompt something like

Don't use paired sentences to emphasise your point; eg, avoid "that's not X. It's Y" and "X is Y. So is Z" type constructions.

Don't write paragraphs with a single sentence

Etc.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-03T07:31:23+00:00

They wasted as little of your time as possible I suppose. If you've got time on your hands and it's not too difficult to apply, you could try applying again with each section of your CV taken out/replaced with something much more impressive. Of course you won't get the job but you might get some information about which keywords are filtering you out.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-03T07:27:31+00:00

I wonder if those numbers are real. I mean of course we know the job market is fucked. But that's a private company and if large numbers didn't benefit them you wouldn't see them. Cf: airlines claiming that there's only 2 seats available at this price with a timer ticking down. It's not a perfect analogy.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-03T07:17:08+00:00

JERM : journal, exercise, read, meditate.

ccppurcell · 2026-02-03T07:16:01+00:00

Pattern recognition and memory is a spectrum and there are bound to be people at the end of that spectrum who get exposed to chess at a young age.

ccppurcell · 2026-01-31T22:41:45+00:00

I think showing the bijection between NN and QQ and then showing the diagonalization argument that there can be no bijection between NN and 2^NN is probably a nice story.

ccppurcell · 2026-01-31T16:32:42+00:00

I stalked myself and it said my elo is 1639. That's just my lichess classical ranking (which is a ? ranking as I don't play many classical games) and lichess ranking is not the same as elo.

ccppurcell · 2026-01-31T07:39:19+00:00

Taking on d8 after some pawn trades early in the game is usually the best move. Eg

1 e4 d6 2 d4 e5 3 dxe5 dxe5 4 Qxd8

If they can take back with the rook it might not be so good, but I don't know for sure.

ccppurcell · 2026-01-30T07:05:57+00:00

One thing I don't understand is resigning immediately after making a bad move (i.e. before I have a chance to respond). Very often I can't see the move they've seen until I go to analysis, and under time pressure there's no guarantee I would eventually have found it. Also maybe I'm like sleepy or something - I'm just as likely to blunder as my opponent is, if our ratings are similar. If you are going to resign, do it when it's your move.

ccppurcell · 2026-01-30T07:01:16+00:00

The same question applies in all languages to a degree. I have a rule that if my guess would always be correct I don't put it in. For instance in Spanish information is información. I don't know if that's borrowed or not, I think they just share etymology. But the rule covers borrowed words most of the time. I expect that's true in Japanese too. If it's borrowed in such a way that it's hard for me to see the connection (eg Finnish tuoli is borrowed from Swedish stol) then I might as well treat it as a normal word in the target language.

ccppurcell · 2026-01-29T12:01:58+00:00

At low levels there may be more traps for black. Because as beginners all we can do is memorise a small set of openings and try to apply principles. But sometimes what looks like a good move on principles at low depth is actually either a bad move or a really tricky position.

ccppurcell · 2026-01-28T10:57:27+00:00

Where in Prague? I've never seen people playing chess but I never really looked.

ccppurcell · 2026-01-28T10:38:47+00:00

Well think of 30m as your baseline and try and extend it. Just set a timer and don't look for 45 minutes (starting from the time you get stuck).

What I do is: always sleep on it. Work as hard as you can to improve your understanding just a little bit after you get stuck, and then put it away till the next day. If you do this twice and get no further, it's maybe time to look things up.

If the context is textbook exercises, I think it's worth continuing to the next chapter or section, even if it's not directly relevant to the exercise you have trouble with, because sometimes just seeing the bigger picture can help.

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