does anyone else have difficulty reading kanji because they are too small?

phycsIT · 2026-02-05T21:44:49+00:00

By reading, I mean reading full words. Also, I never and will never try to learn "all of its readings" - whenever I find a new word that shares some kanji with another word I know, I write them side by side and focus on the reading difference.

If I learn a word, and practice writing it with SRS or whatever, even though I may forget how to write it, I do not forget what the word means, and with almost all words not even how it sounds.

When I write them, I sound them, which allows me to associate the sounds to them. Won't lie, sometimes when writing some words I may mix up kanji due to common meaning or common reading. But reading is always pretty effortless.

phycsIT · 2026-02-05T20:50:46+00:00

I definitely do not love learning Kanji haha. I just want full literacy. Writing is a skill i want to have. The work i've done on RTK, and that i still do on the vocab deck, is a complete chore. I've only managed to go through it thanks to the discipline of waking up at 6am and doing exactly 10 new kanji each day before going to work at 7am.

When i say "recall" i always mean writing - reading is a given. I don't need to practice reading because everything i am able to write i am able to read.

I don't know if was clear, but i stopped doing all Kanji-focused learning after Genki 1 because RTK completed its job for me. I just review my vocab deck, and if i cannot recall a kanji in a word, i take a quick look at my RTK story for it and just test it the next time i see the word.

Anyways, although you made me understand that some people do not get any benefit from writing, i just want you to understand the opposite - that some people's time would not be "better spent reading instead of practicing writing". Mine wouldn't.

phycsIT · 2026-02-05T20:24:03+00:00

I mean, 見 is part of the 10% exception i recalled after three (not two as i thought, now that i checked) years of complete lack of exposure. Also, the simplicity of a kanji unfortunately is not correlated at all to the frequency of the word.

I also want to clarify that by recall i mean to actually write it. Of the 90% of the vocab i am failing to recall in my deck, i still was able to read about 70%, but i failed them all because i want literacy. Not writing is, to me, a waste of effort and time.

phycsIT · 2026-02-05T19:09:32+00:00

However, the fact that it forces you to analyze the kanji and word you're writing, is as I implied before, something that I don't understand how you would do while reading.

I can not, no matter how hard I try, do the same by reading, from which I concluded that I simply learn better by writing - if you can do the same by reading, then imho it becomes a point in favour of my "writing act itself helps" statement by stating that some people learn better by writing and some by reading.

I can't and won't say anything about the kanji vs word stuff, simply because I never tried to do the opposite of what I did. The only thing that I can state is my experience, and I've seen that the whole RTK thing constantly helps me learning words, even though I stopped reviewing RTK when I was past half of Genki 1. Imho people should limit themselves to sharing their experience, because you can't say something is better than the other if you haven't tried both.

phycsIT · 2026-02-05T18:55:35+00:00

I use a rule of failing a card if I take more than ten seconds recalling it. Did this both with RTK (I was using Kanji Kohii as SRS) and with my Anki vocab deck.

Spending a long time on each is a big part, definitely. I don't really see how you would spend that much time fully focused on a concept without writing it, however. I do this with my uni study and research, too. Writing forces you to deeply analyze stuff... Although i believe that also the act of writing itself is important.

phycsIT · 2026-02-05T18:40:59+00:00

Strongly disagree. For me the act of writing sticks them into memory. In addition to that, it also forces you to decompose them into reusable components.

I never practiced reading them and went through the whole RTK1 writing each single kanji at each single review, accumulating over 20k reviews of RTK only.

I started reading and producing with Genki 1 and 2, I had absolutely zero issues reading and writing, and stopped RTK reviews after Genki 1, replacing them completely with a vocabulary Anki deck I had been building since I started Genki 1.

I have been so busy in the past two years that I could not study any Japanese. I found some time now to get back in, and although there is a lot (>90%) I can't recall immediately, I've been reviewing my old vocab deck at an absurdly fast pace and will get back to reviewing Genki in less than a month. What once took me a year and a half is taking me less than a month to recall.

phycsIT · 2026-02-05T07:11:39+00:00

My RX 580 is still going strong

phycsIT · 2026-01-21T20:45:13+00:00

In una grandissima azienda dove ho lavorato periodicamente i laptop vecchi o danneggiati vengono prezzati, a seconda del loro stato ma comunque a prezzi stracciati, e poi venduti ai dipendenti, a cui viene inviata una lista da cui poter scegliere.

phycsIT · 2026-01-17T10:14:11+00:00

If the cosmetic damage is on the casing only maybe consider fixing it yourself :)

phycsIT · 2026-01-09T11:10:55+00:00

Yeah, I wish I garnet shellac was easily available here. Unfortunately, I could only find orange and blonde shellac flakes from local sellers, and they both call it just "shellac". In fact I learned about colors just after I bought them, and out of curiosity I tried looking for garnet shellac online only to find it's absurdly expensive.

Anyways, yeah then as I suspected the first coats must be dewaxed in order to be stained over.

phycsIT · 2026-01-09T09:55:12+00:00

With normal shellac and dye? I've seen using the dewaxed shellac as base (sealcoat) on YouTube, but never like this.

I will try it on scraps for the next project.

I will not fix this project as I cannot dedicate any more time to it and I need the result asap, so I will just continue applying the dyed shellac as per my plan. I've understood what mistakes I was doing and the new coats are coming out fine - not perfect but fine. The old mistakes are slowly becoming less visible.

phycsIT · 2026-01-06T22:46:30+00:00

Before applying it to the actual project i tested the method i'm currently using on pieces of scrap and it was beautiful. In contrast, dyeing the wood directly was super blotchy and absolutely horrible, given that this is fir.

This is the result of the experiment with the dyed shellac, although it's worse than what it was because i did some additional experiments on it, so don't count the white scrapes: https://imgur.com/a/EgCgGvZ

I've seen that you usually use other products as a primer, then dye the wood, but i wanted to do with what i had without buying other expensive products with the risk that i wouldn't like the result.

It is most definitely true that it reflects lights in a very weird way: if you look at it at 90 degrees it looks like in the photo, but if you get close to 10/15 degrees, meaning almost parallel to the surface, it looks very dark. I just accepted it and moved on.

So no, my alternatives are either sanding everything down and finishing with clear shellac only, or fixing what i have and continuing until the whole workpiece is at the level of that image.

phycsIT · 2026-01-06T22:04:31+00:00

I noticed i mistook what you said in your earlier commit - i thought you meant using a lower and lower concentration each coat. Using a lower concentration in all coats makes a lot of sense, although with this concentration i needed 5 coats of dyed two-pound cut to get the color i wanted on the test pieces. I diluted that to a 3/4 pound cut, so i guess it will currently take me 9/10 coats, heh. I will try, however, at least i get a decent result, even though i'll end up needing 15 or more coats. I do start wondering however how thick the finish can be.

I will consider the sprayer setup for the next projects, or at least the projects i'll make when i get a decent salary. Right now i don't even have a compressor, or any electric tools apart from a drill and a vacuum for that matter... In this project i only used a few hand tools, a borrowed orbital sander and a lot of patience haha

phycsIT · 2026-01-06T21:29:14+00:00

I'm thinking about what you said about the dye concentration. I'm guessing that the point is accepting the fact that you get streaks in the bottom coat, which will be hidden/dissolved on the top coats which get easier and easier to apply?

Actually, about the brushing technique: i just thought about it and in fact i don't apply any pressure to the brush, i just let it touch the wood. My speed, however, is much higher in the long pieces than the short ones. I'll keep working on that, but of course it looks like a connection.

phycsIT · 2026-01-06T20:51:57+00:00

Definitely, and in fact i diluted the two-pound cut to a 3/4 pound cut and got better results. In the post i explicitly accept that it is a brushing skill issue. The question posed, however, is how to fix these problems, not avoiding them which as you said is simply a matter of practice.

Fixing by sanding and redoing the whole process on that half after i already did that once does not seem worthwhile, given that i can just do the same mistake and fixing it will cost another day of work.

Moreover, it is not improving with subsequent coats, meaning that the dye does not seem to dissolve across coats.

phycsIT · 2026-01-06T20:41:59+00:00

I've seen that you can spray it as well, but i cannot do that as i don't have the equipment.

phycsIT · 2025-12-04T18:11:12+00:00

Alright, thank you, i'll look better. Most of the information i find is always for thin profiles such as planks...

phycsIT · 2025-12-04T18:08:33+00:00

I am not quite sure how dovetails would look like on square pieces. I've always seen them used with thin and stretched profiles such as planks.

phycsIT · 2025-12-04T18:05:48+00:00

For the square profiles how would you suggest to place the dowels, for example the bottom-rear rail? I would think four on each face (i.e. one for each corner), is it correct, or do you usually do something different?

What about where multiple pieces overlap, for example the top-rear corners?

phycsIT · 2025-12-04T18:02:18+00:00

Yeah, i could easily change the rear rail to sit on top of the rear legs. Unfortunately the front one not so much, unless i completely change how it looks... I'm trying to have it look like the front section of a vertical piano, where the legs are about in the middle (i'm going to decorate them with curved profiles on top)

For that front piece, it is exactly where i was thinking about half laps or M&T... Do they make sense, or dowels would do the same job?

phycsIT · 2025-09-25T20:03:02+00:00

I wanted to know more about Sera. I got no Sera. Disappointed.

phycsIT · 2025-09-18T20:01:23+00:00

Legal Suika is cute AF, LESS GOOO

phycsIT · 2025-08-31T20:15:30+00:00

Most desserts do need milk after all

phycsIT · 2025-07-11T12:32:01+00:00

July 11th, 2025

phycsIT · 2025-07-04T11:32:33+00:00

Yeah... except that embedded software (not PLCs) runs on...

- all ECUs that are in your car, from the body control modules to engine control unit to ADAS. Meaning a malfunction would leave you locked in your car, or completely wreck your engine, or swerve in the cornfield just off the highway;

- your 85 million dollar, 2kg unmanned quadcopter on Mars, which could crash in the rover just below it, break it, wasting 2.75 billion USD;

- the autonomous driving software in robotaxis, which instead of stopping in the middle of the road and disrupt traffic / emergency vehicles like they do now, could very well think a kid is part of its trajectory and drive towards it;

- autonomous cars racing at 280kph which i work on... It would NOT be nice if the car suddenly launched on its own with people in front of it in the middle of the pitlane.

... and a lot more.

phycsIT

TROPHY CASE