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Anki-fy your life

abouttolearn.substack.com

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Re: Anki-fy your life

#111

Post by liendolucas »

Question aside. Does anyone know straightforward ways to create anki decks?

Last time I checked on this it was like a lot of effort to put on and got discouraged to build my own decks to improve my italian. I was expecting anki decks to be constructed easily, in its most basic form from plain text files (html, markdown, etc) with references to maybe resources (audio, images, etc) just from a filesystem directory but is not that simple.

I can't recall the name of a Python tool that allowed you to create decks programmatically but I found it way too much effort to use it and I couldn't find other good alternatives (maybe this has changed recently, don't know).

Does anyone recommend a good, simple and straightforward tool to create decks/cards? (I'm using FreeBSD).

Re: Anki-fy your life

#112

Post by vector_spaces »

liendolucas wrote: post #111

Question aside. Does anyone know straightforward ways to create anki decks? Last time I checked on this it was like a lot of effort to put on and got discouraged to build my own decks to improve my italian. I was expecting anki decks to be constructed easily, in its most basic form from plain text files (html, markdown, etc) with references to maybe resources (audio, images, etc) just from a filesystem directory but…

There's a Python library called genanki that has a minor learning curve but isn't terrible to figure out. My process is to maintain a gsheet with data I use to generate my flashcards, then manually download the CSV data, and run a Python script to convert everything into the Anki format.

If I'm not mistaken it's also possible to import CSV data directly into anki without the intermediate Python script

Re: Anki-fy your life

#113

Post by huimang »

liendolucas wrote: post #111

Question aside. Does anyone know straightforward ways to create anki decks? Last time I checked on this it was like a lot of effort to put on and got discouraged to build my own decks to improve my italian. I was expecting anki decks to be constructed easily, in its most basic form from plain text files (html, markdown, etc) with references to maybe resources (audio, images, etc) just from a filesystem directory but…

Anki can import csv files.

That said, making decks is extremely tedious. It’s better than a premade deck for learning language vocabulary, but it’s time consuming.

You shouldn’t make vocabulary cards programmatically. If you’re going to invest time into learning a card, you need to be absolutely sure that it’s correct. Otherwise you’ve wasted your own time.

When I was using Anki daily, I’d reserve about 20 mins or so in the evening to input new words.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#114

Post by bluquark »

TwentyPosts wrote: post #97
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duolingo used to be better: people who are talking about Duolingo might be referencing how it used to be.

I'm not. I'm a new user, and I notice that Duolingo kind of sucks, but I am getting some amount of value out of it. I'm very open to suggestions for better language learning apps, though.

When you hit diminishing returns on a walled-garden language-learning app, it's time to create a continuous intake of real-world media at your level that you enjoy, plus a suite of inline understanding+memory tools to extract the maximum learning out of that media.

I have been following many of the recommendations on https://learnjapanese.moe/resources/. Most of them are language-specific, but perhaps you can still draw some inspiration from the methods and look for equivalent tools in your target language.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#115

Post by liendolucas »

vector_spaces wrote: post #112
liendolucas wrote: post #111

Question aside. Does anyone know straightforward ways to create anki decks? Last time I checked on this it was like a lot of effort to put on and got discouraged to build my own decks to improve my italian. I was expecting anki decks to be constructed easily, in its most basic form from plain text files (html, markdown, etc) with references to maybe resources (audio, images, etc) just from a filesystem directory but…

There's a Python library called genanki that has a minor learning curve but isn't terrible to figure out. My process is to maintain a gsheet with data I use to generate my flashcards, then manually download the CSV data, and run a Python script to convert everything into the Anki format. If I'm not mistaken it's also possible to import CSV data directly into anki without the intermediate Python script

Yes, this is the one I previously found (thanks for sharing). Found it ridiculously complex for what an anki card seems to be... I mean from the docs I found this:

> "...You need to pass a model_id so that Anki can keep track of your model."

At that time I wondered myself: "Why on earth do I need to keep track of a model id for an anki card?" then quickly move forward on the docs without paying too much attention and finally put it aside...

Re: Anki-fy your life

#116

Post by orbisvicis »

I wish I could generate a personal memex by training GTP-4 solely on bookmarked content, in a way that minimizes hallucinations and unrelated content. Then that memex could generate quiz prompts or anki decks for me.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#117

Post by liendolucas »

huimang wrote: post #113
liendolucas wrote: post #111

Question aside. Does anyone know straightforward ways to create anki decks? Last time I checked on this it was like a lot of effort to put on and got discouraged to build my own decks to improve my italian. I was expecting anki decks to be constructed easily, in its most basic form from plain text files (html, markdown, etc) with references to maybe resources (audio, images, etc) just from a filesystem directory but…

Anki can import csv files. That said, making decks is extremely tedious. It’s better than a premade deck for learning language vocabulary, but it’s time consuming. You shouldn’t make vocabulary cards programmatically. If you’re going to invest time into learning a card, you need to be absolutely sure that it’s correct. Otherwise you’ve wasted your own time. When I was using Anki daily, I’d reserve about 20 mins or so…

I heard this many times before... If there's an easy way to create the cards I'm willing to put some effort on it. Italian and spanish are not that far away languages so most of the time I really know the meaning of the words (with of course the help of translation and a dictionary sometimes) I learn but I need to remember them.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#118

Post by BeetleB »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #62
MichaelNolan wrote: post #41

I'm a huge fan of spaced repetition and Anki. I strongly believe that most people's professional lives would be improved by using it. There is a huge amount of information that falls into the zone of it's needed often enough that not knowing it is a pain, but it's not needed often enough that you would "naturally" remember it. I've yet to find anything else that only takes 10 to 20 minutes a day that has a higher ROI…

Why is it useful? My job at least isn’t bottlenecked by me not memorizing enough things. Or maybe it is! But I’m not convinced

Don't think in terms of bottlenecks but rather in terms of missed opportunities.

Although already a power Emacs user, it was a significant step up when I started memorizing keystone for various modes via spaced repetition.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#119

Post by watwut »

bluquark wrote: post #87
TwentyPosts wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also what I'd call the classic issue with Duolingo. Or rather, one of them, considering that the app has all sorts of issues. If you use nothing but Duolingo you'll plateau very quickly. It's probably "okay" as a casual side spaced-repetition learning tool—when you're learning languages you generally want to pull from several different resources, and learn with different tools anyway. But don't make the mista…

> Or rather, one of them, considering that [Duolingo] has all sorts of issues. Yep. I agree with measured criticisms of Anki even while feeling the app is really useful if you use it well. Whereas Duolingo isn't worth bothering with at all. It's purely optimized to maximize engagement/revenue.

I mean, I don't think this is true about duolingo. I used it for language I knew zero about and for one I used to know. And I did learned foreign languages before duolingo existed.

With nothing but duolingo and occasion "let's try to read or watch movie", my ability to read or understand went high in a way that would not happened without it at all.

Re: Anki-fy your life

#120

Post by BeetleB »

crazygringo wrote: post #32
nohaydeprobleme wrote: post #18

A major limitation exists for spaced repetition software (e.g. Anki, SuperMemo, or other flashcard-style systems), in my experience using them for several years for long-term memory: it's neither necessary nor sufficient to use this software to learn certain topics. Several excellent physics and math students I worked with have never used spaced repetition software, but were excellent at their studies because they co…

Right, there's a big distiction to be made here. Knowledge that is primarily conceptual (like almost all of math) generally does not benefit from spaced repetition. The learning involved is understanding -- a new concept may be hard to understand in the first place, but once you get it, you don't really forget it. Or you just need a super-quick refresher if you haven't touched it for a few months. While knowledge tha…

That's fine if you're a student and can consistently do textbook problems. What happens when you enter the workforce where you very likely will not use most of the mathematics and get married and have kids? You don't have time to solve those problems.

I had lost all hope till I started using spaced repetition to relearn what I'd forgotten. Is it as good as doing textbook problems? No. But it's better than not doing anything. With spaced repetition I can have gaps of months at a time and can still get back to the material without having to start all over.

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