I’m still working on my animation platform startup, SuperAnimo, because I think it’s going to be awesome… but lately I’ve had an urge to study Japanese while doing work.
I listen to Japanese music while working but I don’t learn anything by hearing the lyrics (if I look up the lyrics it wastes time, and I forget what they mean anyway). I also watch Japanese TV shows in my freetime, but watching shows with subtitles does not help you learn AT ALL. So I was thinking… is there a way to change that???
My idea is called LangShuffle… it will be a browser extension to help you learn a language passively. Like the Productivity owl, you would have something that follows you on every webpage you load. Except instead of an owl, it will be subtitles for the music you are listening to. So you basically have an HTML5 Music Player in the extension, and you add your Japanese songs, and then it pulls a subtitle file from my server, and then while you work you can see the lyrics in English/Katakana/kanji. Eventually it will recognize words in the subtitles you are studying, or even recognize conjugation forms of verbs, and then you will be able to casually glance at those things and refresh what you’re learning in your mind.
Of course I estimated that I could build this thing in two days… because I’m pretty optimistic with my estimates. I worked on it one day, and realized it’s a pretty big project given how I want there to be an interface to create subtitle files, a full music player with playlists, and so on… so I’m not sure when I’ll have time to work on this.
But I really want this app for myself. Actually everything that I work on I really want for myself.
Contract work on the other hand – it’s almost like prostitution. Maybe not full-blown prostitution, but more like giving handjobs. I could write a whole post about that analogy, but basically I never want to be forced to implement someone else’s “software fantasy.” It’s unethical. I think programming is important, and you don’t do important stuff like that with strangers. And they shouldn’t force you! I feel dirty even thinking of contract work.
Anyway, hopefully I’ll have a release for this extension soon, and I’ll release it for free like the Productivity Owl.



