trane_project

Interesting ideas for how to write the cards. But the dependency part seems to be limited to letting you pick questions from a subtree. SuperMemo has something similar, which is the closest I was able to find in existing solutions.

The problem is that this basically means dependencies can only form a tree, with one topic depending on only in at most one other topic. What I wanted was something that let me express the relationships as a directed acyclic graph. Something like learning a big chunk of a music piece is dependent on the questions for learning individual smaller passages. Something as basic as that cannot really be expressed with a tree but is trivial with a DAG.

Sure, here's the gist of how it works.

- When Trane is asked for a batch of exercises, it performs a depth-first search of every branch in the dependency graph. It picks up exercises as it goes along, and stops exploring a branch when the dependencies of the last node are not met.

- Each exercise is given a 1-5 score by the student and those scores are used to produce a combined score, rather than compute a date on which the exercise should be reviewed. Two reasons:

- Trane is also meant to be used to learn skills, which do not fit the assumptions made by the SuperMemo algorithm.

- I believe most of the gains come from regularly being reminded to perform an exercise, so even a simple scoring algorithm should get most of the gains. Eventually, I want to replace the existing scoring with something more complicated that also makes a distinction between memorization and skill exercises to get better results. But based on my testing, this works for the most part as is and the gains to be made from more complicated algorithms are marginal.

- Once you get exercises from performing the search, you reduce that number into the final batch by grouping exercises based on difficulty and selecting a percentage from each bucket. This is done to make sure not too many very difficult or easy exercises are included in each batch.

There's also some elements of randomness added to prevent the same exercises from appearing all the time. For example, the branches are explored in random order and the elements from each difficulty bucket are selected at random. But that is the gist of it.

Yes. That's required. I think they meant that the program uses those relationships to automatically advance the student to the next topic when it makes sense.

Check out my project: https://GitHub.com/trane-project/trane

It does exactly this because I also thought this was a critical limitation of current systems.

I have a feature coming out soon (already merged to master but I need to make a proper release) which should make it way easier to use with Markdown files acting as the front and back of flashcards that are automatically picked up when starting up the program.

Shameless plug to my own project: https://GitHub.com/trane-project/trane

Dependency relationships between exercises are core to its design.

I tried to use Anki but this limitation is pretty baked into Anki and made it unusable for cases where there's a clear order in which things must be learned (music in my case).

Very interesting talk by Alan Moore on the origins of consciousness, magic, shamanism, and how the entirety of human culture came out of the engagement of the first people experiencing consciousness with its full possibilities (which is how Moore defines "magic" for the purposes of this talk).

It's an hour long (45 min + 15 min QA), but if you don't have that time, the first fifteen minutes should give you the gist.

I have experienced this first hand as well and will never commit that naive mistake again.

See also the responses of women learning their partner is bisexual or their dating racial preferences.

Their mating strategy optimizes for status and in the process creates and reinforces the very structures they claim to oppose. What they are really opposing is the negative effects these structures have on them.

They are not evil or man-hating, but all of us are ruled by instinct way more than we would like to admit. And the people self aware enough to recognize and avoid reacting to them, specially when they relate to something as important as romantic relationships, are not very common.

You aren't going to change his mind. What needs changing is his heart.

This book explores a similar concept to writing about yourself from the future and having that fantasy gradually become real: https://www.amazon.com/Weaving-Fate-Hypersigils-Changing-Tel...

Not sure how well it works because I haven't really started but I've had similar instances of what the author talks about happen to me before.

I tried intermittent fasting by not having dinner, and I noticed that my heartburn went away almost immediately. I stuck to it pretty much because of that. Not sure how it relates to my sleep apnea because I had already fixed it by then, but it is probably worth a try if CPAP didn't work.

I have sleep apnea, probably caused by having a big tongue, and did a home sleep test. My AHI was close to 60. I was prescribed a CPAP with a nose-only mask, and my AHI went to zero overnight. No issues whatsoever. Maybe try a different CPAP or mask combination if you only tried it with a mask that goes over the mouth.

Yes. I am not very familiar with GUI development so I focused on the CLI first. No concrete plans yet.

Thanks. Quite the rabbit hole, but I'll try to read it all this week.

And yeah, I started with music because it both has an established pedagogy that is centuries old, and the process consists mostly of repeating the same task until it soaks into your nervous system to the point you can do it without thinking.

But I am curious about the actual extent of the skills that would benefit from this. I suspect it's a matter of having experts break up the domain knowledge and the right exercises/tasks. Like, could anyone learn soccer using Trane? Have the tasks being progressively more difficult drills?

I am thinking it would take the form of creating a bunch of Blender files and then present them to the user, asking them to open them, and do a simple task (add a sphere, rotate the view, etc.). Probably a lot of work, but it seems doable.

I set up Trane as a library rather than a monolith app because I think another use would be embedding Trane into another application's tutorial mode. So one could open Blender, click an option on the help menu, and open a tutorial that progressively teaches you the ropes of the app and keeps your progress.

I was thinking of fighting games, which already have tutorial modes, but something like Blender or Photoshop is also a good candidate.

For the actual building of all the manifests and asset files, take a look at https://github.com/trane-project/trane-music for some examples of how I am generating them. This might seem kind of annoying at first and I wasn't sure if it was the right call at first, but having to manually generate all those JSON files is way more annoying.

If you want to learn the piano, it'd be useful to be able to reference an external resource. I am thinking of mostly using https://www.soundslice.com/ to create the music sheet. There's already a special asset to reference a soundslice link, although it probably needs some improvement (add a description along the link for example). This asset is at https://github.com/trane-project/trane/blob/master/src/data....

Once there's a graphic interface, these kinds of resources could be embedded inside the app so that users don't have to switch context.

But for now, an exercise that says "go practice measures X through Y in this slice at this link" or "practice piece #X from book Y" should be enough to build the exercises.

Closest thing to a walkthrough right now is the README in the trane-cli repo. It has the output of some of the commands so you can see what it looks like.

The only difference in normal usage is that you eventually reach the threshold to be shown more difficult units.

I hope I don't have to change it. I quite like that it sounds like train, since it's what it does. Someone mentioned a company by that name but I think I am in the clear because they are in a completely different industry.

I'd be more worried about someone in John Coltrane's estate having an issue with it.

Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out.

With respect to the chronic pain, I'd suggest some kind of embodied mindfulness practice to help alleviate the symptoms. I assume Western medicine has not been able to help you much on that front.

There are tons of techniques out there, some of which have been proven by scientists to help reduce the symptoms of chronic pain. I'd suggest you find someone qualified teacher, since doing some of these on your own might be dangerous.

If you are willing to go for something more out there, I'd recommend reading this book https://www.amazon.com/Meditation-Saved-My-Life-Tibetan/dp/1... (it's free on libgen). It's the story of a Tibetan monk which was tortured in a Chinese jail and developed gangrene in one of his ankles, which progressed to the point of almost killing him and destroyed his joint. Doctors kept pressuring to have his foot amputated, but he sensed it'd be the wrong choice. Eventually, he went into retreat in his apartment and practiced some techniques for healing he had been taught in Tibet. Within a year, his foot was mostly healed, and eventually his body somehow managed to grow a new ankle joint.

The book is not explicit about what he did, but the two main practices he alludes to are called "tsa lung" (moving energy through the body) and reciting the "Medicine Buddha" mantra. I think you'll need an instructor if you want to practice "Tsa Lung" (the monk in the book teaches it, but he moved to France). But Medicine Buddha mostly involves reciting mantras and should be safe.

I don't have a lot of personal experience with the Medicine Buddha mantra, but reciting another mantra ("om mani padme hum") and similar practices cured a chronic depression that lasted more than five years. Saying "cure" is a bit of an understatement, because my outlook on life has radically changed. My external circumstances have not changed a lot, but most of the internal turmoil has mostly subsided. So on the base of that, I am willing to consider the possibility that a monk might regrow a joint by reciting a mantra.

You don't have to believe in cosmic blue Buddhas (in fact, the official position is that they don't inherently exist, just like you and me). I think of these practices as a technology developed by a culture that put the mind at the front and center of their inquiry into the nature of reality.

Here's some references: - Medicine Buddha mantra (so you hear what it sounds like): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoGmifZperY - A more involved practice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on7kiQawZJ0

This second one is a more traditional presentation, so it might not be your cup of tea. But I am including it anyway just so you can get an explanation from someone qualified. Again, sorry if this is too out there. But again, I doubt you posted here because you wanted to hear the same answers you get anywhere else.