An email I sent to 38 degrees today in response to https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/contribute/PR

Why is all the pressure for electoral reform being put on Nick Clegg? After all, he represents (due to the wonders of FPTP) less than 10% of the MPs who could affect this, and it's Brown or Cameron that could allow reform to go ahead, not him.

I voted for the Lib Dems and for Clegg, and I want PR. I was at the demonstration on Saturday. I wrote to him as a Lib Dem member on Friday to urge him to act in the best interests of both the country and party by sticking to Lib Dem core policies including Electoral Reform. But I'm finding it very odd that many people who didn't support the Lib Dems in the election now think that Nick is now beholden to them to fix an electoral system that's left his party a minnow among the old whales, particularly when they seem to be offering him no support in doing so; in fact, they offer little more than masked threats.

I'll back the promotion of PR in the national press, and I'll hit the streets again to support it. But I won't help promote the idea that this is somehow entirely Clegg's responsibility and that neither Cameron nor Brown have a responsibility to us. Clegg's got enough on his plate without being set up as a scapegoat for the failure of Labour or the Conservatives to finally reform our discredited electoral system.

Back in September 2009 I started studying Japanese at SOAS, in the Beginners Certificate Course. This is an evening class with one two-hour lesson a week. Prior to joining the course, I'd tried to study at home, but found that I didn't have enough momentum to learn at the pace I wanted.

The course at SOAS uses the Minna No Nihongo books, which use kana (Japanese script) rather than romaji (latin script). This meant that those taking the course were expected to be familiar with the hiragana and katakana scripts before starting the lessons.

To learn this, I used a small book of mnemonics which helped me to learn the two basic Japanese alphabets: Kana Pict-o-Graphix: Mnemonics for Japanese Hiragana and Katakana. The book's about the size of a pad of post-it notes so it fits easily in a pocket, but the contents are invaluable in learning to read non-Kanji Japanese (which is most of what you'll encounter when you start learning).

To revise what I'd learned, I used the Kana Flip application. This is a flip-card app, with the added feature that it manages the order of the cards it shows you to maximise your chance of recalling them. Between this and the book, I managed to get to grips with the kana in about a week. I also used Kana Strokes to look up the characters and stroke order, and Kana Pad to practise them.

Having got the hang of the letters before the course, the next requirement was to start learning the vocabulary. There's a "Japanese Flip" application in the same family as Kana Flip, but it's less useful for the beginner as the smallest vocabulary set has 415 words - too much when you've only learned 20 words, and it's not possible to make your own lists on this app. However, once you get a bit further in, it becomes more useful.

If anyone does know an iPhone app that'll let you do this, please let me know!

One app I did buy early on was the dictionary app just called "Japanese". What I hadn't realised until recently was that this also lets you make your own word lists from the dictionary, which, while not as useful as flashcards, could still be helpful for vocab practice. This app is also very good for giving the stroke order for Kanji once you start using those.

It's worth noting, by the way, that the iPhone's actually quite good for entering Japanese text once you turn the right keyboards on. (Settings - General - Keyboards - International Keyboards - Japanese - Kana).

There are a few online resources that are useful once you start getting somewhere with the language. About.com's Japanese section is particularly good, with some useful word of the day emails and newsletters. It's also useful to keep up with other language learners and teachers online; a lot of them are on twitter where I've created a list of interesting twitter users.
You can check out my full list of Japanese links on delicious.com.

Once you move onto learning Kanji (in the second term in the SOAS course), other resources become useful. One book that's worth reading even before you really start on Kanji is "Read Japanese Today", which derives indirectly from the Shou Wen lexicon created around 200AD, but is an extremely interesting and readable book that makes 300 of the more common Kanji memorable by explaining their origins. There is also a "Kanji Flip" app that works much the same way as Kana Flip and Japanese Flip.

It's worth noting that, whatever language course or material you follow, you'll meet the vocabulary in very roughly the same order, as there's a standard Japanese Language Proficiency Test which groups the vocabulary into levels. So, pretty much all the vocab we've met in the first two terms of the SOAS course is in JPLT level 4, the first set in the Japanese Flip app.

One other lightweight and fun resource for early vocabulary is the Usborne "First Thousand Words in Japanese" book - I had the French version when I was about 10! (The Japanese version does have a couple of errors in though).

One thing you'll find, in a repeating head/desk way, while studying Japanese, is that Japanese grammar is incredibly tricky and very different from english grammar. The grammar covered in the SOAS course sometimes feels a bit lightweight, so I've looked for a few resources to help with that. Simply googling the relevant terms can be useful, but I've also found Yuki Johnson's Fundamentals of Japanese Grammar to be very readable, although it will occasionally leave you muttering to yourself about "Stative transitive predicates".

That covers most of the academic resources I tend to use. Outside of the classroom (and for that matter home study) there are a few useful locations and events for those of us in London: Grant and Cutler, Foreign-language booksellers and the Japan Centre's shop are both good places to browse for books, manga and media, and the Japanese Meetup Group is a very social event for those who are a little more practiced in the language.

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Update

The real-world shop at Japan Centre is incredibly hard to find (it's not where Google Maps says, for a start); it's on the extra bit of Regent Street everyone forgets, just south of Picadilly Circus. It's also not very good at all for books! (great for groceries though!) However, it's next door to Mitsukoshi, a Japanese Department store, and in the basement of Mitsukoshi is JP-books, which has thousands of books in Japanese.

I've also found a really good site/flashcard system for web & iPhone: smart.fm. Besides having existing vocab lists for most purposes & numerous languages, you can also add your own lists. The existing lists are generally of a good quality and the site's community and scoring systems really help motivate you. Say "hi" if you join up, I'm on smart.fm as parsingphase.

Last Sunday was Alan Turing Day at the park, and I was determined that "Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night" (essentially the contents of the weather forecast for the day) were going to keep my from my first day's volunteering there. In fact the weather was much better than predicted, and we turned out not to need the "Dunkirk Spirit" that Kelsey promised. In fact it was only the fact that I was coming in from South London that provided the "gloom of night": an early start and the combined chaos of South West Trains and London Midland.

However, I was almost in time for the day's briefing, and a cheerful ribbing of "about time you did some work here" from the gate guard reminded me I was on friendly territory. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from my day; my duties were assigned as "roaming" (or "loitering", as it's also known), which boiled down to "we're expecting a lot of people, so wander 'round and look helpful". Given that it's pretty much impossible to get bored at Bletchley, that didn't seem too demanding a task, and I figured I could use the exercise.

Wandering proved to be a good start; fortunately the weather was much better than threatened ("light drizzle" or "British spring" would have been reasonable descriptions) and I got to familiarise myself with those few bits of the park I didn't already know and chat to some of the more experienced staff. They all proved extremely friendly, and free with positive hints and advice, and within a couple of hours I really felt like part of the team.

Perhaps due to the forecast the park wasn't quite as busy as we'd hoped, and I drifted into the Turing Bombe demonstration area in Block B, where I was able to show off the latest in Bletchley Park fashion, the rather fetching Enigma Rotors T-shirt. As a volunteer I got to take a good close look at the rebuilt Bombe which, like everything at Bletchley, just gets more fascinating the more you learn about it - thanks to fellow newbie P J Bryant for his expertise there! At some point I'm hoping to learn to demonstrate this machine myself. In the meantime however I parked myself next to a Service Enigma and (while I've not yet fully learned the tour script) was able to answer a few questions, and give a few (hopefully coherent!) explanations as to the role of the Enigma and the Bombe. Explaining it in French was an interesting challenge though!

Now, I've been interested in WW2 history for a while, and particularly the Enigma, so I know a fair bit about it, but the visitors still managed to test me, and I had some homework to do after (about 22000 Enigmas were built, we have about 6 on site, they're each worth a small fortune, and yes, one got nicked, it's upstairs). I also got to chat to, and learn from, some of the other volunteers, including the formidable Jean Valentine who was a Bombe operator during the war. As ever the day passed more quickly than I'd expected (Bletchley's winter opening hours aren't that long), but I was still happy to head back on the now-running trains as the early start began to catch up with me.

As one of the more distant volunteers (and with a full-time job!) I can't get to the park quite as often as I'd like, but hopefully I'll be there for most of the big events. I'm enjoying having a hobby that not only keeps my interest like Bletchley does, but also helps protect and promote such an important historical site.

The "TDD deciphered" series was starting to take over Phase.org, and the site's design - basically as a blog - wasn't really ideal for navigating an online book. I've now moved the project over to its own domain at tdd-deciphered.com. This new site is based on the Symfony framework (which I'm now trying to learn) and should be somewhat faster and more streamlined that Phase.org, which contains a lot of legacy code.

Now that that site's launched, I'm hoping to get back to creating content for the series, and to get a demonstration of the machine online.

Part 12 of this series is now available at http://tdd-deciphered.com/part/12/spare_parts

Part 11 of this series is now available at http://tdd-deciphered.com/part/11/the_final_pieces_and_a_real_decrypt

Part 10 of this series is now available at http://tdd-deciphered.com/part/10/assembling_the_machine

Part 9 of this series is now available at http://tdd-deciphered.com/part/9/implementing_the_real_rotors