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Using Tango Blaster - 2007-03-07 03:02:40

Using Tango Blaster

Run the program and after configuring the fonts (if for the first time) load a data set CSV (some included) an click on "Test". Tango Blaster will then fire you a set of vocab and you can decide whether or not you know them. Try to say the word out loud before you click show. This will test whether you really know it.

Chunks

If you want to separate the sets into smaller chunks so you can keep going through the same few words before you move on, use the add chunking option. I find chunks of 10 are good if you haven't seen the words before. This splits down the learning process to 10 at a time. Often, going over the same group again without chunks can be helpful.

Selecting Primary Field

You can select the primary field on the main menu, using the test style options provided. The first column lets you chose what should be displayed before show is selected. The second column allows you to select the primary field.... i.e. the order.

Loading Data

Data can be loaded in one of two ways. You either take the data from the included database or you can import a CSV file. I have included a number of these with the zip file.

Creating CSVs

You can create them yourself too. Not that they need to be UTF-8 encoded. This is now a world standard for internationally encoded data. Unfortunately Microsoft Excel does not have good Unicode support. For this reason I would strongly suggest using OpenOffice instead. It can be freely downloaded from www.openoffice.org You can edit the files in notepad, but make sure you load and save selecting the "UTF-8" character set. For format for the file is that every field is enclosed within " " (double inverted commas) and fields are separated by commas. This is the default setting for OpenOffice. Sadly Excel doesn't have this kind of fairly basic functionality. Again, I would say, if you want to edit the files, but don't like notepad, download OpenOffice.... it's free and better than the Microsoft version.