[HN Gopher] Morsle - A daily Morse code challenge
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Morsle - A daily Morse code challenge
Author : wkjagt
Score : 95 points
Date : 2024-10-19 09:31 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (morsle.fun)
(TXT) w3m dump (morsle.fun)
| ryanianian wrote:
| This is fun. The UI and concept are well-executed.
|
| I wish it did farnsworth timing, though. The idea is that the
| individualy characters play at full 30 words per minute speed,
| but the characters are spaced to be at your target listening
| rate.
|
| You want to hear each letter as a distinct sound rather than
| hearing individual dits and dahs. The added time between each
| character with farnsworth timing gives your audio/memory system
| time to make the connection rather than slowing the whole
| character down so you have to remember that dit-dit-dah is U.
|
| I can typically hear at about 30 wpm with farnsworth timing. It
| is, for me, much harder to hear when slowed down to 10 wpm with
| the dits and dahs slowed way down.
|
| It has taken a few months of practice. I'm still too nervous to
| use it on the ham bands aside from scheduled chats with friendly
| operators. My favorite way to learn has been guided courses with
| experienced CW (morse code) operators from cwops.
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| Paper version:
| https://www.nam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/learning-resource-...
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| This is great! It's cool that you can listen to each letter
| individually
| zikduruqe wrote:
| That was fun. I passed my 20WPM way back when it was requisite
| for your Extra license. Took a few replays, but got the word at
| 35WPM.
|
| It's funny how you can still retain it. But I did pound brass for
| years.
| soldeace wrote:
| I used that website everyday when I was prepping for my ham
| license upgrade and got reasonably good after a while, being 25
| WPM my most comfortable speed. But then I learned that the CW
| exam in Brazil was carried out at 5 WPM. When I tried that speed,
| much to my surprise I couldn't understand a single word. I had to
| relearn slow Morse on lcwo.net from scratch weeks before the
| test. My takeaway was that our brains seem to get super
| specialized, so if you're studying for a CW exam yourself, I do
| recommend immersing yourself in CW at roughly the same speed as
| the exam.
|
| At any rate, really cool website!
| plingbang wrote:
| Looks usable and useful unlike my joke version:
|
| https://plingbang.github.io/morsel/
| schrockwell wrote:
| Hi folks! Love reading all the feedback. I originally released
| Morsle on April 1, 2023 as sort of a joke, but I'm glad that
| folks are still enjoying it.
|
| The original idea was to make it more accessible to non-hams,
| which is why it has no Farnsworth spacing, visual aids,
| alphabetic keyboard, etc., but over time it's become clear that
| really it's just hams that are playing. So I should probably add
| more settings and proper training modes.
|
| Thanks for playing!
| asdfman123 wrote:
| The option to start at a lower wpm or just to play one
| character a time could be useful for us software engineers who
| still harbor dreams of learning morse code.
|
| 40 wpm is way too much. I just want to practice at one
| character at a time. Maybe even start with a reduced character
| set, like Duolingo only teaches you a few foreign language
| words at a time.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| Disagree with 40wpm being way to much. You want to learn the
| 'sounds' of the characters, you don't want to count the
| individual dits and dahs.
|
| Other posters have mentioned Farnsworth spacing, which
| increases the gap between characters, but keeps the speed of
| the individual letters.
|
| https://lcwo.net is a good resource for learning as you start
| from K and work your way through the alphabet.
| greenbit wrote:
| Years ago I tried starting out with 5 wpm and 'working up',
| and just barely passed the 13 wpm test to get the 'Advanced'
| ticket. Only thing that stopped me getting Extra was that 20
| wpm code test, that was still a thing in the 80s.
|
| I let it all lapse for about 35 years and just got back into
| radio in '22, and tried copying some 5 wpm from W1AW, and
| could copy maybe 20 or 30% of that at best. So it came as
| something of a surprise, playing with Morsle for a few
| minutes, to discover I can do as well or better at 35 wpm as
| I can at 5.
|
| You really get too much time at the slow speeds to engage the
| frontal cortex. If you learn to think your way to each
| letter, that doesn't scale very far.
| uint8_t wrote:
| Hee hee. But it is Farnsworthed, the default 40 WPM is quite
| spaced out!
| bityard wrote:
| I have only limited experience (and not near enough patience!)
| trying to learn CW, but I have always heard that there are two
| things which are actively harmful to learning: 1) trying to
| visualize the dots and dashes, and 2) practicing at speeds slower
| than encountered on the air.
|
| The best way to learn, according to the experts, is by learning
| to directly associate the sound that a letter makes with that
| letter. This takes lots of rote memorization at first, but it
| trains your brain to copy code "on autopilot," which is exactly
| what you want for something like this.
|
| I liken it to music: musicians who learn to play by ear take the
| time to learn chords, scales, and intervals. It's a slog to start
| with and takes hours upon hours of boring practice. But once
| competent, they can play most pieces of music after one or two
| listens with only a little "noodling" to figure out the easiest
| 90% of the song.
|
| I don't _think_ I'll ever learn CW well enough to do it in a
| contest but I've gotten a fair amount of mileage out of
| https://lcwo.net/morsemachine. It's essentially the audio
| equivalent to flash cards.
| exitb wrote:
| Another word of warning is that sadly, this knowledge doesn't
| seem to stick if left unexercised. Few years ago I used this
| website to get good enough to be able to copy callsigns from
| real radio. Now I would have trouble to recall more than a few
| letters.
| zamadatix wrote:
| It'd be interesting to see how quickly relearning it to ~the
| same level would be in terms of % of time spent originally.
|
| I found something similar after going through several
| different keyboard layouts ~15 years ago. It turned out it
| only took a few hours for it to all come back so I make sure
| to use Qwerty and Dvorak at least once a year in case I ever
| need them (I landed on a 3rd).
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| As is true with nearly any language. I originally got my ham
| license back in 1988 when I was a kid (was actually
| surprised/happy I could remember my original callsign and use
| that to look up my registration date). I got up to the 13 WPM
| needed to pass the General license back then, but then I
| eventually lost interest, especially when I went to college
| and the Internet (and especially the Web) was in its early
| stages. I sadly can hardly remember any of the codes these
| days.
| ozim wrote:
| I would say this is how one should learn any foreign language.
| Daviey wrote:
| There's also this resource from Google,
| https://morse.withgoogle.com/learn/
|
| You can also set up morse as an Android keyboard.
| IamDaedalus wrote:
| I forced myself to use morse code keyboard for a week and it
| was fun but I switched back to the normal keyboard
|
| might go back and do that again
| dbcurtis wrote:
| Pretty cool, I will be using this. But.... the letters are spaced
| out more than they should be. I got the word in two tries at
| 40WPM... and I assure you that I can not take code
| conversationally at 40WPM.. or even contest exchanges at 40WPM. I
| got two letters on the first playback, and the remaining three on
| the second playback. Two attempts was very helpful, and the extra
| letter spacing is also a "crutch". I consider my "true"
| proficiency at the level where 25-28 WPM contest exchanges (where
| you know the format ahead of time) is comfortable. Conversational
| code I would have to slow down.
| CITIZENDOT wrote:
| This is great, I'm going to start learning Morse code because of
| this.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| Another Morse code learning resource, for those the seriously
| want to learn and build Morse code skills, is the CW Academy run
| by CW Ops. https://cwops.org/ Basically a friendly crew of
| skilled CW operators that want to invite more people to the
| party, and do online classes and mentoring.
| threeio wrote:
| Very much this... and the Long Island CW Club
| (https://longislandcwclub.org) which has similar classes
| pugworthy wrote:
| It's fun to see this. My father (W7AAI) recently passed away, and
| we were just going through his QSL cards from the 60's and 70's.
| I never learned Morse code, but spent a lot of time hearing him
| using it as a kid. He first got his license in 1955, and my time
| in his HAM shack, playing with teletype tape, oscilloscopes and
| other such things was really pivotal for me becoming a CS major
| but handy with a soldering iron.
|
| If you're curious about what it was like, here's something he
| wrote up in 2020 about his experiences with HAM radio in the
| early days. I see now I shared this once before on a YC post
| about QSL cards...
|
| https://www.qcwa.org/w7aai-29229.htm
| bityard wrote:
| Sorry for your loss. I enjoyed the write-up. It's fascinating
| to see how much ham radio has changed. It used to be the height
| of novelty (and expense!) for the privilege of talking to
| someone across the world in real time via dits and dahs. A lot
| of people don't realize that even though telephones existed in
| that time, they were really only practical for local or
| regional calls.
| lutusp wrote:
| For some mysterious reason I have a much easier time sending
| accurate Morse code than receiving it. This was true when I first
| acquired a ham license in the 1950s and it's still true today
| (KE7ZZ).
|
| I was able to solve a game example at 30 WPM, but it's only five
| characters repeated, not so difficult. And as someone here has
| commented, one's code skill declines through neglect.
|
| But, as with Latin and a few other examples, once a given skill
| has lost all relevance to modern life, my interest increases.
|
| A link to my Morse code page:
| https://arachnoid.com/morse_code/index.html
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| I called CQ with my horn in a traffic jam and got into a pileup,
| heh. Just kidding. A ham can dream.
|
| Hmm maybe I should hook up my iambic paddle to the horn somehow.
| I'd need a keyer of course.
| ozim wrote:
| The other day there was a game where person wanted to play
| something while in the meetings without turning on the screen.
|
| First thing I thought instead of random buzzes to reply to -
| trying to replicate it would be cool to buzz morse code and then
| having person tap back what was buzzed.
| anotheraccount9 wrote:
| I recall listening to a cassette that would go through the
| alphabet, like a song. I tried hard, but never really got the
| hang out of it. But this time, Morsle would build the bridge more
| easily.
| nidegen wrote:
| Nice!
|
| If there are some morse enthusiasts here, I am developing an
| iPhone app for morse encoding and decoding with flashlight and
| camera.
|
| If you want to test it, use:
| https://testflight.apple.com/join/ZXrZgfvd
|
| Thanks for any feedback:)
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