2020-04-11 - Morse 
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The last few days i've been playing around with getting a bit of a 
better understanding on morse code. I stumbled upon some morse 
trainer, and had some fun playing around memorizing and keying out 
single characters, and now i'm kinda fascinated by it.

This is one of those skills i always wanted to learn a bit more 
about. In fact it's on my imaginary bucket-list of analog skills 
i'd like to be able to do. Other items on this bucket-list are;
 
- improving navigational skills with compass and sextant
- getting astronomical skills on star positions and constellations
- Figuring out how to use a slide rule
- First aid skills

Now my first experiences with morse are a bit mixed. It seems i can 
memorize the alphabet fairly easily, and i can even key out 
individual characters in a very slow fashion. However, when trying 
to train my hearing using the Koch's method on lcwo.net, i find 
myself in great difficulty recognizing the characters at a 20/10 
word speed. Gosh it goes so fast, and my brain certainly has 
difficulties figuring out what they heck is going on.

It's pretty awesome when you think about it though. I think what 
i'm experiencing now is a bit like having to learn 'reading' when i 
was a kid. It's hard to imagine, how i thought about the world 
before i could read. But at some point in school you're introduced 
to letters and the alphabet, and the sound of these individual 
characters. And everything is new.

And after some time carefully observing each individual character, 
you slowly learn to recognize characters, and eventually you're 
able to read very small words, and are even able to copy some. And 
as a kid you start to recognize characters and words at some point. 
My friend has a young kid, who's now reading every sign he sees on 
the street. Figuring out every individual character, constructing a 
word, and asking his dad for confirmation. That's how you learn, 
and it's awesome. 

However, as an adult after having been able to read for so many 
years it's nearly impossible not to read things. I cannot look at a 
character or a word and merely wonder about its shape without 
interpreting it automatically. 

So it's pretty cool to place myself in a situation again where i 
know nothing, where everything is new, and i can slowly try to make 
sense of things. Maybe after some time i can recognize some 
individual characters in a stream of dits and dah's. Maybe after 
some time i could become proficient enough that i can 'hear' words 
without having to focus deeply and taking half an hour to figure 
out what i just heard. 

But i find listening very difficult now, so for the moment i'm 
having a hard time to figure out the difference between K,M U,R...
It's awesome, i feel like a five year old again. :)