I'm pretty confident in my hiragana reading and "deciphering" capabilities. I've now finally clicked the learn button on katakana in renshuu. In essence, katakana is just a sharper version of hiragana with some mild differences here and there. Even though I only know about 20% of the katakana alphabet, if you were to throw a large block of Japanese text at me, I'd be able to differentiate hiragana, katakana and kanji from one another with a good accuracy.
You might have noticed the Japanese text in the cover art for these posts. The text isドビドピ /dobidopi/, the closest match to "DvidPi" in Japanese. You might have also noticed it's written in katakana. Katakana is useful for foreign words, while hiragana is made for native words. This allows Japanese speakers to tell apart English-isms in Japanese text. This doesn't mean katakana is used only for foreign words though!
I've been introduced to small kana! Sutegana, as they're called, are just smaller versions of certain kana. For example: あぁ. Both of these are /a/, however, the smaller one is used in slang and creative writing.
I don't have much else to say. I'm actively revising hiragana and katakana while pushing new kana into my head. Somehow, I'm keeping up.