What I've been doing since finishing six Duolingo courses

My Duolingo subscription has ended, and I won't be renewing it. At first when I finished six courses a few months ago, I was doing the German refresh exercises. Then I realized I was tired of playing that game, so I started reading more foreign-language sources and watching Easy German, Easy French, and Easy Spanish. 

I also spend time practically every day looking at headlines on Twitter and translating the ones that I understand or am interested in. News in other languages is really hard, even just the headlines. Sometimes I will look at a German headline, for instance, and will perhaps understand the first couple of words, then it will all break down as I continue. I keep reading German like I would read a Romance language. But German puts their infinitives at the end or they split them, and they also don't use prepositions and possessives like the Romance languages do. So as my eye follows along, my mind gets stuck. But yesterday, I managed to translate some German, in addition to Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese tweets.

I also finished writing a draft of a novella. I started on June 1 and finished it on July 11. I was ready to start revising it right away, but then stepped back, realizing that I should restructure the story, so I'm currently doing that. 

I'm continuing to take a French class at the Alliance Française; I started last year, and it is fantastic. The teacher is highly trained and is a native French and English speaker who was born here but grew up in France, so we learn the language as well as the culture. I've realized that it's very important to not only learn the correct words and grammar, but to learn about the country as well. It makes the class more interesting and I'm motivated to find out more about France, where I've never been. Sometimes I look at my brother's old French college textbook to brush up on grammar and language structure, and of course, I have a long way to go. I think I'm going to try to go to France next year to study for a couple of weeks and travel, which I'm doing next month in Germany via Easy German. 

Unfortunately, my book-reading is down; I made the mistake of reading a few books at once, and each is very long, so I haven't finished any of them yet. So I'm concentrating on finishing one before my Germany trip. I've also been watching documentaries and British shows, watching NHK shows, and enjoying life outside of Duolingo. 

Duolingo got me back into intense language-learning, and I haven't stopped. I feel like I'm where I was years ago in the early days of this blog, when my life was more language-focused. This is probably one of the best years of my life.

p.s. the e-book version of my debut novel is still at Amazon, and the price for the print version has been reduced: buy at the Eckhartz Press site.

I finished the Duolingo Portuguese course!

A couple of weeks ago, I said that I was studying Portuguese more intensely and thought I would be done with the Duolingo course more towards June. But I decided to try to finish the course by Easter, which was yesterday, and I managed to finish it last night. So I got to the finish line by the end of March, and now it's the beginning of April, a fresh start for another pursuit. 

Since the beginning of the year, I've finished the Japanese and Portuguese courses. But I don't think Duolingo really cares if we finish; it seems like they want us to stay mired in endless lessons because they keep changing and extending their courses. While I'm very glad I've attained a couple of major language goals, I don't really want to use Duolingo as much anymore. My paid account ends in July and I am not going to renew the subscription.

I wasn't planning on saying anything negative, but the Duolingo admins blocked my post about it on an online forum. I'd posted an image and wrote two sentences about it, but they said that violated their rules because they wanted a more robust written description. I thought, okay, I finished a course. That's a big deal; why aren't they accepting that as-is? They're constantly throwing out stats saying how rare such engagement is, but when you actually achieve something, they downplay it, not just in discussions but in the app. They celebrate tiny wins but don't care about the larger ones. So I wrote a longer description and was not blocked when I posted it again, but there was a bot answer that told people how they should engage with my post. 

I've been studying languages and teaching ESL for several years. I'm obviously really into language and have kept this blog going for almost 20 years. But a bot blocking me, then responding to posts (not just mine) to tell people what they should say, in addition to an app that keeps moving the goal lines, is sort of crass. That's why I'm way more appreciative of what Easy German is doing. I'll be doing a post about them in the future. But in the meantime, yes, I'm happy that I learned a lot and finished two courses, and will still engage with Duolingo a bit every day, but I'm not going to promote them anymore, even to my students.

MasterClass isn't a "class"

Towards the end of last year, someone asked if I wanted to be gifted an "all-access" pass to MasterClass. They had a deal where if one person bought a pass they could offer another pass to someone else at a reduced price (I forgot the details, but it seemed affordable). It's not like I was motivated by the names of the "instructors" because I hadn't consumed all their media or read their work; in fact, I'd only read one book out of all the blockbuster writers, and I'd pretty much watched none of the TV shows they'd written. I'd seen one movie that one of them had written, and I didn't like it. So overall, I wasn't buying in because I wanted to know the backstory of their creations that I'd consumed, because I was hardly familiar with their work; I wanted to know how people had done something that brought them incredible wealth and approval, and I'd figure I'd learn something.

Yes, I've learned things after watching several videos, but I feel like I've just been watching professionally produced videos instead of "taking a class." There are downloadable materials with exercises, but I could pretty much access such exercises anywhere; I have access to books, online articles, webinars, etc. that are all free. What I don't have access to are rich, successful, well-connected people who I can talk with, ask advice from, and who can actually give me feedback on my work.

Because I've been teaching for several years and have taken both credit and non-credit classes online, I know what a class is. Even in online classes, we always have access to the teacher if we have questions. Also, in an online class there are lessons (as there are "lessons" in MasterClass), but we submit our work for feedback, and subsequent discussions are with students *and* the teacher. We also have a substantial onlilne textbook or digital, multimedia package that we work with, so the online material is dynamic, as opposed to MasterClass, which is just videos and some PDFs to download.

In MasterClass, there are "discussions," but they're just posts from other students, and people aren't necessarily communicating with each other. They're just comments that people can like, reply to, or ignore, just like at YouTube or other social media. I've even seen questions in the discussions that were asked in MasterClass that went unanswered. So what's the point of discussions if no one is answering the questions? Also, the site expects students to communicate with each other. But they don't necessarily know a topic at the "master" level; that's why we're at the site, to learn from the masters. So while it's nice to see people from all over the world assembling, they aren't necessarily equipped to lead others; the pros should be facilitating instead of letting the students meander. Since the site is calling these "classes," why isn't the "instructor," or at least someone from their company/studio/etc. or even from the MasterClass site itself, interacting?

The only interaction I've seen are livestreams, which are infrequent. Basically, there are like a hundred "classes," but only a handful of "instructors" have bothered to communicate with "students," and they're only answering questions that are pre-approved by the site. When I joined, there were no livestreams, but I think because a lot of the world is at home, the site decided to offer them during this pandemic, so I don't know if they will continue that when people can go out again. After all, they convinced these uber-successful people to teach by paying them a mere six-figure amount, plus a percentage of sales of their classes, so I'm sure they don't want to make them work even more because they can probably make way more money from their real "jobs."

While some videos are very informative and insightful, I haven't been too thrilled with some of the writing ones. I won't name any names, but it seems like their advice isn't concrete. Some of them say they love what they do, rewriting is hard, etc., but it's really information I can get from a general interview or an article about writing, and I don't need a famous person to tell me that. All they're doing is sitting there and talking and reading from their work. What I've been impressed with are some of the non-writing pros: they literally take you through their process, whether it's showing you the software and equipment they use and taking you through their unique steps, or showing you their production meetings. They break it down for you. So even though I'm still critical of the lack of interaction, at least they're showing us instead of just talking at us like any video online.

I'm not saying my money was wasted, and I'm sure many people have enjoyed the site, but I'm being realistic when I say that I haven't been taking classes there, but rather just watching videos of very successful people who I'll never communicate with, who have created a bunch of handouts that I can read when the videos are over and my membership expires.

Nerdy site

The typical/average person would probably put me in the "nerdy/weird" category because I'm interested in ideas, language, thinking, reading, writing, observing, and basically doing things that aren't on a predictable track. But I was very surprised when a computer science student who's way smarter than I was at that age, or any age, asked me what a "differential equation" is. He said he had some downtime, and figured since I work on the same floor as extremely smart professors and grad students in an engineering department that I, too, understand science. I admitted my ignorance and he had no problem with that, but it made me curious just what it is.

What I found was an excellent site created by probably one of the smartest people in our generation, who hasn't merely jumped on the computer or data bandwagon, but was one of the early birds to that whole dominating phenomenon (or reality, since they're running the world at this point). 

The site is called My Physics Lab, and I assume anyone who studies that discipline knows it, because the computer student already knew about it when I told him that I found a decent explanation of differential equation there.

The creator of the site is Erik Neumann, who "was fortunate to get involved in the Macintosh software industry early on." He then describes an impressive resume of working in all kinds of computer stuff (my purposely non-technical word). Then, he "relearned calculus by doing all the problems in [his] old college text book and took further math classes at the University of Washington." He created the "website as a way to practice what [he] was learning," and he continues "to work on physics simulations, with several new ones in development." 

HUH? I'm still trying to figure out how to do basic things, like caulking a bathtub or avoiding bread. Meanwhile, Erik is creating *physics simulations* for the fun of it. Actually, you should check them out on the homepage...when you click on them they move/animate (for people like me, who just like sparkles and baubles). Or if you want the "explanations," you can look at the scientific/technical information. There's so much to describe, I took some screenshots because it's so incredible that this guy has done all this, in addition to his super-cerebral career/work, in addition to whatever else is going on in his life.

Billiards animation screenshot

Billiards explanation and other nerdy info

I'm so simple-minded that it didn't occur to me to try to create a gif to represent his creations, and I'm so tired from reading science that I don't even want to try at this point.

Anyway, way to go, Erik, and remember us commoners on the prairie out here.

Metrofiction is back

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably seen me mention the Metrofiction site, which was originally created a decade ago. John Deaver (who passed away in 2006), John Banas, MM Plude, and I met in a fiction writing class and formed a writing group. I decided to set up a website for the group, and called it Metrofiction since we all took the writing class in the city and I'd been living in the city for several years.

When the site was established, popular blogger Arthur Chrenkoff contacted me from Australia to find out about submitting a story. After his story was posted, he ended up getting his novel published!

I took the site down for a few years because I was getting more involved with radio and my podcast (which also meant I didn't post here as much), but decided to resurrect it because I'm working more in the language world again.

I also included John Deaver's story that he submitted to the original site. I wish he was still here!

I wish I knew more about this Japanese fan

I was looking online for Japanese kanji iPhone apps, and found some reviews at Zonjineko. I don't think there are that many anymore, since the review is from a couple of years ago, but the post made me look around his site. It seems to be great for Japanese language and cultural info. Unfortunately, he doesn't say much about himself in his bio, but I wonder if Japanese is just a hobby or part of his work. He goes there (often?) and takes photos, including signs, which is my personal passion (I take pics around Chicago and when I visit other places...which I really should post on Flickr and here), and it's just an interesting site all around.

Actually, he has a good post about not giving up studying Japanese, and in it, he uses the word "Mum" instead of "Mom", so I wonder if he's a Brit or part of that world.

Check it out--he's so organized and seems to consistently post substantial content, which I've been having trouble with lately :| He even has a newsletter you can subscribe to!

the BBC doesn't have a Japanese news section

I was talking to a Polish-born coworker the other day (he immigrated during his university years and became a US citizen) about good news sites, other than the Polish ones he reads, and he recommended the BBC. I agree; it's a great site with informative, multimedia features and has a good learning English section. I noticed that they offer news in several languages, but Japanese isn't there! I'm surprised...they have other Asian languages, including the ones that aren't widely spoken. Why there's no Japanese, I don't know.

Since Japanese wasn't there, I decided to check out the Portuguese section, which of course is easier to read than Japanese, even though I don't know all the words.

Another incredible feature at the site is learning languages! They have several, including Japanese, though I'm seriously interested in improving my German. At one point, my German ability wasn't bad, and now it's awful. I even took a trip there, and was eventually able to function in German, but now, I don't think I'd be able to manage it :(

I'm assuming the BBC is publicly funded...way to go and thank you very much for providing such a great service!

If you want to support Balinese

Alissa Stern from BasaBali, a site "encouraging the use of Balinese," contacted me after seeing my post about Tim Brookes' Endangered Language Project. She and some professors are working on "developing the first multimedia language materials for Balinese."

She says:

Although Balinese is not an endangered language, it is on sharp decline in the increasing shadow of English and Indonesian. Professor Hildred Geertz likens the richness of Balinese to Shakespearean English and 15th century Yiddush, but with only a million speakers left out of a
population of 3-4 million, it is quickly losing traction.

They started a kickstarter campaign "to try to
raise funds to pay the Balinese linguists, videographers, animators, and
anthropologists who are working with us."

So if you're interested in preserving Balinese, go to the campaign site to see a video and find out more. They have various reward levels for which you can receive a "thank you" gift for contributing.

Facebook confusion update

This summer, I discovered that I confused Facebook when I changed the display language to Japanese and my residence to non-American places. Then, to see what would happen, I changed again and saw Arabic and French ads.

Here's the most recent update: the display language is French, and I "reside" in Vietnam, so I currently see all French and Vietnamese ads. Confusing Facebook is fun! I've now decided to "move" from Vietnam to Thailand, so we'll see what pops up next. Stay tuned!

This guy was a genius

A lot of people throw the word "genius" around. I often hear that word overused in the radio biz, just because someone came up with silly jokes before anyone else, or can put together audio in an interesting way. That's not genius, it's talent. Talent is important and admirable, but genius is on a whole other level and requires extra-special brain power that seems to be exerted effortlessly.

The obituary of the creator of the e-book and founder of Project Gutenberg shows what a genius really is. Read it, and I think you'll agree.

I figured out how to download my Facebook album

I've been posting pictures of signs on Facebook, but realized that I should also post them on Flickr because it will allow me to share them publicly. And there's also a way to synch up Flickr with Facebook, so maybe I'll just post to Flickr from now on. I'll figure out the best way.

Anyway, I was going to do another blog post topic tonight, but it took me so long to find a decent Facebook album downloader, I want to post the results of my search here: PhotoLive. I installed the plugin on Chrome, but it's available for various browsers. I have no idea how it works on the other browsers, but it worked for me on Chrome. So I'm going to post that album on Flickr, and post the link here.

Try it...you'll like it (hopefully).

UPDATE: Tech blogger JP (Jiangpeng) Zhang told me that PhotoLive has discontinued its service (even though the link I have above still works). He has written a blog post about Seven ways to download your Facebook albums and photos.

Bilingual security

Rebelx sent this to me from a security site. This is some complicated security!

Language learning site

Oliver sent me a link to his free language learning site that has various European, and even some Asian, languages. I signed up initially for Japanese and added Portuguese, since it's such a hard language to pronounce.

There are a lot of features including audio, vocabulary lists, sentences, interactive quizzes, and more. The weak area is the "text" section: there are categories listed, but when I click on some of them, no text is there. But if I really want to understand Japanese texts, I can paste anything I find online into Popjisyo to see the meaning of words I don't know.

Anyway, check Oliver's site out--there's a lot of fun free stuff there.

This guy is *really* good at languages!

This guy has hit the big time: he speaks amazing Cantonese, and is already a sensation, so you probably know about him already. Now that he's been featured in the mainstream media, he's going to be even more of a star.

Another FB victory!

Over a week ago, I discovered that I managed to confuse Facebook, so the ads I saw were showing up in Japanese and German. Well I've done it again! Now the ads are in Arabic and French. Confounding Facebook is fun!

Google on my phone is confused too!

The other day, I celebrated my ability to confuse Facebook, and now Google maps on my phone is confused as well.

I was looking up a tourist town in the Google search function on my phone, and the results were in English, but when I clicked on a map of the town, it was in Dutch! Not only was the map in Dutch, but the top navigation menu and anything else on that page was in Dutch, too. So I clicked on "internet" on the top, and it took me to Dutch Google! At the bottom of the page, it offered me Google in English, as if I don't already have such a feature on my phone.

I have no idea why that happened--I don't know Dutch, and have never even studied it. And of course, I've never used that language on my phone.

Weird, but interesting! I wonder what else I can confuse?

I have confused Facebook

I have managed to confuse Facebook! Sometimes I change the display language from British English to French to Portuguese to Japanese. Most recently, I've been using Japanese, which helps me maintain my reading ability, unless I'm on an archaic computer that can't render it. Then all I see are boxes of symbols.

Basically, when I change the display language, some ads appear on the side of the page in that language. Usually I would see English *and* the other language, but today, I noticed that *all* the ads are in German and Japanese! No English at all!

I think I was able to achieve FB Confusion because I keep changing my city of residence. What I usually do is choose a weird-sounding name or an obscure place. So I guess Facebook assumes I'm not in the English speaking world anymore.

In other words, I won the FB battle!

the Brazilian Kraftwerk site is done

First of all, I was going to post something yesterday, but Blogger was down for a couple of days. Plus, my crazy work schedule caused me to get sick again--this time, I've had a very bad cold all week. It's totally my fault because I did way too much this year. So this week I've been taking it easy and will resume a better schedule next week. I will also resume language study, which was also compromised due to the cold.

Anyway, I'm here to say that the Brazilian Kraftwerk fan site has been discontinued, though they still have the archive (what they call the "old frozen website") posted online. This is the same website that I did a huge translation for, which ended up being heavily edited (I was not happy about it, but that was five years ago).

I have no idea why they discontinued it other than what the site says, for "personal reasons". They put a lot of work into that site and were very nice people. It's too bad they couldn't continue.

Maybe now I can repost my translation and the original text :o

A bit of Chinese in a sneaker blog

Kesan, the Chongqing-born Chinese teen who first made his appearance here as the funny Chinese clown, now has a blog where he posts pictures and words about sneakers. Well I'm happy to report that he included some Chinese in a post about Air Force 1 Year of the Rabbit sneakers. He said the design is inspired by 大白兔奶糖 = Big White Rabbit Milk Candy. Thanks for the translation, and enjoy your sneaker obsession :D

Korean history channel: Japanese dinosaurs