Using Duolingo daily

Byrichard
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Duolingo is a mobile phone app that allows you to learn a number of languages whenever you have a few minutes. In so doing you can learn several minutes at a time, when commuting for example, or you can learn as a focused 20 minute session.

The Variety of learning options

Listening

There are two methods of learning by listening. The first option is that you hear a word or phrase and you have to select the correct one from a list. The second version is that you write the correct word with the correct spelling. This can also include listening and writing it in English

Images

Images are shown and you have to select the one that corrects to the word that you are looking for. It allows you to familiarise yourself with the word and the associated image. This is useful for beginners

Pairing Words

With this option you see German words and English words. The aim is to pair the English and German word together. When you do not know a word you can do this by a process of elimination, removing the words you are unsure about and then confirming them as the last pair. Conversely you can also pair a word you just learned, to push yourself.

Typing Phrases

In these situations you will either read the sentence in English and type it in German, see the sentence written and type it in German, or see it in German and write it in English. I find this one useful because it forces you to remember both the spellings and the conjugations of words.

Pronunciation

Finally, we have the pronunciation exercises. In this case, you see the sentence written down and you hear it. You then repeat the sentence you heard and you see the translation appear.

The Game

As you practice you will make mistakes. With this app you have the opportunity to make five mistakes before you have to take a break. The hearts replenish at a rate of one every four to five hours. You can replenish your hearts either by “practising” what you have learned or by watching an advert. Practice sessions are fun compared to watching adverts. These practice sessions help consolidate what you are learning.

Another aspect of the game is that it encourages you to practice every day by offering badges for consistency, getting a certain number of options right in a row and more. It also allows you to compete against friends by getting more “xp“.

Web Interface

The web interface is simple and intuitive to use. It’s a quick and simple way of getting through the modules efficiently. It also reduces the amount of adverts that you see. I found the web interface much faster to use.

Playing with languages you know

I played with French as an English speaker and English as a French speaker and I became frustrated. As a native in both languages I know that phrases would be understood by anyone I converse with. It expects you to give a specific sentence or phrase. With AI and a broader range of correct phrases this problem could be resolved.

Playing with languages you are unfamiliar with.

I tried Romanian, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Polish and other languages that I am unfamiliar with. With these languages, I really struggle. I find that many of the words are hard to remember. They do not sound like words from other languages. With time and perseverance, you could build your base and progress from there.

Progress Quiz

I started writing this blog post two or three weeks ago and since then I have progressed with studying the German language. I find that I can do entire lessons without making mistakes on some occasions and keep making mistakes in others. With lessons, you feel you’re getting to know a language but thanks to the progress quiz you get a true appreciation of whether you have learned a module or not.

I felt that I was learning German and that I was starting to understand a lot more but there is a considerable gap between what I understand and what I can express. Taking the quiz demonstrates that I still need to spend more time practising, and learning.

The Words Tab

The Words tab shows you the words that you have practiced and how fresh they are in your memory. With this tab you will be advised on when to practice words once again. if you practice one or two modules at a time then this word tab would be useful. I made the mistake of spending hours a day going through modules and as a result I see that I should practise specific words but I don’t remember which lesson tree they’re under.

I’d like to be able to click on a word and see which lessons those words are in. It would make refreshing my memory easier.

Conclusions

I started writing this blog post several weeks ago and wanted to play with more features from the website. I have now been using the website and app for about two months and I feel that my understanding of German has improved. I find that I am now in the habit of praciticing for an hour every single day. I supplement this practice with listening to Echo Der Zeit, a Swiss German current affairs news program, broadcast daily.

Learning via this website is about persistance rather than speed. You can rush through every module on the tree to boost your vocabulary but I found that in so doing the word tab becomes useless as you forget which word is in which module. I am now working my way through methodically, trying to get the modules to stay within my mind, rather than be forgotten within a few days. It’s easy to do from anywhere, including when waiting for a train (which I haven’t done in months) or waiting for food to be ready, which I have done. I like the app and website enough to be using it two months later.

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Working Towards a Goal

Working Towards a Goal

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I am currently working towards a goal and I am struggling. I am struggling to stay focused when I follow online courses because I find that my mind strays. I am also struggling because the topic is so broad that there are hundreds of things you can learn but you need to be focused.


I am also struggling because although many people live in denial about the pandemic it is still thriving. The positivity check, for a disease, to be considered under control is less than five percent. COVID, after five years is still at ten or more percent. This gets in the way of going to conferences, meetups and other networking opportunities.


Out of pandemic I would volunteer for many events for two reasons. The first is that I’m shy, and by volunteering I force myself to go to events. The second reason is price. If you volunteer you pay for the train or parking but nothing else. This is a good way of going to conferences, meeting people, and coming across interesting ideas.


If I felt comfortable with what I am learning at the moment I would spend four or more hours a day on it. I would spend two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon.


Recently my progress keeps stalling because I don’t have the solitude that I need to be at my most productive. I sit down, start to focus and then noise interrupts what I am working on and I stall.


This isn’t an uncommon problem. Usually writers complain about this but I am not a writer.


What I find hard with this situation is that I am a good worker, when I am in contract. The problem is that contracts are hard to find and they end after six to nine months, and finding the next one is a struggle. That’s why I’m working on changing career. That’s why I try to write at least a few lines of code every day. At the moment I am working on being at ease with Laravel and PHP and it’s progressing.


The progress is not as fast as I’d like, because I don’t have as much solitude as I would like to make good progress.


I am close to reaching my goal.

Trying To Read Nested Data From a JSON File

Byrichard

Over the last two evenings I have been attempting to read nested data. I have tried to parse the data and other methods but without success. I have browsed the web to try to find solutions but for now I am getting stuck. Learning is also about trial and error, and knowing where to find the right information. For now I am lost. At the end of this process I will be more self-sufficient.


Learning by watching courses is good, and we do make progress, but it doesn’t require us to think about problems in the same way. We learn to follow instructions but not problem solve, and that’s what I want to learn. So far I have spent two hours on this specific problem, and I could easily remove a few lines and it would no longer be nested. I will persevere.


Playing with Comments


Since I am trying and failing to accomplish what I am trying to accomplish I am now using comments to mark what I still need to achieve, whilst looking for solutions and ideas.


Prototypes and CSS


I have also continued studying prototypes, factories and more. I see some overlap between this topic and CSS. For those with experience and time both allow for more depth and complexity than is comfortable when you are starting out. The short version is that with prototypes and factories you can cut down on the lines of code in a project, making it easier to read, and lighter.


The Pandemic Continues


It is now the weekend but the pandemic is still alive and well. Governments are deciding not to do anything to stop the spread, preferring to tell people that for vaccinated people it’s no worse than the flu, whilst ignoring the fact that children from 0-18 have not been vaccinated. There is a certain degree of indifference by governments that is hard to observe. They expect the next few weeks to be difficult, and that’s as far as their sense of responsibility goes. It is a challenge not to be disappointed by this attitude.


A Desire to Dump WordPress

A Desire to Dump WordPress

Byrichard

In theory WordPress is a fantastic tool to write a blog, without needing to learn to code. In practice I am tired of WordPress and I have been tired of WordPress ever since they started to use blocks, and ever since I noticed that it uses React. 


React and Meta


I know that PHP was developed by Facebook, and that we use it all the time, but I also know that React was developed by Facebook as it was morphing into Meta, the destroyer of the independent web. Instagram and Whatsapp were destroyed by Facebook, as the monopolist took over those accounts. 


Blocks and ClassicPress


I am not alone to feel this way. I see that there is the ClassicPress community. I tried ClassicPress and it works, but it feels like time could be better spent with a different project, that diverges, and has a more concrete direction than “We don’t like blocks”. I am oversimplifying. I realise it’s more than that. 


Hugo


After playing with Hugo for a week or two I think that this would be a very nice solution. I don’t need comments, and I don’t need a complicated backend for the type of blogging I do. I believe that Hugo would easily fill the gap left behind by WordPress. 


Dormant WordPress


If and when I do make this change I won’t convert my WordPress blog to Hugo. I would simply create a new directory and write blog posts that would go there. I am still not certain of my strategy. For now the goal is to have my static website running Hugo cleanly, before then adding the blogging section. Within the next week I should be ready to make the leap. 


And Finally


Before WordPress I tried plenty of different content management tools and services, as can be seen in the wayback machine.  I am migrating, primarily because I want to try something new. I want to learn how to use a new tool and expand my skills, rather than have them plateau. The reason for the switch can be described in a single word. Curiousity. I am curious to see how I can use this “new” tool, to blog, with a different workflow. 

Learning by Trial And Error

Learning by Trial And Error

Byrichard

Every day or two I see people post about how the Fediverse should be simplified to welcome new people. It’s a shame. Signing up for a fediverse server is easy. It’s the same process as for every site. The biggest difference is that you’re signing up for a privately owned, crowd sourced community instance. The instances vary slightly from mastodon to firefish to ClassicPress to WordPress but at their core they are the same. It’s just the community that changes, but even that can be the same if you migrate from one instance to another.

Experimenting

A core aspect of the World Wide Web is that it is a platform where people can experiment with ideas, community tools and more. If you need a manual then you are stuck on websites like Twitter and Facebook, rather than exploring what the World Wide Web has to offer. You’re stuck in a silo.

It worries me that people want to simplify the Fediverse, to write guide books and tutorials. If you spend an hour or two experimenting you’ll understand how things work with ease. I don’t think we need manuals for everything in life, especially not social networks on the fediverse.

The Case for Manuals and Tutorials

There are moments when manuals and tutorials are important. That’s when you’re trying to use something that is not as intuitive as you had hoped. WordPress is plug and play and requires no manual. It works like every other CMS works, so it’s easy to pick up. Hugo is easy to pick up, but you might need to RTFM for one or two functionalities.

The moment you really need a manual or instructions is when you’re experimenting with Angular, Laravel, 11ty, Jekyll and other platforms. It’s when you don’t know what the options are that you need a manual. With the Fediverse all the answers are easy to find. You just need to spend a few minutes looking for them. I suspect that chatGPT, Bard and Bing AI can help you when you have questions.

With Hugo I was able to create pages and get a table of contents with relative ease. With 11ty I got a little stuck so I felt the need for a tutorial. I know what I want to do, and I know how I expect it to work, but it’s not like other solutions. that’s why I decided that for 11ty I would use a learning resource, or more, to experiment with, and learn how to use the tool. I am not against manuals and instructions. I like to read the fantastic manuals, when I get stuck. I even like to ask AI for help in some cases, because I can ask a tailored question and get a tailored answer.

The Case Against Manuals

The more time I spend on Mastodon and the Fediverse, the more it feels like a waste of time. I love the concept, and the freedom we have on the website. What I don’t like is that people want to write manuals and instructions to make the same mistakes as people made, on mastodon, and if that is the case, then I have no reason to stick around. Every day people discuss how to use hashtags, bully people into writing alt text for imagess and encourage thousands or tens of thousands of people to follow individual accounts. If that is what people want then there is little reason for using Mastodon, rather than Twitter. Twitter has the community of friends amassed from 2006 to 2023. The Fediverse is a network of strangers.

I Want the Community to Teach Itself

I want communities to learn by participating, rather than reading. I don’t want people to read a manual about how to use the fediverse, I want them to learn by trial and error, and by what feels good, rather than by doing what is expected. The more time I spend on the fediverse, seeing people speak about better onboarding, the more it feels kitsch, and the more I want to close the tabs.

Experimenting with Eleventy

Since I was getting stuck with eleventy I decided to follow Learn Eleventy From Scratch. As I said, it’s not that I am opposed to learning from guides, manuals, or documentation. I like to learn from these sources, when trial and error doesn’t yield the results that I am looking for, or where trial and error takes more time than is reasonable to figure out.

What I want to do is simple. I want to have one directory for posts, and so far that works quite easily, but I also want another folder that acts as an archive. That is where I am getting stuck, and that is where a manual can streamline my learning process. It’s when I see that I have gaps in understanding that I use manuals to fill them.

And Finally

In my experience the people who write manuals on how to use social media websites are utilitarian, rather than humanists. They encourage people to develop a utilitarian approach to social media and that’s what I fear, and object to.

When you look for books about blogging none of them are about the philosophical or intellectual process. They are all about monetisation, which is fantastic, if you want to be a spammer, but awful if you want to be a humanist. I blog to explore ideas, concepts, and speak of cycling, walking and climbing experiences. If I followed the guide books my blog would be aimed at making a fortune, rather than developing and elaborating ideas.

I will always try something new, without RTFMing (Reading the fantastic Manual), before getting stuck and following a tutorial. What has changed is that now I am learning through manuals, instructions and more, rather than online tutorials. I am learning independently. I am a step further along now.

Playing With Pelican – A Static Blog Website

Playing With Pelican – A Static Blog Website

Byrichard

When looking at Codeberg as a European alternative to github I came across mentions of Pelican, a static blog generator. Yesterday I spent several hours setting it up and playing. Whilst playing with it I saw some opportunities. 


By default Pelican is designed to have one category per blog post. For small websites this is fine. It encourages people to focus on three to five topics, and ensure that each topic is clearly visible in the nav bar at the top of the page. 


When I imported two different wordpress blogs I had success is importing the blog posts, but a failure when it came to the nav bar. 


How Does Pelican Work


Pelican can use html, reStructuredText or markdown. It wants to know the date, tags, category, slug, authors, summary and more for each page. Once a page has this information, as well as some content you type “pelican content” and it will generate the static website for you. You can then test the site with pelican listen and check that the website is displaying and working as desired. 


Categories


If I wrote a blog post about hiking in Vaud, Switzerland I would have that blog in “hiking”, “Switzerland” and “Vaud”. Pelican combined the three categories and created a nav page. The result is that I had a bloated nav bar. 


When I enquired about parsing the categories I was told that Pelican wanted to have one category per page, intentionally. They also told me that a plugin allows you to create more categories.  This plugin is quick and easy to install and implement. 


More Categories


With More Categories you can add several categories per blog post, but you can also add a hierarchy. If you write a post about hiking in Vaud, Switzerland, you can have hiking, vaud, switzerland, as a flat hierarchy. You can also have “sports/hiking” and “Switzerland/Vaud” as subcategories. This opens up the possibility of creating a nuanced static website. 


Importing a Website


You can import content from another source by using pelican import. You can choose from Blogger, Wordpress etc. I experimented with importing from Wordpress and it  worked well, except for the issues I mentioned earlier. 


Streamlining an HTML Site


My website is split into three parts


• The legacy HTML section


• the main blog


• the photo blog


After the two tests I ran yesterday I came to the conclusion that, for now, I will keep using wordpress for the blogs. The reason I think Pelican is interesting for me is that it can read html and the legacy part of my website is html. The challenge with legacy code is keeping the navigation and other parts up to date each time you make small changes. With Pelican I hope to delegate navigation creation. By ensuring that each page has the correct meta data in the header I can then get Pelican to regenerate the website with a navigation that is easier to keep up to date. 


Measuring Success


If I am successful then I will have the website imported into Pelican and I will have a geography, environmental systems, Ancient Rome, and other sections and one or two sections will have themes that are specific to them. 


List of other Python Static Website Generators

Shifting from Tutorials to Practical Experience

Shifting from Tutorials to Practical Experience

Byrichard

Since getting the Raspberry Pi devices my shift has moved from following tutorial after tutorial to experimenting with setting up a number of server projects fron Home Assistant to Nextcloud to Photoprism and Immich to name a few. In the process I have instantiated and then pulled down plenty of instances before finally deciding to keep certain instances up and running for longer, to see whether I can use them. I also experimented with CUPS and set up a printer/scanner for remote use.

Tools That work

Nextcloud, Photoprism, Home Assistant and Pi Hole work well so I can now use them without thinking about them too much. Both Ad Guard and Immich were slightly less successful but this might be due to fatigue, and running two things at once. The issue with Ad Guard is that it seemed to block 192.168.1.1 which I need to be able to access. I also noticed that when I switched things around Windows stopped being able to see local devices.

Immich Potential

I see a lot of potential in Immich but there is one flaw. If your library is too large it loses the ability to crawl all the files and upload them before timing out. I got to 14,000 images backed up, and the last 4000 are currently in limbo, waiting to recognise that they can be moved from the phone to the Immich server. With Nextcloud and Photoprism I was able to transfer all files from the phone to both services and now I can add the latest images with ease.

An Experimental Close Call

This morning I had a close call. I plugged in a one terabyte drive to the Pi with Photoprism and Immich. My plan was to mount the external hard drive, move the files from the SD card library to the external drive library and then to change the .env file to read from the external hard drive rather than the local drive. This didn’t work.

After some quick searches and practicing my AI using skills I had set things up as I thought I wanted them and started to copy from one location to the other. I wanted to check on progress a few minutes later but noticed that I was copying between two partitions rather than between two drives. I aborted the copy. No data was lost.

That’s why you experiment in a context where it doesn’t matter, and why you don’t assume that data is safe until it is backed up off site once, and locally twice.

In the worst case scenario I would have lost my Photoprism and Immich instances.

The Postponed Experiment

Before the setback described above my idea was to see whether the Android App would allow me to backup photos from Google Photos to Immich. It can’t. It only sees what is on the phone locally, not online. For the second part of the experiment I wanted to copy images from Google Takeout to Immich using Immich Go.

If Immich detects duplicates it will mark them as duplicates and throw them away. The reason for which I want to experiment with the tool is that I have eight hundred one gig files to get through, and to do this manually will take more than five minutes. I also need at least a terabyte of space free on another drive, so that when the files are unzipped and added to immich there is enough space for the task to complete successfully.

I want to experiment with the Uploads folder that I noticed in Immich, as well as Immich go.

The Concern

My concern with unzipped Google Photos files is that they will have lost exif and other data so Immich will import them as being created tomorrow or the day after rather than the day they were actually created, along with exif data for location data, camera used, and more.

Immich Go is meant to read the image file and the relevant JSON file to ensure that the relevant metadata is attached to the relevant image. iPhoto and Google Photos tend to strip this data to make migrations more difficult.

And Finally

Tutorials are great for building a good foundation but it’s by playing with practical examples that we learn to think about things in the right way. We consolidate what we learn both through repetition, as I did with Nextcloud, or by finding the right packages for docker and a specific OS, before changing OS and getting Docker to work on that instance. It’s about encountering an error and knowing how to fix it.

My next challenge will be to install Immich, Nextcloud and Photoprism on a single system.

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