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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Assimil is a great way to throw yourself into the language. Each lesson is in the form of a conversation with audio and the pdf has the text along with the translation.

    Listen to the lesson without reading the text first. This gets you used to the sound of the language. Then read the text, then text with audio, and finally read the translation along with whatever notes on grammar (don’t focus too much on the grammar aspects when you are first starting out), neither on spellings. Later on you’ll be asked to go back to earlier lessons and reproduce the text. The first phase is to internalise the language. You can read the recommended Assimil way of learning and adapt the steps to something that suits you.

    Assimil works well along with Language Transfer for me. Assimil is more immersive while Language Transfer is more explanatory.

    I find that music is also a great way for me to learn new words. Once I listen enough times to a song I like, I start humming along, maybe repeat a word or two. The important thing is to not stress yourself out trying to sing along to everything. Maybe there is a catchy chorus or bridge section that is memorable. That is good enough to form associations with words. In this, I find pop songs are a better genre because they are catchy.

    Something else I do is have a notebook where the only rule I have for myself is: no using my native language. I try to explain new words to myself using a sketch or whatever basic words I have already learnt. Don’t worry if you can’t draw well, neither can I. But I can draw something that looks like a spoon or a hill. Then I label them, and bam I’ve already learnt two new words. To build on that, I can draw a stick figure on the hill - this has taught me the verb climbing. You get the general idea. Just don’t stress yourself out trying to journal every new word you come across. Be creative and you’ll have fun.






  • I switched after development ended on the package manager I was using on neovim. I didn’t at that moment want to simplify my vimconfig, so I looked into helix.

    Helix highlights the action you take, so if for example, you are deleting 5 lines, you select the lines first then hit delete. Sometimes the vim actions end up taking fewer keystrokes though. And I still prefer some ways vim does things. And I don’t always agree with the kakoune inspiration of helix (I haven’t used kakoune, just going by what the docs say) - for example, movement always selects text which I then have to unhighlight.

    But the biggest reason I stuck to helix was sane LSP defaults out of the box with minimal config. I was tired of having to fix LSP related bugs in my vim config after package updates.

    TLDR: saner defaults for helix + lazy to fix my bloated vimconfig.









  • If you don’t mind paying, Protonmail. I pay €12 per month for mail and VPN combined however it is cheaper if you only want the email option. I haven’t used Gmail in about three years now.

    Degoogling is a long and difficult process. I highly suggest you start with small steps. For example, you could start using Invidious to watch Youtube videos. It is definitely not without bugs and you will run into issues. Change your search engine to Duckduckgo or Brave or whatever else you prefer. For general searches, these are good enough. Unfortunately, for addresses and navigation, Google Maps doesn’t have a good enough competitor that I know of. I urge you to make Firefox your daily driver if you are still using Chromium-based ones. I have Brave browser as an alternative for sites like banking or to access Maps or Google search. Start an alternate Protonmail account while still using Gmail. Be warned though that the free tier has 500MB, the paid tier 500GB.

    If you want to go full hardcore, look into Graphene or CalyxOS as a replacement for your Android. I specifically bought myself a Pixel phone so I can get a degoogled OS for my primary phone. I still have a secondary phone running Android for banking and paying which I turn off when I do not use it. Look into Shelter to freeze apps. For example, Uber doesn’t need to know your whereabouts when you are not specifically looking for a cab.

    But please, please, DO NOT start doing everything all at once or you will get overwhelmed. I now almost fully use open source stuff, and I pay and donate for services. I think this is the only way to show support for the projects you love and to have a voice against big tech/ad tech.



  • I go back to World of Tanks every once in a while but it is impossible to enjoy it even though I want to. The concept is great, there are tactics involved, but the skill ceiling is just too damn high. So now whenever I get the urge to play, I instead watch a couple of streamers. Skill for his entertaining streams and well, skill (but he gets annoying when he starts raging about not being able to achieve his personal goals), and Dez for the generally chill vibes.

    World of Tanks would have been a great game had it not been plagued with the entire pay to win aspect. And don’t get me started on the whole crew training and retraining nonsense. I hate that aspect of the game, and still don’t understand it. Do I keep the trained crew in a tank I enjoy playing or move them onto the next tier tank and then have terrible stats on the new crew and lose interest in the tank I started enjoying? Uff!