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TED Talks for the New Year

Here are TED Talks that will give you a guide to a successful year

How to learn anything

Power food for the brain

Secret to self-control

Don't be a jerk to yourself

Building your identity capital

Improving your body language

What your future self wants

Saying Yes

Habits of original thinkers

Become the person you can't imagine

Designing the life you want

Be your own life coach

How to talk so that people listen

Curiosity over ambition

Life is your biggest project

How to achieve your most ambitious goals

Game-Changing Sites for Writers

A recent search for a specific type of site to help me build new characters led me down a rabbit hole. Normally, that would make me much less productive, but I have found a treasure trove of websites for writers.

Bring Characters/Places to Life

There are a few different places you can use to create a picture of something entirely new. I love this site for making character pictures as references, instead of stock photos or whatever pops up on Google Images.

thispersondoesnotexist: every time you reload the page, this site generates a headshot of someone who doesn't exist. This is great if you're thinking about a character's personality or age and don't have specifics for their facial features yet.

Night Cafe: this is an AI art generator that takes your text prompt and generates an image for it. I tried it for various scenery, like "forest" or "cottage." It takes a minute for your requested photo to load, but no more than maybe five for the program to finish the picture.

Art Breeder: this website has endless images of people, places, and general things. Users can blend photos to create something new and curious visitors can browse/download those images without creating an account. (But if you do want to make an account to create your own, it's free!)

Find Random Places on Earth

You might prefer to set a story in a real-life environment so you can reference that place's weather, seasons, small-town vibe, or whatever you like. If that's the case, try:

MapCrunch: the homepage generates a new location each day and gives the location/GPS info in the top left of the screen. To see more images from previous days, hit "Gallery" in the top left.

Atlas Obscura: hover over or tap the "Places" tab, then hit "Random Place." A new page will load with a randomly generated location on the planet, provide a Google Maps link, and tell you a little bit about the place.

Random World Cities: this site makes randomly selected lists of global cities. Six appear for each search, although you'll have to look them up to find more information about each place. You can also use the site to have it select countries, US cities or US states too.

Vary Your Wording

Thesauruses are great, but these websites have some pretty cool perspectives on finding just the right words for stories.

Describing Words: tell this website which word you want to stop repeating and it will give you tons of alternative words that mean the same thing. It typically has way more options than other sites I use.

Reverse Dictionary: type what you need a word for in Reverse Dictionary's search box and it will give you tons of words that closely match what you want. It also lists the words in order of relevancy, starting with a word that most accurately describes what you typed. (There's also an option to get definitions for search results!)

Tip of My Tongue: this website is phenomenal. It lets you search for that word you can't quite place by a letter in it, the definition, what it sounds like, or even its scrambled letters. A long list of potential options will appear on the right side of the screen for every search.

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Hope this helps when you need a hand during your next writing session 💛

19/05/2022, Day 11

My main exams got over and I took a much needed break from anything study/university related. Went out, enjoyed the sun, caught up on some tv shows and ofc completed reading 2 books and began The Godfather.

I’m studying anatomy and physiology today. I also plan to post something on my insta page which has been dry for months now. And ofc I’m going to get back to playing the piano, my one true love. It’s gonna take me some time but oh god will it be worth it:))

Resources to keep me focused:

The picture to the left is from the website lifeat.io This website has a lot of different spaces ranging from cafés and libraries to nature and cityscape. It also has amazing anime and fantasy themed spaces like Harry Potter and Sherlock. They’re constantly adding more spaces and not only that, you have a to-do list, a note taking section, personal music section, a timer and a daily quote to keep you motivated.

I love this website ans they new additions they’re bringing adds on to the best of it.

I have added the link to the website but do dm me if it isn’t working.

Hope this is helpful. Here’s to having a productive day lovelies. <33

My New Favorite Chinese Dictionary Resource

A couple of months ago, I discovered a great new resource, 教育百科 from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education. It is a Chinese-Chinese dictionary, so it’s best for high-intermediate and advanced learners.

Here’s an example entry using the word 爆炸. As you can see, there’s pinyin and zhuyin provided. Those blue blocks show the different dictionaries that contain entries for 爆炸. Yes, they even have Hakka and Hokkien entries for some words!

Continuing on, there’s some audio, definitions (in Chinese of course), and a couple examples.

Where this dictionary really shines is for chengyu. Here’s an example of what you get for the chengyu 听天由命.

There’s almost too much here explaining the origin and history! Seriously, it’s too much content.

Here’s my favorite part: the example sentences. Some chengyu I’ve looked up don’t have this many example sentences, but some have even more.

Lastly, there’s even a comparison section to compare and contrast other similar chengyu.

I’ve been doing a one year chengyu-a-day challenge for the past 10 months or so, and I found that for some chengyu, Pleco just didn’t cut it. There weren’t enough example sentences! I ended up stumbling across this resource, and it’s been so useful. 

Pleco is usually still my first stop, but when I need more, I head over to https://pedia.cloud.edu.tw/ or https://dict.idioms.moe.edu.tw/ (the latter also has a lot of the same chengyu content but leaves some things out).

My current fave Mandarin learning resources:

In this post, I’m compiling the (free) resources, which I’ve been using to study Mandarin on my own, along with a few lines on how I’ve been getting the most out of them. I’ve basically developed a little routine for myself when it comes to using these to make sure I practice a bit of everything (reading, writing, listening, speaking). Hope these help in your Mandarin acquisition journey if you’re looking for complementary content outside of the classroom or for self-studying like me!

Reading & Writing

Yes! Chinese Reading (website)

Perapera Chinese Popup Dictionary (extension)

Yabla Chinese Dictionary (website)

How to use + more resources

So, I use all three simultaneously. Every other day, I try to read 1-3 stories from Yes! Chinese, with the Perapera extension turned on and Yabla opened in a second tab. When I stumble upon a new word in a story I’m reading, I’ll hover over it and, courtesy of the Perapera extension, the definition will appear like a pop-up below the mouse. If after reading the definition, I’m still confused about how the word is used, I’ll look it up on Yabla. What’s great about Yabla is that it often offers sentence examples and even links to pages on grammar points related to the word you’re looking up! After all that, I’ll write the word a couple of times on a white board to practice writing.

*example of Perapera in action

*example of Yabla entry with option to look at sentence examples (“Example Usage”) and pages on the grammar behind the word (“Grammar Notes”)

I think the Yes! Chinese stories are pretty entertaining and varied when reading those under the ‘Grown up’ level section. But, if you’re looking for more content to browse through, here’s a post I made with more free reading resources: post.

Listening

Learn Chinese With Movies (YT)

Everyday Chinese (YT)

Meditation for Chinese Learners (YT)

Cdramas & Music (YT)

How to use

Quick description of what each of these resources have to offer: Learn Chinese with Movies is a channel in which movie and TV show scenes are played with subtitles, broken down based on important grammar points and vocab, and then played again without subtitles. Everyday Chinese has a lot of videos on both learning Chinese and on learning about Chinese culture. Meditation for Chinese Learners offers meditation videos in Chinese for different levels. Cdramas and music are a great way to immerse yourself in the language. Although it may not be the best way to learn new words for beginners (trying to learn new words this way can feel like trying to drink water from a fire hose), it’s a great way to get a feel for the pronunciation of words and to gauge your progress as you learn more vocab.

Speaking

HelloTalk (app - w/ feature restrictions in free version)

How to use

HelloTalk is a language exchange app. It has a text, call, and video call feature along with a feed that everyone can contribute to posting to. So, it’s reminiscent of Facebook but like, for language learning.

Disclaimer on this one though: I saw comments on Reddit that apparently voice calling is turning into a VIP feature that you have to pay for if you make an account now and/or you have to pay fees when making international calls after having made a certain amount unless you pay for the premium subscription. I tried looking into the fine print and didn’t find anything + I haven’t been affected, but it may be because it’s only affecting recent subscribers to the app (?). I just thought it worth mentioning!

Resource List for Learning Ukrainian

Hi Language Enthusiasts,

Do you want to learn Ukrainian but don’t know where to start? Then I’ve got the perfect resource list for you and you can find its links below. Let me know if you have any suggestions to improve it. I hope everyone can enjoy it and if anyone notices any mistakes or has any questions you are free to PM me.

Here is what the resource list contains;

Handmade resources on certain grammar concepts for easy understanding.

Resources on learning pronunciation.

Websites to practice reading.

Documents to enhance your vocabulary.

Notes on Colloquial Language.

Music playlists

List of podcasts/audiobooks And a compiled + organized list of websites you can use to get hold of grammar!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DTgAwXrk_PLS7Or8T8vnzgAZIutwQZIDVN35hDW1F54/edit?usp=sharing

Just found knew that you want to learn data analysis while you are majored in psychology. I am also majored in Arabic language and literature but I want to be a data analyst :))

I'm struggling right now with statistics and data visualization on excel 🤦 this is so hard!

Could share with me your learning resources if you don't mind? I'm using Nanodegree on Udacity

hi, yes i can definitely share the resources i’ve been using :) i’m still working through many of these myself, so i can’t vouch for quality, but the full list is:

for data viz and machine learning:

data science and machine learning bootcamp

harvard’s CS109A and CS109B

stanford’s CS229

ubc CS 340

for statistics:

MIT 18.650

MIT 18.05

UCI 131A

carneige mellon probability and statistics

i also recommend checking out this repo for a complete list of data science resources. i would also recommend learning about pandas and seaborn for data viz, those are libraries used pretty much all the time in the industry, even more than excel imo :) scikit-learn is another library i’m learning about that i would recommend you look into as well!

SQL Learning Resources ?

Good online resources are appreciated :)

List of Finnish learning resources

In preparation for making a video about learning Finnish (a requested topic believe it or not??) for my Amanda's Finland channel (in Hindi), I started gathering a list of Finnish learning resources online in Notion. Viewing the list doesn't require a Notion account.

I have given credit to @kwaamfan and her Notion template used for her impressive Thai/Lao Resources list.

At the moment my list is very modest (only 20+ items) - but I was surprised how much free decent quality content I was able to find for learning Finnish after just a few nights' googling. All comments and links/tips for other resources to be added to the list are more than welcome.

17 free and helpful things, that everyone can take advantage of

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library They send an age appropriate book once a month if you have a child younger than 5.

Project Gutenberg Lots of free classic books.

Library Genesis A great place to look for and download college/university textbooks for free, as well as other books.

Scihub Endless Free college books. (and peer-reviewed scientific publications that are otherwise hidden behind a paywall)

Khan Academy Free knowledge that you can use to clep out of university courses, or to simply invest your time in a worthwhile topic.

Openlearn UK’s Open University - free courses for all levels of study, samples of university materials, study skills and tie-ins to BBC documentaries. Everything under Creative Commons licence so you can use it as you see fit.

Duolingo The Green Owl of Languages. There are a few hundred that it teaches and the mobile app makes it easy to do anywhere while waiting (!warning! only good for Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Esperanto, and English. with anything else it gets very low-quality and short.).

Codecademy An awesome site to learn how to use some programming languages. Doesn't get into the really advanced stuff, but it's good for a start.

Photopea Completely free Photoshop clone that has all the basic features of Photoshop, using basically the same interface.

Gimp Another free version of Photoshop.

Unsplash Stock of free photos of just about anything, provided by the photographers themselves, to do with what you like.

Futureme You can write letters to yourself (or other people) in the future! You can also make notifications and reminders of a +doctors appointments or anything else important.

Heavens Above You can look up all the satellites flying over your house tonight, including the ISS, Hubble Space Telescope, those pesky Starlink satellites, and whatever else your heart desires, complete with star maps and precise timing. And there is an Android app, but unfortunately no iOS one last I checked. (For iOS you can use “Sputnik!” which is free and tells, when ISS and Hubble passes overhead.)

Night Sky Other astronomy app for iOS. If you hold your phone to the sky the app tells you what you're looking at (or point it at the ground for a view from the other side of the planet). Zoom in with two fingers and tons of deep space stuff is revealed.

Freecycle its literally people giving away stuff they don't need/want any more that they can't/don't care enough to sell.

Nexus Mods Has thousands of video game mods (for 1,509 PC games), made by independent content creators, available to download at no cost.

Archive The Archive aka Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and so much more... For example a lot of DOS games (classics like Prince of Persia, Oregon Trail, DOOM, Monkey island, Rayman, Turtles), directly playable through the browser.

My earlier list

More things to do