Super Hexagon

I was here before the Reddit API kerfuffle, because I care about an open and decentralized internet.

SM57s still can get roughed up pretty bad with the plastic covering on the front of the mic (especially if miking a snare drum with a less than precise drummer). SM58 will survive a nuclear war.

Radeon 7770.

FFXIV!

Puzzling Places has been an unexpected joy after I got it in a bundle with Tetris Effect.

Completely unique and very difficult to experience with alternative hardware nowadays (compared to the PSP which can be played on nearly everything). The games library is incredibly unique because small budget games still had a big chance to succeed.

I had a very interesting experience watching Network recently, a film from 1976 about the influence of television, and I had a strange realization that TV then was nearly as old as the internet is now. This just feels like a natural point in the history of a communications medium that people begin to think critically about its effect on people and the way we think.

I think about this all the time, I really could see myself getting into computer education ten years down the line.

What I would do is this:

• Focus on recreating styles of computing that produced our most digitally literate generation: Gen X (for context, I was born in 2000).
• Give everyone in the class a Raspberry Pi and a MicroSD card. Guide them through the setup process. This recreates larger, more complicated computers in microcosm.
• Start out with the Lite version of the Raspi OS, allow students to discover the different components of an operating system: Bash, window management, sound, the desktop, office applications. Take them through some common Raspberry Pi tasks.
• Do not allow the class to become the Adobe/Microsoft power hour. This is the number one way we are failing our students today.
• Have a unit focused around free software and the open source movement. Focus on social media literacy as well. Ensure that students understand how social media algorithms work, how these companies make money, understand that users are the product.

There’s probably more I could come up with if I sat down to really plan out a week by week lesson plan, but this is off the cuff where I’d put the focus. So many of these topics have Connections-style related points. “Why is my computer at home different from a Raspberry Pi?” gives you a great opportunity to expand on CPU architecture, which leads to how computers actually “think”. I remember when I was a child one of the things that I was most confused by was how a computer was able to turn Python into something it actually understands, that can be a fascinating lesson in the right hands. How does a computer know where to look on the disc when it boots up? It’s great!

Kids already know how to use phones and tablets. Take concepts from those, concepts they are already familiar with, and then explain the deeper process behind it. Computers are engineered by people, you can understand them, it’s not magic.

I want to play either Skyrim or Breath of the Wild for the first time again, knowing nothing about what’s out there to be discovered or the limits of the sandbox. Those games cast a special spell in their first few dozen hours before you know where the boundaries of the world are.

I can recognize that I love the Star Wars prequels for bad reasons.
But also they’re still masterpieces actually.

Do vinyl records count? I really like that they make beautiful noise from a simple electromechanical process.

The tech savvy will just buy a Raspberry Pi and install yunohost on it.

I do think a split keyboard design would serve a slate like this a bit better though.

I’d been looking into building something like this out of a Raspberry Pi, very cool that this is open source.

Workers co-op

That seems really exciting! But don’t services like Discord forbid third party clients?

My general approach is to use Anki as my primary resource with the addition of the Genki textbook, video lectures and grammar videos on YouTube (Toki ni Andy, Game Gengo, Livakivi, etc.), and immersion content (Manga, anime, YouTube). I use Anki because I believe it’s the most effective method for me having used it previously to learn Esperanto; although I believe that you should use whatever method is the most fun for you, whatever will keep you coming back for daily work is good. Don’t fall for the “Bro Science” language learning people who promise quick shortcuts, there are none, these people are usually trying to sell you something.

My daily study consists of about 40 minutes of Anki per day. I split my time between two decks, which is suboptimal in terms of occasionally containing duplicates, but I like it as it serves as a method of chunking my study out throughout the day and as a way to recognize the same Kanji in different contexts. These two decks are the KanjiTransistion and Core 2.3k decks. I do four new cards from the KanjiTransistion deck and three new cards from the 2.3k deck. Following that if I’m in the mood I’ll return to reviewing my Hiragana and Katakana decks (you should do this first if you haven’t already!). I also use the Review Heatmap plugin to see my streak, which helps me stay focused on goals and milestones.

You should form your own opinion about what method of learning works best for you, but don’t fall victim to spending time strategizing and figuring out the scientifically perfect way to learn the language, there isn’t one. If you’re spending time planning how you’re going to learn the language, you’re spending less time actually learning. The only way to get good at a language is to literally be exposed to it and learning it for 1000+ hours.

100 days of studying Japanese every day

Every PSP I own must have the following games ready to go at any time:
-Lumines
-Rock Band Unplugged
-Patapon 2
-WipEout Pulse
-Final Fantasy: Crystal Defenders (gorgeous small tower defense game, but with enough strategy behind it for hours of play)