App – Random Geek Child

Learning ASL Online

American Sign Language is one of those language I’ve been meaning to get to, and because it’s not on a platform that I’m familiar with (read: Duolingo), it’s taken me a while to get there. But! I finally found one that works for me! At least for the basics.*

SignSchool is, first and foremost, passably similar to Duo. This is my gold standard for learning platforms, because I know it works for me: new material, structured practice, and reviews anytime, with lessons grouped by topic. Repetition and diversity of context long-term memories make, after all. Additionally, there’s some commentary on the “why” of a concept, or different ways a concept can be phrased; an explanation for the order of the previous sentence, mayhaps! (There is not – that was whimsy.)

Alongside the lessons, there’s a dedicated Learn My Name tool – a great place to start -, a fingerspelling game, and other review games. And a dictionary! My favorite aspect, though, is the Sign Of The Day. What better way to expand my vocabulary and feed into that thriving-on-chaos? I’m still working on the language’s basics, “good evening” and whatnot, and yet I know “cactus,” “blood pressure,” and “geometry.” Truly, a platform after my own heart.

*No shade to SignSchool – I just can’t speak for anything past these yet. It should also be noted that my experience is with the website, rather than the app. They do have both!

Duck… Duck… Not Goose!

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo on mobile for a while now, since hearing about the feature that keeps your other apps from sharing your data with each other. Aside from that, DuckDuckGo is a browser and a search engine, without the targeted advertising of its competitors.

This is both their appeal and their business model: they don’t collect your personal information, and they don’t use it. The ads that they make money off of? Paired to be on-subject with what you’re currently searching, not some behind-the-scenes profile of who you are and everything you like. Truthfully, I’d have swapped them in as my primary on desktop a long time ago, if only switching browsers wasn’t so tedious.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t! Once I finally plucked up the courage to transfer my digital life, I found out that DuckDuckGo has an “import bookmarks and passwords” option, which did most of the work for me! Since then, I’ve discovered that the desktop version also blocks tracking attempts, pop-ups, and most cookies, and has an omnipresent fire button with which you can wipe out all cookies, caches, browser history, and permissions, except on websites you’ve specifically and deliberately fireproofed. (The mobile version has this too!)

I’ve been further and perhaps most delighted by Duck Player, however. Privacy and self-determination are all well and good, but can they hold a candle to watching YouTube videos without the ads?! The answer is yet to be determined.

Hearthstone Updates: The Good and the Bad

There have been some changes to Hearthstone since I last posted about it, bringing good news and bad news. The bad news: they’ve discontinued Duels, which I was rather fond of. The good news: they’ve added a Duos mode to Battlegrounds!

Instead of eight players fending for themselves, four sets of two share health stats with their partner, and so must coordinate their approach. This includes the ability to Pass cards to your teammate’s hand at the cost of Gold. To that end, you can flag certain cards or other options (i.e. Tavern Upgrade) to confer with your opponent! It’s a very simple system, just a checkmark, an x, a question mark, and a portal symbol. Part of the joy for me has been learning how to click with each new teammate, because we all use the same four-symbol shorthand a little differently!

For the combats themselves, you and your teammate take turns fighting first, facing off one-on-one with an opponent until one or both combatants lose all their minions. Their teammate(s) immediately tag in, the fighting continues, and whichever team still has minions in the end does damage! If one player defeated both their opponents, their teammate’s minions fill in the empty spaces in their board and contribute to the damage total.

(Additional note: the Anomalies update I mentioned in the previous Battlegrounds post was, I believe, Season-specific, and isn’t currently in effect. They shuffle cards and rules like that with the major updates, so there’s always something new to play with!)

Hearthstone: Everything Else

Surprise! I’m not done with Hearthstone yet. If you haven’t read my first two posts on it, you can find those here and here. All caught up? Great! The third play style is Tavern Brawl, which has a new set of rules each week. For instance, “[y]our deck is full of wannabes who cast a random spell at a random target when played.” Some rules, like this one, provide you with a deck, while other times you’ll have to build your own. Depends on the week!

The fourth option on the main menu is “Modes,” which leads you to… four other options. Arena and Duels are both a three-strikes system in which you build a deck and try to win as many games as you can before you’re out; each can be played using Gold or Tavern Tickets, and each wins you more prizes the longer you last. Duels also has a Casual mode, which costs nothing but has no reward. As for the mechanics, Arena features the traditional characters and rules, while Duels has its own characters, with extra abilities and increasing Health and deck size the further in you get. I personally prefer Duels, both because it has that Casual option and because it’s my kind of chaotic. I especially like how the addition of new cards each turn forces my strategy to grow and adapt; it’s ever-changing, which means it’s never boring!

Solo Adventures are Hearthstone’s story mode, where you can play through the characters’ origin stories and learn more about their history with each other. Functionally, it’s a lot like traditional Hearthstone, but against an NPC and with dialogue. Some arcs have you rooting for yourself more than others; March of the Lich King was painful because I didn’t want Arthas to win, knowing full well the villain he was becoming. Others are clearly the hero of the story, regardless of whether they’re in the Book of Heroes. (Rokara is in the Book of Mercenaries. She’s also the most consistently heroic character I’ve played so far.)

The final game mode is Mercenaries, which is by far the most unique. Whereas the others are about picking the right cards, success in Mercenaries is more about what you do with the cards you’ve picked. It works like this: to take on a Bounty, you put together a party of six Mercenaries. Protectors deal double damage to Fighters, who deal double to Casters, who deal double to Protectors, so you might base who you bring on which type your opponent is. However, your opponent is the last in a whole lineup of NPCs you’ll have to fight to reach them, so the ideal party has a little bit of everything. Pick wisely, because once you start the Bounty, you’re locked into those six cards. Success is instead contingent on picking, 1) the right three to have in play for any given combat, and 2) the right abilities from each of them to maximize effect. Each ability has a speed, with the lower numbers going first, and you can see what your opponents have picked before choosing moves yourself. Be exceedingly careful with the Health of your characters, though, because if a Mercenary dies, they’re out for the rest of the Bounty! And if everybody dies, big surprise, you’ve lost. There are a few major perks to this game mode, too. First is that, like in Duels, you’ll get a new upgrade after each fight, which lasts for the duration of the Bounty. The second is that, unlike Duels – or any other Hearthstone mode – each combat grants your Mercenaries XP, which unlocks new permanent abilities! You’ll also receive Merc-specific Coins, which can be used to upgrade those abilities.

The closest that traditional Hearthstone gets to this is the Reward Track – by playing games and completing daily or weekly quests, you progress along a track that earns you Gold, cards, Tavern Tickets, and Card Packs, which can be opened for five cards apiece. Battlegrounds also has its own track, where you can earn Hero skins and emotes.

And that’s Hearthstone! I definitely didn’t cover everything, but we’d be here for a very long time if I did. Hearthstone is near and dear to me, so I hope I’ve managed to impart at least the impression of everything, in case any piece of it interests you, too. See you in the Tavern!

Hearthstone: Battlegrounds

Last week, I talked about the first Hearthstone game mode, and I promised more. So here’s part two: Battlegrounds!

Battlegrounds is an 8-player competition where you each pick one of two Heroes (randomly pulled from a broader lineup), start with three Gold, and instead of using your own card collection, you have to buy minions from Bartender Bob. Unless your ability says otherwise, minions cost three Gold apiece, refreshing the selection costs one, and the cost of upgrading your Tavern Tier decreases by one each turn. There are six Tavern Tiers. As you upgrade through them, you unlock higher Tier minions, usually with better abilities. In both traditional and Battlegrounds, you may only have seven minions on your Board at a time; in Battlegrounds, minions sell for one Gold (with exceptions). If you acquire three of the same minion, they combine into a Golden minion with an improved ability, and playing it lets you Discover (pick between three cards) a minion from the Tavern Tier above yours! Each turn, your board of minions will go up against another player’s, attacking mostly at random (except where abilities like Taunt dictate otherwise). If you have minions left after your opponent’s have all been defeated, each surviving minion’s Tavern Tier is added to your own, and the sum is dealt as damage to your opponent. Unlike in traditional Hearthstone, the minions that died last turn also return to your board! This gives you a lot of opportunity to build them up; my favorite minion type for this is Mechs, to which Magnetic minions can bond, allowing you to not only increase their Attack and Health, but also give them additional abilities! Only five of the ten minion types are used in each game, though, so you have to get comfortable with multiple strategies.

Battlegrounds characters start with different amounts of Armor on top of their 30 Health, likely to counterbalance their various abilities, but just like in traditional Hearthstone, when you run out of Health you’re out. If there’s an odd number of players left, the NPC Kel’Thuzad will reanimate someone’s board so that everyone still have a match. The last player standing wins! Battlegrounds takes longer than traditional Heathstone, because while the duration of each turn is set, there is no Fatigue mechanic to limit the length of the game. However, because each turn is a set length, usually much longer than I need to make my decisions, I’ve found Battlegrounds is useful for when I want to work on something in small doses. I can take my turn, get something done, and then take a break while I take my next turn!

This week, they also came out with the Anomalies update, giving each game a special rule like “Only Mechs are in the Tavern” (a favorite of mine) or “Tavern Tier 7 exists. Start with 10 extra Armor.” As you might imagine, these massively impact your strategy, up to and including which Hero you pick!

The cherry on top is Bartender Bob himself. He talks. Sometimes it’s in response to actions or transitions, like “Don’t tell the others – I’m rooting for you” at the start of a combat, and sometimes he’s just making conversation, which is when he’s at his funniest. Some of my favorites include “”Oh, I’ve dealt with the League of Evil. Terrible people. But good tippers!” and “All the best minions come here. I’ve got the spicy pretzel mustard.” There is so much to be said for this game, and still this NPC is genuinely one of my favorite parts.

Come In! Have A Seat By The Fire

He a rthstone is a virtual collectible card game with several game modes and a warm, comfy tavern theme. If you have your volume on, you’ll find yourself greeted as the main menu appears.

Your first option is traditional Hearthstone. In this, you pick one of the eleven character classes – each with a signature ability – to build a 30-card deck for, then compete one-on-one with another player. The first player starts with three cards in hand, the second starts with four, and they each get one opportunity to reshuffle some back into their deck and draw replacements. This is most often useful when the card costs a high amount of Mana, because players have one Mana on their first turn, two on their second, three on their third, etc. up to ten. Starting with an 8-cost card, then, isn’t immediately useful. The second player also gets The Coin, a free card which grants them one extra Mana Crystal on the turn that it’s played.

The goal of the game is fairly simple: each Hero starts with 30 Health, and through the use of minions, spells, and weapons (all played by spending Mana*), you’re trying to knock the other Hero’s Health to or below 0 before they can do the same to you. You start your turn by drawing a card, and the text on each explains its abilities. There’s also bolded text, which you can hover over for the definition; for example, Windfury means a character may attack twice each turn, and Taunt means enemies must defeat your Taunt minions before they can attack any of your other characters. Each minion has Attack and Health stats. There’s also a time limit, to each turn, but also to the game: once your deck runs out of cards, each time you should draw deals you an increasing amount of Fatigue damage instead.

Alongside all this, there are several maps (randomly chosen from), each of which has interactive features! They give the game that little bit of extra character I adore. Strategy? Yes. Firing a catapult while you wait for your opponent to take their turn? Also yes!

On the subject of waiting, this post turned out extremely long, so I’ve split it into three parts. For my commentary on the next game mode, Battlegrounds, come back next week!

*Except for the rare cards that cost Health instead.

It’s A Wide And Wonderful Zooniverse!

Zooniverse is a volunteer-powered research platform, which I stumbled across by accident and have been obsessed with ever since. “What kind of research?” you might ask – a reasonable question, the answer to which is yes. They’ve got NASA projects, medical research, digitization of centuries-old handwritten documents… the list goes on and on. Another cool example is Saint George on a Bike, which is training an AI to caption European visual art from the 12th to 18th centuries, based off human input!

The great part about all this is that you don’t need to be an expert. Each project has a tutorial and a field guide, which will tell you everything you need to know to perform your classifications! Sometimes the images are a little unclear – they were taken at night, or in motion, or the handwriting is just awful – but because each piece of data goes through multiple people, everyone’s best guesses can still provide a useful approximation. (Ex: “We can’t agree what kind of wallaby that is, but it’s definitely not a dingo.”) Personally, I’m partial to trail cam research, where you’re identifying animals, so the classification pictured below is from the WildCam Gorongosa project based in Mozambique. They have some extra features in their system, so not only is there a field guide with information on each animal, you can filter by build, horns, pattern, etc. to narrow down your options.

There's a lanky, orange-brown, antelope-framed animal sitting at slightly above the center of the photo, with a tall, vertical piece of grass just in front of the camera, and a shock of foliage to the left of the critter. The classification on the side has "Oribi" selected, as the species I deemed it most likely to be.

Each project has its own homepage with a progress bar, which shows what percent of the data has been classified, the number of volunteers who’ve worked on it, and other relevant numbers. There’s an explanation of the project itself, and an About page in the toolbar with more detailed information. Also in the toolbar is a Classify link (there’s also one of these on the main page, and I appreciate that there’s multiple easy ways to get to the actual workflow), and a Talk section to ask questions, comment on specific subjects (that’s the image you’re classifying) and generally hang out. You don’t need an account to participate, but if you have one you can also mark favorites, make collections of related images, and revisit subjects you’ve recently classified in each project. Your profile page also has a pie chart of your classifications to date, and a shortcut to projects you’ve recently worked on, both of which I’ve found super helpful!

The other big feature I love about Zooniverse is that you can pop in and out whenever. If you want to show up and binge Galaxy Zoo for an hour, you can do that! If you only have time for two classifications before lunch, you can also do that! There’s no obligation, just the Zooniverse at your fingertips for when it suits your fancy. And when it’s fun, satisfying and convenient… what’s not to love?

Pixel Art

Yes, I have fallen prey to the hypnosis of color-by-number apps. While I realize there are probably several options along this vein, I’m going to be talking about the one I use, aptly titled Pixel Art.

The basic concept seems fairly self-explanatory — an image is divided into squares, numbered by color, and you fill it in accordingly. You don’t have to use the colors in order, or all of one color at once… in fact, it’s often easiest to start with the highest numbers, as they tend to be the least prevalent. When you select a color on the number bar, it shows how much of that color you’ve completed so far, and marks all pixels of that color with a dark grey to set them apart from the blank white of other unfilled cells. You can choose between tapping these individually to color them, or dragging your finger across several, which is quicker but risks hitting other numbers, too. If that happens the pixel will remain a paler version of that color (number still visible) until you hit it with the correct one. The page of the palette before colors 1-10 has two “Boosters”: the Color Wand, which colors multiple neighboring cells of the same color with one tap, and Color Splash, which colors everything in a set radius with one tap, regardless of color. Honestly, though, I don’t really see the point in those.

There are a couple different menus, all comprehensively organized. First there’s the main one, at the bottom of the page, sorted into Library, Daily, My Works, and Create. Yes, there’s an option to create art for this — don’t ask me how that works, I’ve never done it. Daily is fairly self-explanatory: there’s a new image there every day, like an all-year advent calendar of coloring. My Works has a second menu near the top, split into, again, “My Works,” which shows everything you’ve colored at least one pixel on, and “In Progress,” which shows only the images you haven’t completed yet. As you can imagine, In Progress is super useful for when you’ve got multiple pictures going on at once, especially the more detailed ones that can take a while to complete.

The most complicated tab is Library, which has a 4-tab menu of its own. First off, Event. Currently, there’s a “Desert World” event going on. What the event is changes regularly, but they each have thematically appropriate art, and the more of those you complete by the end of the event, the more rewards you get, including Bonus images, which is the third tab from the left — pretty much, the more event art you complete, the more bonus ones you collect. The tab between those is New, which is also fairly self-explanatory. New art appears at the top of the page, and the more you scroll down, the older the stuff you’re looking at. It’s worth noting that a lot of times, these are added in clusters, hence why my screenshot has four images pertaining to Japan all completed around the same time.

The fourth and final tab in Library is Books, which, like how In Progress acts as a filter for My Works, is effectively a subset of New. These are collections of 8 images each, bound together by a category, be it Landscapes, Comfortable Clothes, or even just “Orange Color.” You unlock each next row of the collection as you work, going through seven easier images and ending on a full one. I won’t say photorealistic, necessarily, because sometimes full pictures are intricate patterns instead, but rather than being a cutout of some concept within a given space, full images take up the entire square.

Both books and individual art are sometimes locked, and while you can buy premium, you can also just watch an ad to unlock them.

Owls and Multilingualism

Yep, I’m talking about Duolingo. As some of you know, I’ve already posted about Rosetta Stone — another language platform. Yes, I’ve used both, and no, I’m not going to slam either. They’re both good, for different reasons.

Rosetta Stone offers a lot of languages (I provided a list in my post). So does Duolingo. As of when I’m writing this, they have Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic, Turkish, Dutch, Swedish, Hindi, Greek, Irish, Polish, Norwegian (Bokmal), High Valyrian, Hebrew, Latin, Vietnamese, Hawaiian, Danish, Romanian, Czech, Welsh, Indonesian, Swahili, Klingon, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Navajo, Esperanto, and Scottish Gaelic, organized by number of learners. As you may have noticed, some of these languages are from fictional universes, like Klingon. No, that’s not a joke. Yes, they legitimately cover those.

I also made a point of saying, “As of when I’m writing this,” because Duolingo is always adding new courses. They also add them faster than Rosetta Stone, namely because, as a subscription service, Rosetta Stone has to have the full course ready before they make it available. Duolingo, on the other hand, puts it up in beta and keeps adding to it.

That’s another point — Rosetta Stone costs money, Duolingo is free. Like I said, they’re both good, but, again, for different reasons. Rosetta Stone has the breakdowns I mentioned in that post, focusing on different parts of each lesson, whereas Duolingo really doesn’t (the closest they get is Tinycards). On the flip side, because there’s not a set amount of time until your subscription runs out, with Duolingo you don’t feel pressured the same way, which allows you to pick up multiple languages without concern over money and time management. I’m currently taking five.

Duolingo lessons also tend to be, in my experience, more… bite sized, I suppose. They’re faster and have less content per lesson to memorize, which allows me to binge Hawaiian lessons without running out of steam. Rosetta Stone lessons tend to be longer, taking an estimated ten minutes for most of the exercises.

As a final note between the two, Rosetta Stone gives you words in the target language and a picture to match it, whereas Duo gives you the English translations for the words. As I said in my Rosetta post, I don’t really know how to feel about that, or which I prefer, but they both work.

Overall, I’d say if you’re seriously intending to put a lot of focus and effort into learning a language, Rosetta Stone is the way to go, but if you just want something that you can work on in your spare time, or for fun (I picked up Hawaiian on a whim, for instance) you might prefer Duolingo.

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