In this post I outline the technologies I used to create a prototype for the system I describe here . As I mention in the post outlining the idea , I strongly believe that a content consumption aid like this is only going to be useful if it is available on all content consumption devices, and if all the interactions with the system have a minimum of friction. Since the original post where I had developed a Google Chrome browser plugin and had the server-side stuff running on my laptop, I have moved the server applications to the (Alibaba) Cloud and ported the browser extension to Firefox. I also created a basic interface for interacting with the lexical database that is much easier to use for adding new words than using standard Anki . These are now live and I am using them to help my own learning. Server-side The system currently has 3 major components, all of which are currently installed on a single 4GB VM on Alibaba's cloud in their Hong Kong data centre. I am currently i
Preface In this blogpost I outline what I believe to be a novel use of existing technologies to dramatically increase the useful content available to learners of a second language. I introduce myself then follow with an outline of some relevant developmental and educational principles. From there I analyse the system requirements and present the system, and finally take a look at the opportunities for future research and development. For a more detailed look on the philosophical differences between my proposed system and existing tools, see my blogpost here . Introduction For my 40th birthday I decided to take a sabbatical year and tick off one of the big remaining items on my bucket list - learn Chinese. I had started learning Chinese during my Linguistics degree 20 years ago but fate took me to Europe and life as a software engineer, and not only did I not get very far with Chinese, I completely forgot what I had learnt all those years ago. The only character I could actively