u/Sniping-Agency-2049

CallVaders scans your video call for faces and names and gives you something to do while spending valuable time in a video call. Your colleagues become the invaders. Join them on a leaderboard and blast together. Privacy is top priority - private data never leaves your device.

Make your video meetings fun again!

Long story short, I've lived in Finland for 25 years. I arrived as an young adult, and I've been hovering at B2 level for at least over a decade and a half now. In Helsinki area with English speaking jobs and friends, it is pretty easy to get by with English only.

But spending most of my life in Finland, I've always tried to integrate culturally. And I feel that I am more Finnish than my original nationality. But fluent language has always remained the last frontier.

10 years ago, I undertook a project that I thought would help me learn Finnish faster. It's basically compiling bilingual books, reading them paragraph by paragraph. I've always thought that this is what made me learn English as a child best. From amazing spelling and grammar, to vocabulary.

Because I am naturally a lazy person, I managed to read just 5-6 books this way, lol. But now I've entered a new phase, when I'm again much more motivated. And I took another idea from my high school days. Translating to Finnish from English, thus turning learning into an active memory process. What I think are the benefits: actively trying to recall the Finnish word and then thinking about the grammar and sentence structure, changes the way I memorize the language. Until now my biggest problems have been a bit of lacking vocabulary, grammar, constant spelling mistakes, but also very importantly, lack of Finnish sentence structure knowledge and of course Finnish phrases. Whenever I would translate from English to Finnish in my head to people who don't know I amn not a native speaker, they would look at me with a puzzled face.

So I feel that it is working, and I've been using this method for a few months now. What do you good people think?

For all the people who have easy answers, in the line of: just embrace it and it will come - screw that, I think 25 years is good enough timeline for me to say that when you're just surrounded by 99% English - this approach just doesn’t work for one to get to the coveted C1-C2.

https://reddit.com/link/1v4bm8m/video/3uygi8t6mzeh1/player

Oye belter fans!
So I spent a lot of my holiday on improving the Belter Charts and finally got around to recording a showcase video.

This is for you and for me, the fans. It is not official thing in any way.

But I hope you will enjoy it and spread the word. Also comment here, because the awesome comments from the community are what kept me going. I love it and thank you all!

What's new since launch (whole busy month, beltalowda):

Stories:

- Seven canon story scenarios, from the Cant's last haul to the Ring flotilla: Epstein's last flight, Julie's last run, Miller's ride to Eros, the Io dash, and Eros making its move. Flight stories put you in the seat with a scripted comm log; watch stories lock the camera on the body while history plays out.

- Spoiler gate: tell the chart how far you've read (book one through six) and it hides the rest. Menus, events, and stories all respect it.

The system got crowded:

- Ambient traffic layer: procedurally generated ships flying real lanes between Earth, Mars, Ceres, Tycho, and the Belt. Faction-tinted transit arcs, hoverable ship names, deterministic (scrub the clock, same ships fly again). Toggle it from the timeline.

- Port districts on Ceres and Eros: warm dock lights and structures that spin with the rock.

- Tycho and Anderson stations with real models, spinning drums, window lights, and running beacons.

Real hulls:

- The Rocinante, the Canterbury-type hauler, the Donnager, and Epstein's yacht are now actual 3D models (community CC-BY models, credited in-app).

- Epstein-drive plumes per engine: exhaust grows with the burn, mach diamonds on the torches. The Donnager burns on all four nacelles.

Worlds worth looking at:

- Earth got a live day/night terminator that tracks the real sun, city lights, an atmosphere rim that only glows on the lit limb, and a cloud layer that drifts independently of the surface.

- Close-up focus and ship zoom.

Quality of life:

- Bring your own soundtrack: load audio files for your ride, cached also for the next time.

- Ride speed controls and a rebuilt ride HUD.

- New timeline speeds, a proper loading screen with shader pre-compile, and smoother keyboard flight.

It's a flight planner for the Solar System with real NASA and JPL data. Choose a ship, plot a flip-and-burn from anywhere in the solar system (in the Expanse universe), then ride the burn.

https://preview.redd.it/rtdjpi9zfzbh1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=f2de3075525eea4c50db809aaa16f9666029f309

So I've been building an unofficial navigator for the books' solar system and (I feel) it's finally ready to share: it's an unofficial fan project - the code is open on Github.

Just remember it's meant for wide-screen browsers. And it's free as in beer, no account needed, no freaking ads.

What it does:
- Full body solar system simulation. 3D everything, keyboard and mouse camera navigation.
- Got the real sky for future dates. Planet and asteroid positions come from real ephemerides (JPL Horizons + astronomy-engine) computed for 2340–2365, so Ceres, Eros, Vesta and friends are where they'd actually be.
- Ride the burn. The fun part. Chase-cam the hull through the flip in 3D.
- Canon locations. Tycho Station, Anderson Station, Eros, plus a
timeline of events anchored to the fan-consensus calendar.
- Canon timeline. All book events are marked on the timeline. You can choose the book you have read up to and just those events will be shown.
- Share flight paths. The whole plan lives now in the URL, so you can send
someone your favourite route.
- 4 ships to choose from. Real physics or book canon ones.

Need some love and feedback from people who know the books better than I do,
especially about station positions and the calendar anchor.

Wardruna @ Nordic Night, Oslo 13.06. couple of tickets for sale.

Unfortunately, me and my wife can't go anymore (and we are heartbroken)

If you are interested to take our tickets at a good discount, please contact me.

https://preview.redd.it/zoisari4si4h1.png?width=1498&format=png&auto=webp&s=2cfe0bcc9fc9f7ca2dce9bb824453e196cbe935e

I'm trying to pick a format for bilingual books and I am currently debating between two styles.

Format 1 You read normally and glance over when you need it.

https://preview.redd.it/7abzdqaepbyg1.png?width=1332&format=png&auto=webp&s=32b48a6041a1ab31b80e8e131e1ca86f43ae9e6c

Format 2 Original is right above each word of the translation. So you can see what every single word means without leaving the line.

https://preview.redd.it/v97ufxo8pbyg1.png?width=1332&format=png&auto=webp&s=690932af1a0c67491de5703d589564a94097c9d2

A couple of things I'm curious about:

- Which one do you find less distracting?

- If you were looking to buy a bilingual book on Kindle, which one would you prefer?

- Would you switch from one to the other as you got better?

The sample above is from The Great Gatsby German-English bilingual edition.

Thanks a lot!