How to Remember Chinese Words - HSK 5 (7) 岸 an\ = beach, bank, coast, shore

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Keep dreams alive!

- Original Art, Howard T. Chiam, 2014 -

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        After installing a nice painting on the wall, Hu the owl (who the hoo?) decides to get out of the house and take a relaxing break on the beach, feeling the press of the sand on the feathery back, hearing the sound of the coastal ocean waves, feeling like it's heaven...dreaming of 0007...saving Anne on the beautiful shoreside.*

岸

(Pronounced like "Anne", with a British-ly accent.  A yawny one.  With a falling tone.  Yeah.*)

There's still time to pursue your dreams before school finals come.
We're about halfway through the academic year, be it highschool, college, or uni.
A month or two, and we have some small breaks.
A few more months, and we're all on holidays.
Don't give up on your dreams just yet.
Take time to remember what your real dreams were in the first place.
But please do get up from the beach and do something.
Like for Hu the owl, the story will continue.
And maybe we'll have even better hopes and dreams than Hu the owl.

* [Note:]
Bold is for the Meaning(s),
Bold Italic is for the Pronunciation,
Italic is for describing the Tone, and
Underlining is for the Order mnemonic (an extra bonus if you can figure it out, it's quite easy actually)

• What's HSK?
• More ways to remember:  Chinese Vocab Mnemonics Storybook - HSK 1
• (Black-and-White edition: lower printing costs = 1/2 price)
  
• Free book preview
• Book announcement post
• Practice HSK Level 1 list
• Practice HSK Level 5 list

How to Remember Chinese Words - HSK 5 (6) 安装 an--zhuang-- = to install

加油！Exams are almost over!  Keep working at it!
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- Original Art - Howard Chiam 2013 -

Our dear friend, Hu the owl, is calmly using sticks to install a work of art.
The instruction manual says a horizontal press 按 and hit 撞 should work.
Apparently.

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• What's HSK?
• More ways to remember:  Chinese Vocab Mnemonics Storybook - HSK 1
• (Black-and-White edition: lower printing costs = 1/2 price)
  
• Free book preview
• Book announcement post
• Practice HSK Level 1 list
• Practice HSK Level 5 list

Screenshot Keyboard Shortcut on Windows 8.1

Just figured out how to do screenshot on windows 8.1:  Win+Shift+S.  (Especially if you don't have a PrtScr button.)

Instead of Shift+S (which now goes to search).

Kudos to superuser:

http://goo.gl/sSRORI (and google url shortener for making it possible for my tweets to be short enough)

How to Remember Chinese Words - HSK 5 (5) 安慰 an--wei\ = comfort

All the best for those going into exams!
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- Original Art - Howard Chiam 2013 -

Next
Previous

• What's HSK?
• More ways to remember:  Chinese Vocab Mnemonics Storybook - HSK 1
• (Black-and-White edition: lower printing costs = 1/2 price)
  
• Free book preview
• Book announcement post
• Practice HSK Level 1 list
• Practice HSK Level 5 list

This is an auto-scheduled post.  So I can focus on studying.

Creativity Tools - Practice Creativity, Beanstalk, Random Sentence Generator

"Too old to be creative"?  Being "older than a child" can have its creative advantages too.  You have a certain advantage from your years of experience from being alive longer than them so-called "youthful holders of hyperactive imagination".  If you take your years of experiencing the world's subtleties and complexities, and combine them with a child's openness, you can explore the possibilities and draw inspiration from those very years of experience.  It just takes a little practice.  Here's a few easy-to-use, free places to get regular inspiration.

Try signing up for a free daily creative activity at "The Beanstalk Project".  You can get a 5-minute creativity activity in your email inbox, to practice those creativity muscles once every day.  Past examples are also on their blog: http://dailycreativeactivity.wordpress.com/.

The signup should look like this.  There's also a link that goes to their archive seen below:

If you go to their blog, it should look like this.

Sometimes one needs something to spark an idea, or something to get the snowball moving during brainstorming, to get ideas flowing and to think outside the box.  Or just something to write a blog post about.

You can access a free random sentence generator at this link:
http://watchout4snakes.com/wo4snakes/Random/RandomSentence
There's also generators for random words, "phrases" (two words), and paragraphs.  For some of them, you can control the parts of speech and common-ness of the words.

(This is an example output sentence.)

↓

 Interpretation:

↓

Original Art:  Howard Chiam 2013

"An illegal dictator-ship pales under a (giant) square-d chestnut."

Using the random sentence generator feels quite similar to certain language-learning mnemonic techniques, as well as a fantasy character/scene generator technique:  http://fantasygenesis.blogspot.ca/ for examples.  There's a book written by that author that shows you the technique if you want to find out for yourself.

I've tested these techniques a few times to find something interesting to draw when I can't find enough inspiration to draw something new; just combine things quasi-randomly to create something different; and following the anecdotes of discovery in science, a new idea can = old ideas combined by chance.

(Please note that I do not own the aforementioned websites.  Use at your own discretion.  I am not responsible for any unintended consequences of your creativity and fun, however if you do have a good time, feel free to share and let me know how it goes!)

Kung Fu Hooray

A Couple KickerStarter Projects - Circuits and Plants

A couple of interesting KickStarter projects I found out about:



Circuit Scribe:  (a pen for on-paper circuit drawings that actually literally work)

Could take circuit drawings you draw in class and test them on the spot (instead of waiting to go to a lab to use a breadboard, or buying components, or getting circuits printed).
http://www.inside.com.tw/2013/11/26/circuit-scribe
You can also read about it in Chinese at the link above, especially using that handy mouse-over translator I mentioned in a previous post.  Got this link from a friend of mine.  Thanks bro!



Glowing Plants, natural lighting, no electricity:

Plants to replace lightbulbs?  Ding!  But I thought I already thought of that!  Looks like someone already took my idea lightbulb...and put a plant there.  XD