It’s not really a resolution as such (particularly since I started both projects before the new year began), but I have decided to spruce up (and expand on) my foreign language skills. To this end, I’m dinking around at Duolingo more and I’ve dug my old copy of Rosetta Stone Mandarin out and installed it on this computer. It took a few tries to get it to work on this computer, largely because I kept trying to install an update (note for Rosetta Stone users using Rosetta Stone on Windows 8. Don’t bother with the update. Just kick it down the road some and keep going).
My employer also gives me free access to Rosetta Stone, so since we have a lot of foreign customers, I decided to learn one of their languages and have settled on Vietnamese. Rosetta Stone is good for the initial introduction, but I’m nearing the end of Level 1 and suspect that I will hit the wall soon. So when that happens, I’m going to switch to Duolingo’s Vietnamese lessons and then repeat and redo the earlier Rosetta Stone lessons. Just as long as I do at least five hours per month I’ll be good. Eventually I’ll be able to tackle further lessons in Rosetta Stone. I hope to have all three levels done by the end of 2017.
I’ve also started doing the lessons at Codecademy. I just finished the first course, on HTML and CSS. I’m starting the JavaScript course now and will need to practice at some point. I started designing my first webpage in 1997 or so, so that course was easy. JavaScript is all new to me, so I’m going to need somewhere to practice. I wonder if WordPress will let me stick random JavaScript into the blog. . . .
I’m paying myself to do all these things, as well. With the language thing, I’m hoping that I’ll save up enough money to invest and with the Codecademy stuff I’m saving up to pay for the pro version which, they tell me, will give me opportunities to practice. If I never save up $20 for the first month, well, I’m clearly not dedicated enough to this idea to make it worth the expense.