Linked List: Three FOSS Apps for Continuous Learning
I believe in continuous learning, even if it's in small steps. I used quite a few tools for that. Here are three of the most often used tools by me. They help me to remember things, explore and learn by building things. I hope you find them helpful too. What are your favorite learning tools?
Anki
Anki is a program which makes remembering things easy. Because it's a lot more efficient than traditional study methods, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn.
Anki
Anki is not just an application, and it's the whole system that will help you remember things using spaced repetition and flashcards. Android app is a FOSS app; it's available on FDroid and Playstore. There are also desktop apps for all three platforms. Only their iPhone app is closed. Everything else including the logic and format are open. Everything works offline.
I usually create decks for anything that I want to remember, from birthdates to formulas. It's a process. I will write about that in a different blog.
You can also create learning decks and share them with others. For example, Kannada learning decks - Nithya Kannada, built by me uses Anki.
Aard 2
Aard 2 for Android is a successor to Aard Dictionary for Android. It comes with redesigned user interface, bookmarks, history and a better dictionary storage format.
Aard2
Aard2 for Android is a successor to Aard. It's available on Playstore and FDroid. It's a dictionary browser. Dictionaries don't come with the app. They need to be downloaded separately as .slob file. Many dictionaries are available to download on their GitHub page. But I like the Wiktionaries. Once you download the .slob file and add it to Aard2. It's completely offline.
What's great is at the fundamental level, it's just a key-value browser. SLOB is just a highly efficient key-value storage. So you can store any data in SLOB format and use Aard2 to explore. For example, people store Wikipedia pages for offline usage, etc.
PHONK
A Javascript coding playground for new and old Android devices.
PHONK App
PHONK App android is a full-featured programming environment. It supports a subset of JavaScript that can be used to interact with Android APIs. Using this, you create smaller apps that are easy to make, run and share. PHONK also exposes a web-based editor that you can use on the local network to code on a desktop.
It can talk MQTT, OSC, Websockets. It can also interface with OTG and Bluetooth. So this is an easy way to program your Arduino board too. It has support for graphics using processing, audio using LibPd. You can also add maps using OpenStreetMap. So basically, you can build a reasonably sophisticated custom app. I have made a simple Oximeter interface using PHONK. Please have a look at it for inspiration. Oh, did I say it's FOSS? It's available on Playstore and as APK.
