5 December 2019

Learn Finnish on a Budget

Start here

For absolute beginners, there is Aura's Finnish Lessons on YouTube. It's a good setup for the subsequent resources. This course is especially good at learning pronunciation.

The entire playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQPy8Yjt61s&list=PLmWGG0B5AnRAMCK567_E80zUlLIStl43y

An alternative to the above is FinnishWithAnna. I've included it below Aura's Finnish Lessons because I feel the pronunciation in that course is more thorough. Still, FinnishWithAnna is an amazing resourse which much more content. It's especially good at explaining some of the more advanced topics.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9yyzeBy9LLQCiMSjIPE2kg/videos?view=0&sort=da&flow=grid

If you like to study from text, I think the grammar section of Finnish for Busy People (Uusi Kielemme) is the best complete grammar resource https://uusikielemme.fi/finnish-grammar/ In my opinion, it's written in a straight forward manner.

Supisuomea

Supisuomea is a Finnish language and culture beginners course for all adult learners. The course itself is in Finnish, which makes it a little harder for complete beginners. However, it's in a format that makes it ok for people quite new to the language.

Supisuomea video course https://areena.yle.fi/1-4163476

Supisuomea video episode notes https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2015/12/15/supisuomea Click the blue button NÄYTÄ NAVIGAATIO and then for example - "Supisuomea, osa 1: Persoonapronominit, verbin persoonataivutus ja adjektiivit". osa 1 means episode 1.

I would review the notes before each episode.

50Languages.com

English UK to Finnish Audio Language Course from 50Languages.com

https://www.50languages.com teach languages. This free Finnish audio course contains 100 carefully planned audio lessons. All dialogues and sentences are spoken by native speakers.

English and Finnish https://www.50lingue.com/book2/EN/ENFI/ENFI-all.zip

Finnish only https://www.50languages.com/_1language/FIFI.ZIP

Yle news in easy Finnish

This news program reports current news using uncomplicated language, hence the name. Turn on video text and you have a reading and listening practice.

https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/selkouutiset/

Lang-8

Lang-8 is a community of native speakers that support your language learning. They have two products, although I recommend the phone app because it's more active.

Website https://lang-8.com/

Phone app https://hinative.com/en-US

27 September 2019

Getting the RP working with your WiFi network

Here's an easy way to get the Raspberry Pi to connect to your network.

Create the file wpa_supplicant.conf and put it in the boot folder of the SD card. Add the following to wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=FI

network={
    ssid="your_network_name"
    psk="your_password"
}

These settings are entered in your network settings, and the file is deleted after boot.

16 May 2019

Migrate from one host to another with 301 redirects

I recently had to migrate from one host to another. Search engines can be finicky about such things, and you risk SEO penalties. One way to ensure migration goes smoothly is to add this to the top of your .htaccess file in the old host's web root. Note, do this at the same time your new host content goes live.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.:]+\.)*oldsite\.example\.com\.?(:[0-9]*)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newsite.example.net/$1 [R=301,L]

The above code tells search engines you have moved host.

If you want to have your new content set up before hand, remember to set the following in the robots.txt file prior, so search engines won't think you are stealing content from your old site.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /