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yingtai.bsky.social
Yingtai
@yingtai.bsky.social
160 followers 110 following 1K posts
Singapore. Today I learnt. Long covid. Occasional BDSM. She/her. Profile pics are my own calligraphy. https://abjectsub.com
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yingtai.bsky.social
This was so satisfying!
Handwritten chart of Japanese verb conjugations showing plain form, nai-form, long form and te-form, with pitch accents marked in red.
July 15, 2025 at 12:30 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
I finally got syntax highlighting working on my Autohotkey scripts, and it makes me so childishly happy! I made the colour scheme myself and I have nicknamed it Montessori.
Notepad++ screenshot with text in bright colours like you would find in educational kindergarten toys: red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple. The background is dark. The file shows an Autohotkey function for checking whether the current document contains any text.
July 11, 2025 at 12:49 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
I am watching a tech reporter claim that ChatGPT is a search engine ... while also conceding that it hallucinates both information and source links.

I wonder if he got his definition of "search engine" from ChatGPT?
Screenshot of Bluesky conversation. Ann Leckie: Say it after me: Chat GPT is not a search engine. It does not scan the web for information, it just generates statistically likely sentences. You cannot use it a search engine, or as a substitute for searching. Now. Please never use an LLM for information searches ever again. Casey Newton: This is one of the most-shared posts on Bluesky in the past day and it's just completely false. You might think ChatGPT is a *bad* search engine, or prefer another search engine. But it has had integrated web search since last year. Gregor Drehohr: It still hallucinates stuff including source links half of the time. The point is absolutely valid. Casey Newton: that's not her point though! that's a completely different point Gregor Drehohr: Fair, I guess. But it's functionally equivalent. It doesn't reliably provide you with the information you need. It may be able to search the web but it's unable to tell you correctly what it found.
May 2, 2025 at 6:53 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
I am writing out Hildegard von Blingin' lyrics in ASL fingerspelling.

I don't know why I am doing this, but it's fun!

The song is here with some very cool animated medieval illumination. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZU-...
Beasts of Yore Hildegard von Blingin' Hast thou skill with a quill? Ink shall be thy living will. Make thy mark upon the page And with thy deeds a ledger fill Here the pen is mighty still If thou seekest glory. Inkulinati potens dominus Miles bestialis artificiosus.
April 24, 2025 at 8:04 AM
yingtai.bsky.social
I am reading No Silver Bullet by Fred Brooks, and I must say that I was not expecting a seminal essay on software development to have such an arresting introduction.
Introduction Of all the monsters who fill the nightmares of our folklore, none terrify more than werewolves, because they transform unexpectedly from the familiar into horrors. For these, we seek bullets of silver than can magically lay them to rest.
April 22, 2025 at 10:51 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
I've started up cursive handwriting practice again! The character in the screenshot is 筆 (simplified 笔 bǐ = pen), believe it or not. Definitely still struggling with it but these wild gyrations are fun!

As before, it's this textbook: archive.org/details/intr...
A screenshot of a drawing app with a large handwritten cursive Chinese character in blue. The background is a page from a textbook that says LESSON 10 at the top, showing 2-4 cursive variants of about 15 common Chinese characters.
February 13, 2025 at 2:14 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
I have finished my second #Mandarin chapter book! It went so much faster than the first!

It's actually only a very easy bridge book. But I'm still very proud of myself. I have the whole series and I'm looking forward to whizzing through them!
A Chinese children's book with two cartoon boys holding hands on the cover. The title is 米小圈上学记：好朋友铁头 (Mi Xiaoquan's School Diaries: My Good Friend Iron Head) and the author is 北猫 (Cat from the North). A Chinese children's book open at the beginning of a chapter in diary format. The chapter title is 铁头的背叛 (Iron Head's Betrayal). There's a cartoon illustration of two boys playing with a skateboard and another boy crying on the side. Pinyin pronunciation is printed above the text and a few words appear in colour and a handwritten font.
January 2, 2025 at 1:45 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
#alt4you
This is a screenshot of a quote tweet. Afif Aqrabawi, @AjAqrabawi, 1 day ago: A soldier shot this 2-year old in the chest today. She didn't lose her life in an airstrike---she wasn't "collateral damage" in the fight against Hamas--but the victim of an Israeli who aimed his gun at her tiny heart and pulled the trigger. Excuse my antisemitism. This is the tweet it is quoting: Quds News Network @QudsNen, 1 day ago: The Israeli occupation killed this innocent child Nour Morsi in northern Gaza. There is a photo of a child with huge eyes, wearing a hairband with a giant bow, sitting on a bed.
December 5, 2024 at 9:59 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
#alt4you
21. Massachusetts - R 22. Michigan - R 23. Minnesota - R 24. Mississippi - R 49. Wisconsin - R 50. Wyoming - R States Containing "R": Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming. Count: 34 states contain the letter "R."
December 5, 2024 at 9:54 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
#alt4you
Remember, if you buy an album from bandcamp, it's around the financial equivalent to the artist of you streaming their music every day for 3 years. From @posthuman, 4 May 2021, Twitter for Android.
December 5, 2024 at 9:13 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
Infographics are a challenge. This image was originally posted by @carnage4life.bsky.social at mas.to/@carnage4lif.... 5/n
Infographic illustrating types of accessibility: permanent, temporary, and situational. For Touch it has: One arm, Arm injury, New parent. For See it has: Blind, Cataract, Distracted driver. For Hear it has: Deaf, Ear infection, Bartender. For Speak it has: Non-verbal, Laryngitis, Heavy accent. The bottom says Inclusive: A Microsoft Design Toolkit.
November 28, 2024 at 8:49 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
Just finished my second 习字 exercise book! The characters with a vertical row of 3 dots on the right are the ones I wrote wrongly. #Chinese #Mandarin #handwriting
Photo of careful Chinese handwriting on the last page of an A5 notebook printed with very large squares. The writing is vertical, right to left, and it covers the whole page with no gaps, but two characters are in red (the date).
November 18, 2024 at 2:16 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
Obsidian is CRACK for me. All the formatting! Nom nom nom nom!

And I've found the best theme. Just look how cozy and comforting it is! It's called Primary: "soft, chewy, comforting — like a chocolate chip cookie, or a warm brownie". github.com/primary-them...
Obsidian screenshot of a journal entry, showing a colour scheme in soft cream and brown, with muted accents in red, green and orange, like in yellowing old magazines. The same colour scheme appears on the interface: there's a left sidebar showing directory structure, a calendar on the right, and toolbars in the corners. The page heading is 2024-11-04 Monday. Then there are links to yesterday, 2024, and tomorrow. After that is a very minimal journal entry with appointments, a comment about Obsidian, and a to-do list (with items like Town Council and Mop kitchen!).
November 4, 2024 at 3:19 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
I finally caved in and split the Comment field in my #Mandarin Anki flashcards into Example, Example Notes and Comments. Now I'm wondering why I waited so long. It's pretty! And I get to memorise a Chinese sentence for each word instead of a translation, which is much more useful at this stage.
Anki flashcard with the heading Speak, then "time of birth in stem-branch format", then N (for noun). There are buttons on the right linking to a dictionary and examples. Under a horizontal rule is the pronunciation in grey (shēng chén bā zì), the Chinese characters 生辰八字 in a large font, an example sentence in bright blue (我把……写在一张纸上，交给算命先生), additional vocabulary in dull blue (fortune teller), and a synonym in grey (四柱 = 4 pillars: year, month, day, hour). At the bottom are buttons saying 30 minutes: Again, 2 days: Hard, 6 days: Good, and 24 days: Easy.
September 3, 2024 at 5:11 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
I tried a little seal script the other day. I hope I'll get better at it, because it's surprisingly fun when it goes right.

The seal script in the last two lines is 小、亦、止、山、川、木，水、九 respectively. The page is written in vertical lines, right to left.

#Chinese #handwriting #penmanship
A page of Chinese handwriting practice in black and red. The last two lines are mostly in seal script, which looks like gracefully bent wire.
September 2, 2024 at 9:12 AM
yingtai.bsky.social
I've been trying to internalise traditional Chinese dates and times by adding timestamps to my penmanship practice. Here you can see stem-branch names for the year and hour, but numbers for everything else.

Details here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagen...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditi...
A page of Chinese penmanship practice in black with red headings, in vertical lines from right to left.
August 31, 2024 at 7:36 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
I am so damn glad I bought these old-school Chinese exercise books. Doing flashcards is a lot slower when I write every single character, but infinitely more fun for my calligraphy-loving soul.
An open exercise book filled with handwritten Chinese. It's the kind with large squares for children to practise handwriting. Some of the writing is upside down, a bit is in cursive, and a black Pilot V5 pen is laid on top.
July 11, 2024 at 9:09 AM
yingtai.bsky.social
It is so cool that both Chinese and Latin #calligraphy have a hierarchy of scripts, and it works the same way. A piece starts with older/slower scripts, and finishes with younger/faster scripts.

1/n
A page from a Latin manuscript, first line in red. Further described downthread. A piece of Chinese calligraphy centring on one large character. Further described downthread.
June 30, 2024 at 2:19 AM
yingtai.bsky.social
My silver gel pen seems to have died from neglect, but the gold one was delighted to be resurrected. It's too bad my hands can't handle regular practice, because these 1mm metallics are great for learning new cursive scripts - really forgiving and encouraging! #handwriting
Cursive handwriting practice in gold pen, mostly in Getty-Dubay italic handwriting. Some random English words, then some of my favourite bits from Le Nozze di Figaro ("Crudel, perche finora", "Sull'aria", "In quegli anni") with lots of misspellings and repetitions. A few lines of Chinese cursive at the end.
June 4, 2024 at 6:46 AM
yingtai.bsky.social
A wonderful side benefit of working on my Chinese has been discovering a new world of children's literature. And I am ridiculously delighted with the little vocabulary list I made by folding a piece of paper into quarters.
Cover of a children's book, with a chicken gleefully hopping over a wall. It's a Chinese translation of the French P'tites Poules series, and the title translates to "I want to see the ocean". There's also a Chinese vocabulary list in black and red handwriting. The translations are: "sound of child crying; cormorant; stupid, foolish; sand dune; to rush forth; castle, fort; shell; small shrimp; yuck!; salty; dive; urinate; measure word for ships; sailing ship; continent, (mainland)." The book is open to show a picture of so many chickens, big and little, some celebrating their new eggs, others straining over the job. In the foreground is a little chicken walking away and looking very disgruntled. The text says: "It's egg-laying time! This is the little chickens' first time laying eggs. Look, some are crying because it hurts. 'What lovely eggs!' The mother chickens are thrilled. Only Carmela refused to lay eggs. 'Eggs, eggs, always eggs!' she said angrily. 'There must be more fun things in life than eggs!' So many wonderful background details, like the big chicken encouraging a little chicken, or a little chicken who seems to have thought of a diabolical new scheme, or one chasing another with a worm.
February 21, 2024 at 5:52 AM
yingtai.bsky.social
Damn. In just one page Write Now by Getty-Dubay showed me how to do ampersands and @ signs with an elegant minimum of fuss.

I'm still trying to decide between oldstyle and lining numbers, though.

handwritingsuccess.com/shop-usa/
Handwriting practice in coloured pencil, focusing on the letter X, numbers, and punctuation, especially & and @. The style is italic cursive, no loops.
December 15, 2023 at 7:44 AM
yingtai.bsky.social
I've always wanted to write this wild portmanteau Chinese character, called 招财进宝. The characters mean "welcome wealth, enter treasures". In traditional script, each character shares a radical with one of the others, so you can smush them into one mega-character. Image source: s.lazada.sg/s.YeGHP
Poster with mega-character in the centre, ornate border with coins and flowers and 出入平安 (peace when you come in and go out). The poster is in a square diamond shape, printed in gold on a red background.
December 9, 2023 at 6:05 AM
yingtai.bsky.social
I couldn't find my old edition of 三字经 the 3 Character Classic, but I'm getting a heck of an education trying to recreate its format. I've caught pronunciation errors and text mismatches. Now I'm writing notes on its flash tour of Chinese philosophy and history. As the author intended 800 years ago.
Screenshot from my notes on the Three Character Classic. The translation reads: "Then Kuang Wu arose, and founded the Eastern Han Dynasty. It lasted four hundred years, and ended with the Emperor Hsien." My commentary says: Emperor Guangwu was born 刘秀 (劉秀) Liú Xiù, one of many descendants of the Han imperial family. A remarkable strategist, he was unique for his combination of decisiveness and mercy. Unusually, he did not later kill any generals or officials who helped him take the throne. The Han Dynasty ended with two child emperors. After years of turmoil, the minor warlord 曹操 Cáo Cāo took control in Emperor Xiàn’s name, but suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of Red Cliffs 赤壁之战 (赤壁之戰), Chìbì Zhī Zhàn, in 208 CE. There are many stories about the brilliant strategist 诸葛亮 (諸葛亮) Zhūgě Liàng (or孔明 Kǒngmíng) in this war. Formatting: Both traditional and simplified script are given, with pronunciation. The Chinese text is only 12 characters long, in a semi-calligraphic font.
December 5, 2023 at 9:23 AM
yingtai.bsky.social
I just worked out that I can use my calligraphy app to practise on top of screenshots from my Chinese cursive textbook. This feels like a gamechanger!
Lesson 4 from a Chinese cursive textbook, with 錢 (钱) the character for "money" handwritten big and bold over the original text. I cannot stand how beautiful all three variants of this character are.
December 3, 2023 at 3:34 PM
yingtai.bsky.social
Looking into migrating my Books+ log out of my bullet journal. I think my hands have recovered enough for a spreadsheet like this, though not for actual library software like Library Thing or Libib. And it was fun to design the format!
Google spreadsheet, rows in alternating white and light brown. Header row says November, Title, Note, Link. There are checkmarks, coloured shape emojis, titles, occasional authors and series names, and one link. There is a key for the coloured shapes: ⭐ New 🟡 Fiction ⚫ Not English 🔴 Non-fiction 🔺 Not very 🔵 Geography 🔹 Not very 🟢 Audiovisual 💚 Game ⚪ Poetry 🤍 Scripture Incomplete list of titles (because character limit) Damia's children Lyon's pride The tower and the hive Angel-centered therapy through a multicultural lens... https://archiveofourown.org/works/49139437 His blushing plaything Chinese cursive script Mending with love David and Helen in China (level 1) A scotch for the road AO3 hotness Owning Laura The assassins of Thassalon As she's told Catching fire Jeeves and Wooster (S1) Penric and the shaman Penric's fox Masquerade in Lodi Penric's mission My punishment Mend it better Penric's demon Our lives, our history Mira's last dance Slavery and social dea
November 24, 2023 at 12:13 PM