Yesterday there was no way I could get the yellowbridge.com animations to work in either Firefox or Chrome on my new Ubuntu install (10.4 Lucid Lynx LTS long term service) even though I had visited Adobe.com and installed their special thing for Flash on Ubuntu and plugins, etc.

Today I did a lot of installs to get my Brother 7820N printer working (which was not hard) and to get the SCANNER working which was a BEAR and required that I go into TERMINAL and sudo NANO on a rules file, add a few cryptic lines and reboot.)

I dont know what changed but suddenly when I went back to yellowbridge.com I was able to do the stroke order animations both in Firefox and Chrome.

I dont like it when things are erratic and unpredictable. I like the Ubuntu pinyin input better than the MS Windows Pinyin, but that too is a bit unpredictable.

Also, I found some GREAT introductory mp3 dialogues from http://chinesepod.com

The actual podcasts are HERE http://www.clearchinese.com/mp3-lessons/

I find them very helpful for a beginner like me and in some ways more helpful than Rosetta Stone Mandarin although I do not have buyers regret and fully intend to plod through all five levels of Rosetta Stone and I am sure it will make me a better person. BUT, I dearly wished that these mp3 podcasts were downloadable for FREE, since I am already spending a lot between Rosetta Stone and Skritter (although worth EVERY PENNY!) SO, here is what I did. I installed AUDACITY on my Ubuntu since I read that Audacity can record whatever is playing on the speakers. What I discovered is that the Ubuntu version LACKS the ability to do this. I would have to run a cable from the output to the mic input. BUT, I have and OLD install of Audacity on my Dell XP Windows and that DOES have a dropdown which offers "Wave Out Mix" as a choice and that choice actually records whatever happens to be playing on the computer. I can press RECORD once the tutorial reaches the actual dialog and translation and then press PAUSE when the useful part of the lesson is over. One must be VERY CAREFUL to only use that PAUSE button to TOGGLE recording on and of and then one may load each lesson and record only what is useful. I captured the first nine lessons which was about 40 minutes. I wanted to save that as one MP3 so then I pressed the STOP recording button and then I can go to FILES and choose Save as MP3.

I think the basic subscription to ChinesePod is only $14 per month. They do offer PDF downloads to subscribers. Perhaps when I can afford it I will subscribe to them and I shall certainly give them some advertising in Facebook, Google Plus, etc.

The biggest drawback in Rosetta Stone is their reluctance to provide translations or pasteable Hanzi so that one might at least use translate.google.com

I have Word 2007 macros to convert from pinyin numeric codes to accented pinyin so I can search in google for the exercise sentences.

I thought I would mention all these technological adventures just in case it might benefit other students.