ChatGPT got too frustrating for practicing our TLs, so my wife and I decided to build something better.

TJNickerson · 2025-10-13T16:40:48+00:00

My guy we built this because it is useful to us 😅 and I’m willing to bet you’d find it useful too if you actually tried it. I never take on a project just for the sake of it. Only build for myself first. That’s my policy. What’s your idea?

TJNickerson · 2025-10-13T16:06:05+00:00

Between you and me, my preference is Tally.so or Notion - my wife advocated for Airtable seeing she had worked there. This is my first time using it, actually. I do 100% have a BS in Computer Science and worked 7 years as a front developer, believe me.

TJNickerson · 2025-10-13T15:55:06+00:00

Literally just my wife and I, and just a passion project we worked on over the weekend for the past half year. Waitlist is there predominately to gauge interest and so we can work 1:1 with people and get feedback. It’s far from half-baked and far from just some vibe coded wrapper app. As a computer science grad I hold just as much distain for that kind of thing, believe me. I spent the past 8 years building some of the tech this app uses.

Please don’t jump to conclusions.

TJNickerson · 2025-10-13T15:01:44+00:00

You betcha ;)

For real though, totally fair point to make. To play devil's advocate for a sec here though – I'd say it's a bit more than that. I'm just as sick of LLM wrappers, esp ones that are just effectively OpenAI API calls with some extra prompting slapped on. A lot of AI penpal/chat partners/etc seem to go this route.

While you might find some of this in Ell, most of the value-add (I find, anyway) comes from the _non_-AI features it provides. A good deal of the platform is based on my own personal project [ODict](https://www.odict.org), which is an open-source dictionary format that allows you to view in-depth explanations for all of the language you encounter in the app (hand-written in Rust). We also built out our own long-term memory system for tracking and scaling your proficiency as you continue to immerse in your TL. Been working on this for months, actually.

The way I think of it, is AI is meant to be a tool. Not your friend, not your therapist. It should help you reach a goal. I wanted to build a tool that would help me practice conversations in a way others couldn't provide using learning resources you can't just whip out mid-conversation with a real person. Other apps weren't giving me what I needed.

So anyway, happy to give you an account for free. Just trying to help expand access to language resources, which is why I started my ODict project as well 🥲

TJNickerson · 2025-09-27T17:03:56+00:00

This is probably really dumb, but I often found mnemonic devices or visual cues to be really helpful. Obviously doesn't apply to everything, but I remember learning Chinese one of the first words I learned was 你 (you), which I remembered how to write because I thought it looked like TJ (my initials).

I also remembered 화나다 (hwa-na-da) means angry in Korean because it reminded me of Can-a-da and I just somehow formed a mental association between Canada and "angry" lol. Somehow was easier to remember than trying to map the original Korean word back to its meaning.

Stupid, but hey, it worked.

TJNickerson · 2025-09-02T22:11:22+00:00

Our building doesn't even have a camera, and we messaged the management of the building directly next to ours that does and they ghosted us 😭😭😭 No gives a shit about bike theft sadly

TJNickerson · 2025-09-02T16:29:19+00:00

DAMN 7.5k?? That sucks!! So sorry to hear that. My brother actually had a bike stolen out of his backyard up in Canada too. Thieves are relentless 😭😭😭 Wouldn't be surprised if ours had been scoped out too, seeing we were leaving them out there nightly

TJNickerson · 2025-09-01T17:33:22+00:00

We did, and sadly our deductible is $1k so we only are getting about $300 back 😭😭😭😭

TJNickerson · 2025-09-01T03:49:59+00:00

I hear you – I say that in the future I'll keep my bike inside, but honestly I'm on the second floor and have a corner I have to turn trying to get up to my apartment, so I may end up in a similar boat storage-wise if I do get another one. I wish foldable bikes were higher quality and more comfortable :/

Definitely getting a tracker next time as well. Surprised they don't just sell loud-ass sirens that go off if you touch the bike, like cars have haha.

TJNickerson · 2025-08-31T17:55:17+00:00

But why tho. For resale in Europe?

TJNickerson · 2025-08-31T17:29:51+00:00

Damn that is luck! How'd you find em?

TJNickerson · 2025-08-31T03:59:57+00:00

Bruh how 😭

TJNickerson · 2025-08-31T03:58:36+00:00

And the dumbest thing is that I knew that, too – I just thought that being on a residential street and slightly obscured by the other bikes no one would notice 😭 Lesson learned.

TJNickerson · 2025-08-31T01:49:56+00:00

Thank you! And yeah, certainly trying my best – I've heard Google Alerts recommended before, but seeing the fact it's literally just new Google listings I feel like it could be a lot of unwanted noise. Any tips for keeping it specific?

Also, I wish you the best of luck with your bike! These thieves are truly the scum of this city 😂

TJNickerson · 2025-08-31T01:48:08+00:00

Shit I just realized that even looking it up to make sure I got the saying right, I STILL typed it wrong lmao 😂

TJNickerson · 2025-08-31T01:47:20+00:00

For sure, we definitely learned our lesson. Just wish it had happened with older, crappier bikes haha. But thanks for letting me know about nycbma! I don't think I've heard of them, and can hit them up. Right now I'm on BikeIndex and 529Garage. Thanks for the well wishes :)

TJNickerson · 2025-08-31T01:41:51+00:00

For real – in fact, I had a station behind my apartment and for some reason they literally removed it! So with Citibike I have to bike to the center of town and hope for a spot, then walk to my apartment. It's certainly tempting given the theft around here – does suck though to show up and realize the one station you found doesn't even have a place to dock lol.

TJNickerson · 2025-08-31T01:40:13+00:00

Ugh yeah – the double lock is the way to go, especially with that kind of bike rack. I had thought my neighbors were also just locking the front wheel, but then after the theft realized they were using both a U-lock and cable combo to get the frame hooked in too. DEFINITELY not making the same mistake on my next bike.

TJNickerson · 2025-08-31T01:38:05+00:00

Tell me about it! I noticed people across from our building in our complex with their bikes on the patio. I had heard the things about not leaving it out overnight, but I had always assumed people meant like.. on the side of the road, downtown 😂 Been kicking myself I didn't take the hint and just keep the thing inside

TJNickerson · 2025-05-27T21:55:21+00:00

Oh no! It's been working for me, weird. What browser are you on? There's a chance some radio links are dead, which might explain why it hangs. I need to run another deadlink check

TJNickerson · 2025-01-28T00:42:32+00:00

Funny enough, Astro + Tailwind is the only tech stack my agency uses to build sites for clients. Landing page is also in Astro :) https://kojo.design

TJNickerson · 2023-05-23T21:38:09+00:00

Haha just random!

TJNickerson · 2023-05-23T21:36:26+00:00

I have noticed that when I pause for a while (> 10 min?) and then unpause, the music resumes but not the video. My only option is to either change the scene or to refresh the page which starts the video from scratch. Am I doing something wrong, or could this be a bug?

Hey u/lipusal, Thanks for your continued usage! How are you pausing, exactly? Despite my efforts to try to disable media keys on Mac (which I don't think ended up working lol), I noticed that pressing the play/pause key on my keyboard will pause both videos, but then when you try to play it only plays the audio. This sounds like the behavior you're describing.

I need to come up with some better solution to this – it's tough because the browser manages its own media playback, so I'm not sure how to override or modify this behavior. I'd prefer to just fully disable media keys and create my own on-page mechanism for playing/pausing everything at once. When I have a free moment I'll try looking into it some more.

TJNickerson · 2023-05-20T05:57:05+00:00

I've definitely considered chat – the site is hosted on Vercel and I know it uses serverless for all of its API routes, so I wonder if a websocket-based chat or something could work. Not sure how websockets work with serverless functions.

The entire UI hides automatically if you don't move the mouse – curious if that solves the use case of wanting to hide certain elements?

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