CHAPTER 2 HAS BEEN UPDATED!

how to disappear completely and never be found again

24 Invaluable Skills To Learn For Free Online This Year

Here’s an easy resolution: This stuff is all free as long as you have access to a computer, and the skills you learn will be invaluable in your career, and/or life in general. 

1. Become awesome at Excel.

Chandoo is one of many gracious Excel experts who wants to share their knowledge with the world. Excel excellence is one of those skills that will improve your chances of getting a good job instantly, and it will continue to prove invaluable over the course of your career. What are you waiting for?

2. Learn how to code.

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Perhaps no other skill you can learn for free online has as much potential to lead to a lucrative career. Want to build a site for your startup? Want to build the next big app? Want to get hired at a place like BuzzFeed? You should learn to code. There are a lot of places that offer free or cheap online coding tutorials, but I recommend Code Academy for their breadth and innovative program. If you want to try a more traditional route, Harvard offers its excellent Introduction to Computer Science course online for free.

3. Make a dynamic website.

You could use a pre-existing template or blogging service, or you could learn Ruby on Rails and probably change your life forever. Here’s an extremely helpful long list of free Ruby learning tools that includes everything from Rails for Zombies to Learn Ruby The Hard Way. Go! Ruby! Some basic programming experience, like one of the courses above, might be helpful (but not necessarily required if you’re patient with yourself).

4. Learn to make a mobile game.

If you’re not interested in coding anything other than fun game apps, you could trythis course from the University of Reading. It promises to teach you how to build a game in Java, even if you don’t have programming experience! If you want to make a truly great game, you might want to read/listen up on Game Theory first.

5. Start reading faster.

Spreeder is a free online program that will improve your reading skill and comprehension no matter how old you are. With enough practice, you could learn to double, triple, or even quadruple the speed at which you read passages currently, which is basically like adding years to your life.

6. Learn a language!

With Duolingo, you can learn Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, or English (from any of the above or more). There’s a mobile app and a website, and the extensive courses are completely free.

Full disclosure: BuzzFeed and other websites are in a partnership with DuoLingo, but they did not pay or ask for this placement.

7. Pickle your own vegetables.

Tired of your farmer’s market haul going bad before you use it all? Or do you just love tangy pickled veggies? You too can pickle like a pro thanks to SkillShare and Travis Grillo.

8. Improve your public speaking skills.

You can take the University of Washington’s Intro to Public Speaking for free online. Once you learn a few tricks of the trade, you’ll be able to go into situations like being asked to present at a company meeting or giving a presentation in class without nearly as much fear and loathing.

9. Get a basic handle of statistics.

UC Berkeley put a stats intro class on iTunes. Once you know how to understand the numbers yourself, you’ll never read a biased “news” article the same way again — 100% of authors of this post agree!

10. Understand basic psychology.

Knowing the basics of psych will bring context to your understanding of yourself, the dynamics of your family and friendships, what’s really going on with your coworkers, and the woes and wonders of society in general. Yale University has its Intro to Psychology lectures online for free.

11. Make your own music.

Step one: Learn how to play guitar: Justin Guitar is a fine and free place to start learning chords and the basic skills you’ll need to be able to play guitar — from there, it’s up to you, but once you know the basics, just looking up tabs for your favorite songs and learning them on your own is how many young guitar players get their start (plus it’s an excellent party trick).

Step two: A delightful free voice lesson from Berklee College Of Music.

Step three: Have you always thought you had an inner TSwift? Berklee College of Music offers an Introduction to Songwriting course completely for free online. The course is six weeks long, and by the end of the lesson you’ll have at least one completed song.

Step four: Lifehacker’s basics of music production will help you put it all together once you have the skills down! You’ll be recording your own music, ready to share with your valentine or the entire world, in no time!

12. Learn to negotiate.

Let Stanford’s Stan Christensen explain how to negotiate in business and your personal life, managing relationships for your personal gain and not letting yourself be steamrolled. There are a lot of football metaphors and it’s great.

13. Stop hating math.

If you struggled with math throughout school and now have trouble applying it in real-world situations when it crops up, try Saylor.org’s Real World Math course. It will reteach you basic math skills as they apply IRL. Very helpful!

14. Start drawing!

All kids draw — so why do we become so afraid of it as adults? Everyone should feel comfortable with a sketchbook and pencil, and sketching is a wonderful way to express your creativity. DrawSpace is a great place to start. (I also highly recommend the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain if you can drop a few dollars for a used copy.)

15. Make your own animated GIF.

BuzzFeed’s own Katie Notopoulos has a great, simple guide to making an animated GIF without Photoshop. This is all you need to be the king or queen of Tumblr or your favorite email chains.

16. Appreciate jazz.

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Have you never really “gotten” jazz? If you want to be able to participate in conversations at fancy parties and/or just add some context to your appreciation of all music, try this free online course from UT Austin.

17. Write well.

Macalester College’s lecture series is excellent. If you’re more interested in journalism, try Wikiversity’s course selection.

18. Get better at using Photoshop.

Another invaluable skill that will get you places in your career, learning Photoshop can be as fun as watching the hilarious videos on You Suck At Photoshop or as serious as this extensive Udemy training course (focused on photo retouching).

19. Take decent pictures.

Lifehacker’s basics of photography might be a good place to start. Learn how your camera works, the basic of composition, and editing images in post-production. If you finish that and you’re not sure what to do next, here’s a short course on displaying and sharing your digital photographs.

20. Learn to knit.

Instructables has a great course by a woman who is herself an online-taught knitter. You’ll be making baby hats and cute scarves before this winter’s over!

21. Get started with investing in stocks.

If you are lucky enough to have a regular income, you should start learning about savings and investment now. Investopedia has a ton of online resources, including this free stocks basics course. Invest away!

22. Clean your house in a short amount of time.

Unf$#k Your Habitat has a great emergency cleaning guide for when your mother-in-law springs a surprise visit on you. While you’re over there, the entire blog is good for getting organized and clean in the long term, not just in “emergencies.” You’ll be happier for it.

23. Start practicing yoga.

Most cities have free community classes (try just searching Google or inquiring at your local yoga studio), or if you’re more comfortable trying yoga at home, YogaGlohas a great 15-day trial and Yome is a compendium of 100% free yoga videos. If you’re already familiar with basic yoga positions but you need an easy way to practice at home, I recommend YogaTailor’s free trial as well.

24. Tie your shoelaces more efficiently.

It’s simple and just imagine the minutes of your life you’ll save!

OK, so I was messing around with chatGPT is an AI model that’s truly terrifying (try it here), and I made it write haikus for me. I’m not sure if this is amusing or scary, but it’s also ironic that in the process of registering an account with ChatGPT I was asked to identify photos with chimneys to prove that I’m not a bot, and failed 3 times.

College Tennis

Out on the green court, Racket swings with precision, Ball flies through the air.

Merry Crisis

Merry Christmas cheer, Suddenly disappears, Crisis on the rise.

The Fernweh Saga: Book One Achievement Guide

Hi Everyone!

 I hope you’re doing well. 💚

This publicly accessible GoogleDoc, here, contains a comprehensive guide to the achievements that can be earned within TFS: Book One. It outlines how to obtain each and every one of the 89 achievements, including helpful stat, friendship, and choice guides that can allow you to better plan how to trigger them or might let you identify the ones that allude you. It’s truly incredible! 

This guide is entirely thanks to the hard work of my friend/editor, Tiffany. 🥰 She has spent days organizing and cross-referencing material to compile it to help readers of TFS, so a massive and heartfelt thank you to her. I truly feel that this goes above and beyond what I could’ve hoped for.

There will be spoilers ahead, so please keep that in mind! Reblogs are greatly appreciated. :D

I hope you have fun while hunting for achievements. 🏆

The public-access demo has been updated to include Chapter Four!

Play the game HERE. Please RESTART the game as old saves will not work.

New to this update:

Edited version of Part One - around 20K words of extra content in Part One;

Chapter Four;

Dealing with the aftermath of Virion's arrival;

Making plans to secure your safety;

Saying goodbye to your family;

Boarding a ship;

Dealing with conflict;

More conflict?;

Spending time with your chosen RO or friend;

Lock in your romance with Prince Irus;

Smooch your chosen RO;

Discover the Nomad Tribe;

Escape a sinking ship;

Reunite with your old friends.

Chapter Four Word Count: 46 909 words. Total Word Count: 246 442 words.

Other things of note:

New, fancy chapter header font and accompanying adornments;

Removed the passive/aggressive stat;

The game will be extended to twelve chapters - instead of three parts, there will now be four parts of three chapters each;

There is an apk version of the game available for android users;

Chapter Four is very bare bones at the moment. I will be going back to add extra content when I start edits.

Thank you for being so patient and I hope you enjoy the game!

Remember to report bugs to me via the bug form in the game or you can report them to me here on Tumblr.

Anniversary celebration and chapters 1 & 2 update  

Happy one-year game anniversary! ✨😱🥳

I know it’s not the 9th in most places in the world, but it is in some! And I’m impatient 😆✨ anyway—one year! Isn’t that amazing? Time flies when you’re having fun 😅 Thank you all for giving me such a warm welcome to all this 💖 without your support and kindness, this would have remained a small little writing exercise 😳 

As thanks for sticking by me and the game, I wanted to give all of you something. But as the new chapter 3 and 4 update isn’t done yet, I had to do the next best thing! I’ve updated chapters 1 and 2 with a little over 6 thousand new words, which feature content such as:

Extended Lestrade sandwich scene

Ask Watson about Lestrade 

New price if you win the heads or tails game 😉

Steal Lestrade’s flask?

Multiple new choices and edits to make it easier to play a soft bickering Lestrade relationship 💖 (if you still want to be yelled at, make sure you make them mad before gloating rudely or obliviously) 

And more! 

I hope you like it and have a great weekend! ❤️ 

IT’S HERE

Case Three: Chapter One (“A Love Story”) is available to play here!

This is a story-driven chapter, so sit back and enjoy the ride 😉 

As always, feedback is appreciated. Let me know your thoughts about the chapter - I’d love to hear it!

For coding errors, please let me know which line the error occurs at (ChoiceScript should display it in their error message).

Reblogs, as always, are more than welcome ✨

The Exile - Chapter Five, Part One

She's here... and she's a big one. This is easily the biggest chapter I've ever written in terms of variety, and honestly most of it is thanks to the fight scene alone.

I would highly recommend playing through a few times with some different commanders (if you have more than one)! There are some big secrets to be found this chapter >:3

Note to Code Divers.

We're at the point where the plot is beginning to thicken up and a lot of interweaving stories are going to be introduced.

By code diving you'll spoil the game to yourself (obviously). And, obviously, the game is meant to be played through blind. While I can't control what you choose to look at or spoil for yourself, I do ask that you keep yourself from spoiling the story for others.

This means do not share "sensitive/spoilery" code with others and do not use the code for your public theories. Because at that point it's not really a theory-- it's just spoiling the game.

Thank you!

Avg. Play length: 90k -> 114k Total Wordcount: 530k -> 818k

Read Below!

Trigger Warnings - There are no new trigger warnings. However, Chapter 5 starts with an incredibly graphic and emotionally intense scene.

Note: You'll have to play from the beginning. Your save files may still be there, but there's a high chance they won't work with the new chapter. Start from the beginning. Save yourself the pain. 😔

Play Chapter 5!

(Send bugs to my tumblr inbox or report them in the discord #bug-report channel. Either one works! And yes, there will be a lot of them 🙃)

Motivation for "Harvard students" or all students basically

1. If you fall asleep now, you will dream. If you study now, you will live your dream.

2. When you think it’s too late, the truth is, it’s still early.

3. The pain of studying is only temporary. But the pain of not knowing—ignorance—is forever.

4. Studying is not about time. It’s about effort.

5. Life is not all about studying. But if you can’t even conquer this little part of life, then what else can you possibly do?

6. Enjoy the inexorable pain.

7. It’s those who are earlier than the others, those who put in more effort, who can enjoy the feelings of success.

8. Not everyone can truely succeed in everything. But success only comes with self-management and determination.

9. Time is flying.

10. The saliva that flow now will become the tears of tomorrow.

11. Dogs are learning, ambassadors are playing.

12. If you don’t walk today, you’ll have to run tomorrow.

13. People who invest in the future are realists.

14. The level of education is in direct correlation with your salary.

15. When today is over, it will never come back.