I sent the author a quick thank you, explaining how it helped me in my hour of need. Exactly as others have said here, it goes a long way to making the effort of blogging worthwhile!

Effectively... "Don't work as a freelancer for a company if they are your only client. That's employment."

[0]: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understanding-off-payroll-workin...

I'm now doing anything and everything to get in the sea and improve my surfing. Lengths at the pool for strength and endurance, free diving (and spearfishing) to reduce the anxiety of those big hold-downs. It's been liberating choosing just one sport to be good at.

A hook plate sounds horrible! Mine is a simple straight plate, bent into a helix shape to follow the natural rotation of the bone. I've got almost full mobility, although that shoulder does seize up quite readily. Not sure whether that's the plate or just remnants of the reduced mobility post-crash and post-surgery.

I've been told to expect two weeks of surgical healing and a further 4 weeks of babying it and avoiding impacts. I'm hoping your removal being tougher was due to the different plates. Would quite like it gone and to get on with my life now.

Good illustration was that my run of the mill, 45 minute surgery ended up taking 4.5 hours.

It’s good to hear that everything felt good after your plate was removed. At 18 months post-surgery, I’m in a really good place where I can do most anything I want. Only occasionally experience discomfort if my son headbutts the plate or a backpack strap rubs on it. I was in two minds about having it removed as it would be a step backwards to post-surgical, but the likelihood of me doing something stupid again in the future means it’s worth it. Rather have the fuse that a clavicle is rather than fracture my sternum!

Even with this mess, it was hotly debated for around two weeks whether I needed surgery. A good chunk of my collarbone was trying to push through my skin and the other half was fusing to my scapular and was starting to compromise nerve function. Even then, because the non-surgical route is now considered the standard, I was meeting resistance to have an ORIF. It seems that the about turn from surgical intervention has been so strong that getting ANY surgical intervention is a battle.

I eventually came across a surgeon who took one look at me (never mind the imaging) and scheduled me for surgery. ~18 months later I’m now on a waiting list to have the plate removed, and strangely have gone off cycling… Surfing has happily taken its place.

Nuenki is pretty much what I was looking for - plus it's a good shove to make switch from Safari to Firefox (a change I've been meaning to make).

I've heard of Anki as a learning tool, but not tried it. What makes it miserable?

I'll be sure to checkout the Reddit and YouTube links too. Thanks for the help internet stranger!

I remember seeing some techniques mentioned here over the years - specifically in response to a question about DuoLingo where the conclusion was there are better methods.

I’m a native English speaker, who at points has had conversational French under my belt and GCSE (high school?) equivalent education in French and German.

I’m looking to pick up enough German over the next 12 months to make better-than-average/expected conversation whilst on holiday in Austria.

So, what’s the best methods to (re)learn a language?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910934

Points: 6

# Comments: 9

Either way, I like the thought experiment! :D