bitty notes

A new method I want to try: back-translation

bitty — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 20:52:52 +0800

I know about 5,000 words now. But reading articles at that level? Still painful.

Every word looks familiar, but I can’t process sentences fast enough. A few paragraphs in and my brain just gives up.

I complained to a friend about this, and he told me to try back-translation. Here’s how it works:

Pick an English article
Translate it into Chinese
Wait a bit, then translate your Chinese back into English
Compare your version with the original

You’ll see right away where you’re weak — the words you didn’t use, the sentences you made awkward, the expressions you couldn’t come up with.

2026 03 13

bitty — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 18:42:08 +0800

Well, this is awkward. Last time I said I was back and would continue to improve my English, but I forgot again because I was on vacation. Holidays make people lazy.

Having given up twice already, I can’t give you a firm commitment to keep updating.

Speaking of which, I also plan to make some minor changes to the website.

I noticed this site didn’t even have a pagination button. The theme author probably forgot it or skipped it for ‘minimalism,’ but I wanted my old posts to be reachable, so I added it myself.

I’m back.

bitty — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:02:28 +0800

I’m back. It’s been such a loooooong time, hasn’t it?

I’ve said this before. This site was supposed to be for learning English, and I did keep at it for a while.

Then the exam came closer. I stopped writing and switched to reading and listening instead. So this place went quiet.

After the exam, I forgot about it again. Or maybe I didn’t forget— I just relaxed too much and didn’t feel like studying anymore.

The exam is coming soon

bitty — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:09:34 +0800

There’s only one month left until my exam. Today, I asked GPT to generate an essay topic for me. I thought the topic would be easy to handle because I have a template to follow—you know, those templates with fixed sentences where you only need to fill in the subject.

But when I confidently submitted my essay to ChatGPT, it only gave me 7.5 out of 15. That really caught me off guard.

After the Fall

bitty — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 22:23:35 +0800

During this period

Honesty, I fell.

I vaguely remember that I was trying to figure out how long I could keep writing a diary.

Now I can share my record — 26 days. Typically, people say that keeping something for 21 days helps form a habit. I think I had achieved that, but one important thing ruined everything. I had to put almost all my effort into that project.

2025 11 03

bitty — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 19:41:32 +0800

These past two days, I’ve been swamped with work. I clearly feel exhausted, yet when I checked the time, only three hours had passed.

I can’t even imagine what it’ll be like if I start working outside the home—at least eight hours a day. Will my body really be able to handle it?

Will I have enough energy left to keep studying after getting home at night?

2025 11 02

bitty — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 19:37:55 +0800

My computer started crashing again today, and I feel like it’s because the memory is full.

I really want to replace the memory, but once I finish these days of intensive computer use, I won’t need to put it under such a heavy load anymore, and I feel like buying it now would be a waste.

Anyway, I think I’ll have to upgrade to higher memory in the future.

2025 11 01

bitty — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 19:32:15 +0800

A fresh start to the month—pretty nice.
The weather keeps swinging between cold and hot, which is annoying. I don’t even know how to dress properly anymore.
Then, I spent the whole day glued to my computer today. Not good at all—my back and shoulders always ache after sitting in front of it.

2025 10 31

bitty — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 23:12:50 +0800

I just realized it’s Halloween today, because so many social media platforms have been saying it.

But since I live in a rural area with no festive atmosphere, I’ve just decided to spend the day playing online games with friends.

By the way, why are there so many web crawlers on so many websites during Halloween?

2025 10 30

bitty — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 16:29:55 +0800

Today is the 30th, but I forgot what important thing I was supposed to do.
I often have this kind of problem — I forget to do things that I need to do.

But that’s not a problem, because October has 31 days.
I can continue thinking about it tomorrow.

2025 10 29

bitty — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 22:51:47 +0800

Yesterday I said that I had a task — to finish a document.
Tonight, I finally finished it,
but my teacher hasn’t reviewed it yet.

In the foreseeable future, he will probably find me,
point out my mistakes,
and I’ll have to correct them.

I really don’t like this kind of pace in life.

2025 10 28

bitty — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 22:35:46 +0800

Now I find that building a habit is very difficult. There are so many things that can break my atomic habits.

Today, I just needed to finish a document that must be handed in tomorrow, so I spent all my time working on it.

Because of that, I don’t really have much to share with you today.

2025 10 27

bitty — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 12:38:07 +0800

“While surfing the internet today, I came across a video where the creator talked about how they climbed out of a low point.
One comment underneath said: ‘I really admire the creator, and as I get older I’ve realized that even venting should have a time limit. You can’t use a bad mood as an excuse to stop working and keep immersing yourself in your own world.’
After reading that, I felt a bit moved. It reminded me of a line from a movie I once saw: ‘Crying still counts as time.’
It made me feel that, in its own way, the world can be a little cruel.”

2025 10 26

bitty — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 14:45:38 +0800

Many people recommend that I use ChatGPT’s voice chat to practice my speaking and listening. But what’s hardest for me is that it’s really difficult to use: understanding English at a conversational pace and responding quickly is still too hard.
Even though ChatGPT is forgiving, I often mispronounce words, so it completely misunderstands what I’m saying and the conversation falls into chaos.
I really don’t know how people manage to train with this. That said, I’m reserving judgment—I’ll keep using it for a while. Maybe in a few months I’ll feel differently.

2025 10 25

bitty — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 14:41:19 +0800

Today I was busy studying English, and while studying I kept doubting myself—at this pace, can I really pass the exam?
It felt like I’d been grinding for two hours and only memorized fewer than ten words, which really made me feel discouraged.
But honestly, I slacked off too much before, so now I have to give it my all and study with total focus.

2025 10 24

bitty — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 22:38:19 +0800

Post-meal sleepiness hit me today. I lay on the bed with my eyes half-closed and, blink by blink, drifted off. It happens more often than I’d like. I really should stop doing this—either I wake up at some random time, or I get yanked back to reality exactly when I least want to.
In the end I was out for less than half an hour, and I woke up with a pounding headache.

2025 10 23

bitty — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 20:04:15 +0800

Today my computer froze again without any warning and then restarted all on its own. I didn’t even get a clear look at the blue screen before it rebooted—that alone was enough to make me furious. I wasn’t even doing anything special! It just decided to crash for no reason, and to make it worse, it didn’t even bother to leave an error report.

After digging around in the Event Viewer for quite a while, I finally found the culprit: VMware’s USB driver! How annoying! I’ve disabled that driver for now—fingers crossed that this finally fixes the problem.

2025 10 22

bitty — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 19:17:25 +0800

I can’t believe I actually forgot to write my diary yesterday—what a crime! Still, I have to admit, it’s kind of amazing that I managed to keep it up for this long before slipping. That small victory makes me oddly proud. Anyway, before anything else, I’d better make up for the missing entry.

To be honest, these kinds of diary entries are the easiest to write. They don’t require any real thinking—just a constant use of the language part of my brain to translate thoughts into words, one after another.

2025 10 21

bitty — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 20:12:24 +0800

This entry is a make-up note—yes, I forgot to write my diary for the first time. Let me reflect on why that happened. The reason is simple: I was playing games. Once I start gaming, I get completely absorbed and lose track of everything else I’m supposed to do. That’s exactly why I didn’t write my diary. Actually, not just the diary—most of my real tasks for the day (which technically means yesterday) were left unfinished.

2025 10 20

bitty — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 20:21:51 +0800

I exchanged friend links a few days ago.
But my site follows minimalism, and I couldn’t figure out where to put the friend links.
I can only talk about it here in my diary, and she said it’s okay~

Her website is yuuu, it’s a Chinese site by the way!

微霞

水风清，晚霞明

https://yuuu.org

She helped me a lot — from getting this domain, to setting up most parts of the website, and many other things as well.