Home on Kelvin's personal website

Firefox is the best mobile browser

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Firefox is an open source, private browser, one of the few mainstream browsers that supports extensions on mobile (Android) as powerful as the desktop ones (A lot of extensions have been ported), with seamless sync and a customizable homepage.

Browser Extensions

There are many extensions that have improved my browsing experience dramatically, by helping me fight the bloat of modern web browsing. This is especially more important on mobile, where resources and screen space are more limited.

Firefox’s extension store for android

The extension store is very similar to the desktop one. My browsing use case on my phone is to read articles, look up something quickly, buy things in online stores, or just see what people are saying online. When I do that, I don’t want to see ads, and I don’t want pop-ups taking up half of my screen. No, I don’t want to download your app, The website is fine; I don’t want to talk with your AI chat. I’m not interested in receiving fake notifications either. And I might have subscribed to your newsletter if you hadn’t put a pop-up while I was midway through reading your article.

The following extensions have helped me in my fight against bloat and antipatterns on the web. Making my time on the web rather a pleasant experience

Block ads and more (Ublock)

Ublock is the best ad blocker. Besides blocking ads, it also blocks other annoyances such as mobile banners, like those super annoying ones where they tell you to download their app instead of letting you use their website

Amazon your app sucks and I won’t use it

Amazon’s app pop-up

Ublock filter lists

Here it’s my the filter list that I use that not only removes those install the app for the best experience. They also remove other annoyances like chat widgets, newsletter notices, popups, cookie banners, etc.

Ublock filter lists

To activate it go to the extensions menus. Press the Ublock one and then press in Open the dashboard And the go to the filter lists tab.

There is the step by step tutorial with images

Ublock extension menu

Open the dashboard

filter list menu select

I hate the Medium UI (Libredirect)

So when you open a medium article you get the following delightful UX

a Full screen pop-up to subscribe to medium

And after you close it, they show you bunch of annoying elements in the article

Medium main page with unnecessary elements

Compare that with the beautiful experience you get with the Scribe front-end.

Scribe frontend with just content

The extension that makes this possible is called LibRedirect

X, I want to see the comments!

Twitter/x. won’t let you to see the comments unless you create an account

Twitter page requiring log in to see the comments

If you tap in read replies button you’ll be presented with a log in screen

Compare with the nitter frontend also using LibRedirect where you can actually see comments

Nitter frontent showing comments

Don’t fuck with paste

This one is self-explanatory, but if you hate that some sites don’t let you paste as me, this is for you.

Don’t fuck with paste

Can I just listen to something in the background?

This extensions will allow you to fix issues in some sites where they don’t let you to play audio in the background

Video background play fix

Video background play fix store page

404 Not found

404 not found

When this happens, you want to look up for a tool that let’s you to check for an archived version. Web archives let’s you to do exactly that

It even let’s you to choose from multiple archive sites Web archives

Web archives archive site selection

Stop wasting time on the web

Are you wasting time on the web?
Install Lechblock You can block websites, set time limits and more with Lechblock

Sync

The other nice thing, about Firefox is that if you use Firefox on desktop, you can sync your data between your phone and your desktop easily, like bookmarks, addresses, passwords etc.. (I only sync bookmarks and tabs though )

Desktop’s tabs

You can see the tabs opened on your desktop

See mobile tabs opened on desktop

A useful feature is send to the desktop Where you can send tabs for checking them later on your computer.

Send to desktop

customize homepage

you can customize the home page to only leave what you want. I for example remove sponsored shortcuts and stories from the page

customize homepage

How to think in your target language

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Most language learners often wonder how to start thinking in their target language. In this article, I’ll show you a set of strategies that will allow you to start from a basic level to progressively develop your ability to produce thoughts in your target language, therefore develop your writing and speaking abilities.

Start writing

Why?

If you start speaking, you not only need to think about what you want to say, but you also have to think about how to pronounce it correctly. However, when you’re writing instead of speaking, you have time to think about what you want to say, you can look up words, recall words or phrases from content that you watched, etc. But this won’t be the usual writing that you’re used to in school, where you write or copy textbook exercises; this type of writing requires you to write your own thoughts, but you might say:

If I don’t know how to “think” in my target language, how am I supposed to write my thoughts in it?

It’s true that there isn’t much that you can write about at the beginning, but you should still be able to have some basic thoughts by doing immersion in your target language.

What is immersion?

Language Immersion is when you consume content in your target language. It could be TV shows, movies, videos, books, articles, or even just having conversations with native speakers, as long as you’re consuming real content that you can at least somewhat understand.

The input hypothesis:

This states that learners progress in their knowledge of the language when they comprehend language input that is slightly more advanced than their current level. Krashen called this level of input “i+1”, where “i” is the learner’s interlanguage and “+1” is the next stage of language acquisition.

It’s basically the previous step, before trying the strategies I’ll present. Still, you can start applying the strategies as you keep immersing in the language. The thing is that immersion alone will not suffice. You won’t be able to produce developed thoughts to have a conversation. You need to train the muscle to form ideas in your target language. The following strategies have helped me to do exactly that, and I hope they help you too.

To-do lists

A simple writing format is a To-do list. For example:

English

buy food
do laundry

Spanish

Comprar comida
Lavar la ropa

French

Acheter de la nourriture
Faire la lessive

When you write to-do lists, you basically speak in the present tense, and that’s the simplest tense to use in most languages. Also, you can use basic vocab, and the structure is also simple to follow. As a bonus, you’ll always have things to do, so it’s easy to do it consistently every day, and consistency is the most important thing for developing your thinking in your second language.

Continuing from the immersion’s words/sentences.

This is also a simple one: take a sentence or word that you read/listened to from a piece of content in your target language, and try to continue to form sentences using that word or sentence. For example, you might learn the word “Dégoûtant” in French, which means disgusting. And you can form the following sentence: “La nourriture dans ce restaurant était dégoûtante”. “The food in that restaurant was disgusting.” It might not be the best example (I just came up with it), but the point is to take words from the content that you watch and form your own sentences, and that way it’s easier than starting from scratch.

Making reviews

After you watched a video, movie, TV show, book, or whatever, write about what you think about it, what made you feel, or just summarize it. If your vocabulary and skills are not that advanced, just try to summarize what you watched, read, or listened to.

Below is an example that I did with the French TV show Standing Up

Drôle série sur Netflix

La série parle de comédiens qui essaient de progresser dans leur carrière et de tous les problèmes qu’ils rencontrent dans leur quotidien. Je l’ai beaucoup aimée parce que j’ai trouvé l’histoire des personnages principaux très amusante.

I want to add to this strategy, to post comments in whatever platform that let’s you do it, like in youtube, in social media, in platforms like Webtoon anytime that you have the opportunity to share your thoughts in your target language about what do you thing about something that you like or disklike, take the opportunity and interact with the community in that language.

keeping a journal

Keeping a journal is another effective way to practice your thinking, as when you speak with another person, they usually ask you about your day, your plans, like what you did today, and that kind of stuff. Finally, you can keep a daily journal, so you have the consistency part down with this strategy, too.

For example, an entry from a journal that I used to keep in French, called le midi journal (Because I used to always write at noon)

le série drôle c’est pas renouveler, c’est dommage, c’est la merde en fait. aujourd’hui j’ai commencé à nouvelle série appelée le 7 vies de Lea. aujourd’hui mon père parti de venezuela pour arriver ici. c’est tout à demain

It has many errors, but the point is to keep writing, check your mistakes, and keep improving every day.

Content creation in your target language

You can do a blog/newsletter for writing or something like a youtube channel and similar for speaking, basically what I’m doing with this post, the purpose is to share with others your thoughts, doing this will help you to refine your ideas, and doing content for others to see, will make you to want to maintain a higher quality that just for yourself.