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Forgive me I can't figure out how to reply on the original thread but I saw you used a script to build an Anki deck with the native plant species in your area.

Forgive me I can't figure out how to reply on the original thread but I saw you used a script to build an Anki deck with the native plant species in your area. I'd love to do the same but I've never coded in my life and doing it manually would take forever. Would you be willing to share how this is done? Thanks!

clbrmbr 1y ago
Ooo so glad you asked. That's something I am super passionate about. I built those decks during the COVID lockdowns when I needed to connect with nature a bit more. Those Anki decks were incredibly efficient for learning to recognize many plants and mushroom species! I actually did very little coding. It was more of like just some light scripting and today with LLMs you should be able to figure it out even without coding experience. Here's how I did it: 1. I fetched information on the 500 most commonly observed plant species in my area (Northeastern USA and Canada) on iNaturalist. I think I did this just by downloading the web pages with wget. inside of those downloaded files were the common and scientific name of the species as well as a link to the photo. 2. I then wrote a very simple script to download all of those images. 3. Finally, I had a script that I think just created a CSV file that I was able to load into Anki and I created my template, making sure to have a notes section so that as I'm studying, I add interesting facts, such as the genus Eupatorium being named after an emperor infamous for his use of poisons [1]. A note on copyright: Although I would have liked to have a deck that I could freely share with people on the internet, I really wanted to have the best possible photos to help with identification. So I chose to use the primary photograph associated with each species on iNaturalist and most of these are copyrighted without any Creative Commons license. So it's totally fair use to use it for your own edification, but I'm unable to share one of these decks with you directly without getting permission from hundreds of iNat contributors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_VI_Eupator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_VI_Eupator
- kikuska 1y ago
  Yay this is awesome thank you!! I will try this out :) cheers for the detailed guide, had no idea about wget - that will help a ton!

clbrmbr 1y ago

Ooo so glad you asked. That's something I am super passionate about. I built those decks during the COVID lockdowns when I needed to connect with nature a bit more. Those Anki decks were incredibly efficient for learning to recognize many plants and mushroom species! I actually did very little coding. It was more of like just some light scripting and today with LLMs you should be able to figure it out even without coding experience. Here's how I did it: 1. I fetched information on the 500 most commonly observed plant species in my area (Northeastern USA and Canada) on iNaturalist. I think I did this just by downloading the web pages with wget. inside of those downloaded files were the common and scientific name of the species as well as a link to the photo. 2. I then wrote a very simple script to download all of those images. 3. Finally, I had a script that I think just created a CSV file that I was able to load into Anki and I created my template, making sure to have a notes section so that as I'm studying, I add interesting facts, such as the genus Eupatorium being named after an emperor infamous for his use of poisons [1]. A note on copyright: Although I would have liked to have a deck that I could freely share with people on the internet, I really wanted to have the best possible photos to help with identification. So I chose to use the primary photograph associated with each species on iNaturalist and most of these are copyrighted without any Creative Commons license. So it's totally fair use to use it for your own edification, but I'm unable to share one of these decks with you directly without getting permission from hundreds of iNat contributors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_VI_Eupator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_VI_Eupator

kikuska 1y ago
Yay this is awesome thank you!! I will try this out :) cheers for the detailed guide, had no idea about wget - that will help a ton!