Here's what else is in my bookmarks, aka what I've seen go past on here over the past few months that seemed approachably interesting:
http://www.wildml.com/2015/09/implementing-a-neural-network-... - a getting-started guide you can follow along with in IPython
https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/five/why-do-neural-netw... - just playing around, but notable
https://github.com/mbartoli/neural-animation - shows how to restyle video in manner loosely resemblant of Deep Dream
http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/ - this book is online-only but it's CC so you could legally crawl it if you wanted a local copy, I haven't rated it for my own use yet
http://nxxcxx.github.io/Neural-Network/ - a static 3D visualization you can zoom around, mostly kitsch but still kinda fun.
I recommend you go through the cream of the crop and find what suits you the most though:
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=neural&sort=byPopularity&prefi...
The first advice is not to use a dictionary and translate from one language to another. This might sound weird, but I never used any dictionary. You have to understand words in their sentences and try to memorize a sentence instead of just a word.
Movies, TV, Youtube were the one I used primarily to learn a new language. Why?, because you shouldn't be too much focused on "learning" a new language, but more living it and having fun with it. Getting pen/paper and a dictionary every time you want to learn a language sounds like a big hassle. Make learning the language you want a fun part of your life.
Writing in forums/websites very helpful.
If you want to understand a language, you need to understand how people laugh in that language. Watch comedy shows, buy trash magazines and understand the pop culture.
Go to meetups/get together where you can find native speakers.
I can see reading such media to improve fluency to be sure, but I can't see how a sufficient amount of listening to foreign gibberish somehow makes it not-gibberish.
I tried this for learning Japanese while I was an anime fan in high school, and after taking classes in college I could understand every 10th word or so. I was a C student in those classes, so it's possible I just suck at Japanese. Is German easier to do this with?