For one, math was supposed to be hard. People say, "~Oooh calculus~" as if it's some scary monster. I would say, "What, calculus? I finished that in 10th grade." Well, calculus 1 and 2, at least. That was the highest they offered at my high school, so I took online math classes from the nearby university my last 2 years. Of course I aced all of those classes. What did you expect? Math was one of those things that just came easy to me. They kept saying, "Do the homework and study because that's the only way you're going to learn." I just wanted to tell them, "There are exceptions to that rule."
Saturday, December 15, 2012
A New Beginning
"It's a hard college," everyone said. "Even high school valedictorians have to study hard there." And I was just thinking, "I'll believe it when I see it." I had enough experience doing things that were supposed to be hard.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Hard Work vs Talent, and the Ironic Story.
There are many things that cannot be known for certain, but the fact that different people will require different amounts of hard work and effort to accomplish the same things is surely true. How much variability exists in natural abilities and how much can and cannot be overcome through pure effort are things that I cannot answer.
To say that many of my past efforts were with the intent of providing insight into the truth of this matter... well, you might say that that's an understatement. "What have you learned?" you ask. What have I learned, I wonder...
Perhaps the best answer is... nothing. I was one person. How could I hope to form any meaningful conclusions from the analysis of only one person? It might seem that I put a lot of effort into the things I did, and, well, I suppose I often did, but it wasn't optimized effort. It wasn't effort with the pure goal of improvement. I mean, what would you expect? I wasn't completely willing to give up enjoyment for the sake of improvement. It wasn't that there was no overlap between the two; it was just that it will always be true that I could've done more. As such, I can't say that my efforts or abilities represent any limit. They aren't the limits of my own abilities, so it would be ridiculous to look at them as the limits of human abilities. The other point was that I was also not representative of the average person. It's just true. I was certainly not your average person.
I think it's ironic, you know. Most people would look at me as someone who was talented, someone who was gifted, and yet here I was, writing a story that was perhaps as much hard work and effort as it was talent. I could've stuck to what I was good at, right? I should have, maybe. But now you have to ask, what do my results mean?
If I were to write cruelly, I would say that everything I do supports the fact that there are things that are nearly impossible to do if you weren't born with the necessary talent. Do you think you could do everything I can do? I wasn't born with every talent in the world, but I definitely had a lot of natural talent.
And, writing out of the extreme opposite perspective, I would say that, while maybe I had the benefit of some natural abilities, a significant amount of what I was capable of was the product of hard work. Plenty of the things I became able to do were things that I initially couldn't even imagine being capable of doing, ever. But, really, if you give it a lot of effort, there will be many times when the things that seem really hard will eventually become easy. Basically, anything I can do is something you could probably become capable of doing too, if you tried hard enough. Besides, I have experience of overcoming a lack of talent through hard work. Just ask me about my days of running cross country. Huh, what do you mean that story didn't exactly have a happy ending?
Another big question is: is there an ability to learn, or to pick up things, to improve? Is that what intelligence is? And if so, can you improve your ability to improve? Can you make yourself smarter?
Definitions of intelligence aside, there may be an ability to learn, but it might not be a single ability. For example, you might think of the ability to learn subjects in school. That might not be specific enough, so you have to go deeper. Split it into an ability to learn history, and an ability to learn English, and to learn math. And maybe that's not enough. It's an ability to learn math based on logic and theorems, and an ability to learn math through examples, and an ability to visualize geometry, and so on.
The questions go on of course. Maybe you can't improve your general ability to learn, but it is possible to improve in small areas. To what extent it is possible I can't say, but, for example, you can improve on your ability to improve at new rhythm games. Now, can you take your improvements in learning rhythm games, and use them to also improve quicker in other genres of video games? And, if so, can you take your improvements in learning how to improve in games, and make yourself able to learn more quickly in general? If I had to guess, I'd guess that it's possible, but it could depend on your natural ability to inherently know the relationships between things that often seem unrelated. Now, can you improve that ability?
The practical side of me says that, while it might be possible to make yourself a smarter person, the amount of effort it would require would probably make it a worthless goal. There are times when you have to give an extreme amount of effort just to do something that others can do easily. I have enough experience on both sides to know that. With such a broad goal, not just to be better at one thing, but to be smarter in, essentially, everything, surely it would require even more effort. And, not only that, there's no general well-known method as to how to become smarter. What do you do, attempt to copy the strategies of those who seem to be smarter than you? And what if it's not possible? You'll spend your life trying to reach a goal that was never obtainable in the first place.
The dreamer in me says that this is something that cannot be proven impossible. You can't say with certainty that it can't be done. However, it is possible for me, as a single person, to prove that it can be done. And not just me. Anyone out there. That story is there to be written. And the story doesn't have to be black and white. Success and failure do not have to be the only two words to describe the end result. Even if you are unable to truly become smarter, I believe that the story of the attempt to do so is one worth writing.
And you ask, "Is that your story?" and I say, it depends. Don't you see? All stories vary when the perspective from which they are written is changed, and all stories evoke different emotions when the true feelings of its characters are changed. It is my belief that these things are the keys to transforming a recollection of events and a list of facts into something more- into a story. "So, what is your perspective? What are your true feelings?" And, with a reply that feels heavy, weighted down with its meaning and its implications, and powerful, proclaiming an alternate way of viewing the world and of living, and definitive, defining some kind of truth, some kind of certainty behind the person I was, I take a deep breath to, slowly, and with a sense of absoluteness not normally present, answer,
They vary.
To say that many of my past efforts were with the intent of providing insight into the truth of this matter... well, you might say that that's an understatement. "What have you learned?" you ask. What have I learned, I wonder...
Perhaps the best answer is... nothing. I was one person. How could I hope to form any meaningful conclusions from the analysis of only one person? It might seem that I put a lot of effort into the things I did, and, well, I suppose I often did, but it wasn't optimized effort. It wasn't effort with the pure goal of improvement. I mean, what would you expect? I wasn't completely willing to give up enjoyment for the sake of improvement. It wasn't that there was no overlap between the two; it was just that it will always be true that I could've done more. As such, I can't say that my efforts or abilities represent any limit. They aren't the limits of my own abilities, so it would be ridiculous to look at them as the limits of human abilities. The other point was that I was also not representative of the average person. It's just true. I was certainly not your average person.
I think it's ironic, you know. Most people would look at me as someone who was talented, someone who was gifted, and yet here I was, writing a story that was perhaps as much hard work and effort as it was talent. I could've stuck to what I was good at, right? I should have, maybe. But now you have to ask, what do my results mean?
If I were to write cruelly, I would say that everything I do supports the fact that there are things that are nearly impossible to do if you weren't born with the necessary talent. Do you think you could do everything I can do? I wasn't born with every talent in the world, but I definitely had a lot of natural talent.
And, writing out of the extreme opposite perspective, I would say that, while maybe I had the benefit of some natural abilities, a significant amount of what I was capable of was the product of hard work. Plenty of the things I became able to do were things that I initially couldn't even imagine being capable of doing, ever. But, really, if you give it a lot of effort, there will be many times when the things that seem really hard will eventually become easy. Basically, anything I can do is something you could probably become capable of doing too, if you tried hard enough. Besides, I have experience of overcoming a lack of talent through hard work. Just ask me about my days of running cross country. Huh, what do you mean that story didn't exactly have a happy ending?
Another big question is: is there an ability to learn, or to pick up things, to improve? Is that what intelligence is? And if so, can you improve your ability to improve? Can you make yourself smarter?
Definitions of intelligence aside, there may be an ability to learn, but it might not be a single ability. For example, you might think of the ability to learn subjects in school. That might not be specific enough, so you have to go deeper. Split it into an ability to learn history, and an ability to learn English, and to learn math. And maybe that's not enough. It's an ability to learn math based on logic and theorems, and an ability to learn math through examples, and an ability to visualize geometry, and so on.
The questions go on of course. Maybe you can't improve your general ability to learn, but it is possible to improve in small areas. To what extent it is possible I can't say, but, for example, you can improve on your ability to improve at new rhythm games. Now, can you take your improvements in learning rhythm games, and use them to also improve quicker in other genres of video games? And, if so, can you take your improvements in learning how to improve in games, and make yourself able to learn more quickly in general? If I had to guess, I'd guess that it's possible, but it could depend on your natural ability to inherently know the relationships between things that often seem unrelated. Now, can you improve that ability?
The practical side of me says that, while it might be possible to make yourself a smarter person, the amount of effort it would require would probably make it a worthless goal. There are times when you have to give an extreme amount of effort just to do something that others can do easily. I have enough experience on both sides to know that. With such a broad goal, not just to be better at one thing, but to be smarter in, essentially, everything, surely it would require even more effort. And, not only that, there's no general well-known method as to how to become smarter. What do you do, attempt to copy the strategies of those who seem to be smarter than you? And what if it's not possible? You'll spend your life trying to reach a goal that was never obtainable in the first place.
The dreamer in me says that this is something that cannot be proven impossible. You can't say with certainty that it can't be done. However, it is possible for me, as a single person, to prove that it can be done. And not just me. Anyone out there. That story is there to be written. And the story doesn't have to be black and white. Success and failure do not have to be the only two words to describe the end result. Even if you are unable to truly become smarter, I believe that the story of the attempt to do so is one worth writing.
And you ask, "Is that your story?" and I say, it depends. Don't you see? All stories vary when the perspective from which they are written is changed, and all stories evoke different emotions when the true feelings of its characters are changed. It is my belief that these things are the keys to transforming a recollection of events and a list of facts into something more- into a story. "So, what is your perspective? What are your true feelings?" And, with a reply that feels heavy, weighted down with its meaning and its implications, and powerful, proclaiming an alternate way of viewing the world and of living, and definitive, defining some kind of truth, some kind of certainty behind the person I was, I take a deep breath to, slowly, and with a sense of absoluteness not normally present, answer,
They vary.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
The 2012 Turkey Trot
The Turkey Trot is one of two 5K runs that I've been running every year, so of course I have to get excited for it. I was pumped up; I was like, C'mon, let me out there, I'm gonna go crazy on the course. Well, that was until the 15 minutes before the race started, because then I started wondering why I was excited to push myself like I did in my cross country days and go through ridiculous amounts of pain and suffering to run only as fast as other people were running for fun... I started to remember that fact that pounded itself into my legs and my mind every race when I used to run cross country: running isn't actually fun.
Monday, November 12, 2012
On Working Memory and Multitasking
Have you ever heard of limits like this? Or things like this? I've always wondered the value of searching for limits like that. Take that first article, for example. They say you can't remember 4 things at once, unless you use tricks. Well if you're talking about something like a game, and saying that, without using some special input device, you can only do so much, then all right. But when you're talking about the human mind and it's capacity to learn and remember, why would you consider a limit like that?? It's like saying, "If you memorize things inefficiently, then your limit is 4 things." Well maybe, but why would you want to memorize things inefficiently? You're saying I can only remember 4 groups of objects. If I think of an individual object as it's own group, then I should only be able to remember 4 objects, but maybe if I remember objects in groups of 10, then I can remember 40, or groups of 100 for 400 total... something like that, right? So where's the limit?
I feel the same about multitasking. Maybe you can only focus on one thing at a time, or maybe only two things. That may be so, but how do you view your "things"? How many beats am I keeping when I play this? (I can do the first half of the song with no misses pretty consistently now.)
It's 4 beats, right? There's the quarter note, the eighth note, the 16th notes, and one more beat pattern. But then I've had enough practice with things like that, so the quarter note and eighth note beats basically just feel like one rhythm to me. So that's three beats, I guess? But then, after practicing that song enough, I can see the whole left hand rhythm as a single beat. So, two beats? That's how I see it when I play it, but maybe if I was a bit better at it, I could hear the sync between the left and right hand parts and play both beats as one completely. So, am I multitasking? Am I not surpassing any limits because I'm seeing things that could be considered separate tasks as one?
See, I really believe that much of it depends on how you view things. In many cases, there's a normal classification for tasks. Like, you probably wouldn't say someone playing DDR is doing 4 tasks at once, even though there's 4 arrows. It's just one game. And someone playing Beatmania might be hitting 7 keys and the scratch, but you wouldn't call that multitasking between 8 things. But then there is the option to play both sides on Beatmania. Now that, that sounds like multitasking, right? Well, I'm not so sure. If you learned the game in that mode, you'd probably just consider it one game. One task. Now, if you learned the game in the normal mode, then you'd probably have your memory of playing the normal mode, and it'd feel a lot more like doing two things at once. But, with enough practice, you could put them together.
Then there's another big question I have. Who do they test in these kinds of studies, and how much practice do they get on the tests? I don't think participants get to practice the tests beforehand, and I doubt that the people chosen are the best multitaskers out there. Maybe that's good for knowing the average, but I wouldn't make any statement about a limit from a study like that. I mean, imagine if someone randomly selected a thousand people to play DDR, and it just so happened that none of them were extremely experienced at the game. It'll look like the hardest songs in the game are impossible to beat, for any number of reasons. The people playing couldn't move their legs fast enough. They couldn't process the information fast enough. There were times when there were 8+ notes on the screen at once, and there's no way to remember that much information in working memory. Well, maybe, but you improve on things like that with practice. Which leads to another question: can you improve your working memory with training? Can you improve your multitasking with practice? I like to believe so. I have nothing to mention on working memory specifically, but I have plenty of what you might call "multitasking training." And, I feel like this form of multitasking is something that's gotten easier for me with practice.
Monday, October 22, 2012
On (My Own) Visual Memory
There are times when I think my memory is deficient. There are a lot of things that I don't remember that most everyone else does. Being how I am, I have to think through it all and wonder if there's some pattern or some category of things that I don't remember or some theory I can create... One of those theories would be that I didn't care about the same things other people did, and so I didn't remember the same things. And one of those categories could be visual memory. Or so I thought.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Unfinished Stories (aka Why I may never return to DK Summit)
I know I've left some unfinished stories on my Youtube channel, with the most notable being this one. I don't regret that I stopped playing DK Summit; I only regret that I tried to go on with the story when I knew I didn't want to. You see, I never intended to write some endless story, and it wasn't my expectation that I could set a record that would just never be beaten. Yes, there was supposed to be an end to the story, no matter how good or bad that ending might be.
It started out with getting the world record the first time. Back then, that was something that seemed almost impossible. To set a world record in a well contested game with a worldwide leaderboard, now that was something to write a story about. And then eventually I did get it, and it was like, "Wow, I actually got the world record!!" And then of course someone else beat it. But then I got it back, and not only was it that I got the world record once, but I also defended it. And then some time later the strategy on the course changed significantly. Then once again, getting the world record looked like something that was really hard to do. Some of what I had previously learned was now useless, and if I wanted to even be able to compete for the record again, I would have had to learn something new. And then, despite all that, I got the record again, and reclaimed it a couple times after it was beaten again. After that, it was less of an amazing feat to reclaim the world record and more of something I believed to be possible. Certainly not easy, but just not as meaningful as it once was. I didn't feel like I had anything left to prove. I was able to set the world record once, get it back after losing it, get it back after the course strategy changed, and get it back again after losing it again. I fully believed, and I suppose that today I still do, that if I really wanted to get the world record again, I could do it. It might take some ridiculous effort, long struggles, and a lot of failed attempts, but hey, I went through that before. The only problem is that it's not my goal to set a world record in Mario Kart anymore. I'd rather do something different, learn something new, find some area where I have much more potential to improve. In that way, the story continues on, just not in Mario Kart. Say what you want: that I ran away or that I gave it up. Maybe I did, but right now I'm fine with that, and because of that, I may never come back.
As for Street Fighter IV, I did get a lot better at it. I guess I found out though that, while I had the motivation to play the game, I didn't have the motivation to make videos about it. Eventually I moved on to other fighting games anyway, and I got a lot better at fighting games in general.
Oh, and I was going to do a series on Starcraft II, but it's probably good that I didn't.
It started out with getting the world record the first time. Back then, that was something that seemed almost impossible. To set a world record in a well contested game with a worldwide leaderboard, now that was something to write a story about. And then eventually I did get it, and it was like, "Wow, I actually got the world record!!" And then of course someone else beat it. But then I got it back, and not only was it that I got the world record once, but I also defended it. And then some time later the strategy on the course changed significantly. Then once again, getting the world record looked like something that was really hard to do. Some of what I had previously learned was now useless, and if I wanted to even be able to compete for the record again, I would have had to learn something new. And then, despite all that, I got the record again, and reclaimed it a couple times after it was beaten again. After that, it was less of an amazing feat to reclaim the world record and more of something I believed to be possible. Certainly not easy, but just not as meaningful as it once was. I didn't feel like I had anything left to prove. I was able to set the world record once, get it back after losing it, get it back after the course strategy changed, and get it back again after losing it again. I fully believed, and I suppose that today I still do, that if I really wanted to get the world record again, I could do it. It might take some ridiculous effort, long struggles, and a lot of failed attempts, but hey, I went through that before. The only problem is that it's not my goal to set a world record in Mario Kart anymore. I'd rather do something different, learn something new, find some area where I have much more potential to improve. In that way, the story continues on, just not in Mario Kart. Say what you want: that I ran away or that I gave it up. Maybe I did, but right now I'm fine with that, and because of that, I may never come back.
As for Street Fighter IV, I did get a lot better at it. I guess I found out though that, while I had the motivation to play the game, I didn't have the motivation to make videos about it. Eventually I moved on to other fighting games anyway, and I got a lot better at fighting games in general.
Oh, and I was going to do a series on Starcraft II, but it's probably good that I didn't.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Hard Games and 2 Player Games
That's pretty much all I care to play anymore. When you're playing a game that's difficult for you, you usually have to learn something new or develop some new skill or ability. I guess that's one of the things I like most about playing games: that you can keep on learning new concepts and skills, essentially, that you can keep on improving yourself.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
I can't connect with others. (Closing points)
Well I'm certainly an introvert, and a pretty extreme one at that. Dealing with other people almost never seems like something enjoyable to do. Of course there are exceptions. I can't say that I've never enjoyed talking with other people, or that there is no one who I enjoy being around. But still, it's so extreme, like, if I were to say, "Have you ever played some kind of game, a board game, video game, you name it, and enjoyed it?" and you say yes, and then I say, "So, you can see why there are people who could play the same game a hundred hours, or a thousand hours, their entire lives even, because they really enjoy it, right?" and unless you're actually into games you say, "Uh, no not really."
With a quick search you could find out all kinds of stuff about introverts.
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So, the next thing would be, "What is it that I want to say?" Well why would I tell you that? So you can tell me that you don't see the point in talking about something like that? So you can say, "Oh, thaaat's what it is that you enjoy talking about." in some extremely judgmental tone?
Yeah, I do feel that social anxiety to some extent. The first paragraph on it in Wikipedia says:
I don't mind saying that I probably have social anxiety because I've somehow ended up in the ironic position where, if anyone were to say that my way of life or my interests or my desires were just wrong, then a million counterpoints would jump to the forefront of my mind and then I'd actually be making myself feel more at ease instead of making myself worry. Like, if you actually wanted to make me doubt myself, you'd have to out-logic me (which is already virtually impossible (not because my logic is so good, but because you'd have to find some set of absolute statements which I don't believe exist)), and if I lose some kind of logic battle then it's because I said something that's actually wrong, and it's different being corrected on something that's actually wrong. Basically it wouldn't be an opinion thing anymore and so I wouldn't be bothered by it. So yes, I'm saying that if you want to challenge my opinions, go ahead. In some ways it'd put me at ease, and I have a ton of counters ready, so, good luck.
But the fact of the matter is that it's still there. I really don't want to hear people telling me how wrong they think my opinion is, and at the same time, I'm not really interested in having my opinion supported. So not only is there no reason for me to tell other people my opinions, there's actually reason not to. Which, as you might imagine, greatly limits the amount of things that fall under the category of "things I want to say."
See, I'm virtually always silent on my (very very slight preferences that are so small and vague that they hardly deserve to be called) opinions, so other people really don't know what they are. Which means that any time a strong negative opinion is expressed on something, it could very well be a strong negative opinion on something that I, you know, care about. Now with how it is with friends, I'd bet that if, after someone said something like, "Man, who would like something dumb like that?" I said, "Hey, I like that," then the response would go something like, "Well it has this and this which are redeeming qualities," or "Well yeah I guess it's not that bad," etc etc. Okay, so you were either over-emphasizing the negative points initially (which why would you want to do that? To make me feel uncomfortable?) or you're softening you're true opinion (which is nice and all, but you already said how you actually feel). And then the closing point is that, well, maybe I don't actually have an opinion on what you're talking negatively about, but you're still showing that you make negative judgments on people based on their opinions on a given topic, and that almost guarantees that I'll never want to talk to you about my (very very slight preference that is so small and vague that it hardly deserves to be called an) opinion on anything near that topic. Look it's cool that you have your judgments on things, but I really don't care about making you support what I like, and I really don't want to have to answer questions like, "Well why do you like something like that?" or to have to deal with people saying how awful what I like is.
But it would be how close I am to another person (or, well, every other person that my preference was being expressed to) that would determine how hard it was to express my preference. And either you were coincidentally similar to me as far as feelings and mindsets and personalities went, or it was a looooong bridge spanning a huuuuge gap. But, I don't believe any such bridges are truly uncrossable.
The last thing was that it often took me a long time to put together my words. Sometimes I feel like when people ask me a question I should say, "Wait, give me 15 seconds to organize my thoughts and all, and then maybe I can give a meaningful answer." And I can already imagine the murmurs of, "Is that a weakness? A disability?!" and my reply of, "No way, I don't believe in things like that!" as I go on to spend the rest of my life focused on improving my communication skills to show that it was something that could be overcome... Something like that.
With a quick search you could find out all kinds of stuff about introverts.
Introverts tend to dislike small talk.Well, I can say that this one fits me. Most of what could be called "small talk" is stuff that I'm not interested in saying, and not that interested in listening to. I guess extroverts just ask these questions that other extroverts have long responses to, and they expect people to go on and on with an answer to a question like, "How are you today?" but all I have to say is, "Fine," "Good," or something. "Well." If you wanted to know something more, you'd have to ask about it specifically, because all I would really be interested in knowing is stuff like, "Are you still alive with no major injuries and no huge difficulties to face and you haven't won the lottery or anything?" so really that's all I'd be answering. "I'm still alive and well and I have nothing else to add unless you have something else to ask."
Introverts need time alone to recharge.I see this a lot, but I've never seem myself like that. Maybe if you looked at my "social battery" like a terrible laptop battery, you know, the kind that runs out in a couple minutes, then I could see it.
Myth #2 – Introverts are shy.The not shy introverts say that just because you're introverted doesn't mean that you're shy, which is surely true. But just because there are introverts that aren't shy doesn't mean that all introverts aren't shy.
Myth #4 – Introverts don’t like people.
On the contrary, Introverts intensely value the few friends they have. They can count their close friends on one hand. If you are lucky enough for an introvert to consider you a friend, you probably have a loyal ally for life. Once you have earned their respect as being a person of substance, you’re in.I guess you could say I'm even more accepting of others than most. I mean, in general I would say that I've got nothing against other people, and I don't care if you don't see the world in the way that I do. But I probably won't say much to you because I just don't have much to say period.
Myth #1 – Introverts don’t like to talk.I've got to believe that this is the best way to talk to introverts. If you can find what they want to say and show that you're genuinely interested in hearing what it is they want to say, well I'd imagine that it would make for a good conversation. That would probably be an excellent way to talk to other people in general anyway, introverts or extroverts.
This is not true. Introverts just don’t talk unless they have something to say. They hate small talk. Get an introvert talking about something they are interested in, and they won’t shut up for days.
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So, the next thing would be, "What is it that I want to say?" Well why would I tell you that? So you can tell me that you don't see the point in talking about something like that? So you can say, "Oh, thaaat's what it is that you enjoy talking about." in some extremely judgmental tone?
Yeah, I do feel that social anxiety to some extent. The first paragraph on it in Wikipedia says:
Social anxiety is anxiety (emotional discomfort, fear, apprehension, or worry) about social situations, interactions with others, and being evaluated or scrutinized by other people that is typically characterized by an intense, ego-driven fear of what others are thinking about them (specifically fear of embarrassment, criticism, rejection, etc.), which results in the individual feeling insecure, and that they are not good enough for other people, resulting in intense fear and anxiety in social situations, and the assumption that peers will automatically reject them in social situations.I read through it saying, "Yeah, yeah, I guess so," until I get to the part about insecurity and not good enough for other people. I don't have any doubts about myself, and I would prompt a challenge by saying, "What, you think you're better than me?" I mean I don't know, surely you are at some thing (you know, like some random thing out there that I'm not that interested in), but I would never consider myself to be "not good enough" for someone.
I don't mind saying that I probably have social anxiety because I've somehow ended up in the ironic position where, if anyone were to say that my way of life or my interests or my desires were just wrong, then a million counterpoints would jump to the forefront of my mind and then I'd actually be making myself feel more at ease instead of making myself worry. Like, if you actually wanted to make me doubt myself, you'd have to out-logic me (which is already virtually impossible (not because my logic is so good, but because you'd have to find some set of absolute statements which I don't believe exist)), and if I lose some kind of logic battle then it's because I said something that's actually wrong, and it's different being corrected on something that's actually wrong. Basically it wouldn't be an opinion thing anymore and so I wouldn't be bothered by it. So yes, I'm saying that if you want to challenge my opinions, go ahead. In some ways it'd put me at ease, and I have a ton of counters ready, so, good luck.
But the fact of the matter is that it's still there. I really don't want to hear people telling me how wrong they think my opinion is, and at the same time, I'm not really interested in having my opinion supported. So not only is there no reason for me to tell other people my opinions, there's actually reason not to. Which, as you might imagine, greatly limits the amount of things that fall under the category of "things I want to say."
See, I'm virtually always silent on my (very very slight preferences that are so small and vague that they hardly deserve to be called) opinions, so other people really don't know what they are. Which means that any time a strong negative opinion is expressed on something, it could very well be a strong negative opinion on something that I, you know, care about. Now with how it is with friends, I'd bet that if, after someone said something like, "Man, who would like something dumb like that?" I said, "Hey, I like that," then the response would go something like, "Well it has this and this which are redeeming qualities," or "Well yeah I guess it's not that bad," etc etc. Okay, so you were either over-emphasizing the negative points initially (which why would you want to do that? To make me feel uncomfortable?) or you're softening you're true opinion (which is nice and all, but you already said how you actually feel). And then the closing point is that, well, maybe I don't actually have an opinion on what you're talking negatively about, but you're still showing that you make negative judgments on people based on their opinions on a given topic, and that almost guarantees that I'll never want to talk to you about my (very very slight preference that is so small and vague that it hardly deserves to be called an) opinion on anything near that topic. Look it's cool that you have your judgments on things, but I really don't care about making you support what I like, and I really don't want to have to answer questions like, "Well why do you like something like that?" or to have to deal with people saying how awful what I like is.
But it would be how close I am to another person (or, well, every other person that my preference was being expressed to) that would determine how hard it was to express my preference. And either you were coincidentally similar to me as far as feelings and mindsets and personalities went, or it was a looooong bridge spanning a huuuuge gap. But, I don't believe any such bridges are truly uncrossable.
The last thing was that it often took me a long time to put together my words. Sometimes I feel like when people ask me a question I should say, "Wait, give me 15 seconds to organize my thoughts and all, and then maybe I can give a meaningful answer." And I can already imagine the murmurs of, "Is that a weakness? A disability?!" and my reply of, "No way, I don't believe in things like that!" as I go on to spend the rest of my life focused on improving my communication skills to show that it was something that could be overcome... Something like that.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Task performance over time
Have you ever done some task over and over only to find that you were doing worse the more you did it straight? I think this might be something that happens to a lot of people. Of course, I don't have much support for that statement, but I don't have much to go against it either. At any rate, it's something that happens to me sometimes.
This is how I feel I perform when I do the same thing over and over:
It's something I'm interested in for the purpose of doing things like improving game records, but it might apply to a lot of different situations.
This is how I feel I perform when I do the same thing over and over:
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Rhythm Lines Update
The game actually turned out as I envisioned it. I see it as a solid concept for a rhythm game.
Video with me playing the 2 hardest songs so far:
The game has a lot of freedom in where notes can be positioned. Not as much as you might expect though: you can only have horizontal or vertical lines, and, due to how the information is stored, you can't have horizontal lines unless they connect to the note in another column. That's not something I'm going to add in either, unless I completely remake the game. The game and the editor were relatively simple to make specifically because everything was based on the fact that you only need to know the note timings and the columns, and the program will know where to draw the lines. I could maybe add in diagonal lines, but it'd be tough, and I think the game is fine as it is.
The freedom that the game does have in note placement is good and bad. It's easy to make a bad chart (have the lines go off the screen or the lines intersect confusingly or go through notes you don't actually hit, etc etc...), but you can also create interesting and challenging patterns, or patterns that are specific to the song. It can be fun just watching the notes move around, especially on a song like Drum Lines with 4 different simultaneous beats all having notes to go with them.
I changed the scoring. I knew the old scoring was putting an emphasis on hitting notes, but I didn't realize until I played it how much I personally disliked that type of scoring. So, being my game, I dropped the point values for the middle ranges, so you can miss a few more notes but get a better score if you did a lot better with your accuracy in general.
Video with me playing the 2 hardest songs so far:
The game has a lot of freedom in where notes can be positioned. Not as much as you might expect though: you can only have horizontal or vertical lines, and, due to how the information is stored, you can't have horizontal lines unless they connect to the note in another column. That's not something I'm going to add in either, unless I completely remake the game. The game and the editor were relatively simple to make specifically because everything was based on the fact that you only need to know the note timings and the columns, and the program will know where to draw the lines. I could maybe add in diagonal lines, but it'd be tough, and I think the game is fine as it is.
The freedom that the game does have in note placement is good and bad. It's easy to make a bad chart (have the lines go off the screen or the lines intersect confusingly or go through notes you don't actually hit, etc etc...), but you can also create interesting and challenging patterns, or patterns that are specific to the song. It can be fun just watching the notes move around, especially on a song like Drum Lines with 4 different simultaneous beats all having notes to go with them.
I changed the scoring. I knew the old scoring was putting an emphasis on hitting notes, but I didn't realize until I played it how much I personally disliked that type of scoring. So, being my game, I dropped the point values for the middle ranges, so you can miss a few more notes but get a better score if you did a lot better with your accuracy in general.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Game update
So the game was "playable" after 2.5 days of semi-serious and not that efficient work on it, but I had to type in every note track manually at that point, so I only made a test chart with a couple notes, and then I went to work on an editor. That took a while but in the end I'm happy with how it looks (it's far from perfect yet but it does work). So I finished that a few days ago, but then I realized I had to use it to make a chart before I could even play the game... So I completed a chart two days ago. For stuff that's still to do, well, there's a results screen, life and a life meter, editor improvements, implementing the song selection screen from Triple Beat into this game (I liked that one and I definitely don't want to make something like that again for a long time), creating high score files and then a file system for everything, and then work to make everything look nicer, minor adjustments and improvements, etc. Oh and charts for songs. I suppose that's pretty important too.
Scoring... I guess you could say the scoring I'm using is kind of a "feel-good" scoring. DDR's scoring is 50% for greats and osu!'s is 33% for greats. Well I'm giving 80% for greats (may change to 75% though, it was 70% initially). First, if you're hitting the notes around the right time, I think that's pretty good. And second, a higher score for greats puts more emphasis on not missing notes. Then, the low end scores (similar to good and almost in DDR) are worth 30 and 15 points. There's a way early penalty of -8 and finally a top rating (like DDR's Marvelous) that is worth 100 points, while the perfect rating is 4 less at 96. The timing for Marvelous is pretty tough, with the hope that it will make a perfect score really difficult. And that is something I want so that scores will always be improvable, and not so close to perfect that when you miss a single time it's like, "Well now it's just impossible to beat my high score." What?! No, I'm not frustrated with osu! or anything!
On the flip side, I intend to make a very insulting difficulty rating. Hey, if I can nearly fc a song after playing it for a day, then that means it probably shouldn't be rated higher than a medium 4 (on a 0-10 scale) level. And then easy will be a level that's easy. For me. And then I can watch people say "Hey, I'm pretty good at rhythm games so I'll try starting on medium" and then they fail in 5 seconds. And I'll name the easiest level ultra-beginner with difficulties like .1. With that said, I can't wait to see the hard and insane levels.
Also, I was going to make a video of what I have or at least take screenshots, but I don't feel like it at the time... So maybe later. It actually looks a lot like what I had for the rough drawing of it.
Scoring... I guess you could say the scoring I'm using is kind of a "feel-good" scoring. DDR's scoring is 50% for greats and osu!'s is 33% for greats. Well I'm giving 80% for greats (may change to 75% though, it was 70% initially). First, if you're hitting the notes around the right time, I think that's pretty good. And second, a higher score for greats puts more emphasis on not missing notes. Then, the low end scores (similar to good and almost in DDR) are worth 30 and 15 points. There's a way early penalty of -8 and finally a top rating (like DDR's Marvelous) that is worth 100 points, while the perfect rating is 4 less at 96. The timing for Marvelous is pretty tough, with the hope that it will make a perfect score really difficult. And that is something I want so that scores will always be improvable, and not so close to perfect that when you miss a single time it's like, "Well now it's just impossible to beat my high score." What?! No, I'm not frustrated with osu! or anything!
On the flip side, I intend to make a very insulting difficulty rating. Hey, if I can nearly fc a song after playing it for a day, then that means it probably shouldn't be rated higher than a medium 4 (on a 0-10 scale) level. And then easy will be a level that's easy. For me. And then I can watch people say "Hey, I'm pretty good at rhythm games so I'll try starting on medium" and then they fail in 5 seconds. And I'll name the easiest level ultra-beginner with difficulties like .1. With that said, I can't wait to see the hard and insane levels.
Also, I was going to make a video of what I have or at least take screenshots, but I don't feel like it at the time... So maybe later. It actually looks a lot like what I had for the rough drawing of it.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
My Next Game
All right, so I'm really excited for this next game I'm making (more excited to play it than to make it, but I'll never get to play it if I don't make it). My hope is that I will like it more than Pipelining and Triple Beat. I liked both of those games, but Pipelining felt a bit repetitive and luck based, and Triple Beat no longer seems like a big change from normal rhythm games to me. With Triple Beat I also ran into the problem that it was weird to have to hit a button off beat to change screens, but it was also weird to have the button to change screens be part of the beat (or at least I think it would be, but I never really tried it) because there's no indicator for changing screens, so when playing you would probably just hit it off beat anyway. Anyway, the next game.
So it'll be an 8 button rhythm game. And before you say something about me liking to have a lot of buttons in my games, let me say that it gives so much more options for what you can do with the game. But I could always also just use only 4 buttons for one specific song, or just 6 buttons, or something. At least, I'll probably keep the ultra-casual-beginner levels to 7 buttons max. But yeah, 8 buttons (unless I don't like it and feel like changing it to 6), probably mapped by default to the keys S, D, F, ..., to L in a line. A strategy could be moving your finger position to avoid using your pinkies or to just use your index and middle finger depending on where the notes are.
Now, there will be 8 hit icons, one for each button, in a line in the middle of the screen. Then there will be balls that follow tracks through the hit icons, and when a ball moves through the hit icon you press the corresponding button.
The ball reverses when it reaches the end of the track, and the track lasts for a specified amount of time. Well, that's the main idea; the rest are just the cool details that make the game interesting and more fun to play.
So it'll be an 8 button rhythm game. And before you say something about me liking to have a lot of buttons in my games, let me say that it gives so much more options for what you can do with the game. But I could always also just use only 4 buttons for one specific song, or just 6 buttons, or something. At least, I'll probably keep the ultra-casual-beginner levels to 7 buttons max. But yeah, 8 buttons (unless I don't like it and feel like changing it to 6), probably mapped by default to the keys S, D, F, ..., to L in a line. A strategy could be moving your finger position to avoid using your pinkies or to just use your index and middle finger depending on where the notes are.
Now, there will be 8 hit icons, one for each button, in a line in the middle of the screen. Then there will be balls that follow tracks through the hit icons, and when a ball moves through the hit icon you press the corresponding button.
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| Rough drawing of the main idea |
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
I can't connect with others. (Word choices)
My life had such a heavy emphasis on politeness and respect, to an extent that if you didn't share the same view, I would guess that you would have trouble appreciating just how much it was a part of me. However, I wouldn't make an assumption about how broadly you view the world, or how many different ways of life you can understand. Surely, just because one doesn't feel as compelled to follow various rules on politeness and respect does not guarantee that that person cannot comprehend why others would.
The fact still stands though. It was a big part of my life. And in my opinion, the majority of the people I met didn't really live with the same views. Was I like, born into the wrong culture, or something? I have to wonder sometimes. Maybe. But that's kind of another topic.
It just made it harder to connect to other people, if you couldn't help thinking stuff like, "Well, the way you said that just bugs me a little." For example, imagine if you said, "There's really no point in being so polite." Sounds pretty reasonable and I agree, there are worse ways to say it (ex: "Well that's stupid! Why would you want to live like that?!"). But still, you're basically saying that my way of living is wrong. I'm aware of (some of) its flaws, but perhaps you're unaware of its strengths. I mean it's not like I don't have my reasons for believing what I believe. And then maybe you're like, "I'm just saying you could be happier if you didn't live your life so politely." To which I would have to say something like, well I appreciate the fact that you're concerned about my happiness [level of sarcasm inversely proportional to the perceived level of concern], but let me say that the things that make one person happy won't necessarily make another person happy. You're assuming that you know what makes me happy better than I do. Now why do you believe that? And then maybe you're like, "Okay, let me guess, you're not going to be completely comfortable with my statement unless I say something like, 'Maybe you could be happier if you tried living with less focus on being polite, I mean, if that's something you haven't already thought about.'" And, well, to be perfectly honest, you're kind of right about that. I mean I'm open to suggestions, but I'm not going to tell you how to live your life, and I'd rather not be told how to live my life either.
It was tied in to that topic on giving advice too. So if you saw my Pipelining game, and you're like, "Hey! You should make a puzzle mode, make the matches faster in vs mode, and put it online," well the words themselves don't convey the feeling completely, because you could be saying it in a "This is what is missing from the game and what is wrong with this game" tone or you could be saying it in an "I think it might make the game better" tone. If it's the former, well, I made the game specifically for my own purposes, and the only time I wouldn't have a problem with you saying that like that is if I was designing the game specifically for you, but I'm not, so... If it's the latter, to give the same feeling on the internet, you might have to say something like, "Maybe you should try..." And then I'd say, well, I actually already made a puzzle mode and it turns out it's a really nice addition. Faster matches to make harassment a viable strategy? That might be the best way to do that without changing the scoring, and that is what I was already considering. And if I knew some reasonably easy way of putting it online, and I cared enough to do it, well, I probably would. But... yeah.
Then there's the "What did you do yesterday? [Expecting an answer]" Why do you want to know? I was doing stuff that I don't want to tell you about. That I can't tell you about. Saving the world on a secret mission, or something.
vs. "Did you do anything interesting yesterday?" Eh, not really. Nothing out of the ordinary, you know.
Or, say you ask someone to do you a favor, like they're going to the store and you give them money and ask them to buy you a candy bar. And then they get back and you're like, "So... you bought that candy bar, right?" or, to be very polite even in my view of politeness, "Did you happen to remember to buy that candy bar?" with the follow up to a no answer after the first implied to be something like, "How could you forget?" and for the second, "Well that's all right, don't worry about it."
And then you're like, "Come on man, that stuff isn't rude, you just-" have extreme views on politeness I know. That's the point. But you know, I'm not trying to say, "Oh no, you shouldn't say things that I think are rude." In fact, I specifically don't want to say that. I'm going to follow what I believe, and I can only expect that you would do the same. But that doesn't change the fact that it's hard to actually connect to people if most of the things they say kind of feel rude to you.
The people I met were all across the board. Sometimes, I had to wonder if people were completely blind to the fact that there was a rather large difference between us with how we talked and how we felt about things. Sometimes I figured, "Ehh, they probably know but don't care enough to change," and I can understand that. Sometimes I could tell that people changed, like they would probably say, "That's so stupid!" to most other people but they'd say "There's really no point..." to me. Or there were even people that could go so far that I was never really bothered by anything they said. When I saw people change to better connect with me then I always wanted to do the same, so those would be times where I'd do my best to try and think of something to say, think of something to say, something to say, say, say... I think that's part of the secret to what those who are good at connecting with others are good at. They get a feeling of how others feel and act, and can mimic it. I've met some people who do it so well that it's kind of scary, like, can they read my mind or something? And then I've also met a few people who seem to share the same feelings and views as I do, to some extent.
The fact still stands though. It was a big part of my life. And in my opinion, the majority of the people I met didn't really live with the same views. Was I like, born into the wrong culture, or something? I have to wonder sometimes. Maybe. But that's kind of another topic.
It just made it harder to connect to other people, if you couldn't help thinking stuff like, "Well, the way you said that just bugs me a little." For example, imagine if you said, "There's really no point in being so polite." Sounds pretty reasonable and I agree, there are worse ways to say it (ex: "Well that's stupid! Why would you want to live like that?!"). But still, you're basically saying that my way of living is wrong. I'm aware of (some of) its flaws, but perhaps you're unaware of its strengths. I mean it's not like I don't have my reasons for believing what I believe. And then maybe you're like, "I'm just saying you could be happier if you didn't live your life so politely." To which I would have to say something like, well I appreciate the fact that you're concerned about my happiness [level of sarcasm inversely proportional to the perceived level of concern], but let me say that the things that make one person happy won't necessarily make another person happy. You're assuming that you know what makes me happy better than I do. Now why do you believe that? And then maybe you're like, "Okay, let me guess, you're not going to be completely comfortable with my statement unless I say something like, 'Maybe you could be happier if you tried living with less focus on being polite, I mean, if that's something you haven't already thought about.'" And, well, to be perfectly honest, you're kind of right about that. I mean I'm open to suggestions, but I'm not going to tell you how to live your life, and I'd rather not be told how to live my life either.
It was tied in to that topic on giving advice too. So if you saw my Pipelining game, and you're like, "Hey! You should make a puzzle mode, make the matches faster in vs mode, and put it online," well the words themselves don't convey the feeling completely, because you could be saying it in a "This is what is missing from the game and what is wrong with this game" tone or you could be saying it in an "I think it might make the game better" tone. If it's the former, well, I made the game specifically for my own purposes, and the only time I wouldn't have a problem with you saying that like that is if I was designing the game specifically for you, but I'm not, so... If it's the latter, to give the same feeling on the internet, you might have to say something like, "Maybe you should try..." And then I'd say, well, I actually already made a puzzle mode and it turns out it's a really nice addition. Faster matches to make harassment a viable strategy? That might be the best way to do that without changing the scoring, and that is what I was already considering. And if I knew some reasonably easy way of putting it online, and I cared enough to do it, well, I probably would. But... yeah.
Then there's the "What did you do yesterday? [Expecting an answer]" Why do you want to know? I was doing stuff that I don't want to tell you about. That I can't tell you about. Saving the world on a secret mission, or something.
vs. "Did you do anything interesting yesterday?" Eh, not really. Nothing out of the ordinary, you know.
Or, say you ask someone to do you a favor, like they're going to the store and you give them money and ask them to buy you a candy bar. And then they get back and you're like, "So... you bought that candy bar, right?" or, to be very polite even in my view of politeness, "Did you happen to remember to buy that candy bar?" with the follow up to a no answer after the first implied to be something like, "How could you forget?" and for the second, "Well that's all right, don't worry about it."
And then you're like, "Come on man, that stuff isn't rude, you just-" have extreme views on politeness I know. That's the point. But you know, I'm not trying to say, "Oh no, you shouldn't say things that I think are rude." In fact, I specifically don't want to say that. I'm going to follow what I believe, and I can only expect that you would do the same. But that doesn't change the fact that it's hard to actually connect to people if most of the things they say kind of feel rude to you.
The people I met were all across the board. Sometimes, I had to wonder if people were completely blind to the fact that there was a rather large difference between us with how we talked and how we felt about things. Sometimes I figured, "Ehh, they probably know but don't care enough to change," and I can understand that. Sometimes I could tell that people changed, like they would probably say, "That's so stupid!" to most other people but they'd say "There's really no point..." to me. Or there were even people that could go so far that I was never really bothered by anything they said. When I saw people change to better connect with me then I always wanted to do the same, so those would be times where I'd do my best to try and think of something to say, think of something to say, something to say, say, say... I think that's part of the secret to what those who are good at connecting with others are good at. They get a feeling of how others feel and act, and can mimic it. I've met some people who do it so well that it's kind of scary, like, can they read my mind or something? And then I've also met a few people who seem to share the same feelings and views as I do, to some extent.
Monday, May 28, 2012
I can't connect with others. (Nothing to say)
Sometimes I see other people talking and I wonder what it is they actually enjoy about their conversations. When I hear conversations like, "Man this food is extremely awful." "Yeah, I know, this cafeteria food is the worst." "It's even worse than it was last year," as people eat their cafeteria food, I mean I dunno, it's like, I... guess... that's a good time to discuss that very exciting topic... or something. Or then there are the ones that go like, "That was awesome!" "No it was terrible!" "No you're stupid!" "No you're stupid!" And then the people walk away semi-upset but somehow better friends than before, or something. Or there are the ones that are like, "What did you do yesterday?" "Stuff." "Cool." or "How are you today?" "Fine." "Good." And the people move on, satisfied with their worthwhile exchange of words, or something.
And I laugh at myself and my overemphasizing, knowing full well that I do understand it somewhat.
I suppose a natural question to me would then be, "So, you never have anything you want to say to other people?" to which I would answer, well, for the most part, no, not really. But, yes, I do, occasionally. And then, not having anything more specific to say immediately after, there's a reasonable chance that I would unintentionally force the person asking the initial question to then have to actually ask the very obvious follow up question that most people would have answered naturally anyway.
Honestly though, I don't think that there are many people that want to talk with me about the things I want to talk about. When I got 167,000 on Pipelining timed, easy, that was something I would have loved to talk about. But who really cares about that? It's a personally created game that no one besides me has ever played for any significant amount of time. I mean, anyone could say, "Yeah, sure, that's nice," but before you could even hope to understand the significance behind the score, there was so much more to be said. It would go something like:
60 piece matches are the most efficient way of scoring. The highest scoring 60 piece match that I could hope to do consistently usually scored around 49000, but it was luck based, and could drop to 45-47K if you're unlucky (and you don't fill up/give up). The time to make and clear the match was around 60-75 seconds for me, and the game was 200 seconds long. As such, the high scores had stacked around 145-148K, as I could get 3 full matches and perhaps an extra thousand points or so if there were a few seconds remaining. Since short matches were worth so little, there was a lot more importance on getting 3 high scoring matches. The barrier to break then was 150K. I realized there was a strategy adjustment I could make that was basically as easy to pull off consistently and it scored 50090 max, but could generally get 49500 or so (barring bad luck, which was always a potential problem). Using the adjustment, I broke the 150K barrier, which was pretty cool itself. But then I got faster. That was the significant improvement. That is what the 17,000 over 150,000 clearly implies. Before setting 167000 I was having 20-30 seconds left over at the end, and suddenly the 4th match was no longer some barely important tie breaking 1000 points, it was now 8000, 10000 points. And on my record run I had like 40 seconds left and I got probably 20000 points on the last match. The speed increase shifts the focus of the game again, and now speed becomes more important than max points on the full matches, because if you're fast enough, the last match becomes a long match and then every extra second is an extra second to extend that last match a couple pieces, and every couple pieces is now an extra 1000 points or more. What's really exciting is that I built up and brought down a full match in 50 seconds once! I mean I'm not actually actively playing the game anymore, but if I was, you know what that means. It means 200000 is the next target, and it's actually achievable, albeit extremely difficult and luck based with the current strategies and skill level of the best player, you know.
Or, well, no, you don't know. And you probably don't really care that much about it either, do you. I mean, I can understand that.
Maybe though, maybe you like Mario Kart Wii or something. Well, if you want to talk about what I (or you) like (or hate) about the game, or what is good or bad about the game, I'm probably not going to have anything to say. Maybe if it was that you wanted to hear about a story of a clan, or of a war, or of a race, then I might have something to say. Or if you wanted to talk about the tension and excitement in racing in 2nd trying to overcome 1st.
See, I believed in myself to be able to do that. Especially in draft range. If 1st doesn't have an item it's a free pass. Staying in the line well enough isn't really the challenge, well, it can be a hard thing to do, but I mean, it's something that should be doable. And then if you have an item too, you ought to take the lead no problem, you know, at least, that's how I always feel about it. Yeah I always remember the item counts, like, you see them pull out an item, so that's their only one, or they just go through a box so they have 2. The guy with more items gets free shots at the opponent, well, mostly free, maybe you risk dropping a banana and then getting a fib in first and the guy in 2nd gets a red, and well yeah. But you pay attention to the item counts and know when you have to be careful and probably dodge something. And then in 2nd, there's a way you can draft the person in 1st and dodge any item they drop just by aiming well enough. There's one problem though: the person in first could expect it, and then they jump in front of you and drop an item and you aren't dodging that on reaction. Still, unless you're playing against one of the tip top racers, you probably don't have to worry about that. You get that draft, drive a bit to the side to dodge an item drop and then through them to force them to break their wheelie or get bumped, and then you have the lead. But you've got to look back regularly, to counter their play. When I see someone going for the draft, I always try to drive an adjusted line so they can't get it, or if they're still there, I might hop out of a wheelie and yeah it slows you down, but as long as you hop around directly in front of them, how are they going to make the pass? It lets them close the distance a bit, but if they're not slow (slower than you at least), you're not going to pull out of draft range by driving standard lines or keeping your wheelie. It keeps your first at least. Or do you think there's a better way to play it?
Well, you're probably not a high level competitive racer, so let me guess, you have nothing to say.
Then, you could say something like, "You like anime? I like anime too!" To which I would have no response. "What's your favorite anime?" Um... nothing to say. "What types do you like?" Uh... nothing to say. "Hm... You watched Madoka? Did you like it?" Um... sure. "Who's your favorite character?" Uh... nothing to say. "I love Naruto!" Nothing. "I hate the people who love Naruto!" Nothing. "Do you think that anime can emphasize the often contradictory notions that people have by portraying situations in which the viewer will feel a certain way, even though the events that are occurring, when interpreted differently, would evoke the opposite feelings?" Um... I don't know, but that sounds plausible and maybe I have something to say about that, but I don't have anything specific to say at the moment, maybe in an hour or so I'll have a general idea of my feelings on the answer to that question...
And then you're like, "All right, I get it. You don't want to talk about your own opinions. So let's talk about something like math! You are a mathematician and all." It's like, well, what is there to say? Is there some specific math topic you want to know about that I understand well enough to talk about? Or is there something cool you know that I don't? Because otherwise I don't really have anything to say, you know. I just don't have anything to say!
I could listen though. If you wanted to talk, I could be a very extremely nonjudgmental listener. But if it was something to say... I don't even know what there is that I would want to talk about. Shared interests? Shared memories? Well, I guess those are possibilities. Or, if there was some way to get a full point across, uninterrupted, without having to worry about opinionated people trying to tell you how wrong or right you are before you even complete your entire point, I guess in that situation I would say more of the things that I actually wanted to say. But I don't know what those things would be.
And I laugh at myself and my overemphasizing, knowing full well that I do understand it somewhat.
I suppose a natural question to me would then be, "So, you never have anything you want to say to other people?" to which I would answer, well, for the most part, no, not really. But, yes, I do, occasionally. And then, not having anything more specific to say immediately after, there's a reasonable chance that I would unintentionally force the person asking the initial question to then have to actually ask the very obvious follow up question that most people would have answered naturally anyway.
Honestly though, I don't think that there are many people that want to talk with me about the things I want to talk about. When I got 167,000 on Pipelining timed, easy, that was something I would have loved to talk about. But who really cares about that? It's a personally created game that no one besides me has ever played for any significant amount of time. I mean, anyone could say, "Yeah, sure, that's nice," but before you could even hope to understand the significance behind the score, there was so much more to be said. It would go something like:
60 piece matches are the most efficient way of scoring. The highest scoring 60 piece match that I could hope to do consistently usually scored around 49000, but it was luck based, and could drop to 45-47K if you're unlucky (and you don't fill up/give up). The time to make and clear the match was around 60-75 seconds for me, and the game was 200 seconds long. As such, the high scores had stacked around 145-148K, as I could get 3 full matches and perhaps an extra thousand points or so if there were a few seconds remaining. Since short matches were worth so little, there was a lot more importance on getting 3 high scoring matches. The barrier to break then was 150K. I realized there was a strategy adjustment I could make that was basically as easy to pull off consistently and it scored 50090 max, but could generally get 49500 or so (barring bad luck, which was always a potential problem). Using the adjustment, I broke the 150K barrier, which was pretty cool itself. But then I got faster. That was the significant improvement. That is what the 17,000 over 150,000 clearly implies. Before setting 167000 I was having 20-30 seconds left over at the end, and suddenly the 4th match was no longer some barely important tie breaking 1000 points, it was now 8000, 10000 points. And on my record run I had like 40 seconds left and I got probably 20000 points on the last match. The speed increase shifts the focus of the game again, and now speed becomes more important than max points on the full matches, because if you're fast enough, the last match becomes a long match and then every extra second is an extra second to extend that last match a couple pieces, and every couple pieces is now an extra 1000 points or more. What's really exciting is that I built up and brought down a full match in 50 seconds once! I mean I'm not actually actively playing the game anymore, but if I was, you know what that means. It means 200000 is the next target, and it's actually achievable, albeit extremely difficult and luck based with the current strategies and skill level of the best player, you know.
Or, well, no, you don't know. And you probably don't really care that much about it either, do you. I mean, I can understand that.
Maybe though, maybe you like Mario Kart Wii or something. Well, if you want to talk about what I (or you) like (or hate) about the game, or what is good or bad about the game, I'm probably not going to have anything to say. Maybe if it was that you wanted to hear about a story of a clan, or of a war, or of a race, then I might have something to say. Or if you wanted to talk about the tension and excitement in racing in 2nd trying to overcome 1st.
See, I believed in myself to be able to do that. Especially in draft range. If 1st doesn't have an item it's a free pass. Staying in the line well enough isn't really the challenge, well, it can be a hard thing to do, but I mean, it's something that should be doable. And then if you have an item too, you ought to take the lead no problem, you know, at least, that's how I always feel about it. Yeah I always remember the item counts, like, you see them pull out an item, so that's their only one, or they just go through a box so they have 2. The guy with more items gets free shots at the opponent, well, mostly free, maybe you risk dropping a banana and then getting a fib in first and the guy in 2nd gets a red, and well yeah. But you pay attention to the item counts and know when you have to be careful and probably dodge something. And then in 2nd, there's a way you can draft the person in 1st and dodge any item they drop just by aiming well enough. There's one problem though: the person in first could expect it, and then they jump in front of you and drop an item and you aren't dodging that on reaction. Still, unless you're playing against one of the tip top racers, you probably don't have to worry about that. You get that draft, drive a bit to the side to dodge an item drop and then through them to force them to break their wheelie or get bumped, and then you have the lead. But you've got to look back regularly, to counter their play. When I see someone going for the draft, I always try to drive an adjusted line so they can't get it, or if they're still there, I might hop out of a wheelie and yeah it slows you down, but as long as you hop around directly in front of them, how are they going to make the pass? It lets them close the distance a bit, but if they're not slow (slower than you at least), you're not going to pull out of draft range by driving standard lines or keeping your wheelie. It keeps your first at least. Or do you think there's a better way to play it?
Well, you're probably not a high level competitive racer, so let me guess, you have nothing to say.
Then, you could say something like, "You like anime? I like anime too!" To which I would have no response. "What's your favorite anime?" Um... nothing to say. "What types do you like?" Uh... nothing to say. "Hm... You watched Madoka? Did you like it?" Um... sure. "Who's your favorite character?" Uh... nothing to say. "I love Naruto!" Nothing. "I hate the people who love Naruto!" Nothing. "Do you think that anime can emphasize the often contradictory notions that people have by portraying situations in which the viewer will feel a certain way, even though the events that are occurring, when interpreted differently, would evoke the opposite feelings?" Um... I don't know, but that sounds plausible and maybe I have something to say about that, but I don't have anything specific to say at the moment, maybe in an hour or so I'll have a general idea of my feelings on the answer to that question...
And then you're like, "All right, I get it. You don't want to talk about your own opinions. So let's talk about something like math! You are a mathematician and all." It's like, well, what is there to say? Is there some specific math topic you want to know about that I understand well enough to talk about? Or is there something cool you know that I don't? Because otherwise I don't really have anything to say, you know. I just don't have anything to say!
I could listen though. If you wanted to talk, I could be a very extremely nonjudgmental listener. But if it was something to say... I don't even know what there is that I would want to talk about. Shared interests? Shared memories? Well, I guess those are possibilities. Or, if there was some way to get a full point across, uninterrupted, without having to worry about opinionated people trying to tell you how wrong or right you are before you even complete your entire point, I guess in that situation I would say more of the things that I actually wanted to say. But I don't know what those things would be.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
I can't connect with others. (The Opinionated)
You know, I'm not really very strongly opinionated. And, to be honest, you could say that that's quite an understatement. And yeah, that may be how I am, but it's not like I have a problem with people who are really opinionated. is what I say, but I don't know, maybe that's not completely true. Actually, no, that's not true at all! I have a big problem with people who have strong opinions. Yeah, you hear that?! I have a problem with you guys out there! Yes, you! You got a problem with that?! Huh?!! Eh! Ahem.
It's not like I have a problem with people who are really opinionated. I mean I could work together perfectly on a project with someone who has strong opinions, and it's not like I'm going to dislike you just because of something like that. But if you wanted to actually connect with me...
See, if you're just going to say something like, "This is the best/worst thing ever," as a fact, you might as well at the same time say, "and I am completely disregarding and disrespecting your opinion, as it means nothing whatsoever to me, and neither do the opinions of anyone out there who might disagree with me." I mean if you're going to say something like that, how am I supposed to respond? You want me to agree with you? Argue the other side? I mean I could say, "Sure, yeah, uh huh," but that's not very interesting. And it's not like I'm going to want to try and change your opinion. And why should I bother to even give an opinion if you don't care about it anyway?
People ask anyway though. They say stuff like, "Hey, do you like such and such" and it's always a hard question for me to answer. A lot of times the most complete answer would be something like, "Well, there are a lot of specific things about it that I like, but there are also a lot of things that I don't like, so at best it's slightly leaning towards one side, but I can't really give a conclusive answer..." Yeah, I never actually said that to anyone. Usually I just chose one side and answered that way.
And then people are like, "Well I thought the opposite, so why do you have that opinion?" and it's like, "I don't know, I don't even feel that strongly about it at all, so I don't know what you expect me to say, but..." Or they're like, "Yeah, your opinion is completely right-" no. No, it's not. It's just my opinion, I'm not saying that it's right or wrong, and I don't have a problem with all the other people out there that have the opposite opinion, and...
And then they think they're right about things, and they're like, "The prior distribution for the noise in this inverse problem is inverse gamma because I think it should be, that guy is an idiot, anything that I like is good because I like it, and I understand exactly who you are, I mean you said it right there, 'I have a big problem with people who have strong opinions.'" And it's like no, no, I mean, I know it's hard to understand, but I don't live with a one sided view, I don't live with a one sided view. And have you at least attempted to show why that's a good assumption for the noise? Do you even really know that guy, I mean, really know that guy? And is there something so special about you, because I could say that same thing but have a different opinion, so that statement can't be true for multiple people at the same time.
And then ironically, my guess is that the people that I really could connect to would be like, "Hmm... maybe I am like that," and then the people that I had trouble connecting to would be like, "Yeah, I know how you feel, I hate people like that too-" no. No, I don't hate people like that! I wouldn't hate people for something like that. And by the way you kind of are like that yourself!
It's not like I have a problem with people who are really opinionated. I mean I could work together perfectly on a project with someone who has strong opinions, and it's not like I'm going to dislike you just because of something like that. But if you wanted to actually connect with me...
See, if you're just going to say something like, "This is the best/worst thing ever," as a fact, you might as well at the same time say, "and I am completely disregarding and disrespecting your opinion, as it means nothing whatsoever to me, and neither do the opinions of anyone out there who might disagree with me." I mean if you're going to say something like that, how am I supposed to respond? You want me to agree with you? Argue the other side? I mean I could say, "Sure, yeah, uh huh," but that's not very interesting. And it's not like I'm going to want to try and change your opinion. And why should I bother to even give an opinion if you don't care about it anyway?
People ask anyway though. They say stuff like, "Hey, do you like such and such" and it's always a hard question for me to answer. A lot of times the most complete answer would be something like, "Well, there are a lot of specific things about it that I like, but there are also a lot of things that I don't like, so at best it's slightly leaning towards one side, but I can't really give a conclusive answer..." Yeah, I never actually said that to anyone. Usually I just chose one side and answered that way.
And then people are like, "Well I thought the opposite, so why do you have that opinion?" and it's like, "I don't know, I don't even feel that strongly about it at all, so I don't know what you expect me to say, but..." Or they're like, "Yeah, your opinion is completely right-" no. No, it's not. It's just my opinion, I'm not saying that it's right or wrong, and I don't have a problem with all the other people out there that have the opposite opinion, and...
And then they think they're right about things, and they're like, "The prior distribution for the noise in this inverse problem is inverse gamma because I think it should be, that guy is an idiot, anything that I like is good because I like it, and I understand exactly who you are, I mean you said it right there, 'I have a big problem with people who have strong opinions.'" And it's like no, no, I mean, I know it's hard to understand, but I don't live with a one sided view, I don't live with a one sided view. And have you at least attempted to show why that's a good assumption for the noise? Do you even really know that guy, I mean, really know that guy? And is there something so special about you, because I could say that same thing but have a different opinion, so that statement can't be true for multiple people at the same time.
And then ironically, my guess is that the people that I really could connect to would be like, "Hmm... maybe I am like that," and then the people that I had trouble connecting to would be like, "Yeah, I know how you feel, I hate people like that too-" no. No, I don't hate people like that! I wouldn't hate people for something like that. And by the way you kind of are like that yourself!
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Competitions, and a competition
I don’t face many challengers, but I suppose that’s
understandable. Why would anyone
believe that they could be a challenge for me? If you were to think such a thing, I would have to show you
that it’s pointless. Would you
compete against me with the intention of winning? Because I don’t intend to lose.
Although I can’t yet beat everyone in everything. So, it would come as no surprise if you
were to manage to beat me in one thing.
In fact, it would be rather pitiful if you couldn’t. But what of it? Would you think that it actually meant
something? Would you try and make
something out of it, overlooking all of your inabilities? Something foolish like that?
Or maybe you would try to actually accomplish something against me, though
you must understand the massive stockpile of abilities, resources, and
strategies I hold, all ready to be used in full at any moment. Do you think you can overcome
that? Hahaha of course not.
Hahaha ahem.
I’m just joking. In all
seriousness, I’m never serious.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Stories of a Runner (2/2)
So the pi-mile's this Sunday, and I can already imagine how it's going to go...
Start out running... This feels nice... 5 minutes in, already tired, stop and walk some halfway through, push to the finish, stumble across the line, they'll say, "Daniel, it's just a fun run you know!" and if I can breathe I'll say, "I- know,- this- is how- I have fun" as I collapse to the ground in front of some other people leisurely jogging in behind me...
Oh wait, that's not how you're supposed to visualize... I'm supposed to say:
I'm halfway through, still feeling good, headed back in, passing a bunch of people on the way, sprinting as I get near the end, flying past the line, the person with the stopwatch saying, "23:xx" and I'll be exhilarated having run such a time in my current condition.
Yeaaheheheh that's not gonna happen.
But, I'll give it all I've got, finding some kind of motivation in the memories and the unfinished stories of the past...
Start out running... This feels nice... 5 minutes in, already tired, stop and walk some halfway through, push to the finish, stumble across the line, they'll say, "Daniel, it's just a fun run you know!" and if I can breathe I'll say, "I- know,- this- is how- I have fun" as I collapse to the ground in front of some other people leisurely jogging in behind me...
Oh wait, that's not how you're supposed to visualize... I'm supposed to say:
I'm halfway through, still feeling good, headed back in, passing a bunch of people on the way, sprinting as I get near the end, flying past the line, the person with the stopwatch saying, "23:xx" and I'll be exhilarated having run such a time in my current condition.
Yeaaheheheh that's not gonna happen.
But, I'll give it all I've got, finding some kind of motivation in the memories and the unfinished stories of the past...
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Names and titles
Being such an indecisive person, I'm surprised I was able to come up with a blog title that I liked. And well I do like this one. "The Words of a Self-Proclaimed Genius." It sounds pretty big, pretty epic. And, it mixes in one of the things I love to point out. See, at first glance, one might think that a title like that is something an arrogant person would come up with. But, I think that that would be making an unjustified conclusion without fully considering everything. The joke is that the term self-proclaimed generally implies that other people don't feel the same way. It made sense to arrogantly call yourself a genius, or to have other people doubtingly refer to you as a self-proclaimed genius, but what did it mean to call yourself a self-proclaimed genius? At the very least, it showed an awareness of the fact that not everyone would necessarily think of the speaker as a genius. So, it could be interpreted as, "Maybe some people think I'm just calling myself a genius, but I think I'm an actual genius." Or maybe it could be seen as, "Even though I'm calling myself a genius, I don't think I'm an actual genius. I know I'm nothing more than a self-proclaimed genius." Or it could be anything in between. It could even be nothing more than a cool sounding example of something that could easily be misinterpreted. An illustration of the mistakes that could possibly occur when one is to quick to judge, and even the variety of valid interpretations that can make an accurate judgement difficult despite a careful consideration. Yeah, it could be all that and more. What was it actually intended to imply? I dunno. Who knows?
You might also be wondering why I chose DdRMaSTeRDan as my Youtube name.Well, it's because at the time I picked the name I was utterly convinced that I was the best DDR player in the world. There's actually a short story behind it. A friend of mine came over when I first got Mario Kart DS, and before I tried playing online for the first time, he put a name in for me. The name he put was DdRMaSTeR. So, a long while later when I was about to create a Youtube account but had no idea what I wanted as my name (I'm not very good at coming up with names, as you can see from the name of this blog), I figured, "Hey, why not use that name my friend put in my DS, with 'Dan' added at the end?" And so I did. And then when I had to create forum names for various forums, I thought, "Why not use the same thing, or something similar?" The problem was that people would get a certain impression from the name DdRMaSTeR, and they might not read carefully enough or stay around long enough to notice the things that hinted that that first impression might be wrong. So, I began to use DdR_Dan instead.
I don't particularly like that name though. Eventually, I might start going by a different name. Maybe Regened. It kind of sounds like I'd be new and improved then, you know. Regen(erat)ed. And it also kind of sounded like something else. You could pronounce it so it sounded like レジェンド.
You might also be wondering why I chose DdRMaSTeRDan as my Youtube name.
I don't particularly like that name though. Eventually, I might start going by a different name. Maybe Regened. It kind of sounds like I'd be new and improved then, you know. Regen(erat)ed. And it also kind of sounded like something else. You could pronounce it so it sounded like レジェンド.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Pipelining Analysis
Well I ended up making that one game during winter break. If you don't know what it is, here's an overview of it:
First, some design decisions: score formula was 25*[1.25(# of matches)+.5(# of halves)-.25]*chain number. Looking back, I'd have liked to increase the bonus for more matches (as is, it's 1.00 for a single match and then +1.25 for every extra simultaneous match; I was thinking something like 1.00, 1.25, 1.5, ...), but considering that the entire fan base for the game would be upset if the scoring changed now because of all the high scores being set with the original scoring, I'm not going to change it. Also, the bomb piece wasn't originally planned as a part of the game. You could then be stuck with unplayable pieces, and I would just say too bad, set your pieces better or something. But, in the end, I think the bomb was a nice addition. Not only can it open up unplayable sections, but it also helps deal with unlucky piece distributions.
As for the game, I think the graphics are all right. Not amazing but not bad, which is fine by me, I wanted to make a game, not draw a picture. I find myself humming the music in my head occasionally, so I guess that's good too. I do like the voices, and not just because I made half of them. The game itself can actually be fun for anyone who enjoys games like this. See, Blockmania was a 3 in a row game with 4 colors and only single blocks, so if you put each color in a separate column, you never fill up and the game's pointless. It only got interesting if you were into making long chains. This game isn't like that; it has it's difficulty. The game also gets harder as time goes on: at first you only need to drop 6 blocks to get a starter drop, but if you play long enough, you won't get more drops until after placing 20 blocks. The pieces also fall faster.
In battle mode, you send 1 garbage block for every 200 points. Garbage is cleared by exploding a piece next to a garbage block. Now, the questions I have are how well this system works when 2 people are playing without any knowledge of deep strategies and how this system affects the optimum strategies. A single half-hearted sample run (no one I knew was very interested in testing out the game) brings up some possible answers. Maybe, maybe garbage can be cleared really easily? Maybe? It might be the case that the game drags out because most players will have trouble sending a ton of garbage without knowing any strategies? Which would be all right because the game isn't too easy. This might happen because you can clear like 20 blocks and only send 12 garbage blocks or so, and then if the opponent can make a match they might be able to get rid of most of that. However, it could also be possible that someone wins with a big match usually. It's also possible that garbage isn't really that easy to clear, it only gets cleared quickly if you have a buried match and dig down to it, which I think is what happened in the only somewhat evenly matched game between new players ever played.
And I can only guess what high level play would be like. But, at least I can guess. I guess I have a lot of guesses.
First, some design decisions: score formula was 25*[1.25(# of matches)+.5(# of halves)-.25]*chain number. Looking back, I'd have liked to increase the bonus for more matches (as is, it's 1.00 for a single match and then +1.25 for every extra simultaneous match; I was thinking something like 1.00, 1.25, 1.5, ...), but considering that the entire fan base for the game would be upset if the scoring changed now because of all the high scores being set with the original scoring, I'm not going to change it. Also, the bomb piece wasn't originally planned as a part of the game. You could then be stuck with unplayable pieces, and I would just say too bad, set your pieces better or something. But, in the end, I think the bomb was a nice addition. Not only can it open up unplayable sections, but it also helps deal with unlucky piece distributions.
As for the game, I think the graphics are all right. Not amazing but not bad, which is fine by me, I wanted to make a game, not draw a picture. I find myself humming the music in my head occasionally, so I guess that's good too. I do like the voices, and not just because I made half of them. The game itself can actually be fun for anyone who enjoys games like this. See, Blockmania was a 3 in a row game with 4 colors and only single blocks, so if you put each color in a separate column, you never fill up and the game's pointless. It only got interesting if you were into making long chains. This game isn't like that; it has it's difficulty. The game also gets harder as time goes on: at first you only need to drop 6 blocks to get a starter drop, but if you play long enough, you won't get more drops until after placing 20 blocks. The pieces also fall faster.
In battle mode, you send 1 garbage block for every 200 points. Garbage is cleared by exploding a piece next to a garbage block. Now, the questions I have are how well this system works when 2 people are playing without any knowledge of deep strategies and how this system affects the optimum strategies. A single half-hearted sample run (no one I knew was very interested in testing out the game) brings up some possible answers. Maybe, maybe garbage can be cleared really easily? Maybe? It might be the case that the game drags out because most players will have trouble sending a ton of garbage without knowing any strategies? Which would be all right because the game isn't too easy. This might happen because you can clear like 20 blocks and only send 12 garbage blocks or so, and then if the opponent can make a match they might be able to get rid of most of that. However, it could also be possible that someone wins with a big match usually. It's also possible that garbage isn't really that easy to clear, it only gets cleared quickly if you have a buried match and dig down to it, which I think is what happened in the only somewhat evenly matched game between new players ever played.
And I can only guess what high level play would be like. But, at least I can guess. I guess I have a lot of guesses.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Stories of a Runner (1/2)
The thought of being a runner had never once crossed my mind, and so I still find it surprising that I ended up on a cross country team. I kind of wanted to play tennis, or maybe basketball, but, running?...
I have to wonder how my life would have changed, if I had joined the tennis team instead of the cross country team. In many ways I think I would have enjoyed tennis much more than running. Even now, if you were to ask me if I'd rather run a 5K or hang out on a tennis court, despite not really knowing how to serve, hit the ball, or even hold the racket, I'd rather play tennis. Yes, in some ways I believe I made the wrong choice. But when I think back on all my memories as a runner, everything I took from the sport, and how it changed my life, maybe running was the best possible sport I could have chosen.
It all began during my sophomore year after a timed mile in P.E. I was one of the first done and I felt pretty good about it. And so it happened that the P.E. teacher told the coach of the cross country team that I might be someone who would be interested in running. And when the coach asked me about joining the team, I figured, "Sure, why not?" I didn't know then that I wasn't born to be a runner.
I found out though. Really quickly.
I have to wonder how my life would have changed, if I had joined the tennis team instead of the cross country team. In many ways I think I would have enjoyed tennis much more than running. Even now, if you were to ask me if I'd rather run a 5K or hang out on a tennis court, despite not really knowing how to serve, hit the ball, or even hold the racket, I'd rather play tennis. Yes, in some ways I believe I made the wrong choice. But when I think back on all my memories as a runner, everything I took from the sport, and how it changed my life, maybe running was the best possible sport I could have chosen.
It all began during my sophomore year after a timed mile in P.E. I was one of the first done and I felt pretty good about it. And so it happened that the P.E. teacher told the coach of the cross country team that I might be someone who would be interested in running. And when the coach asked me about joining the team, I figured, "Sure, why not?" I didn't know then that I wasn't born to be a runner.
I found out though. Really quickly.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
The Outstanding Senior Award
There were 3 valedictorians of my high school class. I wasn't one of them.
At senior awards night, they gave out the awards for the outstanding senior. Or, seniors. There were 3 given out and, unsurprisingly, they went to the 3 valedictorians. "But!" they said, they had decided to give out one more outstanding senior award, to someone who, while not a valedictorian, had worked just as hard by taking so many difficult classes, along with doing many extracurricular activities...
I sighed. I already knew what was going to happen.
At senior awards night, they gave out the awards for the outstanding senior. Or, seniors. There were 3 given out and, unsurprisingly, they went to the 3 valedictorians. "But!" they said, they had decided to give out one more outstanding senior award, to someone who, while not a valedictorian, had worked just as hard by taking so many difficult classes, along with doing many extracurricular activities...
I sighed. I already knew what was going to happen.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
An Introduction, of sorts.
I'm just a college student, halfway through a Master's program. I like video games and math and I do a little game design, just for fun. I used to be a runner. Oh I enjoy playing sports too. Anything competitive, you know. That's how I would describe myself. Only, it feels like something's missing...
I'm generally pretty humble about things, but I'm a smart person you know. I mean, I'd go so far as to call myself a genius. And it is that intelligence that has been the key factor in driving my life. It allowed me to make it through school with enough time and ability to pursue just about any goal in between. But there was no point in chasing easy goals. No, I lived my life going after much more. We're talking world records. Unmatched skills. Stuff like that. It's just who I am. But, I don't think that's everything...
I'm someone who probably always sounds uncertain. I mean, I guess I am. You could say that uncertainty defined my life. If nothing else, I was pretty certain in it. And it drove me towards proofs. If you want to make a statement, you have to prove that it's true. Like, if I was going to say that I was a smart person, I would request irrefutable proof from myself. Which ran into problems like defining intelligence and the fact that supporting evidence was not the same as a guarantee, etc, etc. So, in the end, I figured I couldn't prove that I was a smart person, and so I wouldn't say something like that unless it was for someone else's sake, or it was for the irony or something like that. It's just how I live my life. Well, that might not be absolutely true...
I'm a nice person. In a way, it's something that really shapes my life. Making an effort to be constantly aware of the feelings of others, and things like that. But I didn't want to be the person who did it to show off though. Like, I didn't want it to be something I was really well known for, because if that happened, inevitably, someone would feel jealous or insulted. It was something better left in such a way that the people who knew it knew it and everyone else was unaffected.
And then I would say, well, that's actually saying too much, whether it's true or not. People are going to think too much of me and want to support me and all that. And so I would go back and do things like change the "I try to be" to "I'm" and add in some extra sentences. The "I'm" gives it a different feel, because now it's more likely that the reader's will look more for reasons why it isn't true so they can say "No you're not." But, it balances out, because hopefully there's enough there at the end that people will say, "Well, I guess you are." See if it was still "I try to be" then some people would say "Aw you really are a nice person" and other people would say "You're just doing it to gain people's sympathy" and I wouldn't want that. Still, it's who I was, and I couldn't really deny that. At least, it was part of who I was...
Challenges are what I live for. The impossible. The losing battles. I mean, what was the point of playing a game you expected to win? You either win as expected or lose disappointingly. I'd much rather play a game which I'd lose almost every time. It wasn't that I liked to lose; it was that losing when I felt I had a chance to win motivated me to play more and try harder and harder until it looked like I was mad with determination. That was the life I lived. ...
I don't have a solid goal, a set direction. Essentially, I spend my life wandering aimlessly. I just go with the flow. But without a target to shoot for, I'm in danger of being another person who could be described as a jack of all trades but a master of none. That is where my life is threatening to end up...
My life is dominated my a desire to change. I wouldn't blindly follow my past ideas if I found a reason to change them. Still, I suppose most of the time I just stayed the same...
I live a life under rules of formality and and politeness that few other people seem to care about. But they are obvious! For example, you don't force people to do things, or put unnecessary pressure on them, just as you don't force your opinion onto other people. Basically, it was all about respect. You respect others' opinions, you respect others' choices, and you respect others' ways of life. Why wouldn't I live like that? ...
I can't understand what people enjoy so much about talking with others, which is why my life is not one that's so concerned with hanging out with others or going to parties and such. But really, what is there to say? Nothing really crazy has happened to me in the past week/month... Was there something to be learned? To be taught? Because I wasn't overly curious about other people's opinions on most things, and if you wanted an opinion from me, you most likely weren't going to get a very interesting one.
I'm not an opinionated person at all. And, as such, I have a pretty apathetic view of my life. I mean, if you don't care either way, then nothing really matters to you, right.
I'm just one person, among billions of other people. One person, tiny compared to the size of the earth, which was tiny compared to the size of the sun, which was tiny compared to the size of the galaxy, which was tiny compared to the size of the universe... Why would any of it matter? Why would life matter? And how can I live like this? ...
I'm just a human being. Just someone who's going on living. Striving for happiness and creating my own reasons. I can't be that much different than you.
It's all true, it really is. At worst, there are over exaggerations and understatements. But, I like to believe that one can describe oneself in so many different ways, all completely valid, all true. Just as a scene changes when viewed from a different angle, so too, can the interpretations of one's life change, when viewed from a different perspective. It's not much different than choosing a point of view, choosing the important details, and telling a story.
So, I am a story teller. Just like everyone else, I have a story to tell. And this is how I will tell it.
I'm generally pretty humble about things, but I'm a smart person you know. I mean, I'd go so far as to call myself a genius. And it is that intelligence that has been the key factor in driving my life. It allowed me to make it through school with enough time and ability to pursue just about any goal in between. But there was no point in chasing easy goals. No, I lived my life going after much more. We're talking world records. Unmatched skills. Stuff like that. It's just who I am. But, I don't think that's everything...
I'm someone who probably always sounds uncertain. I mean, I guess I am. You could say that uncertainty defined my life. If nothing else, I was pretty certain in it. And it drove me towards proofs. If you want to make a statement, you have to prove that it's true. Like, if I was going to say that I was a smart person, I would request irrefutable proof from myself. Which ran into problems like defining intelligence and the fact that supporting evidence was not the same as a guarantee, etc, etc. So, in the end, I figured I couldn't prove that I was a smart person, and so I wouldn't say something like that unless it was for someone else's sake, or it was for the irony or something like that. It's just how I live my life. Well, that might not be absolutely true...
I'm a nice person. In a way, it's something that really shapes my life. Making an effort to be constantly aware of the feelings of others, and things like that. But I didn't want to be the person who did it to show off though. Like, I didn't want it to be something I was really well known for, because if that happened, inevitably, someone would feel jealous or insulted. It was something better left in such a way that the people who knew it knew it and everyone else was unaffected.
And then I would say, well, that's actually saying too much, whether it's true or not. People are going to think too much of me and want to support me and all that. And so I would go back and do things like change the "I try to be" to "I'm" and add in some extra sentences. The "I'm" gives it a different feel, because now it's more likely that the reader's will look more for reasons why it isn't true so they can say "No you're not." But, it balances out, because hopefully there's enough there at the end that people will say, "Well, I guess you are." See if it was still "I try to be" then some people would say "Aw you really are a nice person" and other people would say "You're just doing it to gain people's sympathy" and I wouldn't want that. Still, it's who I was, and I couldn't really deny that. At least, it was part of who I was...
Challenges are what I live for. The impossible. The losing battles. I mean, what was the point of playing a game you expected to win? You either win as expected or lose disappointingly. I'd much rather play a game which I'd lose almost every time. It wasn't that I liked to lose; it was that losing when I felt I had a chance to win motivated me to play more and try harder and harder until it looked like I was mad with determination. That was the life I lived. ...
I don't have a solid goal, a set direction. Essentially, I spend my life wandering aimlessly. I just go with the flow. But without a target to shoot for, I'm in danger of being another person who could be described as a jack of all trades but a master of none. That is where my life is threatening to end up...
My life is dominated my a desire to change. I wouldn't blindly follow my past ideas if I found a reason to change them. Still, I suppose most of the time I just stayed the same...
I live a life under rules of formality and and politeness that few other people seem to care about. But they are obvious! For example, you don't force people to do things, or put unnecessary pressure on them, just as you don't force your opinion onto other people. Basically, it was all about respect. You respect others' opinions, you respect others' choices, and you respect others' ways of life. Why wouldn't I live like that? ...
I can't understand what people enjoy so much about talking with others, which is why my life is not one that's so concerned with hanging out with others or going to parties and such. But really, what is there to say? Nothing really crazy has happened to me in the past week/month... Was there something to be learned? To be taught? Because I wasn't overly curious about other people's opinions on most things, and if you wanted an opinion from me, you most likely weren't going to get a very interesting one.
I'm not an opinionated person at all. And, as such, I have a pretty apathetic view of my life. I mean, if you don't care either way, then nothing really matters to you, right.
I'm just one person, among billions of other people. One person, tiny compared to the size of the earth, which was tiny compared to the size of the sun, which was tiny compared to the size of the galaxy, which was tiny compared to the size of the universe... Why would any of it matter? Why would life matter? And how can I live like this? ...
I'm just a human being. Just someone who's going on living. Striving for happiness and creating my own reasons. I can't be that much different than you.
It's all true, it really is. At worst, there are over exaggerations and understatements. But, I like to believe that one can describe oneself in so many different ways, all completely valid, all true. Just as a scene changes when viewed from a different angle, so too, can the interpretations of one's life change, when viewed from a different perspective. It's not much different than choosing a point of view, choosing the important details, and telling a story.
So, I am a story teller. Just like everyone else, I have a story to tell. And this is how I will tell it.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Untitled
You know, I was going to write something here. I simultaneously wanted to write stuff
and didn’t want to write stuff and the part of me that didn’t want to was
winning. At that rate, this blog
would have been another thing that I started but kind of just left off and then
I’d feel bad about having ever started it at all… But I wasn’t going to let that happen here. I was going to force myself to write
something, even if the only thing I could possibly convince myself to write was
some pointless stuff thrown together in 3 minutes!
Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.
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