toes in the water

a bit of many things, inconsistently. a personal everything blog.

[damptoes]

Gonna try to learn echolocation. Been working on a good tongue click/pop. I have no idea what constitutes a good click but I figure it needs to be consistent.

[damptoes]

Oh wow what you're supposed to do with your extra bits of money is like legit complicated. I figured out leaving everything in a savings account is bad but there's infinity + 2 ways to do it elsewise and the temptation to throw a dart at a list is growing

[damptoes]

Believe in your ability to make good decisions

Agency is different from self-confidence. Self-confidence is a belief in your own ability to do something. I say agency is the belief in your own ability to make decent choices that matter. I was missing a sense of agency. 

A few centuries ago, I imagine confident humans were confident in their ability to carry out their deity's will. Likewise, I was confident in my ability to regurgitate what teachers poured into my heads when prompted. And as child, everyone is your teacher. 

What I lacked, like those humans of the moderately distant past, was the belief that I was capable of leading myself to a good end. As a child, everyone thinks they know better than you.

I have changed my mind. While it is good to take advice from others, each person knows their own happiness best, and should be the main actor in their lives. 

The belief that you are capable of making good decisions is a heady one. 

[damptoes]

I have always felt like a kid pretending to be an adult. What I now realize is I was right but the status of Actual Adult is possible, and that a whole bunch of people don't even realize they are fake adults. 

[damptoes]

I forget things that I don't review. It sounded obvious but then I realized that means I forgotten most of the classes I took last year, and how to spell anything without spell check. I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to do that. 

[damptoes]

Next month's brainwashing goal: play will be even more enjoyable if it is done when all your work is finished.

[damptoes]

waking up with your world in a shambles unique to ambitious people who forgot they were ambitious for a few years.

[damptoes]

There has been a rising belief in the effects of deliberate practice. I believe in deliberate practice, even though I have been to lazy to do it. However, this paper suggests that there is more to skill than hard work. Time spent practicing explained a distressing minority of variation in skill among subjects, with a best showing of 26%

[damptoes]

In Go, there are steps you take to move towards your future goals, these are strategy steps. But there are also steps you need take right now, or else you die. These are just steps. Guess which is more fun, guess which you should do /right now/.

Fuzzy

[damptoes]

Did you know that Google's Android isn't really open source?

I mean, Android itself still exists as an open source project, but the majority of the cool shiny things people like about their Android smartphones are owned by Google. They are not open source. 

On the left is Android, and on the right is Google's Android

Image and info taken from this news article

One is clearly better than the other. 

Me ignorantly ranting about smartphones below.

The mobile phone scene now reminds me of politics, though I am grossly ignorant about both. Despite there presumably being actual differences, brand is important enough for companies to be "economical with the truth." There are two major followings, with constituents that are slightly antagonistic for little reason, and sometimes only identifying with one side out of habit.  Both want to woo you over for their own benefit, whether for your vote or for your data. 

The really got me though, is that in this simile, Microsoft is the offbeat group, the independents. We have tech hipsters and they are Microsoft users. 

Google and Apple are competing for your data, and they want all of it. They want to help you, of course, but to do that they have to know absolutely everything about you, and for you to be loyal only to them. All the better to aid you with, of course. 

In this sketchy mess, Microsoft is somehow the least blatant offender. Not because it's different. As far as I can tell, it's because it's just done a worse job of being creepy big brother. 

The future is so bright.

[damptoes]

  Image mostly unrelated. We can say it almost sort of shares in spirit.

Art by ナルト色々詰め④ | 史考兵(ｼｺｳﾍｲ) [pixiv] 

Story by Black.K.Kat AKA Drown Me in Blue, author of many wonderful one-shots

  Author Summary: 

COMPLETE. Sometimes, even the softest breath on still water can create tsunamis. Several weeks before meeting his genin team, Kakashi is sent to find a bounty hunter responsible for the deaths of five missing-nin, all rumored to be part of a secret organization. But Uzumaki Kurama is far different than anyone expected, and ripples are starting to spread. Slash/yaoi, time travel

  I'd tag: #AU #time travel #for the better #bittersweet #kids taken care of  #realization of potential #OP in a good way #slow romance #happiness is real #plot-driven? #introspective #COMPLETE

9/10 It's really good and I haven't figured out what these numbers mean.

Another retroactive review, I want to open with some that I've liked recently. This was completed only a few weeks ago, so you can still catch it before it cools. The summary is unusually bad for Kat. 

  The majority of the story takes place between just before the Genin exam and just after the Chunin ones, though we get glimpses into other time periods. 

For all that I said that the story was plot driven, it's only so in contrast to "The Human Mask" which is so intensely focused on the people. I like character driven stories. It will probably be a trend. 

  Chapters tend to be neatly contained, and read a bit like interconnected one-shots, with the length of back it up. But rather than character growth happening, it's more like a natural progression from things not being god-awful in the first place. Kat tugs at your heartstrings in a reverse fashion. She shows you what could have been, but failed to be in canon. 

This story explores what the Naruto-verse would have been like if everything went right.  And I need that sometimes. 

Even shounen heroes deserve to be happy.

    If you need a pick me up after an angst-ridden epic, this is your story. For all that it's still a serious read, it a perfect reminder that there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

[damptoes]

    Image only tangentially related, by Zeke69 taken from Zerochan,net 

  Sequel to one-shot "Worthy of a Name" by harunekonya (also fantastic)

Author Summary:  Natsume slowly learns to deal with life as a god. An inter-connected vignette series. 

  I'd tag: #AU #gods #power #moral ambiguity #loyalty #broken people #growth 

10/10 one of my favorites. go read it.

Disclaimer: I have never read or watched natsume yuujinchou 

This is a retroactive review. I started reading this a long time ago. It's actually on hiatus currently, but I believe it will end soon.

This story follows Natsume after he was turned into a god and his struggles to truly be one. Arcs are short and have well defined beginnings and endings, meaning no cliffhanger-paloozas, and nice places to stop binging. 

The author is a fantastic writer. The world is well developed (I don't know if it's true to canon, having never read it) and doesn't feel forced. I didn't have any "I see what you did there" moments. The characters are wonderfully human, dynamic and multifaceted. The writing itself is just good (what do you even call that?)

Each chapter is prefaced by a small blurb from Natsume's point of view, summing up the theme of the chapter. The first one encompasses the the whole story well: He, and by extension us, gains insight into human life, by slowly losing bits of it. The chapters are written entirely from Natsume's point of view, focusing more on his thoughts than actual events. This is by no means a plot driven story.

It's fantastic, well-researched, engaging and insightful. Go read it.

Even if you never read Natsume Yuujin-chou, if you know the premise and the 2 main characters you're fine, it's worth it.

[damptoes]

Got Danganronpa with an English patch installed on jpcsp =)

[damptoes]

1/1/2013

Cover art of the 27th Discworld novel I've started, "The Last Hero", featuring Cohen the Barbarian.

I first brought up the series of books nearly a half year ago. At that point I was about halfway through all the books. Though I paused for a few months, I've been continuing to read listen to the Discworld series in the background of things. 

I've recently started The Last Hero, it's the second to last full length novel in the thread of stories in which Rincewind the Wizzard has a major role. As I catch up to the author, I feel a bit sad. I will miss hearing about how all the characters are doing.

To give a bit of context to those unfamiliar with the books, Discworld is a series of 30-some novels by Terry Pratchett. They parody or deconstruct the fantasy genre. For example, Cohen the Barbarian, featured in the cover art above, is an comedic exploration of fantasy heroes after they've grown old. Although they are not all connected to each other, they all occur in the same universe. A diagram of novels can be found here. 

Rincewind is a wizard. However, he is very bad at it. Famously so. He can't do a shred of magic. Even in a parody of the fantasy genre, this lack of innate talent is very unusual. Most main characters feature ridiculously high levels of one stat or another. Carrot has maxed charisma, Granny Weatherwax, magic attk, Lord  Veterinari, int, and so on. Rincewind has maxed luck. Unfortunately for him, it is of both kinds. 

Rincewind is probably my favorite character. He's resembles Odysseus in trying to find his way home while being buffeted about by the winds of the gods, except without the heroic tendencies. He's not as cool at the high-powered characters who are almost always calm and in control, but he has his own appeal.

Instead of struggling to accomplish super-human feats to save the world, Rincewind struggles to get back to his home and his dream of peaceful days working at the wizard university. He is often labeled as a coward because he flees from the apocalyptically powered antagonists, but he is not offended because he has found it to be the best way to stay alive and return home. 

He is practical, realistic, and comfortable with himself even though he is far from  perfect. I think, in contrast to the perfect protagonist, Rincewind is the better role model.

[damptoes]

12/1/2012 (post-event post) A screenshot of At A Distance, a short artsy two-player game. 

Played it with friend in the beginning of December.

It's a short platformer-ish game, it took us about 1-2 hours to beat the game, including the half an hour in which we had no idea what was going on.

The two-players are referred to as the left-brain and the right-brain, the significance of which I'm still not sure. One player arranges the relationships of rooms from the outside and the other player retrieves keys from the inside of the rooms, which are used to get more rooms. The twist is that the outside player also needs to navigate rooms of platforms to get new rooms. 

There's some foreshadowing, no recognizable plot, a surreal atmosphere and some really opaque symbolism that might not mean anything at all. 

Despite an unsatisfactory ending and scattered confusion about game mechanics and events, I enjoyed playing the game.  It has no time pressure, and had both individual and cooperative game play. There's an exploratory aspect since each room for both players had distinct architecture and mood. It wasn't linear, yet a way forwards was usually clear: get all the rooms. And importantly, since there was way of saving, it was short enough to play in one go. 

Sadly, replay value is zero. 

[damptoes]

12/31/2012 A few panels from Chapter 92 page 9 of AKB49 - Renai Kinshi Jourei

Recently been reading AKB49 - Renai Kinshi Jourei. Even though it's about idols, it's still very much shonen, the team trains and competes to achieve ever greater levels of success. Only the premise is weird. The main character is a boy cross-dressing as a girl idol, and his goal is to let his love interest succeed. However, most of the time you almost forget this completely. There seem to be chapters stuck in randomly just to remind people. 

I think I like the happy feeling from reading about people succeeding by working hard and staying positive.

[damptoes]

I started watching Steins;Gate a few days ago but I don't know if I'll end up finishing it. It's really a strange series but it's supposed to get better later on. 

So far, the strangeness is it's main appeal, and it's not a particularly strong one.