Saving Grace

Hello, guys.

i dunno, brendan. i don't know why i decided you were the one to point out that computers were something to be more grateful of than air. i guess that, in my head, you've permanently been labelled as the guy who is going to say something. it doesn't matter whether it's a wedding, funeral, press conference, or strandation on a desert island. brendan will be the first to say something.

i don't know why i put in wedding or funeral, disregard that.


so yesterday on my blog post i was like "man, it's effectively 10:08, i'm so tired. i guess the way to sleep earlier is to wake up earlier. yeah, i got this figured out now"

and then this morning i got up, and it was dark, because i had my door partially closed, and i flipped over and picked up one of the inside-bed clocks (my bed kind of has an inbuilt shelf where i put things such as bedside clocks (and i have two of them, one is my old one, the other one is used for the alarm, because the alarm system for my old one was flimsy, it was so hard to figure out how to set the time in the first place. to be honest, i never set the alarm for that clock so i don't realy know what it sounds like. but i also don't know how to stop the alarm. actually the old one is really cool, it's like... you know the symbol in maths for "is perpendicular to"? from the side, it looks a bit like that. and you press it, and it changes from time, to alarm, to date, to temperature, back to time. and you also press it to make it emit blue light. so at night, sometimes, when i randomly wake up and wonder if it's 3:27, i push my old clock, to turn the light on, and then i push it three more times to make it cycle back to the time. but i don't really do that anymore. i have my new clock, which you just press the button on top. i don't even know why i have my old clock anymore. i have a habit of never throwing away things, such as old clothes, old toys. i've talked about that before, though.)

okay, jokes/funny stories don't go too well when you have a 200 word tangent in the middle of them. i'll start over.


so yesterday i was like "the key to sleeping earlier is to wake up earlier, because i'm so tired right now and it's only 10:08"

and then this morning i woke up in the dark because my door was closed, and i was considering just going back to sleep. then i pressed on my new clock to see what the time was, and it was 1:59.

yeah. so, the key to sleeping earlier is to grow up so you're capable of sleeping earlier. no other real sol'n.



i appreciate it when people who i don't really expect to like my status, like my random pointless status. it's nice. most of the time i don't like everything i see (anymore). i don't know why, though. it takes nothing more than a click just to show support like that.

oh, that's a good lead in to this concept which i once thought about but i think i've never posted.


the value of something decreases as the amount of people who have it increases. in some cases, however, the value of something is pretty much nothing until there are a few people who have it. then it decreases as normal.

okay, actually, i have talked about this, regarding 10:37.

so anyway, similarly to inside jokes (sometimes i have inside jokes which are just me. that's why they're called inside jokes), the value of your own "like" follows that rule. if you've only liked one status, your like is pretty important. it's pretty special. if you like every single status you see, your like is represents nothing.

nice and simple.

i thought about this before, and decided against posting it (for good reason, but screw that), and it can also apply to friends. The more friends you have, the less each individual friend means to you. so even if you aren't the sociallest butterfly, rejoice, because the friends you have are true ones. the exception is if you are like me, and have no friends at all. bl

i was going to use capital letters properly, like, you know, at the beginning of sentences, but i decided that the first part of my post (addressing brendan) didn't really have to be so formal. i could save that for the important part. now, i've realised that none of this is "the important part". i'll go put a poll up after i type up this post asking about capital letters or not. i don't know why i'm not using them, actually. habit.
something tells me the first 4 comments are going to be "you forgot to put the poll up"

we'll see. i probably won't forget. i've made big enough of deal of it already to make it a memorable thing.


i've figured out what's been wrong with my playstyle, and why i was losing (on that one day). this is a sc thing, so you don't have to read it. but, i found that SC does have real life lessons (tbc later).

Starcraft has this thing called the "metagame". It's not an easy concept to describe.

Wikipedia:

Metagaming is a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself.

In simple terms, using out-of-game information, or resources, to affect one's in-game decisions.

Urban Dictionary:

The highest level of strategy in many complex games, metagame refers to any aspect of strategy that involves thinking about what your opponent is thinking you are thinking.

I like that. "strategy". that's a good way to put it. but that "thinking about what your opponent is thinking you are thinking" isn't the whole story.

Predicting an opponent's decision in competitive gaming as a result of analysis of the opponent's past decisions.

There is a special set of moves in chess which allows a player to win in four moves. Competitor A has been watching Competitor B play chess, and the past five games in a row Competitor B has attempted to use this four-move win. When Competitor A sits down to play against Competitor B, Competitor A will be metagaming if he/she plays in a way that will easily thwart the four-move checkmate before Competitor B makes it obvious that this is what he/she is doing.

that last one was from urban dictionary, but the person copied wikipedia for that. so that's using both of the sources.

so the metagaming is assuming something without seeing it, based on the information you've gained from scouting. the metagame is the way metagaming shifts over time.

In SC, there are three races you can play as. Protoss, Zerg, or Terran. each of them are different. If you go back to the above wikipedia example, you can replace "competitor A" with Protoss, and "competitor B" with Terran. Protoss (as a race, not a person) has played against Terran before, and knows what strategies Terran usually uses. So Protoss looks to see what strat Terran is using, and then uses another strategy to "counter" it, and win. Terran, after a while, will realise the strategy doesn't work against protoss players anymore, and terran players will eventually change the strategy, or use a different one. Then protoss will face a new strategy, without having a counter from metagaming the terran.

That ^ is a shift in the metagame. The game mechanics are the same. One player verses another. But after the shift in the metagame, the way the game is played is completely different, with different strategies, even though it's exactly the same game. So you could say the metagame is the trend of strategies and mindsets employed by players over time.

so ... yeah... you needed to know about the metagame for some reason...



anyway, as you can imagine, the metagame changes quiet a bit, especially when pro gamers uses new, unseen strategies they develop themselves, with the whole world watching. Because everyone just copies what they do.

the problem I had was, I hadn't adapted to the changing metagame. I was using the same strategy every ProtossVsZerg, and I would just straight up lose.

YOU MIGHT SAY

I LOST THE METAGAME

so yes. i'm changing things up a bit. putting on a little pressure earlier. trying my own crazy builds (which are stolen from the pros. well actually, one of them was my own idea). getting more immortals. getting less collosi. back to the old timing pushes of early '11.


The metagame constantly shifts. You have to keep up and adapt with it.


anyway, sorry about that. the "real life lesson" from this is, that

Life is like the metagame. It constantly shifts. You have to keep up and adapt with it. You can't just ignore everything. You have to change your mindset, you have to change your attitude (like how you have to change your strategies).

it's like clinging onto old, dying traditions. welcome to the new world.


anyway, life SC lessons. There was a forum thread. Let me quote it a few times. You don't have to read it.

"Any game with any sort of analytical/strategic elements is bound to demonstrate SOME educational value because it's demanding concentration and problem solving beyond the realm of "shoot bad guys."" ~Dox

"Honestly, I don't think Starcraft teaches you anything other than how to play Starcraft (which is just fine as I play the game for its own sake).

I suspect its educational value is negative. Leaving aside the obvious problem of kids playing when they should be studying, there is an emerging body of literature in relation to how the internet is "rewiring" our brains - eg shortening attention spans, less information retention as a result of multi-tasking etc) (see eg The Shallows (2010), although the irony of that book is that its central thesis is that people are now less inclined to read books and less capable of absorbing information from traditional print media).

One could plausibly suggest it teaches people to control their emotions in situations of high stress (which will be a useful skill in later life in the workplace etc), but the anecdotal evidence suggests to me at least that the opposite is the case. I've read many stories now of people who swore they would be "good manner" devolving to into a raging beast after several months of laddering." ~Tom




"I dunno, I think it enforces the incremental learning fundamental; Hard work = Achievements. If you work hard at something then you'll get good at it.
Not the whole entity learning principle, where you do something just because you are good at it." ~ZergGirl


"Gaming is and always will be for entertainment. The question is, which is more educational and constructive? Passively watching comedy or drama TV vs actively playing a strategic game?" ~HDPhoenix


"games such as these teach one to think ahead and see the 360 degree scope of a situation. not just visually, but by identifying, analyzing, and then coming to a logical and rational decision for how to constructively handle and solve a problem. The issue is most people don't realize that is what they are doing, even though they may be GREAT at it.

if you like SCII you most likely enjoy the stressful task of problem solving and critical analysis." ~thedirtydub

THIS IS A GOOD ONE

"The most important thing I have learn from starcraft is how to lose in a competitive environment learn from it and improve." ~Cordance


"how to stay a virgin" ~TAScarlet

anyway, SC has taught me that there's no need to be ashamed of who you are. SC isn't really something you would share with a random stranger (i've already talked about all of this in the BB article and old posts), but if anyone, anyone was to ask me about the things I liked, I would say Starcraft and Foo Fighters. If they asked me what starcraft was, I would do my best to explain it to them (even if they didn't know what a real-time strategy was). If they asked me about what foo fighters was, I would punch them in the face.

but i've already talked about all of that pride etc before so there's no need for that now, because it's like 1:04 and I should be wrapping this up soon.

I was only kidding btw


The funny thing is, I planned this post to be about all of my trauma involving piano. one thousand words later...



Piano is this saturday. Not many days left. Last lesson on thursday at 6PM. Yeah, that's late. but not really any other time. (normally it would be saturday).

Playing the piano has been strange. Do you know how sometimes, you feel good after you've done a test. And then you get it back and you got like 80%. (or less if it was a science one).

Piano recently has been like that. I would feel pretty alright the day before the lesson with how I'm playing (i can pretty much play all of the songs, with the notes mostly correct, at a decent speed). But when I'm actually there, it turns out I have all of the technique wrong, like the middle voice of Aria List A, No. 2 would be too loud, and you can't hear the melody (the top voice, there are three voices in this song which you have to play with two hands). And I would just not feel up to it for Allegro List B. No 2. And I would think while playing the song "the hard part is coming up, I'm going to fail it", and I would fail it. Same thing for the middle part of Fantasiestuck, List C. Same thing for Dance in Bulgarian Rhythm (I guess I haven't "perfected" this one completely yet, though). And my scales are so bad. For the thirds and sixths scales, my fingers hit eachother sometimes, and I can't play it evenly at the minimum speed requirement. And I just suck at arpeggios. I just hope that I'm hitting the right notes. I really have no control over it. I look at the notes with my eyes, but there is absolutely no hand-eye coordination going on. It's just all muscle memory.

I think it's because my hands have grown. I used to be able to play octaves by stretching my thumb and pink fingers as far as comfortably possible, and that would be exactly an octave. But now, It's an octave plus one note. So I can't rely on that anymore. everything's ruined.

This week's lesson, I just felt like crying when my piano teacher was explaining everything I was doing wrong (I didn't, of course). I don't know. Is it meant to be this difficult? Or am I just a failure? Does it happen to every piano student? When you just can't play it the way you are meant to, no matter how much you try

She suggested 4 hours per day until the exam. It's sad, I've probably only had one per day, maximum so far.

I hope I don't fail. I hope I pass. I don't mind if it's a C. I hope I pass. I don't know. How often do they fail people?

I remember last time I got a C, because I screwed up my songs, and for one of the scales, I don't know what was going on in my head, but I only played 2 octaves instead of 4. And afterwards I was just like, shocked, and I said something like "was that meant to be 4 octaves?". I don't know. I hope they like my rendition of the songs. Because it sure isn't what they're meant to be.


I'm not really good at memorising one line in 90 seconds and playing it. I'm not really good at identifying imperfect, perfect, and plagal cadences (interupted cadences are easy). I'm not too good at singing the lower voice for more complex pieces. I'm not good at identifying whether a major or minor chord is in root, first inversion, or second inversion. Sometimes I get a major third interval confused with a major sixth.

i hope it's okay. i think i'll be really disappointed if i fail. more disappointed than about anything else.



isn't it funny how the most well known people are the entertainers, not the ones who work to save millions of lives, or the ones who work to bring us the technology of the future?

oh and wow, that's ironic, i just remembered. This is just a thing I felt like sharing, so if it's the holidays and you don't really have anything to do right now, check these videos out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4lDmETgYGs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP-e0tzq1Hg

they're videos of Kirby Chambliss, a professional of aerobatics. it's like acrobatics. WITH AN AEROPLANE.