Having Lived

Last night, wait, the night before, (today is tuesday the 5th 12:36), I just couldn't sleep, it was like a little past 2am and I couldn't sleep for a couple of hours or something like that. Had slight troubles last night too (even though I was feeling tired at 12, the tiredness goes away at 1am for some reason). Hopefully better this night.

In the last no-lectures week I just ended up sleeping later and waking later. I didn't plan to, it just happened. So now with the nothing at all study-week it's worse. I say worse as if it's a bad thing. I remember like 10-13 months ago feeling inexplicable something-like-joy staying up long enough to notice that the sun is rising, has risen. At that point I say something like "oh curses the sun has risen" and then go to bed, feeling something-like-exhaustion-peace while the birds sang me to sleep.


So I couldn't go to sleep and ended up writing things to put here, but when it's 3am and you're tired of not being able to sleep, and tired, sad, and you try to do this, you'll end up writing stupid things. So instead of writing it all out, this is just me talking from right now and using it as a check list.

...

I read through a day9 ama which apparently I did not know even happened, and one of the things from it was this:

"80% of life is just showing up. You don't need qualifications, motivation, brilliant ideas, or any other crap. The person who wins is simply the person who shows up. If you show up every day, there's nothing you can't achieve."

~Day9

"I am really bad at showing up." Opportunities. Jobs is an example. I will have to get a job soon, and it won't be easy getting a job and I will hate the process wow i am going to hate it so much especially because it's not something I really want to do, more of I am obliged to and don't really mind.


"Exams in a week. Wow I should prepare."
Exams in ... not sure, less than a week now. I think. I think I start next monday. I can check that later. Today I started studying a bit ... I did half a discrete maths past paper (out of 6). But the relearning process only takes around the first 2 papers and the next 4 are practise.

I do know that my exams go for 9 days. 4 exams in 9 days. I checked sometime during the semester and I thought yeah they look pretty spread out, should be good. I checked again a few days ago, and 9 days doesn't sound very spread out compared to HSC. But I still think it will be fine because there's no pressure for uni exams, for me, and I have a plan.

I always make these study plans. Just noticed.

I have this week to learn maths and discrete maths (the first and last exams), and this is perfect because those are probably the 2 easiest and enjoyable ones to study for.

Then I have a 3-4 day break between exams for the other 2 subjects, which should be more than enough time.

I have been playing games constantly throughout this semester. A lot time. Last semester I would go for days without playing because of essays, reports, assignments. This semester all homework has felt inconsequential (and it kind of has been).

But we're getting pretty good at dota... kind of...
It kind of feels the same as starcraft in the sense that, you get to this level that's close to the top... but not quite there. And you're really really almost there. But you aren't quite there...

We're not quite at that stage, but I think during the holidays we will get there. And then we will never reach the top and it will suck,

I feel like, personally, one of the biggest obstacles is my internet. It's just horrible. and it sucks and it's awful.

It makes half of the games I play, okay maybe not half but still a lot, a waste of time. Because ...
in this game, you get bonuses from getting the "last hit" on something. The killing blow. You get bonuses from killing units, but you have to be the one that brings its health to 0.

"Last hitting" is kind of like a game of "precision". I don't know what the game is actually called. But when you have like, a ball moving through a series of boxes and you have to press enter when it gets to the highlighted box. Or if you just open up a stopwatch and try to stop it at exactly 2 seconds.

It's the same thing. You have a "creep's" health slowly dropping, and you want to deliver the killing blow.
Now, imagine playing 5 of these precision games at the same time. (it's not actually that hard, since the hp falls relatively slowly).
Now imagine playing 5 of these precision games at the same time, and having an opponent who is playing against you. If they get the last hit on the creep, you are sad.
So if you are doing 50 damage, you have to hit the creep after its health drops below 50, but before your opponent.
Now imagine playing except the opponent can, if they choose to, ignore the precision games and just attack you instead. So now you are running back and forth fighting this guy, while playing the 5 simultaneous precision games against him.
It's quite fun.

Now imagine doing all of this, except there is a 0.1 second delay to every action you make. It kind of sucks, but you get used to it, and you don't realise how much of a difference this delay makes until you play without it.
Now imagine that the delay ranges from 0.2 seconds to 0.8 seconds, and it's random every time.
You try to get the last hit, but your opponent gets it before you because you were delayed by half a second. Next time you try to hit it earlier to adjust for the delay, but then the delay is 0.2 seconds instead and you hit it too early.
The lag isn't that random for me, it will be something like ... 10 seconds of 0.2, then 3 seconds of 0.8. So I can kind of predict how much delay there will be at any moment. But regardless, it's still a waste of time.

It's a waste of time because if you play precision normally, you would get better at it. If you play precision with random lag spikes that you can't control for, you don't get better at it.


So anyway, that's dota. But I really should make sure I study a reasonable amount.



"I played Coto today for the first time in a long while. It takes a little while to unrust."
and I haven't played it since. Sometimes when I played it before I felt ... something-like-silly, because I wondered, don't my family ever think something-like-"he's just playing the same song over and over again this song sucks I'm tired of hearing it I'm going to find and burn the sheet music".
And that feeling makes me play it less than I want to.


"I like and don't like my composition at the same time. I can just imagine others hearing it and thinking 'what is this crap'. But it still is lots of fun and coming along nicely. or naturally. It writes itself. All of it wrote itself. Sometimes I didn't know what to do and I imagined other melodies that already exist, but they didn't fit the song at all. So I just leave it and wait. Wait for what fits, what was meant to be. I wait because what is right will come eventually."

When I was trying to transcribe Coto, I would sleep late a lot of nights because I stayed up working on it. Kind of the same now except progress is slow because I don't know what this is meant to be at the end. The inspiration I was given was only for a start of a song. I have made the start. So ... what now? I could keep going, but if it doesn't write itself then it will probably suck.

I think it will just write itself slowly then. 


"risk averse"
One of the last topics of micro was about risk (and expected values).
Let's say there is a game.
You have 50% to win 10,000
You have 50% to win 0
You can choose to avoid this game and just take 4,000

A risk averse person would take the 4k despite the expected value of the game being 5k
A risk neutral person would play the game because the expected value of the game is higher than the 4k
A risk lover would play the game even if the game changed so that you get guaranteed 6k from not playing the game.

If I were to play that game, I would take the 4,000.
Because to me, 4k or 10k is still a win to me. And it becomes something like... I can choose either 100% chance to win, or 50% chance to win.

I don't know if that makes sense.

If it were something like, 50% chance to win 50k, of course I would take that over 4k.
Hm... so what's the threshold. That's interesting. I think for me... around 12-13k? If it was a 50% chance to win 12.5k, or walk away with 4k, I would probably take the chance.

So for me the expected value has to be something around 150% for me to take the chance. (6.5k vs 4k)


When I know I will take more than 10 minutes to sleep I usually decide to listen to something, which often is stella. And sometimes I'm kept awake and then a long time as passed and it's the end of the song. And the good thing is, or the silver lining of the this-cloud-sucks is that I kind of don't mind because I get to listen through the whole song instead of missing out on the end.

And then the song is over and I think oh, I'm still not asleep. Curses. This is unfortunate.


"I really can't sleep.
I thought it was so ... amazing-scary how the thoughts and memories and feelings we have are lost. Forgotten. There is no record. There is no replay".
Maybe there is some truth in this, because I can't recall how I was writing that.
I remember that was sad, or I remember that was awesome. ... but that's all I remember

I haven't mentioned "forget" in a while. I haven't forgotten about it. I just haven't got around to it. I still do it, maybe not every day but often enough. When did that start, anyway, whatever


re: "This Destiny person seems intriguing and I would like to subscribe to his newsletter."

http://blog.destiny.gg/dealing-with-depression/

If you don't want to read a quick life-summary of his, (I don't know why you wouldn't want to, though)

Personally, I’ve found that finding a hobby or craft that is completely independent of other people is the best approach to dealing with depression. A lot of people make the mistake of relying on family or friends for support, but as soon as those family members or friends are no longer around to support them they completely fall to pieces. 

...

The nice thing about finding a hobby or a craft to work at is that it will always be there for you, completely and totally unconditionally. No matter how bad or terrible the decisions you’ve made in life are, no matter how badly you’ve messed up, no matter how little money you have and no matter how bizarre the relationships are with the people you deal with every day is, no one can take that special thing away from you.

For some people, this is as simple as drawing, singing, or even playing video games.

...

No matter what happens in life, you need something that you can turn to that no one else can ever take from you.

Video games. I guess that's what it was for me.

The thing about this is ...
I don't know if it's good or not because
If you are playing a multiplayer game or something where there's winning and losing (I consider the majority of player vs ai/story games win only games because the game should be designed so that you win)
On some days you might only lose. And if you already felt really bad to begin with, now it's just like ... oh, well I guess I'm just really shit at this as well.

Losing never got to me that much, it was just part of it all for me (you would think that this unafraid of failure would carry over to real life, but no it's the opposite for some reason). But some people really really hate losing. Maybe because losing is like "fact: you are bad" as opposed to "opinion: you are bad". There are a lot of reasons why it sucks and gets to people.

Sometimes it makes you "rage". Get angry at your opponent, this game sucks, this game is not fair, whoever designed it is stupid. If it's a team game, get mad at your teammates. They incompetent, they are horrible.

Legitimate anger. I don't think this is good.

And some people rage even when they weren't in a bad mood to begin with. If you play games and get mad almost every time (you lose), maybe you shouldn't be playing these games.

I think one of the best things about myself (this is odd I'm not saying something negative about myself) is that I am comfortable with losing, don't get online-stage-fright, and don't tilt. It means my emotions are completely separate to the game, so I am consistent. Except for other factors such as lag I hate my internet so much I saw a comment the other day on an NBN thread it made me mad.
And the other thing is that I don't get mad. I don't get mad at the enemy for winning. I don't get mad at my team for losing. Sometimes if I mess up I think "I can't believe I did that" but I don't get mad at myself for it.

Last post I said something about how people shouldn't be so quick to conclude that other people are stupid, because people aren't stupid. And this is the same thing. I wrote the line "And I hate it when I do it to people I know, because I know they're not stupid." with this game in mind.

I know they aren't stupid. I know they didn't intend to do that really stupid thing they just did that cost us the battle. So there is no point in hurling negativity at them.

Ok, so they did intend to do that really stupid thing that cost us the battle because they thought it was the right thing to do. I can tell them, later, why it's not the right thing to do. There is no point in telling them that they are wrong and stupid, because they're aren't stupid.



The other day there was a thread about someone being scammed for an item worth, idk, a lot of money. This was one of the replies.

I understand you needed someplace to vent, but during my days as a staker/rwter in runescape I learned the hard way very fast. Getting scammed like this is a great character developer, until it actually happens you can't ever understand so don't get too twisted about it.
Also, the amount of money involved isn't that big of a deal, work for a day and you will make more than you did waiting MONTHS for it to rise(I'm Australian, idk where you are from).
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me :)
Runescape gold at one point was 60c/M, Having a friend of 4 years steal 10b off your account isn't very fun :) but I understand where you are coming from try to Cheer up pal, once you put it into perspective you will realise how dumb it was getting so worked up over it in the first place. 

~/u/Icon_dota

"getting scammed like this is a great character developer", I remember thinking, wow, that's so true. I must have told this story multiple times before, ... ok apparently I haven't. Is now really the best time?

Not really but I might as well. Maybe I'll read through this post tomorrow and make some edits into the story as I remember more things.

I used to play RuneScape ... I don't know which year this was. I think it was primary school... 3-4...?


Oh I just remembered something funny, which I have not remembered in probably over 10 years. So, when we were young my parents were very anti-gaming. I must have told this story in the past ... and yeah I have a few times, but very briefly.

In the school holidays, since my there wasn't much to play at home, and my parents were anti-gaming (although I can't remember if they were at home or work during the holidays), on some days my brother and I would go to Eastwood. "We're going to the library". And then we would go to the library, and then quickly borrow some books randomly. Well, not pure randomly, I would look at the books a little bit to make a judgement on whether it seems interesting or not. But randomly enough for us to be able to leave the library about 10 minutes later. And then we would go to the internet cafe. In the beginning we went to one that was on the side of the train station that didn't have the library, but shortly after we switched one on the same side, called "Good Day". It's still there now and I used to walk past it on the way home during high school, but I haven't been inside for almost a decade.

And then we would spend the day at the internet cafe, with a break for lunch. And then we would play when we got home, separately though, and when "why are you playing games?", "but we spent the day at the library".

Games used to be so fun.

Oh, the funny thing I remembered was that, I remember telling my mum "did you know that bronze and tin makes copper!?" to show her that I was learning so much from this game.


So anyway I used to play RuneScape. And the story I was meant to tell, I still can't believe I haven't told it here before.

For those of you who are RuneScape-uneducated. The weapons and armour you equip are made out of metals in most cases. As you level up you get stronger materials, which naturally are better.

The progression was something like: bronze, iron, steel, mithril, adamant, rune.

To get these metals, you had to mine things from mining fields, and then smelt it in a ... smelter?. And from there you would acquire a bar of that metal, and you needed some number of bars of these metals to make things.

So I was pretty well accustomed to the RuneScape world. I had dabbled in all of the trades that existed, I had cut down trees to increase my lumberjack level, I had casted some spells to get good at magic, I used a bow and arrow as a ranged fighter for a while, I had buried bones to increase my prayer level, I was pretty good at making fires and using them to convert raw beef into cooked beef. And I was getting pretty good at mining metal ore and smelting weapons and armor out of them.

I had already made bronze weapons and armour for myself. The equipment had served me quite well, I probably killed so many goblins with it, but it was time to move on. It was time to move on to the next level, it was time for IRON.

And man, the jump from bronze to iron is crazy. Iron is so much harder to mine - you have to have a higher mining level, and it takes longer, and it's just all so horrible.

And even worse, sometimes when you smelt iron, it fails and you don't get an iron bar. Yeah, that's right, you get nothing. Your ore is just wasted.

And you can't even make the good equipment until your smelting level is high enough. So I had to get experience for that as well.

It was tough. But I kept at it, and soon enough I was making myself some really awesome iron gear.

//I also remember typing out "you're welcome" whenever someone said "ty" and other things like this, which was natural to me. It's what I said in real life, right?

One day, somewhere near the outskirts of lumbridge, on the west side of the river (man I remember this quite vividly), I was doing my rounds between the mining fields and the smelter to make more iron bars, and some guy comes up to me and says "hey, do you want to go to the black forest?". I remember his avatar clearly, for some reason, he was wearing no equipment so just had the standard clothes with stiches and you look poor, and long-for-a-boy but short-for-a-girl length hair, brown, and I'm not good at describing so this is a waste of time.

"what's the black forest?" I ask in reply.

I can't remember exactly how he answered that. It was something like, "it's really cool, you'll see, come, follow me".

"ok"

And so I set character to follow him. He lead me north, north, north, through places I had never been before. Things probably happened along the way, but I don't remember freaking anything. I know I told this story sometime before, remembering more, but there is no record of that I can copy.

Eventually we reached this point where the ground turned black. The trees turned black and typical-spooky. I didn't think much of it, because I wasn't really aware of what typical-spooky was, so I didn't associate the black trees with danger and evil and all of that. These were just black leafless trees to me.

He tells me that I'll get some pop up warning, and I should just ignore it.

"ok".

I get the warning, I read through it a little bit. It was the message that tells you this is the "wilderness", PvP exists here and other things, be careful. I think I read all of that but didn't think much of it.

So I step past into the wilderness. And now all of the trees are black. On part of the screen there's a tracker that tells you how far you are into the wilderness. It started on level 1. So I kept on following the guy through the black forest. And it was so fascinating. All I knew was the normal medievally landscape, and suddenly you have this black forest, with little landmarks here and there. Bones here, a random bubbling green pool here, scorpions here uh oh run from them they look scary. And sometimes there were other players, and it was weird because some of them had a skull and bones symbol above their head.

He lead me to like level 31 or something of the wilderness. I'm not sure if he said anything at this point. He might have.
But we got to level 31 of the wilderness, and then he attacked me.

I was shocked. Shocked. I didn't do anything. Now the skull and bones symbol appeared on his head as well. I didn't understand anything that was happening. I didn't know players could even attack other players in this game.

"What are you doing"

He just hits me.

I start to run away. I still don't know what's going on, but I am scared. In real life, I am scared. I just tell myself to keep running. I feel adrenaline rush through me as I click, click, click, click, all I am doing is clicking to run. But he is faster. He catches up every few steps and keeps on hitting me. Do you get scared when something is chasing you? Would you get scared when something is chasing you, and catching up to you, and slowly killing you? Holy shit I was terrified. I was confused. I was panicking.

"stop"

He just hits me.

"stop"
"stop"
"stop"

I keep typing it, but he doesn't stop.

What do you feel when something is chasing you, catching up to you, and killing you? I don't know, but that's what I felt. And then I died. I saw my character collapse, in all senses of the word, there was a really weird death animation because they had to fit it in one tile.

And then I respawned in Lumbridge and all of my things were gone. I lost all of my armor that I had spent so long making. It was probably worth a couple hundred GP when people are trading millions and billions of GP, but that was my armor. I made it myself, and having it stolen like that was like losing everything. I could not believe it.

And this part I do remember. I message him expressing my confusion and asking him why he killed me, and he responds just by laughing. Like, it was something along the lines of "HAHAHAHAHAHA".


So ... yeah, getting scammed, or in this case, getting tricked, having your trust completely broken and being simulation murdered is a great character builder.

And looking back at it a while after, I am really lucky that I got to have that experience at that time. If I had continued growing up trusting everyone and everything, because I had no reason to distrust anyone or disbelieve anything, I might have not had a sandbox to learn the lesson in. I don't know if the word sandbox even means what I want it to, what I mean is, my un-experience might have hurt me in real life.


runescape was awesome, I remember beating the final free quest, dragon slayer, for the first time, I was so happy. It was just this world with everything, you had your caves and islands and forests and volcanos even, you can fish for trout here, and lobster on the other side of the world, there are all of these different creatures who dwell in particular parts of the map.

I consider how much of the world I would experience as year-three me, or even uni-year-one me who has not travelled to anywhere new in a very long time,
and compare it to this alternate reality, and this game was so amazing.

So I guess RuneScape really was educational after all, because of the fictional experience, not the stupid fact "bronze + tin = copper".

It's 4:16 now, I guess I will be able to sleep without trouble.

my right hand area around the wrist kind of hurts a bit, this is weird because as much as i use the computer i don't get this usually.