today, i try: Existing

Discussion in 'Howdy there!' started by Alexand, Apr 17, 2017.

  1. Alexand

    Alexand Rhymes with &

    Um, I haven't really done forums before. I haven't really done talking in a while? I tried posting on Tumblr for a few days, but that was TERRIFYING -- I'm not entirely sure how to go about this, is what I'm saying. Bear with me.

    …My name’s Alex. I’m technically a college student, mostly a shut-in, and I leave my dorm room once a day for food. I’m teaching myself discrete math, linear algebra, and Java right now, since I’ve become too anxious to actually attend lectures ages ago…in my spare time I listen to podcasts, like Math Mutation and Developer Tea and Linear Digressions…oh, and I listen to a lot of McElroy Brothers Content too! So, that’s my current fandom. So, I do like to…y’know, have fun and relax and stuff, too.

    (Right now I’m spending my Allotted Free Time marathoning Griffin’s Nuzlocke video series. I also enjoy: The Adventure Zone, Cool Games Inc, My Brother, My Brother and Me, Car Boys, Touch the Skyrim, Monster Factory, Interrobang…I recently started Rose Buddies and Bunker Buddies…oh, and I’m all caught up with TAZ, for the record.)

    Anyway, I’m here because I want to learn how to talk to people again. I don’t feel fit to exist among Good Functional People right now, let alone speak, but I’m tired of being nonexistent, too. I’ve sent Seebs some really trivial anon asks in the past few months, just because I felt like I needed some input from not-my-own-brain, and it’s hard to get that when you don’t interact with people…and...now I want to see if I can handle being not-anonymous, too. So I’m Alex. I like math and podcasts and McElroy Humor. I hope we can get along.

    …Oh, and my Certified Autist™ Special Interest™ is sound. I spend most of my time thinking about sound-related things. When I feel tired or anxious or depressed, I can usually return to my mental home base, and my mental home base is…”sound thoughts”, I guess? Right now I’m brainstorming ways to make a sound-based browser game more interesting for other people to play…and I don’t have any actual progress on that browser game yet, it’s not something that I’ve even started to so much as pseudocode out yet, it exists literally entirely in my head as a fun daydream…but it does make me happy. One day I’ll make it real.

    …I don’t really know how to talk about any of that with other people, though! I'm pretty sure I failed at it entirely just now. It was easier back when my mental home base was “original characters”, and I could spend my time in it and then come out with writing and OC trivia to share...maybe I’ll figure it out eventually. And maybe my OCs will come back from vacation one day. Who knows?
     
    • Like x 2
  2. unknownanonymous

    unknownanonymous i am inimitable, i am an original|18+

  3. Codeless

    Codeless Cheshire Cat

    Hi! Existence is said to be fun sometimes, so good luck! Do you like fiction podcasts? Like Welcome to Nightvale
     
  4. Alexand

    Alexand Rhymes with &

    I know I used to listen to WTNV at some point...I'm not really sure why I stopped, now that I think about it. I think I just wasn't really into podcasts at the time.

    But, hmm. The most fiction-y podcast I listen to right now is The Adventure Zone, but does The Adventure Zone count? It's a DND podcast, so while there's some pretty intense storytelling going on, it's not entirely "in-character" like I remember WTNV being. It's more, y'know, a podcast of people roleplaying characters. There's a fair amount of OOC banter.

    ...The thing I worry about with fiction podcasts is that I might not be able to muster the concentration necessary to follow the fiction. I'm actually really bad at listening and processing language consistently; I inevitably space out and miss a minute or ten from time to time. This isn't a problem for talk podcasts, and with educational podcasts I don't mind so long as I catch enough of them to do further research on my own, but...well, I can't follow movies At All, if that helps as an example. I have never left a movie with any real understanding of the plot. I don't do audiobooks, either. I can sort of do TAZ so long as I'm doing literally nothing else while I'm listening to it, but I think I still rely on fandom a lot to remind me of the important bits.

    How much of a problem would Spacing Out be for following WTNV, though? I don't remember it being particularly plot-dense, but then I did only listen to the early episodes. I'm interested in whatever other Fiction Podcasts you might know about, too, since I definitely don't know my way around the genre myself.
     
  5. Verily

    Verily surprised Xue Yang peddler

    Hi! I also love discrete math, Monster Factory, and linear algebra. And I'm all about hiding in dorm rooms or other rooms and emerging once a day for food. Welcome to the forum!
     
  6. Codeless

    Codeless Cheshire Cat

    Depends on how important knowing all the plot is to you to be honest. Since it is very scattered, and they like to pick up things from earlier episodes to put into a plot later. However episodes are also often fairly self contained so oyu can enjoy them as little weird stories of their own.

    For a very easy fiction podcast plotwise, Our Fair City recaps it´s plotpoint so far a lot in the beginning of episodes and has a very good story. Alice isn´t dead is by the same people who make nightvale, less meandering plot but no recaps.
    King Falls AM is very episodic, though there is overarching plot and some recapping.
     
  7. Deresto

    Deresto Foolish Mortal

    Hi! Me and quite a few others here enjoy that good good mcelroy content too. Theres a few different threads for mcelroy stuff in fan town if you wanna check it out! Welcome to the forum!
     
  8. Deresto

    Deresto Foolish Mortal

    Oh, also i love your icon choice, its cute
     
    • Agree x 2
  9. NevermorePoe

    NevermorePoe Nevermore

    Hey, welcome to the forums!
     
  10. kmoss

    kmoss whoops

    hey, hiya, welcome to kintsugi!
     
  11. An Actual Bird

    An Actual Bird neverthelass, Brid persisted, ate third baggel

    Hey there! Our hats are very similar. If you ever wanna talk about game dev stuff, hmu! I'm more on the level design/narrative design side, but maybe we can brainstorm some things together!
     
  12. vuatson

    vuatson [delurks]

    Howdy! Fistbomp of solidarity for How Do Talk To People and for hiding in dorm rooms. And also for being a McElroy fan! I've watched/listened to most of their Polygon affiliated stuff and all but the most recent ep of TAZ, and I'm on episode 269 of MBMBAM. You should come check out the TAZ and general McElroy threads!
     
  13. Acey

    Acey hand extended, waiting for a shake

    Welcome! People-ing is hard, but it's cool that you've joined us here--online interaction is still interaction, after all.
     
  14. Alexand

    Alexand Rhymes with &

    …I might’ve forgotten how to reply to multiple messages/people at the same time, but, I GUESS NOW’S THE TIME FOR ME TO MAKE MY ATTEMPT.

    !! Yo, sweet, what other Maths are you into? Every blogger/writerperson I follow nowadays is someone who either does Too Little Math or Too Much Math for me personally to engage with them About Math on their level; it’d be neat if we happened to share any common ground.

    I mean, I’m still pretty much at the beginning of my journey through…Post-High-School-Math, but I wanna say I’m super psyched to get into abstract algebra as soon as I have the chance. I found Steven Roman’s series of Youtube lectures on category theory the other day, which was basically my first introduction to category theory at all, and I was all…”:O!!!!” but, also, “I’D PROBABLY GET MORE OUT OF THIS IF I CAME BACK WHEN I KNEW SOMETHING ABOUT LITERALLY ANYTHING BESIDES MATRICES AND VECTORS, HUH.” S’infuriating how many THINGS there are out there that remain totally nameless and invisible to my brain, I tell you what.

    So like…I feel like I don’t know enough about what’s out there to name a favorite field or anything, but I’d be interested in hearing about yours! Or like, what your relationship with math is, experience, interest, whatever. I’m mostly in this race because I want to learn more ways to relate/experience/focus in on things, after all.

    (Actually, do you listen to any podcasts yourself? I have two I really enjoy for their interviews with mathematicians about their work: Mathematical Moments from the American Mathematical Society, and Travels in a Mathematical World by Peter Rowlett. Both are pretty quick and accessible in their discussions, so I don’t go in with much knowledge of The Math and I don’t necessarily leave it with much more, but I do get plenty of that rewarding…”oh, so that’s what people are doing with math right now” feeling. Like, “oh, so here are the seemingly-unrelated Material Things that the Conceptual Math Things can describe”. …My mental image of Math as a Living Thing is pretty biased towards the applied end right now, is what I’m saying.)

    (…OH, ALSO, YOU HAVE GOOD TASTE IN THE OTHER THINGS YOU MENTIONED TOO. I went on too long about the math thing and now I’m feeling too sheepish to just barrel on into a second topic.)

    So I checked out Our Fair City and its reviews on iTunes, and, I probably should’ve looked at the other podcasts you mentioned first before I made a decision, but Our Fair City sounds so far up my alley that I just have to start that one first. I’m making myself a note to check out the other two (and WTNV again) later, though.

    Oh! I feel like level design/narrative design may be the parts of game design I know least about…or…well, no, that’s not true, the parts of game design I know least about are “essentially everything”. But it is definitely a different angle than the one I’m coming from! I didn’t know I actually had any interest in game development until I realized that I had specific gameplay mechanics I wanted to exist in the world, so my indie game inspirations are stuff like, y’know, Rhythm Doctor. Not generally very narrative-heavy games.

    …That’s not to say I’m not super INTERESTED in narrative, though. The thing that I wanted to do before I realized that I Need To Dev Some Games First was to write a book, or a series of books, just to get my characters and universe out of my head and into a body of their own, y’know? I still do want to do that, eventually, just not yet. And I have thought before that I’d like to tell their stories through games somehow…I’m just not sure how…my story ideas and my game ideas develop so independently of one another that I don’t know how to do both at once, I guess? Which is funny, since I usually value narrative most in my own favorite games. I hadn’t thought too hard about it before, and now I very much want to learn more about Thinking About Game Narrative, actually. Talked myself all the way through that revelation in two paragraphs. Wow.

    Also,

    Thank you for the Thread Directions!

    Thanks! I found this cow in one of those Buzzfeed-y Youtube video slideshows of animals with cool markings, which was not the place I was expecting to find A Literal Gratuitous Picture Of My Self, I have to say.

    And thank you all for the warm welcome!

    …Um, that sentiment sounds less sincere than I mean it when I write it out as a single sentence at the end of a long post, but seriously, thanks for stopping in and saying hello to me in this thread I made.
     
    • Like x 7
  15. Re Allyssa

    Re Allyssa Sylph of Heart

    Heya! I don't really math that much, but if you're willing to explain things, I can usually follow along pretty well (I tend to understand the concepts alright, but when I get around to doing actual problems, everything breaks for some reason) :) also I think there is a math thread in general chatter!

    I like programming though, and I took a class in java and I might be able to help out if you need, or at least find the documentation for you. This is also a programming thread in general chatter.

    My favorite programming stuff is the actual programming part and getting the thing to work. I can design a thing to do what I want, but I'm not the best at coming up with what to do. I'd much prefer someone tell me and then I design for that :P
     
  16. Verily

    Verily surprised Xue Yang peddler

    I too am mired in matrices! I started working with computer vision a while back and everything immediately became matrices forever. I think you know more math than I do! I've sort of reached the end of what I'm likely to learn at school because I guess that's about all they thought was useful enough to make me pay for classes. I got away with taking a bit more than absolutely necessary. In high school trig was my favorite thing. Unlike algebra, which I had to manhandle in all sorts of undignified ways before we came to an understanding, it spoke to me. Of college math, discrete math involving logic and set theory was my jam. Especially logic.

    Generally, I need math to mean something in my head before I understand or can use it, so I didn't start understanding calculus until I took physics, then I wanted to cry all the time because it was so wonderful. And then computer vision introduced me to discrete calculus and there was a fucking song in my fucking heart for months and everything was so beautiful.

    It's been a while and I need more math in my life. Just thinking about all this math so I could respond to you was making me so excited I literally did several (2) cartwheels, which was probably ill-advised but oh well!

    I think I'll have a look at that series of lectures on Youtube.

    Hang on while I susbcribe to those podcasts! Okay! They sound fascinating!

    Hmm, the nonfiction (or about fiction) podcast that I currently listen to the most is The Journal of Medical Toxicology Podcast, which I think is an excellent good time. It's really not intended for listeners who aren't toxicologists, but google helps a lot.

    I don't think you went on too long! It was all very good!
     
  17. Alexand

    Alexand Rhymes with &

    …SORRY FOR LIKE, UNANNOUNCED LEAVE OF ABSENCE, MY BAD,

    Short story is that Finals Hell hit me and my ability to accomplish literally anything I wanted or needed to do — including having a Fun Convo About Things I Like — went entirely horrendously out the window. (I did write one post on a different board here, to ask a question that was gumming my brain cogs, but then I didn’t stick around to read any replies…don’t really know what I was going for there.) So uh, I stuck it out until the end of the semester, and then I ended up taking the medical withdrawal from those classes anyway. Whoops. Now I’m home! And ready to put some HARDCORE EFFORT into the whole…”learning-how-to-accomplish-basic-tasks-and-then-accomplishing-them” thing. Haha, anyway, whoops.
    …Actually, is it weird at this point to resurrect my intro thread to reply to things? Would it make more sense to move to PMs? What kind of conversation is one’s intro thread meant to support, anyway? I’m…not really sure, so I’m just going to post this here to avoid changing plans.

    ANYWAY, THE THINGS I MEANT TO SAY EARLIER ARE

    That’s really neat, since I think I’m about the exact opposite! Too many things I want machines to do for me and never the patience to sit still and write those things out. Like, the “finding a thing to solve” is the easy part for me, and the “designing a procedure/series of functions/System In The Abstract that solves it” is the fun part…and then there’s translation-into-actual-code… I’m really bad at human languages, too, for what it’s worth. I like learning languages sometimes, but man, I am very very bad at it.

    Anyway…just to check, when you say “coming up with what to do”, do you mean something like “finding a thing to solve”, and then “designing a thing to do” is “designing the System In The Abstract that solves it”? Or…are you saying “coming up with what to do” as the abstract-system-designing part and “designing a thing to do” as like, the actual coding part? Or…I’m not sure how to communicate the steps of programming in some universally applicable way…if we were talking about writing I’d be talking about “coming up with an idea for a story” -> “writing the order of events in the story” -> “writing a rough draft of the story, focusing more on knowing the words I *want* to write than writing those words themselves” -> “writing a draft I can actually present to a reader”, I guess. In programming terms I’m good at “ideas” and enjoy “writing order of events”, and I’m trying to ask if you’re more of an “order of events” or a “rough draft” person? That might not actually be anything. Or it might be a thing after all, but a thing that isn’t actually relevant to anyone but me. ??? Communicating creation skills is hard

    !!! Computer vision!! Aa!! I know my school has at least one professor actively doing computer vision-related research, and another who I think used to in the past? I personally have a huge flag to wave for machine listening, so I tend to see machine vision as a sort of sibling field that inspires…admiration and a little jealousy? A successful-older-sibling field. Like, machine vision’s constantly doing COOL NEW THINGS, machine vision has HISTORY, machine vision produces all those neat trippy Deep Dream kaleidoscopes and unsettling generated cats and bizarre neural-net-specific abstract visual illusions…there’s something very tangible and cool about learning how machines see and how they could see better…and meanwhile machine listening is like, five papers old. Not really, but it feels like it. So many perceptual characteristics of sound and music that are 100% inaccessible to modern signal processing, y’know? So many perceptual characteristics of sound and music that we haven’t defined or even properly named yet. It’s neat how comparatively incredibly good people are at visual problem-solving, is what I’m saying, I wanna learn more about how it’s done.

    In general the thing I’m wondering about you from your post is…would you consider yourself, like, a Spatially-Adept Person in general? Do spatial transformations and mentally manipulating objects and like, physical puzzles, maybe, feel more natural to you than other things? I think I tend to wonder that about everyone who finds physics more natural than calculus, because I’ve always been a lot worse at physics than calculus, and my best guess as to why is that I’m just very bad at Spatial Things. Which…I haven’t actually spoken with anyone else who relates to being “Bad at Spatial Things” means, so I can’t tell whether or not it’s even a thing, but I have spoken with people who are Good at Spatial Things and I’m ALWAYS very interested to learn more about what that’s like. Like, I’ve known at least one or two people who think almost entirely in images (rather than words or something else), and I’ve spoken to a friend-of-a-friend once about how his spatial synesthesia works, and…these are…the kinds of questions I ask and the kinds of conversations I start with the people around me, in general, I guess. The point is that somehow numbers are leagues more tangible to me than actual, real-world, physical objects are, so I have no idea what that’s about.

    Unfortunately I don’t think I can really do toxicology podcasts (or like, even-vaguely-poison-related-things-in-general? Weird Brain Hangup), but I do really like the idea of using podcasts to keep up with new published research. What’s your general listening strategy with these kinds of podcasts? How many play-throughs, at what playback speed, and with a pen and paper at hand or just casually/on-the-go? I ask because I tried the AES Journal Podcast the other day and man, audio engineering was something I hoped I knew at least a little about, but I didn’t retain anything long enough to write up some Google queries after the fact…probably not the best podcast choice for background-audio-while-walking-somewhere, I guess. I honestly wouldn’t be able to guess whether an audio engineering or a toxicology podcast would involve more hard-to-memorize specialist lingo, though.

    Also, as far as math goes…I’ve now got some School Stress Associations with the textbooks I was using for the past several weeks, so I want to let those fade for a little while, and also I want to start on one of the other textbooks I have saved…either abstract algebra, or mathematical logic, or real analysis, I can’t decide. All are very tempting. Also I have like…a certain scoring system that I haven’t figured out how to translate into its associated algorithms yet, and that’ll most likely haunt me pretty heavily until I solve it, I think? I don’t know what kind of textbook to read to get better at Making Models Work Good For A Bunch Of Messy Variables, though.
     
  18. Re Allyssa

    Re Allyssa Sylph of Heart

    Sorry about the classes, but yay on being home (I assume?) and working on being better! Good luck!

    Nope, not at all! There's not much of a taboo against reviving threads in general. Just against reviving fights, I think.
    Your intro thread can be whatever you want it to be! :P

    Haha, that's alright. I meant it the first way you put it.
    I don't like coming up with the idea for a story. I can do the writing the order of events, but my favorite part is the rough draft! (and if we continue this analogy where would unit testing come in, because I utterly loathe testing :P (I am very aware it's a necessary thing but it's still a pain in the ass! xD)).
     
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