What the title says... here's a few thoughts on the subject, based on stuff that's been going on recently:
Have a heatwave. I can usually keep functioning until 11pm quite happily, but I've struggled lately. It's been particularly awkward at work - I seem to have spent several hours feeling like I'm wilting all over the till.
Play Antichamber. Acquired recently when it came up on a Steam sale, taken more than 5 hours so far... and I don't even know how much of it I've solved. It's unspeakably confusing. Non-euclidean geometry, things changing behind your back (which often happens in my dreams, but now it's happening on my PC monitor too!), and sundry other very odd game mechanics. Makes you miss the comparative linearity of Portal.
Change all the windows in your house and get paranoid that something's missing. It's especially confusing in the porch, because the new front door has a lot more glazing than the old one, and lets in a lot more light, generating the subconscious assumption that it must have been left open by mistake. Which is confusing when the door's actually shut. Still, the new windows are, in themselves, very nice, and the new front door key has the added bonus of looking not so much like a key as we know it, Jim, but more like some fragment of the Enterprise which has gotten lost in time.
Get your new hamster to eat something which you don't know isn't poisonous. After a longish period without any hamsters, we've had two new ones in the last week: Smokey (Ben's fourth), and Muffy (Sophie's fifth). I went to clean my teeth last night, and found Muffy's cage temporarily sited on the kitchen table, and the rodent busy munching on a bit of christmas cactus which was accidentally poking through the bars. I had no idea whether or not christmas cacti are toxic, so I pulled the plant out of reach (which left the hamster looking a bit confused!), and scuttled off to google the thing. The internet seemed to concur that christmas cacti aren't poisonous - the worst that might happen is a bit of gastric upset and vomiting, but nothing life-threatening - so I could sleep easy. But still, while it lasted, one more thing to help fry my brain cells...
Any other suggestions?
- The Colclough
Showing posts with label Confusingness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Confusingness. Show all posts
Saturday, 3 August 2013
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Two down, one to go... and then, redrafting
Finished a couple of things today.
One was writing the first draft of Megastropulodon! Series 1 Episode 5, Eggs of Devastation. At the final count, the draft comes to 29 pages, 65 scenes, 6400-and-something words. Obviously, it's far from being ready to shoot, and it'll take a lot more drafts before it's good to go, but I've got it past the first hurdle: the bones of the story are out there on the paper. (Word-processor, actually, but never mind.)
So now, I can get started on Episode 6. And once that's done, it'll be back to Episode 1 to start on Second Drafts. And so on, and so forth...
My other achievement today has been to finish reading this paper on 'the Distant Starlight Problem' - an objection sometimes raised against Biblical creationism. In short, the author does some clever stuff with Relativity theory, and eliminates the problem. But it's taken me nearly three days to read, because it's one of the two most confusing things I've ever tried reading, and I had to keep stopping for long breaks to prevent my brain melting.
I should point out that it's not really Dr. Lisle's fault that it's confusing. The confusing-ness is down to the Relativity-Theory-based nature of the article, so it can largely be blamed on Einstein and/or on the fabric of the universe itself.
The other most confusing thing I've ever tried reading was Donna Haraway's 'Cyborg Manifesto'. If you've never read it, don't bother. If you'd never even heard of it until you read this paragraph, be very grateful. It got inflicted on me during the second year of my media degree, but I never finished reading it, because it was making no sense at all, and I was getting the melting-brain feeling without any worthwhile payback. It was a prime example of mere human philosophy (possibly drug-induced, judging by the psychedelic pseudo-logic involved) setting up frameworks and theories that had no practical bearing at all on the real world, despite an impressive-sounding claim to be able to explain basically everything.
The big difference between that, and Dr. Lisle's paper, was that Lisle is talking about the real world and his arguments are built on established scientific principles (mostly Einstein). So despite the sensation of molten neurons starting to trickle out of my earholes as I read, I felt that I was getting something worthwhile out of the exercise. Namely, an answer to the 'distant starlight problem'. I don't think I could really summarise what he said without confusing you, but if it's an issue you've ever worried about then I'd recommend taking a look at the paper - just make sure you pack your head in ice first to stop it going up in smoke.
Be ye warned: the rest of this post consists of a couple of thematic left turns...
Yesterday, my best amigo Tim posted the 86th and final episode of Sidewards, his bizarre but rather enjoyable spin-off from my main webcomic, Cylinder and Miserable. The ending caught me by surprise, as I didn't know how many strips he'd actually written. But it's been great fun reading the comic. I mean, it's about squabbling, half-psychotic bacon sandwiches committing industrial sabotage... what more do you want?
Speaking of webcomics, have you been reading Fort Paradox, and if so what's your reaction? Has your grey matter survived so far?
And finally, on another not-really-related note, a quick update for the RH crowd: I went through the various segments of the video the other day (I'm editing it in 4 different parts to stop Vegas crashing) and added up the runtimes - and the total came out at 33 minutes 19 seconds, which is within 4 minutes of the 30-minute target runtime. So the good news is, the video might actually be closer to completion than I'd realised! The next step will be to watch through the segments, check for boring bits, and trim accordingly. Once that's done, I should hopefully have got the runtime down to 30 minutes by natural wastage, and then it'll be time for my Workflow Pudding - designing and making the nice shiny chapter-heading graphics and things. If you thought the 2008 video was good, you ain't seen nothing yet!
- The Colclough
One was writing the first draft of Megastropulodon! Series 1 Episode 5, Eggs of Devastation. At the final count, the draft comes to 29 pages, 65 scenes, 6400-and-something words. Obviously, it's far from being ready to shoot, and it'll take a lot more drafts before it's good to go, but I've got it past the first hurdle: the bones of the story are out there on the paper. (Word-processor, actually, but never mind.)
So now, I can get started on Episode 6. And once that's done, it'll be back to Episode 1 to start on Second Drafts. And so on, and so forth...
My other achievement today has been to finish reading this paper on 'the Distant Starlight Problem' - an objection sometimes raised against Biblical creationism. In short, the author does some clever stuff with Relativity theory, and eliminates the problem. But it's taken me nearly three days to read, because it's one of the two most confusing things I've ever tried reading, and I had to keep stopping for long breaks to prevent my brain melting.
I should point out that it's not really Dr. Lisle's fault that it's confusing. The confusing-ness is down to the Relativity-Theory-based nature of the article, so it can largely be blamed on Einstein and/or on the fabric of the universe itself.
The other most confusing thing I've ever tried reading was Donna Haraway's 'Cyborg Manifesto'. If you've never read it, don't bother. If you'd never even heard of it until you read this paragraph, be very grateful. It got inflicted on me during the second year of my media degree, but I never finished reading it, because it was making no sense at all, and I was getting the melting-brain feeling without any worthwhile payback. It was a prime example of mere human philosophy (possibly drug-induced, judging by the psychedelic pseudo-logic involved) setting up frameworks and theories that had no practical bearing at all on the real world, despite an impressive-sounding claim to be able to explain basically everything.
The big difference between that, and Dr. Lisle's paper, was that Lisle is talking about the real world and his arguments are built on established scientific principles (mostly Einstein). So despite the sensation of molten neurons starting to trickle out of my earholes as I read, I felt that I was getting something worthwhile out of the exercise. Namely, an answer to the 'distant starlight problem'. I don't think I could really summarise what he said without confusing you, but if it's an issue you've ever worried about then I'd recommend taking a look at the paper - just make sure you pack your head in ice first to stop it going up in smoke.
Be ye warned: the rest of this post consists of a couple of thematic left turns...
Yesterday, my best amigo Tim posted the 86th and final episode of Sidewards, his bizarre but rather enjoyable spin-off from my main webcomic, Cylinder and Miserable. The ending caught me by surprise, as I didn't know how many strips he'd actually written. But it's been great fun reading the comic. I mean, it's about squabbling, half-psychotic bacon sandwiches committing industrial sabotage... what more do you want?
Speaking of webcomics, have you been reading Fort Paradox, and if so what's your reaction? Has your grey matter survived so far?
And finally, on another not-really-related note, a quick update for the RH crowd: I went through the various segments of the video the other day (I'm editing it in 4 different parts to stop Vegas crashing) and added up the runtimes - and the total came out at 33 minutes 19 seconds, which is within 4 minutes of the 30-minute target runtime. So the good news is, the video might actually be closer to completion than I'd realised! The next step will be to watch through the segments, check for boring bits, and trim accordingly. Once that's done, I should hopefully have got the runtime down to 30 minutes by natural wastage, and then it'll be time for my Workflow Pudding - designing and making the nice shiny chapter-heading graphics and things. If you thought the 2008 video was good, you ain't seen nothing yet!
- The Colclough
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