Relatable lol.
Saturday, 18 July 2020
Saturday, 20 June 2020
The Time I Decided to Quit FIAT Currencies
I like cryptocurrencies, so Id thought I do a post about it with some history and possible future, etc. Its a break from my normal content but maybe for once that will make it interesting. Lets start with cryptocurrencies in general.
I think we all understand what money is and why its important. I'm not sure how many chickens a dodge ram is worth, but I have a pretty good idea how many dollars its worth, you get the idea. Well one of the main problems with traditional currencies is how they are created and issued. Currently some governing body just arbitrarily decides when and how much to create, and thus has the majority control of its value. This makes the currency vulnerable to hyper inflation, as said governing body could just decide to print unlimited funds and thus several debasing their original value. Imagine overnight your life savings now are only worth a few cents, and there is nothing you can do about it. Well surely that would never happen right? Well it happens more then you'd think. One example would be the German mark. After their defeat in World War I, the Germans were forced to pay reparations to the allied power for damage caused during the war. Of course their economy was also damaged from the war and so they were forced to print money to maintain payments and thus the value of their own currency plummeted. At its height they were printing bills as large as 100 trillion marks. Of course this is not sustainable, and lead to the complete collapse of the German economy, the great depression, and eventually the rise to power of the Nazi party.
This possibility is a consequence of how our money works, and is really a modern problem. Before our money's value was directly tied to gold, aka 'the gold standard', but this just isn't economically feasible anymore. Frankly the price of gold is fairly arbitrarily set as well, a simple supply and demand economy.
Well sometime in the early 2000's, someone thought of a new way to issue currencies using computers, and that is via cool math games. Okay maybe not exactly cool math games, but by solving arbitrary math problems. By creating a currency that isn't issued by a single governing body, and instead as a reward given out at a set rate to the first person to solve said problems, they have essentially eliminated the possibility of hyper inflation. But why math problems? Well one problem with currency, and digital currency is no different is forgery. In paper currencies we use fancy printing techniques to make reproducing fake bills incredibly difficult and easily spotted when compared to the real deal. I realize now is a very poor time to be talking about counterfeit bills, but I will continue. How do you make something that has no physical properties difficult to copy then? Well you make it computationally difficult to replicate. The above mentioned math problems are so difficult that no one person has a strong enough computer to make counterfeit currency. By having multiple people with multiple computers running these calculations, we essentially build a consensus on who has what and no one person can over rule the rest. It honestly sounds pretty sketchy, but it has worked now successfully for over 10 years without any major incidents in many cryptocurrencies.
This is the system used by most cryptocurrencies including all of the major ones, bitcoin, litecoin, etherum etc. It is fundamental to their function but it is also their Achilles heal. It turns out tying all the transactions of your currency to arbitrarily complex math problems is an effective security feature, it also uses a tremendous amount of computer resources. So much so infarct that it puts a very severe strain on the capacity of transactions it can support. We call this the scaling problem. For any of you familiar with bitcoin, when its price peaked in 2018, the transaction cost also peaked at around $20. Imagining trying to buy something for $5 and then having to pay a transaction fee of $20, it just doesn't make sense. Since then the adoption of bitcoin was repealed in many high profile retailers as it was no longer economical to accept it.
Well then how do we fix it? The community is actually quite divided over that, and have basically split into two camps, side chains vs bigger blocks. As you may have heard one of the fundamental technologies of cryptocurrencies is the block chain. Its the fundamental data structure of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies where transactions are grouped together in blocks and then the blocks are chained together. Each block has its own solved math problem and then is linked to its previous block forming a chain. That way once a block is accepted as valid by the majority of people on the network, it is impossible to change later as it is already embedded in the chain.
The bitcoin community decided that the solution they would go with is side chains, where a lot of the smaller transaction load would be moved of the main bitcoin block chain onto other more efficient chains. The problem with this solution is that the programming required to do this is very complex and is still in its infancy. The first major side chain called 'segwit' for example has been out for 2 years and is only at 60% adoption by bitcoin users.
Some people opted for the bigger blocks solution, where the blocks that contain transactions are made larger so they can contain more transactions. Instead of adopting segwit, they opted to split the bitcoin block chain in whats called a 'hard fork' and start development of their own coin. Technically this is a much simpler solution and has already been successfully deployed for a few different spin off coins. The main technical downside is that bigger blocks require more storage space and thus makes it require much more complex (and thus expensive) computer hardware to run the bitcoin software. One of the fundamental mission goals of the bitcoin community is to provide access to basic banking services to people who do not have access to traditional banking services, most likely due to endemic poverty in their nations. Increasing the hardware complexity requirements of bitcoin makes this goal unnecessarily more difficult, hence why the majority of the bitcoin community decided not to adopt it. The reason why the major people who did decide to adopt it is actually quite self-serving, but that's a story for another time.
I have quite a bit more to share on this topic but I think this post is already probably too long so Ill call it here.
Friday, 19 June 2020
Follow Up: The Time I Decided to Quit Back Pain
So I forgot one key detail in the previous post on back pain. I guess that's the problem with writing the entire post at once, but there's no reason I cant add things later, especially when its such a simple thing they had such a big impact on me. And what is that thing? Flax seed oil.
Normally when I tell people that, I immediately follow it up by mentioning that its a supplement you take, usually in pill form. For some reason the first impression everyone gets is something else, I don't know why. You can get it in a liquid, and I have tried it before, but it doesn't taste good and the consistency is really gross. Its possible the liquid I had was rancid, its a common problem with oils. You cant taste when capsules are rancid, but you still don't want to be eating rancid oil so maybe liquid is better in that sense, but then again I have no idea.
How does it work? Well from what I've read its all about your ratio of Omega-3s to Omega-6s. They're both essential fatty acids, which means your body cant produce them on their own, so you need to consume them somehow. Now deficiencies in either of these oils can cause negative health effects, and there's a lot more complexity to just the broad number of fatty acids encompassed by these umbrella terms which Im not going to cover right now, maybe a bit later. For now Im going to focus on the effects of the ratio these oils have. Lets start by talking about vegetable oil, there's a pretty good break down of the fat content of oils on wikipedia, here it is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Types_of_cooking_oils_and_fats
As we can see nearly every oil we consume has a much higher omega 6 content then omega 3s, which a few exceptions, notably flax seed oil. If you're not aware, and I wasn't until I had read about it, these oils are in the majority of processed foods. They're usually listed in the ingredients as vegetable oil, sometimes with what particular types of oil. In general the most common are canola, soy, sunflower and safflower. They're used in deep friars, they're used as a substitute for butter in margarine and baked goods, they've even replaced peanut oil as the primary oil in peanut butter.
Ill let you in on a little secret, I started writing this two weeks ago, then I stopped to watch the new season of black mirror. So why did it take me two weeks to continue, well I suffer from insomnia. I just didn't have the mental energy to put in the solid thought required to write something Id actually consider worth writing. Ive actually become pretty good at managing my insomnia, but clearly I havent fully over come it. It was really an eye opener to how even what I would consider a small event really effected me, I just wasn't operating at 100% even a full week after I was back to normal sleep. Its something I plan to write a full post on sometime, hopefully once Ive really got it under control, but maybe not, its still something I dont have a clear solution to yet.
Normally when I tell people that, I immediately follow it up by mentioning that its a supplement you take, usually in pill form. For some reason the first impression everyone gets is something else, I don't know why. You can get it in a liquid, and I have tried it before, but it doesn't taste good and the consistency is really gross. Its possible the liquid I had was rancid, its a common problem with oils. You cant taste when capsules are rancid, but you still don't want to be eating rancid oil so maybe liquid is better in that sense, but then again I have no idea.
How does it work? Well from what I've read its all about your ratio of Omega-3s to Omega-6s. They're both essential fatty acids, which means your body cant produce them on their own, so you need to consume them somehow. Now deficiencies in either of these oils can cause negative health effects, and there's a lot more complexity to just the broad number of fatty acids encompassed by these umbrella terms which Im not going to cover right now, maybe a bit later. For now Im going to focus on the effects of the ratio these oils have. Lets start by talking about vegetable oil, there's a pretty good break down of the fat content of oils on wikipedia, here it is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Types_of_cooking_oils_and_fats
As we can see nearly every oil we consume has a much higher omega 6 content then omega 3s, which a few exceptions, notably flax seed oil. If you're not aware, and I wasn't until I had read about it, these oils are in the majority of processed foods. They're usually listed in the ingredients as vegetable oil, sometimes with what particular types of oil. In general the most common are canola, soy, sunflower and safflower. They're used in deep friars, they're used as a substitute for butter in margarine and baked goods, they've even replaced peanut oil as the primary oil in peanut butter.
Ill let you in on a little secret, I started writing this two weeks ago, then I stopped to watch the new season of black mirror. So why did it take me two weeks to continue, well I suffer from insomnia. I just didn't have the mental energy to put in the solid thought required to write something Id actually consider worth writing. Ive actually become pretty good at managing my insomnia, but clearly I havent fully over come it. It was really an eye opener to how even what I would consider a small event really effected me, I just wasn't operating at 100% even a full week after I was back to normal sleep. Its something I plan to write a full post on sometime, hopefully once Ive really got it under control, but maybe not, its still something I dont have a clear solution to yet.
Clearly I was working on this and just never came back to it, I honestly dont know why, but better late then never I guess.
Wednesday, 3 June 2020
Follow Up: Why I Decided to Create This
Well its been awhile, I had honestly forgotten I had even made this, but with a lot of free time on my hands due to this whole corona virus thing, I decided to come back. At least it only took one year this time instead of three.
So I mentioned previously that it was a podcast with Jordan Peterson that inspired me to do this, but it was more then just that. He has this website called the self authoring program. It's a series of long form answer questions they ask with the intent of identify your goals as well as the consequences of continuing on the path you're on without achieving them. I worked on it for several days straight, putting in a few hours of work until I felt mentally drained and then coming back the next day, and even then I only finished about half of it. I'd say I got the point of what it was trying to show and it really did help me make big improvements in my life. Part of me is thinking I should go back and finish it but, the other part of me just wanted to expand on the work I had already done in a more long form, and so here we are.
I still have a few ideas I had started last year and partially finished. I even have a few new ideas of things that have happened to me and are still continuing today. I think I might start writing them now while the events are still fresh in my head but I wont post them later until things are fully resolved.
I would like to say things are going well in my life, but I only return here when I'm unhappy with certain things. Not everything, not even most things, but there are things I need to change and I'm not sure if I will be able to do it.
I'm still not even really sure why I'm doing this. I still have never shown this to anyone and never really intend to. Maybe someday but I don't know when or to whom that would be.
Oh I almost forgot, I had been thinking about this post for awhile but didn't really start it until something inspired me. I actually discovered this youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV8Qe8z3RDLiAV7E0WP7-Fg
I felt a lot of the stories were in a similar tone to mine, but obviously less mundane. It really puts it into perspective when you see someone with real issues that yours suddenly seem trivial. Its really hard to reconcile your own feelings when faced with this. Its also strange when a strangers tragedy bring you your own sense of peace, I wish I could repay them somehow but how do you help a complete stranger really? I don't think you can really.
Oh I almost forgot, I had been thinking about this post for awhile but didn't really start it until something inspired me. I actually discovered this youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV8Qe8z3RDLiAV7E0WP7-Fg
I felt a lot of the stories were in a similar tone to mine, but obviously less mundane. It really puts it into perspective when you see someone with real issues that yours suddenly seem trivial. Its really hard to reconcile your own feelings when faced with this. Its also strange when a strangers tragedy bring you your own sense of peace, I wish I could repay them somehow but how do you help a complete stranger really? I don't think you can really.
Tuesday, 2 July 2019
Follow Up: The Time I Decided to Quit World of Warcraft
I was working on another post that is turning out to be a lot more difficult then I had anticipated, so I thought Id take a break to do something a little easier. A big part of my post on world of Warcraft is the movie revolver, and in it I mention that it really isn't a well made film. It lacks subtlety in how it deliver's its message, and while I still agree that is exactly what I needed at the time, its still the major flaw of that film. Well then is there a film in my opinion that portrays this message with better execution? Yes, probably several, but one in particular stands out and that is The Duellists, and here's the trailer.
The Duellists was the fist feature film of director Ridley Scott, who is more famously known for his films Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator, all of which I also enjoy. It takes place in Napoleonic France, and tells the historic story of two officers in the french Grande Armee. One of the officers, Feraud played by Harvey Keitel, takes offense at a perceived slight from another officer, d'Hubert played by Keith Carradine, and decides the only way to get justice is to challenge him to a duel to the death. The pair are evenly matched and it ends indecisively and is then followed up with several more contests as they cross paths through out their lives.
This is the trap of the ego, it creates unnecessary conflict. Feraud is only able to see the situation from his perspective, that Hubert has insulted him and refuses to admit responsibility. However if he were able to see things from Hubert's perspective he would realize that Hubert, who doesn't even know who Feraud is, has no reason to insult him and that it's clearly an accident. Hubert isn't completely absolved of guilt in this situation either, as he is bound by honor to accept the duels. The idea of honor is a tricky one, in that ideally its used to uphold the reputable treatment of others, both friend and foe. However in this case it seems to cause more harm then good, from its misapplication by both Feraud and Hubert.
Im going to talk about the ending next, so if you don't want it spoiled skip this section. The climax of the film is a final duel between the two, this time with pistols. It's not how I'd imagine a traditional pistol duel, you know back to back take ten paces turn and fire. It's more a dangerous game as Feraud stalks Hubert through a wooded area around a destroyed castle. Feraud discharges both of his pistols and misses, from which Hubert takes the opportunity to catch Feraud unarmed at point blank range. Hubert could easily kill Feraud, thus permanently ending their rivalry, however he decides to spare Feraud's life under the condition that they have no further contact, including no further duels. This is a risk by Hubert, as its possible Feraud could go back on his word and attempt to duel Hubert again, which could result in Hubert's death. Why? Hubert never actually wanted to kill Feraud, he was bound by his own code of honor to respond to the duels. Killing Hubert would actually be a failure of his own personal beliefs, and ironically enough a victory for Feraud, as he was the one that wanted the duels to be to the death. The final scene of the film involves Feraud gazing out across a landscape as the sun rises in the distance. The camera slowly zooms out to give the effect of an expanding horizon, to symbolize the metaphorical expansion of Feraud's horizons as he is no longer trapped in his misguided quest for revenge.
I think it's only fair since I started this post by pointing out the flaws in revolver that I should point out the flaws in this film as well. It's been awhile since I've seen it, so there's probably more I just cant remember, but certainly it's Harvey Keitel. He's not a bad actor, and gives a good performance in this film, but his accent is just not meant for period piece roles. Don't get me wrong, its not Kevin Costner as Robin Hood bad, but its certainly distracting. I ended my revolver discussion unsure if I should recommend it or not, and I guess now it's time to decide the same for this. Both of these movies have had an important positive impact on my life, and on that grounds I have to recommend them. However if you aren't really in a place where you're ready for some introspection fuel, and thus these movies would be purely judged on their entertainment value, then I wouldn't recommend them. I personally enjoyed the duelists because I find history interesting, but I'm not sure the story can carry itself outside of the setting its told in. Ultimately the decision is yours, if anyone ever does read this Id be interested to hear if any other films had a similar impact on you.
This is the trap of the ego, it creates unnecessary conflict. Feraud is only able to see the situation from his perspective, that Hubert has insulted him and refuses to admit responsibility. However if he were able to see things from Hubert's perspective he would realize that Hubert, who doesn't even know who Feraud is, has no reason to insult him and that it's clearly an accident. Hubert isn't completely absolved of guilt in this situation either, as he is bound by honor to accept the duels. The idea of honor is a tricky one, in that ideally its used to uphold the reputable treatment of others, both friend and foe. However in this case it seems to cause more harm then good, from its misapplication by both Feraud and Hubert.
Im going to talk about the ending next, so if you don't want it spoiled skip this section. The climax of the film is a final duel between the two, this time with pistols. It's not how I'd imagine a traditional pistol duel, you know back to back take ten paces turn and fire. It's more a dangerous game as Feraud stalks Hubert through a wooded area around a destroyed castle. Feraud discharges both of his pistols and misses, from which Hubert takes the opportunity to catch Feraud unarmed at point blank range. Hubert could easily kill Feraud, thus permanently ending their rivalry, however he decides to spare Feraud's life under the condition that they have no further contact, including no further duels. This is a risk by Hubert, as its possible Feraud could go back on his word and attempt to duel Hubert again, which could result in Hubert's death. Why? Hubert never actually wanted to kill Feraud, he was bound by his own code of honor to respond to the duels. Killing Hubert would actually be a failure of his own personal beliefs, and ironically enough a victory for Feraud, as he was the one that wanted the duels to be to the death. The final scene of the film involves Feraud gazing out across a landscape as the sun rises in the distance. The camera slowly zooms out to give the effect of an expanding horizon, to symbolize the metaphorical expansion of Feraud's horizons as he is no longer trapped in his misguided quest for revenge.
I think it's only fair since I started this post by pointing out the flaws in revolver that I should point out the flaws in this film as well. It's been awhile since I've seen it, so there's probably more I just cant remember, but certainly it's Harvey Keitel. He's not a bad actor, and gives a good performance in this film, but his accent is just not meant for period piece roles. Don't get me wrong, its not Kevin Costner as Robin Hood bad, but its certainly distracting. I ended my revolver discussion unsure if I should recommend it or not, and I guess now it's time to decide the same for this. Both of these movies have had an important positive impact on my life, and on that grounds I have to recommend them. However if you aren't really in a place where you're ready for some introspection fuel, and thus these movies would be purely judged on their entertainment value, then I wouldn't recommend them. I personally enjoyed the duelists because I find history interesting, but I'm not sure the story can carry itself outside of the setting its told in. Ultimately the decision is yours, if anyone ever does read this Id be interested to hear if any other films had a similar impact on you.
Saturday, 8 June 2019
The Time I Decided to Quit Soccer
Around the age of eight I decided I wanted to join a soccer team. I had played soccer at school before and I guess I liked it enough that I wanted to play in a league, so I joined the local community house league. The first team I was ever on was called the spiders, I don't know why though, none of the other house league teams I was on had a name, but the first year it did. Our team jerseys were bright green, you know that well known spider colour. It was mostly just for fun at that age, no one really took it competitively yet. I enjoyed it so I stuck with it next year, which was about the same, this time maroon jerseys and no team name though. A lot of the kids were the same and I actually made a few friends, one of them even invited me to their birthday party that year. I had one more year with this team and this coach, the last one were the blue team. The next year however I was now in middle school and things would be different.
My middle school had a competitive soccer team, that had tryouts, so I thought I'd give it a try. Now I'm not going to lie, I was a fat kid. I remember in the second grade one day they weighed everyone for whatever reason. Everyone before me got their weight and it was all in the area of 30kg, then it was my turn, I weighed 44kg; no one else was in the forties. I could see how this would be embarrassing to some people, but I honestly didn't care. I was big too, so no one ever teased me or bullied me, I never really even thought about it. During this try out though, it became clear it was a problem and it was the first time ever I felt self conscious about it. One of the first trials was an endurance race, and I came in dead last. After the first week the first round of cuts was posted and I wasn't on the list of people that would continue onto the next round. At the time I was pretty upset about it, but it didn't take long for me to get over it. I would just continue with house league soccer and not worry about it again until next year.
This year house league was starting to get competitive. I was eleven now and starting to take soccer more seriously. I knew I wasn't the fastest player so I started practicing my tackling to make up for it, and I was actually starting to get good at it. Up until then I had tried to make my tackles when the ball was farthest away from the player dribbling it, but then I realized the best time was actually to make your move as soon as the ball left their foot. This way it would be moving away from them and towards me, giving me the more time to get to it before the did. This turned out to be quite effective and I started to become significantly good at defense. My other problem was my kicking technique. Now I was actually a pretty powerful kicker, maybe even the most on the team. The year before one of our games was a tie and went to a shootout. I was selected to shoot first because my coach also recognized I could kick pretty hard. I had never practiced penalty shots before so I just decided to blast it as hard as I could and just aim to get it above the goalie. Of course that didn't work, I hit the crossbar, it bounced straight down and it didn't go in. My problem was I kicked with my toe, and not with the laces of my shoe, so I decided this year to fix this and learn to kick with my laces. It was tough, I certainly lost some power, but I could definitely see why it was better. You just have so much more control over where the ball goes. When game day rolled round for the first time ever we had a starting lineup. Every other year we'd just rotate everyone around every break, whoever started on the field didn't really matter you'd be substituted soon after. My coach had seen Id been working hard to improve and so I started every game. I could see other people on my team has also become more serious as well and all that extra work paid off because my team ended up winning the championship that year.
Next year along came the tryouts for my middle school team again. I was confident that I had made big improvements since last year and I had a real shot of making the team. The endurance run came and I finished dead last again. I knew that was going to happen, but I'd make it up in the skills competitions. In the first important one everyone on the offense lined up on one side and everyone on the defense lined up on the other. We took turns doing two on two attacking drills, and in every one of my attempts I successfully tackled the offense and recovered the ball. Now to be fair one time one of the players very obviously accidently kicked the ball right at me, but all the rest were genuine tackles. I felt very confident in my chances, but again after the first week I was not selected. All the hard work I had made had amounted to nothing. I was upset again but I thought you know why do I care I have more fun playing house league soccer anyways let's just keep doing that anyways. This year however house league was going to be very different.
First off I was on a new team, none of my friends or even any of the players from my previous four teams were there; it was a completely new group of players and a new coach. We started practicing and I was doing good again, it looked like it was going to be a similar season to last year. It was not. When the first game day arrived the coach started calling out the starting line up, I was not called. I didn't even play the entire first half. I thought maybe Id get a chance next game but it was the same. They ended up only playing me once the game was already decided and it didn't matter. I didn't give up at first I thought if I worked hard in practice Id get my shot eventually, and I did so the entire season, but it didn't change anything. It became clear to me I was always going to be the fat kid now and that was going to overshadow anything else I would do. I didnt even make any friends on my team this year, which was really the worst part. I decided not to go to end of season pizza party, and that I was done with soccer for good.
The next year I was now in high school and my high school did have a soccer team. I did consider joining as I did actually enjoy team sports, but then another friend of mine wanted to join the football team and I thought what the hell I'll join that instead. I never missed playing soccer on a team, it was kind of fun playing it again in gym class, but after a few years of playing football, my kicking power went way down and it would have just been not practical to even attempting getting back into soccer. I will admit though even as an adult I still have an appreciation for the sport and watch it on tv now and then.
Usually by the end of these I try to have some kind of take away lesson I learned, but in this case it just never went anywhere and I'm fine with that. Sometimes things just don't work out and it's not your fault, maybe I could have done more and persisted, but soccer just wasn't worth it in the long run. I guess it did help me end up in a sport I actually did like and set a good baseline for what to expect from myself to make sure I had the best chance of success in a competitive environment. This is now the second post I've talked about football so I guess I better talk about that soon, if not next.
This post really did not end up having a satisfying ending, which I guess was bound to happen considering I don't plan the content of these out in advance at all. I aim for more of just a constant stream of consciousness, so when I start writing I don't stop until the post is completely finished. I believe this gives me the most authentic portrayal of how I feel about these events, and thats what Im aiming for. The problem with this one was I just didn't know how I feel about soccer anymore, and unlike my previous posts, did not come to an resolution by writing about it. Maybe that's not even a problem, but right now it doesn't feel like I've accomplished anything here, so I'll just have to wait and see how I feel about this. I will say though after the back pain posted I decided to create the titles of my next eight or so posts, including the last three. I can tell you I have pretty strong feelings about the remaining posts, so this shouldn't happen again anytime soon. I just wanted to get all my early life stories out of the way before I start talking about bigger events in my life. More to come soon, bye.
My middle school had a competitive soccer team, that had tryouts, so I thought I'd give it a try. Now I'm not going to lie, I was a fat kid. I remember in the second grade one day they weighed everyone for whatever reason. Everyone before me got their weight and it was all in the area of 30kg, then it was my turn, I weighed 44kg; no one else was in the forties. I could see how this would be embarrassing to some people, but I honestly didn't care. I was big too, so no one ever teased me or bullied me, I never really even thought about it. During this try out though, it became clear it was a problem and it was the first time ever I felt self conscious about it. One of the first trials was an endurance race, and I came in dead last. After the first week the first round of cuts was posted and I wasn't on the list of people that would continue onto the next round. At the time I was pretty upset about it, but it didn't take long for me to get over it. I would just continue with house league soccer and not worry about it again until next year.
This year house league was starting to get competitive. I was eleven now and starting to take soccer more seriously. I knew I wasn't the fastest player so I started practicing my tackling to make up for it, and I was actually starting to get good at it. Up until then I had tried to make my tackles when the ball was farthest away from the player dribbling it, but then I realized the best time was actually to make your move as soon as the ball left their foot. This way it would be moving away from them and towards me, giving me the more time to get to it before the did. This turned out to be quite effective and I started to become significantly good at defense. My other problem was my kicking technique. Now I was actually a pretty powerful kicker, maybe even the most on the team. The year before one of our games was a tie and went to a shootout. I was selected to shoot first because my coach also recognized I could kick pretty hard. I had never practiced penalty shots before so I just decided to blast it as hard as I could and just aim to get it above the goalie. Of course that didn't work, I hit the crossbar, it bounced straight down and it didn't go in. My problem was I kicked with my toe, and not with the laces of my shoe, so I decided this year to fix this and learn to kick with my laces. It was tough, I certainly lost some power, but I could definitely see why it was better. You just have so much more control over where the ball goes. When game day rolled round for the first time ever we had a starting lineup. Every other year we'd just rotate everyone around every break, whoever started on the field didn't really matter you'd be substituted soon after. My coach had seen Id been working hard to improve and so I started every game. I could see other people on my team has also become more serious as well and all that extra work paid off because my team ended up winning the championship that year.
Next year along came the tryouts for my middle school team again. I was confident that I had made big improvements since last year and I had a real shot of making the team. The endurance run came and I finished dead last again. I knew that was going to happen, but I'd make it up in the skills competitions. In the first important one everyone on the offense lined up on one side and everyone on the defense lined up on the other. We took turns doing two on two attacking drills, and in every one of my attempts I successfully tackled the offense and recovered the ball. Now to be fair one time one of the players very obviously accidently kicked the ball right at me, but all the rest were genuine tackles. I felt very confident in my chances, but again after the first week I was not selected. All the hard work I had made had amounted to nothing. I was upset again but I thought you know why do I care I have more fun playing house league soccer anyways let's just keep doing that anyways. This year however house league was going to be very different.
First off I was on a new team, none of my friends or even any of the players from my previous four teams were there; it was a completely new group of players and a new coach. We started practicing and I was doing good again, it looked like it was going to be a similar season to last year. It was not. When the first game day arrived the coach started calling out the starting line up, I was not called. I didn't even play the entire first half. I thought maybe Id get a chance next game but it was the same. They ended up only playing me once the game was already decided and it didn't matter. I didn't give up at first I thought if I worked hard in practice Id get my shot eventually, and I did so the entire season, but it didn't change anything. It became clear to me I was always going to be the fat kid now and that was going to overshadow anything else I would do. I didnt even make any friends on my team this year, which was really the worst part. I decided not to go to end of season pizza party, and that I was done with soccer for good.
The next year I was now in high school and my high school did have a soccer team. I did consider joining as I did actually enjoy team sports, but then another friend of mine wanted to join the football team and I thought what the hell I'll join that instead. I never missed playing soccer on a team, it was kind of fun playing it again in gym class, but after a few years of playing football, my kicking power went way down and it would have just been not practical to even attempting getting back into soccer. I will admit though even as an adult I still have an appreciation for the sport and watch it on tv now and then.
Usually by the end of these I try to have some kind of take away lesson I learned, but in this case it just never went anywhere and I'm fine with that. Sometimes things just don't work out and it's not your fault, maybe I could have done more and persisted, but soccer just wasn't worth it in the long run. I guess it did help me end up in a sport I actually did like and set a good baseline for what to expect from myself to make sure I had the best chance of success in a competitive environment. This is now the second post I've talked about football so I guess I better talk about that soon, if not next.
This post really did not end up having a satisfying ending, which I guess was bound to happen considering I don't plan the content of these out in advance at all. I aim for more of just a constant stream of consciousness, so when I start writing I don't stop until the post is completely finished. I believe this gives me the most authentic portrayal of how I feel about these events, and thats what Im aiming for. The problem with this one was I just didn't know how I feel about soccer anymore, and unlike my previous posts, did not come to an resolution by writing about it. Maybe that's not even a problem, but right now it doesn't feel like I've accomplished anything here, so I'll just have to wait and see how I feel about this. I will say though after the back pain posted I decided to create the titles of my next eight or so posts, including the last three. I can tell you I have pretty strong feelings about the remaining posts, so this shouldn't happen again anytime soon. I just wanted to get all my early life stories out of the way before I start talking about bigger events in my life. More to come soon, bye.
Wednesday, 5 June 2019
The Time I Decided to Quit World of Warcraft
Alright this is going to be a nerdy one, so I apologize, but I promise if you stick with it I'm going to talk about Jason Statham so it's not all dorky. The first idea that probably comes to your mind is the typical online gamer story, I played too much to the point that it negatively impacted my life, and then I eventually quit and went outside to ride my bicycle. Well there probably was some of that, it's not that kind of story.
So yes, I played world of warcraft, for a couple of years even. I first started when it was in open beta. I had played most Blizzard titles before, starcraft, diablo 1&2, etc. I had also played warcraft 2 and 3, so I was somewhat familiar with the canon. When I had heard they were making an mmo I was pretty excited. I had some experience with mmos before as well. I had played asheron's call for a few months, but I had never really meshed with anyone there and the game wasn't good enough to carry me alone. I had also played Neocron, which I had enjoyed quite a bit, maybe I'll write a post about that sometime.
Anyways back to world of warcraft. Right from the beginning I was stunned. It had looked so much better then any rpg I had played before. The world was stunning, and exploring It would become one of my favourite activities. The game's map started completely covered and the player had to reveal it by visiting each part of the map, a feature which sadly they abandoned in later versions, the maps just starts fully revealed.
Up until this point I had mostly just played the game by myself, but I was getting to the point where I was ready to start running dungeons. Now dungeons typically needed to be run by groups of five, so I had to start interacting with people in the looking for group channels. I ran a few until finally I ran one with a group of people that just clicked with me and we became friends. We ran a few more dungeons over the next few days and eventually they invited me to join their guild. I met even more people in this group and we continued to run dungeons until the majority of us finally made it to the max level. By this point the majority of us had completed the top level dungeons enough that the only really opportunity for a new challenge in the game was to star raiding. This is really where the game took a bad turn for me.
Now I had another friend who also played WoW, but I had originally known them from playing the game counter strike. They had a much stronger mmo background from playing the game everquest, and they were clearly much better at WoW then me. They had a bit of an attitude of superiority about it, and to be fair they were always respectful with me, it was still clear that they had a disdain for people that weren't as good. I eventually adopted this bad habit as well and this is where everything started to go wrong.
The character class I played was a mage, and my guild had one other mage. We never really interacted much early on, in a five man group you don't typically bring two of the same class, so there was no reason for us to ever group. Now one of our, and many other players, past time during downtime was to duel each other. It's just a system for a friendly one on one fight that ends when someone reaches one hitpoint. I had several duels with a warrior in our guild and I had won most of them, not for any particular reason other then the mage class just had a natural advantage over the warrior class. The warrior mentioned how he usually beat the other mage in the guild and how I was much better. This is exactly what I did not need to hear, and would be the beginning of a terrible relationship with the other mage, and it was going to be entirely my fault.
As I mentioned it was around this time my guild started raiding. Now raiding is different from dungeons in that instead of the normal five man groups, the group size is now forty. This means me and the other mage both have to attend these raids or we won't have enough people. Now the rewards from these raids are better equipment upgrades for your characters. Every Time your group defeats a boss a random piece of 'loot' is dropped, and each piece belongs to a set for a particular class. What this means is any time a piece of mage loot drops its now between me and this other mage on who gets it. This combined with my negative opinion of the other mage really started to make my resent them, and apparently it showed.
I remember one night I must have given them enough attitude that they had finally had enough and in front of everyone they told me off pretty thoroughly , and I can't say I didn't have it coming. I reacted the normal way I reacted to conflict, I just shut down, I didn't even say anything back. I don't remember what happened next, but I remember what happened the next day. I started thinking about it and they were right. Why was I acting like this? This person had done nothing wrong to me, I barely even knew that but I had already formed an opinion of them based on nothing of importance. I had decided clearly it was the game that was problem and I should stop playing it. I was wrong though, it wasn't the game it was me.
I ended up taking a solid three months off of the game. It was during this time when I saw the movie Revolver and it had quite a big impact on me. Now for those of you not familiar it was one of the director Guy Ritchie's gangster movies. This one though had a key difference, it delved deeply into the idea of the ego, it even contained interviews with some 'experts' in the credits. I put experts in quotation because one of them was Deepak Chopra, who could be considered a controversial figure today. Personally I found his interview for the film very enlightening. He's on twitter if you would like more context on this.
Unfortunately this is considered to be Guy's worst film, and I can see why. The message is really just beaten over you head. It lacks any kind of subtlety that a finely crafted film would portray the message in a way the audience can learn it through the experience of the main character (Jason Statham, see I told you Id mention him!). Well while this makes for a poor film, it was a time in my life when I needed this message beaten over my head, and so I'm glad it was the way that it was. If you're interested here's the trailer for Revolver, although it feels very disingenuous to the actual subject matter of the movie, probably on purpose. It may be worth watching the whole film, I haven't seen it since so I can honestly say if its still relevant today, but I think it might.
So yes, I played world of warcraft, for a couple of years even. I first started when it was in open beta. I had played most Blizzard titles before, starcraft, diablo 1&2, etc. I had also played warcraft 2 and 3, so I was somewhat familiar with the canon. When I had heard they were making an mmo I was pretty excited. I had some experience with mmos before as well. I had played asheron's call for a few months, but I had never really meshed with anyone there and the game wasn't good enough to carry me alone. I had also played Neocron, which I had enjoyed quite a bit, maybe I'll write a post about that sometime.
Anyways back to world of warcraft. Right from the beginning I was stunned. It had looked so much better then any rpg I had played before. The world was stunning, and exploring It would become one of my favourite activities. The game's map started completely covered and the player had to reveal it by visiting each part of the map, a feature which sadly they abandoned in later versions, the maps just starts fully revealed.
Up until this point I had mostly just played the game by myself, but I was getting to the point where I was ready to start running dungeons. Now dungeons typically needed to be run by groups of five, so I had to start interacting with people in the looking for group channels. I ran a few until finally I ran one with a group of people that just clicked with me and we became friends. We ran a few more dungeons over the next few days and eventually they invited me to join their guild. I met even more people in this group and we continued to run dungeons until the majority of us finally made it to the max level. By this point the majority of us had completed the top level dungeons enough that the only really opportunity for a new challenge in the game was to star raiding. This is really where the game took a bad turn for me.
Now I had another friend who also played WoW, but I had originally known them from playing the game counter strike. They had a much stronger mmo background from playing the game everquest, and they were clearly much better at WoW then me. They had a bit of an attitude of superiority about it, and to be fair they were always respectful with me, it was still clear that they had a disdain for people that weren't as good. I eventually adopted this bad habit as well and this is where everything started to go wrong.
The character class I played was a mage, and my guild had one other mage. We never really interacted much early on, in a five man group you don't typically bring two of the same class, so there was no reason for us to ever group. Now one of our, and many other players, past time during downtime was to duel each other. It's just a system for a friendly one on one fight that ends when someone reaches one hitpoint. I had several duels with a warrior in our guild and I had won most of them, not for any particular reason other then the mage class just had a natural advantage over the warrior class. The warrior mentioned how he usually beat the other mage in the guild and how I was much better. This is exactly what I did not need to hear, and would be the beginning of a terrible relationship with the other mage, and it was going to be entirely my fault.
As I mentioned it was around this time my guild started raiding. Now raiding is different from dungeons in that instead of the normal five man groups, the group size is now forty. This means me and the other mage both have to attend these raids or we won't have enough people. Now the rewards from these raids are better equipment upgrades for your characters. Every Time your group defeats a boss a random piece of 'loot' is dropped, and each piece belongs to a set for a particular class. What this means is any time a piece of mage loot drops its now between me and this other mage on who gets it. This combined with my negative opinion of the other mage really started to make my resent them, and apparently it showed.
I remember one night I must have given them enough attitude that they had finally had enough and in front of everyone they told me off pretty thoroughly , and I can't say I didn't have it coming. I reacted the normal way I reacted to conflict, I just shut down, I didn't even say anything back. I don't remember what happened next, but I remember what happened the next day. I started thinking about it and they were right. Why was I acting like this? This person had done nothing wrong to me, I barely even knew that but I had already formed an opinion of them based on nothing of importance. I had decided clearly it was the game that was problem and I should stop playing it. I was wrong though, it wasn't the game it was me.
I ended up taking a solid three months off of the game. It was during this time when I saw the movie Revolver and it had quite a big impact on me. Now for those of you not familiar it was one of the director Guy Ritchie's gangster movies. This one though had a key difference, it delved deeply into the idea of the ego, it even contained interviews with some 'experts' in the credits. I put experts in quotation because one of them was Deepak Chopra, who could be considered a controversial figure today. Personally I found his interview for the film very enlightening. He's on twitter if you would like more context on this.
Unfortunately this is considered to be Guy's worst film, and I can see why. The message is really just beaten over you head. It lacks any kind of subtlety that a finely crafted film would portray the message in a way the audience can learn it through the experience of the main character (Jason Statham, see I told you Id mention him!). Well while this makes for a poor film, it was a time in my life when I needed this message beaten over my head, and so I'm glad it was the way that it was. If you're interested here's the trailer for Revolver, although it feels very disingenuous to the actual subject matter of the movie, probably on purpose. It may be worth watching the whole film, I haven't seen it since so I can honestly say if its still relevant today, but I think it might.
I had realized that it was my ego that was making me resent this person who I had no real reason to resent, not the game, and in my time off I had lost all those feelings. I thought maybe I could come back to the game and give it another shot. For awhile it was all good again, I had fun, people were happy to see me and vice versa. I thought everything was going to work out. Then the first raid happened.
I remember it very clearly, it was Onyxia, which I had never done before (all the previous raids were Molten Core, shout out to the fellow WoWers). The other mage was there, and I attempted to great him in a somewhat joking friendly manner. They were not having it one bit. In the time I had taken off, they had been grinding, getting geared up, and well surpassed me. Now the tables were turned and I was the one on the bottom, and they were just waiting for their turn to treat me as poorly as possible. I had created a monster. Before I met this person they had none of my trademark superior attitude, but now they had embraced it with the sole purpose of unleashing it on me as I had on them. I couldn't even be mad about it, it was clearly my fault this person had become like this. I decided then and there I was never going to do another raid again.
It wasn't long after that I quit the game again. There wasn't much widespread use of out of game communications then so I never heard from any of these people again, which I think is a shame. I have played other online games since then and become part of communities that extend past the game they're created around, and really that's the best part of online gaming. The real shame though is what I did to this person. Part of me thinks I should have stayed, and tried to help them see what I saw, but Im probably the last person they'd listen to at that point, and I can't blame them. In the end they just have to make their own decisions and I wish them the best. I have done you a great disservice and you have my deepest apologies.
I did end up making another attempt at playing WoW after a much longer break, and had some fun, ran some dungeons again, met a new group. However once this group also started approaching the raiding stage of the game I just couldn't do it, and quit before even attempting another raid. At this point in the game the burning crusade expansion was just about to come out next month as well. Many years later I've tried a few free trial weekends again, but the game had changed so much by then. The leveling system was now so much easier, which meant all the low level zones were already empty, and so Id have to play by myself up until the end game content, which frankly just isn't fun. They had also introduced a dungeon finder system that would automatically pair you up with a group to run a dungeon. This was a lot quicker then the old looking for group channel I mentioned above, but it changed the changed the game in another way I didn't like.
I remember seeing a news article about a famous incident at a BlizzCon where some fan asked an executive of the company about possibly adding a 'classic wow' version of the game for fans of the original. He made a snarky remark about how you wouldn't want to go back to waiting around for hours trolling the old looking for group channel, well actually yes, yes I would. The looking for group channel was slow, but it forced you to meet new people and sometimes even build lasting friendships out of the necessity that finding dungeon groups was difficult. The new dungeon finder system turned every dungeon into a tinder one night stand, where'd you never see these people again; mostly because they were from different servers and it was not possible to interact with them outside this one dungeon instance. Well it turns out that questioner will get the last laugh, because wow eventually did make a classic mode, and it came out last month. I've had a few invitations from people in online communities I frequent to try it out, maybe it's time to give it another go. Thanks Guy.
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