studio-us

Kay so instead of studying hardcorely I've been playing around a bit. I don't think I'm severely underprepared but I am not overprepared. I think I can answer all the questions in the Trial papers (goddamn elective, you son of a...).

So yes I made that video about the Zoom comparing in quality. Overall I set the Zoom to be softer in return for less peaking. I will have plenty of experiments recording stuff then looking at waveforms. And stuff. YAY. Here's the link!



I'm sorry for the random blackness at the end. Must've accidentally selected too much to be my workspace in Premiere =(

For insane geniuses like Vaish, I need to point out that I am not freaking kidding when I said there was going to be random blackness xP. There's like 3-4 minutes of it. You can tell it's finished because an annotation says so. Btw it's hard to read the annotations in this small player. View it fullscreen, this vid is HD. I spent a good 4h of interwebs uploading that, so you guys better make the most of it xP

NOTE TO SELF: MAKE VIDEO OF ME PLAYING WITH A BOW. Cos it sounds cool 8D

PS: Cthulhu.

PPS: Shit I forgot to gloat about being able to use magic outside of Hogwarts :L

that time of year

Random disjointed bits of information

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes =)

Yay it makes me smile when I log into Facebook and see lots of birthday wishes. Then it kinda daunts me cos I have to reply to them all :L

HOLY FUCK CTRL-PGUP AND CTRL-PGDOWN FREAKING SCROLLS TABS OMG.

I wish Trial Ag wasn't so damn soon. I feel so underprepared trolol.

I tried the Zoom for a bit, thankyou to [insert names from card which I will get soon] =D. I will post a video, recording a guitar session with the Zoom, my phone, and the video camera's built in microphone. I'm quite confident the Zoom will come out extremely nicely =D

I love how "Life is the shits" and "Life is the shit" are polar opposites.

HELL YES I'M UP TO THE ELITE FOUR YEAHH.

trialz

I probably won't do a full blown posts until after trials. I will respond to the anons who are still commenting on pretty old posts as well, I have the emails to remind me!

But in the meantime, check out the Music tab on my Nav bar! Yeah I guess it's obnoxious, but I love widgets yayz. And they're in a convenient-ish format so go nuts.

"Projects" and "Songs" are more polished than "Jams", just in case you're wondering.

Woo I'll leave now and study various dotpoints from my program wooo!

dodgy?

So I was in the frozen food section. And I was looking at the food. And I was like "So many of these dodgy brands are on special."

Then I thought to myself - What makes these brands dodgy? For something as random as frozen food, how do I know which one is better? Why do I have a feeling that "Steggles", "Ingham", and "Bird's Eye" are better brands than "Ocean House", "Bayview" and "Pacific West"?

I reflected that it was because I'd never heard of them, therefore they must be inferior. Then I thought again. Did I learn of those popular names from any merit of the brand itself, or did I just watch TV and happen to watch their commercials?

Beceause in my spare time, I do not read reviews of frozen food, and I have no idea which ones are actually better. It's just that advertising makes it a familiar name. And familiar names are names that you can trust.

And now advertising is getting free-er and free-er. The latest example is the Pascall Swirls. They just made a billion Facebook pages (I'm assuming it cost them nothing), and created some hype. As a result, my brother wanted to try some. They're not that good lol.

As, I'm pretty sure it was Shakespeare, once said: "Your reputation precedes you." Doesn't get any true-er than that.

girlbasher

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=844_1311240493

Found on Facebook, linked by Jeffery Wang in year 12.

And so I watched. It's a security feed. There is a man-mountain talking to his man-regular-sized friend. The cashier girl gets up from her chair, clocks the man-mountain over the head with a catalogue-like roll of paper, and sits back down. The man goes and confronts her. She stands up defiantly and receives a roundhouse punch to the face. According to the video description it broke her jawbone.

And so I saw a comment:

Let this be a lesson to women everywhere.
You can't get away with it, if we can't.
C--ts.

Yeah I filtered the potentially sensitive word. I was never brought up to find it offensive (I don't think my parents even know the word :L) but I know it has epic offending power. So even in a blog of quite liberal swearing, this word has to go :L

Anyways, instantly we see white knights going "SO IT'S OKAY TO HIT A WOMAN? YOU ASSHOLE?"
These kind of over protective assholes don't even read properly. Did YOU read it properly? Click Read More to find out =D

loving under the spell

Remember this post? living under the spell? And I promised to write about how love (or "liking", as we conservative teenagers are apt to call it) is also like drugs?

Well you've probably forgotten but I haven't. Allow me to expand.

Have you ever looked at a couple and thought "How the HELL does she/he put up with him/her? They are being the BIGGEST DOUCHE and it's annoying EVERYONE ELSE."

Or even funnier is when, let's say the girl, says something like "Stop tapping the table, it's freaking annoying' after you've been tapping for like 5 seconds. A minute later her boyfriend (assume they're in the same class pl0x) starts tapping away, and she doesn't even raise an eyelid. LIKE ZERO REACTION. IT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE THAT SHE KNOWS IT'S HER BF TAPPING, BUT SHE SOMEHOW DOES? And it's kinda annoying and her earlier flaming of you only makes it more horribly hypocritical.

In that respect, being "in love" (for want of better term) is like a drug. It's like the Panadol that makes that annoying ache go away. That's not to say that your stomach/head/whatever isn't fucked, it's just that your brain doesn't think it's fucked. All those painfully annoying traits seem to disappear once there's some loving involved :L

But I don't have to be negative. Being "in love" is one of the funkiest and longest lasting highs. Your world is viewed through rose-tinted glasses, and it's easy to laugh. There really isn't much to look forward to except seeing them the next day (or to further the drug references, taking your next drag). You're just so happy, it's amazing.

Ehh the positive paragraph isn't long enough. So (to avoid making me look like a heartless douchebag) I'll make it look longer by saying synonyms. The happiness is just so pure and simple that it's impossible to make it more complicated. And saying many words to try and describe it will make it complicated. Because there is blissful, joyful, simple, giddy enjoyment something something... ahh screw it I can't finish the sentence because I don't even know what I'm trying to say any more. Let's just say one of the only benefits of drugs is that you get high and really freaking happy. Just like being "in love" will get you. Mmm it looks about the same word count as the negative paragraphs now. Woo visual trickery ftw. Even as I tell you I am trying to fill words, your mind is perceiving this text as in the "positive points" section, and so you are wasting time reading text that is here purely to fill space so that it appears I am giving relationships enough credit for being a source of wonderful happiness.

Now, to start making sense again, I'll mention the withdrawal symptoms. I'm looking up withdrawal symptoms of heroin on Wiki, and I got: (the [x]'s are ones that apply to break-ups)
[ ] Sweating
[x] Malaise (general feeling of unwell-ness)
[x] Anxiety
[x] Depression
[x] Akithisia (restlessness)
[Most probably not..] Priapism (AHAHA IT'S A PERMANENT ERECTION/ENGORGED CLITORIS)
[Ditto] Extrasensitivity of the genitals in females
[x] Feeling of heaviness
[ ] Cramp-like pains in limbs
[ ] Excessive yawning/sneezing
[x] Tears
[ ] Rhinorrhea (runny nose)
[x] Insomnia
[ ] Cold sweats
[ ] Chills
[ ] Muscle/bone aches
[Possibly?] Nausea and vomiting
[ ] Diarrhea
[ ] Cramps (again)
[ ] Fever

The first lesson being "don't do drugs", or at least "don't do heroin", the second is that 7.5/20 of the withdrawal symptoms of a high-profile illegal drug such as heroin can be reflected in withdrawing from "love". I think we might make that 8.5 cos we can count "tears" twice :L

Next there is just the crappy drugs that just don't work. You smoke it and you get a headache. Or you pop the pill and you just pass out. Something like that. You can buy low quality marijuana (apparently called "cabbage" lol) or you can buy high quality marijuana (probably called "the good shit"). As an inexperienced teenager who is trying these things for the first time, how the hell are you supposed to tell which one is high quality, and which one is not? (btw yes I am objectifying people. But fear not, boys are being compared to marijuana too!)
How can you just look at a bunch of green leaves and think "yeahp that'd get me high" or "that's not even marijuana" unless you've been through the good and the bad?

By the way that analogy meant there are good relationships out there, and there are bad. And unless you've tried your share (or are just extremely lucky and found your OTP right off the bat (lol pun)), you won't know what your "type" is. And you can probably work that out through mistakenly trying the non-compatible types first.

By the way I'm not advocating drugs but it's just such a fun fun analogy! So yeah, don't smoke stuff, but you can pretend each other's tongues are joints of marijuana, I guess. And smoke that liberally. But please get a room before you do so. Sharing is so not caring in that instance.

chimes 102

Now that you know how to measure chimes, it is time to create your own chimes. Here is the theory of how to make the most awkward chimes (sorry Max, I will get to internet chimes soon!).

I was being bored yesterday and testing out some chimes. Here are my findings
- Vivid "genuine" enthusiasm is more powerful than sarcasm in causing awkwardness. You just have to be considerably more enthusiastic than everyone else in the conversation to make it really strange.
- Stating the bleeding obvious, or getting extremely excited about the topic of the conversation is a surefire killer.

So just before Chem NQE, there was some person speaking about a Pokemon movie... Some Pokemon was cutting something? I don't remember the details, but my chime was
"Oh, really! I don't remember that!" with convincing enthusiasm (btw no-one else was really interested so it's even more easy to look more enthusiastic). In addition I was only 1m away from the conversation as I moved to throw something into the bin.
In retrospect, that's not the most awkward chime I can muster. I think I would've said "OH YEAH! AND THEN HE FOUGHT MEWTWO, RIGHT?"
In the likely event I'm dead wrong, even though I'm hardcorely enthusiastic, would that make the chime even more awkward? Only experiments can tell.

Saying a chime that will make people laugh instantly resolves any tension (which is bad, btw). Again, in NQE, someone was having a very loud conversation, featuring the word "jizz" several times. My chime was "I like jizz!" with enthusiasm. But I failed because it was too far fetched to not cause laughter. The room was quieter for a few seconds, but people laughed and it was nowhere as effective as my previous Pokemon chime. In retrospect (and Brian agrees) that the perfect chime would've been
"Jizz is slang for semen!"
Maybe for added annoyingness I'd add "DID YOU KNOW!"

If Tree is reading this, you basically just pull a Viking slam, but for someone else's conversation. =D

ON A TANGENT!
I also got a SoundCloud cos it seems like cool stuff. When I cbf video-ing, SoundCloud can store my clips. Gay thing is the limit of 120m of upload time though =(
Projects by jwhero

Random Jams by jwhero

The widgets are cool lolol

chime theory

Chimes work in a different way to light/sound/energy waves, where intensity diminishes as an inverse square of the distance from the source. The inappropriateness combined with the sheer distance over which the chime is performed makes up the total effect of the chime.

[Intensity] = ([Power]/2)^3 * [Distance]

Where Intensity is what the observer "feels" as a result of the chime, Power is the inappropriateness or stupidity of the remark included in the chime, and Distance is sooooo hard to explain so I can't be bothered xP

Power (unit: idiots)

Power is on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is a weak, somewhat sensible chime, and 10 is the motherload of all idiots.

You can have a chime like "ME TOO" which is a baby chime. It is so common and actually has a power of less than 1. In the formula, it gets cubed to oblivion (and so the intensity perceived is minimal). Like 0.5^3 is 0.125. Which can be barely felt.

Huge chimes that take words out of context
"So I was watching Mythbusters, and they blew up this car"
*chime* "Who blew who's dad? You blew your dad? EWW WHY DID YOU DO THAT"
Stupidly inappropriate chimes like this have a power of about 4.

The highest power of chime ever recorded was a 6.9, and there were 2 fatalities and several other casualties. Luckily there was not a lot of distance, so the chime didn't gather a huge amount of power.

Distance (unit: m)

Distance is measured in metres, from the centre of the conversation to the person making the chime. If the chimer is out of sight, the measurement must be taken as a DISTANCE and dodging any obstacles. So if there was a wall, the measurement would have to go through the doorway to measure how far the chimer is from the convo.

Observe the 3 figures below. The yellow circle is the chimer, the blue circle is the conversation holder. The brown line is the wall, the gap is a doorway, and the pale blue line is a window.

Most chimes average 1m, maybe a tiiiny bit more. Spectacular chimes are 5m away. 10m chimes are scarce but not unheard of.

Intensity (unit: facepalms [idiot^3 metres])

This is the direct amount of pain felt after both factors have been calculated. A weak chime from far away is just as bad as a strong chime from very close.

So next time someone chimes and you think "phwoar whatta massive chime", you can now quantitatively recall it to your friends! 8D

n. 1) a direction or route taken or to be taken.

During the past week I have seen some funky social experiments done with cadets. Click "Read More" cos it's kinda long.

frequent flyer

Buying shit so you have points to buy more shit is pretty good. If you're in the fence between two supermarkets, this rewards system may tip you over to the supermarket with the rewards system. However, if one supermarket sells its products for 10% more than the other, then you would choose the cheaper one, regardless of which one has a rewards system.

Which makes the iPhone somewhat beautiful. It's not a rewards system, it's just a massive trap. I can't remember if I've blogged about this before, but look at how genius it is!
-You buy an iPhone or iPod touch.
-You think "Damn I would like to have Fruit Ninja"
-You buy Fruit Ninja
-You then go "Damn I would like to have Doodle Jump"
-You buy Doodle Jump
-etc
-At the end of the month you think "Damn I spent about $20 on games"
-etc
-At the end of the year you think "Damn I spent about $100 on applications!"
-When it is time to change your handset you think "Hmm what phone should I choose? But WAIT! If I buy an iPhone, I can continue using all these handy apps and funzies games! Why not get an iPhone!"
-You pay about $1,000 and get your phone.
-Then you're like "Shit" because other phones of similar quality are much cheaper. And really, are the apps worth it? Who knows. But all you know is that it feels like a waste to buy a new phone and let your iTunes account waste itself.


And how can I resist into linking this to relationships :L As I've heard one too many times, "relationships are not about the rewards". Well I say screw you. Allow me to make my point, and then feel free to flame me.

On the premise that a perfect relationship means:
-Little to no arguments.
-Having perfectly matching sets of values and beliefs.
-Freedom from being judged by the significant other.
-100% security.
-Being able to communicate clearly and effectively, without any awkward moments due to awkward wording.
-Knowing how they are feeling, or how they would react to certain situations.
-Knowing what exactly makes them happy, makes them laugh, or makes them want to rip your head off (and subsequently avoiding those things lol)

Then it is clear that a perfect relationship is when you are single and only have to deal with yourself. How often do you argue with yourself, challenge your own morals, judge yourself, threaten to leave yourself, misunderstand what you're thinking, misinterpret what you're feeling, or pulled a joke on yourself that you thought was funny but actually caused you to threaten to leave yourself?

But it's obvious that there is something completely unfulfilling about being single for the rest of your life. There is something appealing about having an imperfect, two-person relationship over a perfect one-person relationship. And I'll be damned if that shit ain't some sort of reward.

A relationship shouldn't be a chore. It's not like "fuck I better do this or they'll be mad." That doesn't make a good relationship. That's how slaves react to the people holding the whips and forcing them to harvest the corn. It's more like "now wouldn't they be happy if I did this!". A mindset like this is the driving force behind a happy relationship. That's the difference between flying high in the sky and another bird struggling to stay above the surface of the dark, cold ocean, ready to drown itself at the slightest unfavourable gust.
But why the hell would you be charitable for absolutely no reason at all?

Now don't take me wrong. It's not like I think being selfless is wrong. When I donate to charity for "no reason at all", it's really not that. I do feel like I'm contributing to making a difference, and as a result I feel some pride and accomplishment. Now even though I am getting no physical, social, financial benefit from donating, I do feel happier. And that in itself is my reward. If done in the right way for the right people, being selfless is its own reward.

I personally don't think it's possible to be nice without gaining some reward from it. Whether you believe in karma, or "what goes around come around", I think being randomly generous makes me feel like a good person, and that kind of moral security is a reward. I could help someone pick up something they've dropped, and their smile and thankyou is my reward. I don't see any problem with considering these little things as "rewards".

Relating back to relationships, they are a sacrifice of time, freedom, money, and what else have you. But all those sacrifices can be made in a way that it feels like a reward.
All these sacrifices are made so the other person can be happy. And if you guys have the relationship nicely sussed out, making the other person happy is a surefire way of lifting your own mood too.

I mean, isn't it rewarding to know you're the reason she smiles every day?

wake up call

Back from courses. I'll stop being controversial for a while so I don't have too much hate flying around here :L

Was generally fun. Met some cool people, met some thoroughly uncool people. Good news is that everyone in the course passed so *cheer*

I will leave you with an idea I came up with when I saw James (Chen's) alarm clock:
- We should totally make a Rubik's cube clock. To set up the alarm the cube must be scrambled (now it's really easy to see if your alarm has been set. No more waking up at at 9 and going "FUUUUUU WHY DIDN'T MY ALARM GO OFF?!").
- Nextly, when the alarm goes off, the only way to make it shut up is to solve the cube.

I bet you someone can find a link of this and it's already been made. In which case, be quiet and kindly go away 8D

Now I will go and sleep and catch up. 6h45m of sleep for 6 nights is not very sustainable :L

that's why i treat you like trash.

WOO YOUTUBE FINALLY LET ME UPLOAD IT YAY. Enjoy, if anyone bothers to watch these 8D



NEW UNRELATED TOPIC AFTER THE BREAK!

for free

Ehh I cbf with the BlogQuest game, I only have 8 people who wanna play :L. Maybe I'll do it next holidays, when there is no cram necessary!

Btw this is what "clean" guitar sounds like, for all those people who've I've told that electric guitar doesn't have to be facemelting wailing noises :L. So here's a jam over Californication by RHCP



I'll upload my acoustic song in HD later, Youtube is rebelling atm. If you can be bothered finding whatever post it's hidden under, the name of the song was "As The Rain Falls" =D. But the version I'm uploading is HD and has RainyMood to back it YAY

Have a survey! I can't be bothered making a pictionary 8D

Tell me the truth, what made you start liking the person you like right now?
I wish this was applicable :L

Fess up, who was the last person you thought about kissing?
Who the hell thinks about kissing? Aren't there greater and grander things to fantasise about?

What brings out the worst in you?
Stress, tiredness, botheredness, annoying people :L

Rest of survey after the break!

apply to all

Science isn't that much better off than religion. It's still based on a belief system (in fancy words it's called a paradigm).

Chemistry

I've expressed my lack of faith in the Chemistry paradigm (ie the atomic model) before, in this post in our old blog.
As Freya pointed out kindly in Chemistry: "There's always a freaking exception."
And there is. And Occam's razor states that the way we think subatomic particles interact with each other are probably incorrect.
Because you know you're wrong if you're making exceptions for yourself all over the place. I do believe there is something succinct that describes all subatomic interactions in a way that works intuitively, and gets rid of exceptions that "just are."
How many times have you asked "WHY IS SUCH AND SUCH DIFFERENT TO EVERYTHING ELSE?"
And your teacher will reply "I dunno lol. Just memorise that this is different."
And silently your doubt for the periodic table grows and grows.

Oh lol I just remembered an FML where some girl's boyfriend memorised her menstrual cycle (so she can't pull the "no sex I'm on my period" on him). And then he forgot her birthday LOL. Hope I don't ever end up like that :L

Physics

Conventional current. Do I have to say any more? I mean everyone knows that it's the electrons from the "negative" terminal flowing towards the positive, as you can clearly see in a CRO. Yet plenty of calculations involve seeing it as electricity flowing from positive to negative. Including freaking voltage. And the force on a wire due to electromagnetic interactions. Everything's so counterintuitive, and you need to think twice before going "so current flows THIS way in this question..."

And the "laws" of physics are rather arrogant. How can we possibly prove that the laws of physics apply in outer space? Most (if not all) the experiments regarding mechanics have been conducted on Earth. And I know for sure all mechanics experiments have been conducted within our solar system. Just because it APPEARS to work for the greater universe (ie bending of light due to gravity and what not), we can't be sure it's true, simply because we can't test it.
The rest of the universe could have massively messed up physics, and gravity doesn't exist, etc etc. How could we tell?

Biology

And in the event of aliens approaching Earth, are we going to classify them as "alive"? What if they're not made of cells, but are capable of moving and intelligent thought? Do we just call that super-slime and refuse to give them the title of being "alive"?
Though I guess apart from cells defining life, biology seems very Earth-based, and everything is relative to our own Earth. Not like we can go classifying organisms from anywhere else anyway :L

And on an unrelated but still biological note - why do girls seem to have a reduced sense of fear/self-preservation when it comes to things like heights and the possibility of hurting yourself in general?
I have two theories:
- Back before humans cared about equal rights, women did what the females of any species did: stay at home and raise the offspring. Due to their rarely used fight/flight instincts, nature decided they didn't need them. I mean, it's not like the female Neanderthals were hunting the mammoths, right? So why would they have an instinct for running out of the way when the mammoth fell and is potentially going to crush them? (I don't have to give an example of reduced self-preservation, right?)
- Well, maybe not! Maybe even before that, women were more hardcore than men (like in many species of spiders!), and they went out and did the jobs that men couldn't do. Like dive off cliffs and the like. And how can any of those things be done if you have fear? Yeah fuck fear. Evolve women with little to no self-preservation, to ensure the success of the species.

Occam's Razor

i perceive...

Has this phenomenon ever occured to you:
You were once close. And everything they did - their voice, the way they laughed, the way they smiled, etc etc.
(If the other person is opposite gender), then all of those things were cute.
(If the other person is the same gender), then all of those things were awesome.
Yeah? Gotta love the way they move *insert riff*

But now you have fallen out. And everything they do - their voice, the way they laugh, the way they smile, etc etc.
And all of those things are STOP BEING WITHIN MY SURROUNDINGS. WHY MUST YOU DO THOSE THINGS RELENTLESSLY. DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW ANNOYING YOU ARE?! ETC ETC.
Yeah? Gotta hate everything they do. *no riff here*


Pardon the horribly crude transition to a related topic, but for the same reason, why is saliva so acceptable within your own mouth, but say if you drooled into a cup and drank it again, it's the most disgusting thing ever?


Have you been condescending towards any activity, just because you aren't involved in it? This is easiest to demonstrate with sport.
(Hey Max, I'm actually quoting you for once. But I DID point this out to you when you did it so we're good, yeah? 8D)
As you probably know, Max knows the rules of basketball and none of soccer. Me? Well I'm vice versa. I know soccer and none of basketball.
So here I have him asking questions that go like

"Hey, are formations even useful in soccer? I mean you just run around and kick the ball and shit. What's the point of a team structure?"
"Is there any skill in soccer? How can one person be better than another person at soccer? Are there any skills involved in beating one person (or whatever he used to mean "anklebreak")?"

For anyone who has played soccer, you probably know these are two ignorant questions put into a condescending form. I don't find it fair to claim that soccer structures are more apparent than in basketball, or that intricate footwork is much more impressive than bouncing a ball quickly. Because I don't watch basketball, haven't played it properly, and probably still don't know half of the 300 or so rules, I really have no knowledge of basketball. And how can I possibly pass judgment when I'm biased like I am?

I'm not claiming holiness either, though. I've made comments like
"Do people care about being good at basketball, or like, just try to draw as many fouls as possibly by waving around in the key?"
"Why do people even bother shooting properly if you can just charge through everyone in the key and layup/dunk the ball when you get close enough?"


There also a similar incident with someone else, but I'm not certain who it was so I'm not going to name names.
But it went along the lines of an athletic vs swimming relay.

Personally I do not see the skill in swimming relay. When the other person is about to touch the wall then you jump in and swim. No teamwork involved. It doesn't matter who the person before you was. That doesn't affect your own performance. Essentially swimming relays are just an aggregate of the individual swimmer's times.

Athletics relays, however, are hugely dependent on the interaction between two runners. That's why people practise baton changing for relay. Let's talk about the change between first and second leg.
When 1st is about 7m away from 2nd, 2nd should go out on a full out sprint. After about 5-6 strides, 2nd should stick their hand out, and receive the baton (without looking back). In doing this, the baton should travel at a constant speed; the acceleration time of 2nd runner should have occurred while 1st runner was catching up to them.
This is why the world record for 4x100 relay is 37.10s. Which is miles faster than Usain Bolt's 9.58 multiplied by 4. Because most Olympic sprinters have the same top speed - all that separates them is the time taken to reach the speed (Usain Bolt's massive acceleration makes him a god).
But in 4x100m relay, the changes should essentially delete any acceleration times from the equation (except for the 1st leg starting off), and just be top speed all the rest of the 370-ish metres down the track.


Wow notice my beautiful segue off topic - I started with friends falling apart, then about saliva, then about people not understanding other sports, then sports full stop. What a multi-talented post =)
Just like MEATLOAF HI5

marked improvementz

I'll tell you what I do not want:
- Reading and going "WOW GOOD STORY". End comment.
- Reading and going "WOW I DON'T LIKE THIS STORY". End comment. Btw this is not that much worse than the previous comment, it's on the same level of uselessness.
- Saying "this bit is wrong" without actually like, saying why, or making a suggestion, or anything.


Here is what I do want:
- You read my work
- You comment wherever you don't follow. Instead of simply going "wtf", you can put a question like "what is the significance of the mirror?", or "why did he do that?", so that I actually know why you're confused.
- As said above, don't say "grammar wrong", and just stop. Tell me what it is! (For me that is usually tense, thanks Freya, if you are reading this)
- Do not put a specific comment at the end (eg "I didn't like how you used pronouns instead of people's names"). It is much more helpful to put a "who?" in red next to every confusing pronoun, or other such grammatical sinner.

So basically, I would rather see a document with lots of red, than no red. But constructive criticism is the key, and so it becomes obvious to me WHY I am being criticised.

Maybe some people are scared of offending people for being too harsh on their story. But as long as you keep all criticism constructive, then you will not be offending anyone. If anyone is offended to have someone help make their piece better, then they can go jump in a lake because you well and truly did help.

Don't forget to let the author know what they're doing right. If they had a good suspenseful paragraph, pray tell them. When I read stories I just comment with whatever I'm thinking. Like I sometimes go "nice, I like that symbol meaning freedom" or I go "damn that imagery is crazy" or "i like the suspense. WHO IS THIS PERSON". I don't know if people find that annoying :L

So yeah. When I send a document to you and you send it back with "Nice story/essay", I don't feel epic because I know my first revision is nowhere near perfect. I just feel gipped :L


Similarly in discussions, if I put forward an idea and you just go "Nahh gay idea." I will get annoyed. Because by not providing WHY it sucks, you're just being a douchebag. That's not even subjective.
Also, the manner in which you provide WHY it sucks should be constructive as well. It is as much for your own benefit as it is for mine. So phrasing the flaw into a question isn't too hard: "How can this work if [blah] is to happen?". Instead of "This sucks dick cos [blah] is going to happen."

In order of usefulness:
1) People who care enough to give suggestions
2) People who don't care at all and don't say anything
3) People who care enough to tell you you're doing it wrong. And then stop caring after that.


Woo most of this is really outdated but hopefully it's still read-able.

interjection

GAH so much busiez now.

It's holidays but I'm probably going to be hardcore catching up on stuff all week before courses. Then go on courses.

Btw *hi5* Brian for receiving my telepathy(ish) to start a syndicate discussion 8D.

Interestingly, comments about my blog/my opnions in general have been very polar. I have either been getting "WOO COOL", or the complete opposite, "Jeff you are a judgmental wanker. *insert judging look*"

But from another source:
"Jeff your rages are freaking hilarious. Like, they're awesome, but it would suck so much to be someone from WA"
By the way this is after I dissed WA for some reason I do not remember. OH IT'S COS THEY WRITE THEIR X'S FUNNY. (lol sun+brian! remember this?).

I was going to go somewhere with this but it felt too mean.


Anyways I have a nice rant about criticism which I will share with you tomorrow. It is mainly about peer marking, but extends to real life (like during discussions!)

Addendum: Hell yes. Saying stuff to people's faces is the best feeling.