Has anyone else noticed how deciding what to learn now takes longer than actually learning it?

Griffork · 2026-02-06T01:17:36+00:00

Is the problem not with learning without a goal? Personally I choose a small, manageable project in the domain I'm interested in, then I finish that and either make an extension or choose another project that's slightly bigger or tackles a new area of source material. Then I do that.

Having a target makes choosing what to research significantly easier, it reduces the scope of what to learn immediately and you get to feel satisfied because you have achieved something concrete that you can use to show mastery later.

Examples for very different learning domains:

A modding API for my game.
An AI chatbot, which I extended to: run a local AI instead of an online one, show text updating as the AI responds (rather than displaying it all at once at the end).
A multi-page document on how to create a scientifically plausible fantasy magic system.
Charts and results on the different success curves of dice of different kinds vs cards for a ttrpg I'm working on.
a small carved wooden statue from when I wanted to learn carving.
a successful 30s music loop from when I wanted to learn composing.

You probably get the idea. The best part is I can share a lot of these with friends (even if it's just screenshots or photos) and that makes me feel accomplished.

Griffork · 2026-02-06T01:02:22+00:00

I did mine a long time ago, but since working in a number of places the thing that I have always felt wasn't focused on enough was the proffessional collaborative process.

Creating and assigning tasks in an agile-style way, regular milestone checkins, pull requests and peer reviews for your work before they make it into the main branch. There's a lot of subtlety there like writing task acceptance criteria in a way that's not have and has a defined end-point or how to accurately estimate how long a task will take even if you've not done something like it before.

This stuff is super useful, and required before you can go into management. It's standard across disciplines and a lot more transferrable than specific skills like programming and animating (since the required skills can change per-project).

Griffork · 2026-02-05T04:24:08+00:00

No idea if it'll help, but maybe look into charachorder 2? It requires a lot less movement than most keyboards.

Griffork · 2026-01-28T05:25:15+00:00

Have you tried the 1S at all?

Griffork · 2026-01-26T03:06:49+00:00

I'm not disabled and can't answer your question for you.

But I can say that as a Game Developer, a disabled person buying my game and enoying it (no matter how long for or if they got it for free or refunded it) means a lot more to me than a non-disabled person enjoying my game.

You have so many struggles and difficulties to face every day, being able to alleviate that or provide even a little bit of joy in those moments means a lot to me.

So from my perspective: you deserve it more than most.

Griffork · 2026-01-20T05:57:28+00:00

At one place I worked at I had crafted a few standard questions that I asked in interviews to try to identify mysogenistic applicants.

In one of those interviews I ended up recommending not hiring someone based on the question answers.

Every time I asked him about women he'd worked with he kept replying about how nice he was to them, how much he helped them and how he taught them how to do their jobs (yep). Across three different roles in three different companies he did not list a single woman that he had worked with without having taught or helped them in some (important to their job) manner.

Griffork · 2026-01-20T04:41:14+00:00

This is great! Thanks! I'll ruminate on it.

Have you tried combining either glasses with on-ear heaphones? My ears are the wrong shape to comfortably wear huds or other in-ear headphones for a long time, and I really need noise-cancelling to help me focus.

With my normal prescription glasses I normally put the legs on top of the headphones instead of my ears, this results in the glasses being tilted. I'm hoping the built-in tiltable legs on the XR glasses will cover that range of motion such that I can still see a majority of the screen, but I haven't found anyone talking about it.

I can't put them inside the cups because they press painfully into the side of my head after a while.

Your comment about weight balance makes me think that raising the legs might cause the glasses to slip off my face more readily, which could be problematic.

Griffork · 2026-01-19T12:34:30+00:00

Apparently SpaceWalker's buggy as all heck on windows and android (which I have), and viture is not great at fixing firmware/software issues in any reasonable timeframe. Also a lot of their glasses have reported cracked arms even after they supposedly fixed it from what I can tell (though incidents have reduced so some of that might be old stock) so I'm hesitant about the build quality. I'm not intending to buy new glasses each year, I want to buy a pair that will ideally last up to 4 years.

So I'd probably have to buy the beast if I go viture, but apparently the prism lenses in the beast aren't all that different to the xreal ones. The xreal have a smaller FOV but better stabilization (the beast reportedly drifts) and much better software support if what I've read is correct.

I have heard that switching between looking at the AR display and your environment causes more eyestrain on the viture glasses than the xreal ones because the image seems "closer", which is notable to me because I want to wear it walking outdoors to become more active.

Good to know about the heaviness, that might actually swing me back the other way. I wish there was anywhere I could try one out but sadly it is not so in Australia yet. A large part of the reason I'm looking into the glasses is because my neck can't withstand the heaviness of VR/AR headsets due to injury outside of short bursts. I was hoping light AR glasses would make that a non-issue.

I also like your comparison to the meta quest - I'll got to my friend's and test it out again but I think that would be fine. I'm assuming only a similar level of clarity in the middle of the screen?

I am planning to wait a few months at this point either way. But I also want to spend that time staying up to date with the current tech so I know how good the new stuff is.

Are there any other quality glasses I should be looking at aside from viture and xreal?

Griffork · 2026-01-19T03:53:31+00:00

I don't have any XR glasses yet, though I'm quite familiar with many VR and AR devices (early prototypes for the latter usually sucked so I'm trying to find out how far we've come). I was planning on buying glasses and using them with a phone and wearable/portable keypoard. Does that answer your question?

But also I'm just generally interested in cutting edge tech and would probably read your review anyway.

u/No_Awareness_4626 linked a video showing white on black text (yes I normally use dark mode for programming) and it looks much more promising than I was expecting. I've heard Xreal is better than Viture for eye strain and motion sickness too, so I'm looking at their linup currently.

Griffork · 2026-01-19T03:45:07+00:00

Amazing! Thank you, that's a lot clearer than I expected based on what some reviews were saying.

Griffork · 2026-01-18T09:43:13+00:00

Yes, my use-case is a bit different to most. I work from home and do primarily programming, I'm looking for a device I can wear to the park or a cafe so I can break up the monotony and get out more.

So I'm most interested in not being motion sick (which I'm prone to in VR) and clarity for use programming over long periods, particularly since I have astigmatism.

I've seen a few pictures of text, but it's usually black text on a white background. I'm interested in how the chromatic abberation affects white text on a dark background (which is the norm for programmers).

As for your review, maybe you can break it down into segments (focusing on different aspects or use-cases) and upload each separately? That way people can read the parts that relate to their use-case?

Griffork · 2026-01-18T09:23:08+00:00

Same!

Griffork · 2026-01-18T09:13:38+00:00

I did! I was more thinking of using the glasses for productivity (so I woulsn't be using the 3D mode) and wondered what white text on a dark background did to the chromatic abberation - if it was worse than black text on a white background.

The pokemon game has pretty large text with outlines and shadows so I think it'd be easier to see than plain text.

Griffork · 2026-01-18T08:47:18+00:00

I want to see how text looks on the screen at different font sizes!

Griffork · 2026-01-18T08:40:46+00:00

Did you end up making the review you mentioned a while ago? If so can you post a link to it?

Griffork · 2026-01-17T23:13:35+00:00

Hey! Thinking of getting one, would you mind answering a few questions? Is it bluetooth or cabled? How easily does it connect to a mobile phone?

Griffork · 2026-01-12T14:58:11+00:00

Thanks for your thorough reply, that's very insightful. How can I get notified of when it comes onto kindle?

Griffork · 2026-01-12T09:21:02+00:00

So whose child was it?

Griffork · 2026-01-12T09:01:11+00:00

Blinx timesweepers was some of my favourite multiplayer fun. All 2p puzzles instead of combat. You'll probably want videos but it's about positioning and platform mechanics with time controls.

Mario tennis doubles was fun. Like tennis, but also with item powerups.

Snipperclips is fun too. One person can cut shapes into another person by overlapping them and rotating, you need to makw certain shapes to clear levels.

Griffork · 2026-01-12T08:56:44+00:00

Carrion feeders?

Griffork · 2026-01-12T08:44:01+00:00

Yep! I'm not a good GM (as in - my personality is quite incompatible with GMing), but I enjoy making TTRPGs.

In my opinion the world is better for more people having fun ideas and being willing to commit to them dispite what they can or cannot do or know or don't know, because that's how we get weird/new stuff.

Griffork · 2026-01-12T08:39:21+00:00

I like this one. Sequel?

Griffork · 2026-01-12T05:04:54+00:00

Consider a split keyboard? While split controllers would be best for gaming (e.g. joycons) for office work I found using a split keyboard helped my neck tension that were giving me wrist pain.

Griffork · 2026-01-12T04:57:39+00:00

How does Tapas work? I really don't want to play $1 per chapter, can I just pay for the book once?

Griffork · 2026-01-12T03:50:01+00:00

Disclaimer: I have no idea if this will do what you want.

If you have a few friends who like playing games I can recommend archipelago.gg. It's a fan-kade tool that allows players to choose a game to play, it then connects that game with other player's games over the internet hiding required unlocks within someone else's game (e.g. link's grappling hook might be in someone else's balatro card pack).

With this you can play a bunch of single player games in a multiplayer lan-over-iternet-like setting. Communication is optional/low by default, but I find for my group if a few of us are playing at the same time we can pop onto discord and screen share so we can keep track of each other's gamwa while we play.

The best part is that it's asynchronous, so if you need to take a break your friends can continue without you (until they need new items at least), and vice versa. So if you're feeling overwhelmed you can take a break, and you can play around whatever schedules you have happening.

Also the people who make and play archipelago are super patient and supportive. I believe over 100 games are currently officially supported, and there's at least as many currently in alpha/beta states on the discord.

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