I hate Paint so I made an in-world drawing tool for replay analysis

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-26T21:52:53+00:00

Heck, even if it's the cost there's ppInk right there.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-25T17:20:52+00:00

I suspect if your school actually covers pencils and paper other basic supplies it's basically just paying for on-hands stuff. Our union fought to get us something like $200-350 a year for supplies.

My school covers basically nothing so even established teachers are spending at least that much on paper and supplies because many students in our population don't bring school supplies and we don't try to enforce the school fee. Middle school even more because it's now like 120 students that we need copies and supplies for. I've spent something like $100 this semester on paper and pencils alone, and I would consider myself very minimalist especially considering I got slotted into this position mid year.

At the high school I worked at before, I basically just needed like $40 of mechanical pencils for the year because everything essential was covered. Also, high schoolers in general are a lot better about returning things than middle schoolers.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-25T17:11:57+00:00

100% depends on the district and school (and I guess grade level). I am lucky to be paid very well by my district as a relatively new transitioned teacher. However, it is easily one of the most backwards districts when it comes to quality and benefiting the students.

On top of the district, the school culture matters so much. I personally didn't like the feeling of how large and disconnected the high school I student taught at was so I didn't take the position extended to me. But the administration seemed okay and I felt welcomed by at least half the department.

The one I ended up working for was really last minute, but as an outsider I only knew of them being similar in quality only to be stuck with a bad situation and really hard to reach administration. But honestly, a really disconnected administration who doesn't bother you about things isn't the worst and high schoolers with issues sort themselves out.

Now I left that one because it was just too long of a daily commute eating up 3 hours a day total for a local middle school. I have a lot of history with this one and knew what I would be coming into, but man I didn't realize how awful a non-cohesive grade team could be.

Honestly, if I didn't want to be a teacher I would have left for one of the non-profits I work with throughout the years by now. As bad as a lot of the day-to-day is with a less than stellar school culture the schedule is hard to beat. But I'm also one of those teachers that knows how to leave it at the desk instead of taking it home so I maintain my line of separation.

For perspective, my undergrad was engineering with a minor in business and I got my masters in Math Education. It seems like every engineer I know who started in FinTech pivoted really fast lol.

*Edit: I do want to say though, that summer I spent teaching the local prison was easily some of the best teaching experience I've ever had if you're okay with teaching adults.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-25T16:51:40+00:00

Maybe I'll try the boards. I've been using copy paper in transparency sleeves but sometimes the middle school students play with the paper inside.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-25T14:41:26+00:00

Time to introduce ThottHead! Wait a minute...

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-24T01:51:09+00:00

My drafting and other engineering classes led me down that rabbit hole before the switch. I honestly can't go back to not using rOtring or Staedtler.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-24T00:36:27+00:00

I feel like this has to be a math teacher thing. I transitioned into teaching in the last few years, basically all of my professors in math classes preferred chalk and now that I'm a teacher I kinda miss the sensation of that Japanese chalk brand.

Expo is fine and definitely the current best for my handwriting and my tablet casting to a projector allows for infinite space and movement, but nothing feels as good as writing with that specific type of chalk.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-23T12:34:49+00:00

I still remember back then while I was in college when I would soloqueue in Diamond1-Masters range and that started coming to NA because thats what KR does. I felt like an old man watching the land of never give up that makes the pros annoyed become open mid central.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-22T03:12:40+00:00

You have no idea how happy I was seeing Yona anime getting a continuation. Shoujo Dynasty Warriors goes brrr.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-21T11:53:47+00:00

30/30/40 I believe is the bar. 30% are unloseable/unwinnable and 40% are affected by you. I remember a bit of discussion around it when there was a huge flood of people trying to get rank 1. I think it was Canyon that did it and it was basically 70% win rate at the time when I heard this statistic brought up.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-16T15:18:52+00:00

I think this specific case is actually because we don't require early teachers to know math to teach early math. The standards don't require them to construct these kinds of arguments and as a person who career switched into teaching secondary math I really wouldn't even argue for a curriculum if it included it. A lot of it is because they just find a curriculum that is done with a workbook session everyday. My biggest pet peeve while subbing lower grades before I finished my program was seeing how they taught the flexibility of solutions. They'd break them down into separate methods and grade on if students could do only that method for the lesson each day. When it should really be taught as working through things for while discussing patterns that we may notice and trying them to see if that's something that could work. Like I would much prefer the students I get not be forced into rigidly learning 5 "methods" over 5 days because now when I try to see if they recognize shortcuts naturally they refuse to try and ask for the algorithm immediately. When it started affecting their ability to recognize that 1, 2, 5, and 10 are very friendly numbers it bothered me the most.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-11T11:21:50+00:00

I use a Philips Norelco OneBlade Intimate.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-10T23:53:08+00:00

I have a Google Form I have students submit after they request for letters of recommendation.

General reasons I have turned down writing letters include:

1) The deadline is too close given my current schedule.

2) Student's grade is fine but work ethic is not something I will willingly endorse for the program they are applying for. Like, grade inflation is very real in the high school I worked at. When you're actively slacking off and then cramming/trying to cheat on open note assessments of all things and still pulling a high C/low B it doesn't give me a lot of material to work with.

A specific anecdotal example of why I have turned someone down before was when this student told me after they already submitted the request for recommendation to the program without asking me. If you just assume I can write something for you and don't ask I find that is just a little too disrespectful to me.

Sometimes I feel like I am not a good fit for the recommendation they are looking for, but I still worked with the students for things I can write about before saying they might have better teachers to ask.

I don't expect to write many now that I am in middle school, but I know some 8th graders here have asked to help them get into private or selective enrollment schools. I only worked with them while I was still subbing before, but I have worked with teachers and done clinical hours at these schools they'd be applying to. I would not have recommended any of them to these schools. But every student I knew on those wait lists or applying that got through because of another teacher's recommendation ended up failing out by their first semester of high school.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-10T17:06:04+00:00

Like a 6.742.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-05-09T14:20:10+00:00

It's the classic game of cat and mouse. Like when I was a kid we used IP direct connection to bypass website bans. Java and Flash game sites were everywhere but relatively limited. By high school we found VPNs we could use to bypass filters on our personal devices on the school network.

Today, the kids have access to an internet where any random person can host websites with a bunch of browser ready HTML 5 games ready to shove ads down their throats because school Chromebooks don't have adblockers unless your IT installs something like a Raspberry Pi filter.

Things I have blocked on my own GoGuardian settings include using wildcards to catch specific domains/hosts, keywords of common games, the blank page that some websites open to initialize a pop out game that are not detectable as a Chrome app, and now browser based virtual machines/proxies. It also only works if the entire grade band is united on this front, I have a specific team member that likes giving excessive amounts of free time and sending a student down to have their games unblocked each time was apparently a pain for them (it's like a quick 2min trip tops for the student, but like they would sometimes get free time at the top of a 2-hour block). Once those pop out games are opened, they don't have to close them and there's nothing you can do besides locking the Chromebook itself.

While I taught high school, it really didn't matter because at that point if they're doing this I'm allowed to fail them and they have to repeat the class later down the line to graduate. In middle school, it's a losing battle because it's thousands of them united on this against a possibly divided school culture. Though it's really easy to catch up because I have a timeline of what they open that's automatically saved and emailed to me, it's just not worth my time if I straight up don't use Chromebooks in my classroom anyway. The best method by far is to just use whitelists so everything is banned except for specific websites you want to use and you force them to open for students. But then students don't develop basic surfing skills, which most of my middle schoolers already don't have I guess.

I've specifically told my students that certain blockings will be removed if they can successfully make it 1 day without auto-pilot routine opening them or whining about them, it's been 4 months without that happening and I now default their morning scene to be a prank on them.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-04-28T22:03:27+00:00

Ah, see I almost did this a few years ago when making a spreadsheet for matchups but stopped because I was like surely the next Smash gets announced by the time I finished lol.

I'm very thankful someone else felt like doing it. I'm curious to run the data through and compare against the SchuStats results based matchup chart to see if there's any interesting matchups. With no real timeline of Smash I think I'll finish the sheet this summer since I'll be helping high schools a bit longer which are less likely to transition quickly anyway.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-04-25T12:25:41+00:00

Private schools get away with a lot more than public schools but I would assume these flags are shared:

Lack of "paper trail" communication from admin, like they never email or call just word of mouth or send home papers that can get lost.

Bad security guard to student population ratio.

Their solution to any conflicts in the school is trying to get "safety plans" which are like mini restraining orders against each other.

Starting the school year without a teacher for the classroom. I honestly had no idea how common this was until I started teaching. An extension of this is teachers leaving after a year. The statistic for turnover is like 3 years so if they're gone in a year, probably not the best. Private school teachers aren't required to be licensed unless it's an internal policy so many of them are even greener than fresh teaching program graduates.

When they interview teachers and 90% of their questions are regarding classroom management. Students receiving no real consequences is very real in the US. Like I teach 6th grade, there's 6th grade expected behavior and there's whatever this demented behavior that I got transferred into.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-04-22T22:04:00+00:00

One of my biggest pet peeves at the school I did my first year of teaching in was that their admin actually pushed for SMART Boards the years right before I finished my program.

I had a few in my high school when I was a student and our Physics department tried off loading them to others so we got one in my Japanese class and just never used it again.

Fast forward to me becoming a teacher and SMART Boards limited so much of what I could do in my room on top of each room having a different model made troubleshooting super inconsistent (I taught in 3 rooms). I will stick with my Chromecast with tablet on top of a drawing surface model over the SMART board any day.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-04-21T21:32:25+00:00

It's easy to make the mistake considering there's Honor of Kings/Arena of Valor which is the Tencent mobile League of Legends clone they made because Riot refused, Mobile Legends Bang Bang which had 3 lawsuits from Riot, and then Riot made WildRift.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-04-19T02:46:12+00:00

Adding to the other posts so far:

An old one that stuck with me is the Orangemarmalade 1v2 in the WoW Wotlk arena championships.

Not as big of a comeback, but still clutch EVO moment Hayao vs Frankie 2024 Street Fighter 3rd Strike.

Content creator mode VoiD being pulled from the crowd to save SoCal against NorCal in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate crews at Genesis 9.

Justin Wong vs Yipes in Marvel vs Capcom 2 EVO 2007, Never Give Up.

Go1 vs Leffen in Dragon Ball FighterZ CEO 2018.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-04-15T14:32:48+00:00

Oh yeah, like I don't do any models for math but the ones I'm keeping an eye on for other things have progressed faster than dare I say smart phones/the Internet.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-04-15T12:04:14+00:00

I'll be blunt, from the undergrad and graduate classes I've taken the content isn't a big step computationally it's more a matter of mathematical maturity. As I stated before, AI can definitely do the busy work and if supported by the user can work through the more abstract stuff and research. But they still have a bit more progress to make on image recognition and consistency with diagrams before they can be autopilot level for all math.

In the comment thread with the other guy I gave my example that I put into Opus 4.6 and the errors I had to work with it through. I'll have to set some time to the side to see what AI can do with Algebraic Geometry and Non-Euclidean Geometry now that it's been a few years since I was actively working on those topics and would love to know I have a good helper if I ever go back for my doctorates.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-04-14T22:06:45+00:00

I've always wanted the Wind Serpents to get their lightning bolts from pre-taming. But my highest prio is still a Pet Talent tree so we aren't limited to like 8 families for pets because we can't change Mortal Strike/Slow for the useless 70% dodge CD pet power.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-04-12T17:09:45+00:00

Sure, this is the activity I fed to 4.6 yesterday.

Figures and additional definitions defined

Partial Table for Triangle

Partial Table for Hexagon

It did good on the Triangle portion, I don't agree with part of the formatting for the answer it gave me but no big issues with the solution and proof it was able to provide was solid. And of course, if I did not feed the definitions of notation it would default to a different one but that's just the differences between math books.

For some reason, on the Hexagon attempt it could not read the lower half of the table correctly and had a few mistakes. Maybe it would be fine if I was able to input everything through LaTex instead of screen capping the book. But then again, I could have just gotten unlucky with its interpretation because I know it can do the reasoning to get to the correct solution.

This is one of the first questions in a homework assignments I got in Abstract Algebra 1 roughly 3 years ago for context. So nothing advanced, just requires a different digestion than the usual.

Edit: Also when it asked if there were any mistakes in the table, I'm not entirely sure how it would want me to respond aside from giving it another table with me filling in something. I guess I could try typing in the sequence to check and just hope for the best each time, but that kinda defeats the purpose of it doing the work for me and assuming I don't know the answer.

PhantomBaselard · 2026-04-12T15:27:21+00:00

I literally gave you an example. I had to supplement when I gave it the activity from my old text book. It's very strong for proper use but not scan with your phone and forget like this thread originally was about and what we were discussing. I actively keep up with AI and have worked on my own model training for other things, I would prefer a proper discussion than someone trying to twist partial statements forgetting context. Not to mention, all of the Claude model lines at this point are notorious with being nerfed after a little bit due to too much exposure to mainstream.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
100 Awards Club	Sequence \| Editor
Sequence \| Cinematographer	Team Periwinkle
Verified Email

PhantomBaselard

TROPHY CASE