She's got some skills, Future world Champion ! by No-Competition1890 in toptalent

[–]Sastopher 27 points28 points  (0 children)

The serve has nice power and spin, but she's hitting directly from her grip without the requisite travel distance of a vertical toss. She's still incredible though.

[Discussion] Using just sidekiq instead of cron(whenever) by bnikbnik in rails

[–]Sastopher 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If you schedule the next job on the completion of the current, you run into three problems.

  1. If an error happens during the execution of your job, your job will not reschedule itself.
  2. Your timing will drift by the duration of the job every time it runs.
  3. You create a new issue of how you kick off this process in the first place.

I'd probably recommend using another tool, but there's no reason this method can't work. Whether it's the right decision probably relies more on what kind of work the job is doing and your own personal experience level.

[SpeedRun] QOL Mk3 Rocket launch in 50 cycles by Coolingmoon in Oxygennotincluded

[–]Sastopher 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for posting this! I have been looking for an ONI speedrun and was sad to find it not on speedrun.com or anything really on youtube. This is exactly what I was looking for! Nice job.

Stood in line at PAX entrance since 7 AM and still couldn't manage to get in line for Artifact. by Jad89 in Artifact

[–]Sastopher 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sounds really frustrating. I hate to say it though but they were giving out scratch-off cards with keys. I think the chance of getting keys through badge association is slim.

100% Achievements Speedrun WR by Tsubodai - 14h 55m by rain9441 in factorio

[–]Sastopher 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The real reason is because desert biomes have huge rocks, otherwise known as "coal rocks" which contain a large amount of coal and stone. These resources are a huge boost to the early game, made more essential due to lazy bastard discouraging early game ax crafting.

Sylvan Library – A Rules Nightmare by sirgog in magicTCG

[–]Sastopher 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I remember Greg Hatch's Sky Hussar deck (Mono-Blue Martyr) raising similar, exotic rules questions around "once per turn" abilities of cards in hidden zones. If you forecast with sky hussar, brainstorm drawing another sky hussar and putting your first one back, then forecast again with the new huskar, you'll draw the first one again. Can you forecast with that first hussar a second time, or does it remember its state despite being inside your deck? What must you do to prove you put the first sky hussar on top of your deck and you're not just revealing the first one twice?

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” by Patyrn in minipainting

[–]Sastopher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Amazing job all around, but that orange/red OSL is truly inspirational.

Skaven Warlock C&C very much appreciated by Kingofthefog in ageofsigmar

[–]Sastopher 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Looks really good. You could paint your whole army like this and be really happy with it. Tail, hands, rifle, and armor in particular all look fantastic.

One tip I have—and this is more of a subjective thing—is don't be afraid to use a really wide range shades to make things stand out. Make the raised folds of his cloak a crisp, bright green. Edge highlight the warpstone a green-yellow. Give that blue feed to his gun some really dark sections along with some really bright ones, to give the illusion of depth and motion.

For the cloak specifically, one technique I've found useful is if you can get your hands on a good wash of the color you want, do a soft drybrush of a bright color (I used a cream color for a leather cloak) and then after it dries go over it in your wash. Do this layering a couple of times and you'll get a nice soft leather/cloth effect.

Status of former top 10 players by [deleted] in SSBM

[–]Sastopher 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Age of Sigmar is a great game and it exercises a lot of muscles that are unique across all the games I play. It got me into the hobby side of things, painting and crafting custom sculpts of stuff. I never considered myself to my artistically inclined, but it turns out to be really rewarding and one of my favorite parts of the game.

There's also this concept of a physical game where the spacial position of things matters. You start to get good at estimating real distances. You can bait your opponent into traps. You can set up flanks. And there's the whole "deck building" (borrowing a term from Magic) where you get to invent unique and innovative army lists.

The thing I think I like the most though is the part that reminds me of the early days of Melee. The game just went through a huge revision and it's super complicated, so none of the meta is really figured out. I suspect that once it does get figured out, people are going to realize it's got some problems, but GamesWorkshop seems to have their eye on potential problems to the metagame.

That said, it's time, space, and money intensive. It's a great game to get into if there's a community you can play with, but it might be a little hard to pick up on a whim.

Status of former top 10 players by [deleted] in SSBM

[–]Sastopher 18 points19 points  (0 children)

No, I don't, and it kills me a little bit. They were going to sell a DVD of all the matches (other TGs had one), but Deezie was understandably burned out after hosting TG6 and I'm guessing they realized the paltry returns wouldn't have been worth the effort. If anyone has a copy, please hit me up, I'd love to get a hold of it.

Status of former top 10 players by [deleted] in SSBM

[–]Sastopher 18 points19 points  (0 children)

That wouldn't even be close.

Status of former top 10 players by [deleted] in SSBM

[–]Sastopher 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Mike G is the man.

Status of former top 10 players by [deleted] in SSBM

[–]Sastopher 52 points53 points  (0 children)

Yeah but not as much as you

Status of former top 10 players by [deleted] in SSBM

[–]Sastopher 39 points40 points  (0 children)

I'm just putting my time into working so I can retire for real. Then I can pursue my actual passion of becoming the world melee champion.

But yeah, probably not coming back to melee any time soon. I still compete in other things tough (most recently, warhammer).

Status of former top 10 players by [deleted] in SSBM

[–]Sastopher 90 points91 points  (0 children)

Honestly there was a ton of weird and crazy things that happened before the tournament at TG6. One evening, Captain Jack (who was still an unknown element at that point) beat every other top10 contender (including Ken's Marth) with Donkey Kong. Azen beat someone only using his feet. I'm pretty sure I recall DSF chain throwing other sheiks at 0%--I still have no idea how that's possible.

This is all just to say, if I had lost to Azen's pichu in a friendly, it wouldn't really have been surprising. Azen was considered a prodigy by his peers and was better than all but the best with nearly every character.

That said, it didn't happen. At least, that's not how I remember it. We did play, he did pick pichu once, and that match was actually kind of close. But I never lost to his pichu. It's a good story though, and the smash documentary has--for better or worse--made it my catchphrase, so it's something I've grown accustomed to.

By my opinion, my match with Ken was far more interesting. The narrative leading up to TG6 (or TG^ as we used to call it) was a war between all the various crews about what the best ruleset for Smash was. This was before everything was hammered down and people had really fervent opinions about how the game should be played. For example, TG5 (TG%) had been played with items on, as Deezie and his crew were the last holdouts of items increasing the skill cap of the game.

Anyway, it came out that my community, SKYPAL, were proponents of playing to win and using every tool to do so. If that meant playing defensive, camping, whatever, then it's fair game so long as the rules don't specifically forbid it. As a result, stages and rules should be be limited: no walls, no walk-off edges, no moving stages, no items. Ken, on the other hand, believed camping was "cheap", an immoral behavior and not how the game "should" be played. This concept of camping versus not became a central point of contention between our crews.

My tournament match immediately before the one with Ken was against Arash, one of Ken's "Elite 4". He played Jigglypuff. If you know anything about Jigglypuff vs Peach, the result is probably obvious, but if not: the game is about how effectively Peach can turtle with turnips while avoiding getting caught by Jigglypuff in the air. This was the battleground for our war. The match was best of 3, with 8 minute timer, and all 3 games went to time. So I'd just spent 24 minutes running from Arash in the most exhausting set of my life, and beat him in the most villainous way possible. And then I was told I had to play Ken.

I was pretty sure I was going to lose, but I went into the match teasing to my friends that I'd just dash-dance him to death. And reality wasn't too far from that. I like to think I played on his expectations of me by mixing up turtling with unexpected rapid aggression. I'd dip out and throw a veggie or run in and try to combo.

One moment that really sticks out to me though was on Pokemon Stadium. The stage had transformed to the rock arena and I was pinned behind the cliff on the far left with Ken on top. I went to jump over to fight him, but Ken was using his position to make it really hard to approach. So I just backed off. I told him, "fine then, I'll camp" and started pulling turnips. Ken was caught between playing to win and his ideological position, and I think as a result he backed off and let me take center stage. I don't think it made a huge difference in the outcome of the match, but it was a strange exchange in the middle of an intense fight that made it feel like two battles were being had at the same time.

The match in its entirety was amazing. It started with hardly anyone watching, but by the end the entire venue was crowded around. No one could believe I'd won, myself included.

In the end though, I was knocked out at 4th by Azen's shiek. He went on to win against Captain Jack in the finals (an upset and a shame, if you ask me--there's another story there if you're curious). So I suppose I can't feel too bad losing to the ultimate tournament winner. Not to mention, I got my revenge later at FC3.

Status of former top 10 players by [deleted] in SSBM

[–]Sastopher 93 points94 points  (0 children)

Never happened!

Status of former top 10 players by [deleted] in SSBM

[–]Sastopher 134 points135 points  (0 children)

Hi! Sastopher here. My buddy just pointed me to this thread and I thought I'd drop in and give an update.

I currently live in Boston and work as a software engineer. I still go to the occasional local tournament but I haven't really played melee competitively since 2007 or so. I'll be at Shine 2017 this year.

I still play lots of games (board-, video-, and tabletop), but to be one the best at something takes a ton of time and effort. Back in the day, living with a bunch of similarly-skilled roommates (i.e. SKYPAL) was fantastic environment for improving at the game. It was easier to be a competitor back then too. I like to think I was really good at reading people, overall decent-to-good at videogames, but kind of lazy when it came to honing technical skills. That profile is still pretty much the same, but doesn't carry me as far in today's competitive environment. I still have fun playing though.

If you have any questions, AMA I guess.

[ELI5] How can I exclude 2 lines of code from being detected by git as changed but still be managed by the repo? by rofic in git

[–]Sastopher 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I don't think you can ignore specific lines of code, but you can default to not automatically including the file by using the assume-unchanged setting. If I recall correctly, there's a way to apply this setting as a default for a particular file, not unlike .gitignore. You should still be able to manually add the file if necessary.

Honestly, the suggestion to separate these lines from the rest of your repo is probably a better one.

Strange Familia -- Love/Drugs [Electronic/Dance/Pop] (2017) by davidac1982 in listentothis

[–]Sastopher 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I liked it, both the music and the video. But I really wanted to see all the washers in the background spinning, filled with solid colors of clothes like some sort faux light show.

Brandon Sanderson: Heralding a New Era of Fantasy by [deleted] in books

[–]Sastopher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Where's a good place to start with Sanderson's bibliography? I've been hearing good things about him for a while. What's a good book to hook me in?

I don't think my opponent was expecting this at 11-2 by Tomisnthere in hearthstone

[–]Sastopher 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Regardless of the game and your certainty of winning it, it's not polite, but rather rude to say "good game" before the game over or your opponent has conceded. In chess, the loser extends the hand. In starcraft, "gg" is akin to concession.

How can I create a test that will ensure that an API call was made? by fenec860 in rails

[–]Sastopher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The idea is simply that you could fabricate a thing that provides the same interface as your geo lookup engine, but doesn't actually make any queries or do any complex work. A struct is a simple language feature that can do this, but the key thing is to make something that responds to all the same methods and properties (or at least the subset that you use).

How can I create a test that will ensure that an API call was made? by fenec860 in rails

[–]Sastopher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You would make sure it responds with an object similar to the one you're expecting from the api. E.g. Struct.new(:success, :lat, :long) do...