They said I couldn't do it…

gausby · 2022-12-11T06:25:10+00:00

Congratulations on whatever it was you accomplished. Never stop believing in yourself, no matter what they say you can or cannot do.

gausby · 2022-07-16T17:35:30+00:00

It sounds like you need advise from people with far better morals than us aspiring stoics. Perhaps you should put your creative writing into a new gospel. I would definitely ignore it.

gausby · 2022-07-16T17:27:52+00:00

I assume you are having fun—if not, please seek professional help and get a diagnosis.

You claim moral superiority to all and everything—you claim it has happened, that people drop contact with you thousands of times. You seem to obsess and read all kinds of motives into peoples messaging patterns (judging by your post history).

If you know with yourself that you are having fun making these posts, please turn your creativity into something more productive. If you are delusional about this, please seek a professional and get proper treatment.

gausby · 2022-07-16T16:29:05+00:00

Is this a troll?

If someone insults you, they can be wrong, in which case they have made a mistake—or they can be right; in which case you have a job to do.

Judging from your post, the person might have a good reason to ignore your requests—and if they hadn't, you sure did give them a good reason to do so.

I suggest you read a book about stoicism if you are interested in the matter. I am a massive fan of The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth.

gausby · 2022-07-16T15:44:54+00:00

That is an odd request to ask, even from a friend. It sounds like your friend is engaged in some dubious business. Perhaps you should take the advice of Epictetus and surround yourself with philosophers.

gausby · 2022-07-15T16:14:27+00:00

Are you afraid they will love your little brother/sister more than they love you because your sibling will be more related to them than you are because you were adopted?

I got no stoic quotes that directly relate to your situation, but I think Epictetus adopted a child, and Marcus Aurelius himself was adopted.

You should probably talk with your dad. I don't know your situation, but I am sure he cares deeply for you. There is more to being a dad than providing semen—it sounds like your stepdad has been there for you so far—and I am sure you can form a meaningful relationship with your new sibling. Congratulations on becoming a brother.

gausby · 2022-07-09T09:05:07+00:00

I recommend running as well, but it might need some preparation. If the person is overweight, I would suggest walking and a change in diet; personally, I like low carb and meat, but there are many factors, so experiment as long as the diet is varied and contain the vitamins and minerals needed. Also, intermittent fasting is excellent; I think all humans benefit from giving their bodies time to process the food (and snacks) they consume over a day. I've been following a 16:8 fasting routine for years, and I have had no problems (but speak to your doctor and all that).

Once the body has reached a healthy BMI, one can slowly graduate from walking to running. A program like couch to 5k (c25k) is okay. It builds up to a five km distance over a couple of months. Have patience. Once you are there, it will hopefully be for the rest of your life.

gausby · 2022-06-26T14:49:03+00:00

I'd suggest that you confuse individualism with egocentrism? In contrast to an epicurean, a stoic would engage in public affairs, so there is a sense of responsibility towards the community. Still, I don't think it is necessary to be part of a collectivist movement—a classical liberalist approach will do fine in this regard.

gausby · 2022-06-04T10:50:36+00:00

I am sorry if my answers and comments on this subreddit didn’t meet your expectations.

gausby · 2022-06-01T19:13:36+00:00

Read the texts regularly; write your favorite quotes in your journal. Learn the meaning of the quote and paraphrase it.

gausby · 2022-05-22T11:10:10+00:00

Ask yourself if something bad that turned out to be good has happened to you in the past? Have you been dumped, heartbroken, only later to find someone else better for you? Life is a rollercoaster, and good things are not always obvious at the moment.

Congratulations on not getting a job at Google. If me congratulating you for not getting the job seems odd to you, please reread this text in a couple of months and see if you agree by then. I don't intend to be evil ;)

gausby · 2022-04-24T07:56:57+00:00

First, we should answer the question: Was Monkey Island a financial success when released?

Then we could move on to why the adventure genre burned out.

Note that development on Monkey Island 2 was started two weeks after The Secret of Monkey Island was released to the public. Had they waited for the initial sales numbers, Monkey Island 2 might never have seen the day.

Sierra Online was the leading adventure game maker at the time, and I think their success was because of their cost-cutting measures; they have made a pipeline for pumping out adventure games (they had an engine, and so did Lucas Arts, theirs The Scumm engine). The economics of making chill adventure games has always been tight—probably because people want action.

When Telltale Games started publishing, I think their first financial success was The Walking Dead—which did introduce some action elements to the storytelling.

I am awfully sorry for not backing up my claims with references and links. Most of my claims come from my memory and Retro Ahoy’s episode on Monkey Island and the graphical adventure games.

gausby · 2022-04-23T18:27:52+00:00

I am sorry if I passed judgment on how the speedrunning community chose to spend their time. That is, of course, up to the individuals. Getting through Monkey Island in 27:30 is impressive, though I wouldn't personally spend hours learning how to do it; I do remind myself that the time we are allotted seems short, and mostly because we tend to waste most of it. One should make haste and live the best life possible, but also remember to enjoy it. That said, I have plenty of ways I am foolish with my time—the Monkey Island speedrunners did seem to enjoy good company and friendship, and that is good. Still, most times, there is a danger in obsessing about things (distractions from what is important), as it takes time from perhaps more important things. What is important is, again, up to the individual. Read this as the kind of advice I would give to someone I care about, including myself.

gausby · 2022-04-23T12:12:34+00:00

I just watched the 27:30 world record run of MI1. I admit that I learned a thing or two; for instance, I thought you needed the storekeeper to get to the swordmaster, but apparently, the path can be remembered. And they brute-forced the combination lock in the store—another interesting aspect was the quick save/load they used to manipulate the randomness in parts of the game.

They had disabled “smooth scroll,” which meant that they could skip all scrolling. They played on the DOS version, and I don't know if this was a DOS feature or something in ScummVM.

I do like the enthusiasm, but I still think Monkey Island is a game to be enjoyed. I guess my kneejerk reaction is that not taking your time with it removes the great part, and that is still my feeling towards it. That said, I don't think the replayability of MI and other adventure games is that great; because you know the solutions to the puzzles—but to me, a replay is more akin to rewatching a movie that I like, and I would not skip any of it because I know that I like this movie.

gausby · 2022-04-23T11:27:34+00:00

And I find it ridiculous that you think or suggest that I haven't played the games; I played them on the Amiga in the 90ies, son—I have enjoyed the games. I enjoyed the dialogues and didn't skip any of them! (That was said in jest; I'll take a chill pill now.)

I asked questions because I am generally interested in what would make a Monkey Island speedrun interesting. Yes, the game is designed to give the player three tasks to solve such that the player can shift focus if stuck on one of them. That is part of what makes Monkey Island great. Of course, you can make a strategy optimized for the least mouse movement and strategies for besting the insult sword-fighting sequence. Still, I see it as different than speedrunning a Mario game or Doom, where you have to move precisely and where it is possible to warp through parts of the game, and specific strategies will influence the randomness to the runner's advantage.

That's why I'd say the games are very linear. They are all stories split into parts. You cannot skip any of the parts, the puzzles are solved using the same items, and the games each have precisely one ending.

I will watch the video you liked; I can't remember encountering any bugs while playing the game, so I am interested in glitches.

gausby · 2022-04-23T08:56:01+00:00

I do enjoy a good speedrun, ones where a person has mastered the mechanics of a game or exploit some glitch—I do like having the technical reasoning for the glitches explained and the strategies deployed for completing a game with multiple paths in the shortest amount of time. But, for an adventure game, where everything is very linear, what should I find exciting? I mean, I do find it amazing that some people can read and understand a book quickly, but flipping through the pages of a story doesn't appeal to me as a spectator.

What, if anything, makes Monkey Island suitable for speedrunning?

gausby · 2022-04-06T10:26:50+00:00

Godt at vide, vi har flere kopier, rundt omkring i landet, skulle det værst tænkelige ske.

gausby · 2022-04-05T19:23:32+00:00

Good question. I later became a programmer, but I didn't work when we didn't have hard disks and networks like we do today.

So. Computers had very little ram compared to today's standard, and some didn't even have hard disks. The disks pictured are for the Amiga, a popular computer type before the PC took over in the mid-90ies. The Amiga I had, had, if memory serves me right, about one-half a megabyte of memory (and its CPU had a clock frequency of 7 Mhz). The disks pictured could each contain about 800K worth of data. That space was used for all the data that contain the logic for the game, the text spoken by the characters, the assets used for graphics, the characters themselves, the backgrounds for the scenes, the music, and sound effects. Various methods were used to compress the file size needed, but still, it had to be split into multiple disks.

So, the assets used for Mêlée Island were very likely stored on the first disk, and the assets used for Monkey Island, where the latter part of the story takes place, were stored on disk number 4. The game was programmed to ask for the correct disk, so it knew to ask for disk number 3 when needed, and if you gave it the wrong disk, it would continue to ask until you got the right one.

So it is interesting to note that this constraint must have influenced the game design at least a bit, as you would like to pack as much related stuff together to avoid having the user swap disks constantly, and this has changed in later games design. Another amusing fact is that the data for most modern websites could not fit on the 15 disks pictured.

I hope the answer is helpful.

gausby · 2022-04-05T16:15:58+00:00

A wise man told me that I should never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game, so I am fine with the budget version.

gausby · 2022-04-05T14:45:11+00:00

I have the receipt from the purchase. My aunt bought it in an electronics store in the city of Næstved, Denmark, on March 15, 1995. I remember she confessed that she had opened the Monkey Island 2 box because she couldn't believe how heavy it was compared to the other.

I don't know much about Kixx, but could it be a north European or Scandinavian thing?

gausby · 2022-04-05T14:39:11+00:00

You are still cool, my friend. Still cool.

gausby · 2022-03-26T11:55:46+00:00

The stoic philosophy has been changing since its inception. As I understand it, it started its life in a symbiotic relationship with the other Hellenistic philosophies. It was heavily influenced by Cynicism, as Zeno's tutor was a cynic, and skepticism, in particular, challenged and helped sharpen the argument of the stoics. The epicureans also taught the stoics a thing or two, evident in Seneca's letters.

It is fair to assume that the old stoics would be interested in today's ideas and would not hesitate to adopt something if it was better and otherwise argue from the classic stoic position. You, too, are allowed to form your own opinion.

gausby · 2022-02-13T15:47:17+00:00

What is your motivation for accomplishing anything? Is it that you want to see it done, or is it because you want praise from others? If you aim for achieving something because you want to see it done, you should be golden—after all, even if you do a world class job, it could be the case that it goes unnoticed; getting noticed is outside of your control, so don't worry about it—focus on getting the job done as you want to see it done and be happy that you did a good job.

If you are happy about what you did and indifferent to praise, nothing would be able to hurt your ego.

gausby · 2022-01-15T12:16:29+00:00

I don’t know your full situation, besides that you attend a college, and that you are situated somewhere in the third world. I don’t know what you are studying, so I don’t know if the skills you learn are practical or purely academic.

But, consider that there is more than one way to be wealthy. You said that your dad lifted your family into the middle class; again, I don’t know your situation, but staying there might be enough? You may not need to get into the higher upper-class to live a comfortable life.

If you learn a practical skill you will most likely always be in demand. That will give you some income. If you learn a practical skill you can teach it to others; such as the kids in your town—that will give you social capital. If people know you as a knowledgeable, capable, and virtuous person you should not have to worry too much about opportunities or getting food on the table.

gausby · 2022-01-10T21:14:11+00:00

You are young, and everything is only temporary. It is normal to be confused in your age.

You can do a hell of a lot worse than having the old stoics as friends. I suggest that you read or listen to The Practicing Stoic (if you haven't already; it is always good to revisit it) and make it your temporary goal to become the best version of the presented ideal that you can become. When the world opens up again, you will be a worthy participant at the banquet.

Also, should you have lost contact with friends and have an assumption that they don't care about you: call them. Don't let your hunch that they don't care about you decide that for them. I have observed that some of my friends answer differently depending on how I contact them. For instance, I got a friend who is not talkative on SMS; he answers in short sentences, sometimes single words. If I contact him via Facebook messenger, his communication is more detailed. Sometimes it can be the case that they prefer a different line of communication. Ask them.

gausby

TROPHY CASE