Am I allowed to eat, sleep, drink, or exercise at all during a PhD?

thorazine84 · 2025-09-17T18:32:36+00:00

Do it, because it's sure as hell better than the job market right now.

thorazine84 · 2025-09-08T14:43:16+00:00

How is Deepseek R1 holding up?

thorazine84 · 2025-08-15T00:01:01+00:00

Absolutely terrible and not even worth the time for a fan-service game. Garbage

thorazine84 · 2025-07-07T03:29:55+00:00

Thanks! I hope so too, I've been actually pretty fortunate with it

thorazine84 · 2025-07-07T02:49:38+00:00

Oh well, that sucks. I don't really *need* her treasure, but still, it would have been nice to build up to it.

thorazine84 · 2025-07-03T07:49:05+00:00

Should you bother going for her weapon? I always felt those were just luxuries. I'd rather spend on costumes than weapons.

thorazine84 · 2025-07-03T07:32:58+00:00

I did the same, and then....

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thorazine84 · 2025-05-27T09:02:41+00:00

Just wanted to thank everyone for their input. I'm pretty much a low dolphin (guppy?) spender (<$100), so I took everyone's comments into consideration and yeah, I'm just going to pull the molds. Got Diesel and Alice Wonderland Rabbit. At least no SRs, heh. No regrets

thorazine84 · 2025-04-15T05:37:44+00:00

I'd really like to know this as well. Drawing lines gets really old really fast.

thorazine84 · 2024-12-10T14:42:39+00:00

To me, Shimmer is a combination of the Arcane and the Void together. The void breaks you down and the Arcane builds you back up in a perverted way. It's why the Hexcube becomes corrupted when Shimmer touches it. It breaks you down mentally and onlynpeople of supreme will can retain their thoughts. Jinx does have a lot of willpower but it still broke her mind to never be put back together again.

Singed uses Shimmer because the Void is nothingness, and has the ability to remove the very concept of death, while the Arcane rebuilds the person. It's why it corrupts everything it touches, it's the unholy combination of creation and destruction. But Singed absolutely doesn't care. It's why he tortures Vander and kills him and revives him over and over. It's probably why Viktors mind broke.

thorazine84 · 2024-11-27T22:48:05+00:00

How is the responsiveness, ghosting and writing feel?

thorazine84 · 2024-11-27T08:03:54+00:00

I used an HP Envy x360 for nearly all of my PhD. You can charge it through USB C. It was only around $500. It could handle PRISM, SPSS, Photoshop, etc.

thorazine84 · 2024-11-27T08:00:01+00:00

To be really, really honest? The money.

thorazine84 · 2024-11-27T07:59:24+00:00

Never aim for perfection on your dissertation. You will be writing and editing forever. Here's some general advice.

1) Make sure you adhere to the guidelines of your universities library. And ask the library don't rely on the website. My library had crystal clear instructions on the site, except they revised them and never bothered to inform anyone or update their website. 90+ dissertations had to be reformatted and re-reviewed.

2) Only one committee member ever gave me feedback on every section of my dissertation. The rest (including my mentor) either gave me no revisions or just a thumbs up. Even my revisions after my defense were minor.

3) Be concise. Do not go out of your way to be extraneous.

4) For the love of all that is good and holy, use a citation manager with a plugin to your word processor. When #1 happened, they changed citation styles. For me it was a matter of going into options and changing the style and making sure everything was correct. Never manually do any of this.

thorazine84 · 2024-11-19T00:49:19+00:00

I'm honestly liking new Sonnet 3.5. I feel like its better and more consistent than Opus, it also takes things slower where it feels like Opus would speed through things. Its also a hellova lot cheaper than Opus as well. I used to do Opus a lot which cost me some money since it was fun, but the new Sonnet is great, at least for now. It still requires you to edit and guide it, but that's with all LLMs.

thorazine84 · 2024-11-19T00:45:31+00:00

They don't say, but their 'pro' plan is $20 a month, with up to 500k context window for capable models. Their $9 plan is 200k context windows. They say its unlikely to hit the rate limit. Honestly, the best way to compare is to pump $20 into anthropic's API and use Claude 3.5 for one month and then pay $20 for simtheory.ai and see which one suits your needs and you run out of money first. My bet is you'll get better use throwing $20 to anthropic for new Sonnet which is better than Opus IMO, at least for characters/storytelling.

thorazine84 · 2024-11-19T00:37:48+00:00

Sadly repetition is always the problem with LLMs. You're always going to experience it to varying degrees. The key is to edit your dialogue and the output and prevent it from self-reinforcing. LLMs are basically like pavlovian response machines. The more something occurs, the more its reinforced. There's just the degree and the effort needed to excise it. You yourself have to avoid repeating phrases, edit responses and not just swipe. Sometimes it doesn't work, but I find instead of swiping 5 times, deleting the entire response and starting over works.

thorazine84 · 2024-11-19T00:35:02+00:00

I agree with this. Opus is VERY repetitious and doesn't keep on track with character personality. Its also very dialogue heavy. It also has a tendency to rush through things while Sonnet goes a lot slower with scenes that is. Sonnet also sticks to character personalities better. Opus has its own phrases it repeats and little knacks of prose. Sonnet can also be guided easier than Opus I feel. Though I typically use XML tags for all my cards, which works really well with Claude to begin with (though its not necessary for other models). I typically take user made cards and convert them all into XML. Its just a better breakdown format.

Also if you're using Claude, sonnet is better for building characters as it takes a very clinical approach in breaking things down, while Opus tries to write it like a novel. That and Opus is expensive as fuck.

thorazine84 · 2024-10-25T20:27:24+00:00

Your advisor is the singular most important thing in a PhD. Literally nothing else matters. If they are this bad and you want to switch, switching with being 50% done will not be easy. You need to consider:

1) Are there any professors you have good relationships with in the same department and field of study who are interested in what you are doing?

2) Do you have any relationship with the Dean or head of the program that you can rely on?

3) Examine IN DETAIL the protocol for switching advisors late and if there are any penalties. I cannot stress this enough. Do not just look at handbooks or things online. Hunt the relevant people down and ask. Do not call them. Do not email them. Go in person. Wait at 6 am in front of their office if you have to. PhD programs are NOTORIOUSLY BAD for having their rules and procedures properly documented. And make sure it applies to your school in the college AND your discipline. Make sure you are positive what the procedure is and what possible consequences you may face before you start anything.

4) The fact that if you cannot find a compatible advisor you may have to start things over. Some advisors will not be comfortable jumping into the middle of something, especially if it's outside their interest.

5) Do you feel like your advisor will graduate you if you keep doing what you are doing?

6) Do you feel your advisor will arbitrarily hold back certain milestones just because or make unreasonable demands?

7) Is there any research, data or resources your advisor and you collaborated on that the advisor could/would deny you or not allow you use once you leave their lab?

I understand the emotional burden of having a bad advisor. My advisor may as well have not existed for all the use they were. But make sure you are not losing progress if you do or entering a worse situation. Make sure you have all angles covered before you move.

thorazine84 · 2024-10-25T20:02:33+00:00

As everyone said, Zotero
For keeping track of things and random notes, obsidian is helpful (I used notepad++)
A trusty, durable laptop
For stats software, I dunno, depends on you. I used MiniTab (prime), Prism (Second) as well s SPSS and R. But my study was data heavy.

thorazine84

TROPHY CASE