Atypical moves in chess

KreativeKewl - Surprised

There are some moves in chess that seem atypical – one player decides to go for an all-out attack using atypical moves. Obviously, there is a downside – you risk not handling the attack very well, and the opponent has good answers to your moves, and you end up losing.

But, from time to time, I’m so surprised by those atypical moves, that my mind gets overwhelmed, and I make silly mistakes.

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The sound in movies

farlukar - volume

There’s a paradox in movies – for a few special effects, from time to time, the overall volume in a movie varies strangely. The special effects have a loud sound, while you can barely hear the actors speaking. When I’m at home, I like to listen to the sounds in the movies using speakers, not headphones, and there are only two good solutions – either the special effects are too loud, and you disturb the neighbors, or you can’t hear the actors’ voices properly. I go with the second option, but dislike the solution.

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Wishing to win

Matt - Competition

I look at some events in my past and there’s something striking: sometimes I win and it means a lot to me, sometimes I lose and this means pretty much nothing. Why the two?

I realized that there were some different kind of situations:

  • There was a game – Prince of Persia and I wanted to see all the levels, to play everything, but I didn’t care all that much. You had 60 minutes to finish the game start-to-end, so, in the end, you would get to know the first levels very well, the following ones less so, and so on. But I never finished the game without using cheat codes. Yes, I’ve finished the game due to curiosity, but I didn’t care all that much in finishing the game start-to-finish.
  • There was another game – Quarantine – which took quite some time for me to finish start-to-end. When I gave the game to a friend, he told me he finished it very quickly, in a few days, or a week, something like that. It now occurred to me that I didn’t care all that much. Sure, my friend was better than me at video games. So, what? :)
  • At school, there were some things it was worth investing time in (important exams, for example; I mostly had very good results at the most important exams in my life), and some other things less-than-important (private lessons to learn some specific subject; I put very little emphasis at being a top student at those lessons).
  • At work, there were times where I had to shine (a job in London for ~1 year), and jobs at which I preferred to learn a lot of things (a job in WordPress, where I mostly learned new things), or to come up with better solutions to do a job (a job for which I came up with a procedure which helped a lot in reducing the time required for some actions).
  • In hobbies, like drawing, I mostly fool around. But when I had to paint an icon for school, it was considered one of the best in class. When I had to due a map for a project, it was one of the best made.

There’s a difference between enjoying the moment and wishing to win:

  • At games, I mostly enjoyed the process than winning. Sure, winning is fine, but I didn’t care all that much, most of the time.
  • There are some exams which matter a lot, and some exams which matter much less. If I enjoy the process and risk only a little, I can jeopardize an exam, just to try & feel good.
  • Even in work, there are jobs in which you need to perform, and jobs for which you can focus on learning, or improving the process.

It’s great if you can win all the time. But, second-best, if you can win where it really matters, that’s a good allocation of resources.

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Personal personal diary. Too personal. Two unlimited

arbyreed - Personal Items

Some people have diaries. They’re personal, of course, even if they only write in it the calories consumed at lunch or the money they’ve spent in a day. Even a map with a jogging course can be personal.

I like to write personal thoughts on my blogs (1, 2).

At times, some people told me:

  1. I write too personal, too deep, too intimate.
  2. I have a way of looking at my life which seems external. Even if I write about personal dilemmas, it may look like I’m writing about somebody else.

The thing is, I do have this emotional issue – I don’t get too attached to people, of myself, of pretty much anything. I wrote about this on my blog.

So, I can write about myself from an external point of view.

The tricky part is when I write about close-to-me personal, about very personal experiences. To most people, this would be a definite no-no.

For me, it’s like this – I understand the need for privacy, and I generally don’t write about that. But still, it’s somehow external to me.

Until now, I didn’t write about pretty much anyone, but, in my mind, I wrote a lot of times. And it’s a bit scary, this freedom, although not expressed. I know that it’s about things which are supposed to be private, but, somehow, they’re not.

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