Notices by Rovine(QOTO) (rovine@qoto.org)

@freemo @inditoot @_lunawinters I have a friend. He couldn't finish college. He tried to do programming but constantly run into frustrations of poor instructions and lack of help and encouragement from his college. He spends most of his time playing video games and "running away from reality" that is his own future, let alone reality of the world. If he tries to face reality, all that greets him is the "reality" that there's no place in this world for him. No one wants an unmotivated "lazy ass" like him. He is not able to function in this society and likewise this society has no place for him.

And yet he is my absolute best friend. He talked me out of feeling worthless when I couldn't make anything work. He nudged me into game jams and gave me ideas for me to work on. He played games with me and helped distracting me on days when I feel like shit, not just shit about myself but shit about society and "reality". Everytime I slip, I got back on my feet because he yanked me out of "reality" and helped me experience a better way of life, proving to me that it is totally possible to feel better about yourself, and all the more proof that before you can save the world, you gotta save yourself first.

He's totally running away from reality, but in his case, I hope he won't ever have to face it. If anything, reality doesn't deserve his gift.

Taking a break now from my assignment game dev.

Implemented simple finite state machine to switch between player turns.

Next up is to actually play the damn board game itself.

@freemo @mngrif

Preparing new nibs

@Saederup92 @freemo
The word "debate" reminded me something about myself.

I used to hate debates, or any variations of the word: arguments, or even discussion, to a degree.

Since childhood I cultivated an anxiety that people just don't like me and everything I say is wrong, even my personal values. So I'd get personal in debates very easily if I get disagreement from what I say. A reasonable disagreement in reality is supposed to feel more like a prod on my shoulder, or even just Link's fairy going "hey, listen!", but fear turns any disagreement into imaginary machine guns blasting at my way, and I have to put up some thicc bullet proof walls to protect myself.

I still have that anxiety on my low days and it's certainly not healthy. Frustrating to come across people who refuse to understand that psychology though.

New blog post on flashcards: https://hippocampus.worldrovine.com/doku.php?id=blog:flashcards

@pschwede I was born and raised in Hong Kong for 15 years pre-1997. Hold your horses on the idea of just giving out UK citizenship for free.

Like @freemo said I appreciate the sentiment of this intent. I wouldn't mind having the option of UK citizenship myself, but there's one thing I want to point out in addition to what freemo said:

HK rioters are fighting for HK. A citizenship elsewhere means nothing to them, if HK itself cannot be protected. My brother is living in HK right now and, while not actively rioting, refuses to leave even though he has permanent residency in Australia.

Considering the power China holds over the world right now, I don't blame UK only resorting to "virtual signalling" - they're doing the best they can. Handing out citizenship for free is not a gesture of care, when the one thing that HK rioters really want is not to live somewhere else better, but to save their own home.

"Reasons to Stay Alive" by Matt Haig

@neil
Clashed with my music jam night but I hope it goes well! Maybe I can come to another meetup.

I'm going through CSS: The Definitive Guide by O'Reilly, published in 2017 and I got this along with other O'Reilly books from a humble bundle back in Nov 2017. I'm using an incremental reading method to go through this book. O'Reilly really live up to their reputation for being awesome compsci books - I finished first chapter and it covered even the most obscure ways of doing things, such as linking stylesheets from Apache .htaccess. O'Reilly is well worth the money especially if you see any special bundle sales.

"Be who you needed when you were younger" Speech from Brad Montague https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwawsVan05s

@freemo

*backs away from quora*

Special thanks to my friend https://www.deviantart.com/flame-shadow for my new avatar! The hippo is a pun for my blog https://hippocampus.worldrovine.com

#showerthought Up until now I have been stalled by one thing in my project ideas: server side operation. So far my ideas have at least some kind of file I/O involved, which require server side scripts. That's out of scope for my assignment, and I haven't done learning all the client side shit yet.

So if I eliminate all the server-related operations in my ideas... I can actually get something done!

I'm gonna spend this month going through two online web dev courses: Web Developer Bootcamp on Udemy by Colt Steele, and one about CSS Grid on Scrimba. Wish me luck.

Here we go, a blog for my long form learning journal, with a Mastodon widget!

https://hippocampus.worldrovine.com

@freemo

I managed to learn a lot today without accomplishing anything. Things I've done:

- Setting up Grav as a custom webapp only to realise that the latest Grav requires PHP 7.3.8 which isn't Yunohost's PHP version, as Yunohost follows Debian stretch;

- Setting up Jekyll in Gitlab with a theme I want, but Gitlab CI confused me mid-way;

- Pico CMS as custom webapp in Yunohost was the closest to getting working, but a lot of plugins and themes are outdated;

- Dotclear2 authentication doesn't like Yunohost's LDAP;

I'm really trying not to use WordPress here but I have wasted all day on the above.

I'm also seriously considering ditching Yunohost with how restricted they are with my host.

But for now I've accumulated too much frustration and have to call it a day.

Also my goodness the increased character limit is satisfying. Thanks @freemo

Thanks for hosting @freemo.

I'm going to use this account for keeping track of my learning, to complement the theme of qoto.org. Hopefully with that usage it might even be my Mastodon main.

Gonna start my first post with this article I came across on Quora, despite my slight distaste of the monetisation the platform has tread towards:

https://medium.com/better-marketing/how-to-actually-learn-a-skill-from-a-book-e72261fcae70

The article is suggesting the use of handwriting a particular lesson 100 times, before experimenting and learning from it.

I was born and raised in Hong Kong until 15. The way we learn Chinese (a language evolved from pictures, so instead of memorising 26 alphabets that you string together, you memorise >1k different shapes) was largely rote learning - recite a chapter until you can do it from memory, handwrite a chapter 100 times. If you were naughty at school, handwrite a chapter 100 times more.

Sounds daunting and ineffective in Western standards, and I didn't like it, but it did have its merit. Even more so if you care about what you are learning.

The article used copywriting as an example of the learning subject. Since I'm learning programming, I wonder how I'm gonna do this - handwrite code 100 times? Handwrite explanation of algorithms 100 times? I do love handwriting so any excuse to get my pen flowing is a good excuse.

#introduction #learning