DeltaAro

On 4/14/2024 at 4:54 AM, -Veet-Voojagig said:

First I thought this drawing would deserve a real paper, but somehow the lines add to the experience.

Makes me remember an English lesson in sixth grade, in which we read a story about police in Texas. That term "K-9 unit" came up, somebody asked what it meant, and the teacher explained, "It's a code word for police dog:  K-9, canine, ca...nine".

And I just thought: "Seriously, code word? They must be very simple-minded there." 😅

On 3/31/2024 at 1:29 AM, smac n cheese said:

parents... UGH THEY LOVE LITTLE KIDS 

Yeah, at least my parents were equally bad to me and my much younger sister.

15 hours ago, Sili said:

[[Specialist]]

Stellaris Wiki?

2 hours ago, Cavetowns_fkin_awesome said:

Also I admit I am so scared of adults I don't know why but I am SCARED of anyone over 25 :'>

That's very strict. Even the original boomer slogan was: Don't trust anyone over 30. 🙃

2 hours ago, smac n cheese said:

No, I'M the baby of this site!!!!!!!!!! (I'm 12)

12 years... that was a long time ago. I guess back then in math, they started to write 4x instead of 4 · x.

And I always thought: put the %&!§$ dot back in there!!!

2 hours ago, smac n cheese said:

I'm also scared of adults lol, probably bc almost all the adults I've met in my life had been either toxic or downright abusers...

I'm very sorry that you had such experiences. It seems that you at least know nice people of your age. Which I can't say for my youth.

There were some posts on this board about diabetes 1, and this made me remember of a girl in my class who also suffered from this and therefore had to avoid sweets with real sugar. So my classmates thought it was a good idea to bully her by singing "life is sweeter with sugar" and the like. Combined with horrible teachers, it was pretty bad.

On 3/26/2024 at 1:40 PM, Karasu said:

So I had my first sexual interactions with someone. And I just want to talk about it, because it somehow drives me insane, haha. Don't understand me wrong, he was very kind and tried his best that I feel good. But! I just didn't, lol. I know, I can't suspect that it will be super good for the first time. But idk, I realized that my body reacted, but myself didn't. My head was full of toughts and I coulnd't relax. And than it was too much for me, so I stopped it. What was okay. We couddled, what was also okay, but somehow also annoyed me - a bit. The whole experienced was to me more like a movie what was played and I was the watcher.

I wouldn't stress about it...

Only if this was a pattern, like for me, it would hint at something (I have strong aegosexual tendencies).

On 3/26/2024 at 1:40 PM, Karasu said:

I just let it happened because I tought, girl, just let it be, look how it feels and if you like it or not, you need to have this experience someday why not now?

But you only "need" to have this experience, if you are generally interested to repeat it.

Otherwise, it would be because society exerts an unjustified, extreme social pressure. Like, for some reason, it's considered positively shameful to not have sex after a certain age, and totally socially acceptable to shame virgins. IDK how many aces just had sex because of that.

On 3/26/2024 at 1:40 PM, Karasu said:

We also kissed what I also didn't like that much, but he did so he kissed a lot what was also annoying for me, lol. I mean, whats the point of kissing? I just absolutely don't feel it, not a bit.

Yes, sex without kissing is like milk without cereal for most people. A lot of brain areas for touch processing map to the lips and tongue, so that's why it's usually done, I guess. But then ... the touch sensation from that area is just detailed, not inherently that pleasurable.

On 3/26/2024 at 1:40 PM, Karasu said:

What does he expect then? I know, talking about how you feel is very important but it's so haaaaard! I just want to hiiiiide. Now, if I think about the situation I am feeling anxious, at the edge of crying, confused and stresssed. I know there is someone who likes me but I can't like him back. I am just feeling nothing.

It depends on what you want, try it again, or not?

I don't think we have to give people we just recently met and are casually dating long explanations why we break up ...

On 3/28/2024 at 4:44 AM, Cavetowns_fkin_awesome said:

I got scared for a second thinking I got some 50 yr olds on here 

Yeah, 50 is the right age for being Aro Scoutmaster.
😀

Seriously, we ain't a youth organization here, but all-inclusive. We just skew young because older aros probably don't know about it. I guess it's a bit similar for Aven, but not that extreme.

I also nowhere feel as old as here.

On 3/21/2024 at 4:56 PM, CanadianBird said:

If CSS is the whipped cream, then HTML is the pancake. I like to think of it like the outlet that holds the charger. Because it's a base, there's a limit to what you can do with it in terms of styling. However, without it, you can't do anything at all.

Sometimes I think applying CSS doesn't feel like putting whipped cream on a pancake, but more like making a Baked Alaska.

On 3/21/2024 at 4:56 PM, CanadianBird said:

I actually don't think CSS is all too difficult to learn if you've never used a back end language before (HTML doesn't count here). In fact, compared to styling with HTML I would actually call it easier because of how it's organized.

How does one style with HTML? I know that web design in the age of yore was based on using HTML tables for the page. Controversially, that was probably a rather natural way to look at things. And the first iterations of CSS really had inadequate layout capabilities, e.g. missing display:table, display:flex.

Anyway ... IMHO, CSS never ceases to amaze me. Like when I came across the problem explained here. I really don't think there's anything "easy" about it. 😀

On 3/21/2024 at 4:56 PM, CanadianBird said:

Since I posted that first comment I did end up completing my second year compsci course and learned some java (still a beginner but I can make objects, user controls, and move stuff) but It's been torturous. Java is like math. It is math. Applying it is like calculus. Unfortunately for me, it's also important. But it does do some pretty cool things.

Normal programming is certainly way more analytical compared to CSS. So I totally agree it is very close to math

But there was some interesting research that I just have to share, claiming "... coding does not precisely replicate the cognitive demands of mathematics either".

Probably the crucial difference is that one can employ indirect or non-constructive methods in math, but not in programming. Like, you can prove there are infinitely many primes without having to develop an algorithm that produces an infinite sequence of primes.

If we look at Euclid's proof ...

"Assume that you found the largest prime n, then the product 2 · 3 · 5 · ... · n + 1 must be prime again, since any division by 2, 3, ..., n always yields the remainder 1."

... we see that it only works non-constructively: you show that a claim is self-refuting. But you don't get a method to construct primes by this. A counterexample would be 2 · 3 · 5 · 7 · 11 · 13 + 1 = 30031. This is not a prime, since 30031 = 59 · 509.

Indirect / non-constructive programming OTOH does not exist. Even the most abstract programming style must in the end construct something, produce something.

So there will be a long disclaimer, that can be skipped (but then don't complain). CW: transphobia.

On 3/6/2024 at 3:27 AM, Fox said:

I know the definition is that it's an innate, internal sense of what your gender is. Can anyone elaborate on what this sense feels like? Is it something you just know?

It is absolutely mysterious to me.

To identify the internal sense of gender, shouldn't one tell people what this sense is about?!

Compare that to "aromantic": Terms like "romantic attraction" are certainly very vague. But we still have some rough idea what romance is, we can point to it, give examples. And we learn that most people feel a mental pull or motivational force towards engaging romantically with someone, which we call romantic attraction.

You cannot easily confuse "romantic attraction" with something totally different, like "desire to play video games" (ok, not talking about Otome games 😉). This makes the term meaningful.

"Sense of gender" is NOT like that. Previously I believed that it was about how we relate to masculinity, femininity. But what is the relation? How do we relate? What does that even mean, since e.g. a woman can embrace femininity or reject it, and both options are "fine"?

Also, I wrote somewhere else:

On 1/30/2024 at 1:13 AM, DeltaAro said:

what even is femininity and masculinity? A set of attributes, behaviors, and roles? In that case, they are Mandelbrot-like complex, with exceptions and exceptions to exceptions. E.g. The Warrior is the archetype of masculinity: the male symbol ♂ represents the shield and spear of Mars. But ok, there are female warriors, what to do with them? We expect them to wield elegant "feminine" weapons like rapiers or naginatas. Not a war hammer! So you can at least be feminine in your unfemininity. Amazing.

And then you have xeninity. Now we're going to be very nice, respectful and accepting, and explicitly repeat that xenogender people are valid.

But with xeninity taken seriously, literally anything that humans do and are can be considered gendered! It would be no contradiction saying "I feel my gender through playing video games" (Gamergender).

On 3/6/2024 at 3:27 AM, Fox said:

I have inclinations towards different gender expressions on different days. Like, one day I'll want to wear feminine clothing, and another day masculine clothing. Some days I'll want a male body, and other days a female body, and most days I don't really care. Are these gender expressions, or are they indications of a changing gender identity? What's really the difference or the connection between gender identity and gender expression? 

The difference between gender expression and identity is that the former is observable, while the latter is a subjective feeling.

But I've never ever come across an explanation regarding the connection between those two. It's really very obscure.

Personally, I don't like non-neutral (feminine or masculine) presentation, and avoid buying things that are advertised as gendered (clothing, accessories, cosmetics, fragrances ...). But I don't feel any connection from that to my gender identity. I'm more fighting against being gender-manipulated by giant corporations.

On 3/6/2024 at 3:27 AM, Fox said:

I don't really understand how to "sense" or "know" my gender, I just understand some days I feel like a skirt and other days a sweatshirt (for example.)

I would suggest you use:

• agender
• genderfluid
• nonbinary

On 3/19/2024 at 11:30 PM, CanadianBird said:

I can definitely see why some back-end programmers look down on us CSS users, but I think it's fair to say that sometimes we have it tough too (Of course, I've only been a it for a year-ish consistently, so experts would have it better than me).

The CSS box model is IMHO pretty difficult to understand and use correctly, and I've seen many developers who exhibit a stubborn resistance to it, since it's so different to normal programming.

Nowadays, we use stuff like Bootstrap or Foundation that make it dramatically easier, and many frontend developers regard those frameworks as workarounds to understanding CSS. They're doing ok, until a certain "small problem" comes up that needs manual fixing ...

23 hours ago, organs and bone said:

What’s the opinion on hmtl?

Plain HTML is easy to master. Do I have an opinion of it? It's kind of like asking my opinion on water, it's too basic and there's no way around it ... (HTML 5 was of course a godsend, imagine there was a time when Netflix used Silverlight).

22 hours ago, Balfrog said:

It is decently fun, but if you play it you probably need to read a fan wiki to find a lot of stuff.

Kudos for admitting that. Most don't.

IMHO, Elden Ring is a victim of the difficulty hype. They wanted to sell 20 million copies, not be a niche game, but also not alienate the git-gud anti-easy-mode gamers.

So they reduced the execution difficulty, but increased the knowledge difficulty (that can be bypassed by using Wikis).

Elden Ring is an extremely difficult game if you figure everything out by yourself. If you don't and instead look up the PvE meta in the Wikis, it's pretty easy.

So I hate Elden Ring's the "accessible difficulty". Easy mode is more honest than this farce.

Try to find out by yourself how to dodge Malenia's Waterfowl dance, LOL. 😄

On a basic level 130 build, with no Wiki knowledge, Malenia is so hard that Isshin, the Sword Saint from Sekiro is a mere joke in comparison.

Elden Ring hints at a psychological pathology in some segments of the gamer population. In the end, everybody says "Oh, I didn't use the Wiki". But of course they did.

Otherwise, drop-off stats (achievements) would look worse than Sekiro's or Lies of P's and not much better instead.

Further proof is that the most common ending achieved is "Age of the Stars", which is hidden behind a lengthy, complex quest line that (unless you play like a beta tester) you likely will miss or lock yourself out of. It's absurd to believe that players would organically get that ending more often than the standard one.

And the one who don't use Wikis are bashed. It's really ridiculous when some players complain they get lost and the answer is "Duh, you literally have the light of grace that guides you!"

Yeah, the graces guide you directly to a boss (Margit, the Fell Omen) which is, with your character at this point in the game, 10 × harder than all the other first bosses of famous Soulslikes: Asylum Demon, Phalanx, Gyobu Oniwa, Parade Master, etc.

22 hours ago, Balfrog said:

My brain appears to be stuck on elden ring at the moment. It is decently fun, but if you play it you probably need to read a fan wiki to find a lot of stuff. Starting out is rough in comparison to mid game as leveling is harder early on. Multiple characters are introduced with fake names that are close enough to their name I didn't notice until reading the fan wiki. For instance Ranni starts as Renna, and then you don't see here for a while, same with a boss you first see as Margit but is really Morgot. I don't remember names easily but I don't think this helps.

Seriously it has its downsides, probably more a 7 / 10, not like a 10 / 10 masterpiece as often claimed.

Generally, I'm not the biggest fan of open world games, they often have so much fluff and filler. And Elden Ring is certainly no exception. I think this game was just too big, too ambitious for a mid-sized studio like From Software.

The recycling is pretty extreme. You fight Morgott and his Alter Ego Margit three times, basically every boss at least twice (perhaps in an Evergaol or dungeon), and it's not done well like in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth where you fight the Turks multiple times. In FF 7 that's explained by the plot, and you see cutscenes of them escaping after being defeated, not the dying animation!! 😖

So bosses are massively recycled. And catacombs, mines and caves = basically always the same. The story is also completely impenetrable.

I liked Demon's Souls Remake more. That's it, I said it.

• much better graphics (PS5 exclusive), three years ago I couldn't believe how incredible it looked
• no fillers
• no recycling
• accessible story
• it's straight-forward, doesn't encourage cheesing 🧀Elden Ring bosses OTOH do input reading and have just ridiculously delayed attacks and mobility, but they all can be easily cheesed.
• the atmosphere of the dungeons is unmatched, so unique and dreamlike (Prison of Latria, Boletarian Palace)

On 5/31/2023 at 3:43 PM, CanadianBird said:

CSS coding

Great, I'm very impressed! For me, starting to code in CSS was the uncomfortable moment where all my previous programming experience was null and void.

I think that CSS in reality means "Check your superiority, you actually suck".

Oh, and if someone says it's not real programming, show them that.

CSS + HTML is Turing-complete! 😄

On 3/13/2024 at 7:40 PM, organs and bone said:

Didn't Nigel Farage suggest that June 23, the day of the Brexit referendum, should be celebrated as Independence Day?

😄

I succumbed to the temptation to buy Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. 🙃

This is basically Final Fantasy Remake part 2. It's a standalone game: You get a small bonus for having FF VII Remake, but you can't reuse your characters.

Right now, I'm at the Mythril mines, so relatively at the start. Up till now, it's truly EPIC, with a huge and grandiose open world ... it seems the game constantly tries to outdo itself, lol.

I would very, very much recommend it. It may be the best game of this generation yet.

What an improvement compared to the rather formulaic and repetitive Final Fantasy XVI... the only better aspect there was the gritty medieval fantasy setting, which I like a bit more than the cute shōnen anachronism stew (sci-fi/magic/swords) of Final Fantasy VII.

Now, I'd suggest you play Final Fantasy VII Remake before. Or the Midgar part of the original* (I guess, if you look up the story, you won't emotionally connect with the characters).

* Of course, the original is very rough for modern standards, but I got used to it after 1–2 hours. It runs fine with the ePSXe emulator.

EDIT: I've now noticed, that Final Fantasy VII Original also exists as a PS 4 game for 15 € !! So you can play it WITHOUT a PC emulator.

Oh, and the difficulty is "high" on normal difficulty for Final Fantasy standards. 🙂 The mainline bosses are can be tough when you skip too much of the open world side content.

Cloud, Sephiroth and Zack

6 hours ago, organs and bone said:

Lol, thanks to la Révolution française and Napoleon ... but it wasn't just meter, gram, etc. they even had a Revolution calendar, Revolution clocks, ...

A 10-hour day, with 100 minutes per hour, and 100 seconds per minute.

But sometimes traditions have some internal sense, and then the "rationality" of the reformers turns out to be mere foolishness.

Like being able to divide by 3, 6, 8, 12 is a good thing, which the decimal system doesn't allow.

On 3/10/2024 at 8:15 PM, organs and bone said:

here’s another one.  I do struggle a lot with my over simplification or hoofed creatures, especially equines. I did struggle with this and I’m not sure if I like it but ah well

Very nice!

The reference is mysterious for me.

16 hours ago, Nix said:

Oh don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to suggest you don't need some form of instruction or teacher. Would be a little weird since I'm an art teacher ;)

Yes, that makes sense. 😅

16 hours ago, Nix said:

My point was how people tend to look down on forms of instructions that are focused on (what they would consider) 'low-art'. I taught myself to draw action poses by looking at anime, mainly Dragon Ball Z (rip Akira Toriyama) But my art school teachers wanted me to drop that practice as it wasn't considered 'good art'.

They fit the cliché of fine art teachers ... culture snobs, oops.😉

I would understand it if they said: anime / manga is quite a bit different and skills aren't easily transferrable. You may get confused.

That's how it's for me. E.g. the very little bit of practice I have is using 7 or 7 ½ heads proportions. Manga is around 6 heads and that's only the beginning, literally every proportion is different... I simply cannot draw manga.

Now, the negative attitudes towards certain books (usually poor Chris Hart) were more substantiated: that they teach you a bunch of ready-made "recipes", tricks or easy hacks to repeat - but not universal drawing principles.

I guess I overthink it, one should notice if one gets stuck with a book, right?

16 hours ago, Nix said:

I mean, I understand and teach the importance of looking at the classics and learning from their long journey from the stiff, awkward poses in ancient times to the dynamic and exciting ones in the Renaissance (great examples by the way!)

In defense of the ancients, it can't be 100 % skills. More like 80 % skills and 20 % deliberate style / artistic canon.

For example, the ancient Egyptian artists realized that they drew the human face and body incorrectly:

• frontal eye + head in profile
• frontal torso + legs sideways

It was a stylization that represented high status. Normal workers and slaves are depicted correctly!

Or another example: medieval art feels often feels a bit organized like a story to me: your gaze is supposed to wander around and look at all the small details, so modern perspective just wouldn't really work that well:

Tower of Babel by the Bedford Master, 1405–1435

Compared to...

Tower of Babel by M. C. Escher, 1928

Modern 3-point perspective is so imposing: it makes the parts of an image very unequal.

16 hours ago, Nix said:

I saw an experiment once were a group of students was tasked with learning to make a clay pot in 2 weeks time. Half of the group had to make as many pots in those 2 weeks as they could, while the other half got to use that time to make just one, but as perfect as possible. As you can probably imagine, the quantity group made a lot of really ugly pots, but at the end they had a fairly good grasp on which techniques worked well and which didn't. The quality group all made 1 nice looking pot, but they were a lot more frustrated by their learning process. The moral of that story is to not stare blindly at your art if you can't make it work. It's okay to just put it away and start fresh. It will speed up learning and it keeps frustrations at bay.

That totally makes sense. But now the big question: how do you motivate yourself to practice a lot of drawing fundamentals? Honestly, I find doing 1000 figure poses ... a bit boring.

While you learn less doing quality, the motivation to produce something nice, and your individual ideas instead of something generic, is higher.

PS: sorry again very verbose. Don't feel pressured to answer, I'm not even a paying student, haha. 🙃

4 hours ago, midnight_radio said:

i like books, music, star wars and cats.

If you like Star Wars and cats, you'll fit in here, I promise.

Oh, and welcome!

On 2/25/2024 at 4:24 PM, Nix said:

Christopher Hart's drawing books are super popular with the kids I teach. It looks cool, colourful and not too difficult, so I guess it speaks to them. I see them as just another tool, like most drawing books really. In my personal experience there is no perfect book to teach you to draw better or different. But drawing books can help to see how others do it, and that will certainly help on your journey.

Thanks for the advice, sensei! 🧑‍🎨

(I answer in this thread because it would be totally off-topic in the other one).

I always believed that one NEEDED books or a teacher. Because if humans could just naturally figure out how to draw by themselves, it wouldn't have taken so long for art to reach technical perfection.

Aside from obviously advanced topics like perspective and anatomy, even basic gesture drawing of pre-Renaissance art looks technically unsophisticated. It seems foreshortening is enormously difficult for humans to do right without instructions.

It's hard enough for me with instructions.

E.g. Ancient Roman painting was not that unrealistic, but they also consistently struggled with free 3D-rotation of limbs, e.g.:

Part from Initiation to the Cult of Demeter fresco, 1st century BC

Huge gap to:

Jonah (Sistine Chapel) by Michelangelo, 1512

Perhaps, one could argue, it was just their style. But it's hard to believe that everyone pre-Renaissance did not want to draw foreshortening right, and so I suspect it was technical progress. Especially since Romans and Ancient Greeks achieved perfection in sculptures.

PS: Thanks for reading all this. I hope I didn't come across as too pretentious. 😅

15 hours ago, organs and bone said:

your package hath arrived! quick dnd kitty doodle, not finished, but hoping to do all the classes!

Aww, how cute!!! 😸

Please, more art, please!

I have an M.Sc. in mathematics. Does that count as science (it's not empirical...) 🙂❓

I'm a software developer now.

4 hours ago, Nix said:

Wow I never knew they were called that, I've been rolling D20's for years. So maybe some cats playing Dungeons and Dragons?

Lol, DnD is a "platonic activity" I guess. 🙃

It's mathematically proven that there are exactly five of them. They appear in Plato's dialogue Timaeus.

He had some strange ideas about them. The dodecahedron is the shape of the universe as a whole. And the atoms of the elements are shaped according to the remaining ones: earth = cube, water = icosahedron, air = octahedron, fire = tetrahedron. 🤪

11 hours ago, organs and bone said:

@DeltaAro hahaha forgot to tag u

Not necessary. Just was busy yesterday, sorry for replying so late.

12 hours ago, organs and bone said:

YES I will :) any ideas for a scene or a pose?

Has someone drawn cats playfully jump around platonic solids (dodecahedron, icosahedron, ...)? Probably not. So that would be nice, some very subtle appreciation for platonic love. 🙂

Or cat eating ice cream , of course.

Just suggestions, I equally appreciate your own ideas. 💚

Cats, plz!