racktash

In June I "accidentally" (I certainly never saw it coming...) got back into film photography. I bought a Lomography Konstruktor for fun and ended up having way more fun taking photos with it than I thought I would.

It's going to be a personal, subjective thing, but not having the option to take unlimited photos, as I tend to do with my phone when on holiday, say, but having to try to at least give each exposure a chance of being worth the expensive cost of film, made me rediscover the fun of photography.

Highly subjective views to follow...

1. That most people (including me) are utterly clueless a lot of the time, including people in very high positions of authority. Don't sweat figuring out the big questions or trying to solve problems that have been a feature of humanity for all of time.

1a. This is kind of a side point ... expertise in one thing doesn't make a person any good at other, unrelated fields. When I was younger, I used to think programmers (like me!) could solve the world's problems because "we're so smart and logical". I soon realised being a decent programmer just means I'm a decent programmer. Accepting this made me a lot more "chill".

2. Cynicism is probably justified – mankind has done A LOT of screwed up things – but ultimately unhelpful if you want to live a happy life. For those who've seen Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, the Ke Huy Quan character epitomises I think the best way one can live life – embrace the absurd, be happy with what you have, love your loved ones, be a bit silly and don't take everything too seriously.

I work on games as a hobby. Each game takes around 2 years or so to finish, which means I need to be able to sustain PRODUCTIVE development over a long time and resume paused development (for when life gets in the way of the hobby or I just need a break).

Here's my tips (based solely on my own experience, but maybe some of them will be useful to others):

1. Make a plan to decide what is in scope, what you want to make (at least for now). This plan can be revised, but you want to stick to it unless you have a very good reason to change. Avoid scope creep. (One way I manage this is to set goals. If I exceed my goals' deadlines, I can afford a bit of creep. Otherwise, I stick to the plan.)

1b. DESIGN your systems up front. You want to be adding modules to a well-architected system, rather than chipping away in the dark hoping a sane structure takes form by luck or genius.

2. From the outset, break the project into a series of medium-sized, high-level chunks. In my case, this is things like "create level 1", "complete weapon model 1", "create player gameplay code". Generally, I avoid moving off a chunk until it is completed, and each chunk is broken down into subtasks.

2b. Find a SIMPLE way to track these chunks and tasks. I use Trello, but don't use anything fancy lest the tool become its own side project (I speak from experience...).

3. Try to make some progress most days (unless I'm on a prolonged break). When I'm really not in the mood, I'll settle for just 25 minutes work (and often when you've done the 25, you'll find you're able to do more).

4. While you want a plan, and you want to design things before you implement them, especially architectural aspects, don't worry about being perfect. Get things done. You will be able to fix problems later. This is especially wise to remember if you're stuck – just get something that works there, and maybe tomorrow you'll figure a way to refactor or do it better, or maybe you'll even find that what you had was actually sufficiently decent.

5. Don't feel bad about taking prolonged breaks. For creative projects, this really refuels the tank, but I imagine it'll be useful for any significantly complex project. Absence makes the heart grow fond.

These things work for me at least!

I've long meant to read more about the brain's final moments (I've heard a little bit a out its final, frantic surge in other articles but never read up on it). Your comment made me very interested in the topic again, so thanks!

I spent much of my 20s obsessing over the meaning of life.

To me, the "answer" was to realise the question could only be asked because of quirks in language. We can ask the question, but it doesn't touch upon anything real.

I get my happiness in life (which I think is a different point) by enjoying small pleasures – a beer woth friends, or a movie at the cinema, or an engrossing book. I'm a simple guy. :)

Not looking to accuse the commenter of anything, but...

I think the Imitation Game movie may have given some folks a rather simplistic notion of Turing (indeed, I was under such an illusion until I read the biography on which the movie is supposedly based): that he was a tortured genius singly vital to the war effort, who was then persecuted and who then as a result committed suicide. But his real story is more complicated (though, to be clear, I am not looking to downplay how society treated him).

Turing's purposefulness didn't end after Bletchley or his conviction. Up until the end, he was doing ground-breaking work (at least as far as I understand it) in mathematical biology.

Yes, therefore it is not required (by this I mean one can be within the EU without being in the Eurozone, whatever the treaty details) – just like Sweden continues to be productively within the union while retaining its own currency.

The customisable membership (and again, certain core principles cannot be customised of course) is a strength of the EU.

Even as a (still!) pro-remainer/pro-EU UK citizen, comments like this always sound a little gleeful to me.

The Euro is not a requirement (obviously) of being in the EU. If the sovereign UK or sovereign Ukraine or sovereign Sweden (or Norway, or wherever) want to acquire/retain EU membership but don't want to adopt the Euro, then that's absolutely their right.

The EU is a wonderful (and of course imperfect) organisation because it is democratic, because it's a voluntary association of democratic states. Yes, being a member has some basic requirements (like upholding rule of law), but let's not pretend it has to be all or nothing.

The UK will I suspect one day rejoin the EU, and when it does, it will be two mature political entities coming to a mutually beneficial agreement.

Thanks so much for this. I've been finding it hard to separate useful resources from the salesy/hypefilled pieces so recommendations like this are very helpful.

I've never had a problem with programming languages – I'd pick up a book, do the exercises, play around with the language and get a feel – but I find "cloud" hard to get into for some reason.

Cloud computing (especially AWS). I've spent the last decade working on application software and am increasing worried how many jobs expect cloud experience these days as I have none.

* Operators And Things – a fascinating account of a woman's journey through (and out of) schizophrenia. Also, some very interesting insight into toxic office politics.

* Philosophical Investigations – I've wanted to read and understand Wittgenstein's PI for a while now. This year I've made a serious effort and it has been very worthwhile. Best read with a companion text (I used Routledge Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations).

I can relate to this comment. The Tao Te Ching had a profound influence on me. Reading it was the first time I engaged on a "spiritual" level with life (I'm a fairly pragmatic and reductionist guy, perhaps to a fault). But this also wore off for me and I returned to being my usual mostly unspiritual self after a couple of years boring my friends trying to tell my friends about the Tao... Without describing it.

I do feel like I have a respect for such things where before I just considered it all manipulative woo or self-delusion. I also think it paved the way to my being able to appreciate Wittgenstein's ideas (the ones I can grasp anyway).

I read through a few different translations of the TTC, two of which had commentaries. Both the text and the translations had somewhat different takes. So it's definitely worth trying a few versions.

Two I recommend: DC Lau's translation and Philip Ivanhoe's.

I wonder how many millions of dollars Google spent to rediscover the value in capitalising proper nouns. :)

I think most people that point to the historical use of the singular 'they' aren't trying to make any kind of bad faith argument – I think it's more an attempt to justify the modern usage by pointing to historical precedent as many folks feel that adds legitimacy.

Personally, 'they' singular has sounded natural to me my whole life. How much of that is generational and how much of it is regional variation would be interesting to know.

I was surprised when reading The Sense of Style by Pinker (not a book I would recommend incidentally) that the use of 'they' as a generic pronoun was still considered controversial. Pinker opts to alternate his chapters with he, then she, then he again – he explains this is to avoid the issue of having to otherwise use he/she type constructs. Had he used 'they', I would've never thought anything of it. Maybe it's a geographical thing?

I suspect Elements of Style is at the root of "avoiding passive" being popular advice.

It's a decent rule of thumb for those of us who accidentally slip into writing in the passive. Too much passive leads to writing that feels less direct, less active. Alas, as with every rule of thumb, you will get people who take it as a commandment and loudly denounce any and all use of passive, thinking they're being clever. I worked with a tech doc writer who liked to point out passive voice usage in peoples' work emails. Whatever gets you through life I guess...

I didn't take notes when reading Meditations.

I tried a programme of taking notes every time I read a "serious" nonfiction book a few years ago and for me it sucked all the joy out of it.

Even when reading programming books I tend not to take notes – though I'll do practical exercises so that the skills stick.

I agree with the other replier that describing autistic people as "chimps" is very inappropriate, though perhaps unintentionally so. I'm all too familiar with the coarse language some people like to use for those who are intellectually/socially disabled in some way, and I don't welcome seeing more of it here.

BUT I do think there is an important point buried in that comment.

It used to be when we spoke of autism, it was describing a very disabling condition, but increasingly we see a greater number of (for want of a better term) high-functioning cases falling under the label of 'autism'. Medical professionals even decided to get rid of the the separate diagnosis 'Asperger's' – a label that at least was something the public could understand as "like autism, but not quite".

None of this is to say that there weren't good reasons for broadening definition of 'autism'. And nor is it to say that high-functioning autistic people don't have problems they must deal with in everyday life. But I think one dangerous side effect of the conflation is that when we talk of "treating" autism, it is more obvious why one might want to do this in low-functioning cases. It's also obvious why high-functioning individuals might see this as an attempt to "erase" what makes them unique. Society can't adapt to everyone, but I absolutely think it can change to better accommodate the "high functioning".

It's generally good advice.

Although when I was younger I took it too much to heart and became obsessed with having a verbal and written understanding of everything when, sometimes, a deeper understanding at a subconscious, more intuitive, level is more useful. :)

Yes – it's both the most fun and frustrating hobby. :) Nothing gets me in that focus zone like working on a level or cl oding a new gameplay system. I think it's the thrill of tweaking, testing, tweaking, over and over again, which eventually produces a very satisfying product.

I'm currently working on a Godot project (highly recommend the engine for hobbyists).

The last project I released is a free total conversion survival horror mod for Half-life 2 – https://fourthstoa.itch.io/the-apocalypse-of-eden

At the risk of sounding very green, what is the best way to learn serverless/cloud? My decade or so of experience in the industry has been solely application development in C and C++. I've some personal experience in server side programming with PHP. Any time cloud concepts come up, it all seems very foreign to me.

If a pressure group closed off the main roads into a city in protest of some government policy, is that the kind of disruption that should be tolerated? If yes, where do we draw the line in tiny groups being able to grind the operation of society to a halt?

I hear what you're saying.

But I would argue that the Cornoation is an important public ceremony / event with every right to go ahead.

It's the same as when a foreign head of state visits and the police cordon off the roads for security.

In my view, this is different to pressure or protest groups disrupting traffic or public events.

If President Biden visits the UK, people should not be able to stop his going about a state visit. But they should be allowed to protest with banners and so on if they so wish.

There's definitely a balance to be struck between allowing protests to take place and also preventing a minority of protestors disrupting the lives of ordinary people.

For instance – I worked in Belfast while a series of flag protests took place (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast_City_Hall_flag_prote...) in 2012. In my view, these protestors had every right to make their views publicly visible and known.

But when they organised "rings of steel" around the city, preventing drivers from coming and going about their business, as they did on a few occasions, they had gone too far.

I don't know the full details of the anti-monarchist arrests, but unless they were planning to disrupt the events, I feel they should not have been arrested.

Some people definitely do fixate (and derive a sense of purpose, whether that's good or not) from perpetual productivity improvement – I think this is why online productivity and life hack gurus are so popular.

But for some, it's all about looking like they care about productivity because that's what their job or manager expects. Certainly this was the case for me. Throughout my twenties, I pushed myself to be more "productive" in my career because I thought I had to look like a go-getter to the people who paid me. I put in extra hours and effort, and even enrolled in an online university course to further expand my skills (resulting in me having next to zero free time!).

I still like to work hard and do good work, but I no longer push myself to be very good at everything I do. "Competent" is my aim. Doing my paid work to a standard that is "good enough" is not only easier on my stress levels, but my managers continue to report satisfaction with my work.

Some movies benefit greatly from having room (runtime) to breathe.

Historical epics like Laurence of Arabia, Ben Hurr, The Ten Commandments and Spartacus immediately come to mind. Their length adds to their "epic" character.

I can think of plenty of films that are overlong and suffer for it too of course. A recent example is the Danish film Godland. There were people literally asleep by the end of that one in the cinema showing I attended. I wished I could have done the same.

Yes, and if that's as far as it goes – "Hey, are you sure you want to use that word? Okay, it's your call." – I have no problem with it.

Some excellent writing involves getting into the heads of hard, mean characters who are going to say and think nasty things. I'd like it if writers were free to plumb the depths of such characters in their writing without having to worry about hurt feelings.

I'm not saying you're arguing contrary to any of this by the way. Just expanding on my views a bit.

I agree. I love reading books from around the mid 20th century – Chaim Potok and Richard Yates being my favourites. There are lots of things in Yates that could today be considered sexist or insensitive, but they're such a wonderful way to get a sense of the attitudes and culture of the past. Plastering over it to appease people who don't even really read (or watch movies in the case of Spielberg) is just immature in my view.

It's a side note, but I also dislike the notion of sensitivity readers and such for new publications too. All it can lead to in my view is a dulling of writing.

It's been about ten years since I read it, but I don't remember anything particularly "anti-feminist" in it. Or anything political at all. I'm curious why you think so.

I feel this can sometimes happen even when the writers stay the same.

Highly subjective opinion incoming!

By season 3, the characters on the BBC show Sherlock had become caricatures of their season 1 selves. Though maybe it doesn't help that the characterisation was always a bit over the top anyway...