Out of the loop
Jun. 20th, 2010 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseLooking at my calendar I’ve been fairly busy for the last three weeks, in the first week entirely unexpectedly too which hasn’t helped. Thus reprioritising my… priorities has been a necessity and growing out of that I have even greater respect for the Objectivist view of opportunity costs. I only have so much energy, time and give a damn to get me through each day so in theory I ought to be facing some tough decisions about what does and doesn’t need to be done but interestingly enough that hasn’t quite been the case. There are some things that just don’t strike me as requiring my urgent attention or even my consideration at all, there are even things that, when I glance over them, no longer hold my interest in the slightest. I’m also coming back to things from long ago that I’ve entirely neglected. For example, it’s only this weekend that it’s sunk in that not only is my current build at least eight years old but that I’ve been forcing performance out of a processor that was renowned for overheating for all that time. AGP slots are a thing of the past and its all PCI-E now, Lenovo is repackaged IBM, I’m running on DDR RAM and when I look at component lists I don’t know what’s current anymore. I use to be a hardware junkie who had to have all the latest equipment the minute it was released, I sold on components that were less than a few months old because I’d bought the next innovation and was upgrading, and now I’m sitting on a machine that is… still a fairly moderate build for the time: eight years ago it probably counted as sci-fi futuristic. But times change and when I make my triumphant return from overseas I’ll be building the next innovation, with a spec list from my lieutenant because I still don’t know what’s what these days.
In the same tech loop, things have certainly changed over the years because in a conversation about the Xbox Kinect which segued into complaining about how it would be fairly useless due to there being no physical feedback I found myself supporting my argument for VR gauntlets with the fact that they could have business application. And realistically they could because you could have far larger screens and then the equivalent of touch screen technology without getting your fingers all over the monitor via VR gauntlets. Heck, build in an eye-tracking headset and you could have displays that maximised and minimised without an extra command from the glove unit. Though perhaps you might have to worry about the headaches caused by that if you weren’t Jem'Hadar or Cardassian.
On the non-tech side, of late I’ve been noticing that I’ve been able to apply what I’ve been reading about body language indicators. The first point made was to observe people which is something I’ve been doing for quite some time anyway but without any purpose. Years ago I use to sit in cafes, often at rail stations, people-watching but couldn’t put an intention to a gesture or expression. Now it’s growing more and more interesting to be able to look at a set of gestures or expressions in a context and suppose upon the subconscious intention. Without going into detail, not so long ago I got to view and apply case study gleaned information on the projecting of authority and how it should and shouldn’t be done. I’m also getting better at practicing the detachment required to keep context in mind since its one thing to understand the basic objective view and another entirely to remember to apply that in various circumstances.
In other news my lieutenant adroitly pointed out that my being INTJ according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test means that I’m part of a group that only makes up 1% of the population so my continual declaration that I’m surrounded entirely by idiots is a statistical fact. Unsurprisingly he’s ENTJ which gets termed appropriately enough the ‘field-martial’.
And lastly, coming back to my point about priorities and objectivity I’ve finally reached the end of the line when it comes to fandom ‘discussions’ where I have to teach critical reasoning regarding evidence, language and context first before the debate can even get started. It may be a failing of the age since increasingly I’m noticing that vast swathes of fandom seem to believe that by saying something they make it real regardless of the evidence to the contrary. Perhaps it’s a result of a rise in fantasy reading where the invocation of certain words will create something out of nothing, perhaps this is an expression of the fandom dream of becoming a State Alchemist and transmuting substances. I’ve no idea but right now at the current time there appears to be a pervasive inability to analyse evidence or undertake character analysis which would be fine if only they weren’t purporting to debate said topics. And I really don’t understand why anyone would profess to enter into a detailed analysis of a character if they’re not actually doing it. Nobody is forcing anyone to analyse anything in depth but if you declare that that’s what you’re going to be doing then the expectation is that you’ll follow through with it. You can’t announce that you’re going to analyse Farfrae and then base that analysis entirely on a single conversation he has with Elizabeth-Jane while in the process of wooing her for example. What’s happened to basic technique? To the analysis of the message which includes examining why the message was produced in the first place, who it was aimed at and how it was delivered? What happened to examining a single instance as a link in a chain and examining how it relates to other key points? This is the basic kind of analysis that eleven year olds studying A Midsummer Night’s Dream are expected to undertake after all and as far as I’ve noticed, those failing at such analysis are at minimum in their early twenties. This is just the sort of thing that makes a once engaging activity no longer enjoyable. I’d have more respect for these idiots if they’d just admit that they don’t know what they’re talking about: it’s the continual garbage as a smokescreen for lacking knowledge that offends me.
In the same tech loop, things have certainly changed over the years because in a conversation about the Xbox Kinect which segued into complaining about how it would be fairly useless due to there being no physical feedback I found myself supporting my argument for VR gauntlets with the fact that they could have business application. And realistically they could because you could have far larger screens and then the equivalent of touch screen technology without getting your fingers all over the monitor via VR gauntlets. Heck, build in an eye-tracking headset and you could have displays that maximised and minimised without an extra command from the glove unit. Though perhaps you might have to worry about the headaches caused by that if you weren’t Jem'Hadar or Cardassian.
On the non-tech side, of late I’ve been noticing that I’ve been able to apply what I’ve been reading about body language indicators. The first point made was to observe people which is something I’ve been doing for quite some time anyway but without any purpose. Years ago I use to sit in cafes, often at rail stations, people-watching but couldn’t put an intention to a gesture or expression. Now it’s growing more and more interesting to be able to look at a set of gestures or expressions in a context and suppose upon the subconscious intention. Without going into detail, not so long ago I got to view and apply case study gleaned information on the projecting of authority and how it should and shouldn’t be done. I’m also getting better at practicing the detachment required to keep context in mind since its one thing to understand the basic objective view and another entirely to remember to apply that in various circumstances.
In other news my lieutenant adroitly pointed out that my being INTJ according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test means that I’m part of a group that only makes up 1% of the population so my continual declaration that I’m surrounded entirely by idiots is a statistical fact. Unsurprisingly he’s ENTJ which gets termed appropriately enough the ‘field-martial’.
And lastly, coming back to my point about priorities and objectivity I’ve finally reached the end of the line when it comes to fandom ‘discussions’ where I have to teach critical reasoning regarding evidence, language and context first before the debate can even get started. It may be a failing of the age since increasingly I’m noticing that vast swathes of fandom seem to believe that by saying something they make it real regardless of the evidence to the contrary. Perhaps it’s a result of a rise in fantasy reading where the invocation of certain words will create something out of nothing, perhaps this is an expression of the fandom dream of becoming a State Alchemist and transmuting substances. I’ve no idea but right now at the current time there appears to be a pervasive inability to analyse evidence or undertake character analysis which would be fine if only they weren’t purporting to debate said topics. And I really don’t understand why anyone would profess to enter into a detailed analysis of a character if they’re not actually doing it. Nobody is forcing anyone to analyse anything in depth but if you declare that that’s what you’re going to be doing then the expectation is that you’ll follow through with it. You can’t announce that you’re going to analyse Farfrae and then base that analysis entirely on a single conversation he has with Elizabeth-Jane while in the process of wooing her for example. What’s happened to basic technique? To the analysis of the message which includes examining why the message was produced in the first place, who it was aimed at and how it was delivered? What happened to examining a single instance as a link in a chain and examining how it relates to other key points? This is the basic kind of analysis that eleven year olds studying A Midsummer Night’s Dream are expected to undertake after all and as far as I’ve noticed, those failing at such analysis are at minimum in their early twenties. This is just the sort of thing that makes a once engaging activity no longer enjoyable. I’d have more respect for these idiots if they’d just admit that they don’t know what they’re talking about: it’s the continual garbage as a smokescreen for lacking knowledge that offends me.
