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Tuesday, Aug 07, 2007 - 23:23 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

A Procrastinator Am I

The Days of Dreams...

Urgh.

Planned to continue programming an RTS experimental framework for my UROP today after stripping the Fouiero source code apart to get a code skeleton yesterday, then just didn't feel like it. Well, I've procrastinated on that for the whole of the holidays, so why not another day?

The cause this time was the desire to produce one truly professional drawing, the sort that people take one look at and assume that the guy who did it does it for a living; So far, I've been kind of sloppy (e.g. the blog skin illustrations), and I haven't taken the time to learn how to colour properly. No way I'm gonna manage Random Personal Achievement #614 - Get one's work on a Magic: The Gathering card in greyscale.

Well, it ain't happening soon. But it's fun to draw. It's fun to dream too, and rarely I'm fortunate enough to remember them after I wake. Very recently there was one of an immense building which was large enough to contain terraced houses within it, far larger even than the monolithic city-blocks of Judge Dredd, I suppose. However, even that's nothing compared to this old fave of mine:


Welcome to my world. (Click to enlarge)

That's the merest corner of a worldship being constructed from the inside out, never to be actually complete - cities are raised on its "frontier" surface, and simultaneously enclosed by construction craft. When (or more usually before) a new "world" is ready and supplied with its atmosphere, the process continues on its roofs and walls. In the above illustration, a huge rift is being busily closed, with a temporary tube transport connection jury-rigged together at the tailend.

When I'm retired, I may get around to inking and colouring this.

Tailing Tracks of Time...

There just isn't enough. Time, that is. And I finally can admit to myself just why this is so.

It is simple, really. I just have the habit of finding stuff for myself to do. While I hope to get my Kingdom of Loathing allotment down to around 20 minutes a day soon with one-click gym training for the Level 30 trophies, I am downright expert at distracting myself. Scrolling through my recent Wikipedia history alone shows up entries of dubious value such as the 180 kickflip, 33 Thomas Street, Algal bloom, An Experiment on A Bird in the Air Pump, Artur Friedenreich and Awari, and that's not going beyond A yet.

Recall that damned if you do, damned if you don't interview question on one's biggest weakness? This is what I would say if by some chance I didn't prepare beforehand for it - mine is not knowing when to let go, or rather just not letting go, since the right time to let go is never; Eventually it will be achieved. It always has been this way.

This may be slightly problematic since I like to clean my slate before going on to my next life goal, and some (like that web MMORTS) have stuck around for like forever already. Easier to move mountains than one's personality, sadly. The only consolation I know is that its time will come.

Something about Wikipedia before I forget - I get that feeling that academic society as a whole looks down upon it as a reference, and I could feel one History lecturer sniffing at it when she warned us students off using it as a source. Okay, it's compiled by unpaid volunteers and any loony can edit it at his whim, but overall it doesn't fare badly at all against such olden goldies as the Encyclopedia Britannica (says Nature).

The biggest strike against it would be that it is too obvious and easy - no research skills needed. If any rank outsider just googles the topic, chances are that he'll get to the predigested Wikipedia article on it in no time anyway. But does obvious and easy mean worthless? I don't know, but when I happen to use stuff direct from Wikipedia I try to quote the secondary references on the bottom of the Wikipedia page, and everyone's happy.

And I should seriously cut back on the DotA. Approximately five hours a week may not be much, but five hours is still five hours. It's the competition against other humans that draws me, but too often I can see how the game will go after everyone has selected their heroes. The frustration when one's team is saddled with a feeder who insists on sticking around the creeps with 50hp instead of going back to heal is also bad for one's heart. I had one such champion on my side yesterday.

And a Game

Before starting on game theory, it might be fashionable in a clichéd journalism-school way to ease in with an anecdote about a game. Basketball it will be, then. Now, basketball has always firmly been second behind soccer in my choice of recreation, and not just because I happen to like the latter more. To that I can add at least three more reasons.

Firstly, I have never been sure exactly how much force is considered legal, both in driving towards the basket and in the defending underneath it. Being a friendly throwabout and all, it seems bad to press in harder than might be allowed due to the customary hesitancy to call fouls in a casual setting, or to barge in strongly for that matter - Yea, getting caught for charging may be meat and potatoes for the professionals, but it just doesn't seem good among weekend warriors.

Secondly, my finger joints frequently get punished. Once during NS, the fourth finger on my right hand took the full impact of a hard pass, and I remember not being able to bend it painlessly for a year or more - I was still performing my own brand of physio on it during the first semester of university. More minor irritants have come and gone, but with them being inevitably inflicted on my right hand, the hand that is engaged in the bulk of typing and writing, it might be understood how this may be regarded as a necessary tradeoff with basketball. Legs aren't all that critical to scholarly pursuits, after all.

Thirdly, football seems to me a more... egalitarian game. Height is useful, of course, but even at the very pinnacle of the sport, relative shorties (say, around 1.65m or less) are well represented. Think Messi, Zola, Wright-Philips, Carlos, Saviola and Romario, to name a few contemporary stars. Maradona, who is considered by many as the greatest, topped out at 1.66m. Many others not in that category still happen to be shorter than me - Pelé, Owen, Tevez and Scholes to start the list, and they are by no means uncommon.

In contrast, success in basketball seems contingent, though of course not fully dependent on, very uncommon height. The average NBA pro measures in the region of 6' 7" (2 metres) tall, whereas the average American male is 1.77m tall. According to the 2004 NBA survey, just two participants in the entire league were below that height.

This is a consequence of the objective of the game itself, and very seldom surmountable by talent or effort alone, unless one has immense energy like Muggsy Bogues (shortest ever NBA player at 1.60m), or an unbelievable leap like Spud Webb (1.69m and once-NBA Slam Dunk contest winner). Still, they were novelties then and now, just because contributing is just that much harder when just about anyone else can post one up in defence; Good luck for a normal slum kid trying to go rags-to-riches and make it in the big leagues - he'll need it.

But that's just me talking.



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