dcw303

The battle between form and function was never clearer than in the era of DVD menus. The viewers function objective (start watching the movie as quickly as possible) is at direct odds with the creator's form objective (steal the viewer's time to expose them to my "creation")

I'm also aphantasic and dream normally.

I have some intermittent ability to lucid dream. I have noticed that if I am acting as a "passenger", the imagery is vivid and I will be able to recall everything. Sometimes something in the dream will prompt me to think. It might be entering a phone number, or reading text. As soon as I engage the process of thinking, the imagery goes away. Long lucid dreams for me rely on me being able to remain in the passenger seat.

In my waking life I consider my aphantasia similarly - I can imagine things and get the briefest of a "snapshot" of an image, but any attempt to hold onto it means it vanishes - I don't know how that's related but I suspect that it is.

I know this is different to how I am wired for sound, because I have inner music, inner voices, etc. I can replay music at will, change voices, investigate and modify them, all with perfect quality of audio recall. Earworms can be really annoying ;)

For those in Japan who are interested but getting blocked (or waiting) for access via Komodostation.com:

199,980 base 256GB

244,980 1TB model

considerable markup even over the current USDJPY rate

I'm not species-ist. If a digital sentient being has something to say and they can express it through music, I'm more than willing to listen.

But listening to these samples, it's obvious that, while technically proficient, they have no voice. Funnily enough, neither does most of the human produced music slop that existed before gen AI.

All it exposes is that most people have no taste. This is as good as shuffling through popular songs on Spotify.

it's not. We were able to get rid of 6 fingered hands by getting very specific, and fine tuning models with lots of hand and finger training data.

But that approach doesn't work with code, or with reasoning in general, because you would need to exponentially fine tune everything in the universe. The illusion that the AI "understands" what it is doing is lost.

I am a new initiate into the world of 3d printing for minis. I decided a resin printer does not suit my small apartment lifestyle, and got an Elegoo Centauri Carbon FDM printer. It's pretty plug-and-play, there was very little setup required.

www.reddit.com/r/FDMminiatures/ will give you an idea of the level of quality you can reach. With the smallest 0.2mm nozzle, will it reach resin levels? Close but not really. Is it good enough for me to screw around with, improve my painting skills, and play casual games? Certainly.

Also I subbed to the OnePageRules patreon, they offer alternative minis and rulebooks that are very similar to GW, with an alternate for fantasy and 40K, as well as fleet battles and other stuff.

I have not found that to be the case, the books I have read have gone into deep foundational detail to build up knowledge. Perhaps you're referring to Vol 1 & 2 of "The Art Of Problem Solving"? I haven't read them but from what I know they are a distillation of core concepts for students looking to do competitive maths.

It's confusing because that title is also the name of the publisher / website of the series of the books I'm reading.

I took a brief detour late last year to study "Linear Algebra: Theory, Intuition, Code", and to my surprise it stuck pretty well. The author said the pre-reqs were just "basic high school math", but I'm glad I had recently done lots of algebra and geometry, as the difference between that and some vague memories of stuff I did 30 years ago in school is pretty wide.

I haven't started any 3d game projects yet. For that, my plan is to do the webgpufundamentals.org course first. Scanning the TOC, I think I would be able to attempt it from what I learned from the linear algebra book.

That said, I'm doing AOPS Intermediate Algebra at the moment, and the Precalc text covers more advanced trig and matrix stuff, so I'm thinking it would be good to finish at least to there before starting to apply the knowledge.

Just self study with the (physical) books. I did also try the ebook combo for the Prealgebra book, but I found typing latex in the answers to the exercises was cumbersome.

I think the online classes with interactive lessons is a separate thing, but I don't have any experience with that.

AOPS audience is gifted high school kids, so it doesn't get up to the college level. The core texts are:

- Prealgebra

- Intro to Algebra

- Intro to Counting & Probability

- Intro to Geometry

- Intro to Number Theory

- Intermediate Algebra

- Intermediate Counting & Probability

- Precalculus

- Calculus

My theory is that people who like math have a reward system that responds well to gaining an understanding on empirical concepts. I have that, and it does drive me to keep studying math. Not that I find it easy though, I don't think I'm able to skip steps, and I often have to repeat things I've already done before they sink in. The difference is that I find this process enjoyable, so I don't mind spending the time.

If I can compare to another activity, I've always wanted to be an artist as well, and have spend quite a bit of time trying to build up the skills. The problem is that, if I'm honest with myself, is I just don't enjoy the process of creative expression, it doesn't trigger any reward system that means anything for me. I wish it did but there's just nothing there. It was a hard pill to swallow, but I realized I like the idea of being an artist, but I don't enjoy the process. Hence my ultimately crummy artwork!

Sorry, I realized I'm talking about myself more than you, but I hope it's some help. The point I hope it makes is that everyone has a different personality, and from that different reward systems. It sounds to me like yours doesn't align with math, and that's fine. I wouldn't try to force yourself to study something which you don't love, at least if it's optional self study. Find subjects that you love learning, and the results will come naturally.

I've been doing similar for about a year. My target is to learn the math needed to make 3d games, so basically algebra, geometry, calculus and linear algebra.

I started with brilliant.org, and while I liked the level of polish in the interactive lessons, I found the lesson structure to be out of sequence, often referring to things that haven't been covered yet. They didn't seem to have put as much thought into pedagogy as Math Academy as described in TFA.

So I gave up on that and instead have been shipping several kilograms of dead tree across the pacific in the form of The Art Of Problem Solving series of textbooks. They are great, the lesson structure and building up of complex ideas from first principles is outstanding. They will humble you though, as the exercises are tough. They're also quite expensive but IMHO worth it.

Math Academy does look interesting, If I was not halfway through my series I would probably take a look. But I do enjoy having reference books on hand. Many times I've jumped back to brush up on a topic that has slipped from memory.

I solve my exercises with the most low tech solution possible, but I like the freedom it gives me to try new approaches, and nothing beats the latency between idea to ink on paper.

edit: also wanted to add that I've enrolled Chat GPT4 as my tutor. Contrary to many other's experiences that I've read, I find it to generally be very good at reasoning in this level of mathematics. It's helped me many times when I've gotten stuck. And on the occasions where it bullshitted its way to an incorrect answer, I always challenge it if I don't understand, and we ultimately find out if it hallucinated something (rare, can usually be fixed by restating the problem), or I gave it the wrong input to start with (unfortunately more common than I'd like)

Math as prep for 3d game programming. I've been out of school a long time, and when I was there I didn't even get to the pre-calculus level.

This year I've churned through all the introductory level texts from Art Of Problem Solving. Yes, they're written for high schoolers and you need to have some humility to admit you might be missing or have forgotten some fundamentals, but the lesson strucutre really appeals to me. It's the only series I've found that respects the learner and really builds up knowledge one piece at a time.

Before I start the intermediate texts and the calculus book, I've taken a detour to "Linear Algebra: Theory, Intuition, Code" and it's sticking a lot better now than previous attempts on the subject. So that gives me some confidence.

It literally is in an account with your name on it.