(Slightly emo, people that actually read this, please disregard.)
Just a few moments ago one of the new members of my lab posed a simple question to me regarding the Hudson-Huxley equation which soon proved to be a devastating blow to my pride and confidence. Even though I had a vague idea of what the HH equation was all about (and pretty much told much of what I knew about it), she wanted a much simpler answer, one that established HOW Hudson and Huxley came up with the equation and essentially the basis of neuroscience which stood behind it. After struggling for a good amount of time another lab member revealed the answer to me: "V=IR".
Although the question posed was simple and seemingly trivial, it felt almost as bad (possibly worse) than getting a low test grade. Even if I got a low test grade, I can somewhat redeem myself by scoring better later in the course; I cannot redeem myself for this. It exemplified the difference between "knowing" and more properly "UNDERSTANDING" the material, a difference between an average person and a genius. The fact that I could not figure out what she talked about even with all the hints she provided proves, in my mind, that I am a much bigger idiot than I thought I was. And I'm sure she thinks so now too. This however is more trivial.
Although perhaps I am concerned of her perception of me. I don't want her to regard me as a genius but the fact that I couldn't figure out her simple question now makes me think that she regards me as possessing less potential intelligence than what she thought of before. In reality this should be of no concern, though of course it is human nature to want to have a good image of their self to others.
The aspect of having nothing that I can do about it is perhaps what's most devastating to me. I cannot redeem myself in any way from this small err I made. I am not only a biologist in a neuroscience lab but a biomedical engineer, who has been taught to remember "V=IR" ever since BME 101, where the teacher said, "if you drop BME and never want to take another engineering course again, you should at least remember V=IR". I felt that, though I am graduating this semester, I have failed. I have failed to grasp 4 years of engineering studies, thinking it is more like a fun game with interesting math problems than an aspect of innovation that can be applied to reality and promote a better state of living. In truth I had somewhat of an idea that I'm not quite applying engineering courses as much as I should be, since I could never really see the big picture: I only saw the math problems behind them, and solved them. I never thought "this is the problem I encounter when I make something like this". I only saw "there is a math problem. Let me solve it."
Not only that, I have failed in the biology aspect of the world as well. I have delved too deeply into understanding so much of the specifics that I forgotten that we need to look at the overall picture. One of my undergraduate labmates made a collage (he's part art major) based on such an idea that everyone looks so much about the small details that when they suddenly realize they should step back and see what they've done... it's a mess. It's like that. I look into my brain searching for answers and there's a bunch of answers, but they're all junk. They're all obscuring the true answer, the simple equation that established many different aspects of reality in many different fields.
There was no use sulking about this for a long period of time and this is partly why I wrote this up. While I'm not particularly happy this blog somewhat public, its a good enough place to write about it. I don't know what else I can do about what happened... I want to talk to the person who posed the question to me again but due to my poor conversation skills I wouldn't know what to say.
But maybe, I can try. In all cases even in a defeat like that I'll still have to get back up and do better. I already acknowledge I'm not some sort of genius. I'm not as smart as I appear to be. But I want to try, and that's mostly what my motivation for going through school and education is all about. This failure is devastating to me, yet essential and necessary for me to understand, since failure is the only way I truly learn. I hope to do better from now on, and never forget the simple things again. Such as V=IR.
28.8.08
21.8.08
School Days
One of the few anime where I can endure watching it even though the main protagonist and one other character is completely horrible and despicable in character personality yet watchable because--SPOILER but not really because anyone who has the faintest idea what School Days is should be able to guess-- they die at the end. And die beautifully. The one girl that I like and find absolutely moe is the girl that survives, albeit insane. However, that's sort of why I liked the show. My friend says I have an unhealthy obsession with yandere just because I find them so fascinating...moreso than tsundere. Although I think in School Days the yandere had a good reason to go psychotic since she was pressured on so many degrees and, while trying desperately to maintain her innocence and true love, logically breaks down after so many people betray her. At least in my mind and in this anime, she was logically yandere.
There are of course others who are not particularly logically yandere. I think these yandere are more scary in that aspect, yet just like how horror fascinates people, I still find them rather particular. Ryoko from Haruhi is a different kind of yandere, one I call a "calm, smiling" yandere. In a way her relation to her victims sort of is like a human to a mouse in a science experiment, unable to fully relate to their subject. While on one hand this seems cruel, on another (especially since I'm going into a science field where this is often seen everyday) it's sort of a "that's how it is, it can't be helped" attitude. Other yandere, especially Kaede from Shuffle, can be rather scary. Kaede (although it could be attributed to her young age) had a less noble reason for killing and stems more from "I need someone to blame" than for a true reason. This is a scary yandere.
But I digress. Aside from the characters and plot, the music varies. The ending changes from episode to episode, and I liked some of them and didn't like so much some of the others. The opening wasn't that great either. The main thing the show had going was the art, which was near CG quality. I find the character designs quite beautiful and even more so by the fact that the most moe character turns yandere at the end...:V
"Nice Boat."- I couldn't figure out what this had to do with the anime at first. I mean, sure there's a boat near the end of the show but so what? I found out using wikipedia that it was some 4chan comment turned meme and eventually became crazy popular for whatever reason. Something about people being angry at the series and the guy just randomly pops in and says "Nice Boat". Oh well. 4chan, you don't expect logic in that. :V
Additional Comments: I finished Tokimeki Memorial Only Love before School Days, which is a decent anime except for the emo parts (like all these series). Now I'm watching To Heart 2. Kind of like To Heart 1, kind of boring, but there's no emoing at least. But it feels awkward watching it after School Days. Kind of like "I wonder if Konomi will pull out a knife now and go on a killing spree" awkward.
Sigh. More Schoolgirl/harem anime should end like School Days. :(
There are of course others who are not particularly logically yandere. I think these yandere are more scary in that aspect, yet just like how horror fascinates people, I still find them rather particular. Ryoko from Haruhi is a different kind of yandere, one I call a "calm, smiling" yandere. In a way her relation to her victims sort of is like a human to a mouse in a science experiment, unable to fully relate to their subject. While on one hand this seems cruel, on another (especially since I'm going into a science field where this is often seen everyday) it's sort of a "that's how it is, it can't be helped" attitude. Other yandere, especially Kaede from Shuffle, can be rather scary. Kaede (although it could be attributed to her young age) had a less noble reason for killing and stems more from "I need someone to blame" than for a true reason. This is a scary yandere.
But I digress. Aside from the characters and plot, the music varies. The ending changes from episode to episode, and I liked some of them and didn't like so much some of the others. The opening wasn't that great either. The main thing the show had going was the art, which was near CG quality. I find the character designs quite beautiful and even more so by the fact that the most moe character turns yandere at the end...:V
"Nice Boat."- I couldn't figure out what this had to do with the anime at first. I mean, sure there's a boat near the end of the show but so what? I found out using wikipedia that it was some 4chan comment turned meme and eventually became crazy popular for whatever reason. Something about people being angry at the series and the guy just randomly pops in and says "Nice Boat". Oh well. 4chan, you don't expect logic in that. :V
Additional Comments: I finished Tokimeki Memorial Only Love before School Days, which is a decent anime except for the emo parts (like all these series). Now I'm watching To Heart 2. Kind of like To Heart 1, kind of boring, but there's no emoing at least. But it feels awkward watching it after School Days. Kind of like "I wonder if Konomi will pull out a knife now and go on a killing spree" awkward.
Sigh. More Schoolgirl/harem anime should end like School Days. :(
16.8.08
Legend of Mana (SD4), Seiken Densetsu 3
After suffering from anime watching OD (where I couldn't get myself to watch anime yet was still feeling excessive amounts of ennui), I decided to take up a few games to cure my boredom. In the overall case, my opinion is that Legend of Mana is significantly better than Seiken Densetsu 3, despite what everyone else says.
In actuality I had started Legend of Mana a while ago (about 5 years ago, when I was still in high school) yet never finished it because I was told the game copy I had (which was an illegal CD >.> ) had some bug where if I beat the game it would freeze. Not liking that, I never beat the game. Eventually I lost my memory card as well and I stopped playing Legend of Mana (along with some other PS games). During this summer I had the random idea to try Legend of Mana again but I remembered I thought it was an awesome game. And I still think its an awesome game. Legend of Mana encourages a large amount of creativity and innovation while still setting enough rules for the game to work (a game without rules isn't fun, and rules are sometimes where creativity can stem from as well). The gameplay isn't hard at all so the player doesn't necessarily have to focus on levelling to beat the boss but instead on other more interesting aspects of the game. (There is actually a nico video of an example where a person didn't level at all - by not collecting EXP crystals - and yet beat the game in "No Future" mode where all monsters and bosses were level 99... it was really amusing). Of these aspects there are pet raising, golem making, instrument (magic) making, weapon/armor tempering, skill learning, and quests in general for the player to go through. IMO each aspect in itself can be a "game" of sorts and the player can decide which one he wants to do in the game. I've tried my share in working all of these except the golem making and found it very entertaining.
-Pet raising is fun in that you grow fruit and then feed them to pets and their stats and personality change. It's quite amusing to see how your pet acts in the battlefield due to their personality and watch stats rise rediculously high as you feed them delicious foods with fun names.
-Instrument Making I haven't looked into significantly especially since there's no real FAQ guide on it, although the concept is simple enough. I just created strong enough magic instruments for me to use in the game.
-Tempering can be very entertaining, yet extremely complicated. The FAQs liken it to chemical reactions and this is what insterested me. First off, you can temper almost ANYTHING you get into a weapon or armor. This includes the fruit you grow in your backyard or the random (and seemingly useless) items you win in battles. and of course these things have effects that can modify your weapon and armor. These effects, like the FAQ says, can work similar to compounds in a chemical reaction; there are even things like catalysts to get over an energy barrier and reach another level, and cards/compounds which won't work if combined with other things. It can be dangerous as well, since it can lower the effectiveness of your tempering item. Finally it can also be a good way to earn money since some things you compound will be worth more after you temper some things together. Overall I never became an expert on this and worked on it only for one night, but it was really fun and I made some spiffy weapon that OHKOs monsters with one arrow shot and OHKOs bosses with one special.
In sort, I had much too much fun with tempering. :V
-Skill Learning isn't as complicated but it also isn't just "level up, learn a new skill". There are some basic skills set that one can use and depending on the combination of basic skills one can learn new skills and even some new special techniques with the weapon they're using. This isn't very complicated but each skill does somethign different in battle so its fun to play around with a bunch of moves and set up a character that works for the player. There's even a way to load other characters from the memory card and battle them... that's actually quite fun if I had more players to play LoM with. Well, my sister is playing but it will be hard to play her since she's still pretty new and it would be rather unfair if I battled her in the arena. :P
-And of course, quests to make the story interesting. There's no linear plotline but there's three main stories one has to get through in order to activate the final quests in the game. I only got through one of the stories in my most recent trial and remembered getting through another a long time ago, but there was one more I haven't finished so I'll be getting through that one soon. Overall in terms of the characters its probably without a doubt that Pearl is the most moe character in LoM (with main character debatable but I used the less-moe character so I dunno :V). This is especially because about 70% of the characters are some animal hybrid (ie, furry) and of the other 30% only Pearl acts rather cutely in compared to the others...well... Diana could probably be moe too.
Actually, I take that back. Pearl is the most humanlike moe character, but characters like Elle (a siren) and Flameshe (a mermaid) are very moe too. But you can't get Flameshe as a partner and Elle can only use magic, which is cool but rather limited. Well. If you use Pearl she can't do crap until she turns into another character, which then she's not moe, HOWEVER IF YOU'RE USING PEARL YOU CAN COMBO YOUR CROUCHES AND I FIND THIS ENTERTAINING FOR WHATEVER REASON.
AAAB236BXY- long chain combo for any usual character. For Pearl it gets you like 5-6 crouches in a row. Why do this? I dunno, but it sure is entertaining. :V
Seiken Densetsu 3.
I found this game remarkably cheesey and rather lame compared to the ratings it gets, but perhaps it was innovative and new at the time. Obviously with the whole stat raising and real time action gameplay it gives it plays a lot like RO so I never had that much trouble playing the game. Despite what others may say I don't think the difficulty of the game is that high if you're playing normally- I died about 2 times because I did some stupid stuff but otherwise it seemed pretty easy. Although my game style is to level quite some levels before playing the boss and I also had a healer so it might have been that I just had a really easy team to use. Maybe its a bit annoying in that I didn't know what to do sometimes so I had to use the guide (where it tells me something stupid, usually, but not as bad as when I'm lost in LoM. Geez like 3 times when I got stuck and had no idea how to continue the quest even though it seemed like I went everywhere it told me "go home and... etc" and I'm like "wtf" and I go home and boom the quest continues and I feel dumb). The storylines... could be better. Final Fantasy storylines definitely make SD3's storylines seem rather lame, especially since plot is so predictable... even if there ARE different stories for different characters... but oh well. I got through the game anyway.
So WHY did I play this game in the first place, then, if I didn't find much interest in it? It's because of RIESZ. The ONLY thing you'll probably find if you search for SD3 fanart is pictures of Riesz, who for whatever reason is made to be incredibly moe. Not that she wasn't moe in the game, but perhaps because she's the best looking and has the best personality out of the three girls (one is a loli, the other is... a term I prefer not to use, but let's just say she's good with the opposite gender). SO ESSENTIALLY, because she's everywhere whenever SD3 is mentioned I decided to play the game just so I know her story and know what's going on, and so when I go look at SD3 fanart I don't feel guilty for not knowing who she is and can fully appreciate the art, so to speak.
...:V
Afterwards I tried Xenogears but I couldn't get it to work (gets stuck in the world map) so I gave up and decided to end my gaming for the summer (with the exception of replaying some LoM at times). But OMG RIESZ IS SO MOE WHYYYYY. :(
In actuality I had started Legend of Mana a while ago (about 5 years ago, when I was still in high school) yet never finished it because I was told the game copy I had (which was an illegal CD >.> ) had some bug where if I beat the game it would freeze. Not liking that, I never beat the game. Eventually I lost my memory card as well and I stopped playing Legend of Mana (along with some other PS games). During this summer I had the random idea to try Legend of Mana again but I remembered I thought it was an awesome game. And I still think its an awesome game. Legend of Mana encourages a large amount of creativity and innovation while still setting enough rules for the game to work (a game without rules isn't fun, and rules are sometimes where creativity can stem from as well). The gameplay isn't hard at all so the player doesn't necessarily have to focus on levelling to beat the boss but instead on other more interesting aspects of the game. (There is actually a nico video of an example where a person didn't level at all - by not collecting EXP crystals - and yet beat the game in "No Future" mode where all monsters and bosses were level 99... it was really amusing). Of these aspects there are pet raising, golem making, instrument (magic) making, weapon/armor tempering, skill learning, and quests in general for the player to go through. IMO each aspect in itself can be a "game" of sorts and the player can decide which one he wants to do in the game. I've tried my share in working all of these except the golem making and found it very entertaining.
-Pet raising is fun in that you grow fruit and then feed them to pets and their stats and personality change. It's quite amusing to see how your pet acts in the battlefield due to their personality and watch stats rise rediculously high as you feed them delicious foods with fun names.
-Instrument Making I haven't looked into significantly especially since there's no real FAQ guide on it, although the concept is simple enough. I just created strong enough magic instruments for me to use in the game.
-Tempering can be very entertaining, yet extremely complicated. The FAQs liken it to chemical reactions and this is what insterested me. First off, you can temper almost ANYTHING you get into a weapon or armor. This includes the fruit you grow in your backyard or the random (and seemingly useless) items you win in battles. and of course these things have effects that can modify your weapon and armor. These effects, like the FAQ says, can work similar to compounds in a chemical reaction; there are even things like catalysts to get over an energy barrier and reach another level, and cards/compounds which won't work if combined with other things. It can be dangerous as well, since it can lower the effectiveness of your tempering item. Finally it can also be a good way to earn money since some things you compound will be worth more after you temper some things together. Overall I never became an expert on this and worked on it only for one night, but it was really fun and I made some spiffy weapon that OHKOs monsters with one arrow shot and OHKOs bosses with one special.
In sort, I had much too much fun with tempering. :V
-Skill Learning isn't as complicated but it also isn't just "level up, learn a new skill". There are some basic skills set that one can use and depending on the combination of basic skills one can learn new skills and even some new special techniques with the weapon they're using. This isn't very complicated but each skill does somethign different in battle so its fun to play around with a bunch of moves and set up a character that works for the player. There's even a way to load other characters from the memory card and battle them... that's actually quite fun if I had more players to play LoM with. Well, my sister is playing but it will be hard to play her since she's still pretty new and it would be rather unfair if I battled her in the arena. :P
-And of course, quests to make the story interesting. There's no linear plotline but there's three main stories one has to get through in order to activate the final quests in the game. I only got through one of the stories in my most recent trial and remembered getting through another a long time ago, but there was one more I haven't finished so I'll be getting through that one soon. Overall in terms of the characters its probably without a doubt that Pearl is the most moe character in LoM (with main character debatable but I used the less-moe character so I dunno :V). This is especially because about 70% of the characters are some animal hybrid (ie, furry) and of the other 30% only Pearl acts rather cutely in compared to the others...well... Diana could probably be moe too.
Actually, I take that back. Pearl is the most humanlike moe character, but characters like Elle (a siren) and Flameshe (a mermaid) are very moe too. But you can't get Flameshe as a partner and Elle can only use magic, which is cool but rather limited. Well. If you use Pearl she can't do crap until she turns into another character, which then she's not moe, HOWEVER IF YOU'RE USING PEARL YOU CAN COMBO YOUR CROUCHES AND I FIND THIS ENTERTAINING FOR WHATEVER REASON.
AAAB236BXY- long chain combo for any usual character. For Pearl it gets you like 5-6 crouches in a row. Why do this? I dunno, but it sure is entertaining. :V
Seiken Densetsu 3.
I found this game remarkably cheesey and rather lame compared to the ratings it gets, but perhaps it was innovative and new at the time. Obviously with the whole stat raising and real time action gameplay it gives it plays a lot like RO so I never had that much trouble playing the game. Despite what others may say I don't think the difficulty of the game is that high if you're playing normally- I died about 2 times because I did some stupid stuff but otherwise it seemed pretty easy. Although my game style is to level quite some levels before playing the boss and I also had a healer so it might have been that I just had a really easy team to use. Maybe its a bit annoying in that I didn't know what to do sometimes so I had to use the guide (where it tells me something stupid, usually, but not as bad as when I'm lost in LoM. Geez like 3 times when I got stuck and had no idea how to continue the quest even though it seemed like I went everywhere it told me "go home and... etc" and I'm like "wtf" and I go home and boom the quest continues and I feel dumb). The storylines... could be better. Final Fantasy storylines definitely make SD3's storylines seem rather lame, especially since plot is so predictable... even if there ARE different stories for different characters... but oh well. I got through the game anyway.
So WHY did I play this game in the first place, then, if I didn't find much interest in it? It's because of RIESZ. The ONLY thing you'll probably find if you search for SD3 fanart is pictures of Riesz, who for whatever reason is made to be incredibly moe. Not that she wasn't moe in the game, but perhaps because she's the best looking and has the best personality out of the three girls (one is a loli, the other is... a term I prefer not to use, but let's just say she's good with the opposite gender). SO ESSENTIALLY, because she's everywhere whenever SD3 is mentioned I decided to play the game just so I know her story and know what's going on, and so when I go look at SD3 fanart I don't feel guilty for not knowing who she is and can fully appreciate the art, so to speak.
...:V
Afterwards I tried Xenogears but I couldn't get it to work (gets stuck in the world map) so I gave up and decided to end my gaming for the summer (with the exception of replaying some LoM at times). But OMG RIESZ IS SO MOE WHYYYYY. :(
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