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Coffee Is Hard

stilldrinking.org

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Re: Coffee Is Hard

#51

Post by trevyn »

Loughla wrote: post #23
monktastic1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding hippie, "tedious" and "boring" are emotional reactions to the chores, and not attributable to the chores themselves. We don't have to do that. "Everything in life is miraculous. It rests within the power of each of us to awaken from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfuln…

Not to sound too much like a hippie, either, but I learned (actually after having a kid as well) that when people talked about enjoying the ride, that's what they were talking about - the tedious stuff. I always assumed it meant travel more and look for adventure, but I have come to understand that 'enjoying the ride' in your life, not always just pursuing some next thing is about enjoying the tedium. Some of my favo…

There are many meanings, of which you have described two.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#52

Post by davinic »

monktastic1 wrote: post #16
godot wrote: post #6

As a geek and a fan of 80s-90s PC games (not just Sierra but also LucasArts adventure games and so on), this was a super entertaining read on its own; but I also enjoyed some of these insights about life in general from it: > Living is mostly a series of repetitive and unrelated tasks. It makes sense that the most tedious things to code are the tedious things that just have to be done. There are no life lessons or gy…

At the risk of sounding hippie, "tedious" and "boring" are emotional reactions to the chores, and not attributable to the chores themselves. We don't have to do that. "Everything in life is miraculous. It rests within the power of each of us to awaken from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfuln…

"But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down." -- David Foster Wallace, This is Water

https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#53

Post by aidenn0 »

SamBam wrote: post #47
aidenn0 wrote: post #18

As an example of one of the more notorious puzzles in the Sierra games of yesteryear, in Space Quest, you have a sand skimmer (think Luke's sand speeder). When you get to where you are going, you need to sell it for money. If you get out without removing your keys, it is stolen. Then someone offers you enough money to continue on in the game. If you say yes, then much later in the game you die because you don't have…

Having played most of the Sierra and LucasArts games when I was much younger, I feel, though cannot confirm, that there was a shift in these kinds of games such that you couldn't actually progress too far beyond a fail state. That is, by about Space Quest II or III, you could still take an action that would lead to your death within a minute or so, but you could no longer take actions that would lead you to dying/bei…

LucasArts had a very strong bent towards not putting you in a fail state.

My understanding is that Sierra was intending to be more fair as time went on, but they had a bias against playtesting so there were still some big goofs that got through.

I think all of the first 5 KQ games had ways to lose items that would later be needed to win.

KQ VI had a branching path and if you picked the "easy" branch you were unlikely to end up in a very unwinnable state, but there was no indication at the time of the branch that you were doing so (IIRC you were about to be burned alive and you could either use some maid's clothes to put out the fire, destroying the clothes, or cast a spell that required boiling some water, using up some component). With a hint-book it took me several attempts to make it through the "hard" path.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#54

Post by hychoi99 »

meroes wrote: post #20
gameguy43 wrote: post #12

Amped to see Still Drinking on HN again. If you enjoy devouring this guys writing, buy his book, “And Then I Thought I Was A Fish” (I think it’s the “novel” he references the game being based on?). I really really liked it. Link at the bottom of the original post. The other book is just a collection of blog posts. It’s /okay/. But I really really liked ATITIWAF. The kind of book that makes you want to try your hand a…

I would also recommend his story about acid to anyone https://www.stilldrinking.org/the-episode-part-1

It's the same plot to “And Then I Thought I Was A Fish”

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#55

Post by cagenut »

Thinking about stuff like this is fascinating in the context of just how much massively more of a big deal its going to become very very soon.

Specifically, if you draw the trend line on the size and price of kuka/fanuc/abb robot arms, and you put UR's models in there for today, we are really only 3 - 5 years away from you having a robot arm sitting on your kitchen counter that you can script to make your coffee for you.

So all of these bugs will become real :)

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#56

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

throwaway66920 wrote: post #34
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

This reminds me of Scribblenauts. There was an interview with one of the devs at the E3 before it was released and he discussed how much time went into the game simply to pad the internal "dictionary" and conjure up not just things, but also make sure that those things could interact with other things (e.g. "bread" should be able to interact with "toaster" to make "toast"). I don't remember if it was the dev talking…

I always thought that game must have an incredible ontology underneath it that would be amazingly useful to other ventures... I also recall playing it and, at a certain point, realizing that I was stubbornly uncreative in using the variety of options available to me. In retrospect maybe that wasn’t true, and the game managed the massive potential for variance by condensing things into smaller buckets. Either way thos…

Take a look for yourself:

https://gamasutra.com/view/news/300313/Scribblenauts_dev_sha...

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#57

Post by monktastic1 »

Loughla wrote: post #23
monktastic1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding hippie, "tedious" and "boring" are emotional reactions to the chores, and not attributable to the chores themselves. We don't have to do that. "Everything in life is miraculous. It rests within the power of each of us to awaken from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfuln…

Not to sound too much like a hippie, either, but I learned (actually after having a kid as well) that when people talked about enjoying the ride, that's what they were talking about - the tedious stuff. I always assumed it meant travel more and look for adventure, but I have come to understand that 'enjoying the ride' in your life, not always just pursuing some next thing is about enjoying the tedium. Some of my favo…

Are we using the same definition of "tedious"? This is what I get:

Tedious: too long, slow, or dull; tiresome or monotonous.

"Too" long as in "longer than I'd like." Tiresome. Monotonous. Those sound like the opposite of enjoying the ride to me!

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#58

Post by organsnyder »

yodsanklai wrote: post #46
godot wrote: post #6

As a geek and a fan of 80s-90s PC games (not just Sierra but also LucasArts adventure games and so on), this was a super entertaining read on its own; but I also enjoyed some of these insights about life in general from it: > Living is mostly a series of repetitive and unrelated tasks. It makes sense that the most tedious things to code are the tedious things that just have to be done. There are no life lessons or gy…

> The hard parts of of life are driving to work, eating properly, flossing, .... I disagree. Those are simple rituals that makes life enjoyable too. For instance, I know that after flossing, I'm good to go to bed. Or I know when I'm driving my car that I won't get interrupted and I can wander with my thoughts.

I've been working from home for the past year, after previously taking the bus to work downtown. It's mostly an improvement, but I do miss the commute—especially when I'd go early in the morning and get off the "wrong" stop to walk across the river, through a riverside park, back across the river, and still be the first one in the office. I really miss that.

The afternoon commute with the traffic jams, buses packed with students, noise... nope, never missed that.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#59

Post by matwood »

throw0101a wrote: post #44
Loughla wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sound too much like a hippie, either, but I learned (actually after having a kid as well) that when people talked about enjoying the ride, that's what they were talking about - the tedious stuff. I always assumed it meant travel more and look for adventure, but I have come to understand that 'enjoying the ride' in your life, not always just pursuing some next thing is about enjoying the tedium. Some of my favo…

Sisyphus may disagree. :) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

If I was Sisyphus and got the boulder to the top, I would push it back down myself.

I'm going to die eventually, so is it futile to exercise everyday, to learn, to try and be a better person? I don't think so, but all of those things are journeys that never end and require many mundane tasks.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#60

Post by monktastic1 »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #24
monktastic1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding hippie, "tedious" and "boring" are emotional reactions to the chores, and not attributable to the chores themselves. We don't have to do that. "Everything in life is miraculous. It rests within the power of each of us to awaken from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfuln…

I agree with your point that it's all about perspective, but you can easily spin it negatively. "Life is suffering" -Buddha "Tedium is the worst pain" -Grendel I realize that first quote is meant to be encouraging, but you can take it at face value to mean what it is: most of life sucks. Pessimism and optimism are choices we make on how to interpret reality based on our experiences. This might sound like some feel-go…

"Life is suffering" is not something the Buddha ever said: https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/life-is-suffering/

He did say that we turn much of life into suffering by our unwise reaction to it.

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