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My Lack of Attention

champonthis.de

81–90 of 99 posts

Re: My Lack of Attention

#81
post #78

I have some skin in this game. :) OP's app is Gloomhaven Secretary. The other app is X-Haven Assistant. I announced a similar app, Gloomhaven Full Stack, before either of those apps were started and before GH Helper was discontinued. All of our apps can exist only because of the generosity of Gloomhaven's creator, Isaac Childres. He made all the game assets available for use in apps as long as we don't make money. An…

Haha, I never thought ANYONE would read my post nor did I thought that one of GH app creators would. That's why I was explicit with my projects what I am talking about. So maybe I give my 2 cents to your comment. First of all, I think you're still a bit out of competition, because FHA and GHS are really clones of the old GHH. So it's like the chess app has gone, we create two chess app clones and you do 3d-chess app.…

Fair enough. My app is somewhere between GH Helper and a light-weight Table Top Simulator mod. I would definitely feel happier knowing that your app and others are not going to add all the features mine adds. haha. :)

Re: My Lack of Attention

#82
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter example: VHS

Not really, VHS was similar to Betamax. Beta has a slightly better recording format than VHS due to resolution (250 lines vs. 240 lines). Both same scanline ratio. The misconception is people confuses Betamax with Betacam, (both from Sony). Betacam was the Sony format for broadcasters, and the one with high quality (sound and picture). But bloody expensive. Betamax lost due two to reasons. (1)tapes can only record 1…

Great explanation, thank you! I did not know the difference.

Guess then the point is that there is not one single scalar "quality" and things are not one-dimensional.

Re: My Lack of Attention

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." It's true that effort helps success, and working for visibility is as important as working on making something great. But sometimes life is just arbitrary. Anyone who has w…

>> Unfair Of course its unfair. Life is unfair. There is quite literally nothing in life that is "fair". Fairness is the worst hope you can have. If you are waiting for life to treat you fair, then you will die disappointed. And if you are reading this, then likely you are so far ahead of fair that fairness can only be a step back. If you have success, then the best thing you can do is spread some unfairness around.…

Almost. I love the bold poetic of how you put it. But let's please s/fair/equal/.

The vernacular use of fair means something more than "equality".

The idea that life could be equal is patently ridiculous, and self-evidently undesirable. Equality is the worst hope you can have.

> likely you are so far ahead of fair that fairness can only be a step back.

That's a bit too pared down for my tastes. It supposes a linear, monotonic, single dimensional quality of life upon which we all agree. None exists. The best candidate - per capita GDP - is fatally flawed, as discussed here in many vibrant exchanges. As if some (disastrous) communist type reckoning could "reset" the world to parity? No, of course it never could. For one thing we'd all be in different physical locations, different ages, mental abilities, and so on, each dimension having its attendant pros and cons. In such a transformation many aspects of "Our western life" would actually improve, and not to see that would be parochial.

I'd say, if you're reading this; you're probably in an position, intellectually, to appreciate how an imposed "equality" would radically change your life, and make it worse in many ways but better in some others. Such a thought ought to shine light on the richness of life and culture that makes this unfair world such a beautiful place.

What I love about your comment is that compassion is not made a dependent of any schoolboy ideologies about equality or fairness.

> If you have success, spread some unfairness around. Help others up. you can't help everyone, so it's not fair, but it's the best you can do.

Absolutely. Bravo.

> Give someone an unfair leg up, give someone an unfair opportunity. Pass on some of the unfairness you already have.

I find this "empowering others" an ideal that resonates with me as a subversive stance against brain-dead systems that hold people back so that the chosen few might rule. It's spreading "fairness" by spreading "unfairness". Tactical dissemination of knowledge (fairness redistribution) is, for me, a core true hacker value. Code is one of the most extraorinary ways to transfer power. Like blatantly telling my students how to game and hack the Kobayashi Maru dreamed up by "well meaning" but ignorant administrators.

Re: My Lack of Attention

#84
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I think you're totally right. That doesn't change the fact, that I just really don't like marketing and don't want to invest the time. Of course it's naive and not totally right, but to some point I would say, I am immune to advertising. If I need something, I do research if there is something valuable. If someone wants to sell me something, in the end I am even more skeptical about the product. Anyways, I didn't…

>> That doesn't change the fact, that I just really don't like marketing and don't want to invest the time Exactly. And you don't need to. No one says you _have_ to market. But marketing leads to attention. So I think you know the cause effect here. >> . I want to get the benefit without investment because I dream of a world not existing where everyone would do research to find the best. I'm not sure I can say this w…

Thanks, your not a dick at all with your comment. But of course I want to differentiate a bit. I have written about my two examples because there are only the two. I am not complaining about attention due to quality, bit attention of existence. And I am talking explicit about specialised projects with a core audience. To stay with your OS example: you're developing MacOS and everyone is only taking about Windows and Linux. But I still think this is not a good metaphor. And how do you outsource research? It's only possible because others did.

In case of my Gloomhaven app, I only really complain about my posts on Reddit don't be as visible as from the ONE other app.

In case of my hardware token: there didn't exists any kind of this, at least as cheap OSS project (it run on a 10€ M5Stack, currently only with battery pack for longer time but anyway). And the attention I wanted was, that some people see the potential and bring it to a real product. It was and is my first real C hardware project and as hobbyist, I just wanted someone with expertise in that métier grab my project and optimize it. I knew that my code was not good, because I have no expertise. But I also knew nothing like this existed and I thought it would be very useful.

My other projects? I don't care, I make all for fun, I have personal benefits of it, so I don't care. I also don't care about the named one in that direction. I am proud of myself and my GH app still get more appreciation than expected ever, so at all I am happy with all. Just a bit jealous yesterday and wrote about it. Never thought about getting so much resonance to it. And as already mentioned, I know I can change something to do more marketing, but a big thing missing: I don't sell a product here. And not complaining about getting famous around 8 billion people.

Re: My Lack of Attention

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s the deal - if you build (great things) they will come. The problem is people aren’t building great things, period. Really think on it for more than a second - all the products that are “huge” are scaled through this “sales and marketing are more important.” If your initial MVP doesn’t stop people in their tracks, turn around and say “I will cry if I can’t buy this.” Then go home, dust off and try again. Otherw…

>> The problem is people aren’t building great things, period. Oh, I think they are. You just haven't seen them (yet?) and you probably never will, because their creators are slaving over perfection, somehow expecting the randomverse to spot it. The winners are the ones who accepted imperfection, who were brave enough to show the incomplete, who were prepared to make the effort to do more than just write code. VHS ov…

I love this very much. Yes, so many creators never even show their work - I'm guilty and a multiple offender here - but the error is a far cry from the 'marketing' or 'product manager' position that's usually portrayed.

> VHS over betamax, Windows 95 over OS/2, Apple 2/mac over amiga. Our history is littered with marketing over product.

While these are tantalizing examples on the surface - if you dig deeper, you'll see they are all failures to give a damn about the end user. I'll just take the first at first level:

Betamax didn't allow for competition in the production of the tape player, thus being hundreds of dollars more for marginal improvement in picture quality. They ignored the end user over partnerships - aka they didn't build something great.

I'll step in your shoes and say one could argue that Apple proves that marketing matters, but that too, misses the big picture - Apple's iPod specs may have been less technically proficient, and though there was marketing - the very first time you felt aluminum and the glossy plastic in your hand - it was a completely different world of experience, in spite of its technical standing - that product was just great, period.

Re: My Lack of Attention

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but you can't jump to the top of the charts without sticking the donk on the boing first (I assume that means uploading an original track?). I've seen a lot of references to the role luck plays in success, and I don't mean to diminish that role, but you can't get lucky without putting yourself out there. Sticking a donk on a boing takes real effort, as does any other 'shot on net' that one might take.

You can’t win the lottery without buying it first but still a lottery is a lottery…

Which game you play is certainly a factor. If you like composing original music that may be a game worth playing even if the odds are no better than an actual lottery.

Re: My Lack of Attention

#87
I don't think the issue is just attention, it's also simply informing people. If someone misses features in the other app, and your app has those features, I think it's entirely valid to point that out. That's not stealing attention, that's informing someone about alternatives they're probably not aware of. It's helping someone. By keeping quiet about your project, you're denying others the opportunity to enjoy your work.

Re: My Lack of Attention

#88
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like advertizing gospel to me. It implies that people aren't actively looking for better solutions to their problems, which is just blatantly false. If industries spent all of their marketing budget on research and development, we'd live in a very different world. Maybe even a better one. A world where companies aren't asking "how can we fool people into buying more of what we're already making" and instead as…

> It implies that people aren't actively looking for better solutions to their problems, which is just blatantly false. Not really. Think about it for a moment: are there more people actively searching for better solutions to each and every single problem they may or may not know they have? Or are there more people like you and me who go about their day just fine completely oblivious that there might be out there a f…

It's almost as if you believed that a world without advertizing wouldn't propagate any information.

Re: My Lack of Attention

#89
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which social animal does not organize into a hierarchy? Social animals organize into hierarchies precisely because hierarchies bubble quality to the top.

The difficulty with this argument is what we mean by "quality". It's tautological to state that hierarchies select for "qualities that enable you to be higher on the hierarchy"; it's much more debatable as to the nature of those qualities (and, indeed, that the existence of the hierarchy itself doesn't change the fitness surface, so that the advantageous qualities are different to what they might have been without it…

> See, eg, the amount of energy antlered deer (especially males) expend on having large, healthy antlers, purely to compete with other male deer.

Deers have antlers for reasons other than competing with other deer. To defend themselves from predators.

Since they have them, they use them to settle differences in quality. In this case, quality of self-defence.

Re: My Lack of Attention

#90
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which social animal does not organize into a hierarchy? Social animals organize into hierarchies precisely because hierarchies bubble quality to the top.

If you've ever watched a herd of horses, you'd know that's not true. Dominance bubbles to the top. Pushiness bubbles to the top. If the animal is also a decent leader, then great. A lot of the time it's insecure and too busy trying to maintain its position and the rest of the herd ends up harried and banged up. Seen it in dogs too, seen it a million times in people. Those are more artificial situations though.

You are proving my point. Strength and leadership are survival qualities to wild herd animals. The hierarchy allows those qualities to rise to the top. It is the herd that collectively decides to give space to the individual with those qualities. The "alpha horse" does not "dominate" the herd; no single individual can match the strength of an entire herd. The herd gives permission for the qualities to reach top of hierarchy, because those are the qualities the herd wants to select for.

If the animals making up the hierarchy disagrees with the individual on top, they remove it from the hierarchy. Easily. That's the whole point of herds, packs, and hierarchies. Together stronger than alone.

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