A fellow less/non verbal thinker! I resonate with a lot of what you wrote. I can think in words, but it’s not my default or most productive.
I kind of understand what you mean about reading, I find I have to invest a lot of time to comprehend the same amount as others. If I encounter an unconventional style or shape of writing it’s much harder.
When making visual art, I don’t think in words. Shapes, colors, shading, perspective together turn into a final drawing; at no point do I translate this to words. I’m not sure what trying to draw by thinking in words would even look like.
Identifying and searching for morel mushrooms in the woods also feels largely nonverbal (although near a dying elm in late spring after a rain captures an essence of the idea, and those words provide a good starting point).
Coding ends in “words”, or at least some form of written language. But when I try to solve problems I do not think in words until it is time to put fingers to keyboard.
Words are useful (I could not convey this comment otherwise), but they’re not everything. It feels extremely difficult to convey my nonverbal thoughts through an inherently verbal medium like an HN comment. Perhaps to make a wordful analogy, the difficulty is like translating an idiom from one language to one of completely different context and origin.
I don’t deny that words do shape some of my thinking, but to me it’s just one part of the whole stream of conscious.
I’m curious if anyone else feels this way about words?
Yes, definitely. Despite struggling to describe the process, I would hope the end results still demonstrate the process can be rigorous even without words (is the drawing any good, did I find morels this season, does the code work as required)
Have you ever laughed out loud at a cartoon? I don’t think I have, and I would say I enjoy cartoons quite a bit. A grin is about the best reaction I can give to one myself
I'm not sure I've ever laughed out loud at a cartoon, but as a kid, the compilation books of Charles Addams cartoons used to fill me with so much warm pleasure I would read them over and over, and his cartoons still just plain make me happy to this day. I can clearly see that Larson does that same thing for many people.
MAD is wacky. This is more England and it's casual gutter talk. All cultures have their own. Do you enjoy any British hum(o)ur?
VIZ is crass, puerile in the extreme, casually (insert your red line here)-ist on many levels, and often repetitive. It uses common slang words, so somewhat culturally revealing. It's 'wrong' on many levels but done with style, albeit sometimes a repugnant style - So you inwardly 'gasp' in revulsion but outwardly stifle a giggle.
The fake small ads are often very very funny.
Lastly, like so many gags that use the 'shock' effect, the humour doesn't last forever; take a look at an early one on Archive...
Generally, I agree with you. But I do remember coming across Parking Lot Is Full one night and having to stifle my laughing so I didn't wake up my wife who was sleeping next to me while I was reading it.
Panic’s Playdate has been easy to pass around to friends to try. The device intro is a lot of fun and shows the main interactions, and then the games a snappy and easy to jump into.
Definitely would recommend playing with one if you get the chance. Buying one… it depends on how much the device appeals to you, mine got active use for a couple months and then has fallen off
I have had bad cubital tunnel in the past, enough so that I was learning to become ambidextrous to stop using my left hand. A surgery helped tremendously in my case, but I’m still prone to flare ups if I overuse my pinky.
An Ergodox EZ has been a lifesaver, I’ve reprogrammed it so I don’t need to use my left pinky anything other than letter keys (goodbye left shift, you’ve pained me for too long). I fully agree with the articles advice; pair a good programmable keyboard with physical activity to keep the hands working long term.
Be warned though: the more customized your keyboard the harder it is type when using a laptop or friends keyboard.
I'm using Ergodox for 9 years and still can touch type fluently on laptop keyboard. However, I never do heavy programming tasks on the laptop, only messaging, notes and small fixes.
I think the more customized your Ergodox layout is the easier it is for the brain to treat 2 different keyboards as 2 different input devices.
I’m curious, why? My takeaway was that if you’re struggling with a problem, thinking on it more is going to be more helpful than trying to implement a half baked solution.
People who are smart can think themselves in circles. Some people call it spinning their tires. You're working hard but getting nowhere.
Until you actually begin turning thought into something tangible/testible, you don't know what works (and what the actual bugs, issues, and important details are)
If you think about something and then do it (kind of like the old waterfall method) you come to every problem with a solution you crafted in your head before actually diving in, and by the time you do dive in you realize your solution isn't the best but have no time or space or energy left to incorporate a better approach
A problem that stops you and requires a day of thinking is one that needs to be approached differently so you can make progress every day. We don't know how many days we have left, don't think all day today and do nothing, leaving that for tomorrow.
I’ve been building up animations for a main character sprite. I’m hoping one day AI can help me make small changes quickly (apply different hairstyles mainly). So far I haven’t seen anything promising either.
Otherwise I have to touch up a hundred or so images manually for each different character style… probably not worth it
Well, stuff that's popular is plastered everywhere. Think about artworks we see in movies, TV shows, billboards, album covers, book covers, basically everywhere around us.
I would argue that most art around us is current pop art or classical/realist/romantic art, not modern/postmodern/abstract expressionist art.
I kind of understand what you mean about reading, I find I have to invest a lot of time to comprehend the same amount as others. If I encounter an unconventional style or shape of writing it’s much harder.