I got a logitech usb desktop microphone; so far, it seems to work well.

we’ve recently talked about beginners not needing to know why, but how, although why may benefit how.

in warcraft, beginners don’t want to know why, they want to know what and how. when they watch replays to learn, they want to know what the pros are doing and how they are doing it, and not much else. if you’re familiar with poker terminology, this is first-level thinking. next they concern themselves with what their opponents are doing, and how to react to it.

if you want to bring your game to the next “level”, here are two things to ponder. first, you can start asking the whys. why do pros do what they do? why do they respond to situations the way they do? what is in their heads, what are they thinking? can you tell when players are responding to something they’ve prepared for, and when they’ve been caught unprepared? second, you can start thinking about not just what your opponent is doing, but what he is thinking. what are his thoughts? what does he expect you to do?

I must say I’m disappointed about the one account per cd key and “Real ID”

and here I was thinking about smurfs to hide under…

maybe pseudonym..

Had performance problems with the HP.. so trying again. Mother wants a laptop so timing is good.

Lenovo T400
CR2Duo 2.53GHz
14.1 WXGA TFT, W / CAM (cam free, not that I use it)
AMD M82XT HYBRID 256MB (ati 3470?)
3 GB memory (don’t know if I’ll upgrade to Windows 7)
64 GB solid state hard drive (Western Digital external hard drive for more storage)
DVD RW 8x
EXPR.CARD SLOT/PCCARDSLOT
Bluetooth
Intel WiFi 5300 (don’t know details.. just went with best one)
4cell battery (hope it’s lighter than 6cell. I only use laptop on battery for brief periods)

DemonReps traffic growth since December ’07. Visitor report pdf below.

demonreps report

Demonreps started off as a hobby project, like blogging.. and I consider both efforts mediocre at best. In my honest opinion, I’m surprised anyone uses it because I think it’s crap. I spent maybe 40 hours total on it.. and only produced half of the features and polish I can envision. I did all the work myself except version two graphics.. I sorta-kinda program, but I’m no programmer. Code is all custom except izireps for replay parsing. Good learning experience…

I guess I’ll keep the zombie-hobby alive and add more features.. maybe even expand it to sc2!? At the very least, I will add RSS feeds. That should have been done at the beginning. Any site with regularly updated content needs to have feeds.. if all the replay/news sites had feeds it would make scraping 1000% easier and I might actually add more. So everyone lobby readmore and everyone to add RSS! Maybe add more functionality to public replays since it’s become so popular. (15000 replays uploaded and counting.. from leagues to clan to individual scrubs) In fact while I’m at it I should probably just convert everything to xml.

OK enough geek speak.

time flies by, people come and go, and nothing really changes D:

“do you know how to tell a successful person from a[n] unsuccessful one? the easiest way is by the language they use. when you talk to a successful person about his goals, he’ll tell you what he plans to do and when it will be done. when an unsuccessful person talks about his goals (assuming he even has one), you’ll hear something along the lines of, ‘i hope to do this someday.’ here’s a clue for all you losers out there; someday never comes.”

posted december ’07. still true, still working on it. if I am fair with myself, I can honestly say my work ethic has improved. it still has a long way to go.

feb ’08, “Don’t really have anything to write about.. don’t really have any replays to post.” Sound familiar? %) I actually don’t sound too stupid in early posts.. (that is, I’m not embarassed by myself) .. probably because I haven’t changed in two years. I’m going nooowhere. ssdd.

JUST DO IT. that’s my challenge for all and myself. you know what you have to do, so do it. let’s finish off the year strong and have a fantastic, unimagineable 2010–beyond the wildest dreams that you dare not utter.

can you believe people still read my bull**** =\ I don’t have anything to talk about =|

gooo sonkie and longwalk at blizzcon!? betcha lucifron wins ;)

on another note, I’ll be sad if Moon/Sky don’t qualify for WCG. I still watch their replays for entertainment now and then..

More on gambler’s ruin

The original meaning is that a gambler who raises his bet to a fixed fraction of bankroll when he wins, but does not reduce it when he loses, will eventually go broke, even if he has a positive expected value on each bet.
…
Consider a gambler who raises his stake to Bankroll / N when he wins, but does not reduce his stake when he loses. This general pattern is not uncommon among real gamblers, and casinos encourage it by “chipping up” winners. If he loses N bets in a row at any time, he will go broke. He will eventually lose N bets in a row, however big N is.
- Wikipedia

I have a suspicion most of the decent players in poker go busto because of this.

Fixed fractional position sizing is frequently recommended in trading, with 50 for N. (“don’t risk more than 2% of your bankroll on any one trade”)

For more on choosing N, see Kelly Criterion. Sometimes called optimal-f in trader speak.

I may not be at usa final :( something else came up.. haven’t decided yet.. but NY isn’t going to go anywhere.

I am an advocate for repetition based learning. This is contrary to the theoretical, “understanding”-focused methods that are popular in the Western mindset. (I am told that Asian countries focus on repetition.. although that is changing in recent years)

First, ability is practical, and it can only be acquired through experience and repetition. One doesn’t need to know why something works in order to use it. The bottom line is that you can deliver the goods.

The argument is that ability doesn’t constitute understanding. Collectively we’ve all become “philomaths”; we’re bombarded by information; we want to know, know, know, no matter how irrelevant. What good is it if you don’t know why, an average eighth grader can tell you–without knowing, of course, why one needs know why. It’s reinforced in the media–Asian test preps turn students into robots. The love of knowledge extends further. From grade school years students are encouraged to follow current events. You need to know the happenings of the world, lassie!

I think the idea is understanding will aid performance. I have no objection to this notion, but I also think performance will aid understanding. My position is that ability will open the door to the wherefores, and it is more efficient to focus on the former first. I have only heuristic, empirical support for this. Often we will master an obstacle, and only later down the road will we look back with an a-ha moment. “So that’s how that works!”

But I guess no one cares about competence or efficiency.

—

One major problem in learning is who and what we learn from. We want to be humble and willing to learn with an open mind, but that doesn’t mean we should be stupid and follow the blind.

I won’t elaborate too much, but this has applications in everything. Follow the best, people with experience and qualification who have been there and are likely to have a bird’s eye view.

Dunning-Kruger effect is an example of cognitive bias in which “…people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”. They therefore suffer an illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average. This leads to a perverse result where people with less competence will rate their ability more highly than people with relatively more competence. It also explains why competence may weaken the projection of confidence because competent individuals falsely assume others are of equivalent understanding. “Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”

The key here is meta-awareness.. know that maybe you don’t know.

Incidentally anosognosia is a really cool word.