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GaPJaxie


It's fanfiction all the way down.

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Dec
31st
2017

Pokemon Battle -or-, The Blog Post With No Ponies In It · 5:04am Dec 31st, 2017

One of my resolutions for this New Year was to start writing blog posts about my day to day life. Shockingly, there are parts of my life that don't revolve around ponies, so not all of those posts are going to be about little horses.

Most of these posts go up on my personal website, but I'm thinking of tossing a few of them onto my blog here, if they're short and interesting. This is my first swing at it, so let me know what you think! If people like it, I may do this more. Or if they shout, "Shut the heck up and finish Lies We Tell to Children you hornswoggling hornswoggler!" I might seriously think about that story for at least a few minutes.


Jaxie knows MATH, FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS, EMPATHIC LISTENING, and TAIL SLAP.

Jaxie took an online course. Jaxie is trying to learn PYTHON.

Like many people, I made some New Year’s resolutions, one of which was to start listening to more educational podcasts. I loaded a ton of them onto my phone, queued them up for my morning walk, and set out to face the world!

After a week of listening and about twelve hours of audio, I realized that I had learned nearly nothing and that most of these “educational” podcasts were a waste of time.

It’s not that the podcasts were badly made or untrue. They were full of facts. Facts like that this week scientists developed a new theoretical explanation for the existence of dark matter, which could learn to a new “Theory of Everything.” And that is indeed a fact.

But it is also a fact that the star of Grey’s Anatomy Kevin McKidd finalized his divorce with his wife Jane Parker this week. And for approaching any scientific, technological, commercial, personal, or emotional problem, those two facts are equally useless.

Everyone in life has things that they can do. Some of them are formal skills, some of them are talents, some of them are gained through experience, but I’m going to lump them all under one word: Moves. You know moves.

Anyone, literally anyone can go onto Wikipedia and memorize Bayes Theorem, but only some people know the move STATISTICAL ANALYSIS. That move is useful at work for solving problems, it’s useful in life for understanding risk and uncertainty, and if you gamble it has an entire sub-tree of related moves that can make serious money.

Moves are useful in multiple situations. When a friend starts crying because their girlfriend left them, EMPATHIC LISTENING is a great response to the situation. But that same move is incredibly useful if you’re a product manager, and is the basis of good customer research interviews.

Just like with Pokémon, what moves you know determines what challenges you can overcome. If a friend starts crying and you use FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS, you may find it’s not very effective. Unlike Pokémon however, humans can learn more than four moves.

You can’t learn the MATH move if you don’t know a certain number of facts about math. Facts are an important part of the learning process (go figure). But just because something conveys a lot of information, doesn’t mean it’s actually educational.

For my podcasts, I have a new definition. Something is educational if it:

  • Teaches me a new move (like learning Python).
  • Makes a move I already know better (like getting better at Python coding).
  • Helps me apply I move I already know in more situations (like discovering that Python is good for more than making my Roomba dance).

It’s a simple definition, and one that gives a clear basis for evaluating how good a podcast is. I plan to keep using it in the future, and hopefully that will make my morning walks a little more productive.

(Also, Pokémon defeating challenges and earning XP is a metaphor for growing as a person. And items are tools that let you practice a skill. Really, Pokémon is a surprisingly robust metaphor for life.)

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Comments ( 12 )

I'd write a blog based on my day to day life, but it would be astonishingly boring.

Hm, interesting way of looking at it. :)

I also really want to learn Python. I took a class on it during High School but never really picked it up afterward.

Python is actually my favorite programming language, probably because it is the first one I learned. It is very friendly to work with. (I am aware that seems like an odd descriptor, but, well, I'm an odd person). Now, with more experience, I still like Python best, but do wish for a few features from say, Java.

And Pokemon as a metaphor for life is very interesting - one of the moves I've learned as a cashier is RESTRAIN SARCASM. (Not... normally a move I needed before, since I'm not naturally sarcastic)

I love me some Python! I don't really have any advice other than "sit down and play with it a bit", which is how I usually learn. But in general, I have found Python to one of the most natural-feeling of all the languages I've used. The way you can just make things and iterate them and turn them into other things without a bunch of arbitrary-seeming rules getting in the way.

4763030

It's really easy to learn! Just like 4763169 says. It's a super friendly language.

4763075

And Pokemon as a metaphor for life is very interesting - one of the moves I've learned as a cashier is RESTRAIN SARCASM. (Not... normally a move I needed before, since I'm not naturally sarcastic)

I would argue that self-control actually does count as a move for most people, since some people can do it, some people can't, and it's a tool to solve many problems.

4763318
When you work retail, especially during the holidays, SELF-CONTROL definitely counts as a move. Now the question is whether I can manage to replace PROCRASTINATE with whatever its opposite is.

4763335

That was a big part of my New Year's resolutions. The solution I'm trying is having a list of worthwhile things I can work on at any time. Note that "worthwhile" != "productive." If I really want to finish watching Iron Blooded Orphans so I can talk about it with my friends at work, and I enjoy watching it, that counts as worthwhile, as as much as actually finishing that design project that's been sitting on my desk.

The goal isn't to do more work, it's to waste less time doing things I don't actually feel that strongly about. I think that if I can manage that, more productive work will organically follow.

4763335
Take notes when you have a thought worth investigating or find something you want to spend time on, and make sure to note down why you noted it down. Whenever you review the list, if you find something you don't feel like doing, take it off the list.

If you read something on the list and think "I should do that, but I don't want to right now," just take it off the list and be done with it. If it's not motivating you, then it shouldn't be on the list.

4764243

This is my system exactly.

So any python podcasts you can recommend? Inquiring mouse in a flower hat would like to know.

4771576

Actually, my podcasts are mostly about math or statistics. For python I prefer the online on-desktop lessons.

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