Boojum's recent activity
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Comment on Recommendations, specific folk tales: Sisphyus and others in ~books
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Comment on Control Ultimate Edition free update adds Hideo Kojima mission for all players – coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series in ~games
Boojum LinkNice! I just finished the 45th mission this past weekend and thought I was done (finishing off Foundation) and thought I was all done. This is timely, since it means I get one more mission before...Nice! I just finished the 45th mission this past weekend and thought I was done (finishing off Foundation) and thought I was all done. This is timely, since it means I get one more mission before I move on to my next game.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Boojum LinkI've been playing Remedy's Control (Ultimate Edition) after kind of bouncing off of Metroid Prime Remastered on hitting the Phazon Mines on normal mode. Friday night I finished the main campain,...I've been playing Remedy's Control (Ultimate Edition) after kind of bouncing off of Metroid Prime Remastered on hitting the Phazon Mines on normal mode. Friday night I finished the main campain, and Saturday night I finished the AWE DLC.
It's been interesting! At the beginning, it feels fairly mysterious, spooky, and dangerous. By the end, once I got to the last act of the main campaign starting with that maze while fairly powered up, it felt like the power fantasy lovechild of Starwars (the Jedi telekinetics) and The Matrix (the gunplay and environmental destruction).
I've found myself comparing the design of Control to Metroid Prime Remastered, given that they're both considered 3D metroidvanias:
- Survivability: Jesse's considered something of a glass cannon, where survivability means keeping up the offense while moving quickly to avoid getting swarmed. By contrast, Samus is in power armor with energy tanks to help with that. But survivability in Control actually felt at least as good as Metroid Prime. Every enemy drops lots of small health elements when damaged and they don't despawn. (The radius around which you gather them is also much nicer, compared to Metroid where you have to directly touch energy pickups or use charge beam to pull them.) Jesse also feels way more maneuverable and fluid which helps to avoid getting hit in the first place. It also feels like she has more tools in the box, what with shield, sieze, evade, etc.
- Checkpoints: Comparing control points to Metroid's save rooms, they both fully refilled health and provided a save point. However, I really appreciated the generous frequency of the control points, the way they provided fast travel, and the fact that dying and returning to the last control point kept my progress. I remember my first time beating Thardus on Prime; I got a bit off-track and missed the next save room, died, and had to beat the boss again, which was super frustrating because it wasn't a particularly hard fight, but it was a tediously long one.
- Respawns: In Control, it seemed like the first time through an area (i.e., large room/arena) you'd always have to battle the enemies. But on revisits, they'd sometimes respawn and sometimes not, depending on how long since your last battle. If you'd just re-cleared a room of enemies, the next few rooms revisited would probably be peaceful and you'd have a bit of a breather. In Metroid, the enemies would always respawn, which made backtracking much more tedious.
- Enemy scaling: Combined with that, I'd noticed that in Metroid, at certain points of game progression (e.g., after beating a certain boss), some enemies would be upgraded which could make backtracking still more annoying. Control seemed to do this too; revisiting an early area, the enemies that I'd see would typically have higher level numbers. But again, since they wouldn't always respawn this was much less annoying.
- Interaction: Swapping to the scan visor in Metroid got rather annoying, especially since I tend to be a completionist and want to get all the lore. Likewise with the scan visor where it was the way you triggered switches. Just having a simple use button in Control was much nicer. I also kind of hated dark areas in Metroid where I was forced to use the heat visor. So blurry!
- Customization: I do like that Control gives me the ability to tune things for my preferred play style with ability points and a skill tree. Likewise, with weapon and personal mods, though inventory management here is a bit of a pain. Metroid offers no such tuning whatsoever.
- Destruction: I love how much I can destroy the environment in Control. The rooms properly look like warzones after a good battle. And even when not in a battle, just going around punching things is fun. Metroid, being a product of its time, is much more static.
Other fun details that I'd noticed that don't really have a comparison:
- Levitation: Levitation felt really clumsy at first; you just rise to a certain height depending on how long you hold the jump button and stay there until you start to slow fall, and can't go up again until you touch ground. I had expected it to be more like entering a free camera mode where you go up and down freely, and move towards wherever you point. As I got used to it, I realized why it's the way it is: during battles you can levitate around while looking down and firing on ground enemies easily.
- Hub area: I did like that Central Executive fills in with NPCs and clutter as the game progresses. They did a good job with making it feel like an emergency base that the survivors are gathering at to coordinate.
- Post game: It doesn't just reset after you win! So many games seem to do a thing where you beat the final boss and then you get a star on your save slot, maybe some new stuff unlocks, but in-game it's as though you're back to just before you entered the final dungeon/area. In Control, by contrast, everyone acknowledges you've defeated the main enemy but there's still a ton of mopping up to do. Very nice.
- Graphics: This was the first game I've played to have ray tracing (I upgrade about a year ago from a decade-old desktop to an 7950X/4090 desktop; 4k gaming is glorious), so while I've been working for years with ray tracing on GPUs professionally, it was fun to see it in action in a game played for fun. I did have to turn off some things that annoyed me too much due to lack of temporal stability, though.
Okay, I think I'll leave off there.
Spider time!
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Comment on Peeves, opinions, and hot takes about style in ~humanities.languages
Boojum Link ParentI've seen it justified as including the reader (e.g., "We explore..." meaning the author and the reader explore an idea together). That may just be a post-hoc rationalization however. My last...I've seen it justified as including the reader (e.g., "We explore..." meaning the author and the reader explore an idea together). That may just be a post-hoc rationalization however.
My last submission was a solo paper (fingers crossed!) and I used the royal we, as weird as that felt, after double-checking other solo papers at this venue. My main justification to myself was that I was helping to preserve anonymity during peer review; I didn't want to give a clue about the number of authors.
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Comment on Peeves, opinions, and hot takes about style in ~humanities.languages
Boojum Link ParentNope, even for displayed math! It's a fairly common convention. For example, from Wikipedia's style guide (emphasis mine): As an example of how old this convention is, take a look at the...Nope, even for displayed math! It's a fairly common convention. For example, from Wikipedia's style guide (emphasis mine):
Just as in mathematics publications, a sentence which ends with a formula must have a period at the end of the formula.[8] This equally applies to displayed formulae (that is, formulae that take up a line by themselves).
[...]
8.^ This style, adopted by Wikipedia, is shared by Higham (1998), Halmos (1970), the Chicago Manual of Style, and many mathematics journals.
As an example of how old this convention is, take a look at the typography of this short publication from 1946; you'll see it includes commas and periods at the ends of displayed equations and not just the inline ones. Going back farther, here's a scan of a book from 1905 -- page nine of that one (the second page of the table of contents) even has an example of semicolon at the end of a displayed equation.
(I find this convention to be one of those things where you don't notice it until someone draws your attention to it, and then you start to see it everywhere.)
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Comment on What is your strangely specific phobia? in ~talk
Boojum LinkUncovered ground-floor windows at night. I often get this thought of someone outside coming up, standing just out of the pool of light shining through the windows, and looking in -- and how long...Uncovered ground-floor windows at night.
I often get this thought of someone outside coming up, standing just out of the pool of light shining through the windows, and looking in -- and how long they could be watching before I'd notice them. As long as there are blinds or curtains, I'm fine. Likewise, I'm okay with uncovered upper floor windows because of the angle and distance on the sight lines.
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Comment on What is your strangely specific phobia? in ~talk
Boojum Link ParentIf it helps, you're not alone. Famously, there's a line in the 1990 LucasArts adventure game, The Secret of Monkey Island about them: The creator, Ron Gilbert's comment about that line: Someone's...If it helps, you're not alone. Famously, there's a line in the 1990 LucasArts adventure game, The Secret of Monkey Island about them:
The creator, Ron Gilbert's comment about that line:
“I had a feeling in hell here would be mushrooms” was one of Tim’s lines. Tim hates Mushrooms. I also hate mushrooms, but unlike Tim, I’m happy to pick them out.
Someone's even made a t-shirt paraphrasing the line.
For what it's worth, I find them fairly squicky myself (which is why I remembered that Monkey Island trivia).
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Comment on Peeves, opinions, and hot takes about style in ~humanities.languages
Boojum Link ParentNow that you mention it, my own dissertation was double-spaced! I remember hating the required style at the time (it looked so typographically ugly to me), but that's what the thesis editor...Now that you mention it, my own dissertation was double-spaced! I remember hating the required style at the time (it looked so typographically ugly to me), but that's what the thesis editor demanded, so that's what they got. I think I'd blocked that from my memory. :-)
In the LaTeX typesetting system common in computer science (my field), the two math modes are called "inline" and "display". But it's fairly common stylistically to treat math typeset in either form as part of the text and to punctuate accordingly. You're absolutely correct about line heights and it's one of the criteria that I'll use when deciding which mode to use. Inline mode is convenient if it's small and flows neatly with the rest of the text on the line without disrupting it. It's also often used for negative numbers since a proper minus sign is not the same as a hyphen. Display mode is good if the math is too big to fit conveniently, too tall to match the line, or would interrupt it in some other way. I'll also use display mode if I really want to highlight the math as important, or if I want it to be numbered so that I can reference it later:
Here we introduce the Fourier transform: ∞ ⌠ -2πikx F(x) = ⎮ f(x) e dx. (1) ⌡ -∞ ... The Fourier transform (Eq. 1)...I can certainly see how mixing East Asian scripts with Latin ones can be problematic, though fortunately, that's not a problem that I've ever had to deal with.
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Comment on Grammar errors that actually matter, or: the thread where we all become prescriptivists in ~humanities.languages
Boojum Link ParentI don't look for them, but they do tend to jump out at me while I'm reviewing for content. As long as they don't significantly impact comprehension, I don't factor them into my peer review...I don't look for them, but they do tend to jump out at me while I'm reviewing for content.
As long as they don't significantly impact comprehension, I don't factor them into my peer review evaluations of a paper. But I do always make sure that my reviews include a list of whatever I spot. If the paper gets accepted, great, the authors can fix those minor things along with any content-related fixes when preparing the final version. And if the paper ultimately gets rejected, I've at least given the authors a few things that they can fix before they can try submitting somewhere else. Ultimately, I just want to see strong, polished papers published.
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Comment on Grammar errors that actually matter, or: the thread where we all become prescriptivists in ~humanities.languages
Boojum Link ParentEm dashes work too: I’d like to invite my best friend—the CEO—and the mayor. Edit: Just scrolled down and saw /u/updawg's comment. Oh well. -
Comment on Grammar errors that actually matter, or: the thread where we all become prescriptivists in ~humanities.languages
Boojum Link ParentI'm with you on that. Ending a sentence with a period (or question or exclamation mark) is a hill I'll die on. The only times that I ever don't do it are when writing out a URL where I'm concerned...I'm with you on that. Ending a sentence with a period (or question or exclamation mark) is a hill I'll die on. The only times that I ever don't do it are when writing out a URL where I'm concerned that it might be interpreted as part of the link.
I've often thought that if my spouse or anyone else whom I text with regularly start getting messages from me without the ending periods, it'll be a sign that I'm writing under duress.
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Comment on Grammar errors that actually matter, or: the thread where we all become prescriptivists in ~humanities.languages
Boojum Link ParentMuch as I'd like a concise word, I've given up on bi-weekly and just say "every other week". I do like fortnightly, though. But riffing on hemi-weekly, maybe demi-weekly would work (given that the...Much as I'd like a concise word, I've given up on bi-weekly and just say "every other week".
I do like fortnightly, though. But riffing on hemi-weekly, maybe demi-weekly would work (given that the Latin that demi- comes from is about removing the middle, i.e., skipping the week in between)?
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Comment on Peeves, opinions, and hot takes about style in ~humanities.languages
Boojum LinkI can't remember the last time I saw a manuscript in that style. Most of the papers I read in my field are single-spaced with two columns. That tends to be enforced by the journal and conference...Does a published manuscript really need to be double spaced?
I can't remember the last time I saw a manuscript in that style. Most of the papers I read in my field are single-spaced with two columns. That tends to be enforced by the journal and conference style sheets, however. (I did experiment with the one-sentence-per-line thing when drafting my last submission, but LaTeX just formats that into the usual single-spaced two column PDF for me.)
On a similar note, foreign words should not be italicized or emphasized any other way just because they appear in a text. All this does is fill up the text with needless emphasis that distracts from the things you do mean to emphasize.
This isn't really something that I see in my field, but I think a good compromise might be to treat it like an abbreviation - emphasize it once to call attention when you introduce the term, then just use it plainly thereafter.
Now some of my own:
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Don't treat citations as part of the text. Instead of:
We refer the reader to [Foo 2020].
use something like:
We refer the reader to the work of Foo [2020].
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Do treat math as part of the text (place commas between equations in a group, place periods after equations that end a sentence, or continue the text of the sentence after the last equation):
Consider the following equations:
e^iπ + 1 = 0, i^2 = j^2 = k^2 = ijk = -1, e = mc^2.The last one,
e = mc^2,is a famous result by Einstein relating energy and mass.
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Comment on Peeves, opinions, and hot takes about style in ~humanities.languages
Boojum Link ParentThe explanation that I've seen is that an abstract should be a brief summary giving the gist for other experts in your field, who need very little hand-holding. The introduction, related work, and...The explanation that I've seen is that an abstract should be a brief summary giving the gist for other experts in your field, who need very little hand-holding. The introduction, related work, and background sections are for a wider audience where you can try to bring interested non-experts up to speed.
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Comment on Grammar errors that actually matter, or: the thread where we all become prescriptivists in ~humanities.languages
Boojum Link ParentInteresting to see a bit of the history of it. Even so, it's one of those things that grates on me slightly whenever I spot it. (And I fully acknowledge that that's more of a "me thing".) (One...Interesting to see a bit of the history of it. Even so, it's one of those things that grates on me slightly whenever I spot it. (And I fully acknowledge that that's more of a "me thing".)
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Comment on Grammar errors that actually matter, or: the thread where we all become prescriptivists in ~humanities.languages
Boojum Link ParentInteresting! I hadn't heard of that before, though I've definitely encountered people who spoke that way. Still, it's one thing to write it out that way for a first draft, and another thing to...Interesting! I hadn't heard of that before, though I've definitely encountered people who spoke that way.
Still, it's one thing to write it out that way for a first draft, and another thing to post it without going back and editing it. The lovely thing about the written word is that you can take your time and revise it. Or if you have trouble with that, get help from tools or another person.
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Comment on Peeves, opinions, and hot takes about style in ~humanities.languages
Boojum (edited )Link Parent"Logical quotation" is the current term for that. (As a programmer, I do it too.) ETA: I'm with you on the two spaces between sentences. Anyone who looks at my markdown here will see the same...I have a strong preference for punctuation outside of quotations. It probably stems from my experience as a programmer, where a string of text is very precise (this is exactly what I'm quoting).
"Logical quotation" is the current term for that. (As a programmer, I do it too.)
ETA:
I'm with you on the two spaces between sentences. Anyone who looks at my markdown here will see the same thing. That said, while it's currently seen as antiquated typographically for text set in a proportional typeface, there's an argument that it's still relevant for monospaced text. A good amount of my prose ends up in code comments and commit log messages which are viewed that way, so that tends to support my habit. Also, I do my coding in Emacs, which by default recognizes sentences boundaries by double spaces to distinguish them from abbreviations.
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Comment on Grammar errors that actually matter, or: the thread where we all become prescriptivists in ~humanities.languages
Boojum Link(I'll preface this by saying that I'm the type of person who got an Oxford Comma Preservation Society t-shirt from my spouse this past Christmas.) Honestly, I'll forgive most things like mixing up...(I'll preface this by saying that I'm the type of person who got an Oxford Comma Preservation Society t-shirt from my spouse this past Christmas.)
Honestly, I'll forgive most things like mixing up the occasional homophone, omitting a word here or there, and other minor errors (especially mixed tenses). As a cradle speaker of English, the first is something that I occasionally find myself doing - I hear the word in my head as I'm typing, but my fingers type out the wrong version. The later types of errors tend to creep into my own writing because I'll often revise and edit what I wrote before posting or sending, and in the process I'll overlook and leave some fragment of the original that I should have updated as part of my edits too. It's the usual mental blind spot where where the mental model of what I intended to write doesn't quite match the actual words on the screen.
The big things that really bother me, though, are lack of proper capitalization, lack of punctuation to divide words into sentences, and lack of paragraphs to divide sentences into thematic groups.
mainly it's a question of whether the writing is at all organized or if its just a stream of conciousness like this where i find that its really hard to tell what the idea thought or thesis behind it is supposed to be and its full of runons and makes me spend significant mental effort to parse it to try to figure out what their saying and feels like they couldnt care less about communicating clearly to the reader is something that offends me much more than something thats reasonabbly logical and just has a few minor oversites and brainblips :-)
Minor things that I'll definitely find irritating, though: "who" instead of "whom", and "less" instead of "fewer". Bonus points for proper use of "shan't", however.
I'm also old enough to have lived through the days when KB meant 1024 bytes and an MB was a luxury, so MB vs. MiB doesn't really bother me as long as things are unambiguous from context. (I tend to use KiB and MiB out of habit these days, though, since those are usually what I mean and are unambiguous.) I also work as a hardware architect these days, so B and b suffixes are pretty standard among my coworkers. We also tend to use notation like f32, s16, and u8 as well; that helps to avoid the byte/word/dword/qword confusion that /u/em-dash mentioned.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Boojum Link ParentI'll add that UFO 50 is fantastic on the Steam Deck -- to the point that I haven't even bothered to install it on my desktop machine. I've been playing it exclusively in little snacks on my Steam...I'll add that UFO 50 is fantastic on the Steam Deck -- to the point that I haven't even bothered to install it on my desktop machine. I've been playing it exclusively in little snacks on my Steam Deck. (And I find the "play for 20 minutes or a couple hours" thing is kind of what the Steam Deck is made for.)
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Comment on What are your favourite time-loop based books, movies and video games? in ~talk
Boojum Link ParentI always thought it fantastic that they had the courage not to even attempt to justify it, especially since it basically invites the viewer to fill in their own explanation. In my quote...I always thought it fantastic that they had the courage not to even attempt to justify it, especially since it basically invites the viewer to fill in their own explanation. In my quote collection, I have the last lines of the The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Seuss, which I like to think of for unexplained stories like that:
But neither Bartholomew Cubbins, nor King Derwin himself, nor anyone else in the Kingdom of Didd could ever explain how the strange thing happened. They only could say it just "happened to happen" and was not very likely to happen again.
The first one that pops to mind is the tale of Koshchei the Deathless from Russian folklore. Depending on the version, he keeps his mortality hidden outside of himself: locked up inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare, inside a casket, under a tree, in some desolate place, etc. Only by finding this and destroying it can the hero destroy him. You can find a version of the tale here..
For more, this type of story of the external soul is discussed in The Golden Bough. (Beware of somewhat "dated" cultural references). These types of stories are also classified as ATU 302, "The Ogre’s (Devil’s) Heart in the Egg" in the Arne-Thompson-Uther folklore motif index where you can find many more variations listed.
(Voldemort was hardly the first to get this idea.)