October 2014 Bragging thread.

I finally submitted my Alcor application form.

To start off with something everyone here will be interested in, I've recently and finally finished the first part of my video version of The Useful Idea of Truth (LW post here, Youtube link here). It seems well liked, and I'm even wondering if I should've posted it to Main. To understand what finishing this project means to me may be hard, as it means a lot. I have learned a ton doing this, and am really happy with the final look. My previous video editing experience was basically putting still frames and videos in sequential order with a spoken voice overtop. I'm 18 years old. I'm 18 and inexperienced and I just made something that I consider on par with CGP Grey in production quality, and he's been making videos professionally for years. It's so great to look at one of my idols, say "I bet I could do that too," and then actually do it. There's a real-world benchmark for this skill I've never really done before, and I matched it. I'm developing as a person, learning and training new skills, and it's feeling great. Of course, at >80 hours for that 6 minute video, my production rate isn't so great, given I still have schooling and work to worry about. I'm sure I can optimize, slim down, and otherwise improve my workflow, and I'd love to just jump right into doing this full-time, cranking out LW videos every other week, but I can't. I've got a bit of a pipe dream, of course, that crowd-funding or an official sponsor could keep me going until Youtube add revenue/Subable/Patreon can support me, but I'm not confident there's room in people's budget for something like this work to become a priority for them.

Less of public interest, I have made a lot of progress with my schooling. This last spring I made an arrangement with my High school to do my Senior year somewhat differently than is standard. Thanks to advanced placement classes completed in previous years, I had only 3 credits needed to graduate, so I had the option to just do those 3 courses at my own pace, over the summer. 2 have been completed (yay me, I can self-motivate!) , and all I have left to finish is my English 12 class. 4 days ago, I buckled down and finished the 1st of the 4 papers I need to do. The reading needed for the others is getting done quickly, and I'm happy with what progress I have done already. I look forward finishing High School without having to actually go to school, and the validation of my previous feelings toward self-paced lessons is nice.

This is not cool -- in some ways it is the antithesis of cool. But it is an important achievement where I overcame my own weaknesses to do what was necessary. And I add it here to add some diversity to the stories already posted.

I fired someone who objectively deserved to be fired because she was repeatedly harming the organization, despite the fact that I sympathized greatly with her situation. I believe I did so with clarity and compassion; she agreed that her conduct was intolerable. Continuing to tolerate it would have set a terrible standard for her peers. Firing someone is a negative event for both people involved, though it is obviously worse for one. So it was the right decision and you just have to pay the price.

Then I explained the reason to all her peers and showed the evidence for why, despite the fact that this is not the done thing in modern manageria. I believe that the message came across; informal feedback afterwards indicated that the group appreciated the openness and agreed with the action. Not talking about the reason openly would have led to speculation where all but one of the many purported reasons would have been false. Talking about this in a group setting is a professional risk because you never know how people will talk about it afterwards. But again, it was the right decision and you just pay the price.

Max L.

I'm starting to get involved with the Seattle EA/LW group, and helping organize a Secular Solstice in Seattle.

Deal with it, internalized social anxiety.

I missed September's and got ambushed by Akratic Goblins halfway through, but I think it still counts as in the last month (or did yesterday):

I went back to college, and immediately did what I should have done years ago and made a program for viewing images as sound or braille. I never managed to compile it into a distributable .exe, though, so no one cared. But it's still a huge step forward that I'm frustrated didn't happen a decade ago, at least.

I've passed 200,000 words in the story I started writing at the end of May, and as far as I can tell, I'm still on track to keep writing daily and bring it to a finish, instead of just trailing off into... well... not. That's pretty close to four NaNoWriMos in a row, with more to come. And the next story I write will be that much better for the work I've done on this one; and if I can manage my motivation so as to keep it up, I just might be able to consider myself "a writer" instead of "someone who writes".

"On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow." -- Nietzsche

Tsuyoku naritai!

Got a project we worked on for my startup covered on hackaday.com!

I won a game of Diplomacy). It's the third game that I've started, and the first that I've finished. I also did it without lying very much. (E.g. the only time that I said I would do something and then didn't, was when I didn't know whether the person I was talking to had got my message on time; and I don't think they minded, because we'd teamed up against another player and the effect of me doing this was that I took more from that player than I would have otherwise.)

Cooler than that was coming joint first in the IPD tournament

Obtained an online tutoring job.

Generated a list of six schools that I want to work at and have an application in at five of them. The sixth (University of Texas) has yet to post a job within my target salary range.

Despite knowing no one at one of my target schools and having no personal contacts there, I was able to successful use networking to speak to someone in the department I plan to work at, who knows the current holder of the position, and who answered the major questions I had regarding the position (and, this may be bad to do in the bragging section, but I'd like to brag ON the people who made that possible by putting me in contact with the right people and the right places. Thanks.)

Developed a writing wager that now has four participants, each dedicated to writing a novel. Since each person is a talented writer whose abilities I respect, I am pleased to know that this will provide the world three worthwhile pieces of fiction plus what I will produce.

Last month: held a birthday fundraiser that ended up raising $500 to effective charities, mostly MIRI.

My Captain Planet fanfiction has just reached 2,000 views. (Only about 5 of them are mine.)

Turned in the ready-for-copyeditor-no-more-big-content-edits draft of my book to my publisher!

I made a robot fight with a lightsaber! (see work and result ) (more precisely I hacked together a basic arm control so I could easily trigger various sword moves, video game style; we were trying to make a system with an autonomous robot using image processing but as this was hacked together in a couple of hours on the demo booth we stuck to manual mode, which was enough for attracting a crowd).

After 20 years work, transcribed 1.2 million words (magazines, lectures, books) by the British philosopher George Walford.

gwiep.net

I don't really do anything with my time. Believe me, I'm just as big an idiot as I appear to be.