20 NOV 2018 by ideonexus

 Mental States in Gamer Mastery

Learning State While in the learning state of mind your objective should be to concentrate on learning and experimentation. You should play to win, and take matches seriously, but not be afraid to try different strategies for the purpose of learning. In this state you aim to maximize your learning, not your win-percentage. Feel free to think about your moves, what would have happened if you took another route, what you are going to try in the next matchup and so on. It is only beneficial to...
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20 MAY 2011 by ideonexus

 The laryngeal nerve's haphazard course through the body

A favourite example, ever since it was pointed out to me by Professor J. D. Currey when he tutored me as an undergraduate, is the recurrent laryngeal nerve.* It is a branch of one of the cranial nerves, those nerves that lead directly from the brain rather than from the spinal cord. One of the cranial nerves, the vagus (the name means 'wandering' and it is apt), has various branches, two of which go to the heart, and two on each side to the larynx (voice box in mammals). On each side of the n...
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Another example of poor biological design.

21 APR 2011 by ideonexus

 Bernie Cosell on the Complexity of Modern Programming

So I don't envy modern programmers, and It's going to get worse. The simple things are getting packaged into libraries, leaving only the hard things. That stuff is getting so complicated, but the standards that people are expecting are stunning. One of the ones ^i^ey showed me stunned me. He was showing me Google Maps that will do I routes for you. One of the things you can Jo is you can grab a piece of the route with ^our mouse and drag that piece of the route somewhere else to tell Google t...
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Provides a great example of complexity in Google Maps functionality and being thankful that he no longer must contend with such increasing difficulty.