The Pokémon Syndrome

Originally written in December 2011

Image placeholder:? Professor Oak, a middle-aged man with greying hair, stands in an adventurous pose clad in typical Pokémon Trainer gear, including a baseball cap, a jacket, a backpack, shorts, tennis shoes, and hanging from his belt, a number of colorful hand-held devices. Caption: Lets do this! (Again!) †

Go do something you haven't done in a few years. Preferably something you've only done once. Something you really didn't do so well at. You think this time it'll be different: you're older, wiser, and have as and advantage over last time that there was a last time you can now look back to.

Except that… you don't.

After a while, you'll realize you're doing everything exactly the same! It turns out that when forced to make the same decisions under the same conditions, you'll come out with the same results. This is good: it means you are still the same person you were years ago; but it's also bad, because it means that, like a machine, given the same settings – the same input – you produce the same output; you haven't changed – haven't learned.

I call this "the Pokémon syndrome" because I discovered it playing the Pokémon games.

Resorting to image macros

I've always thought image macros were a rather cheap way to convey an idea. After all, you're taking something someone else has made, and merely changing the caption to fit your own devices. Wouldn't it be so much better if people could make their own things from scratch?

However, as a Computer Scientist, I've been taught that things need to be as efficient as possible, and anything unnecessary that gets in the way of that has to go. As a researcher, I've learned that strong emotions are, to put it bluntly, something that literally gets in your blood and has to be used up before you can continue whatever it was you were doing before you felt that way. As someone who writes on the internet, I know that people need to hear from you, and that these are the things they want to hear about. And finally, as an artist, I'm supposed to know that the best way to channel these emotions, is by creating something out of them them.

So yesterday, when I became so-furious-with-myself-I-just-could-have-killed-something at discovering what was wrong with the program I was writing, I made this:

Annoyed kitty image macro copyrighted by thekraidster567 ^{[it is?]}
Text by me

Indentured Servitude

(Or “What’s been keeping me busy, part 2”)

You may have noticed that, recurrently, the little box in the sidebar titled “My current situation,” not only displays the courses I’m taking, but also a cryptic “indentured to the library.” Today, I want to explain to you what on Earth that means.

When I originally started working for the library, I was given a contract that basically said “I agree to everything I have been told verbally.” I was told that I had to do 6 hours a week (for a dollar each) and that, if I didn’t do all of them, I could always do them next term. I was told that I would be paid per hour worked, and that, for the university’s accounting department, I would count as a TA.

After 22 years, I finally saw it

Text-only version

On Sunday, I finally saw Don Bluth's All Dogs Go To Heaven (henceforth ADG2H, because I'm in a bit of a rush). I had never seen it before: whenever it was in stores, I never had the money, and on TV they only ever showed All Dogs Go To Heaven 2^*. Since I "got" the jokes in ADG2H 2, I had, until now, considered my knowledge of that part of pop culture complete. After all, you're supposed to know what the first movie is about to "get" the second one, right?

But recently, Rick Griffin started a story arc explicitly referencing ADG2H on his webcomic Housepets!. Of course, there were many things I didn't get.

A watch from Heaven, WTF?

The Japan relief effort

Text-only version

To make things simpler

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Modification to legal info

Just a brief note to say I modified the Privacy Policy and other legal info page.

Now we have Ads

Text-only version

Christmas story: part 0

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