"Swan song" is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement. The phrase refers to an ancient belief that the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) is completely silent during its lifetime until the moment just before death, when it sings one beautiful song. The belief, now known to be incorrect, had become proverbial in Ancient Greece by the 3rd century BC, and was reiterated many times in later Western poetry and art.
Just a few things,
Finished my HSC. Yay. Ended up playing over 130 hours of Dota2 in those 3 and a bit weeks. Oops. It’s okay though, I ended up doing exactly as I expected in all of the exams (which was really well), except 4u maths where I failed time management and didn’t attempt a few questions which I could have done. That’s okay though, if I had to choose one of my exams to fail, it would be 4u maths because it scales like crazy anyway. Imba.
You might say “135 hours of dota during hsc, are you crazy?” but I honestly feel like my time was better spent this way, and I am glad I did this. There is a point of diminishing returns of studying, and I felt like I reached that very quickly. Maybe if I put those 145 hours into study I would get 0.2 more of an ATAR point? Is that really worth it?
Playing SC2 again. This is going to be tricky because I’m probably going to be terrible at everything because I’ve been getting worse while everyone has been getting better. Furthermore, dota is pretty fun. It’s likely that I might lose more than I would like to and just play dota out of disappointment, slowing down my recovery even more, and playing even more dota as a result, perpetuating this cycle until I’m in diamond. I’ll try not to let that happen.
If anyone ever watched me play, they would quickly realise that I only know how to play macro as Protoss. All-ins don’t work when I do it. I’m incredibly predictable, and when I try to be unpredictable it’s usually a cheese that I haven’t done in a couple of months and I forget my fourth pylon, supply blocking my void ray as well as my initial warp in of 3 stalkers. But now that I’m a blank slate again, I’ll try some more all ins in every match up. Maybe this is why I always have so little games played after each season. All my games are too long.
I realised that I never use the f-hotkeys, i.e. f1 f2 f3 f4 (did you know that i.e. stands for id est which literally means “that is”; I often get distracted when I look at English words and notice that it’s just derived from latin, like the word “distract” comes from the latin participle “tractus” that literally means “having been dragged”, and when you add the prefix “dis” you get something like “having been dragged apart”; and the name “Amanda” is a gerundive that literally means “to be loved” / Miranda literally means “to be admired” [and the word admire is also latin, ad + mirus])
So anyway, I never use those hotkeys, apparently they save map locations or something like that? I’m going to rebind them – f1=9 f2=0 – and try to get into the habit of having my scout on control group f1 instead of control group 2. The reason I don’t use them in the first place is just a habit from war3 and dota where f1 f2 f3 were automatically the hotkey for your heroes.
And now I won’t have the trouble of only having 2 control groups. Of course, this was never a problem to begin with as Protoss only really needs one control group, but I often had difficulty when playing the other races.
I’ll probably be streaming most of my SC2, you should watch, I’m funny. Sometimes. I like to think I’m funny, at least. http://www.twitch.tv/delete12
Polyphasic sleep: This is something that fascinated me and I spent hours reading/watching about it instead of studying for my trial HSC exams.
The uberman sleeping pattern is six 20 minute naps per day, or 2 hours sleep per day. I wanted to do that, but maybe that’s a bit extreme. Maybe one day. Instead I’m going to try some form of biphasic sleep, probably the 6 hours sleep + 20 minute powernap one, and over time try to reduce it until it’s something like 5.5 hours sleep + 20 minute powernap. I don’t know, we’ll see, it’ll be fun.
Coaching. I’ll start coaching again, I think I can do it, but I’ll need to spend more time preparing the lesson so it isn’t a waste of time. I don’t want to do it too often though, I need to spend more time actually playing the game. Maybe like once or twice a week. I don’t know how much it should be. $15 seems standard? I don’t know. Do BSG tournaments still offer free coaching as a prize? I can do that.
Maybe in a couple of weeks. I know hardly anything about the metagame at the moment. Then again, I never really did.
hmm, I think that's everything. see you guys around
I've read about those sleeping methods, but it takes a few weeks to break into ones such as the uberman, and requires extreme discipline to stay awake, and to stick to a schedule so strict during those few weeks.
You also need a schedule and life that lets you sleep every few hours for 30 minutes, this is probably the hardest part.
Glad you did well though, I'm currently doing my VCE exams at the moment.
I've studied and experimented alot with sleep/dreams during my days at University. 20 minute naps are really godawful - you don't approach REM sleep within 20 minutes, and without REM sleep you don't feel rested at all. Multiples of 1.5 hours is what you should be looking for. A quick google search -> http://www.glenrhodes.com/?p=132
Personally I sleep 4.5/6 hours and a 1.5 hour nap. If I really want to be fresh and ready for something I like 7.5 hours. And ofcourse there are days where I don't want to do anything but sleep and sleep something like 19 hours or something ridiculous.
Welcome back to StarCraft! Can't wait to have you back on board to practice/discussions!
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