Frank Davis > Recent Status Updates

Somewhere past half way and its had a few moments but has otherwise been pretty bleak throughout.

So far it has just been a lot of one character just whining about their predicament in life. I get it, this society is tough! But surely there are better ways to tell the story.

I think we've done all of the set up for the main quest now and all of the how to play details, which makes me wonder how quickly the actual quest will go. Still I'm enjoying myself with this quirky, children's story - even as a grown-ass man.

"Americans are considered crazy anywhere in the world." - 'And He Built a Crooked House' by Robert Heinlein (1941)

Apparently that was a casual statement to make 80+ years ago, also.

“Sometimes I think that these symbols, the little scratches we make to represent vectors and tensors, are the universe, the structure itself, and that what we see, the physical, the mechanical, are mere outward clothings of the eternal mathematical thought.” - 'The Living Equation' by Nat Schachner (1934)

This quote expresses the exact opposite view on the realness of mathematics to the earlier quote that I shared

"Number has no place in Nature. It is an invention of the human mind to atone for a bad memory." - from 'Space' by John Buchan (1911)

“A psychiatrist could help. There’s a good man in Albany.”

Finnerty shook his head. “He’d pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” He nodded. “Big, undreamed-of things—the people on the edge see them first.”

I'm enjoying it. Very cynical.

Page 1, sex and death. I guess we're to continue with the same vibe.

The setting is well constructed but gee the plot seems to spend most of its time on sex and death. I'm interested in all the other things.

Nearly there.

So freaking good!

Well I really like what this one is doing with the alien perspective, showing more of what the first contact looked like to them. But it's also paralleling Sandoz's experience and that's a bit rough.

I almost gave up on this immediately, the story started in a very religious setting and I wasn't in the mood for that at all, but I'm glad that I stuck with it. The characters are great and the story is just now beginning to get interesting.

It has been stupid and also fun, but I'm ready for this road trip to terminate.

I've got a long ass drive tomorrow so I should get this finished before the end of the month after all.

Just when I thought I was completely done with faith Vs evidence discussions, Sagan draws an analogy between uncertainty on both sides which I think is extremely relevant to an understanding of our human condition.

I was a little disappointed with this week's level ups. In particular the string skipping and legato exercises have barely changed in 4 weeks. I had practiced those upside down and backwards in the first week and I think that should have been encouraged by the author so that the next exercises would be more unique.

The alternate picking exercise was a reasonable step up and the string bending was great this week.

This is some great content but its presentation is lacking and clearly some conventions that we now take for granted hadn't yet been established. It's a difficult slog going back and forth to confirm the terminology but other than that it has been a great read so far. I will be referring back to these charts for years to come I suspect. Now in the second half it's time to focus on the theoretical.

Well the exercises are starting ramp up. In particular, the sweep picking exercise is starting to feel like sweep picking and something that could be used in music. The arpeggio is still basic but I liked that the pattern varied. The bending exercise started introducing pre-bends which is very cool and something I rarely consider. I'm enjoying it but still disappointed with the brief explanations accompanying each.

Engage(d)

I'm about as interested in a Fenris Rangers story as I am in a story about the Babylon 5 Rangers, which is not at all. But it is a David Mack and January LaVoy is narrating, so I remain hopeful. Only the scene with Janeway has caught my interest so far.

Two weeks done and we're still at very simple exercises but I've found some of the slight changes have been quite revealing. For example just playing the arpeggios upside down this week forced me to focus on my finger placement; landing my chords more evenly instead of landing the bass notes and letting the the higher strings catch up lazily.

With 50 more iterations of each exercise to go it's probably a good start.

Well this has come back around in the third quarter for me. I enjoyed the initial set up but then found the bulk of the first half was far too bleak to enjoy. In Q3 we've set off on a journey marred by bleakness but with a glowing ember of hope. Bring it home in the final quarter please!

Wow. That could be the lowest rated one of these that I've come across. The title doesn't do it any favours for me but I do like Five and I'll go in hopeful anyway.

This is off to quite a good start.

It's not like I needed more exercises but I just love this kind of thing. A little every day goes a very long way and I enjoy the structured/measured approach.

Anyway, I've been at this for a week and my first impression is that this is great stuff. Each exercise has some good info and advice about it, but it is very brief and it could stand to go into a bit more detail.

Starts simple. I might update weekly.

Nearly there.

It feels like I'm crawling through this one because I can only really spare my travel time for reading at the moment, but if I could I'd be unwilling to put it down. The characters are hyperdimensional! The plot is constantly engaging and the writing doesn't abandon the plot for explanatory expositions.