Hi. You'll excuse the lack of emotion, I'm very drained and tired and sad. At least I'm still using punctuation; (← like that one) sometimes my messages get more run on than usual when I'm tired. What a dramatic title, right? Yeah, I guess coding is basically what's keeping me going lately, especially when my friends don't have much time for me. Webdev lessons have started for my club, and I'm teaching, which takes up some time but I love thinking about it.
The second sentence sounds like I'm narrating something, maybe like The Stanley Parable? When Stanley read this post, he forgave the author for his choice of a period over an exclamation mark. Hehe.
Also* been thinking about 2nd person narration. Ever since I wrote that one singular 2nd person piece, it keeps sneaking up on me unexpectedly. Like, I'll write something and think, hm, this would hit harder if I could do it in a 2nd person POV way
like excuse me? get out of my head??
Sorry back to the thing. I'm in a nostalgic mood right meow** so I guess I'll do a quick update. Read*** back my old posts and now here are some things I wanna say in response, chronologically:
- Entry #1 I did not, in fact, add a guestbook (still don't know how)
- Entry #3 My fave brawler is now Jessie (+ Belle); I play her passably :) The exchange went amazingly and I still think of my piece very very fondly, even though it's not too popular. Who cares about metrics anyway ← I do :pensive: ALSO haven't cleared my Watch Later… quit watching videos entirely instead
- Entry #6 I never did finish King Lear, oops. Also, I think editing the background made it fit a bit better. And okay, show-off, using incongruous—they don't know that you had to look it up before posting to make sure you were using it right.
- Entry #8 YAYYYY THERTA!!! She's very cool; I do not regret pulling her :D
Ok but on to other matters: recently, I've started teaching my club some webdev (very basic of course, given that I'm also a complete beginner when it comes to this). The reception has been really great so far—even if they don't wanna answer questions very much; but that's par for the course (shy nerds.....)—except for one thing which upset me somewhat. And that's the use of AI to generate code—and worse, to search up what is very easily found in webdocs and reference websites (which I explicitly mentioned and linked to them). How is one going to learn like this? I understand why my teacher calls his students weak sometimes now :p
No but like! It's fine if you're a loser and resort to genAI to write code for you instead of doing trial and error and research and, y'know, learning turn to AI for the code, who am I to stop them from using something they obviously think is such a useful tool? But when you then don't understand the code, and I'm trying to explain not just how to works but how you can reverse engineer / modify it through some simple online research, don't pull up genAI just to ask about one singular CSS property? Practice some research skills; it's not like we aren't all aware that AI is killing the earth—if you can't stop, minimise your usage, at least. I'm right there to tell you what everything means and how it works!
Where's that post when you need it? stop using chat gpt. i can also feed you misinformation when you ask me questions and also im beautiful
? Sigh. Ok chat it's FINE. I just worry that these people won't actually learn much—and it sucks doubly because I can tell they want to! They are such earnest and willing students! But. But.
In other news††, today's brief journey through some webpages led me to Dithermark, a lovely site that creates sorta-pixel art from images using a dithering algorithm. That's the kind of algorithms we need; not generative AI algorithms. This one's mathematical, though I understand so little of how it works that it may as well be a black box too. Kidding; words have meanings and that's not the right one. I do get slightly irked at wrong usage of words and phrases, which is ironic given I make countless mistakes too. So yeah, back to the point earlier; I replaced the background of my site with a dithered version and I think it fits the theme I have going a little better :D
Oh, it's approaching midnight. Recently (this year), I've been sleeping later. I can feel the effects and I should probably sleep earlier haha but [whatever I could say is not a good reason but I still stay up because I get drawn into things easily and can't extricate myself]. Wha— who changed that to the implied meaning and not my list of silly excuses >:(
Yeah okay. I will post this and go to sleep. Yesterday, I finally silenced my phone for good and decided to commit to staying off social media more. We'll see if that helps somewhat with the depression (not seriously but been feeling very down).
* I also realised—quite a few times, in fact, without any recollection or self awareness in the interim—that I drop the 'I' more often when I'm sad. Something something that's not me anymore, I'm just reporting on this body's feelings.
** shush.
*** she did it again! wow ok 3rd person isn't really helping it either†
† says the one with an alter ego they talk to
†† she moves on before she works herself into a righteous anger again