Dosed

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Everything posted by Dosed

  1. Life

    I mean honestly I don't know. There's a lot of censorship here. You can't access the BBC (you can get to the recipe site though for some reason), and Twitter has been inaccessible for the last 3 weeks or so. Even googling why that might be revealed no results. There was a riot a few months ago in Hanoi and that didn't seem to be being reported on, and there was a big protest about something which also didn't turn up on international sites. It's pretty scary. Honestly though I can't really tell how the locals feel about it. I can't speak about it to them, and the ones I can communicate with would rather not talk about it. The same thing happened while visiting Laos and Cambodia. It's late here now so I don't want to read about it but it seems Bolsonaro has recently done some scary stuff to do with teachers. It honestly seems to me like we're on the brink of our generation's/century's dark times. Whatever that means. I feel like I'm going to live my adult life in a very different world to my childhood one. I'm sorry this got so dark.
  2. Life

    It's beautifully sunny here in Vietnam here and although today is much better than normal, I've very much felt dread setting in. I think it's partially due to all the madness going on. I really sympathise with those in Brazil and it's a terrifying sign of what's to come. Especially since there's been a lot of talk about 'purging' and 'not enough killing'. Who knows. But on the bright side (for me at least) I've started coding again with Treehouse. They had a free trial week and it's got me definitely paying for the next month at least. The course is really well designed and they've got a bunch of courses available if anyone's interested in any programming stuff. I really feel like it's worth the $25. The videos are still full of stuff I don't understand, but it's really well broken down and explained and you have to use the stuff they teach you. I'm gonna keep going with it and it's giving me a good sense of purpose. My girlfriend and are planning on moving to New Zealand so if there's any thumbs that far down south let me know! Roderick what are the Dutch winters like? I loved British winters coz they were so crisp, but it also gets dark around 4pm around December.
  3. I guess you're playing on the NA servers? I normally get to rank 8 or 9 every season, and I used to play until around rank 5. I even got to rank 3 once, but that was when I had the time to grind it out. I'm glad I don't have the time any more coz my God was that a frustrating time. It's such a big time sink. I've read several posts on the reddit that say you need like 150 games from rank 5 to legend. I'm not sure I play that in a whole month... it's crazy. I've ended up playing a lot of arena recently. I find it a much more interesting alternative to the ladder, but I'm glad there's 2 modes to choose from. Would be nice to have a third. If you've got the dust then why not just craft the cards?
  4. Why have you never really tried climbing? Man, that's unlucky for your legendaries. I got Harbinger Celestia as my latest Boomsday legendaries, and Aviana Duskbringer as my last Witchwood one. That was pretty painful. Are you excited for Blizzcon? I'm not sure how much stuff they'll anounce HS wise. I think there might be a tease for the expansion, but maybe not even that.
  5. Life

    Now that's a cutie pie right there!
  6. How's the climb this season? I managed to get to rank 9 and just haven't have had the time/commitment to keep going. I also keep getting frustrated and just giving up. Odd Paladin also did pretty well for me statistically speaking, but man do I hate playing that deck. I actually dislike playing many aggro decks since they're so one tracked. I'm actually really pissed off about the nerfs as I recently crafted Alune and Stargazer Luna for a total of 3200 dust and then they nerfed Mana Wyrm which ultimately crippled the deck. I can't see them releasing many more aggro cards for mage in the future since that seemed to be the idea of murdering Mana Wyrm. I really wish I'd crafted Hadranox and The 9 Mana Recruiting Guy since they're the only cards I'm missing from big/taunt druid and it seems that Druid is, and forever will be, God Tier. I did manage to get my first 11 key run in arena the other day thanks to Houndmaster Shaw and 2 fungal mancers allowing me to do crazy value trades.
  7. Modest Tech: The NX Generation (Nintendo Switch)

    Yeah, I think that's gonna be pretty rough. It wouldn't even be so bad if you beat them and then threw the ball at them until you caught them. I think I'm pretty much mentally bought in at this point though. I believe gen 8 will be 2019, and I'm looking forward to Town, whatever that is, from the pocketmen team. I've been loving Into The Breach recently. It's super cool and I love that I can just turn it on and off again at will.
  8. Modest Tech: The NX Generation (Nintendo Switch)

    How we feeling about that Pokeyman? I'm excited to play with my girlfriend and get some nostalgia tickles.
  9. Idle Thumbs Hiatus

    I still check in every day and I've actually had brief (year long) hiatuses myself, but it's definitely part of my internet routine. I used to often check the Life threads/Idle Banter stuff as I don't have a decent PC to play all the good good stuff that's coming out all the time on Steam, and those threads would at least be interesting. Now there's very few responses to them and they often come days later. I also don't really dislike the idea of slack chat, but as @SecretAsianMansaid I feel like I'm butting in on conversations and that people are already well established there. I kind of feel like there's a coolness about those things that I'm not willing to get into. I'll still check in on this place as I've been coming here since 2009 apparently, but it's a shame that it's died off so slowly and without a word from the Thumbs (to my knowledge).
  10. Idle Thumbs Hiatus

    Yeah, it has been pretty quiet around here recently.
  11. Life

    Well I appreciate all the programming advice everyone gave me. Unfortunately, like many things in my life, I became obsessed with it and then promptly gave up. I promise myself and the good people of this forum that one day I'll return to it. I've also given up on learning German for the time being. I think my gaming addiction kicked in again. I've been playing a lot of video games recently. The worst part is I know I'm in the depths of it right now. I'm not trying to be hyperbolic or anything, but I really do myself going through these crazy phases of addiction. Does anyone else go through this? What do you do to counter it? My normal cycle is let it ruin me until I become so embarrassed/bored/exhausted by it that I stop and eventually end up doing something productive. I know that's not healthy, but that's the way it is. How do you guys it? On the other hand, I've become a lot more physically active. I've been playing 4-5 different sports a week and playing a 7v7 match of football a week which has been fun. I've also managed to get a DnD group together and started playing that after a long time of wanting to. I enjoyed the first session, but I think I'll enjoy it more next session now that I have a better idea of who my character is. It felt like I was just doing whatever was optimal to beat up the bad guys, but now I feel like I have some more motivations to do things. In other news my girlfriend and I are thinking of moving to New Zealand to do a working holiday visa. Does anyone have any experience with it? Or done anything similar?
  12. I bought 11 packs with gold and opened the 3 free ones and got 4 legendaries! Not too bad considering my luck before. One of them was Dr. Boom who I was super excited about, but it seems Warrior has gotten the shitty end of the stick again. Not sure how well he'll do in the future. I've been playing Spiteful Druid with essentially a lot of tech options and Floop for a third Summoner or Fungalmancer (or hopefully Keleseth in the future!). I've been running 2 Spellbreakers, 1 Gluttonous Ooze, 1 MCT, 1 Blood Knight with a few of them replacing the old Druid of the Scythe slots. It's been working well so far, although I haven't seen too much value out of the Blood Knight so far. 10-5 so far against a lot of the Druid variants and that's with me even accidentally throwing games when I didn't see lethal. It's done quite well against Control Lock too as I can often just get a lot of early pressure, ignore/freeze/taunt their big threats and go face and then close the deal with a Kelesethed/Fungalmancered Leeroy. It also helps that people will tend to mulligan thinking I'm playing some big Druid. How's the meta treating you so far? It seems like mechs are cute, but not really seeing anything crazy so far.
  13. I thought the pity timer worked independently for each expansion set. Like if I open 40 packs of Witchwood and 40 packs of KFT then I'll get 2 legendaries, but they won't affect each others timers. The annoying thing is I've already DE'd Millhouse a long time ago. I now know you can't open duplicate legendaries so at least I can't pull him again. Do you think mechs are actually going to be a thing? The community looks pretty split on them.
  14. Well I just pulled 2 legendaries! One from the Classic Set and one from The Witchwood! Pretty lucky. Well it would have been if they weren't Millhouse and Duskfallen Aviana..... lol. I've managed to save 2k gold up for the new expansion and I have about 9k dust for whatever legendaries I stupidly decide to craft for no reason. I'm gonna buy 10 packs with gold and then do arenas with the rest. Do you do much arena yourself? I've recently moved onto PC for the first time in a long time to play HS and I've been using a deck tracker. It made a huge difference in arena because normally I can't remember what's in my deck so it made me stay in games I would've otherwise thought were donezo. I managed to get a 7, 6 and 6 run back to back.
  15. Life

    Yeah, I've been doing a bit with Codeacademy this morning and it was a lot more enjoyable. I also changed my course on Coursera to one which makes you actually write little bits and pieces in every video. The first one I tried was way too confusing. It was also using IDLE which AFAIK doesn't use cells and just runs everything as soon as I moved to the next line of code. I'm sure there's a way around that. The other courses are using much more user friendly stuff thankfully. EDIT: it seems the Code Academy projects are locked behind a paywall which is pretty frustrating. Anyone know any sites which let me work on beginner projects? I think the first two courses applied a lot of the stuff to mathematical concepts (which probably target the kinds of people who are likely to take the course), but it just turned me off instantly. Codeacademy seems to be teaching it more like a language. Yes, I know I'll have to grow up and do some maths eventually! I figure everything is tricky before you start learning it. I mean I had no idea about teaching before I became a teacher and that was pretty daunting to begin with. I'm gonna try out some Unity stuff on my laptop tomorrow too. Hopefully I'm not biting off more than I can chew.
  16. Life

    Yeah, I'm just having trouble even understanding the most basic concepts tbh. I'm using Coursera at the moment and I'm not sure if anyone has used it yet, but I'm learning about reusing functions. The course then asked me to write one line of code which would call on two functions. It was at this point I had no idea what I was doing and it suddenly felt like I've been wasting my time. I'm still plugging away at it every day, but at the moment it really feels like I'm reading a language where I know about 5 words in total. I've been trying to watch YouTube tutorials too, but I haven't found anything I particularly like at the moment. They're all either too complicated or I can't stand the host. Petty I know, but it is important if I plan on watching these people for a sum total of hours. I tried to do Unity stuff a long time ago, but I always only get so far with it and then just give up on it. I should probably give it another go. It would at least give me something practical to practice on. A bit more of immediate feedback would be nice.
  17. Life

    Oh wow. That is just crazy. I didn't know Polish was that complicated. Holy moly. The cases terrified me in German when I first started, but after a couple months of learning I'm trying not to let it stress me out. My big worry is speaking as I'm just learning to read and write at the moment, but I suppose it's a start. I had a teacher here in Vietnam, but it was just too expensive for what I was getting. I was also very happy to think that the subjunctive doesn't exist in German whereas it actually does. I'm not sure how/how often it's used. I think it's one of those things native speakers won't even notice that they use it. That was the case in Spain. People would tell me that they barely use the subjunctive in Spanish when in fact it's the European language with the most common use of the subjunctive. That was like the big deal for Spanish students; mastering the subjunctive. But now that I have some pretty decent proficiency in Spanish I feel like it's not that hard to learn. It's probably just my brain trying to forget all those hours poring over verb conjugation tables and trying to order a sandwich without insulting anyone. In terms of programming: I dropped around 350 quid on a new laptop yesterday. Got it home only to realise it's not got Windows on it. It's a Linux OS called Endless. I know this isn't a huge deal, but I'm too old to be learning a new OS and I just like how the majority of programs/games etc are built for Windows. I'm going to try and exchange it for a Windows machine this morning through Google Translate so that should be fun. I don't know if I'll get anywhere and if not i"ll just have to buy a Windows license. (fixed!) So did you guys get work programming with any official certificates or did you just self-teach and then apply for stuff? How long did it take you to feel like you were actually able to comprehend what was going on? SuperBiasedMan what resources did you use to learn when you first started?
  18. Life

    Oh that's really cool. What exactly was your path to getting there? Did you have some sort of form training and end up getting a certificate or did you just learn on your own and do projects to build a portfolio? I mean my spoken German is barely better than very basic holiday German, but it's cool that we've got at least 3 options to work in now. Yeah, I think some of the older generation do speak French, but I think it's a very low percentage. A lot of people seem to know numbers and very very basic English, but there's a lot of kids learning English now so I suspect it'll be a very different place in 10 years in terms of English speakers. Yeah, I found the biggest improvement to my Spanish was when I started watching TV with no intention of understanding 100% of it. I just wanted to listen and see what I could pick out. That's kind of what listening to a foreign language is like. It helped having the visuals for context. In the UK there's definitely an aversion to learning foreign languages to the point where it's almost embarrassing. I remember being told by my dad, half-jokingly half-not, that I was wasting my time with my French homework. What's Polish like? Does it use cases too? I like the sound of it and in an ideal world I'd love to learn it. Do you have cases in Dutch? I just remember learning all the swear words in Dutch as a kid.
  19. Life

    Oh that's pretty cool! I just want to try it out and see if I can have some sort of career change. I was thinking about doing some sort of higher education again, but I can't really see myself being able to afford it. Initially I was thinking about Germany as they have lots of cheap higher education available, but Brexit is round the corner and I don't know what that'll do. I'm not sure it'll do anything so we'll see. What's your job then? That's actually helped me a lot in terms of thinking about how things work. I'm gonna do some more stuff with Python tomorrow, but for now I'm just doing some reading/watching so I can get my head around it. Yeah, I'm getting a lot of interference from Spanish whenever I speak to Vietnamese people in the market. My brain just grabs for any foreign word in my head which would make sense in that situation. They normally don't know I'm accidentally speaking Spanish instead of English so it's not too embarrassing. My girlfriend and I just had dinner with our Vietnamese landlords and another tenant in the building. It was such a nice night. My girlfriend can speak very basic Vietnamese, and the landlords' English is just that, Landlord English. Stuff they need to know to say in the most basic way in the context of renting a place out. It then turns out that one of our landlords speaks German. So now I can actually communicate with him. I was always very jealous of Dutch people when I was younger. I spent a lot of time in Delft on holiday as a kid and used to get very envious that you all just seemed to naturally speak English. How often do you use your other languages? What have you learned?
  20. Life

    I'd just like access to some clear cut definitions and ideas for things to learn about. I'm trying a beginner's course on Coursera and it literally just looks like nonsense to me at the moment. I don't know the difference between any of the terminology. Would you agree that Python is a good beginner's language? Or should I try something else? Do you program for pleasure or is it part of your job @osmosisch? It's interesting learning a language in my own language. With German I've been lacking direction, but recently found some good materials online for free. I wonder if there's any other language learners out there? It seems like there's quite a few bilingual people here! I really should be learning Vietnamese as well, and I think I actually will end up taking a class next month. Does any one have any experience with learning Asian languages? Yeah, it's the organising that stresses me out. I feel like I need to it myself otherwise it doesn't happen. But then I think maybe people don't really want to do it because otherwise they'd make it happen. But then I know I've flaked on various social events for the tiniest most pathetic reasons. It's difficult making friends as an adult! What does everyone's week look like so far?
  21. Life

    I'm trying to teach myself to code in an effort to move away from teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL for short). I'm not even sure if I like coding so far. I'm using Python at the moment as I've heard it's one of the easier and applicable languages, but other than that I have no idea about it. Is that even a good idea? I've been trying out a load of new stuff recently in an effort to make myself feel more productive, but I just get this crippling anxiety when I start something new. Am I wasting my time? Am I wasting my money? I started German as I wanted to start learning another language. I don't get as anxious from that because I've already had language learning experience and I feel like I know how I learn in that field. But programming is so alien to me. There's sooo many terms being thrown around and I have no idea what it is going on. My girlfriend and I have moved to Vietnam recently and so far we've made 0-1 friends. It's been way harder than we expected, but it seems the people of the TEFL world here are much more transient and immigrants tend to move on from Vietnam, much quicker than those I came across in Europe. I'm very much a believer that if you're not happy you should do something about it, and to that end I tried to set up a couple of board game nights but the majority fell through. Turns out depending on strangers from the internet isn't the way you should structure your social life. There's also very, very few people I've clicked with recently. I've made 2 big moves in my life before this one and they were both very similar. After the 4 month mark in both the last places I moved to I had at least a small circle of friends I'd be happy to hang out with, but at the moment I just see people so I can have more of a social life beyond my house and my girlfriend. We've talked about that and she feels exactly the same way so I don't feel guilty typing that out! I don't know why I'm even writing this. To vent maybe. Has anyone else had similar experiences with any of this? What did you do? How did it turn out?
  22. Wow! Rank 1! Congrats man. I just don't have the time. I'd have loved to get to rank 5 but I'm not sure I'll have the time to invest the hour or two it seems it'll take me. I love the flavour of the new expansion, but some of the stuff so far seems super boring. There's the Astromancer which is basically a Spiteful Summoner for Mages only. There's the Priest legendary which just seems absolutely bonkers. Like a lot of it is just cheating stuff out which the last couple of expansions have been all about. Hopefully there'll be some more interesting stuff revealed soon.
  23. Oh I'm glad to hear you're playing a bit more! I've been playing Even Warlock and trying to get to rank 5 before the end of the season. Managed to get to rank 6 5 stars before being beaten in a mirror match. The mirror matches are kind of annoying because it's basically just who can get the giants online first which is normally down to luck or a good mulligan. How did you find Spell Hunter faired against Even Lock? As a Lock I found it pretty easy to beat Hunter if I mulliganed properly and drew well. But there's so many different types of Hunters out there at the moment that it's hard to know how to mulligan. There's so many different types of everything! Even Lock pretty consistenly gets destroyed by aggro if you don't get any AOEs, but Aggro Mage is so strong at that deck at the moment and I just have no idea how to play against it. What do you think of some of the new cards that have been revealed? The project cards look very interesting to me. I think they need to be wary of cards that reduce the cost of things and the new Priest deathrattle reduction card looks dangerous.
  24. Modest Tech: The NX Generation (Nintendo Switch)

    Who bet that I would be able to hold off on Octopath Traveller until pay day? Well if you'd read my post about Paladins then you'd have known that was a silly bet. I'm loving it too Miffy! I'm about 8 hours into it now and I'm glad to hear that there's new stuff waiting for me. I'm loving it so far. I really feel like I missed out on something by not being into JRPGs as a kid. I think a big part of it was unskippable cutscenes back in the day so I'm happy I'm able to skip almost all of them so far. The story feels so predictable to me that I don't even mind just ignoring it. Who's your main?