mcjkrw's comments

What is so different about the PS2 version? Now that you have the source code for PC, why is it a lot of work to port it to PS2?

By the way, this project is so cool. Thanks for making this!

I remember raising sea level in San Andreas.

Weapon damage was also controllable. I accidentally discovered a hack I used in the multiplayer (MTA mod) that made me receive 0 damage from non-projectile weapons.

What type of meditation did you try? Try following / counting breaths. Definitely counting in the beginning, breathe out, 1, breathe in, breathe out, 2, breathe in ... up to 10, then re-start to 1. Do it for 20 min before falling asleep. Then as you try to fall asleep do the same.

Don't be discouraged if it's not working right away. It has to work but you may need months of training before it starts to work well.

The hardest challenge is to be completely cold to the thoughts, no matter how important they may seem, ignore them and return to counting the breaths.

Perhaps the real problem is navigating between the apps. I use i3 and I have no problem switching between 2 workspaces in a fraction of a second. Most modern desktop environments try to slow it down by adding some fancy animation or some needless UI component.

Would it be legal if DRM is not shipped with the browser, but the user can download and install it separately (copy it manually to the browser folder)?

Sometimes it's just more pleasant to focus on the work, even if it's boring and we are doing it for someone else. We have to spend the time anyway, we could spend it by being alert, or distracted and drifting off. Being alert feels good and there is some satisfaction from the work being done. Being distracted is mentally draining. Also, it's not only the stake holder that is profiting from the work, it's society as a whole - we all depend on this work.

How about scheduling consistent time for work and then at the end of the day, logging whether the work session was 100% focus on the task or if there was any distraction.

Then you can see how many days in the month were focused, how much were distracted and if you care about it enough, you could set a goal that 95% of the sessions in a month should be distraction-free and keep working towards that.

I'm reviving an old abandoned project/product of mine which I failed to sell initially. This is pretty much how I justified rewriting it from scratch. It makes very little business sense, because I already had a finished product which I could try to sell right then and there, however, I just wanted to learn some proper software development. The project was a front-end app built in jQuery (I started it in 2015) and had terrible code quality in general. If I rebuild it, and fail to sell it, at least I will have some base knowledge on how to build a front-end app properly which I could re-use in a future product.

Having had some bad depression and anxiety for over a year, I have tried to do some mindfulness, and I couldn't do it. It didn't have a good effect on me, although maybe I have not practiced it long enough.

However, zazen (zen meditation) saved my life. After a few months of dedicated practice my mental wellbeing was better than ever. I practiced a lot, and on top of doing formal zazen at some 1h - 2h per day, I tried to carry on the practice in physical daily activities like walking, in the gym, doing house work and so on. This is not to say it was easy, but I had nothing to lose basically. I didn't know if it would help me or worsen my condition, I just took a leap of faith. And like I said, just after a few months I have started to experience good effects, I was doing zazen like I had a gun to my head, I either solve these issues or my life is over. However after some 6 months, when my problems disappeared I got sloppy with the practice and the problems soon re-appeared, and when I re-started my practice, I was cocky and delusional about it.

It took me another year to figure this out, but since then things are pretty stable. If I ever get bad anxiety, I can eliminate in some 20 minutes, but it just happens less and less often. If I start feeling depressed, or have depressive thoughts - I have basically a hardwired reaction to cut that off - it's like what I was doing was automated (have shitty thoughts -> focus on zazen and stop thinking, absorb the pain). And that too, happens less and less often. And of course, I still do zazen 1h every day, and try to stay present and engaged in daily activities and cut any useless mind wandering. It's nowhere near perfect and I have a lot of work to do, but anxiety and depression is not something I have to bother with anymore, and I'm very thankful for that and feel like I don't have the right to complain about anything.

The reasoning for why it worked so well - I think - is pretty simple. The problems I had with depression and anxiety were problems with my physiology and nervous system alignment. Being a programmer, I spent a lot of time in the intellectual world, eventually I got locked in and imprisoned in my head. I didn't have a sharp perception of the outside, everything had to first go and be filtered by the thinking mind, I was in a fog and I was kinda dead in the body. And my thinking mind was running wild, I think I have had some sort of OCD as well. This was a pretty low level of existence and this state of things gives plenty of room to welcome anxiety and depression. I also started to get somewhat socially awkward, which further contributed to the depression and it was on overall downward spiral.

Now with zazen I could fight back. I could cool off the thinking mind effectively, and it didn't take long to start seeing beyond the fog. With this I also could develop basic focus abilities, so I could further train my physiology. Little by little, I could unlock more and more of "the nervous system real estate", took control and feel of my body, and that eventually improved my ability to feel emotions.

Be aware - there are risks. My practice wasn't all flowers, there is such a thing in zen called "makyo" which are hallucinary sesnsations. Like I said, I had nothing to lose, and just took my chances despite fear. I had experienced a bit of makyo, but it was nothing that bad. The important thing in zen practice is to have faith in the long-term view and allow short term pain. For me the most dangerous thing was trying to interpret zen intellectually, which I have did to some extent, and the result was that my practice was broken - I was thinking I was practicing rather than actually practicing - it also has caused a worse comeback of depression - trying to interpret some of the zen teachings intellectually contribute to that 'life pain' thing, at least it did for me. So there could be some risks of course, just like with any unconventional way to do things, but the journey, the lessons and the long term reward could be well worth it.

If you are interested, check "3 Pillars of Zen". There are detailed information on how to practice. Also be aware of some of the esoteric stuff and try to not take it too seriously. And the kind of zazen I would recommend is the : counting of breaths -> observing breaths -> shikantaza rather than zazen with a koan.

I always start with a fresh session and never log in. Then if I'm researching a particular topic, I always get recommendations on that topic. If something is worth saving, I bookmark it like a regular page to access it in future sessions.

Babies have the proper breathing and posture. Chairs and stresses of the daily life is probably where the issue is.

Taking care of my breathing pattern, among other things, is what helped me reduce/eliminate anxiety - especially while programming. I always had some anxiety and social awkardness after working. Taking care of my breathing, posture, being in sync with the breath, this is what helped me eliminate these issues. The mind is more cooled down, detached and objective, whereas previously, the mind was at the whim of whatever thoughts were running through - which was the source of anxiety.

I think it's about that the natural selection applies only to the current environment. We are not to be fit to live in caveman days, but in the modern society. If having a condition does not present an obstacle to navigate the world and mate, then it won't be selected against.

I like this quote by a Greek philosopher Epicurus “Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If Death is, then I am not."

Besides, we all already have died in one way or another. I'm 24 year old, is my 15 year old self still alive, is my 5 year old self still alive? Nope. Even if I make it to my 40s, I will become a different person by then - the person that is me will die in some form.

Now imagine if you lived 500 - 1000 years. There are few this could go:

1.You will be fairly active your entire life, thus experience many of these "personality deaths" - so what difference does it make if you finally die for real

2.You will grow old mentally and stagnate. Chances are you will want to die anyway because you can't take it anymore.

3.You will achieve some degree of "enlightment" - and the forementioned quote will probably make even more sense than we can intellectually imagine

I have experimented with something like this for a new side project. The plan was to have a TypeScript class for each component, and a render function to render them on dom. Then the listeners would be handled directly via addEventListener. Eventually I started having thoughts like - "maybe I could have the render function parse attributes and auto-attach dom events".

It became obvious it would become a side project of its own and not a smart use of my time. I settled down for Svelte and I love it.