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A one frame improvement is still an improvement, and arguably a pretty signficant one for a game that's been played this much.
When you don't have an actual improvement in a new movie, you're going to have a much harder time convincing people, I imagine.
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I enjoyed watching this and I think it should be published, so I'm voting yes. A little bit torn because of the noticeable possible improvements, but I don't really agree with the frame perfection way of evaluating a submitted run.
That said, what this run mostly did was remind me of how monstrously awesome jimsfriend's unassisted run is, using the same route.
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While I think you should submit it, because well made SMW tases are awesome and tasvideos can't have too many of them (imo), you definitely need to finish it first. You don't submit half made runs at this site, you submit finished runs. Just the way it is.
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Offensive? not at all.
Aggressively unfunny and eye-stabbingly lame? Around a high 8.
Edit:
alden,
Not sure. I looked through a list of songs I listen to more than most, but I wasn't really sure any of those songs were covers.
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Kuwaga,
All those questions might have different answers depending on the day you ask me. To cut a long story short, we were talking about getting back together and trying again until quite recently, when she sort of decided she preferred her current boyfriend after all. Without going into details, I guess that sounds pretty weird, but not really willing to tell that whole story on a public forum, since it involves other people than myself.
Anyway, that experience has left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth, and while I obviously still do care for her, I also think she's.. how can I put this.. handled the situation less than optimally, which I'm not exactly thrilled with.
To answer your questions, I guess I'm part happy for her, part jealous. I do still care for her, although I'm trying not to.
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alden,
My girl and I broke up in July. As far as I know, she's very good; she found herself a new boyfriend just a week or two after our breakup and they seem very happy together from what I hear.
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Kermit,
Apology accepted. Good job for being a non-douchebag, and apologizing. We're good. Also, I'm choosing to take "the complexity of the transcription more closely resembles something I would expect a more experienced pianist to write" as a compliment of sorts, so thanks for that as well :)
As for what I don't agree with in your earlier post, all the parts where you tell me (or anyone who reads it) what music "should" sound like or how it "should" be played is loltastic and, sorry, makes you look like a huge elitist douche (as per my snap judgment a few posts ago). I appreciate that you have some very specific thoughts on how the piano should be played, but telling others this is the only way to play the piano, or that any other way of playing is stupid/wrong/etc, is simply completely indefensible, on account of musical expression being an art, and everything.
Finally, as an aside, I played the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star variations by Mozart quite extensively back when I was 12-14, and still remember a few of them (mostly variations 1, 2, 3 and 10 if I recall correctly). I like them a lot, but am generally not a big fan of classical music (which, again as an aside, is why I stopped taking piano lessons when I was 13/14, and started playing for my own sake) and its (imo) exagerrated focus on practicing something really specific, and diverting from what's written down is considered bad, etc. I much prefer playing in a freer manner, and while I appreciate you don't feel the same way, I think you should appreciate others feeling differently, as well. I mean, I can certainly tell you know what you're talking about to some degree, but all these judgments you're making about how things "should" be while trying to pass it off as something other than just your opinoin.. not a big fan of that.
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Tub,
Immediately had to go back and reread those posts. That's legitimately really awesome, congrats :) Very happy to hear it.
As for what I think would be a good career choice for me; honestly I haven't found one yet. Having grown up making money from online poker, I've always been very spoiled in the sense that I was able to make very good money very easily. I think this has led me to look down upon basically any "legit" career move (ie typical 9-5 jobs, etc). My plan right now is to go back to college for an Civil Engineer degree, but there's no guarantee I'll actually like that; far from it. As for what I've been considering for the ~6 years since I graduated high school, I'd say a) economist (dropped out) and b) teacher (bleh) have been the main contenders. Neither seems particularly attractive to me right now though.
Kermit, I'd say I've never considered poker to be a viable "career choice" for me. Even when I started playing seriously, late '03/early '04 and felt completely invincible, I still had a pretty clear idea in my head that this wouldn't last for more than 5, 10 years, max. The reason I (still) feel this way, is that online poker competition has become vastly tougher in the last ~2-3 years, while my own level of enjoyment/drive to succeed has gone down considerably. I don't play very much anymore, mostly living off saved poker money, but I still feel very confident I could make a decent living from it. The difference compared to, let's say 4-5 years ago, is that it doesn't feel like a complete cakewalk where basically no one could fail, given a reasonable level of dedication. It's a lot tougher these days, and if I didn't already have considerable faith in my playing ability, I wouldn't feel as though I could still successfully play.
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Pointless Boy wrote:
Warp wrote:
I think the problem was not the critique, but the really blunt and harsh words you used, which felt disrespectful.
Perhaps, but none of my blunt words were directed at Fabian. Of Fabian, I said, "You are fine for an amateur." That doesn't seem particularly blunt, harsh, or disrespectful to me. My words describing the particular version of the piece he chose were less kind, but unless he actually wrote the transcription, he's got nothing to get bent out of shape about. Also, had I suspected he wrote the transcription, I would have been nicer. As it stands, there is no particular reason to observe social niceties when talking about whatever phantom entity wrote the crappy transcription Fabian downloaded from the web.
I don't understand, do you think I obtained a bunch of sheet music with this exact version transcribed, and learned it like that, note for note? Of course it's "written" by me, I play by ear. The idea that you would think otherwise for a second is reasonably funny to me, and pretty clearly shows that we're speaking in very different languages.
FWIW, here's a link to the chords I've based my playing on: http://www.eltonchords.com/chord_library/canyoufeelthelovetonight.txt
Edit: Thanks for your more detailed thoughts on my playing. I definitely don't agree with everything, as is to be expected, but obviously realize my playing has very clear flaws, and that personal taste sometimes differs greatly. If you overlook the tone, which is still pretty condescending, it does show that you can indeed talk to people like a normal person, so I take that part back. Take care.
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Critique is great. I don't understand why you think I wouldn't want to hear some constructive criticism. Of course I would.
Thanks for the clarification on the transcription thing. Honestly I still don't really understand what you mean though. How should a transcription for solo piano sound, in your opinion?
Anyway, obviously I'm not interested in arguing these other points with you. You're entitled to your opinion, am am I, which is fine. Rock on!
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moozooh,
Good to hear about your personal improvement. Sounds like just the kinds of things you needed to maybe become less of a cynic, which was my general impression of you ~4 years ago. Sucks to hear about the economic hardship of course, but the change in perspective is great, and best of luck with everything.
As for me, I guess I've gone through some character defining stuff too. Mostly from being in my first serious relationship, which lasted 15 months. Once I get over the feelings of resentment and bitterness, I think it has made me a better person in at least most regards. Other than that, it's mostly the same old. Still haven't got a job, supporting myself from old poker money. Still having trouble coming up with a career choice I'd feel happy with, so not much has changed on that front to be honest.
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I can play that reasonably well, yeah. As long as I have the chords for a song, I can usually make it sound decent enough. Elton John is my favorite artist, and I play many of his songs. www.eltonchords.com is a great site :)
I don't have access to a camera, so I can't put up videos on youtube, but I could probably record a sound-only version and upload somewhere if you were interested.
Edit: Well, I felt like giving it a try, so here it is. I literally just sat down and pressed record, so it might not be up to the highest of standards (sorry Kermit dude!). You can probably tell I'm not very used to playing it, but meh, it was a fun way to spend 4 minutes. Actually I should have just stopped after the first chorus, so pretend the final 1½ minutes aren't there or something :)
Anyway, hope you all like it :)
Elton John - Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me (Piano Cover)
(Can I upload mp3 files somewhere for streaming? I know how annoying it is to download stuff)
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Spiro, don't let some condescending elitist douchebag who doesn't know how to talk to people like a normal person dissuade you from posting. Clearly you're playing well enough to not let something like that bother you.
I haven't listened to all your stuff yet, but I'm enjoying it.
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JXQ wrote:
Fabian,
Let's say that we exist in a world where all of our perceptions of color are different - for example, a photo negative, although that doesn't have to be the permutation from current color to new color. We could just as easily "cycle" up the rainbow one color and leave brown, black etc. the same.
One question that comes to mind is: would the colors would all have the same names they do now, or all have the name of the color they used to be, or a mix of the two? Could that vary between languages? Wandering down that thought road, you might wonder if we even all see the actual same shade or not for each color, and have just become used to our view and learned our color definitions that way. Even something outlandish such as if our brains are built in a way to take these different brain-mapped colors and turn them into the mostly-pleasing colors we see today is completely unanswerable and mostly stupid but a pretty out-there question nonetheless. However, all of those questions pale in comparison to the most interesting question I can think of in this context, which is what I'm "officially" asking you in this thread: R U NOOB?
I sort of read the first bit of the post, but decided to focus on the second bit:
U R NOOB. Also a bit of what Kobold said.
Entity and others chiming in, I've read about the whole corn thing happening in the US. Pretty disgusting. Clearly, if the US was to take my advice, smart people would have to be in charge and decide what's best. That's kind of a given. Implementable in practice? Well, one can dream.
bossman, while I'm not saying a greater focus on education and added financial incentives to shop for unprocessed raw foods would solve everything overnight, I think it can (almost) only help. For some people, the inconvenience factor of cooking is big enough that they're willing to pay a huge premium (money-wise and health-wise) for an easy/unhealthy choice. For others, the tradeoff between time and money/health isn't as great, and if the incentives were big enough, I think they could easily be persuaded into better habits. Of course, this is quite hypothetical.
The lack of compelling variation, relentless syncopation, and constant forte dynamics get really tiresome. Maybe try to find a less mind-numbing transcription?
That being said, you're fine for an amateur. I bet the chicks lap that shit up.
But then, I was like :(
Edit: Seriously though, thanks a lot Specter. Boy, what do you mean by finding a less mind-numbing transcription?
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Entity, pretty tough question. I think the most important thing would be to give families with children better opportunities to eat healthily. Adults can take care of themselves and make decisions on their own, what matters most (imo) is to not develop the habit of eating unhealthily as a child.
Now, how to practically implement this.. I think the government should subsidize (hope this is the right word) certain foods, to make them cheaper to buy. I can definitely see how tempting it must be to buy prepared frozen dinners or fast food or whatever for your children, when it's both 20 times easier AND cheaper. Make the healthy alternatives cheaper, and the parents have an incentive to cook healthy food. In the same vein, making stricter rules for what can go into pre-cooked dinners, or what fast food chains are allowed to sell, would both make those alternatives less unhealthy, and more expensive (which imo would be a good thing).
Another thing would be to start educating children in school/pre-school about nutrition and what it means to eat (un)healthily. Young children are very impressionable, and I think teaching them from an early age how to influence their parents and make them cook healthy food, etc, would definitely have a positive impact.
In reality, changes like these probably wouldn't have a huge effect, but you have to start somewhere. I'm not so sure more drastic alternatives would be fruitful; as tempted as I would be to suggest just closing all fast food chains, we all know how the alcohol ban turned out in the 1920's. I don't think there's an easy fix, certainly, and changing Americans' eating habits for the better would be a long, and probably quite unsuccessful, process.
Just as it is in the case of one individual, if you want to lose weight/become more healthy, you can't go on a diet; you'll just gain that weight back when you come off it. You need to change your long term perspective and way of life permanently. As long as Americans want to eat unhealthy stuff, they will. Start influencing people at an early age and make healthy alternatives more accessible, and maybe things will get better.
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Sticky, didn't read mz's post very carefully, but probably something along the lines of that I'm an idiot attention whore who does stupid things and stirs up drama needlessely. That said, I'd never insult bossman out of nowhere, so the joke is on him!
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alden wrote:
Fabian, why are you bumping this thread? I don't get it. Also, is the forum any better now? Also, do you think it's strange that I seem to be so obsessed with you?
Not sure there's much to "get". For the same reasons I thought a thread like this could be good when I started it, I think it could generate some good stuff worth reading today. Of course, this largely depends on good questions being asked.
The forum is a lot worse today, no question about it. Worse in the sense that discussions don't really happen any more, and if they do, it's about useless boring shit like physics and math.
I don't think it's strange that you seem obsessed with me; in fact, I always thought JXQ was the target of your obsession. Obsession is the most sincere form of flattery, or something.
