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Vision Challenge

Byjack

Today I got a formal eye exam. The results are to be expected. I started using the computer a lot more, and I am very tired (from staying up late). My prescription is about half a diopter than 2-3 years ago.

My plan is to buy from Zenni optical (1.5 diopters lower) and if I am able to improve my vision from there, I will reach out to a bunch of eyewear boutiques to see if they will give me a deal for lots of lenses I want to buy.

My measurements are 143 mm for frame width, 15 mm bridge width, 132 mm temple arm, my PD is 64 mm.

I’m trying out these frames: https://www.zennioptical.com/p/unisex-fullrim-acetate-plastic-square-eyeglass-frames/2067?skuId=206725

Total came out to be about $52 dollars. I really need a better option if I get my vision better.

Measurement today is 11 cm. 100/11 = 9 diopters

So figures that the prescription came out higher today.

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Sova Fanart 7: Class Unit 2 Day 3

Byjack

UNIT TWO: Dynamic Figure Drawing | Day 3 – Animate

Unit 1: Shooting from Vandal

Stick figures
Gesture sketch
Final sketch

Unit 2: Shooting from Bow

Rough sketch
Structural sketch
final sketch

Unit 3: Camera movement (Sova Drone)

Rough gesture
Structural sketch
Final Sketch
  • I noticed in all of my animation attempts that I didn’t really need stick figures.
  • It was nice going back and refining each step before moving onto the next.
  • The structural step was really helpful, I liked marking where the limbs attached to the body with an X.
  • For the structural step I like to make the torso a tapering box and the pelvis a triangular prism.
  • I really didn’t like the final output compared to the structural sketch it looked super awkward.
  • To transform the manikin structural step into the final you need to focus on adding muscles.

I decided to explore the final sketch a little more by doing another drawing:

rough drawing
structural sketch

After getting the basics down, I played with many iterations of the final sketch.

first iteration
final iteration

I realized I don’t really like the linework on the final and it makes the form look very 2d. I decided to really focus on forms instead of lines when drawing. After all, I’m mostly interested in painting not drawing. The forms will help me figure out where the light hits.

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Profit in Peace 7: Day Three

Byjack

I didn’t do the powermoves yesterday. Dunno how I’m already so burned out.

Dunno how to find my power or center again.

This is very interesting for me, like the logistics portion for me.

Thoughts and questions today:

  • Alibaba is not a marketplace, its a directory of manufacturers
  • You can send them an RFQ and they can produce your product
  • Certification used to make something eco friendly
  • Click hearts on suppliers that look good > Favorites > Select all > Contact Supplier
  • High quality images
  • Talk about benefits not features
  • Use canva for images
  • Turn off on keywords that are not delivering, put more money into the keywords that are delivering
  • 20-30 per hour for sourcing agent
  • about 400 for each project
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Valorant 17: Choosing My Own Path

Byjack

I’ve looked at multiple things recently:

  • My lesson with a CS Go / Valorant coach
  • A excellent video of someone reaching radiant from silver
  • A video of how to aim well by Scream a team liquid professional valorant player

What I realized is that there are many ways to improve and win valorant games and climb to plat. There are somethings that will make it easier but you don’t need to do all of them.

Valorant, like life, is a game with specific rules, but how you play it is up to you.

A few different examples:

  • You can play only solo queue (deciding to team up with random people)
  • You can play only with people you know
  • You can play the game to gain rank
  • You can play the game to try out the different agents
  • You can play the game for the high reaction time and mechanical skill like aiming
  • You can play the game for the strategy required

I decided to make a list of how I want to play Valorant in the context of this challenge.

  1. I want to play with people who are fun to hang out with
  2. I want to make the entire game comfortable to play for me
  3. I want to focus on the actual objective, killing all the enemies and winning each round

Step 1: Finding people to play with

The most efficient way is just to focus on playing with people I already like playing with and try to meet new people by adding new people from games I play. I should also focus on unadding people I don’t like playing with.

Step 2: Making the game comfortable for me

The areas I need to focus on being more comfortable:

  • Minimap
    • Being able to visualize where everyone is just looking at the map
  • Aiming
    • Being able to comfortably get the physical mechanics of aim and crosshair placement down
  • Movement
    • Knowing the different ways and distances to peek comfortably
  • Abilities
    • Knowing lineups and ability planning
  • Clearing
    • Knowing how to path through a site properly
  • Switching weapons
    • Knowing the physical coordination of switching knife, pistol and main weapon

Step 3: Focusing on winning rounds

Usually, I am laser-focused on two things:

  • Abilities
  • Killing people and not getting killed

I want to reframe Valorant for me.

Generally, you want to either play for a plant/defuse or try to kill every member of the enemy team. 

As a result, I want to think about Valorant in the following plays:

  1. Brute force brawl with team, if team is pushing site together
  2. Try to get the enemy to trip up and make a mistake by confusing them and holding weird angles or lurking
  3. Try to set myself up for an ace by having my abilites and pathing planned out

Overall I think Valorant meets the following needs for me:

Growth: Getting better over time

Significance: The chance to practice my learning techniques in a measurable area

Love and connection: Playing with people who I like hanging out with

Here is what I think my routine should generally be:

  1. Warmup physically, and stretch, get pumped up with music
  2. Warmup in deathmatch, get a feeling for the mouse
  3. Warmup in the range and spike rush and defuse
  4. Meditate
  5. Play a game, focus on winning rounds
  6. Vod review, focus on the minimap awareness
  7. Practice in custom game lineup and setups to win next time or win by more
  8. Meditate, reflect and write blog post

 

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Valorant 7: Embracing Death (and Improving Movement)

Byjack

I’ve been thinking about what small exercise I can do right now to level up my gameplay and progress in Valorant since I haven’t had much time to play or practice recently.

After meditating on it a little bit, I settled on something that I know has held me back in Valorant since I first started playing the game – the fear of death.

The fear of dying in the game:

  • Makes me stressed out, and not think clearly
  • Makes me shoot too fast without aiming
  • Makes me frustrated when I lose
  • Makes me exhausted after playing for a few games

I’ve decided to learn how to accept death in the game, and to understand it better overall.

For example, understanding the “time to death” from an intuitive sense (and knowing how to extend that time) could be a GAMECHANGER.

It will intuitively let me know:

  • When to peek
  • If I whiff, whether I should peek back, crouch down, or keep spraying
  • How much time do I have to aim before I get killed by the enemy
  • Stay focused even after dying a frustrating number of times

So I hopped into a couple of deathmatches and gave it a shot!

I started out just trying to predict when I would die, but dying stresses me out too much to tap into my intuition (you need to be relatively clear-headed to feel things intuitively). I focused then on saying “die” aloud every time I died or predicting when I died. This is taken from a sports exercise of intentionality (you vocalize what will happen, for example, if you are playing badminton, you say “hit” when you hit the birdie, and “miss” if you miss). This exercise is supposed to train your intuition and powers of prediction and anticipation.

Some takeaways:

  • Crouching can make most people miss if they are shooting at you.
  • The direction you run and bunny hop is very important, need to figure out the most evasive ways. Sometimes running directly at them has zero chance of success. I need to work on sometimes facing the side not just forward to be more evasive.
  • The timing of peeking is important, how they have been spraying bullets is important.
  • When you are running behind a wall, before you peek, you don’t need to bunnyhop, just run normally, feel out intuitively, the moment you should peek out
  • I should start just by shouting out dead, every time I actually die, then try to predict
  • I need to aim higher to knife to the head, I keep knifing the body.
  • What I should try next is to stay alive for as long as I can.
  • I should also focus on letting the shock and frustration from dying play out before going again so quickly.

 

My intuition also tells me that I should focus on what I’m missing or losing when I’m dying and focus on those feelings right after dying.

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The Health Challenge

Byjack

I’ve been feeling pretty lost as of late. I am thinking about my youtube channel, about my job, about coaching, about my health and about my challenges with youtube and fitness. I’ve been stressed out about all these different things and I don’t really know how to tackle all of them at the same time. I don’t know what to focus on, which ones makes sense to put energy into, and how I will go about focusing on any of these things.

I’ve been feeling depressed, overwhelmed and depleted, constantly self medicating with youtube videos and games.

Recently, I’ve been inspired by this video:

Health is everything. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you don’t have to choose between that and health. You will be a better entrepreneur with better health.

I want to drop all of my other challenges and focus on this for a while.

I want to focus on my health.

I thought about what this meant for quite a while because health is such a nebulous topic. I feel that Brian Johnson in project Blueprint is taking a very scientific approach to health, but I want to take a more personal approach.

Here are the areas that I care about:

  1. Mood: How positive and happy I feel overall
  2. Passion for life: How motivated I feel about life, relationships and projects
  3. Energy: How energetic and strong I feel
  4. Flow: how in the moment and attuned to my body’s sensations I feel
  5. Attractiveness: how healthy I look

Some ideas of times that I can measure these things:

  1. When I wake up: great for seeing how well I slept
  2. Around 10 AM: good for checking up on my morning routine
  3. Around 3 PM: good for checking on my afternoon routine
  4. Before I go to bed: good to seeing the cumulative effect of the day and how fulfilled I feel

I’ve tried these type of challenges before, but I feel that I sort of neglected the mental part of health, feeling healthier physically but mentally trapped and unhappy. I want to really commit to doing video journaling this entire time in order to make sure that I can express myself and work through mental challenges.

What would mean success to me is not just feeling much more happy, passionate, energetic, in flow and attractive, but also to create a lifestyle, mindset and routine that will maintain and grow that over time.