#it is at least partially because for some reason there are at least 3 dt albums i can relate to The Characters

[nihiltism]

god the gallery will always be my favorite album ever but as far as dt albums go fiction is growing on me a looot.

[lacquerware]

Devil May Cry 2 Reflections

Now here’s a head-scratcher. How does a sequel to a very strong IP debut, helmed by a creator with an incredible pedigree, turn out to be one of the worst games ever developed by the developer in question?

I’ve heard fragments of an explanation—that the first and second Devils May Cry were developed (at least partially) concurrently, and with insufficient communication between the two teams; that Hideaki Itsuno was only pulled onto the project very late in its development cycle, after it was already clear it was a steamer. I’m sure there is a good reason, but looking at the series as a whole, or even Capcom’s internally-developed library at large, Devil May Cry 2 stands out as an anomaly. I can think of no other internally-developed, numbered installment in a Capcom series that has deviated so abruptly or presented such a nosedive in quality. I mean JESUS. Even Plasma Sword was pretty cool, if ya ask me.

Here are some things that Devil May Cry 2 did worse than its predecessor, Devil May Cry.

The combat. Controlling Dante feels like trying to throw feathers at a bullseye. Slashing your sword through an enemy feels about as meaty and satisfying as batting at a balloon with a flyswatter. Shooting feels like firing loud blanks out of two unwieldy prop guns. The combat often feels laborious; there are too many situations where the only viable approach is to boringly fire off seven-hundred rounds from your pistols while repeatedly jumping into and falling out of range like an adorable red panda trying to reach a human door knob. Some of the enemies have absurd amounts of health but present no evolving threat. The Infested Tanks, for example, mostly just sit there pivoting their enormous cannons slowly and firing at the wall behind you while you slash away at them for actual multiple minutes, your sword swooshing through them like a firm L.L. Bean catalog through thin air. Watch your style rank climb as you flail an ornate metal rectangle mindlessly at a brown public domain asset. Smokin’ Slick Style!

↑ Don't worry.

Speaking of which:

Style ranking. This didn’t really get sorted out until DMC3, but here it seems deliberately configured to discourage improvisation. It seems that only certain moves are deemed stylish enough to even initiate a combo, let alone sustain one, and these are left for the player to guess. So you could be dishing out a lot of damage to a lot of devils before you ever see your first “Don’t Worry,” which by the way, “Don’t Worry”? Tall order, Devil May Cry 2. Tall order. 

If you’re good, eventually you’ll claw your way up to “Are You Ready?” Let me assure you that the answer is “No.” Nothing could have prepared us for the banality of Devil May Cry 2, least of all the dazzling, timeless bliss of Devil May Cry.

Dante. I don’t know where they took the real Dante, but he sure as hell doesn’t appear in Devil May Cry 2, unless maybe that’s him disguised as Trish. Trish moves almost identically to the Dante who charmed us in the first Devil May Cry, while this new “Dante” is entirely different and worse. He also has a different voice actor, who has all the personality of a cutting board. I’d take the voice-cracking, LiIGht-hearted delivery of DMC1’s VA over this smoldering gym sock any day. It’s as if they were deliberately trying to illustrate that this Dante is a fraud. Even his looks are an unnecessary departure from the well-liked thing they’d just established. We’re given a whole new Dante model that’s weirdly smooth and blank. He’s like a celebrity lookalike you pay by the hour to make your lame party seem more interesting. Except, as with a celebrity lookalike, it doesn’t work.

Story. No Devil May Cry game has a great story, but 1 and 3 at least have catchy premises. I played all the way through DMC2 and I don’t know what it’s about. I don’t care.  

Character progression. I guess there’s an argument to make for giving players the entire suite of moves from the outset—it’s more in line with fighting games, which formed the bulk of Director Itsuno’s resumé at the time—but I don’t remember anyone criticizing the original DMC for continually providing meaningful incentive and evolving the combat through purchasable moves. In DMC2 you still get orbs, but you only really use them to upgrade your weapons’ damage output, so your only incentive for earning lots of orbs is the prospect of ending each boring fight sequence more quickly.  

Devil Arms. I don’t think they even call them that in 2, but basically Dante has one melee weapon, disguised as several. The swords you find over the course of the game all function identically, with only nebulous differences in attack power and range. I appreciate that they tried to get you thinking about using different swords for different encounters, but the differences are so slight that it’s hardly worth the trouble of fiddling through menus. 

Guns. There’s a special pleasure to be found in a game that lets you attack as fast as your finger can push a button. Capcom built an entire series out of that idea in Strider. Ebony & Ivory offered that pleasure in the first Devil May Cry, bolstered by the satisfying spurts of blood which accompanied each shot. In DMC2 your pistols lack this responsiveness and can only fire at a fraction of the speed. You can also just hold the button down, which makes the player feel considerably less connected to the weapon (pistols don't auto-fire), and firing while moving produces echoey two-shot bursts with a strange syncopated rhythm like a limping horse in a mineshaft. 

↑ There is a significant drop in Dante's rate of fire between 1 and 2. 

I appreciate that the game gives you so many guns, but no one of them is interesting. They also no longer have distinct Devil Trigger properties, since shooting with DT activated now causes Dante to unleash this game’s bastardized version of Air Raid, wherein his hands turn into lightning uzis. (The lightning hand-uzis are kind of cool, but at what cost?!)  

Environments. More disjointed, more linear, less awe-inspiring, and just about as drab as possible, with few exceptions.

All in all, DMC2 is as my friend (who likes this game) often remarks: “The bad-supermarket-toy version of Devil May Cry.” (He likes bad supermarket toys.)

All that said, this is the first time I’ve really given the game a fair chance, and I will give it credit for introducing some good ideas to the series. It also has a way of sneaking up on you with some very visually striking moments amid all the brown, brown…brown.

↑ Welcome to Brown Town.

↑ Better.

Here are some GOOD things about DMC2:

It introduced real-time gun-switching. This was such a good execution of a good idea, it hasn’t been altered since. It seems to be an evolution of the sluggish but handy Devil Arm-switching in DMC1, so it’s a little ironic that they didn’t apply the idea to Dante’s swords, but of course, the prospect of switching between near-identical metal slabs with identical move sets is no prospect at all.  

It has some stylish animations. I sure don’t feel at all cool when I take control of Dante in DMC2, but he at least has a superficial visual flare that required talented animators and makes for a game that looks better than it ought to in stills. Dante’s hair is subtly imbued with dynamic physics that add a nice bit of detail. We wouldn’t see that out of Capcom again until…Bionic Commando (2009)? That can’t be right, but it was certainly special in 2003. The Wall-Run, Rainstorm, Twosome Time, and various shotgun tricks (including Fireworks) are all very cool-looking and would later evolve into meaningful moves that also felt good to perform. With all these fancy animations, you’d almost forgive DMC2 for dispensing with Taunts altogether.

↑ The Rainstorm is strikingly similar to Ken's backflip shot in Street Fighter 2010, another maligned sophomore installment in a fledgling IP. 

It introduced the multiple playable character thing. Lucia feels like she's straight out of the PS2’s most generic third-person action game, so it makes good sense that she wound up in DMC2. She’s actually kind of a cool design, and I guess more fun to control than Dante. The idea of the double protagonist seems like a delayed inheritance from Resident Evil, and would be used to better effect in future sequels.

It introduced Bloody Palace Mode. I can’t be bothered to try out BPM in this game, but it was the seed of a nice idea.

Some of the bosses are cool. Not fun, per se, but they look cool. And a couple of them reference DMC1, which is some of the only evidence that the creators of DMC2 had even heard of that game.

Trish. It is, as Dante would say, “strange and ironic” that Trish, not Dante, plays exactly like Dante did in the first game, but I’ll take it. She actually does have a couple unique mechanics, such as the ability to stick her sword in the ground, freeing up her mitts to do some pummelin’, and this iteration of Trish set the template for her future appearances in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition.  

I’m glad the game exists, because it highlights how special the surrounding games in the series are. The line between masterpiece and dud ain’t that thick.

[cookinguptales]

Okay so weird question, but how exactly did you get diagnosed with POTS? I was diagnosed with hypermobility syndrome and partial arrhythmia a while ago, and it's only just recently that I've had a doc wonder if I have POTS. He didn't really tell me anything about POTS, and now I'm really lost! Do you think it's unlikely that I could get to be 21 and not be diagnosed?

Strap in, friend, because the story of how I got diagnosed is long and unpleasant.

So to start off, here’s a basic explanation of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. It’s a syndrome, which means that it is a description of a collection of symptoms rather than an underlying cause. Frankly, doctors aren’t super sure why any of this happens, what exactly causes it, or even if it’s genetic or what. (But my mom, sister, and grandmother all show signs of mild POTS, so uh. It’s probably genetic.) The long and short of it, though, is that your blood vessels are supposed to automatically tighten or release in order to control blood flow. When you stand up, they tighten to counteract gravity and make sure blood stays where it should be. When you have POTS, your blood vessels don’t do what they’re supposed to do. Your autonomic nervous system stops controlling this tightening and loosening process, which means your blood flow is not being adequately controlled. (Also, there seems to be some research showing that #1, we tend to have more elastic blood vessels, which means they just expand when they fill up more – bad because that means your body can’t use blood pressure to regulate blood flow, either, and #2, we may not always have enough blood in our bodies to fill our blood vessels, so again, shitty blood pressure.) ANYWAY, what all this means in practice is that assorted parts of your body aren’t getting enough blood, or they’re getting too much blood. Blood does all sorts of important things for your organs, especially oxygenating them, so this really means that POTS is an “anything that can go wrong will go wrong” situation. Anything in your body that uses blood can go haywire at any time. And sorry to say, that’s everything.

Now, POTS is highly variable. Again, it’s a loose collection of symptoms, and those symptoms are different for literally every patient. POTS is actually super common in teenage girls, but it tends to be very mild and some teens (mostly boys, mind) completely grow out of it, so people often don’t even notice they have it. People only just started researching it and it’s still not talked about much, which, well, is probably due to sexism. I learned the hard way that teenage girls are not generally listened to when they complain about nebulous symptoms, especially if those symptoms have literally anything to do with hormones and menstruation. (Which POTS does. It’s…I think ¾ of all people who have it are biologically female, and onset usually accompanies periods of hormone fluctuation such as start of menstruation, childbirth, or start of menopause. Most sufferers get it in their teens when they start getting their period.) Like… It’s hard to really put this in a gender neutral way because I promise you, the reason doctors are shitty about POTS is tied to both the biological and societal effects of being female. That’s an aside though.

Anyway, tl;dr, it’s different for everyone and doctors think you’re nuts. When I was diagnosed, in the informational packet literally said “THIS IS NOT ALL IN YOUR HEAD” because so many patients have been repeatedly told that. For me, I was actually uh. I don’t want to say lucky? But in some ways I guess, yeah, lucky. I have a really bad case of POTS with some really severe symptoms. I have a lot of digestion problems, extreme exhaustion problems, dizziness, faintness, anxiety/depression, pooling/tingling/coldness in extremities, and here’s the biggie – blindness. When I stand up, I often just straight-up go blind. (Or if I’m just sitting there doing fucking nothing if I’m on an airplane.) It was really bad especially when I was a teenager. It used to be like literally every fucking time I stood up. (We later found out it was because all the blood was draining out of my head bc gravity. Turns out your brain likes blood! This is also why it hurts so much.) Now, doctors ignored most of what I told them about exhaustion, trouble keeping down food, aches and pains, etc. I was repeatedly told “oh, well, that’s just part of being a teenage girl”. Like honestly, try telling someone that you have exhaustion, pain, and nausea relating to a period and see how seriously you get taken. Jesus.

BUT UH THEY COULD NOT IGNORE THE BLINDNESS. Like I don’t care how teenage girl-y you are, it is not normal to go blind on the regular! My doctors could not figure out what the hell was happening. And I do mean doctors. I got POTS when I was around 10, along with my period. I was diagnosed when I was almost 18. In the meantime, I was passed around between dozens of doctors and honestly? I was a guinea pig. They didn’t know what was wrong with me so I was subjected to constant barrage of tests and treatments that made me a hell of a lot sicker. I was going to like 3 different doctors a week, sometimes every day. There are very few medical tests I have not had at least once. Some of the treatments they tried, I later learned, carried a strong risk of addiction, permanent neurological damage, and death. I was a drugged-out mess trying to drag myself through 15 flavors of physical therapy every day. Like uh. In short, my teenage years weren’t…good… 

I finally got referred to like my sixth neurologist, and the guy was like “okay, you have been passed around between neurologists, cardiologists, ENTs, sleep disorder specialists, etc. for YEARS and we don’t know what’s wrong, so it makes no sense to keep ‘treating’ you – so I’m gonna take some readings and send them (and you) to a research hospital”. And that’s what he did! He took me off all of my medications (leading to the kind of DTs that honestly possibly could have killed me; I researched a few of the medications later and let’s just say you’re not supposed to go off them cold turkey) and did some tests. He found out some stuff like my blood pressure moves around a lot when I stand up. And sometimes my blood pressure was as low as 60/40. (Yo, that’s almost dead. The nurse took the reading three times with two different machines bc she was freaking out, lmao.) So he referred me to Mayo Clinic.

Now, what I did not know before this was that Mayo was actually the clinic that had discovered (and still researched) POTS! They saw a lot of girls like me. They took some blood, did a few tests, and when I had my appointment with them, they knew in under a half hour that I had POTS. I…cried. A lot. haha. It was so bizarre how many things in my life were actually an indicator of POTS. They were like “do you often sit all folded up?” and I basically exclusively do – and often got in trouble for it in school – and they were like “yeah, that’s POTS, you unconsciously try to keep all your limbs tucked in to reduce how far your blood needs to go”. Which is, I guess, why I tend to lose sensation in my legs and/or have my feet turn purple when I sit in normal chairs. lol. “Do you ever get dizzy or black out when you stretch or yawn?” oh yeah. “Do you get really sick when you take hot showers?” almost died once or twice, check! “Do you get weak when you lift things above your head?” you betcha. “Do you have a lot of problems with heat and sunlight?” OH YES I DO. Living in Florida was hell. I’d be vomiting and unable to stand up after like 30 minutes outside in the summer. I still vomit and get migraines if I look at a sunset, when the sun is strongest. Sensory sensitivity, especially photosensitivity, is a thing with POTS.

The actual diagnosis of POTS is kind of difficult. They usually have to do a ton of tests to rule everything else out first. Then they’ll usually try a tilt-table test (they tilt ya and measure your heart rate to see if your heartbeat skyrockets to help battle your blood doing weird shit) or a sweat test (which I am told is supposed to be painless but was one of the most painful experiences of my life so maybe it was a POTS thing) or look at your pee and see if you’re hella dehydrated. If you have POTS, you’re pretty much always hella dehydrated. (Gross but important: a symptom I never mentioned bc I didn’t know how abnormal it was – it burned like HELL when I peed. Turns out I was grossly, dangerously dehydrated. My urine was so concentrated that it was literally burning my urethra. idk how this slipped by so many doctors, but drink some dang water!) So it’s really a combination of tests for diagnosis, and they have to know to look for it in the first place! More and more doctors know about POTS now, but when I was first diagnosed almost a decade ago (this February! :’) when I went to college none of the school doctors knew about it. My family doctor didn’t know. None of my specialists knew about it. They wouldn’t give me student vaccinations bc they didn’t know how they’d interact with my brain. lol. It’s better now, though! I recently got a new doctor when I left my school’s health system, and she knew what POTS was! I was so happy, haha. Once I had a doctor literally google it right in front of me, so it was uh. A welcome change.

All this is to say that getting POTS diagnosed can be hell!! And I could definitely buy that you’re 21 and haven’t yet been diagnosed, especially if you’re female. My recommendation is this: the main treatment for POTS is diet and exercise, and that can’t hurt even if you don’t have POTS. I shit you not. There’s no cure or anything, but you are supposed to drink A LOT of water (I drink over a gallon a day, and that’s on days I’m not dealing with the sun) and eat a LOT of salt (”as much as you can stand” was their exact wording) and wear compression clothing (spanx and compression socks help me) and try to keep your body as toned as possible. It’s really easy to get out of shape when you have POTS (god knows I did), but they recommend trying to keep your blood moving. (THOUGH, CAVEAT!! I put on a lot of weight since I got diagnosed, and I have to admit. It’s gotten my blood pressure to a healthier level. So idrk what to make of that.)

I’m not gonna tell you to start eating massive amounts of salt when I don’t know your body, but drinking water can’t hurt you. So if you suspect that you may have POTS, start drinking water. This is not a replacement for a treatment plan, but it can’t hurt you! It can only help! So while you’re working with your doctor, just drink a lot of water and see if it helps you feel better. It is like night and fucking day with me.

Finally, POTS has a high comorbidity rate with other issues. In other words, if you have a severe case of POTS, you probably don’t only have POTS. A common illness to have with POTS is EDS, or Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It’s a type of hypermobility, which may be why your doctor is concerned. (I don’t have EDS, probably, but I do have some pain/movement issues that they’ve never been able to pin down, so there’s probably…something. idk.)

Here’s my advice. Work with your doctor to try and figure things out. Drink water. Make sure you have a good doctor whom you trust. Even after I got diagnosed, I regularly got medical professionals who believed this shit was all in my head. And try not to worry. Like I said, for most people who have it, POTS is extremely mild. If you change your lifestyle, you might not see many symptoms at all, and if you do, well. Work with that trusted doctor. Hit me up. I know a lot of ways to get a lot of salt in your body. lol

[vesselblock65-blog]

3 Eagles players who weren’t even on the original 53-man roster made critical plays in win over Bears

One of the unsung heroes from the Philadelphia Eagles’ Wild Card win over the Chicago Bears was the guy who actually discovered the unsung heroes who made critical plays in that game. I’m talking about Eagles director of pro scouting Dwayne Joseph.

Part of Joseph’s responsibility is to help the Eagles make good in-season roster additions. It’s not an easy task considering available free agents are usually out of work for good reason. They’re often just not talented enough to really help out.

There are some exceptions, though, and the Eagles have done an exceptional job at finding guys who can help this team win games. In Sunday’s game alone, three players who weren’t even on the Eagles’ original 53-man roster made significant contributions to Philly’s win: Treyvon Hester, Cre’Von LeBlanc, and Jordan Matthews.

Let’s start with the hero of the game: the guy who partially blocked Cody Parkey’s final field goal attempt.

The Eagles signed Hester to their practice squad in September, shortly after Jon Gruden’s Raiders waived him. Hester remained there for a month before being called up to the main roster.

Since joining the big club, Hester has logged 13 tackles, three quarterback hits, two tackles for loss, and one sack. That’s decent production for a backup defensive tackle who has played 21.77% of Philly’s defensive snaps.

Believe it or not, Hester actually ranks 14th out of 121 interior defensive linemen graded by PFF this season. He’s actually the third highest graded defender on the Eagles’ entire defense, which ... huh?

At the very least, the 26-year-old Hester has been a solid rotational defensive lineman who helped stabilize the position with Tim Jernigan and Haloti Ngata dealing with injuries early in the season.

His hand also helped keep the Eagles’ 2019 playoff run alive.

That just shows you, again, those little, tiny things, the fingertip can make all the difference between this being an end-of-the-season wrap-up and continuing to play.

But Treyvon has come up big for us. That was another pick up by our scouts. He was on practice squad and we had a lot of injuries. With all the notice of our secondary and where they were injury wise, we were in a tough spot defensive tackle wise, too. But [DT] Haloti Ngata getting healthy, getting Timmy [Jernigan] back like we just mentioned and getting contributions from a guy like Treyvon, who didn’t play a ton in this game. I think he played about a dozen snaps, but he was out there and got his hand up and did what he was supposed to do at the right time and we were able to get the win.

Leading up to Week 10, the Eagles found themselves in need of help in the secondary. Starting nickel corner Sidney Jones was dealing with a nagging hamstring issue and Jalen Mills had just suffered an ankle injury prior to the Week 9 bye. Dexter McDougle was also struggling mightily in relief of Jones.

So, the Eagles cut McDougle and picked LeBlanc off waivers from the Lions. The man they call “Strap” was quickly forced into playing time and he’s since really stabilized the secondary. Jim Schwartz has been raving about him:

I don’t know where we’d be without Cre’Von. Our scouts, midway through the season, [Vice President of Player Personnel] Joe Douglas came to me and said, “Hey look, there’s this guy that just became available and our scouts have a good feel for him.”

And guys like [Executive Vice President of Football Operations] Howie [Roseman] and Joe, they are up front, but some of those guys that work in those back rooms without a light, without a window and stuff like that and they are pouring overall these guys that get cut or go somewhere else. Well, that might have been the key to our season putting the waiver claim in on -- I had never heard of Cre’Von LeBlanc before and they brought him and said, “Hey, we’re thinking about claiming this guy,” and it was right before the Saints game last time we were able to click him in. But he had his times, also. It wasn’t all just Nigel and Malcolm. Cre’Von had a big part of it and it was a team effort trying to keep him down. We knew how dangerous he was. You could see that on the last kickoff. That’s a guy where if you give him a quarter of an inch or one guy misses a tackle, he can make you pay, and I was proud of the guys, the way they played against him.

[...]

Honestly, I didn’t look [at his tape] very much. Those [Eagles pro personnel] guys did all the heavy lifting on that. We had played against him last year. My exposure was only watching our game against Chicago last year and watching him against guys like [WR] Alshon [Jeffery] and if you remember, they were down significantly in that game and I think it was Alshon that called a ball, maybe it was Nelly [WR Nelson Agholor], and he went hustling down and caused a fumble around the goal line. When the game was sort of out of hand and everything, you could tell what a competitor he was.

But honestly, coaches really had very little to do with that. That was our scouting staff and particularly some of those pro scouts that aren’t guys that are up on podiums a lot of times. We owe a lot of our season to that.

LeBlanc had three solo tackles and one big pass breakup against his former team in Chicago. The breakup came on that weird play where Anthony Miller caught the ball and LeBlanc ripped it out but it was (correctly) called incomplete due to no clear recovery. The Bears had to settle for a field goal on that drive instead of having a better chance for a red zone touchdown.

Strap, who turns 25 in July, is already under contract for the Eagles in 2019 with a mere $720,000 cap figure. That’s an absolute bargain. Given the way he’s played, LeBlanc could realistically be the Eagles’ starting nickel corner next season (and possibly beyond).

OK, so it’s not like was some genius finding because the Eagles already knew who JMatt was. Still, the pro personnel deserves credit for making the right decision to re-sign him.

Matthews was miscast as a massive volume target to run the offense through in his previous stint with Philly. He’s been much more efficient in his return to the organization that drafted him in 2014. Matthews finished the regular season with 20 receptions for 300 yards (team leading 15.0 average) and two touchdowns. He was a good role player in the offense.

JMatt didn’t have a catch in Chicago but he did do a great job of drawing a 33-yard defensive pass interference penalty to set the Eagles up at 1st-and-goal from the Bears’ 10-yard line. On the very next play, Nick Foles hit Dallas Goedert for one of the only two touchdowns the Eagles scored.

Source: https://www.bleedinggreennation.com/2019/1/8/18173995/eagles-treyvon-hester-crevon-leblanc-philadelphia-original-53-man-roster-dwayne-joseph-bears-game

[mathematicianadda]

Self studying - how to know if i am on the right track?

Hello guys, i am a mathematical physics student in the mid of my second year and currently starting to learn about differential forms, integration on manifolds and functional analysis. prior to that i have studied proof based linear algebra and real analysis up to measure and integration theory.

while looking for books to study from i realized how vast mathematics really is beyond basic topics like real analysis and somehow i have the feeling that i am not grasping the new topics as good as the old ones.

for example, in linear algebra most theorems make sense intuitively when you imagine them in 3 dimensions with subspaces being lines and planes. in integration theory you define integrals as the limit of integrals of simple functions and you can then proof things like fubinis theorem by proofing it for simple functions and extending it to integrable functions by limit theorems etc. most of the time you can see why things are true and what the theorems mean intuitively and they seem like important statements to know about the objects youre dealing with.

now in those courses i felt like i am just studying familiar objects like integrals in greater detail. on the other hand, in functional analysis it seems to me that you just proof how random spaces are related to each other or how integral operators are continuous in different norms. the "applications" of the big theorems in my textbook consist of proofing such things most of the time. while there are sometimes also interesting statements about how you can solve integral oder differential equations using this, i just dont know why i would e.g. need to separate convex sets by continuous functionals.

i think differential forms make kinda sense to me after i read terence taos pdf and some things people wrote on stackexchange. still, learning about the lemma of poincare yesterday, i have no idea why it is true neither how one would come up with the idea to proof it or why it is related to the space being contractible or why the constructed form is the "antiderivative" (my book used a pullback from the space X to XxI using the projection to X and defined an integral form on XxI by just integrating the termins involving dt).

as i try to look up why this is true i find explanations on stackexchange involving things that seem very advanced to me at that point, like cohomology groups and cannot really follow them without getting lost in a rabbit hole of looking up definitions. most of the time i give up because it would just take too long. this feels wrong, because the authors of my books usually tell the reader that the books are written for self study and i have to move on without really having the feeling that i grasped the theorems. the book which covers differential forms for example, is the last book of a 3 book analysis series which starts from the basics like set theory and i read all the previous books and chapters, so i should get the theorems without looking up things from other sources for hours right?

often, authors hint to further topics and to me they all seem important to understand the material well, like category theory to understand de rham cohomology, yet i feel like i cant learn about all of them during my degree. when i look up how to get into category theory, i hear that i first have to read a book about algebra (which would take me like 3+ months probably, maybe more if im doing regular coursework parallel to it) and then about category theory (another 3 months), then maybe about topology and only then i can get started with a book about how those tools are used in manifold theory. so it would roughly take over a year TO GET THE BASICS. namely of one field (differential geometry). or do i just mistake pretty advanced stuff for "basic"?

or is it really supposed to take so long to undestand something well? this would mean that i could only reasonably learn about one field during my degree. but the description of the graduate level courses at my university states that prerequisites from many different fields are needed, mainly differential geometry, functional analysis, partial and ordinary differential equations and complex analysis. this is bothering me, because how could i possibly pick all of that up when i already need 1 year to learn the basics about the first field? am i just confusing the "basics" with pretty advanced topics? i cannot really tell how important things are and what i should know yet and what can wait until later.

so my questions are:

is it normal to move on in books without having the feeling of really understanding things well? do i just have to be patient and go on and eventually as i learn more about a topic and read more than one book about it i will slowly understand it more intuitively?

do you think i should ignore that feeling and things will suddenly clarify during a second read? or should i rather focus on getting intuition on the constructions etc as far as i can before moving on?

are these hints to further topics like category really intended for the average student, or are they aimed to people possibly specializing in this field later?

or should i consider to study different topics which are easier for me, like statistics oder progamming?

tldr; i am self studying and dont really know how to tell wether im doing good. solving exercises doesnt mean i understand the theorems intuitively, it just tells me that i can do computations. sometimes i have the feeling that im only progressing very slowly because there is so much (essential) math to learn. how much math does the average graduate/masters student know and how long should it take to pick that knowledge up? for example i consider the areas of differential geometry of curves and surfaces, integration of on manifolds, functional analysis, complex analysis and ordinary and partial differential equations to be something i should know at least at the level of an 300 page introductory textbook before applying to a masters, is that true? graduate course descriptions and the amout of classes some fellow students take make me think this is true.

i am sorry for the long post, but as i am self studying i do not really have anyone else to ask or any other way to know if i am doing good or i need to improve my study habits/the way i approach math.

thanks for reading this and (maybe) helping me!

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Handing out college football midseason awards for 2018

We’re midway through college football season, but that’s not too early to hand out some hardware for standout teams and player — for both good and bad reasons. There’s the Heisman, of course, but we’ve put together our own set of awards to recognize some of the leading lights of the 2018 college football season so far.

Here are ten of our midseason award winners for the 2018 college football season.

Heisman Trophy — Tua Tagovailoa, QB, Alabama

This is still open enough that someone could come in and take it from Tagovailoa, but the Alabama quarterback doesn’t look like he intends to loosen his grip on the award. He’s completed 75 percent of his passes, has thrown 18 touchdowns without any interceptions, and is the offensive backbone of the best team in the nation — something that should not be underrated. He has to be considered the clear favorite at the moment, and unless he regresses quickly, will probably stay that way.

Coach of the Year — Brian Kelly, Notre Dame

A few weeks ago, LSU’s Ed Orgeron probably gets the nod here, but the Tigers’ loss to Florida combined with Notre Dame’s continued success opens the door for Kelly. At 6-0, the Irish have a legitimate shot at the playoff, especially when you consider that they’ll be favored in every game they play from this point forward. Kelly deserves credit. Two years ago, they won just four games, but recovered to win 10 last year and have continued the momentum into 2018. Kelly made a bold quarterback decision that seems to have benefited the team as well. It will be hard to deny him this honor if the Fighting Irish go unbeaten.

Offensive Player of the Year — Dwayne Haskins, QB, Ohio State

Tua Tagovailoa deserves this one too, but we’re giving it to someone else for the sake of variance. Dwayne Haskins will get the nod instead for his superb play at quarterback. Haskins leads the country with 25 touchdown passes this season. He has completed 71.7 percent of his passes for 1,919 yards. His shakiest performance came against his toughest opponent so far — Penn State on the road — and he still threw three touchdown passes. Ohio State’s schedule the rest of the way is somewhat forgiving, so expect Haskins to put up even more big stats as the season goes on.

Defensive Player of the Year — Ed Oliver, DT, Houston

Nick Bosa might have had something to say about this if not sidelined by injury, but instead he cedes it to the consensus best defensive player in the nation. The thing about Oliver is that his impact isn’t really adequately reflected by statistics. He has 40 total tackles but no sacks, in part because opposing offensive lines are so desperate to stop him that he can find it rough going (he sometimes has been triple-teamed). He still racks up double-digit tackles per game and looks likely to be the most likely defensive player to get Heisman votes.

Freshman of the Year — Alan Bowman, QB, Texas Tech

Even in a pass-heavy offense, what Bowman has done is impressive, and it gets him the nod over Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence. In fact, Bowman has nearly twice as many passing yards as Lawrence in one fewer game, all while throwing 11 touchdowns to three interceptions. A partially collapsed lung cost him a game, but it’s expected to be a brief absence, and that should enable the Texas Tech freshman to put up more big numbers going forward.

Comeback Player of the Year — Deondre Francois, QB, Florida State

Francois’s play hasn’t been elite, but he’s been pretty good for a struggling Florida State team. The fact that he’s doing it after a season-ending patellar tendon injury in 2017 is more impressive. Francois has thrown for 1,506 yards and 11 touchdowns this year, close to where he was pre-injury. He’d probably be even better if his offensive line was a little more solid and capable of protecting him. He deserves a lot of credit for his comeback.

Surprise Team of the Year — Kentucky Wildcats

They’re coming off a somewhat surprising defeat at the hands of the Texas A&M Aggies. So what? It was their first defeat of the season and it didn’t come until early October. Nobody could have expected that from this Wildcats team. They have wins over Florida and Mississippi State, both ranked opponents, and both of those wins came by at least two scores. They deserve a ton of credit for what they’ve been able to achieve this year.

Disappointing Team of the Year — Michigan State Spartans

At the start of the year, the Spartans were placed in the same category as Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, and Wisconsin — potential Big Ten champions. They’ve shown from the first moment of their season that they’re well off that pace. They haven’t faced a single ranked opponent yet, but are still just 3-2 with losses at Arizona State and at home to Northwestern. Their wins haven’t been particularly impressive either, with Utah State nearly upsetting them at home as well. The Spartans still have Penn State, Michigan, and Ohio State to come on their schedule. If they continue playing like they have, they’ll lose all three and find themselves miles away from the Big Ten’s elite.

Group of Five Team of the Year — UCF Knights

Scott Frost may have left, but as it turns out, no other Group of Five foe has yet been able to trip up UCF. McKenzie Milton continues to be one of the country’s top dual-threat quarterbacks as the 5-0 Knights are right back in the top ten under coach Josh Heupel. They have a long way to go, however, with matchups against fellow Group of Five unbeatens Cincinnati and South Florida to close their season.

Upset of the Year — Old Dominion over Virginia Tech

At the time of this game, Old Dominion was 0-3 with losses to Liberty, Florida International, and Charlotte. Since beating Virginia Tech, they have failed to win a game and lost to both East Carolina and Florida Atlantic. Yes, the Monarchs are 1-5, and their lone win was over a team that was on the verge of surging into the top ten. It wasn’t even unconvincing — Old Dominion scored 49 points and put up nearly 500 passing yards. You won’t see a stranger college football result all season.

from Larry Brown Sports https://ift.tt/2ILmbpz