alirezashahabirad

[huellitaa]

why people don't like you ₊˚⊹ 💬🎀

okay this is not as harsh as the title suggests but i wanted to put it literally bcuz this is a problem i've struggled with for the longest time. im gonna be brutally honest here. there are so many reasons why ur not of the social status you want to be or don't have as many friends as you like yadda yadda yadda. SO ,, here's my thoughts on why that's the case , and how to help! 🫶🏻🎀💬

──★ ˙ ̟🎀you're fake

whether its cuz ur trying to "fit in" or because you have a completely different personality stored in the back for everyone you meet, ur fake. its very simple. its not necessarily a bad thing, it just means ur insecure.

🧁𓂃 ࣪˖ how do you deal with this?

stop trying so hard girl. it's not that deep. there are 8 billion people on this earth and counting, u really think this person's gonna matter when ur living ur dreams and thriving even more than you ever imagined you could? no. move on. next please!

find out who the fuck you genuinely are. you're never gonna live your life if YOU aren't the one living it. once you get a start on finding who YOU are it's gonna make you more authentic -> more magnetic -> more attractive in every single way, including social.

u arent obligated to fit in. think about the type of people that you see in the street and you stare a while at, the type of people who stand out from a crowd for whatever reason, the people u look up to, ur idols who you could never imagine to meet in a thousand years; do you think they fit in? do you think merging with a crowd is what made them appeal to you so much? no. think abt that.

wake the fuck up and realise u deserve better. why are you neglecting yourself by hiding yourself from the world? would u do that to anyone else? would u get anyone else to change themselves just so they can fit in? girl get a hold of urself!!! you've been through so much and youve made it so far and yet you're still pretending to be someone you aren't?? you deserve SO much better. people who truly deserve you will always love you for you, no one else.

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 ur too awkward / anxious

i want to preface this by saying theres nothing wrong w this at all and i completely understand but ur gonna face some problems of people interacting with you. or you interacting w them. or both. i was diagnosed w generalised anxiety disorder when i was 11, so i understand how much this can impact ur life not just socially but in all areas.

⭐𓂃 ࣪˖ how do you deal with this?

first thing im gonna mention to preface is this can be a symptom of an underlying condition u may need to get checked out. if its impacting ur everyday life please seek therapy, i am not a professional and cannot help u w this, even if i'd like to. i love u ♡

find what is making u anxious. what about social interaction is scary to you, and why? why does interacting w others make u nervous? is there a specific thing ur worried about or u find nervewracking? always. find. the root!

have compassion and empathy and patience w yourself. its perfectly okay and normal to some extent to feel like this and of course we're all gonna feel like this sometimes but its important to treat urself with care, especially in these times.

treat urself as u would a child. i recommend treating urself like a friend a lot but when ur in a delicate and emotional state like this its better to treat urself like ur ur own child. take care of urself with the same love and attentiveness as you would your own children and give yourself time and take care of yourself to work through the issue. ♡

break things down and take it slow and simple. break it into steps and PUT. YOURSELF. FIRST until u feel able to go back out into the public again and be That Girl ♡

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 ur straight up mean

this can be anywhere from just being generally disinterested in people, being constantly negative all of the time to being just really shitty and rude. we all have the same potentials and possibilities but sometimes we can fall into the trap of negative patterns when interacting with others, which is okay. everyone messes up sometimes. but the important thing is is that we fall back out of that and become even better for it!

💬𓂃 ࣪˖ how do you deal with this?

try ur best to put ur ego aside and think about yourself from an outside perspective. would you wanna be friends with you? if you were another person, how would you think people feel around you?

(🗒🎀 note: if that's too difficult, create someone in ur head or mentally assign ur traits, the good and bad, to someone you dont really know, and think ab how youd feel around them. insecure? jealous? confident? excited? nervous? think about it.)

i know it sounds weird but literally just sit down and talk to people close to u when you get the chance or the opportunity comes up and ask if anything you do comes off rude or blunt or abrupt or any sort of negative trait you think might be the issue here. or just subtly (or directly, either one works) try and find out their opinions on you so u can figure out if that aligns w what and how u wanna be, and then how you can change that.

just be generally more sweet and polite. people are easily gonna like you more if ur not a total dick. stop being mean to people, say please and thank you, compliment strangers, smile at everyone, put ur ego aside cuz its really not that deep girl.

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 ur too nice / people pleaser

okay being nice is not a bad thing. there is a fine line between being THE nice girl and being A nice girl. there is a fine line between being kind and being a pushover. you don't have to sacrifice urself to be nice to people. being nice should go both ways!

🧁𓂃 ࣪˖ how do you deal with this?

first things first, like all things and like i've said a billion times before, you need to address the root of what is causing you to act like this. this should always be the first thing you do when addressing any problem, esp w urself. why are you acting like this? what is causing you to endlessly seek approval like this and sacrifice urself in the process? think.

start saying no to people, even to the littlest things. if you want to do it then sure, but start saying no so much more often. it gives you a sense of control and shows you only you have a choice in the things you do in ur life, no one else.

define kindness. is what ur getting in return to this unconditional self sacrifice genuine kindness, or friendship, or respect, or attention, or whatever else you assume you're receiving from all of this? only you can answer that. ask urself what the genuine meaning of all the things ur trying to gain from this are and then see if that aligns w what ur receiving. (🗒🎀 note: also read this post of mine for more on this! ♡)

again, therapy is gonna help a lot w this. if this is making an impact on ur life, social or otherwise, then i am not a professional and cannot help u w this (as much as id like to). ily and i believe in u ♡

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 you seem "unapproachable / intimidating"

people are threatened by talent. people are threatened by beauty. people are threatened by what they aren't. so, congrats! you've achieved your goal! 🩷💭

🫶🏻𓂃 ࣪˖ how do you deal with this?

i told my therapist once that people have told me i seem rude, unapproachable, intimidating, etc. and i felt really upset about it because i dont wanna come off that way. i wanna be nice and approachable and someone people can talk to. and she asked me what i would do if my favourite celebrity or famous person or whatever was my age and was walking through my school. i told her i'd think they were really cool and want to be friends with them, but wouldn't be sure how to go about it bcuz they'd be super intimidating. think about that.

🗒️🎀 note: but if you do find that people say this or act like this around you a lot, then you might need to do some introspection and ask urself if anything ur doing makes people feel like that rather than their own insecurities and mindset. ♡

i just want to quickly add that not everybody is going to like you. everyone feels a general sense of dislike from time to time and this post is what i mean by that, NOT how to make everyone like you bcuz that's literally impossible and something you shouldn't waste ur time and energy on. as harsh as i may have been in this post ur amazing and i love u no matter how much improvement you have to do ♡ i love you and am proud of you and you should be proud of yourself too!

all my love... 💬🎀🫶🏻💗

[soboredidecidedtolearnthings]

#1 having flashbacks of high school math because of the line function

I always wanted to learn how to code, and the idea of code always seemed both very easy and very hard at the same time. Now, trying my hand at it for the first time, I realize that I was 100% right in my assessment. This shit is based on very simple concepts, but my mind was not made for math of any kind. Not even the very simple kind.

The way Khan Academy decides to teach people code is incredibly good, as far as I'm concerned. All the times I tried to learn code before it was always based on just writing things and hoping for the best and my head cannot deal with that. I have to actually see things, see results, see the process, so going for a Processing/JS form of teaching actually makes this something my brain can at least attempt to process.

I'm not a complete beginner when it comes to the concepts of coding — I know what a function is, I can understand for loops, and stuff like that —, but I never really tried to code. And how easy this thing proves you know shit even if you think you do. They start by just telling you to create a simple snowman, without ever needing to call more than the ellipsis function and define it's parameters, and you think "but that's too easy".

And then you realize that you actually need think about how ellipsis function works to draw it, what are the coordinates you need to use so it appears in you canvas, and make the math on where the middle is. Let me be clear about something: I can't do 2+2 without a calculator. My bachelors degree is in film studies.

They actually tell you where to draw things, and give hints on the parameters for some stuff, and I thought "nah, I'm gonna just think it through, this is definitely mean for kids".

The actual snowman itself turned out alright, doing that...

Like, it looks okay. I had to go through the parameters a couple of times to get it right, but it worked and my brain wasn't even screaming.

But then they tell you to put arms in the thing.

It turns out that the line function works in a completely different way than the other things you've learn so far. You have to tell it the coordinates of both starting and end point.

I have slight discalculia. Math in high school was a legitimate trauma, and this thing just threw me back into the hell that was analytical geometry. Fun.

From now on I'm just gonna take the hints and use the numbers they tell you to use and spare my brain from the pain of having to understand where things go. I'll just trust their method.

Between trying to remember the size of the canvas, where the coordinates start, and how each function take it's parameters and how they work, this is a lot of information. It will probably get easier as time goes by and I get used to all of it, but for a first time, it's a lot of things to remember.

Coding is one of those things that can have a pretty steep entry barrier, actually, even if you're starting from literal kids stuff, unless you're someone that has an easy time with math.

[alittleyellowdinosaur]

TUA Thought Experiment

So last night I started thinking, what would the Umbrella Academy be like with alternate powers? Still a massive fuck up? Obviously. But how would their personalities change? I got a little invested in the thought experiment, so I decided, I want to write a fic about this. I want one that follows the show as closely as possible, but very different at the same time. And I thought I’d share my thought process on how I got their powers and how I got the changes to personality that would come with those. So... Enjoy! (This gets long, js)

The Powers

To pick what powers they’d have, I wanted to do something directly opposite to their current powers... Only to realize that, for everyone but Luther, Five and Klaus, I was stumped on how to do that. Is there a direct opposite to throwing shit good? no, no there isn’t. So I decided, let’s start in an opposite-like direction, and go from there. Here’s what I decided:

Luther: Super speed. I think that’s a fairly easy leap from super strength. 

Diego: i started with, okay, he can throw good, so maybe he can... catch good? But that’s not so much a power, just a baseball player. To make it a bit more power-y, I decided, okay, he’s got magnetism, but only for already magnetic things (like not just all metal like Magneto. I’m not making Diego all powerful guys.) So he can like, call magnetic objects to him sort of thing. i’ll make it work. 

Allison: Changing reality with her voice doesn’t have a clear opposite, which sucked. I thought about cancelling things with her voice, but she can do that already so it’s not alternate powers enough. In the end I decided mind reading. Since I do want the fic to follow the main story closely (to a point), I figure being able to read minds will get a similar enough backstory for Allison to work with (ie her manipulative personality) 

Klaus: Klaus was easy. If he can see dead people, then the opposite would be to prevent dead people. So he can heal people. This caused problems with Ben, but I’ll get to him in a minute. I thought about having opposites of his comics powers (levitation and telekinesis), but that got too complicated so he’s just going to have healing abilities. 

Five: Five can time travel, so what’s sort of the opposite of that? Stopping time, a la the Handler. This then posed the problem of ‘where did he go for all those years and how does he know the future?’ so I added clairvoyance into the mix, which I’ll explain later. If Klaus can canonically (in the comics) have multiple powers, Five can to. Fuck off. 

Ben: Here’s the tricky one. I wanted Ben to still be a part of the story, but if Klaus can heal then he can’t see Ben’s ghost. I thought about Klaus being able to see the dead people he couldn’t heal, but that’s too similar to canon. So then, maybe Klaus healed him before he died? But then he wouldn’t hang out with Klaus all the time and it’d change too much. I considered making Ben’s powers allow him to be present, maybe able to appear in dreams or instead of having an eldritch monster in him, he was an eldritch monster (hence this going here in the post, not later). In the end, I decided that Ben would still be dead, Klaus wouldn’t be able to see him, and for powers he’d keep the tentacles. Since he’s not a real player in the story himself, I didn’t feel the need to change that. 

Vanya: I wasn’t sure what powers to give Vanya, as apocalyptic telekinesis doesn’t have a clear opposite, and I still want it to be apocalypse causing. In the end, I decided she could get earth powers. Yes i know, kind of basic and ambiguous, but I was trying to think of “how can she destroy the earth/the moon” and well, the moon is rock, the earth is rock, she gets to control rocks. I’m still going to have sound/music center it, because the violin is just too central to Vanya’s character for me to fuck with it. 

---

The Effects

So we’ve got the new powers, great, great, but how do they affect the characters? How do their backstories change? As I mentioned with Allison, I’m trying to keep this similiar-ish to the canon (so Klaus is still going to be a depressing disaster, just a major trigger warning for him). Obviously things changed, but we’re going to keep it as close to the same as possible. 

Luther: Luther is probably the most similar to canon, in that nothing really changes. He still gets the leader complex, still gets turned into a buff monkey (since I think that was mostly the serum not his powers at play), only with that bit he becomes much more clumsy and shit because he’s not used to running with that bulk. He still gets sent to the moon too. Woo hoo. 

Diego: Again Diego is fairly similar. Stutter, rivalry with Luther, mommy’s boy, all the same. Still goes to the police academy and meets Eudora and fights crime in kink gear. Only difference I see obvious is he probably uses a magnetized knife or bullets or something to fight since he can call it back/manipulate it’s path. 

Allison: She still got really manipulative as a kid, always knowing what people were thinking and such. Since I headcannon that Reginald trained her into thinking she can only change reality with “i heard a rumor” even though she could do it anyways, as like a way to control her, I think he likely did the same with mind reading. So say, now she can only do it when touching someone even if she technically doesn’t need to. She still likely got to be a super star by always knowing what they were looking for/blackmailing, snagged Patrick by being everything he ever wanted in a girlfriend, and manipulated her daughter leading to the divorce and losing custody. Now she wears gloves and long sleeves to prevent touching someone since she doesn’t want to read minds anymore. 

Klaus: Again, trigger warning, this one gets dark. Since he could heal, and his family was being put into dangerous situation when they were like, 10, he probably had immense pressure put on him from family, Reggie, and himself. I imagine for training, Reggie would bring him to hospitals where he’d have to see and heal domestic violence victims, terminally ill children, attempted suicides, burn victims, etc, just horrible things from the time he was young. Reggie probably also hurt him to see if he could heal himself, possibly Grace helping as she could cause pain without permanent damage, and possibly also hurt his siblings for added punishment/’motivation.’ With the pressure and the memories of those he couldn’t save and his siblings suffering, he turned to self harm and self destructive tendencies rather than drugs, as ‘punishment’ for failing. When Ben died and Klaus was unable to save him, he tried to kill himself, only for it not to work as his healing ability kicked in before he could die (see your bitch still got that immortality in there!) Instead he turned to really terrible self destructive tendencies. He wound up in mental health hospitals a LOT which just made things worse as he was surrounded by depressed people who he couldn’t help since he can’t heal mental illness, but he’s still got that ‘i must save everyone or i am worthless’ mindset Reggie gave him. I’ve got more for him, but I kind of want to save some of it for the fic, as he will be the POV character (obvi.) 

Five: Got a vision of the future apocalypse that he tried convince Reginald to take seriously, but he didn’t since Five didn’t get many details except the date (which as we know Reggie already knew). Since Reggie was no help, he left to find out more and stop it on his own, got picked up by the Commission pretty soon after leaving (do you think they WOULDN’T want a person who could stop time/see how different deaths would affect the timeline without long math problems/was crazy smart and excellent at killing? No, they’d swoop him up as soon as he was away from Reggie). He’d eventually come back when he figured out how to tamper with the briefcase they gave him to make it untraceable. Problem was he messed part of it up and it turned him young again (though he was never as old as he got in the series). Delores was another person at the Commission who helped him out. No mannequin fucking in my good Christian household today you hear me? 

Ben: Dead. Torn apart by the tentacles and unable to be healed by Klaus because it’s hard to reattach shredded bodies even with powers. Luther pressured him into using his powers that day, but everyone told him it was okay, so they all feel like they share the blame. I think Klaus probably had a feeling it wouldn’t be...

Vanya: Caused an earthquake as a kiddo when she had to eat oatmeal. Reggie got annoyed because how dare a four year old have a temper tantrum and put her on medication. She got ignored except for by Ben and Five. So about the same. 

The Fic

I haven’t actually started writing the fic yet, again this was just the brainstorming/thought experiment I had at... midnight? one am? Somewhere around then. If you are interested in the idea of this fic, or have any ideas on their powers/plot ideas, please please please leave me a reply or send an ask!! I’d love some feedback and ideas. Whenever I start posting I’ll post the link here as well as on my writing blog @elliot-orion. Thanks for reading!

[vinodpriya]

Chapter 1: About Social Science

Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash

Ah! Social science! The subject I hated the most. I don’t know why, but I felt I was born to hate the subject. It was my destiny to hate it. Or something like that. But the teachers, oh Holmes, they were always so good that I always felt that, at least, I should study it for them. I believe that I always got the best of teachers available for Social Science. There are many interesting incidents related to the subject, especially during the 10th standard, when I was studying it for the last time.

To begin with, the most “ancient” incident which I can remember is during 7th standard. Well, we did not have only 1 S.Sc teachers that year. At first, the honour of teaching S.Sc to 7th D went to Dr. NSA (neither National Security Advisor nor National Security Agency). She had a PhD in Geography. I mean, how can a person be so tolerant, so as to complete a PhD in Geography. Come on, it’s not a joke, doing PhD and stuff like that.Well, after our Principal changed (Yes, our Principal also changed that same year. We’ll talk about her in later posts), she went through the qualifications of all the teachers. After going through the qualifications of Dr NSA, and she thought, “thodi padhi likhi hai, chalo isko 11th aur 12th class padhane ko de do.”   (She is a little bit educated, let her teach 11th and 12th standard).

Yes, thodi (a little). These were the exact words used by Dr. NSA when I asked her about this thing three years later, in 10th standard, when she had come to our class for an arrangement period.

Well, returning back to 7th class. After our summer vacations, our time-table was changed, as were many of our teachers.

Our new social science teacher was Ms R. Whatever she taught for the next two months is a mystery. Yes, it remained a mystery until I studied the chapters myself. Well, the thing was that she was pregnant, and was to deliver her baby in September, and hence she had to complete our syllabus in the next two months only. Now she didn’t teach us the chapters from the book, but made us write ‘Questions & Answers’ in our notebooks (after all, these Q-As were going to come in the exam), and explained the chapters in a comprehensive manner.

Here I would like to mention a small anecdote of class seventh Summative Assessment 1. Just before the social science exam, I fell ill. I literally cried a lot the night before the exam. It’s was not that I had not studied at all, but I had not been able to complete my syllabus, especially geography. Also, I couldn’t read my SSc book, which is a crucial thing to do before an SSc exam. The next day, in the examination hall, when we all were studying, I told some of my friends about my “grievances”. They comforted me about the exam and I told them, quite honestly, that I was not expecting to score above 80 out of 90 marks.

The exam paper came. Questions were quite ridiculous. Yes, they are always ridiculous for someone who does not know the answers. I specially remember one particular question. Perhaps the circumstances presented by the question will not be amiss here.

Q. What do you think about Delhi as the capital of India?

Thinking: Here is a gentle question of an irritating type. Clearly, a tough question then. It has just come from the tropics, for it is written in dark ink, and that is not the natural tint of its text, for majority of the paper is white. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard kind of questioning says clearly. His right hand has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner: bent like (?). Where in the tropics could a Social Science question written in English have seen much hardship and got its arm wounded? Clearly in India. The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked I did not know the answer to the question.

(for those who haven’t read Sherlock Holmes, it is an excerpt from “A Study in Scarlet”).

I then proceeded to answer as follows:

Ans.

    The genuine part:

Delhi is the capital of India. It was named capital of India 1911 by King George of England.

It’s  area is about 4000 km2.

(I knew this because I had sometime checked it. Actually there was an article in the newspaper about good sci-fi movies and one movie involved a spaceship which had a diameter of 500 Km. I wanted to check whether this ship was bigger than Delhi or not)

Now the funny part:

It is a union territory.

But since it has a large population, it should now be made a state.

It has many tourist spots.

These are the points I could make out from my memory. Now, when I went to my bus, I took out ‘The Book of SSc’ and checked in the chapter ‘The State Government’ for the answer. It was there, a full-fledged, five marker answer; legitimate, elaborate, and complete. I repented about not reading the book, but alas, nothing could be done to stop the nature, or rather the answer sheet, from taking it course. I decided to let it go.

When the answer sheets were being distributed for reviewing by the students, I got really disheartened about how much I would have scored. Surprisingly I had scored 86 out of 90 marks. I couldn’t believe my eyes. When I set out to see how the hell that happened, for the first time in my life, I came across the true face of examination-checking in India. You can yourself calculate. I had a completely wrong answer to the above question, so I lost five marks, plus numerous small mistakes. Overall the totalling came out to be around 82 marks or so. I told our teacher about it. She took the paper and kept in the bundle, and said she would look to it. But I never got to know what happened to that. Oh! I forgot to introduce the new S.S. teacher that had come by then. She was Ms P. She was a 2008 pass-out from our school only, and had come to teach us now.

Ms R was a brilliant teacher. By brilliant, I mean literally a brilliant teacher. She had a unique way of teaching. Also, since she was not much older than us, she gave mouth thrashing answer to the misbehaviour of the mischievous children of our class. No, she did not use abusive language, but her subtle words were embarrassing enough.

Our eighth standard teacher was equally brilliant, Ms JS (not NodeJs or AngularJs). But she was quite serious, rather too serious, specially for a funny class like ours.

Ah! Finally the good tales begin. So here it goes. I was promoted to 9th-A, a Sanskrit section. Our S.Sc teacher was Mrs. LL. The funny thing was that she was actually known by this name, LL. At first some of my seniors told me that she is really a good teacher. But believe me, she wasn’t. She specialized in History, and consequently did not know how to teach other subjects. Trust me, she was really awful at Geography. She never completed her sentences, sought to teach only through presentations on smart board, made us write questions, but never clearly told us what the answers were. Here is a sample:

Well, you know, a piece from Indo-Australian plate came and stuck with our land, you know. (Making a collision kind of gesture through her hands). And then, you know….

Alas, we never knew. Now after completing three chapters in Geography and one in Economics, many children thought that they had had enough of her. They started a campaign. They wrote a letter addressing our in-charge to change our S.S. teacher because the current one was not good. Believe me, out of 48 students in the class, 33 signed. Of course, I didn’t, because I didn’t like to take part in such anti-teacher proceedings, because you never know what turn it might take on in future. The letter was sent twice. When Mrs LL came to know about this, she used to sarcastically remark on children yawning or talking in her class that

“Class mein sunna nahin hai, aur phir jab samajh nahin aata to pohunch jaate teacher change karvaane.”

(Don’t listen in the class, and when you don’t understand, you just go on trying to change the teacher.)

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

Well, our SSc teacher changed after summer vacations. It was Ms SL (not S.L. Loney, you dumb math enthusiasts).

She was a great teacher. Believe me. (Of course, you don’t have any other choice).

There is a particularly interesting incident related to Ms SL, which shows….. , well, nothing. As it happened, she was the mother of VM. I had known him for some time. But the major angle in this story is that he was a friend of some other students in our class.(No, he wasn’t my friend. I don’t make such friends). Going on, there was this chapter on ‘Peasants and Farmers’ in History. The marking for question and answers was going to start from the next day. But this VM told HT and PG that his mother was going to Goa the next day. As was expected from a friend, they believed him, and they did not bring their History books with them.

IN THE CLASS

Culprits: Ma’am, VM told us that you had gone to Goa. So we didn’t bring our books.

Executioner: Just think, if I had gone to Goa, wouldn’t I have taken VM with me?

I suppose silence will be good enough for the rest of the scene. Nothing happened. They were allowed to sit in the class, and as I had to go out of the class for some reason, I gave them my book.

Overall class 9th was the best class with reference to the horrid subject of Social Science.

And at last, here comes the best class of all.

Behold...

The Class 10th .

Now this year our teacher was the veteran teacher, the most senior one in the school at that time, Mrs SS1. She was quite good towards me in the starting of the year. But then I started taking some days off the school. I used to ask a lot of questions in her class. So did others. When the first Unit Test (UT) was held, she gave quite a scolding to our class, and told the class (and I felt she was staring towards me) not to disturb her while she was teaching  and ask the doubts later in the corridor. She felt her syllabus got behind the schedule because of this (which of course was not true). She said all this because we had performed  poorly in the UT.

Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash

Now there are numerous small insignificant incidents involving me and her, but let us just shift towards the best ones for the sake of your interest in keeping reading this chapter.

She had grown quite hostile towards me (I mean she used to be quite irritated by me). We used to have 2 UTs in each ‘Term’ (we used to have 2 ‘Terms’ in a year) out of which the better one would be considered for the final result. As a consequence, I had studied only for the first UT in the second term and had scored quite well in that exam. This exam used to be of 30 marks. During the second UT I did not study at all. Probably I just gave a small reading to the chapter. It was “Nationalist Movement in Indo-China”. It is one of the worst chapters in 10th class History textbook (THE WORST ONE was “Print Culture and the Modern World”).

I scored 23 out 30. I was actually quite shocked to see that I had score this much. But SS1 ma’am was not happy at all. I got quite a something we Indian students call as lecture. Then of course there was TM. He was just like me. He left no chance of pulling the leg of other students. At that time he was acting as what we call as “ghee in havan”.

He says, “Ma’am, he did not study because he had scored very well in the previous one and he knows only the better one will considered.” I looked at him like this.

And there you go. A little more lines of taunt, and finally I was released.

Now we also had a revision test. It went terribly bad. Again I had not studied for it as it was not going to be considered for the final result. The day I gave this test, RB1 (another student in my class) had some work with SS1 ma’am. It was probably mid-day. M1 sir (a fine-arts teacher) was present in the class. He asked me to take him to ma’am. I was walking casually. I tried not to look at RB1 as I disliked him very much. I went straight into the staff room. SS1 ma’am was sitting there checking papers! Well I did not quite observe it at first. But there was the bundle on her table on one side and there was a paper turned upside down in front of her with her signatures in the end. It meant that that paper had been checked quite recently. I raised my neck to see whose paper was it. Holy Holmes! It was my paper. How could I have such an ill-luck.

Well, SS1 ma’am started talking to RB1, and I said to myself, “bhag le beta yahan se” (run off from this place, you scum).

I crept out quite stealthily, but alas, as I was just going to open the door, I heard a sound saying “_____” in a stretched manner. I turned. No doubt I was being called for my execution. And then I was given quite a lecture again on me not studying Social Science. But there was Ms MM1 sitting there alongside SS1 ma’am. She asked me what was I planning to take in 11th, and when I told I was going to take science, she patted me and said to SS1 ma’am while laughing “chhod de na yaar ise” (leave him dear). Well I promised her that I will study for the finals sincerely.

(Note: Ms MM1 taught chemistry to 11th and 12th class, and  I didn’t know back then she would be my Chemistry teacher in 12th class. It’s not good to talk of her here, she deserves one whole chapter herself.)

Our school used to organise a “havan” for 10th leaving students before the finals. After the havan, our teachers used to shower us with flower petals as a form of blessing. When SS1 ma’am came, she threw the flowers forcefully at me while yelling “sabse ganda paper kiya hai tune _______” (you have performed the worst in the paper). Of course that wasn’t true. I was bad, but I was not that bad. Everyone started laughing, but, BG ma’am  (our class teacher back then) heard that. And the glare she gave me! I would never forget those eyes. Well I assured her that I would perform well in the finals.

There were some more incidents which took prior to the above mentioned one, though they were less humorous. Once SS1 ma’am was teaching the chapter “Print Culture And Media”. There was a section about scribes who used to copy the books in “beautiful handwriting”. Well, I asked ma’am from where the scribes got their copies from. And there you go. Again I was terribly mocked by her. Whenever I was absent (yes, never when I was present in the class), she used to say in the class “Chalo achcha hua aaj _____ nahin aaya. Itne faaltu saval poochhta hai ki ma’am suraj east se kyun nikalta hai, ya fir hum breakfast subah hi kyun karte hain”, (it’s good that _____ is not present today. He asks such stupid questions like why does the sun rise from the east, or why do we have breakfast in the morning only), though I certainly never asked such questions.

Once SS1 ma’am asked our class who would like to explain the chapter “Transportation” to the class. NB1 (one of my best and oldest friend) raised his hand. He came in front of the class and started explaining the chapter. I and my friends left no chance of pulling each other’s legs.  I repeatedly asked NB1 questions which were quite irritating. Well, he answered them. Then ma’am stopped him and asked someone else to continue where NB1 had left. I went there. I started explaining the chapter now. Now, it was NB1’s chance. He stared putting questions to me. After answering some questions, I felt quite irritated (add to that not knowing the answers), I yelled at him to sit down, and asked him to come to me after the class to take his doubts, and told him harshly that I had to complete my syllabus. (The funny thing here is that SS1 ma’am used to say the same lines whenever she got irritated by the questions, but the difference is that she used to know the answers). Everyone enjoyed this thing, including SS1 ma’am. She said to me “very good beta. Jaa baith jaa” (very good child, now go and sit down).

I did not have Social Sciences as my subject in higher classes (thank God!). Although I used to meet all the teachers now and then. SS1 ma’am retired from her job after that academic year, though she kept visiting the school because of her Rotoract-club duties. Once our class was in the basement for our Computer Science practical, and there she was! I don’t know why, but nostalgia overpowers me whenever I see someone I haven’t seen in a long time. So there we (I and RM1) to go and greet her. Our CS teacher NA1 also came out of her lab and they hugged (apparently they were friends!). SS1 ma’am says to NA1, “Sabse achchhe bachche the meri class ke. Bade pyaare bachche hain!” (they were the best students of my class. They are just lovely kids). And I thought “Oh really???? Oh reallyyyyy??? Why didn’t you never said this in class?”

And as promised, here’s Today’s Music Momento (yeah! I am not calling it memento! not in this life...)

[orbemnews]

University Heights couple overcomes cancer diagnosis, wins free wedding CLEVELAND — An engagement, a new house, and a wedding. They’re huge milestones for any couple as they start their lives together. But for one University Heights pair, they weren’t sure when or if they’d get there after a shocking cancer diagnosis. But they were able to make it through with a little luck and a whole lot of love. “It’s just been a dream. Everything has fallen into place,” said Taylor Newman of University Heights. Falling into place, just like her relationship with Drew Horn. The couple met two and a half years ago and bonded over their love of traveling, music, and even a passion for numbers. “Now we both work at Progressive as analysts. So we’re both math people,” Horn said. A quarantine spent together in their apartment brought them even closer and ready to start house hunting, but in September last year, their perfect love story took a terrifying turn. “I decided to go to the doctor; I found a lump,” Horn said. That lump turned out to be testicular cancer. “Everything was shocking. But in the end, we knew that everything would be okay,” Newman said. Horn had surgery nine days later and went through a round of chemotherapy, all with Newman by his side. “We did everything together as a team. More than anything, I’m just amazed at him and his ability to go through such a rigorous chemo treatment so fast and come out with the same smile, the same strong attitude,” Newman said. After chemo, Horn was more ready than ever to take his relationship with Newman to the next level. So just a few weeks after finishing treatment at the end of November, he proposed and she said yes. “It was subtle and perfect for the time,” Newman said. And then like the early days of their relationship, things started to fall into place once again. They closed on their new home in University Heights on New Year’s Eve, and then Newman saw an online ad for a free wedding at the Gordon Green in Cleveland, sponsored by pop-up wedding company Haus of Cool. So she entered — and they won. “All of my friends and family would say that we would have been engaged for forever because we didn’t want to plan it and didn’t want to pay for it. And we wanted something small and intimate. So it worked out way too perfect,” Newman said. Their dream wedding came together with just a week’s notice, and a whole lot of love and patience. “I never thought in a million years that this is where we could have been X months later, just a short amount of time,” Newman said. “We’ve been through all kinds of ups and downs the last few months, and this is really the top of the line here. The best. Save the best for last,” Horn said. Jade Jarvis is a reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Download the News 5 Cleveland app now for more stories from us, plus alerts on major news, the latest weather forecast, traffic information and much more. Download now on your Apple device here, and your Android device here. You can also catch News 5 Cleveland on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube TV, DIRECTV NOW, Hulu Live and more. We’re also on Amazon Alexa devices. Learn more about our streaming options here. window.fbAsyncInit = function() FB.init( appId : '117981068372285', xfbml : true, version : 'v2.9' ); ; (function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js"; js.async = true; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link Orbem News #bride #cancer #chemotherapy #couple #diagnosis #Engagement #free #groom #Heights #Marriage #marry #News5Cleveland #NortheastOhioNews #overcomes #treatment #university #wedding #wins

[sagaridatta-creativecoding-blog]

Midterm Project (cont.)

As mentioned in my previous post, I had initially planned to use p5.js for my midterm project. However, after a couple of tries I decided to shift to Processing since the browser was taking too long to load my sketch images. Professor Caitlin mentioned in class that p5.js and Processing were essentially the same except for certain features in p5.js that I won’t be using for this project. Thus, it made sense to make the switch.

I had initially started off with the rainfall animation part of my midterm project. The rainfall was the second part/ transition part of my overall sketch. The animation was supposed to look like it was raining all over the previous sketch. I had imagined that the falling raindrops would keep building up on the screen to create a new background for the next sketch. For some reason, I assumed that the rainfall animation would be the easiest out of all my proposed sketches. Unfortunately, that assumption turned out to be completely wrong. By the end, I think I spent close to half my time trying to create an animated rainfall and the result was not what I was hoping to get. I had looked at a couple of examples online but they all seemed to use class functions and were very complicated. I did not want to use any code that I did not understand so I tried what I could with what I knew from class (for loops and while loops) and when it didn’t work out I decided to move on to the other parts of my design sketch (a decision that in retrospect I wish I had made sooner).

The first section of my three part midterm sketch was supposed to comprise of branch and wave repetition patterns. The branches seemed a bit too challenging for me given the amount of time I had. So I decided to remove the branch patterns from the first sketch and instead focus on the wave patterns since the central theme of my midterm project is water. I looked at a couple of wave sketches on openprocessing.org and found that many of them used the sine or cosine functions. Since all trigonometric functions create some kind of wave pattern, I decided to spend some time researching on trigonometric functions in Processing. I also checked out the Processing reference manual online but what really helped was the chapter on trigonometric functions in the textbook assigned to us - Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, by Casey Reas and Ben Fry. The explanation provided was great and the examples were really helpful. 

I thought the wave functions would be hard but the great thing about the Processing trigonometric functions was that once you get familiarized with them, they become much easier to understand and you can actually have fun with them. Manipulating the size, length, height, trough and movement of trigonometric waves in Processing is the same as you would do it in a math class - by setting the angle, amplitude, period and phase shift values and modifying them as required.  

I decided to create a number of sine, cosine and tan functions and used them in several different sketches. I revised my original plan of having only one sketch and instead decided to have numerous sketches highlighting the wave movement of the different trigonometric functions. My first sketch had sine, cosine and tan functions. The second had the repetition pattern of a tan function. The third and fourth sketch had sine and cosine functions set to different lengths. I used string variables/text to create my sine and cosine functions (I thought I’d use text since we had just learnt using fonts in class) and the final wave sketch was a sort of closure sketch using a sine function (something similar to what I had planned with the rainfall sketch). I also included color variations - mostly variating the RGB blue values using the mapping functions (I used grey color values in some cases to break the monotony of the blue). The main reason I wanted to include color variations was because color helped provide visual depth to the wave movement - this was especially prominent for the first wave sketch.

Image 1 - Wave Sketch 1 (waveMultiType function)

Image 2: Wave Sketch 2 (waveTan function)

Image 3: Wave Sketch 3 (waveSinCos1 function)

Image 4 - Wave Sketch 4 (waveSinCos2 function)

Image 5: Wave Sketch 5 (waveEnd function)

Since I had spent a lot of time on the rainfall sketches I decided to include them in my project. There were two sketches - the rainfall animation sketch and the raindrop buildup sketch (I was trying to get the rainfall animation to look like the raindrop buildup sketch - I had created the rainfall buildup sketch only as reference to visually get an idea of what I was trying to achieve). I placed both sketches after the wave sketches since I thought they might be useful in introducing the viewer to the next sub-theme of the design which is circles. I used a grey scale image for setting my color for these two sketches since I was aiming for a stormy look and also wanted to shift the color aesthetics of the overall sketch a little away from blue.

Image 6: Rainfall Sketch (rainFall function)

Image 7: Raindrops Sketch (rainFilled function)

I used ellipses/circles a lot in creating my wave sketches but this next section was more focused on the circles themselves rather than on any wave patterns created using circles. The first circle sketch had circles of varying diameters and coordinates (origins) in continuous motion. The reason why I included circles in my design was because water is often expressed in the form of circles in digital art (water ripples - concentric circles, bubbles/water droplets - filled in circles, etc.). I used the matrix functions to translate some of the circles and the map and distance functions to vary the diameter of the circles. I set the stroke color and stroke weight of the circles with no fill to random and for the circles that had a fill, I set the color/fill to a water image I had uploaded to my sketch .

Image 7: Circles Sketch (waterCircles function)

All of these sketches that I have discussed so far had been set on timer. I used the state position if/else logic to make them appear on the screen in a sequence. I would have liked more user interactivity for these sketches but the designs were such that they looked best when they were left to animate on their own without any user intervention.

To address the lack of user interactivity, I included two mouse interactive sketches under the mouseDragged function. Users can interact with the sketch at any time by clicking on the mouse and drawing filled in and no fill circles in particular patterns on the screen. I would ideally have liked to kept the sketch interaction separate since it looked better that way. However, it can get boring drawing circles on a blank screen - it might be more interesting to draw them on an animated screen. On the other hand, it can make the animated sketch look very busy so perhaps it would have been better to include the interactivity separately. Not really sure...

Image 8: User interactivity (functions drawCircle1 and drawCircle2) on animated screen (circles sketch)

Image 9: User interactive function (drawCircle1) on non-animated sketch

Image 10: User interactive function (drawCircle2) on non-animated sketch

For all the sketches, I had created separate functions to keep the overall code clean and organized. As I had mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to keep the structure of my original design idea and for the most part I think I have managed to do that. There were some new functions I learnt but the most valuable aspect of the whole midterm exercise was remembering all that I had learnt in class and applying that knowledge to this project. We were introduced to numerous concepts/functions in class and I had forgotten a few of them. However, this assignment really helped me with the recap process and getting comfortable using some of the functions that I was previously having trouble understanding (timers, mapping, state position/if else logic, etc.). Another valuable lesson learnt during this midterm assignment was time management (if something is not working out it is best to move on or to at least take a break and come back to it later). It is easy to get caught up in some design idea but it is also important to recognize the constraints of time, something I shall definitely keep in mind for future assignments.

Github code - https://github.com/SagariDatta/Creative-coding-portfolio/tree/master/SagariDatta_Midterm_DM1133