The absolute dumbest startup advice ever
-
@dohpaz42 said:
Can somebody PLEASE take a picture of their hand to SHOW blakeyrat what the hell they are talking about already?
I can't be bothered. There'll only be something wrong with a photo anyway.
Like "no-one said you had to use hands with only 4 fingers and a thumb" or "no-one said you needed hands that didn't have webbing all the way to the tips of the fingers," or some other such bollocks.
Instead, Mr. Pederson just got some company in my killfile.
-
@blakeyrat said:
@tdb said:
Have you ever drawn coordinate axes on paper, or at least seen a picture of them? That should give you a clue of where the X axis usually points, and by extension where your thumb should point.
It doesn't "point" anywhere. It goes infinitely in either direction.
I meant the direction in which points with a positive X coordinate and zero Y coordinate are located in relation to the origin.
Put another way, it's the direction in which the base vector defining that axis points.
@blakeyrat said:
And even if it did "point" somewhere, why would I just automatically assume my thumb should point the same way?
The deal was to visualize OpenGL's default coordinate system, no? (Or DirectX's, in which case replace right hand with left.) This coordinate system has origin in the lower left corner of the screen, with the base vector of the X axis pointing towards the right edge and the base vector of the Y axis pointing towards the top edge. To find out where the Z axis points, make your fingers form right angles as described before, then align your thumb in the direction of the X base vector and index finger in the direction of the Y base vector. You may hold your hand in the center of the screen, since that's probably a more convenient location.
-
@blakeyrat said:
It's not an excuse, it's a fact-- they didn't explicitly state that.
I suppose it was deemed unnecessary because it's a centuries old tradition. Even saying "thumb is x, index finger y" would be considered superfluous by many because "that's the way it's always[1] been done".
[1] "always" as in "since people use cartesian coordinate systems"
Sure, it's arbitrary, like calling a tree a tree, but if there's one standard, well established and almost universally followed, you should deviate from it only for very good reasons.
And I'm not deliberately not understanding anything.
That's not a good testimony for your math teachers. Not that they should've explained why it's done that way (there's no good reason other than tradition), but they should have familiarized you with that tradition (of right-handed coordinate systems).
Why the fuck are you covering for this guy? His mnemonic is shitty, and he explained it in a shitty way. What's your personal investment in this?
Nobody's covering for the guy, he's just using an illustration everybody (not literally everybody) uses. Perhaps not explained too well, but not too terribly either.
Blakey, what's your personal investment in this, why are you so loath to right-handed coordinate systems? (Honestly, just curious.)
-
@Ilya Ehrenburg said:
That's not a good testimony for your math teachers. Not that they should've explained why it's done that way (there's no good reason other than tradition), but they should have familiarized you with that tradition (of right-handed coordinate systems).
I know all the fucking concepts. (Better than some of the people here, considering they were posting that the X axis "pointed" in a direction!)
The only part I didn't fucking know is when using your hand to visualize a Cartesian coordinate system, the thumb was support to point to the right. What the fuck does the direction my fucking thumb have to fucking do with knowing fucking geometry? What the fuck is wrong with you?
@Ilya Ehrenburg said:
Blakey, what's your personal investment in this, why are you so loath to right-handed coordinate systems? (Honestly, just curious.)
What the fuck?
I think you a word.
But when did I fucking state any preference for any coordinate system over another? Quote me.
Oh wait! This is the Daily WTF forums! I forgot, you don't actually have to read what people here say, you just make up some bullshit you pulled from your fat ass, and ASSUME they said it, then QUESTION why they said that.
-
Oh $deity the issue is not that the thumb is x, but which direction on the x axis it is supposed to represent.
-
@blakeyrat said:
@Ilya Ehrenburg said:
That's not a good testimony for your math teachers. Not that they should've explained why it's done that way (there's no good reason other than tradition), but they should have familiarized you with that tradition (of right-handed coordinate systems).
I know all the fucking concepts. (Better than some of the people here, considering they were posting that the X axis "pointed" in a direction!)
I apologize for my inaccurate use of terminology. I hope my clarification using base vectors satisfactorily conveyed the meaning of my message.
-
@tdb said:
I apologize for my inaccurate use of terminology. I hope my clarification using base vectors satisfactorily conveyed the meaning of my message.
Yeah, but the only reason you knew which way the thumb pointed is that you incorrectly believed that a X axis "began" at a particular point, and "traveled towards" some direction. Even if you (at some level) understand the axis is infinite.
So it seems like the people with a strong understanding of the concept wouldn't get the thumb mnemonic, because they understand that which way the thumb points is utterly arbitrary.
I'm calling it now: the reason I didn't get this retarded mnemonic is because I have a stronger understanding of the concepts than everybody else in this thread. I'm smarter than you all and better looking. Except delta534. Maybe,
-
@blakeyrat said:
@tdb said:
I apologize for my inaccurate use of terminology. I hope my clarification using base vectors satisfactorily conveyed the meaning of my message.
Yeah, but the only reason you knew which way the thumb pointed is that you incorrectly believed that a X axis "began" at a particular point, and "traveled towards" some direction. Even if you (at some level) understand the axis is infinite.
I do have a quite solid understanding of the underlying math. I have previously encountered the convention that an axis "points" towards the direction of increasing coordinate values, and incorrectly assumed that this would be widely known. I don't recall saying anything about the axes "starting" from some point though.
Also, I'm a professional in computer graphics and have encountered these right- and left-hand mnemonics before, so I hope you'll forgive me for not realizing that the issue needs to be approached from a purely mathematical point of view.
@blakeyrat said:So it seems like the people with a strong understanding of the concept wouldn't get the thumb mnemonic, because they understand that which way the thumb points is utterly arbitrary.
Of course it is arbitary in the general case. The idea of the mnemonic is this: if you know the directions of two base vectors in a three-dimensional cartesian coordinate system, you can use your hand to find out which direction the third base vector points in.
Now, let me quote an earlier message to explain where this "thumb should point right" came from:
@blakeyrat said:@Sir Twist said:
From that link: @greyfade said:Maybe because Glide used a left-handed coordinate system?
OpenGL uses a right-handed coordinate system, where the +Z part of the world coordinate system extends toward the viewer.
I'll agree that this is not expressed in the clearest manner possible, but to someone with basic knowledge of computer graphics, it should be obvious that this refers to the initial coordinate system, with identity projection and modelview matrices. As explained before, this coordinate system has the X base vector pointing towards the right edge of the screen, and the Y base vector pointing towards the top edge. To use the right-hand mnemonic to find out where the Z base vector points, orient your hand so that your thumb and index finger match the X and Y base vectors, and see where the middle finger points.
-
@blakeyrat said:
@Ilya Ehrenburg said:
That's not a good testimony for your math teachers. Not that they should've explained why it's done that way (there's no good reason other than tradition), but they should have familiarized you with that tradition (of right-handed coordinate systems).
I know all the fucking concepts. (Better than some of the people here, considering they were posting that the X axis "pointed" in a direction!)
The only part I didn't fucking know is when using your hand to visualize a Cartesian coordinate system, the thumb was support to point to the right. What the fuck does the direction my fucking thumb have to fucking do with knowing fucking geometry? What the fuck is wrong with you?
The thumb, by tradition, points in the direction of increasing x-coordinates with y- and z-coordinates remaining constant. In the direction of the x-axis, viewed as an oriented line, for short.
Since the tradition evolved in a part of the world where people wrote left-to-right, I'm not surprised that that is "pointing to the right". I am surprised, however, that you're not familiar with that convention. Familiarizing the pupils with the prevailing traditions and conventions is part of what the school teachers are supposed to do (in the part of the world I live in), so I tend to hold your teachers' failure to familiarize you with that tradition against them.
As to what's wrong with me (us?), I suppose it's the lack of expletives.
@Ilya Ehrenburg said:
Blakey, what's your personal investment in this, why are you so loath to right-handed coordinate systems? (Honestly, just curious.)
What the fuck?
I think you a word.
Referring to the omission of "I'm" in the parenthesis or to the "loath to"?
In the first case, you've just set a new record of dickishness, in the second, hmm, a quick google search turned up lots of "being loath to verb" and very few "being loath to noun", so it's possible that I used that phrase wrongly. News at eleven! Somebody used a foreign phrase wrongly!!!
But when did I fucking state any preference for any coordinate system over another? Quote me.
Oh wait! This is the Daily WTF forums! I forgot, you don't actually have to read what people here say, you just make up some bullshit you pulled from your fat ass, and ASSUME they said it, then QUESTION why they said that.
Just jumping to conclusions from your unfamiliarity (and silently hoping for a nice blakeyrant™, unfortunately in vain ;).
-
@blakeyrat said:
Yeah, but the only reason you knew which way the thumb pointed is that you incorrectly believed that a X axis "began" at a particular point, and "traveled towards" some direction. Even if you (at some level) understand the axis is infinite.
If there were such a thing as where the axis began, you might even say it originates there.
-
An axis does not have an orgin. There is an orgin of a graph which tell us nothing about the orentation of a graph.
-
@delta534 said:
An axis does not have an orgin. There is an orgin of a graph which tell us nothing about the orentation of a graph.
I would argue the opposite, at least as long as we're talking about an axis that is used to provide a metric for the space in which is resides. And since we've been talking about computer graphics, there is an origin there, and, as usual, blakeyrat is just trolling us by being intentionally obtuse.
-
@boomzilla said:
@delta534 said:
An axis does not have an orgin. There is an orgin of a graph which tell us nothing about the orentation of a graph.
I would argue the opposite, at least as long as we're talking about an axis that is used to provide a metric for the space in which is resides. And since we've been talking about computer graphics, there is an origin there, and, as usual, blakeyrat is just trolling us by being intentionally obtuse.I'm not being intentionally obtuse, and I'm not trolling anybody. (At least, not in this particular thread. At this particular time. I do troll all the time in general.)
Knowing the concept is not the same thing as knowing a stupid mnemonic used to teach the concept. People in this thread are saying that since I haven't heard the mnemonic, I don't know the concept... which is bullshit.
That's like saying that Jonathan Coulton doesn't know music because you found out he wasn't aware of "Every Good Boy Does Fine."
This is why programmers should never, never write documentation... everybody in this thread thinks that, because I don't think the exact same way they do that I'm somehow less educated. (Or, more generously, being deliberately obtuse.) Programmers all have this fucking irritating "if you aren't exactly like me, you're inferior and I hate you" bullshit aura that surrounds everything, everything, they do. They don't even see it, it's so pervasive. And so we end up with our poor friends and relatives who, hey, maybe they didn't take 3 years of computer science in school, and just maybe they don't give a shit about using the CLI or installing Linux on their laptop for kicks, and they're suffering with unusable, bullshit, computer interfaces made by programmers. Programmers who are such asses, that they'll say "RTFA" to every question even if there isn't a fucking manual in the first place. And this culture is never, ever going to change, and that makes me depressed beyond belief.
I mean, Jesus, look at this fucking forum. Circle around, barking like jackals, because I have the horrible personality defect of:
1) Not learning geometry by contorting my hand in an extremely specific way
2) Thinking it would be funny to point out that the guy who's trying to demonstrate his expertise in coordinate systems gave instructions that don't workI mean, is this what we're doing? Seriously? Someone's different than us! Let's pile on! Does it matter that it's a trivial difference that has nothing to do with anything at all? No! Pile on anyway! We're geeks! God forbid we be tolerant of people different than us! Of course I guess it could be worse; you could just assume that only possible way someone could claim to have learned geometry without making gang-signs is because he's lying to troll you. OH WAIT YOU ACTUALLY DID THAT.
This is like Lord of the Flies shit. This is like the fucking ending to Quatermass and the Pit shit. Just without the physic powers.
Well, I'm sorry I didn't go to the exact same school you did, and I'm sorry I didn't learn the exact same mnemonic, but that doesn't change the fact that the directions given in that forum for visualizing a right-handed coordinate system do not work. That's the point I was making originally, and I think I've backed-it-up more than fucking enough.
-
@boomzilla said:
@delta534 said:
The origin has no significance. The 'numbering' of your space is purely arbitrary - it indicates relative position. You could use 0 to 10, -5 to +5, or +5 to +15.An axis does not have an orgin. There is an orgin of a graph which tell us nothing about the orentation of a graph.
I would argue the opposite, at least as long as we're talking about an axis that is used to provide a metric for the space in which is resides. And since we've been talking about computer graphics, there is an origin there, and, as usual, blakeyrat is just trolling us by being intentionally obtuse.
-
@intertravel said:
The origin has no significance. The 'numbering' of your space is purely arbitrary - it indicates relative position. You could use 0 to 10, -5 to +5, or +5 to +15.
We could do that. But we don't. For that matter, where you place an axis is just as arbitrary. But once it's there, it's...there. And yes, the origin does mean something, at least when you're talking about a particular axis. Which we were. Even if some of us can't find it.
-
@boomzilla said:
@intertravel said:
Oh for deity's sake, these are not numbers we're talking about. They're just arbitrary (simple) choices used to designate points one relative unit apart. We could call them Tom, Fred, Bill and George for all the difference would make. A point in space designated 1 has no intrinsic property of one-ness in the same way that the number one actually does. There is nothing special about the space at point zero, unlike the number - for suitably broad values of 'number' - zero.The origin has no significance. The 'numbering' of your space is purely arbitrary - it indicates relative position. You could use 0 to 10, -5 to +5, or +5 to +15.
We could do that. But we don't. For that matter, where you place an axis is just as arbitrary. But once it's there, it's...there. And yes, the origin does mean something, at least when you're talking about a particular axis. Which we were. Even if some of us can't find it.The only special property of the 'origin' is that two or more axes cross there, and so we usually designate that zero on each (/all) of them for convenience. The axes could just as well cross at +5, -10 though, or at Fred, Nancy. We have adopted numbers as a convenient pre-existing ordered list to use as designators, but the thing being designated is not numerical.
-
@intertravel said:
The only special property of the 'origin' is that two or more axes cross there, and so we usually designate that zero on each (/all) of them for convenience.
Yes, that's my point exactly. It's an important place because of what it means to us, and because it's convenient. Convenience may not be important or meaningful to you or your deity, but I sure like it.
-
@boomzilla said:
Yes, that's my point exactly. It's an important place because of what it means to us, and because it's convenient. Convenience may not be important or meaningful to you or your deity, but I sure like it.
Thanks. Because you've been arguing with those of us saying that the finger-contorting directions involve conventions that, although convenient, are purely arbitrary, and so cannot be inferred using common sense.
-
@intertravel said:
Because you've been arguing with those of us saying that the finger-contorting directions involve conventions that, although convenient, are purely arbitrary, and so cannot be inferred using common sense.
I... I'm lost for words.
Clearly they teach maths differently in your part of the world.
This isn't necessarily a good thing.
-
@intertravel said:
@boomzilla said:
Yes, that's my point exactly. It's an important place because of what it means to us, and because it's convenient. Convenience may not be important or meaningful to you or your deity, but I sure like it.
Thanks. Because you've been arguing with those of us saying that the finger-contorting directions involve conventions that, although convenient, are purely arbitrary, and so cannot be inferred using common sense.Well, I wouldn't have referred to it as "common sense," myself, although a little bit of thought should show the way. In particular, I brought up the origin after the complaint was made the someone couldn't figure out where the axis might begin, and where it would be pointing.
I don't think that it should take Isaac Newton or Rene Descartes to correlate "begins" and "origin," nor "which way does it point?" with "positive." Blaykeyrat is correct that these things aren't always obvious to everyone (the scariest and perhaps most misleading / false words in a math class: It is therefore obvious that...).
But this really does seem pretty straightforward, unless you decide to pull the full pedantic dickweed. And to be fair, that's about 83% of all traffic on this forum, so you're in good company.
-
@PJH said:
@intertravel said:
Because you've been arguing with those of us saying that the finger-contorting directions involve conventions that, although convenient, are purely arbitrary, and so cannot be inferred using common sense.
I... I'm lost for words.
Clearly they teach maths differently in your part of the world.
This isn't necessarily a good thing.I'm really not sure what your point is. This whole pissing contest is because people decided that Blakey should be ridiculed for not being aware of an arbitrary and unmentioned convention. It's not a matter of commons sense, or even common knowledge: you have to know the specific conventions of the context in which the original comment was made, or it does indeed seem a bit of an odd thing to say.
-
@boomzilla said:
But this really does seem pretty straightforward, unless you decide to pull the full pedantic dickweed. And to be fair, that's about 83% of all traffic on this forum, so you're in good company.
I don't think anyone here has failed to understand, or even didn't understand everything bar the hand-thing before we started. We've just been waving our dicks around arguing about precisely how obvious and straightforward it is. Naturally, we had to make things considerably more complicated - that is, draw attention to the humongous size of our dicks - to do so.
-
This thread is fucking hilarious. First, you don't have to point your thumb in the direction of the x-axis, that's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard. The whole point of an orientation is that it doesn't depend on rotations. So unless you have an amazing talent of magically inverting your hand, right handed coordinate systems are right handed no matter what direction your hand is pointed; different directions just correspond to looking at it from different positions. SO(3), motherfuckers.
Also, this whole argument is totally retarded because it's over one single minus sign. The only difference between left and right handed systems is if you want the z-axis to be in the x-hat x y-hat direction or the -(x-hat x y-hat) one. ONE FUCKING MINUS SIGN. That's retardedly trivial to deal with. In fact, that's what the whole point of the whole point of the left/right hand rules is, they aren't supposed to tell you about axes or coordinate systems, they tell you about cross products because your hands are convienently mirror images of each other, and guess what? Mirrors don't reflect (you'd have to be retarded to think that) but they invert the sign of the coordinate orthogonal to the plane of reflection. So your hands convenently define two totally arbitrary orientations.
Summary for the reading impared:
- This argument is stupid
- It's over a minus sign
- A stupid minus sign
- SO(3) -- learn it
- Your hands tell you about cross products
-
@blakeyrat said:
Forum's fucked. Wrote a long post. Can't post it. Short version: this article is retarded.
Is it really "retarded" or did it strike a metaphorical nerve? I've got no problem with a resume that shows .NET experience, but when someone tells me that .NET is the be-all, end-all solution to all or even most problems on the PC platform, I do lose some respect for that person. If a job candidate's professional and personal projects are all .NET, that indicates to me that this person is basically a die-hard proponent of .NET and I place them in this same (negative) category.
I would at least expect a candidate for "world's best programmer" (which is what this person is trying to hire) to be able to form an answer to the question, "what don't you like about the design of .NET?" Personally, I would answer that question by saying that a good programming environment doesn't necessarily facilitate the creation of heap objects, and that garbage collection - even garbage collection of heap objects - is better handled by stack unwinding anyway. I might go on to question why a virtual machine is necessary for something that basically runs on only one hardware platform. If I had time I would mention that out-of-thread automatic garbage collection makes it radically more expensive to deliver consistent real-time performance.
I might also ask, "what do you like about the design of .NET?" but that's a much easier question. Anyone can parrot MSDN Magazine back to me.
Many (not all) of my criticisms apply to Java as well, which does make me disagree with the exact point of that "retarded" article.
-
@cfgauss said:
This thread is fucking hilarious. First, you don't have to point your thumb in the direction of the x-axis, that's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard. The whole point of an orientation is that it doesn't depend on rotations. So unless you have an amazing talent of magically inverting your hand, right handed coordinate systems are right handed no matter what direction your hand is pointed; different directions just correspond to looking at it from different positions. SO(3), motherfuckers.
Also, this whole argument is totally retarded because it's over one single minus sign. The only difference between left and right handed systems is if you want the z-axis to be in the x-hat x y-hat direction or the -(x-hat x y-hat) one. ONE FUCKING MINUS SIGN. That's retardedly trivial to deal with. In fact, that's what the whole point of the whole point of the left/right hand rules is, they aren't supposed to tell you about axes or coordinate systems, they tell you about cross products because your hands are convienently mirror images of each other, and guess what? Mirrors don't reflect (you'd have to be retarded to think that) but they invert the sign of the coordinate orthogonal to the plane of reflection. So your hands convenently define two totally arbitrary orientations.
Summary for the reading impared:
- This argument is stupid
- It's over a minus sign
- A stupid minus sign
- SO(3) -- learn it
- Your hands tell you about cross products
This is by far the second most pointless flame war I have ever seen.
-
@bridget99 said:
This is by far the second most pointless flame war I have ever seen.
Yeah, well, I think it's the [b]THIRD[/b] most pointless flamewar. Asshole.
-
@bridget99 said:
@blakeyrat said:
Forum's fucked. Wrote a long post. Can't post it. Short version: this article is retarded.
Is it really "retarded" or did it strike a metaphorical nerve? I've got no problem with a resume that shows .NET experience, but when someone tells me that .NET is the be-all, end-all solution to all or even most problems on the PC platform, I do lose some respect for that person. If a job candidate's professional and personal projects are all .NET, that indicates to me that this person is basically a die-hard proponent of .NET and I place them in this same (negative) category.
I would at least expect a candidate for "world's best programmer" (which is what this person is trying to hire) to be able to form an answer to the question, "what don't you like about the design of .NET?" Personally, I would answer that question by saying that a good programming environment doesn't necessarily facilitate the creation of heap objects, and that garbage collection - even garbage collection of heap objects - is better handled by stack unwinding anyway. I might go on to question why a virtual machine is necessary for something that basically runs on only one hardware platform. If I had time I would mention that out-of-thread automatic garbage collection makes it radically more expensive to deliver consistent real-time performance.
I might also ask, "what do you like about the design of .NET?" but that's a much easier question. Anyone can parrot MSDN Magazine back to me.
Many (not all) of my criticisms apply to Java as well, which does make me disagree with the exact point of that "retarded" article.
How exactly does someone's preference in programming languages for personal projects or the decision of the managers at their previoius places of employment say anything about them being a diehard proponent of anything?
-
@blakeyrat said:
@tdb said:
Have you ever drawn coordinate axes on paper, or at least seen a picture of them? That should give you a clue of where the X axis usually points, and by extension where your thumb should point.
It doesn't "point" anywhere. It goes infinitely in either direction.
You always draw axes as a cross?
Most people put the origin on the left:
y
|
|
|
|
|
0 -------------------------------- xWhich, incidentally, is why "right-handed" coordinate system is a ridiculous name, given that the origin is on the left-hand side (or the center, or the top if you're doing CSS, but never on the right).
-
@blakeyrat said:
Well, I'm sorry I didn't go to the exact same school you did, and I'm sorry I didn't learn the exact same mnemonic, but that doesn't change the fact that the directions given in that forum for visualizing a right-handed coordinate system do not work. That's the point I was making originally, and I think I've backed-it-up more than fucking enough.
I considered taking a picture of my right hand to show you, but that would have been difficult since I also need my right hand to hold the camera. Fortunately, Wikipedia has such an image on this article. Does this make it sufficiently clear that the hand mnemonic in fact does work?
-
@dhromed said:
Which, incidentally, is why "right-handed" coordinate system is a ridiculous name, given that the origin is on the left-hand side (or the center, or the top if you're doing CSS, but never on the right).
CSS has the X coordinates growing right and Y coordinates growing down, which defines a left-handed coordinate system.
Edit: Well, it could be right-handed as well, if the Z axis points into the screen. Similarly the X right / Y up one could be left-handed. The hand mnemonic doesn't really make a lot of sense with 2D coordinate systems.
-
@tdb said:
@dhromed said:
Which, incidentally, is why "right-handed" coordinate system is a ridiculous name, given that the origin is on the left-hand side (or the center, or the top if you're doing CSS, but never on the right).
CSS has the X coordinates growing right and Y coordinates growing down, which defines a left-handed coordinate system.
Edit: Well, it could be right-handed as well, if the Z axis points into the screen. Similarly the X right / Y up one could be left-handed. The hand mnemonic doesn't really make a lot of sense with 2D coordinate systems.
The layers with a larger z-index are in front of the ones with smaller z-index, so I would say the CSS represents a left handed coordinate system.
-
@tdb said:
@Nelle said:
CSS has the X coordinates growing right and Y coordinates growing down, which defines a left-handed coordinate system.
Edit: Well, it could be right-handed as well, if the Z axis points into the screen. Similarly the X right / Y up one could be left-handed. The hand mnemonic doesn't really make a lot of sense with 2D coordinate systems.
The layers with a larger z-index are in front of the ones with smaller z-index, so I would say the CSS represents a left handed coordinate system.Unless you tear off a finger and float it back onto your palm. Then your fingers appear in the order which you glued them back on.
-
@Lorne Kates said:
Yeah, well, I think it's the THIRD most pointless flamewar. Asshole.
Actually, I'm beginning to think it's somewhere in the realm of 3 + 9i (or 3 +9j if you prefer).
What I find most amusing about this whole discussion, is that rather than attempting to be helpful and educational, people would rather foray into some kind of strange philosophical cage match. It's more morbidly fascinating, kind of like a disaster, rather than edifying.
And for what it's worth, I most often use my index finger for the X-axis, not my thumb. And I agree (!) with blakey in that it's a very uncomfortable thing to do, but it does work. In general it's easier to just visualize it internally rather than using visual aides.
-
@tdb said:
@blakeyrat said:
Well, I'm sorry I didn't go to the exact same school you did, and I'm sorry I didn't learn the exact same mnemonic, but that doesn't change the fact that the directions given in that forum for visualizing a right-handed coordinate system do not work. That's the point I was making originally, and I think I've backed-it-up more than fucking enough.
I considered taking a picture of my right hand to show you, but that would have been difficult since I also need my right hand to hold the camera. Fortunately, Wikipedia has such an image on this article. Does this make it sufficiently clear that the hand mnemonic in fact does work?
I said the DIRECTIONS didn't work, not that the mnemonic didn't work.
Reading is FUNdamental!
-
@blakeyrat said:
@tdb said:
@blakeyrat said:
Well, I'm sorry I didn't go to the exact same school you did, and I'm sorry I didn't learn the exact same mnemonic, but that doesn't change the fact that the directions given in that forum for visualizing a right-handed coordinate system do not work. That's the point I was making originally, and I think I've backed-it-up more than fucking enough.
I considered taking a picture of my right hand to show you, but that would have been difficult since I also need my right hand to hold the camera. Fortunately, Wikipedia has such an image on this article. Does this make it sufficiently clear that the hand mnemonic in fact does work?
I said the DIRECTIONS didn't work, not that the mnemonic didn't work.
Reading is FUNdamental!
Ah, I think I get it. This John R. Strohm guy didn't specify which way on the axis your fingers should point, so you probably aligned your thumb with the negative half of the X axis and your index finger with the positive half of the Y axis, ending up with your middle finger aligned with the negative half of the Z axis. Am I correct?
-
@too_many_usernames said:
I most often use my index finger for the X-axis, not my thumb.
Whu? The index finger of the right hand cannot possibly point to the right.
-
@tdb said:
Ah
I think directions are pretty much useless in this case.
I'm curious why nobody has posted a picture yet.
-
@tdb said:
Ah, I think I get it. This John R. Strohm guy didn't specify which way on the axis your fingers should point, so you probably aligned your thumb with the negative half of the X axis and your index finger with the positive half of the Y axis, ending up with your middle finger aligned with the negative half of the Z axis. Am I correct?
Yes, most of this thread was one group saying 'the directions are shit' and the other group saying 'you imbeciles, the mnemonic works just fine'.In the most esoteric, my-knowledge-is-superior-to-yours way possible, of course.
-
@dhromed said:
Whu? The index finger of the right hand cannot possibly point to the right.
Not comfortably, but it can be done.
-
@too_many_usernames said:
I don't find it in the least bit uncomfortable - my hand is on the end of this multiply-jointed limb thing called my arm which makes it quite simple. If you point your lower arm straight out in front of you, obviously it's a bit uncomfortable to point rightward, but if you put your arm straight out to the side...@dhromed said:
Whu? The index finger of the right hand cannot possibly point to the right.
Not comfortably, but it can be done.
-
@dhromed said:
@tdb said:
Ah
I think directions are pretty much useless in this case.
I'm curious why nobody has posted a picture yet.
Or better yet, a link to their actual hand rather than some compressed screenshot.
-
@intertravel said:
@tdb said:
Ah, I think I get it. This John R. Strohm guy didn't specify which way on the axis your fingers should point, so you probably aligned your thumb with the negative half of the X axis and your index finger with the positive half of the Y axis, ending up with your middle finger aligned with the negative half of the Z axis. Am I correct?
Yes, most of this thread was one group saying 'the directions are shit' and the other group saying 'you imbeciles, the mnemonic works just fine'.In the most esoteric, my-knowledge-is-superior-to-yours way possible, of course.
TDB's trolling. There's no way he read this thread and is just now figuring out what we're arguing about. My trolly sense is tingling.
-
@blakeyrat said:
TDB's trolling. There's no way he read this thread and is *just now* figuring out what we're arguing about. My trolly sense is tingling.
You know that the people that argued against you where thinking:
"Blakey is trolling, there is no way he read that explanation of the mnemonics and did not get it"
Word for the wise, never assume too much
-
I'm still figuring out how the hell this is still going.
Can we go back to insulting PHP?
-
@serguey123 said:
@blakeyrat said:
TDB's trolling. There's no way he read this thread and is just now figuring out what we're arguing about. My trolly sense is tingling.
You know that the people that argued against you where thinking:
"Blakey is trolling, there is no way he read that explanation of the mnemonics and did not get it"
Word for the wise, never assume too much
Anybody else who actually read the explanation (as opposed to "read the explanation and combined it with a personal experience they had in high school") also would not have gotten it. This is why the explanation sucked.
As I said yesterday, I only have access to the text itself-- I don't have access to the shit in your mind that makes the text understandable to you personally.
-
@blakeyrat said:
Anybody else who actually *read* the explanation (as opposed to "read the explanation and combined it with a personal experience they had in high school") also would not have gotten it. This is why the explanation sucked.
As I said yesterday, I only have access to the text itself-- I don't have access to the shit in your mind that makes the text understandable to you personally.
In all honesty I did not read the article and I never heard of the hand thingy before but I understood what they were talking about inmediately
So do this make me smarter than you or gives me mind reading superpower?
-
@blakeyrat said:
@intertravel said:
@tdb said:
Ah, I think I get it. This John R. Strohm guy didn't specify which way on the axis your fingers should point, so you probably aligned your thumb with the negative half of the X axis and your index finger with the positive half of the Y axis, ending up with your middle finger aligned with the negative half of the Z axis. Am I correct?
Yes, most of this thread was one group saying 'the directions are shit' and the other group saying 'you imbeciles, the mnemonic works just fine'.In the most esoteric, my-knowledge-is-superior-to-yours way possible, of course.
TDB's trolling. There's no way he read this thread and is just now figuring out what we're arguing about. My trolly sense is tingling.
I am not trolling. Not with the content of my posts at any rate. In a few earlier posts I did troll a bit with the way I expressed that content, but the content itself was intended as actual discussion.
Habit is a powerful thing. When you know how something works, it's not always easy to imagine how someone unfamiliar with it might be seeing it. Have you ever tried to explain variables, let alone pointers, to someone who just doesn't get the concept? I was actually writing an entirely different sort of reply and re-reading the stackoverflow thread for that purpose, when it finally dawned to me what must have been your point from the beginning.
I must ask though, did you honestly not get it after reading the instructions and thinking on it for a moment or two, or were you just raising a point for argument's sake? If not, your mathematical skill, or at least the ability to apply it to different situations, might be more lacking than you think.
-
@tdb said:
Habit is a powerful thing. When you know how something works, it's not always easy to imagine how someone unfamiliar with it might be seeing it. Have you ever tried to explain variables, let alone pointers, to someone who just doesn't get the concept? I was actually writing an entirely different sort of reply and re-reading the stackoverflow thread for that purpose, when it finally dawned to me what must have been your point from the beginning.
And that's fine and dandy, as long as you never, ever, write documentation you expect another human being to follow.
@tdb said:
I must ask though, did you honestly not get it after reading the instructions and thinking on it for a moment or two, or were you just raising a point for argument's sake?
As I've said in this thread an UBER-KRAJILLION TIMES, I did not get it after reading the instructions and trying the gesture for myself. I was not raising a point for argument's sake.
I was raising the point because I thought it was funny that a self-declared expert couldn't explain the concept he was supposedly an expert on.
@tdb said:
If not, your mathematical skill, or at least the ability to apply it to different situations, might be more lacking than you think.
As I've said in this thread an UBER-KRAJILLION TIMES, my understanding of a stupid mnemonic has nothing to do with my understanding of geometry or coordinate systems.
-
@blakeyrat said:
@tdb said:
Habit is a powerful thing. When you know how something works, it's not always easy to imagine how someone unfamiliar with it might be seeing it. Have you ever tried to explain variables, let alone pointers, to someone who just doesn't get the concept? I was actually writing an entirely different sort of reply and re-reading the stackoverflow thread for that purpose, when it finally dawned to me what must have been your point from the beginning.
And that's fine and dandy, as long as you never, ever, write documentation you expect another human being to follow.
I try to avoid having to write such documentation by myself at all cost. Preferable someone else should write it, I should check it for errors, then a couple other people should see if they can understand it too.
@blakeyrat said:
@tdb said:
I must ask though, did you honestly not get it after reading the instructions and thinking on it for a moment or two, or were you just raising a point for argument's sake?
As I've said in this thread an UBER-KRAJILLION TIMES, I did not get it after reading the instructions and trying the gesture for myself. I was not raising a point for argument's sake.
I was raising the point because I thought it was funny that a self-declared expert couldn't explain the concept he was supposedly an expert on.
I don't find that funny or even strange at all. See above for why many experts are bad at explaining concepts to newbies, especially without being in interaction with said newbies. I bet you couldn't pick up a paper on advanced computer graphics and understand what's going on without doing further research on the more basic concepts (I'm basing this on the assumption that you haven't done computer graphics before, since you were unable to get the hand mnemonic even when presented with the standard OpenGL coordinate system as a reference). I also bet that you would have been able to do such research on the hand mnemonic and figured it out if you'd tried.
@blakeyrat said:
@tdb said:
If not, your mathematical skill, or at least the ability to apply it to different situations, might be more lacking than you think.
As I've said in this thread an UBER-KRAJILLION TIMES, my understanding of a stupid mnemonic has nothing to do with my understanding of geometry or coordinate systems.
Did you not wonder why you did not get the expected results? Or why both of your hands ended up with the middle finger pointing away from you, when the results were supposed to be different? There are only four possible orientations of the hand with the thumb parallel with the X axis and the index finger parallel with the Y axis; it wouldn't have taken many seconds to try them all. Two of them produce the expected direction of the middle finger, and it should be easy to see which one is simpler. What about drawing an analogue to vector cross product? You must be aware of the cross product relationships between the base vectors of a three-dimensional cartesian coordinate system ([i]i[/i] ⨯ [i]j[/i] = [i]k[/i]) as well as the general properties of cross products (if one of the vectors is inverted, the result is as well, so -[i]i[/i] ⨯ [i]j[/i] = -[i]k[/i]).
-
@serguey123 said:
Neither. It makes you CP-asymmetric and based on aligning Cobalt-60 atoms in a magnetic field.@blakeyrat said:
Anybody else who actually *read* the explanation (as opposed to "read the explanation and combined it with a personal experience they had in high school") also would not have gotten it. This is why the explanation sucked.
As I said yesterday, I only have access to the text itself-- I don't have access to the shit in your mind that makes the text understandable to you personally.
In all honesty I did not read the article and I never heard of the hand thingy before but I understood what they were talking about inmediately
So do this make me smarter than you or gives me mind reading superpower?
