So, following Fabian's example, I decided to create a topic like this myself. I don't encourage others to follow my example of copying Fabian's idea though, as things might get a bit out of hand.
So why am I creating such a topic then? I have two reasons:
1. I will be attending an entrance exam to study English in the University of Turku this June. I thought that this might help me get back in touch with English, as my skills are quite rusty from lack of proper use.
2. My activity on this forum has been varying for quite a while now. Maybe I'll get to be more involved with the site in general this way.
So, ask away! You name the subject, but try to stay within the borders of good taste. Let's follow Fabian's example and address the questions to me with "Dear Brushy,". I'll try to answer every question, but I work and I should also study, so my time is limited. Please be patient.
Also, I'm aware that I'm not as memorable or awesome as Fabian, but I'll do my best not to be a jerk. I'd also ask other moderators not to intervene with the flow of this topic, I'm able to moderate this myself if needed. Thank you.
Thank you for the questions so far. I will answer them tomorrow, as I am quite tired at the moment.
To answer your possible query about why I am tired, I will tell you in advance. I was on a date (with a girl) and I walked her home. I missed the last bus so I had to walk 5 kilometers home in snow. No wolves chasing me though. Also, it's about 1:30 in Finland.
"Dear Brushy,"
Did you kiss that girl on the mouth upon leaving?
What is your opinion of Fabian?
Do you miss the days when alden was an active member?
Can rhinotanks kill you?
Is the first question grammatically correct?
Do you like the number 6?
Am I asking too many questions?
Yours sincerely,
Zeupar.
AzumaK wrote: I swear my 1 year old daughter's favorite TASVideo is your R4MI run :3
xxNKxx wrote: ok thanks handsome feos :D
Help improving TASVideos!
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Dear Brushy,
It's been a long time since the release of Monkey Island 2, the game in your avatar. Talk about how gaming has changed since then and what you miss about the old days.
That's not a question, but I suppose it doesn't need to be.
Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom
Brushy wrote:
1. I will be attending an entrance exam to study English in the University of Turku this June. I thought that this might help me get back in touch with English, as my skills are quite rusty from lack of proper use.
As Fabian's intention was to stimulate conversation on what he saw as an ailing board I shall follow a similar motive. I found this quite interesting as I have been thinking about this recently, so prepare for a bombardment of superficially related questions.
In which context do you hope to study English? Do you hope to study the literature, or are you interested in the more everyday functional, or perhaps technical, application of the language? I have recently considered doing a postgraduate degree in English, however as a British citizen it would be geared towards literature and I wonder how representative that would be of other English degrees throughout the world.
As the English language seems to be something of a legacy of the British Empire, do you feel pressured to learn it in order to get full enjoyment out of the internet and modern culture? In other words, do you hope to study out of necessity or out of genuine enjoyment of the language as opposed to others? Do you know people with less proficiency in English and feel that they are losing out in some way?
I remember learning French back in High School and the language was taught as being inextricably tied to the culture itself (i.e. examples would always be set in a stereotypical parisian setup with questions based on widely known French culture). Do you feel that the study of English requires a meaningful understanding of British (or North American) culture, or do you find it to be more worldly than that?
What are your opinions on being bilingual? Do you feel that the extra vocabularly has allowed you to express yourself in ways that would otherwise be impossible, or more difficult? Have you found the experience of engaging with those of a different tongue to be worthwhile? Last year, on a whim, I asked a German friend of mine which language she thought in, she said English, as it was faster. Do you find merit in this?
Finally, most native English speakers do not have a second language due to the vast numbers of English speaking people in the world. As a person who has made the effort to learn English as a second language, do you find this attitude of native English speakers to be distasteful in any way? Do you feel that it contributes to a sense of isolationism that may manifest itself in foreign policy decisions of English speaking nations?
In Fabian's spirit, these questions are for anyone who feels that they have something intersting to add.
Surely he wanted to use "utilization" instead. That has many more letters, so it must be right!
But perhaps he wants to learn British English instead of American, in which case it would be "utilisation". (Although I heard some rumors that Britons are slowly shifting towards American spelling as well... Nothing is sacred anymore.)
Dear Brushy,
What are your views on nuclear disarmament?
In general I dislike weapons and violence. One might call me a pacifist, but I'm not sure if I fit the description perfectly. I do think that in some situations it is unfortunately necessary to use force and I am prepared to use force myself to ensure the safety of others.
So back to nuclear disarmament. In my utopistic thoughts I do think that there should be no weaponry designed to mass murder people, such as nuclear bombs (or actually, any kind of guns or such, but they're also used as tools, so...), but in reality there seems to be a need for nuclear weapons. Some nations need them as a scare as some other nations seem to be hostile and might attack or something, if there wasn't a scare. But the fewer nukes in the world, the better in my opinion.
I don't really know about the subject of war politics and frankly, I don't care much about it.
Sonikkustar wrote:
Desr Brushy,
If you were under a man eating sofa and you were hungry, what would you eat?
Well, I would ask the man to move so I could get out from under him. If he refuses to move, I would try to crawl out and then get some food. If I couldn't get out, I would ask the man if he would share the sofa with me. Now if you were talking about a man-eating sofa, I would probably die because something has gone terribly wrong in the world.
scrimpeh wrote:
Dear Brushy, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll?
It probably depends on the intensity and duration of the licks. I do not know the answer as I've never eaten a Tootsie roll. My guess is 46 on average.
Scepheo wrote:
Dear Brushy,
In the following sentence:
Brushy wrote:
as my skills are quite rusty from lack of proper use.
Are you sure it's "use" and not "usage"?
Derakon already answered this for me, so yes. You did confuse me a bit last evening though and I had to thing about it actually.
Zeupar wrote:
"Dear Brushy,"
Did you kiss that girl on the mouth upon leaving?
What is your opinion of Fabian?
Do you miss the days when alden was an active member?
Can rhinotanks kill you?
Is the first question grammatically correct?
Do you like the number 6?
Am I asking too many questions?
Yours sincerely,
Zeupar.
I did not kiss her. It was our second date and I'm not sure what she thinks about me. I'm quite shy and I have a bad self-esteem, so I don't dare do to do things like that if I don't get a clear sign that I'm allowed to move in. We have a third date scheduled to happen later on this week. We will be playing Rock Band games at her place, so I guess she likes me.
I think that Fabian is a great guy. He's smart, witty and funny. I wish I could've met him in November or January when I was in Stockholm, but I didn't. Oh well, Stockholm is only 10 euros away from Turku, so maybe one day...
I guess alden had his most active period here when I was inactive and didn't even visit the site. Alden seems to be a nice guy and from what I've gathered, so I'd say yes, it is a shame that he's not as active as he used to be.
I'm not really immortal so even a flu can kill me if I'm weak enough. There aren't any rhino tanks near me though, so it's improbable that I will be killed by a rhino tank. My signature plays with that thought too. There are no rhinos here in Finland, so I doubt that they can easily kill me.
I do think that your first question is grammatically correct. If not, someone may please correct me.
I don't really have any preference on numbers without context. Six is just as good as any other number if there's no context.
You're not asking too many questions. Thank you for your questions.
NitroGenesis wrote:
Dear Brushy,
Do you keep your calendars even after the year they represent passed?
No. I don't really have calendars. Well, I have one in my bag right now, but I rarely use it. If I start to use it, I guess I could save it if it contains something that I want to reminisce on when I'm gray and old (or possibly earlier).
Bisqwit wrote:
Brushy, what motivated you to select for yourself a name of a video game character?
My lack of originality perhaps. Guybrush Threepwood still is my favorite game character and back in the day when I registered on this, I think Monkey Island was on my mind. You know how young people work with these things, right?
I had to shorten it to Brushy when I came on IRC, since Guybrush was already a registered nickname on Freenode. I grew to like Brushy a lot and I'm glad Guybrush was unavailable on Freenode.
Thank you all for your questions. I will get back to Dada's and Mukki's questions later on as they require quite a lot of thought to be answered well. Keep 'em coming guys!
In Fabian's spirit, these questions are for anyone who feels that they have something intersting to add.
Well, you've caught my attention then. :)
Mukki wrote:
I remember learning French back in High School and the language was taught as being inextricably tied to the culture itself (i.e. examples would always be set in a stereotypical parisian setup with questions based on widely known French culture). Do you feel that the study of English requires a meaningful understanding of British (or North American) culture, or do you find it to be more worldly than that?
It's largely inevitable, but also very much appropriate. You cannot hope to fully grasp the nuances of any given language, especially with regards to idioms, certain other verbal constructions, details and dynamics of pronunciation, and other similar things without studying the cultural and historical context behind them, basically all the important circumstances of their creation (that is, etymology) and semantic development. I haven't had any specialized education in linguistics, but these things are somehow able to fascinate me to no end. Here's a (spoilerless) quote from House of Leaves that I especially like. Don't you find the conclusion inspiring in some way?
Mukki wrote:
What are your opinions on being bilingual? Do you feel that the extra vocabularly has allowed you to express yourself in ways that would otherwise be impossible, or more difficult? Have you found the experience of engaging with those of a different tongue to be worthwhile? Last year, on a whim, I asked a German friend of mine which language she thought in, she said English, as it was faster. Do you find merit in this?
Absolutely. We shape the vast majority of our thoughts in verbal forms (i. e. saying or reading them in our mind) which are thus directly related to the languages we are able to wield (as in, be able to produce thoughts using them, not just translate to/from using our internal vocabulary lookup mechanisms). The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis extends it even further, and I actually agree with its postulates. Consequently, if you can successfully manage two distinct sets of cognitive patterns brought forward by bilingual training (especially if you're trained in that way since early childhood), you can potentially reap huge benefits from that by being able to discern more shades of meaning in various concepts or contexts. Which is another topic that fascinates me to no end. Maybe I should have become a linguist or a neurobiologist or something... :)
When I'm writing my response to you at this very moment, I'm thinking in English, which serves a larger purpose here as the result is supposed to be English for you to understand. But oftentimes I would think in English even if the outcome of my thought process is to be expressed in Russian or not expressed at all. This is likely because I find it easier to deal with the English language's simplified morphology and larger assortment of roots, allowing different shades of meaning of any given concept to be expressed with a single and, in most cases, more simple word, or at least an idiom with no equal meaning in Russian.
Then again, you can consider artificial languages such as Ithkuil created for the very purpose of optimizing thought processes by compressing it and ruling out inconsistencies in formal logic, abundant in pretty much every language. At one point I was seriously considering actually learning Ithkuil, but quickly realized I had neither comfortable means of romanization (the current romanization system is anything but useful) nor anybody proficient to talk to for practice. In contrast, pretty much all of my accomplishments with regards to English have been achieved through practice on this very forum (and IRC channel) for the major part. If you'd looked at the posts I made in 2005, you would notice how I purposefully avoided complex sentences, Perfect tense, and other things I wasn't comfortable with. I can't say I'm fully comfortable with all of that now, but it's manageable. My grasp of written English is now rather close to my grasp of written Russian, and I find that pretty cool considering I received no special training on the matter, and in fact no training at all for the past six years.
Warp wrote:
But perhaps he wants to learn British English instead of American, in which case it would be "utilisation". (Although I heard some rumors that Britons are slowly shifting towards American spelling as well... Nothing is sacred anymore.)
Dear Brushy,
It's been a long time since the release of Monkey Island 2, the game in your avatar. Talk about how gaming has changed since then and what you miss about the old days.
That's not a question, but I suppose it doesn't need to be.
There's not much to do here at work so I decided to compose an answer to this.
So, old video games. Me being relatively young and talking about old video games might seem a bit weird. But I like old video games. I'm not sure why exactly though. I'll try to gather my thoughts into this post but I won't promise they will make sense though.
First thing that comes to my min is graphics. Games are nowdays sold by how realistic the graphics are. I couldn't care about this at all. I prefer cartoonish and non-realistic graphics in games. Monkey Island 2 has the best graphics of all time in my opinion. The pixel art is great and clever and the backgrounds are just gorgeous. Crysis... Meh. I can look out the window if I want to see realistic nature and people. Spyro the Dragon has better graphics in my opinion, although they're fairly early 3D. They just look nice and serve the game well. Game developers concentrate too much on non-gameplay elements in general in my opinion.
The gameplay is too guided and linear nowdays when compared to the olden days. Tutorials take up a lot of time and game developers underestimate gamers all the time. This is not always a bad thing and might help introduce new people to video games, but I rarely have the feeling of achievement and discovery when playing modern games.
Action games suffer from michaelbayism. Explosions and slow motion all that seem to make a good game nowdays. I dislike senseless and meaningless effects.
People usually think that old games are played purely because of nostalgia. I disagree with this as I play a lot of old games because they have beautiful graphics, excellent and solid gameplay, inventive level designs and they're just fun to play! The first three games that come to my mind are Mega Man 2, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Monkey Island games.
There, I hope this didn't come out as a rant. I do enjoy many modern games and I will compose a list of my favorite games later. If Dada wishes to know more, please ask more specific questions.
Also, I apologize for possible typos. I used my phone to write this message.
Dearest Brushy.
What do I owe you for the candy which was brought to my vicinity this weekend?
Sincerely, Cardboard.
You must enjoy it my friend, that's all you owe me :)
Patryk1023 wrote:
Dear Brushy,
What is your best TASed game?
What is my best TAS? Well, I'm not a good TASer, but from my published runs I think that The Flintstones has the least possible improvements. I enjoy the obsolete Duck Tales TAS the most though.
In which context do you hope to study English? Do you hope to study the literature, or are you interested in the more everyday functional, or perhaps technical, application of the language? I have recently considered doing a postgraduate degree in English, however as a British citizen it would be geared towards literature and I wonder how representative that would be of other English degrees throughout the world.
Well, the study program has been reformed quite recently and it fused English translation and philology. So if I will be accepted, I will study both. I guess my main interest is in translation right now, but different aspects of the language might grasp my interest when I actually get to know them better. I'm not quite sure what I will be studying and how much, I haven't really put my mind to this yet and I just hope to get in. Then I will see what I'm put up against.
To be honest, I haven't really ever studied English as a school subject that much, so actually having to learn the grammar and spelling rules and such more carefully and be able to tell why it is so might prove challenging. Though I'm not sure, I might adapt the reasons for the rules as naturally as I've adapted the usage of the rules. School hasn't ever really taught me much about English, I'm quite self-educated. I basically taught English to myself right after I learned to read by playing video games such as Monkey Island with a dictionary next to me. Using English has always been quite natural to me, I don't really have to put as much thought into forming sentences and spelling words correctly as one would think.
Mukki wrote:
As the English language seems to be something of a legacy of the British Empire, do you feel pressured to learn it in order to get full enjoyment out of the internet and modern culture? In other words, do you hope to study out of necessity or out of genuine enjoyment of the language as opposed to others? Do you know people with less proficiency in English and feel that they are losing out in some way?
I do not feel pressured. I have chosen myself to learn English to be able to enjoy everything offered in English. I enjoy studying and using English mainly because it's somewhat a lingua franca. I'm able to communicate with millions of people without big difficulties. Of course media is also a big reason to study English. I'm able to enjoy the lyrics of so many of my favorite artists because they write their lyrics in English. I don't have to rely on the Finnish translator's interpretations of American phrases and pop culture references when watching The Simpsons. I'm able to watch so many foreign movies, because one can almost every time find English subtitles for them. So I enjoy English, but I've never felt pressured to learn it.
I do know people whose language skills are not on par with mine and some of them do feel that they're missing out on things. Most of them just don't care though, as they watch their movies and series on TV and there's always a Finnish subtitle available or they don't care about the lyrics of the song they listen to etc.
Mukki wrote:
I remember learning French back in High School and the language was taught as being inextricably tied to the culture itself (i.e. examples would always be set in a stereotypical parisian setup with questions based on widely known French culture). Do you feel that the study of English requires a meaningful understanding of British (or North American) culture, or do you find it to be more worldly than that?
I think that English doesn't require that much knowledge or understanding of the British or North American culture. It's an asset to know about these things, but I don't think it's necessary. One doesn't have to be in the UK or the US to use English as so many people from so many different cultures use the language on a daily basis. I have a pretty good understanding of British and North American culture, I think, and I've been able to my benefit. For example, my ex-girlfriend's father was an American. I got along with him quite well and I was able to understand his cultural references and be more relaxed in conversations because I understood the American phrases he used without any problems and so on.
Mukki wrote:
What are your opinions on being bilingual? Do you feel that the extra vocabularly has allowed you to express yourself in ways that would otherwise be impossible, or more difficult? Have you found the experience of engaging with those of a different tongue to be worthwhile? Last year, on a whim, I asked a German friend of mine which language she thought in, she said English, as it was faster. Do you find merit in this?
I find that being bilingual is an asset. I should actually be trilingual, as I was born in Estonia and my family is Estonian. My mother and my older siblings speak mainly Estonian to each other, but I've never used Estonian on a daily basis. It's a shame really, as I am really out of touch with my Estonian now.
Being bilingual allows me to use phrases and words from both languages to express my feelings and thoughts to most of my friends from all over the world. If English has a good way to say how I feel or what I think about something, I say it in English (or in some rare cases, translate it to Finnish). It also helps if I don't remember a word in Finnish, but I remember what it is in English, since then I can make myself understood.
I can think in English and I usually do if I'm using it. This is extremely useful, as it allows me to communicate with a lot better efficiency because I don't have to translate everything to English in my head first. I don't think I normally think in English that much, because my environment is mostly in Finnish.
Mukki wrote:
Finally, most native English speakers do not have a second language due to the vast numbers of English speaking people in the world. As a person who has made the effort to learn English as a second language, do you find this attitude of native English speakers to be distasteful in any way? Do you feel that it contributes to a sense of isolationism that may manifest itself in foreign policy decisions of English speaking nations?
Yes, I do find it sometimes a bit silly (not distasteful, but silly) that native English speakers sometimes refuse to learn any other language because English is so widely spoken. Different languages enrich ones life, because they allow to understand different cultures a lot better. But some people don't care about different cultures and that's fine by me. Every person is an individual with their own choices. I do think it's a shame they choose to be ignorant. Please note that this doesn't apply to just native English speakers, but to all nationalities.
I don't unfortunately know what to say about that last question. I guess it does contribute to that, but I don't know.
I hope I made some sense and that you got something out of these answers. Thank you for the questions, they were very stimulating and interesting.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Brushy wrote:
Dada wrote:
Dear Brushy,
It's been a long time since the release of Monkey Island 2, the game in your avatar. Talk about how gaming has changed since then and what you miss about the old days.
That's not a question, but I suppose it doesn't need to be.
There's not much to do here at work so I decided to compose an answer to this.
So, old video games. Me being relatively young and talking about old video games might seem a bit weird. But I like old video games. I'm not sure why exactly though. I'll try to gather my thoughts into this post but I won't promise they will make sense though.
First thing that comes to my min is graphics. Games are nowdays sold by how realistic the graphics are. I couldn't care about this at all. I prefer cartoonish and non-realistic graphics in games. Monkey Island 2 has the best graphics of all time in my opinion. The pixel art is great and clever and the backgrounds are just gorgeous. Crysis... Meh. I can look out the window if I want to see realistic nature and people. Spyro the Dragon has better graphics in my opinion, although they're fairly early 3D. They just look nice and serve the game well. Game developers concentrate too much on non-gameplay elements in general in my opinion.
The gameplay is too guided and linear nowdays when compared to the olden days. Tutorials take up a lot of time and game developers underestimate gamers all the time. This is not always a bad thing and might help introduce new people to video games, but I rarely have the feeling of achievement and discovery when playing modern games.
Action games suffer from michaelbayism. Explosions and slow motion all that seem to make a good game nowdays. I dislike senseless and meaningless effects.
People usually think that old games are played purely because of nostalgia. I disagree with this as I play a lot of old games because they have beautiful graphics, excellent and solid gameplay, inventive level designs and they're just fun to play! The first three games that come to my mind are Mega Man 2, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Monkey Island games.
There, I hope this didn't come out as a rant. I do enjoy many modern games and I will compose a list of my favorite games later. If Dada wishes to know more, please ask more specific questions.
Also, I apologize for possible typos. I used my phone to write this message.
You know, you and I aren't that different in our attitudes towards games. For reference, how old are you again? I myself am 23 and started playing games at around 4, so I'm just old enough to clearly remember the DOS era (started off on a 8086 with monochrome CGA monitor).
But my favorite era is the early to mid 90s in PC games. That's also when Monkey Island II, one of the masterpieces of that time, came out. I totally agree with you, you don't need all that much to make a beautiful game. What you need is talented people who enjoy their work and who are willing not to make the next multimillion dollar cash cow, but a beautiful work of fiction they can all get behind.
Not to belittle the people who work in the industry these days. They're all also extremely talented and hard working individuals, but it's become much more of an industry than a craft.
Sorry for rambling since this is your topic and not mine, but I liked your answer and I'm glad there are people here who agree with the notion that it's not just all about nostalgia.
Not to belittle the people who work in the industry these days. They're all also extremely talented and hard working individuals, but it's become much more of an industry than a craft.
This is very well put.
Dada wrote:
Sorry for rambling since this is your topic and not mine, but I liked your answer and I'm glad there are people here who agree with the notion that it's not just all about nostalgia.
No need to apologize, you and everyone else is free to "ramble" and comment on my answers and post their thoughts here. This is not really my thread, it's just a thread to help me with my English and maybe help people get to know me. I encourage everyone to post their questions and thoughts about me or the subjects discussed here to this thread!
