Ask Me Anything: Adam

I know you are a wizard with the underlying website programming. But what do you actually do for a living?

I write code and have done so my entire working life. It's why I didn't include coding in my non-rpg interests. I'm not sure it counts if you get paid to do it.

If you were the mayor of your city/town, what new rule would you enforce?

Do you like logic puzzles and have you ever tried these?

I live in a rural area, so I don't have a city or a town - but in the spirit of the question... I'd enforce a rule whereby people vote for a better mayor.
I haven't tried those particular puzzles, but that's the kind of thing. I'm most fond of combinatorics (counting arrangements of things) and probability puzzles.

I'm not sure that qualifies as a 'new' rule ;) but I'll let it slide.
Got an example of those?

A couple of RPG related examples.

Death saves. How many ways can we order five d20s such that our favourite PC lives (given that nat 20s and nat1s are special)? Or let's say the PCs need to visit four of Icewind Dale's towns before they can leave the roads. How many ways can they complete that task, without visiting any town more than once?

I keep a notebook on my desk and investigate the maths of things that occur to me. Not all are interesting, but some can be.

On a scale of 1 to 100, how much do you cringe at how programming and programmers are portrayed in pop tv/movies?
Got a decent portrayal example?

What's your guilty pleasure movie of choice?

Would you consider running a lore-teaching game about Sword Coast for people new to DnD and ignorant to said lore?

What's the one activity/hobby/habit you have/do that we wouldn't guess for the life of us?

The movies portray everything unrealistically. That's their job. I don't mind.
The code I saw on Mr Robot looked like it would work. I wasn't paying too much attention, but I believe I saw a regex that was intercepting downloads for apk files. Yeah, that could be part of an attack on mobile devices.
Dune. The David Lynch version. I liked and still like that movie.
Gods! A teaching game? That sounds horrible. Although... QuantumRiot had an in-game tavern quiz, but as it was in Cormyr many of the questions were lore-based. That was fun.
I like practical things too. Last night I repaired my brother's car's exhaust heat shield. When I was a young lad I used to drive forklifts and diggers at my dad's business.

Was it your idea to change the phrasing from:

‘Edited 6 times…’

To

‘"Last edited…" under an edited post?

The single greatest innovation in tech, saving me threads-worth of embarrassing revisions. Thank you!!

It was, but it was entirely selfish. I didn't do it to save your embarrassment, but my own.

Can we please request that you add to your user picture the phrase "ceci n'est pas un avatar" ?

(and, do I have to log that in Site Development?)

Sure. Why not? We ignore all the other suggestions in development.

You put maths down as recreational, what would you like people to know more regarding the subject if you could convince them it was worth their time?

For example, I hated almost every maths class I ever had as a kid, but when I grew up I accidentally found a bunch of history around the subject that instantly made it more interesting. For example, the Greeks were drawing square roots (Greek Ladders) in the dirt with sticks, or that algebra is Arabic word, al-jabr. Those were moments where I thought, "Well, obviously, but why hadn't I thought of that before?" These examples sound like trivia for a pub quiz, but in my opinion, they make maths a deeper more interesting subject.

What would you like to see people have a greater appreciation of regarding maths?

my 'Trademark Question' ©Antiproduct: What do movies and television get wrong about your culture?
Classic Question: You have a meeting at 2pm. If your boss tells you the meeting's been moved forward 1 hour what time is the meeting now?
Multipart question: What's something that the last generation got to do/experience, but you won't and it kind of bums you out? Something that the last generation did that you are glad you don't have to deal with? What's something positive that you got to experience that the next generation won't? And something you're glad the next generation won't have to do or deal with?

Mathematics isn't about numbers. It's reasoning with rules. Sometimes the rules represent real things, sometimes they're purely abstract.

In short. It's a game.

What was the name of the kingdom that ruled the land that your house is in, in Anglo Saxon times?

Trying to dox Adam, I see

I think Britain is over-represented in movies, television, literature, and song. People have seen it from so many different angles and probably now have an accurate impression by taking the average.
It'll be at 1pm. But at 12:30pm somebody won't be able to make it, and I'll get an email saying it's cancelled until next week.
Something that the boomers got to experience, that gen-x won't? Dunno. Climate change denial?
Fixing casual racism and sexism. Man! I'm so glad they sorted that. Wait, what's that?
The ZX81. We were the generation who had computers that you needed to program in machine code if they were going to do anything. We watched technology invented and evolve, and many of us ended up with a deeper understanding of the tech that surrounds us because we PEEKed and POKEd.

If millennials wanted something on the screen they called an API or wrote HTML, whereas we jammed something directly into screen memory.
The OS crashes that occurred because some moron hacker decided to jam something directly into memory.

...And those choking-hazard ring pulls. I remember them fondly but the world is a better place without them.

I'm very much a Mercian and proud of it.

Thats a great way of looking at it. Curious then, where do you draw the line between maths and logic?

I wouldn't. There's a branch of maths called mathematical logic, but maths comes from the philosophical branch of logic. I'm not sure any lines around the labels are helpful.

It's a shame that we seem to teach children that maths is a science. As though Pythagoras's theorem was proved by measuring a load of triangles, rather than the result of reasoned logical steps from a set of axioms.

Sure, maths is effective (unreasonably so) in solving science problems, but music, art, and the written word are useful for advertising. But anyone who thinks that music's purpose is to flog stuff has no soul. Mathematics is no more science than music is advertising.

Fundamentally, the processes of maths and logic are identical. At its core, maths is nothing more than a branch of philosophy - a branch that turned out to be really good at solving things.

I sometimes wonder whether we wouldn't live on a nicer planet if other branches of philosophy had been given the same chance as maths. A world where all children are taught epistemology (the study of truth and knowledge) and ethics alongside maths would be nice, eh?

And you think you'd be a bad mayor.

Great analysis!

Also, teaching epistemology to children would be a nightmatre, albeit hilarious. Could you imagine if Hume invented school...

Adult: "You forgot to do your homework again."

Child: "Are you sure? How do you know I didn't already turn it in?"

Lol. Yeah... maybe I need to think this through. Perhaps ethics before epistemology.

What's one thing the average person could do that would make your job easier?
Which do you prefer; cyborgs, sentient robots, androids, or mecha?
What's your favorite movie based on a toy/toyline?
What's your favorite song about a real person?

Everyone knows maths is not science, it's sorcery!

What is a favorite tradition that may or may not be holiday based?

Easy! Include URLs with their screenshots.
I like the idea of sapient robots. There again, once upon a time, I was naive enough to think the world wide web was a good idea. So I'd like these robots to have an off switch, please.
Scorsese's Casino?
God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols.

When I was a nipper, one of my grandmothers taught me that when Jesus was on the cross there was a spider in the crown of thorns. That spider wove a web over our Lord's wounds to bring Him comfort in that dark hour. Because of this, if you kill a spider it will rain on Friday.

Sure, it's like some weird superstitions were thrown into a Catholic blender and poured into my young ears. But even now, if there's a spider in the house then I will carefully collect it up and put it outside. Unless it's a Friday and it's already raining, because then I will feck that spider up - it broke the deal.

I'd never heard that one before!