Brandon Sanderson vs. Criticism

I consider Brandon Sanderson the best fantasy author. Unfortunately, despite being a Utah Mormon, he's got a bunch of trendy lefty ideas. They help him fit in with other writers.

I just saw something even sadder. He's really anti-criticism:

... A famous author once said to me early in my career, “Don’t worry. If your book works for me, I’ll talk about it. If it doesn’t, I just won’t say anything.”

That has always stuck with me as being the best way for another writer to approach reviews. The last thing that authors need is to feel that someone prominent in the field is gunning for them.

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (3)

Mistaken Government Violence

The government is allowed to use violence. Mistakes with violence are extra bad. Therefore we should limit what the government does to the bare minimum.

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (4)

Video Troubleshooting with Keyframes

I made a 65 minute screencast with Screenflow and knew I had a problem. I normally record in a second space (with the spaces feature of macOS) that doesn't have anything private in it. If I ever go back to my regular space then private information gets recorded, like my Messages window, and I have to edit it out.

I paused and checked my messages. Then I accidentally unpaused with my messages showing. I paused it again immediately and hit my marker hotkey to tell Screenflow to mark that timestamp.

After recording I saw Screenflow did not mark the timestamp. After some testing, I discovered Screenflow doesn't create markers while paused. That's dumb.

So I had a half second problem in a 65 minute video. I didn't have much memory of where in the video the problem was. I tried to find the spot in Screenflow by dragging the scrubber around quickly. Then I exported the video and tried watching it at high speed with VLC and quicktime. VLC didn't work well, at 16x or higher playback it often gets stuck on one frame and stops showing anything. Quicktime can play at 60x without messing up, and I tried it, but that was too fast for me to see the problem. I tried 30x too and checked a couple spots where I saw something flash, but they were just other relatively large changes on the screen.

I was unwilling to sit there and watch the whole video at more like 4x – and pay close attention to spot a fraction-of-a-second problem (it'd only show up for maybe an eighth of a second at 4x).

So I googled for how to find keyframes. I figured there'd be a lot of motion when I instantly switch from the screencast to my messages window, and a keyframe would get created.

First I found this:

http://superuser.com/questions/885452/extracting-the-index-of-key-frames-from-a-video-using-ffmpeg

time ffprobe -select_streams v -show_frames -show_entries frame=pict_type -of csv myvideo.mp4 | grep -n I | cut -d ':' -f 1 > frame_indices.txt

It takes 10 minutes to run and a bunch of CPU but it worked. While it ran I found this:

https://gpac.wp.mines-telecom.fr/2015/11/02/check-key-frame-alignment-with-mp4box/

time MP4Box -std -diso myvideo.mp4 2>&1 | grep SyncSampleEntry > keyframes.txt

After a quick "brew install mp4box", that ran in a quarter second.

I saw keyframes like this:

1 26 51 76 101 126 151 176 201 226 251 276 301 326 351

I skimmed around and it kept going like that. A keyframe every 25 frames. Uh oh. That's not very useful. It did give me the idea that I could get my video sizes a lot smaller if I could generate fewer keyframes. When I'm writing I don't need many keyframes.

The end of the list looked liked this:

117293 117318 117343 117368 117393 117418 117443 117468 117493 117518

That's still every 25 frames. Same boring pattern.

But wait. The pattern shifted. It starts at 18 instead of 1. Something must have changed somewhere.

I manually performed binary search to find the change point. How? Go to the middle. If I see a frame ending with 18, I'm still too near the end, go up a bunch. If I see a frame ending with 1, I'm too near the start, go down a bunch. After I narrowed it down a few times that way, then I scrolled quickly in the right direction until I saw the pattern change.

36201 36226 36251 36276 36301 36319 36343 36368 36393 36418 36443 36468 36493

At that point, scrolling down, the last digits weren't just 1 and 6 every time, there's different digits.

36319 frames, at 30 frames per second, is 1211 seconds. That's 20 minutes and 11 seconds.

I checked the video and that was my problem. Right at 20:11 I showed my chat messages for half a second. It worked perfectly. I edited it out, problem solved!

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (2)

Elliot's Thoughts on Pricing

I created a video presentation: Elliot's Thoughts on Pricing. Features:

Shares interesting thoughts on pricing
Elliot talks through the topics rather than reading slides
Discusses Elliot's Gumroad product pricing and broader issues
Learn common ways people are irrational about prices
Not a complete pricing guide
Not an introduction
Provides food for thought and insight into Elliot's thought process

(Under promise and over deliver! I don't want people expecting something they won't get.)

And I've set up a store page which I added to the blog sidebar.

Lots of edits went into the video and the bonus audio discussion, take a look:

Those edits were done in Screenflow.

I do image editing for the cover images with Pixelmator.

And I now have a mic with tripod and pop filter :)

EDIT: I removed the store link from the sidebar because Gumroad doesn't work very well (e.g. crops images to look awful on mobile, has scrolling and blank space bugs on mobile). I looked at some competitors and found similar problems, e.g. the homepage of sellfy currently has an image with a person's head cropped off and some text cut off mid letter. I don't know what to do because I don't want to code a whole store myself, but I also don't like using broken and unprofessional-looking stuff. I haven't decided yet.

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (2)

Trump/Clinton Debate Tweets

My tweets from the Trump/Clinton debate tonight, in reverse chronological order:

You Retweeted
Derek Hunter ‏@derekahunter 7 minutes ago
.@LesterHoltNBC asked Trump questions about things he's said and Hillary questions about things he's said. Little on what she said/did.

You Retweeted
Harlan Hill ‏@Harlan 4 minutes ago
Lester Holt's questions were OBVIOUSLY skewed to Hillary advantage:

- Trump's tax returns
- Birther movement
- Trump's 'comments on women'

You Retweeted
Clinton ‏@2ALAW 8 hours ago
Ice Cube Accuses Hillary Clinton Of Waging War On Black People ⤵

http://www.usatwentyfour.com/ice-cube-accuses-hillary-clinton-waging-war-black-people/ …
Steph, Deplorable Colleen, Deplorable Jojoh888 and 7 others

Elliot Temple 6 minutes ago
Elliot Temple Retweeted Donald J. Trump
Nothing on #IMMIGRATION. #debatesElliot Temple added,
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Nothing on emails. Nothing on the corrupt Clinton Foundation. And nothing on #Benghazi. #Debates2016 #debatenight

Elliot Temple 11 minutes ago
sneaky hillary calling trump sexist when they are out of time to try to prevent any response. #debates

You Retweeted
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 19 minutes ago
Russia has more warheads than ever, N Korea is testing nukes, and Iran got a sweetheart deal to keep theirs. Thanks, @HillaryClinton.

Elliot Temple 19 minutes ago
so are they saving immigration for the 7th debate? @AnnCoulter #debates

Elliot Temple 20 minutes ago
and Lester interrupts Trump again. twice. this is so unfair. #debates

Elliot Temple 22 minutes ago
Crooked Hillary defending the catastrophic Iran deal. http://curi.us/1763-terrible-iran-deal … #debates

You Retweeted
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 25 minutes ago
Hillary Clinton is the only candidate on stage who voted for the Iraq War. #Debates2016 #MAGA https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/hillary-clinton-is-the-only-candidate-on-stage-to-vote-for-iraq-war …

You Retweeted
Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 26 minutes ago
Trump is right on his opposition to Iraq War. This is a media lie -

Elliot Temple 26 minutes ago
lester is arguing w/ trump again & saying Hillary's talking points that Trump was pro-iraq-war. and lester keeps trying to fact check trump

Elliot Temple 27 minutes ago
let's talk about how many Syrians that we can't vet that Hillary wants to spend billions of dollars to bring in. #debates

Elliot Temple 30 minutes ago
can we please debate immigration? #debates

You Retweeted
Frank J. Fleming ‏@IMAO_ 31 minutes ago
That "help me fact-checkers!" sounded pretty desperate.

You Retweeted
Joel B. Pollak ‏@joelpollak 47 minutes ago
Again @realDonaldTrump fact-checks @HillaryClinton, & again he’s right—murder, rape & robbery rose in NYC last year:

Elliot Temple 31 minutes ago
crooked hillary lying that bush, not obama, is to blame for how obama handled iraq pullout. #debates

You Retweeted
Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 44 minutes ago
If smirking and mocking is an appealing trait, Hillary is killing.

Elliot Temple 43 minutes ago
how are trump's finances, whether trump stiffs people, and birther crap the main topics tonight? #immigration #jobs #issues #debates

Elliot Temple 44 minutes ago
this audience is packed with shitlib hillary fans. #debates

You Retweeted
Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 45 minutes ago
OH MY GOSH - TRUMP TRIES TO BRING THE DEBATE BACK TO IMMIGRATION & JOBS -- BUT HOLT WON'T MOVE OFF THE BIRTHER THING! (Started by Hillary)

Elliot Temple 46 minutes ago
lester holt is attacking trump AGAIN. he hasn't fought with hilary once. #debates

Elliot Temple 47 minutes ago
what a biased birther question. Trump better pivot this well! #debates

You Retweeted
Justin Mallone ‏@j_mallone 50 minutes ago
trump: hillary i don’t believe you’re actually this unreasonable @debates

You Retweeted
Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 51 minutes ago
Hillary: Police *want* training to stop being so racist.

Elliot Temple 51 minutes ago
The US Twitter trends tell you who's winning the #debatenight @AnnCoulter

Elliot Temple 52 minutes ago
why didn't Trump get to respond to that long rant? Lester was just like "hillary wanna talk more?" #bias #debates

You Retweeted
Justin Mallone ‏@j_mallone 53 minutes ago
hillary: our police are outgunned. FUCK STOP AND FRISK! #debates

Elliot Temple 54 minutes ago
hillary wants more criminals to be let out of jail. then pivots to saying she wants to disarm their victims. #debates

You Retweeted
Ben Shapiro ‏@benshapiro 55 minutes ago
Hillary says if you're black you're more likely to be charged and incarcerated for same crime. Factually untrue. http://www.dailywire.com/news/9479/liveblogging-debate-trump-v-hillary-round-1-ben-shapiro?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=news&utm_campaign=twitterbenshapiro …

Elliot Temple 54 minutes ago
so sad hillary will win new york state after attacking stop and frisk. she's pro-crime. #debates

Elliot Temple 56 minutes ago
hillary says detroit is doing great. black people have nothing to be upset about. #debates

Elliot Temple 58 minutes ago
lester holt is arguing with Trump AGAIN. this time he's debating Trump on stop and frisk. soooooo biased. #debates

Elliot Temple 59 minutes ago
4000 ppl killed in Chicago since Obama took office. and that's one of the cities Obama likes... #debates

Elliot Temple 60 minutes ago
holy shit Trump just called Hillary out as unwilling to say "law and order". and she didn't chime in to say it. GENIUS MOVE. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
By saying we need to teach cops to "use force only when necessary", Hillary is saying our cops are thugs and murderers. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
Trump needs to stop defending himself. Defending doesn't win debates. Pivot way faster.

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
hillary thinks you shouldn't negotiate your debts. no clue about business or money. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
Hillary thinks leverage is bad. economically illiterate. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
hillary making lying personal attacks and hasn't said any substance the entire debate so far. please focus on the issues. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
stop talking about your finances trump. move on. focus on something that matters. #debates

You Retweeted
Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 1 hour ago
We're importing jihadists, jobs are gone, wages flat for 30 yrs, our borders are gone & LESTER HOLT IS WASTING 10 MINUTES ON TRUMP'S TAXES

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
hillary is just making up stories about trump's finances. pure storytelling instead of issues. & how is this a major topic? bias! #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
Hillary has a really condescending way of smile. she doesn't have to talk to be a smug bitch. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
biased lester attacking trump about his tax returns. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
Maybe Hillary never interrupts b/c she's saving her voice to avoid coughing. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
lol @ obama golf course line. hillary doesn't interrupt though cuz she couldn't pull it off. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
No Trump, Hillary's stuff doesn't sound good. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
Hillary is so condescending and smug while she lies. It's so disgusting. It's a common, mean way popular people bully others. #debates

You Retweeted
Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 1 hour ago
Hillary gives shoutout to media "fact-checkers" to defend her.

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
The lying left has done a good job of pretending fact checks are on their side. Somehow not everyone is laughing at politifact... #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
Trump is good at getting talk time. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
Hillary is so unappealing when she's smug and condescending, like the line about getting her book at the bookstore or airport. #debates

You Retweeted
Frank J. Fleming ‏@IMAO_ 1 hour ago
Trump is fact checking her!

You Retweeted
Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 1 hour ago
Trump QUOTING Hillary is Trump "living in his own reality" according to Hillary.

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
Hillary is shamelessly lying about what she said about TPP. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
"That's your opinion" is what Hillary says when she can't answer Trump. #debates

You Retweeted
Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 1 hour ago
in an attempt to equalize their heights on TV, they have made Hillary BIGGER on the screen than Trump.

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
Hillary is good at ignoring Trump when he interrupts her. I'll give her credit for that. #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
Hillary sounds soooo smug and condescending "well actually i have thought about this" #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
Trump defending industrial scale energy like oil and coal, rather than sucking up to solar! #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
arguing whose experts are more credible is a way 2 distract from debating the issues. it's something even Crooked Hillary can do... #debates

Elliot Temple 1 hour ago
Hillary appealing to authority. some experts said Trump is wrong about his tax plan. of course some other experts said he's right. #debates

Elliot Temple 2 hours ago
Trump wants to talk about policies, Clinton just wants to attack Trump and make super broad claims. #debates

Elliot Temple 2 hours ago
@Kadano should i run my lcd at 120hz or 144hz when i netplay? vsync on or off?

Elliot Temple 2 hours ago
not directly answering a question is a good way to get more time. first you say what you want. then get asked again. then answer :) #debates

Elliot Temple 2 hours ago
trump is getting into all kinds of specifics about nafta and other details. so much better than hillary's comments! #debates

Elliot Temple 2 hours ago
hillary tells vague lies about trump only cares about the rich, trump isn't self made, trump is hardcore rightwing economist. #debates

Elliot Temple 2 hours ago
hillary attacked trump, then the moderator asked a very critical question for a second attack before trump could answer hillary... #debates

Elliot Temple 2 hours ago
Hillary's method is to lie about Trump's positions b/c she can't win on the issues. "trumped up trickle down" econ? BS. #debates

Elliot Temple 2 hours ago
Hillary offers mix of vague platitudes & leftist evil. Trump more specific about protecting jobs from china, mexico; lowering taxes #debates

Elliot Temple 2 hours ago
hillary says capitalists are too stupid and sexist to poach underpaid women and we need the government to run our economy #debates

Elliot Temple 2 hours ago
hillary attacked coal already #debates

Elliot Temple 2 hours ago
So they each give a 2min answer, then it's an 11min open brawl? what idiots on clinton team agreed to that??? #debates

Elliot Temple 2 hours ago
Debate time. Does our country have a future? Trump better crush her so he can #MakeAmericaGreatAgain #debates #debatenight

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (3)

Links

Great article on double blind placebo controlled studies:

http://www.orthorexia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Double-blind-studies.pdf

Great paper on systematic bias towarsd positive results in clinical trials done in some countries such as China and Russia:

http://www.dcscience.net/Vickers_1998_Controlled-Clinical-Trials.pdf

The failed 'turning points' of Trump's campaign implosion:

http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2957268&mc=289&forum_id=2

Screencast where I write emails:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oO45B0kQis

Screencast where I write blog comments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4u3kfmVmO4

I practice SSBM and talk about my approach:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B98VgycoAW0

I play 2v2 Warcraft 3 with Liquid`Monk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B9_DUHBGQE

Best speed reading app:

https://outreadapp.com

Best text-to-speech reading app:

http://www.voicedream.com/reader/

A/B testing makes tons of money for websites with visitors that already make money. It's far, far less popular than it should be:

https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/ab_testing
https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/why_you_do_not_ab_test

Fallible Ideas Newsletter Archive:

http://us14.campaign-archive2.com/home/?u=b2e8e68c5818e273d86964fc1&id=9a450fabc1

Justin's Trump videos playlist (he's up to 3 now with more to come!):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI23o-rRAM1Qbce7VFzyOL4dpjZdWd-tc

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Message (1)

What Cruz Should Have Said

Ted Cruz has endorsed Donald Trump. It's late. He should have done it at the convention. But it's a lot better than nothing.

Cruz was asked today whether he agrees with Trump's comment that Putin is a stronger leader than Obama.

Cruz said he isn't going to defend everything Trump says, and he's made his disagreements clear, but the two months before the election isn't the time to focus on those disagreements and Trump is way better than Hillary.

Here's what I think Cruz should have said:

I don't agree with Donald about everything. But I'll tell you, I do agree with him that Obama is a weak president. And Hillary would be weak too. Donald would have the strength and stamina to lead us, and I think that's important.

The differences between Donald and Hillary couldn't be clearer. It's a productive businessman running against a career politician who is also a lying criminal. Donald is going to build a security wall and he's going to do his best to Make America Great Again. When Donald makes a promise, he always promises to do something good like appoint constitutionalist supreme court judges or help lift blacks and hispanics out of poverty by protecting their civil right to school choice.

Hillary is a stark contrast. It's a certainty that she will appoint radical leftists to the supreme court, as she has promised to. It's a certainty that she'll do her best to keep our border open, and bring in more refugees we can't vet from areas controlled by ISIS or Al Qaeda. She has promised us more of the same: high taxes, the war on coal, Obamacare, and a divisive administration that considers half the country deplorable. And she would continue the same weak policies we saw with Obama's apology tour.

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (0)

Silly Song

What Makes You Beautiful Lyrics

You're turning heads when you walk through the door

song sings about girl turning heads when she walks thru door. but like they can’t see she’s hot BEFORE they turn their head. so it doesn’t actually make much sense. or if they could already see her, they don’t have to turn head, yaknow?

You don't know you're beautiful, oh oh,
That's what makes you beautiful

also the song says what makes her beautiful is ignorance of the beautiful face she spent 2 hours in front of a mirror designing before the party. blatant fucking lie? and is that ignorance what ppl r looking at when they turn their heads..?

Everyone else in the room can see it,
Everyone else but you

she'd have to be terribly naive and ignorant to have no clue how people see her. especially given lots of people have told her by hitting on her, singing love songs to her about her beauty, etc. do they want her to be naive about our society's thinking on sex so she's easier to fuck? sounds unrealistic. maybe they just want her to pretend to be naive about it so she seems more like a virgin. a lot of girls do that kinda thing. they put on an act about their sexual inexperience and then lots of guys like fucking them more. it's very silly.

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (6)

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