Richard Bartle has a very weird brain

  12 Responses to “Richard Bartle has a very weird brain”

1. Ramblings of a little Blue Gnoll says:

   February 6, 2006 at 7:00 am

   Blogroll Joel on Software Raph Koster Sunny Walker Thoughts for Now Sex, Lies and Advertising
2. Q says:

   January 19, 2006 at 4:03 pm

   My XBox 360 Service Request Number is now in my long term memory.

   Sometimes I dream about it when I sleep.
3. Raph says:

   January 19, 2006 at 6:08 pm

   I just realized, there’s three different links there and if you have the underlines turned off, like I do, it looks like one link. Whoops. 🙂
4. Tess says:

   January 19, 2006 at 6:25 pm

   Some of her friends are more enthusiastic, in that they feel music or the radio can help them concentrate more (a habit you really don’t want to have come exam time, but there you go).

   Now, I think this is a perfectly good habit, for some people. I listened to music while I studied, and when I took the relevant exam, I played back the music in my head, and it fetched all of the things I studied back into the foreground of my brain. The downside was that I had to listen to different music for every subject, or I ran the risk of pulling the wrong folder. In general, my final exam scores usually improved my grade in a class, so I must have been doing something right.

   When I’m not listening to music while I work, my brain improvises music. While it seems to be quite capable of doing both competently, I can’t help but think that it must be in some way degrading my programming abilities to be inventing perfectly valid music at the same time. Moreover, the urge to hum said music is strong, and I do not wish to invite the murderous wrath of my co-workers.

   (Also, my office is particularly distraction-prone. We’re on the same floor as an dance studio and a textile sweatshop with loud industrial sewing machines.)
5. Wolfe says:

   January 20, 2006 at 4:08 am

   One day maybe 8 years ago I was harrassed by a 3 foot mean and ugly dwarf who made a nasty little noise when preparing his attack on my innocent body.

   I decided to be clever and punch the dwarf in the head before he could perform some dastardly act which would leave me unhappy.

   When I almost fell out of my bed I realized the dwarf was my winter shirt hanging on the back of a chair close to my bed. I realized I somehow had been suspended between dreaming and waking and the whole feeling was madly vivid. I guess its not all that uncommon after all, but no one I mentioned my incident to could relate to it, Bartle is the first one I read about having experienced a similar incident.

   I also use the listening to music trick to concentrate, it has an interesting side effect on me however as the different songs I hear are heavily related to my emotional state. By randomly listening to a series of songs I’ll run through, serious, calm, excited, happy, annoyed, sensitive and probably more every hour. It dosnt help me remember a number or a text, but it colors my days.
6. Richard says:

   January 20, 2006 at 10:59 am

   I think everyone has a weird brain, it’s just I’m more aware of my brain’s weirdness than most people are of theirs.

   Richard
7. BugHunter says:

   January 20, 2006 at 11:40 am

   I’d like to see Richard provide some training or explanation on how to turn off your senses. Just imagine the possibilities.
8. Brady Hauth says:

   January 21, 2006 at 5:31 pm

   I can relate. Maybe we should compare notes. Maybe there’s even a, ah, “set bonus.” Like they say, “while remaining fish.”
9. Richard says:

   January 22, 2006 at 5:45 am

   BugHunter>I’d like to see Richard provide some training or explanation on how to turn off your senses. Just imagine the possibilities.

   You switch off your senses in exactly the same way as you stop breathing (except you can do it for longer).

   Richard
10. Brady Hauth says:

    January 22, 2006 at 3:03 pm

    You know damn well that’s like telling a bike to change the brake control locations. Me, I may be a self-repairing bike, but changing the gearbox tends to make the chain fall off more often, and physician can’t heal thyself if he cuts off his hand.
11. TimTek Industries ~ View topic - Richard Bartle = Weird Brain says:

    January 23, 2006 at 10:13 am

    […] Now most people on the forum probably don’t know who Richard Bartle is. He is a designer of MMOGs or virtual worlds as he prefers to call them. Anyhow that is not what this post is about. Raph Koster (another MMO developer) has some links to Richard’s journal which show he has a weird brain. Pretty much why I am posting this, is that what Richard wrote was quite interesting, well to me anyway. So here is the link to Raph Koster’s web site. There are three links to Richard’s journal from there. _________________If you give a man a match, he will be warm for a day. If you set that man on fire, he will be warm for the rest of his life. […]
12. moo says:

    January 23, 2006 at 8:42 pm

    Like Tess, after listening to a song a few times I can usually play it back at will in my brain. I often listen to music when coding at home (though not at work? hmm…) and even if I can’t remember what I was listening to when I wrote it, it doesn’t seem to harm my recall when I have the code in front of me. =) But when I’m walking somewhere I often have a song repeating in my head. This must be why I choose my music so carefully. I disfavor pop music (or anything else that is similarly annoying) and favor music that repeats well. There are many many songs in my collection that I could put on “repeat track” and listen two for two hours straight–which is equivalent to what usually happens anyway (in my head) with the last song I was listening to when I turn off the music or go out to get some dinner or even go to bed. =)

    Regarding Dr. Bartle, I found his book Designing Virtual Worlds pretty interesting.. sounds like I should read his blog too.

    By the way, whoever it was who recommended Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Disposessed” to me—if you read this comment—I read it over the weekend and really enjoyed it, thanks for the tip!

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