https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c136h490995


Been on my classic rock arc recently, and it's led me to discover and rediscover songs :O
Music really captures memories it's pretty crazy; certain songs transport me to a different time.

In light of two recent events, one major (reconnecting with r31415) and one not so major (seeing a video about journalling to process trauma and move on) I will attempt to blog semi-regularly. The current idea is to write about emotionally significant (mostly depth/amount) events. As I am very old, negative emotions may revolve around events that are not completely appropriate for AoPS so we'll see.

After my last post this blog got just under 100 views in 10 days, so it's definitely not poppin like the old days.

EDIT: oops i lost track of my thoughts as I typed that; I meant to say that this is more ideal because of the sentence before the one above.

Good thing I sorta kept track of views (and several users commented along the way too)

I reached a million views sometime in December 2014 it seems: https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c2448h1055708_christmas_week_day_2

From shoutbox:
Thanks to everyone for 1.2 million views! Feb 2, 2015, 10:22 PM

hm 1.35 million - Feb 25, 2015, 10:01 PM

wups I forgot to shout when we were at 1.55 million views, now we're at 1.567 million . . .
that means we've gotten 210k views in the past 1.5 years! - Aug 31, 2016

1576000th view! - by superagh, Sep 25, 2020, 11:11 AM

Relevant lore:
https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c2448h1052439_top_6_most_viewed_blogs_on_aops_edited_82314

2 songs released almost 40 years ago:
 




I didn't start listening to 80s/90s music until the past year or so. Idk if it's cuz I've heard these songs randomly my whole life since they're classics, or there actually is something inherently nostalgic about them, but the vibes are unmatched.
 
I've been trying to find songs from (Uncharted Waters) sports camp and (Gospel Light) VBS. Most if not all VBS songs are on YouTube but I'm having trouble finding sports camp songs. Ever since I was young, like 9 or 10, I remember liking certain songs.

Here's 2 VBS songs I hadn't heard in years, more than a decade in some cases:





So many YT links in my old posts are broken cuz the videos no longer exist. Might have to include titles now but these probably wouldn't get removed by YT right.

Possibly blogworthy thoughts:

If anyone reading this is in middle school, or even high school, the best advice I can give as an old person is to mew.
Mewing has been part of my physical therapy for the past few months and it's drastically improved several parts of my life.
Technology is making us weak and killing our rizz; touching grass and mewing is unironically the best advice for future generations.

There's a bunch of resources I can share about mewing if people are interested but it's just natural tongue posture. Our persistent bad posture from sitting, screen time, and breathing habits make us breathe with our mouths and necks instead of our nose and core, which actually puts a ton of strain on our bodies. For cases like me, my body has made compensations and adjustments that make life miserable now. My entire skeleton is not straight, and basic functions like breathing and walking are all wonky.

I work with kids (around 8-18 yr olds) and what I see is honestly shocking and super sad. I think Covid also negatively impacted this generation, but the amount of kids who move like old people is pretty depressing.

Of course I guess this is just life. My parents and people older than me always told me to fix my posture but I was lazy and didn't care. All this stuff weighs so heavily on me I feel obligated to have kids at this point.

I need to lock in and focus on myself though, I'm close to a one arm chin up.

More of my own time capsule business:
I've been reading through old posts from more than 10 years ago as part of working through my trauma, and it's crazy how much I've forgotten. I don't remember whose blog (or if it was even from AoPS) I copied the style from, but many of my irl stories used first name initials. Reading the stories now, I've forgotten who the letters stand for lmao.

The AoPS site remake in 2015 ruined so many things on this blog lmao. All the links to other users/blogs/posts/etc don't work anymore. Highkey frustrating but oh well. A lot of the missing stuff is not only for nostalgia, but also just how connected I was with everything and everyone on AoPS.

But what bothers me the most is how I was lazy or put off writing certain stories. I even knew that I wanted to store the memories here, but I procrastinated and eventually forgot. Now years later I'm going back to try to rediscover these memories and it's just a message from me like 'will write later.' There's several orchestra concerts I wish I blogged about, and a couple swim team things.

Also my blog titles were just for fun but now it's actually hard to find stuff; I gotta click on every single one.

Losing memories is scary and sad at the same time. There are very good memories that we remember for the last time at some point, and then they're just gone forever oof. I used to have a very good memory but after Covid I can't remember what happened like 10 seconds ago lol. I remember when I was young I would keep track of all sorts of things in my head, including best days of my life. At the time of writing this post, I still have a clear memory of when I felt the 'best:' AWANA camp summer 2015

Rereading my blog I also found this post: https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c10h1058451p4577423
It's honestly super interesting to read through now, as I don't think I really followed that thread so a lot of it is new to me. Maybe in my next post I'll talk about all this maturity stuff, as it's something I've struggled on and off with since I started working with kids (again) in 2022.

https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c47h1165297_2015_aops_awards

I compiled links to previous years so there's 5 years' worth just from that thread.

Is it even a thing anymore? Search function doesn't return anything.

Not to be confused with their other song titled "Shot Through The Heart"



I'm so old

Not that any of them are even on AoPS anymore, but I wonder if other people who used AoPS 10 years ago still think about the times we had, or even remember lol

My best songs ever of 2013 is coming in handy tho

EDIT: where is levans I remember checking his blog last time I was on and now I can't even find him in the memberlist

It's been almost 3 months since my last visit. In that time, I graduated college so now I can no longer say I'm a student; instead I'm just unemployed.

The pandemic has also gotten worse in the US cuz we have a significant population of idiots.


EDIT: wow the youtube thing doesn't work with just the code anymore?

Anyway, responding to comments from the previous post:

Radio2 linked a spreadsheet of all Reaper games; always nostalgic seeing names like ninjashiloh, ZombieBasher, cerberus88, candrika, and the legend BashTilZzz.

piphi asked about the Greed Control strategy mentioned in my wiki. There was a discussion in some forum about GC strategy, and I remember the common theme between high-scores was consistency. TBH I put that in my wiki to sound cool lol. I don't even remember exactly what my strategy was; it was either switching between two numbers or putting the same number. I remember leaning toward higher numbers but I'm not sure.

@Kagebaka: yea of course I remember you lol

I just remembered that in the old days, reaper didn't have multipliers.

This particular visit to AoPS was actually motivated by something besides a random thought.
A day or two ago I got baited into an argument on Reddit. If you know from a few years ago you know I used to suck at arguments.
Anyway, I responded to an anti-vaxxer posting what I thought was a really dumb position thinking I could win a free argument online to feel better about myself. Turns out I got played by his strategic bait.
After a couple of exchanges I realized what was up so I ended it, but it sucks looking back I could have avoided all of it altogether.
So what does this have to do with AoPS? I was reminded of having debates on AoPS years ago and what I learned from that. While I was still stupidly invested in the argument I even thought about posting on AoPS to ask for advice.
If anyone wants an idea of what I was dealing with:
https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019R1/Downloads/CommitteeMeetingDocument/169073
From the very beginning I should have realized he was citing non-scientific sources but all I did was provide evidence for my side.
It's crazy how anti-vaxxers can formulate their arguments in a way to make them sound substantial despite being absolutely useless; the problem is even though they are useless they are able to be defended because of how arbitrary and meaningless they are.

Anyway I shouldn't rant; I'm putting off stuff I need to get to.
How do you guys feel about the new Juice WRLD songs?

First of all I wanna give a big shoutout to CaptainFlint and piphi for finding this CSS. Idk how you guys found it but I very much appreciate it. CaptainFlint commented before piphi's shout with a dead blog that has this, which I found fascinating, but piphi linked the original release thread. I'm not sure which one is more impressive lol.
I hope this CSS makes this blog even more of a place of nostalgia.

Responding to some comments on my previous post:
lol thanks?
wow the reaper legend misses me on reaper? If I'm not mistaken Radio2 has won the most reaper games of anyone in AoPS history. (And here again I wish the hall of fame showed every game) I have a faint memory of being able to see old reaper games in wayback machine though, but I'm too lazy to check rn.
Speaking of Reaper, your archives are AWESOME. If you guys haven't seen it yet, check it out here. Radio2 and piphi are putting together a more in-depth hall of fame; you can find more info on Radio2's blog.
If I could give my 2 cents, I think it might be too thorough. With the current formatting, the viewing experience is a little tedious. However, looking through those names I recognize a lot of old reaper legends which is pretty cool.
Time does indeed fly; I remember spending hours on AoPS in middle school and high school and now I'm almost done with college.
btw I responded to you on happyeagle's blog in the shouts

piphi also asked why slester made my wiki page. I remember seeing this before, but I'm still not sure how it works. He definitely did not make my page (would be scary if he knew all that info in the first version) but he shows up as the author for the first edit. I think it might be how the wiki works? idk maybe any new entry is submitted and entered under his name?

Wow actual content besides a random song.

EDIT 9/28/24: changed title to make it easier to find

And I guess wayback machine didn't help me find the old AoPS CSS :/

Edit: Checked my wiki after reading Radio2's blog and found there were some interesting edits and I guess I never noticed irishfeet edited it too https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/User:EpicSkills32

I don't watch or even play Witcher but I really like this cover. I went and listened to the original and it's a bit more boring to me.

Warning: Explicit

To answer dantx5's comment on my previous post, I did not try wayback machine. I'll go try that now.