I'm using Tetris as an example that relates to something else. I'm sure everyone has experienced the afterimage of various Tetris pieces floating through your mind for hours after stopping play. Has anyone ever had this effect come from browsing this forum for a long period of time. It doesn't happen consistently, but I'll start envisioning words whenever I close my eyes after my daily lurking. When the words jump into my head, the sentences make sense at the time, but I have no rememberance of what meaning the sentences form. I'm guessing it's common to see afterimages of what you focus on, but I'm just curious how creative this effect gets.
Posted by lcarus (Member # 4395) on :
Sure. I used to have the same thing happen after programming. And on those rare occasions when I do some intensive writing (*sigh*) it happens with that too.
Posted by MEC (Member # 2968) on :
Sometimes after I have been playing video games for awhile and I goto bed, I can swear that I can hear sound effects from the game coming from nowhere.
Posted by Frisco (Member # 3765) on :
I was so addicted to Tetris that I kept score in my dream games.
Woke up in a cold sweat at level 24 a few times.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Yep. I knew what you meant just from the title alone.
Posted by skillery (Member # 6209) on :
I kept trying to fit my car into open slots on the motorway.
As for programming, have you ever tried to cut and paste in traffic?
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
I've felt the car thing, too. And I've caught myself fitting shapes into spaces around doors and windows, too. Strange.
Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
Yup, done that. And I'm working hard atm on an island topography project, and the last part we had to make a cardboard model that represented the topography. Twenty six hours of cutting and fitting cardboard Anyway, everything I look at now I'm trying to envision its cardboarded topography. ::shakes head sadly::
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
Is this similar to the sensation you get, after roller skating or ice skating, when you switch back to your regular shoes, and you feel like you're still skating, or trying to skate?
So is Tetris effect the term you are using for any time our senses "remember" a previous activity for a little while?
Farmgirl
Posted by lcarus (Member # 4395) on :
I think there's more to it than that. First of all, I think it's your unconscious more than your physical senses. And it's not for just a few minutes. I have frequently found myself dreaming in terms of Tetris or programming. And not just dreaming that I'm playing or programming, but applying those skills to totally unrelated situations. Like my best friend is being a jerk and I'm looking at the source code trying to figure out where the bug is, stepping through the program to find out just where the jerkiness repeats, trying to isolate and duplicate the jerkiness . . . Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
After a ski trip I can have some really weird dreams in the transition from wake to sleep. But I wonder if it depends at all on how old you were when you started to play. I played a lot during one summer when I was 19, but that's probably the most obsessively I have played.
It got to the point where my limbic brain seemed able to process the pieces before they were visible.
Posted by saxon75 (Member # 4589) on :
I don't think that Hatrack or programming has ever done that to me, but when I used to do circuit board layouts I would find myself routing traces in my head long after I left the office.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
There was a time that I was playing a lot of Need for Speed Underground (a racing game). I freaked out when I was driving my family somewhere in the minivan, and I was looking around trying to find the small slots I could force the van into to get ahead of others.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Yeah, I have all that, plus now freecell. While I'm falling asleep I will be playing freecell games in my head. What's weird is that the card I need is always there if I just think about it for a while. Poof, there it is.
Sometimes after I finish a long run, the world backs up all around me for 10 minutes or so.
Once we spent all Christmas afternoon playing with my new slot car racing set, and as I tried to sleep that night I kept getting dizzy because I was watching cars zoom around on the track.
Xavier had a very cool hallucinatory effect from a video game early one morning when he'd been up all night playing. Every electronic device he was around, even when turned off and unplugged, played the music from the video game. I encouraged him to experiment with it and see what his brain considered an electronic device. Like would a clock count, or did it have to be a clock radio? I think the things that did it were his computer, his tv, and I forget what all else. I wondered if it would only happen with things he knew contained a speaker. He never did report on his findings. I think the whole episode creeped him out. Xav, did you ever play that game again, or get any more information about this particular auditory hallucination?
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Once about 3 months after I started programming on a Data General minicomputer (around 1982) using the CLI command line interface, I had a dream in which all the action took place in CLI commands. My first taste of cyberspace, I guess. It was sort of like a multiplayer text based adventure game. It was very exciting and vivid.
[ April 21, 2004, 11:54 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Hmm... the after effects of programming for me are pretty much limited to either A) trying to solve whatever problem I'm working on, or the much more interesting B) Trying to figure out how to program the world (i.e. when I look at pedestrains I don't see people, I see classes of type "Person" inherited through a long line from base class "PhysicalObject" that have a continuous loop of basic rules for movement of which they're following, given specific starts and destinations. I always wonder at how the human interaction function was implemented though)
I always hated Tetris so none of that, but after playing Morrowind, in which I enchanted a few of my things to give me a much higher Jump, I began to feel incredibly werid when I went to class and wasn't leaping 30' in the air.
Hobbes Posted by Anna (Member # 2582) on :
I experienced that, too. With Hatrack, Tetris, Warioland and with Dewey classification. After a day spent to class books with Dewey classification, you class EVERYTHING with it, even in your sleep. Annoying.
[ April 21, 2004, 11:57 AM: Message edited by: Anna ]
Posted by lcarus (Member # 4395) on :
quote:B) Trying to figure out how to program the world (i.e. when I look at pedestrains I don't see people, I see classes of type "Person" inherited through a long line from base class "PhysicalObject" that have a continuous loop of basic rules for movement of which they're following, given specific starts and destinations. I always wonder at how the human interaction function was implemented though)
Exactly!
I have never done the Dewey thing, but I can sure identify.
Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
That's one thing that always bothered me about thinking, you can only think in terms you are taught. Your language basically defines your thought O_o
Posted by Anna (Member # 2582) on :
When you have a conversation with someone and you try to classify it in 240 - theology or 180 - ancient philosophy, then you know you have a problem.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
I have this problem that when people around me speak a foriegn language I get annoyed and begin speaking in C++. Seriously. It's a problem.
Hobbes Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
This happens to me with Snood. I am addicted to Snood.
Never happened to me with Tetris, even though I was equally addicted to Tetris at one time, though, now that you mention it, I can hear the music from the really old version in my head. Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Has anyone else seen the Simpsons episode when Homer tetrised his family and the yard sale trappings?
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
That one was classic, it was at RW's house, he'd not stared in a movie for a while or something and was selling off all his stuff.
Hobbes Posted by Danzig (Member # 4704) on :
On more than one occasion, I have dreamed of getting into arguments online with other Hatrackers.
Posted by lcarus (Member # 4395) on :
Hobbes, it annoys you when people around you speak a foreign language?
Why?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote: I can hear the music from the really old version in my head.
ELA! Thanks a whole bunch. Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Icky, it doesn't annoy me in the way... say an air-horn annoys me, but rather just I'm also thrown off balance when I can't understand a word people are speaking. Annoy isn't really the right word but it's close enough to use.
class Hobbes : public Male { public: Hobbes () : stupid (true) {}
private: bool stupid; };
Hobbes Posted by Bob the Lawyer (Member # 3278) on :
The only time foreign languages throw me off is when people talk to dogs in a language that isn't english. Everyone knows dogs speak english!
The only thing similar to the tetris effect that I've had is when I've spent *a lot* of time juggling. Like the convention I went to, 22 hours a day for 5 days. That was nuts. No matter where you went or what you did there were these stupid balls dancing around behind your eyes.
Posted by lcarus (Member # 4395) on :
Aw, Hobbes.
*pat pat*
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
Did anyone else catch the latest Sopranos episode? There was a screenwriter character who was theoretically supposed to be working on a TV script, but was actually playing Snood on his laptop. I got a chuckle 'cause I recognized it.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
BtL you juggle! So do I, though my efforts are likely to be puny compared to yours, if you went to an actual juggling convention!
I read Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg and was so struck by his description of juggling, of the tao of it or whatever, that I went out that night and bought "Juggling for the Complete Klutz" at the bookstore. It's rather sad that it took me some 2 months to learn a simple 3 ball cascade. I am far from a natural athlete, having played probably fewer tossing and catching games in my life than most people, and my two eyes have somewhat compromised 3 dimensional vision, but I stuck with it and did learn. I love juggling, and keep juggling bags at my desk at work, to relieve stress and impress people. (I'm sure you know from experience how impressive everyone thinks it is. "<yawns> Nice. Can you do five?")
Posted by Bob the Lawyer (Member # 3278) on :
The trick, ak, is to only juggle for little kids. Numbers never impress them as much as throwing the balls really, really high.
But bring your stuff! We'll pass, we'll steal. Actually, if you're up for it I can teach you some of the basic moves from the Gandini Project. Which is basically a 3-ball cascade between 2 people but their arms weave in and out of it. It's hard to appreciate when you're doing it, but it's really cool to watch
And I'm not so hot any more. I started to slack off after the convention and I really haven't touched any of my things since starting school.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Thinking about it, I wonder if juggling is another of those things that lots of hatrackers know how to do, like reciting digits of pi by heart and so on, (going barefoot, singing in parking decks and other public places, being pyros, riding shopping carts in parking lots, etc etc). Claude Shannon, the inventor of coding theory, who worked at Bell Labs, was a big juggler, and could ride the unicycle while juggling.
I myself always had aspirations to ride the unicycle while juggling but these died about the 20th time I smacked my bum falling off the unicycle. Some things you have to learn as a child, I decided. Anyway, when I learned that Claude Shannon did this, it was sort of weird. It surprised me that anyone else would be that way too. I just naturally thought I was the only one.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Have you ever read Lord Valentine's Castle? It is cool. Juggling is spoken of there with an almost religious awe. What inspired you to learn to juggle?
Posted by Bob the Lawyer (Member # 3278) on :
I'm told that riding a unicycle isn't that hard provinding you've got a pretty good teacher. I friend of mine is in her 20s and learned how to do over the past school year. I've never had any real desire though, so I'm not the one to be looking at. But I wouldn't give up hope just because you're an old dog
There's no inspirational story behind my learning to juggle. Mom told me that she saw an add somewhere for circus arts classes and that she'd already signed me up. That was that.
That's not to say that I don't have a million juggling stories, just that I don't want to take over the thread completely
And no, I've never heard of Lord Valentine's Castle, I'll have to check it out. Which is good, I'm almost done my current book.
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I can hear the music from the really old version in my head. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ELA! Thanks a whole bunch.
No problem, rivka. Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
I love hatrack.
I don't feel weird, because so many people here understand the same things I do.
No one in my immediate family would have the first clue what the Tetris effect is.
I love you people.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
Hehe, a thread about Tetris turning into a juggling discussion. I love Hatrack.
I think the Tetris effect is the way your brain reacts when you are forcing yourself to learn something quickly. Especially if there is adrenaline involved. I love the feeling, because I know I'm getting better at whatever it is I'm hallucinating about without even consciously trying. I've certainly experienced this with Tetris (and with BattleTris, a competitive two-player version of Tetris that used to be popular in the Brown CS department), but also with juggling (especially when I was doing a lot of club passing for the first time, but that was a while ago), go (I'd solve capturing races and life & death problems in my head while going to sleep, but I was never really sure I was right), and back handsprings and back tucks (I've had dreams about those -- I still can't do them without a spot). I've just started to get this effect with ballet: I've been taking classes since September, but it's only just starting to get challenging, in the "oh my brain hurts" sort of way.
So, is it your brain rewiring itself? It sure feels like it.
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Anyway, everything I look at now I'm trying to envision its cardboarded topography. ::shakes head sadly::
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