u/SamLooksAt

Maybe this is interesting or helpful to some...

I recently attended a speech by Sayaka Hirano. For those that don't know, she is a Japanese Olympic medalist and now a table tennis commentator on Japanese TV.

I was using my very poor Japanese and a live translate apps so I missed quite a lot and hopefully this still accurately captures what she was trying to convey.

But she had a couple of interesting things to say about practicing.

The first was along the lines of "The way you practice on a bad day is the way you will play on a bad day" basically implying that how you practice when you don't want to is the most important because this is how you will play in a match if you don't want to play or you feel things are against you!

The second was for when you feel like you are training hard but not improving, a fairly common phenomenon. Her advice here was to break training down into smaller and smaller things until you reach the level where you can directly see the improvements in what you are doing. This will help give you confidence that your training is helping even if you can't see it in the big picture.

I thought these were nice sentiments for anyone struggling with training.

This second point actually seemed to be how she approached basically any big goal. Her answers were always about breaking it down into smaller and smaller goals, then achieving those smaller goals one by one until you get back to the big goal.

The last thing was a funny bit near the end! She's 41 and retired but she so obviously still loves the technical aspects of table tennis.

Someone asked her a very specific question about how to return short serves to the forehand side. Up until this point she had been quite reserved and very Japanese. But as soon as it was about actually playing table tennis, suddenly she's leaping out of her chair on stage and in her receiving pose and gesturing and talking about all the different things you could do and what happens if you go here or there etc... Like suddenly someone turned on table tennis mode Sayaka!

All AC units should have a standard 120mm vent using standard PC screws and ducting.

Then you can pipe cold air directly from the AC unit into your desktop PC to improve performance by feeding it directly into one of the 120mm inlet fans.

My Zyre 03 2.5 mm has got a bit older now and I have replaced it.

For those interested I have probably done maybe about 130~150 hours. There is still quite a bit of life in it, but I felt like a bit of a refresh and a change. I haven't done anything more than clean it and cover it after each session, but sessions sometimes include rather rather rough old balls in school gyms, so a fair bit of dust.

I have absolutely loved it on the FH, it's by far the most in tune my game that I have found in the 6 years since restarting.

But in the interest of science I have got the 2.7 mm version as a replacement. Given how good 2.5 is for me, I just have to know how it compares.

I only have one practice on Friday and my usual monthly tournament on Saturday, so it could be rough first time up.

My current expectations are:

• Smashes and loops will be a little faster.
• Blocks will go a little longer, that might make them a little tougher.
• Top spins will go a little longer too, but this may actually make them easier as I am landing VERY shallow when I really swing now.

Will see how it goes.

Will see how it goes

Seriously it's as small as an assault mech can be which means it should actually be crap.

But I absolutely love it! i? It doesn't matter if I'm driving it or one of my crew!

I just love seeing those triple bolts every time anything moves!

I've been thinking about this a bit.

What I've noticed is that any time a player is called or warned about the angle, they immediately just toss it slightly higher because if you throw the ball above a certain height it becomes almost impossible to get too much angle due to the physics involved.

Which made me think...

What would happen if you simply made the minimum toss height for professionals just much higher, like 80 cm.

Then remove the near vertical requirement completely.

I was thinking this would be something for competitive events because amateurs can struggle with higher toss serves, but anyone competing can do this easily.

Thoughts? Implications?

I find the system map in general to be pretty terrible for finding stuff.

But the biggest one is finding industrial hubs that aren't connected to other systems and don't have any special labels on them.

Is there a good mod that really improves this map, I already have "Star Map Tips Enhanced" which I really like but there are still a few things missing.

I just have to say, it's really fun watching the Lebrun brothers live, especially Alexis!

They clearly love the big show and play to entertain.

Alexis in particular is just flamboyant and funny and sometimes just outrageous with some of the things he tried.

One of the biggest cheers of the night though was for Felix smiling and nodding at an outrageous backhand shot from Shinozuka in their game. The crowd ate that up when it replayed on the big screen! That whole match though looked like a couple of young lads in a school gym practicing topspin to topspin rallies, it was an absolute cracker to watch!

Finally after years of living in Japan, I actually did it and booked tickets to a WTT event here!

Off to watch WTT Yokohama next month!

That is all. :)

She faded in the end against Wang Yidi.

But man, her backhand is absolute fire!!!!

Some of those opening shots would look outrageous in a men's match!

It's probably been asked.

But is there a way to force end a mission, or a mod that allows this.

I just had a mission finish but not end because the enemy sent in reinforcements before I extracted and the optional mission to kill them appeared to stay active and lock the game after I extracted.

I also happened to be trying to melee an enemy with the last move (it extracted as soon as I touched the extraction zone mid move).

Battletech Extended - Tactics.

Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else struggle to even catch convoys, let alone destroy the target vehicles.

The vehicles seem to have so much armor that the only reliable way to kill them is melee because the moment you shoot them they simply flee faster than you can possibly pursue.

I never remember having this issue in vanilla. I think it's because the vehicles had less armour and so you could kill each one in a single round before they fled. Or perhaps they simply didn't move as fast.

I find myself just actively avoiding them, even though theoretically they should be fairly easy if you go in with fast mechs. Somehow they just aren't!

EDIT: Thanks for the feedback folks. I still think the balance isn't quite right. But using the sprint to the zone and deliberately not killing the last trailing unit, I think I might have a bit more of a shot at these.

What is the minimum ratio between x and y?

I'm probably capable, but far too lazy to work this one out.

If I have two objects A and C arranged across to two squares each as shown. How big do their squares need to be to allow a third object B to fit diagonally between them?

The objects are twice as long as they are wide and they want to sit in the middle of their two squares so they have a square section in each square.

I'm after the ratio between the width of the objects and the width of the squares, as in I'd like to make the squares as small as possible.

Do your thing...

It's just for a homemade project I'm trying to scale, so your not helping anyone cheat their homework here or anything.

Both handles and mirrors are extremely bad aerodynamically.

But you are required mirrors by law.

So just integrate the door handle mechanism into the mirror, fold the mirror closed for parking and the door latch is exposed!

Completely hidden from the air stream when the mirrors are out.

I have been playing a two player game with my 12 year old son and I thought I would share the rules we use as it has been easy and enjoyable.

It becomes very much a parallel development game rather than a competitive game, a good thing for children.

We started with the usual two settlements, two roads as usual. But with only two of us on the board there was plenty of space and opportunity. We also started with one commodity for each tile we had a city next to, to kick start things a bit.

We played completely open commodity cards, so we could both see all the cards in play all the time.

Play was pretty much as normal, except each turn the active player can make ONE forced trade. They choose two of their own cards and one of the other player's cards, the other player then choses any card to make it a two for two trade.

We didn't have a set victory point goal.

Instead we played until both players had placed all their pieces (or become unable to).

When we reach this point, the player with the most victory points wins.

To speed up the end game, if you have already placed all your own pieces you are allowed to spend your own resources to force the other player into placing theirs (for example, you pay for their last road and then they have to place it).

And that's basically it!

It was very enjoyable and I wonder if the same principle would be actually fun with three players as well.

It puts a very high premium on longest road and largest army, along with the victory point development cards. All going well everyone will have the same number of cities and settlements mean these things are the deciding factor.

The only thing that seem to really upset the flow of things is early bad luck with the robber, so we had a sort of "victim chooses the tile" unwritten rule early on.

Why on earth would you choose a floor almost exactly the same colour as the table. Then brand it with exactly the same colour as the lines...

It's just painful to watch from certain angles.