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This is a little something i "drew" in paint. I use it to practice muscle memory (and thus my mouse precision and speed).
But as i was doing so, i realized that these colors aren't really soothing on the eyes and my eyes got a bit itchy from extensive use. So i thought: Hey, TL has the best community anywhere, maybe i can get some of those wiz kids to help me out? 
So my request/plea is: Can someone recreate the picture i did but with different colors and just make it a lot more professional looking than my crude sketch?
The whole point of it is to move your mouse over from the center of the pic to a certain colored square on one of the axis', repeat and then do the same thing on the same color and distance but a different axis.
And i would be happy to explain it more in depth so it could possibly help out other people out there as well!
 
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FREEAGLELAND26781 Posts
This sounds interesting! I'm not experienced at all with photoshop, but would you mind elaborating on how exactly this helps your muscle memory (besides the obvious)?
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<insert funny ruined version of the picture above>
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Ok, first of all, let me just write a bit about what muscle memory really is:
When you do certain actions and you repeat them over and over and over again your brain and muscles get "familiar" with that certain type of movement. They "memorize" it in a sense. And thus with enough repetitions of the same action you don't really have to "think" about it when you do it the next time and then again and again.
Im sure everyone who has ever played a sport of some kind has felt this (even tho you were unaware of it).
Lets take football for example: Ever notice those kids who have been playing since they were 4 years old and by the age of 14 they don't even need to look down at the ball anymore to control it and run around with it? (never been the case with me, it was mind boggling how others could do it, i always had to look at the damn ball). The sole reason they could do just that without looking at the ball is because they have done it thousands of times before and their brain and legs remember exactly what they need to do and thus they do it without even thinking about it. It becomes "natural".
In a sense, this is what we would try to achieve here but with a PC mouse. Since you use your arm muscles to move your mouse around, we need to do as many different directions and distances as many times as we can until it gets engraved into our brain and muscles EXACTLY how you do it. Over time it will become an EffOrtless activity (pun intended) and you can do it with great precision and speed without even having to think about it for a second.
When being able to perform at that high a level with your mouse you can let your mind concentrate on other things such as multitasking and having your build order down perfect.
And this is applicable to pretty much any physical activity you do in life. I have been testing this out for a while and while being a slow process (learning always is a slow process, don't forget that) it definetly helps a LOT.
Patience is the key here and your body will always deliver! 
There, hope i made it a bit more clear. Ask away if i need to explain a bit more! I don't even know if i understand it now 
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should help with the concentration
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On February 23 2010 18:41 OhThatDang wrote:should help with the concentration
WIN!!
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haha, this is going to be fun
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+ Show Spoiler +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bJOIqVAD-s
Sorry but somebody else other than myself needs this stuck in their head. Image credit goes to my friend who said he had another muscle memory training image to provide and then promptly created this. I don't think I'll be able to forget this song for years to come.
On a serious note you could always try inverting the colors. White on Black might be a bit easier on the eyes.
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any specifications or measurements might help.
Is it supposed to be a rectangle or square?
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On February 23 2010 19:12 Garnet wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2010 18:41 OhThatDang wrote:should help with the concentration WIN!!
HAHAHHAAHAH mabe my day hahahhahahahaaha
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On February 23 2010 20:54 MyHeroNoob wrote:
any specifications or measurements might help.
Is it supposed to be a rectangle or square?
Should be a square. Let's assume everyone uses 1280x1024 for their resolution setting. And 15 "hit boxes" from the middle to the edge sounds good (distance between the boxes should be equal).
There i hope that helped. I'm not sure how to specify the size of it other than resolution so i hope that helps you help me
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On February 23 2010 18:41 OhThatDang wrote:should help with the concentration
what i was thinking too haha
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On February 23 2010 22:04 pyrogenetix wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2010 18:41 OhThatDang wrote:should help with the concentration what i was thinking too haha
ahahahah epic win. contra ftw!
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Bored while F5'ing for a beta-key, so... something like this, or am I totally off?
(first post! "long"-time lurker, fairly new account)
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WOW, that looks amazing! Thank you.
Could i be so bold to ask you to tweak it just a bit more? Make the square a bit bigger (stretch it) so that the distances are just a bit bigger. Or maybe just reduce the number of hit boxes by 2-3 and stretch it to the top & bottom edge.
But if it's a hassle, this will do very nicely as well! :D
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On February 24 2010 02:55 Dooba wrote:
WOW, that looks amazing! Thank you.
Could i be so bold to ask you to tweak it just a bit more? Make the square a bit bigger (stretch it) so that the distances are just a bit bigger. Or maybe just reduce the number of hit boxes by 2-3 and stretch it to the top & bottom edge.
But if it's a hassle, this will do very nicely as well! :D
image > crop
image > image size > increase to whatever you want
problem solved
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Noticed when I saved it, it might have ended up a liiiiittle bit too big if your max height was 1024 as mentioned earlier.
Its 1099x1099px right now, but you could remove one of the "rings" and go for 14 instead of 15.
That way you would end up with a height within 1024px.
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On February 23 2010 18:41 OhThatDang wrote:should help with the concentration
so good
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Thank you for the explanation on what muscle memory is, however, I still don't know how you're using that image.
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Blush, the second one is perfect!
Thanks a lot!
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Ow, and now onto what i do and how i train with this:
Let's assume everyone has Blush's awesome picture. So, what you do is as follows:
1) Pick a random square / color. Let's say green in the 3rd square from the middle. Now you put your mouse pointer in the middle and move it as precisely as you can to let's say the hit box on the right (remember, green boxes, 3rd square) and back to the middle. Repeat the same 10 times. Now do the exact same thing but for the adjacent green hit box (the one bellow or above, doesn't matter). Repeat the same action 10 times. And you do this with each hit box in that particular square until you've "hit the whole circle".
2) Pick a new random square / color and redo all the same.
3) Do this as much as you want but i would avoid over doing. Practice and learning takes time so be patient. I usually do 3 - 4 colors per session.
And the reason we are doing the "whole circle" thing is that we move our pointer in each of the main directions. It wouldn't make too much sense to just pick a certain hit box / distance and do the movements just to that point and back and than pick another random combination since we'd be splitting the distance / direction too much.
There, hope that makes sense.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/the_stup/musclememory.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/5116/hmmmmm.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/4978/musclememory.png)
![[image loading]](http://imgbin.org/images/1303.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgbin.org/images/1305.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgbin.org/images/1306.jpg)
