On-the-spot text wall building

I have to admit that, despite that I try to post something every day, I do run out of ideas at times. I am indeed some sort of post writing machine, but machines take inputs in order to generate outputs. There are indeed days where I don't get enough input (or meaningful input to be exact) for me to generate another wall of text that night, but somehow I managed to find at least something writable (or do something writable on the spot) and call it a day.

While for today I really somehow ran out of things to write on. Well, not really, but I just didn't get the resources for my current ideas ready (some photos and stuff like that). Apparently studying all day long is a very effective way to limit yourself from all those interesting things that happen around you...yeah.

Today, someone enlightened me on something I never thought off...

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Talking nonsense is an important skill in debate, politics, and when you can't think of anything.

When I first saw this my brain disconnected for a moment because it does not make sense to me on that spot, but hey, come to think of it...indeed, it is somehow a valuable skill in many situations. Not only those, let me tell you a story here.

Source

Today, I had a presentation on a case study on ransomware attacks. If you still recall, I mentioned an assignment regarding a similar topic too, and yes this is the presentation for it. I wrote almost everything in the paper, hence it isn't really something I should be worried about, but I haven't did any presentations for one full semester and the nervousness is real. Plus, I don't like memorizing scripts and I perform horribly whenever I try to do so. Whatever, I cannot choose when it's my turn because the list is already prepared, and I already did my part, which is reading the slides for like two more times and stuff like that.

Yeah, I was just praying my brain to work on the spot. That's how I did most of my presentations.

During the presentation, I had to talk about how ransomware spreads, some types of them, and the observations of the case study. Not too bad, since I know literally all of these and it's just a matter of spitting them out. We only need to talk for 15 minutes, what can go wrong?

To prevent ourselves from exceeding the time limit, we set a timer on one of our phones and placed it somewhere on the table so that we can keep track of how much time we have took, speeding up or slowing down as needed. During yesterday's practice, we took a grand total of 17 minutes, so we knew that we have to cut off some points and probably speak a little bit faster. However on today during the presentation, I think we overdid it.

On the first half, my partner flew through her points pretty quickly, flowing through the entire case study by just reading what she had on her paper. I did say that I am not a script person, so I am actually just generating my script on the spot. Things went well until I realized that after the case study descriptions by her, we still have a grand total of 8 minutes to go, and I have to carry my part for that amount of time, or at least somewhere near there so we don't cut off too early. Marks are important, you know.

So what I did? Yeah, to fill up stuff, I had to think of similar things that I know, recall whatever I have wrote on the report, and add in more stuff on the spot. That's the moment I realized that reading a little more never hurt, because I am able to squeeze a few seconds off by mentioning a few names and linking a few more incidents to be used as comparisons. The attacker used compromised vendor credentials to attack their systems? I generated a paragraph of speech there by explaining why vendors leave the backdoor there. Why the attackers chose their company? I pulled in a bunch of stuff and added a few more opinions on it just to make the time match. At that moment it doesn't really feel like a presentation, it is more of a...personal sharing session. I tried to keep everything in range and looks like I did.

In the end I managed to pull about 6 minutes with my part, leaving the one last minute to my partner to wrap things up with a conclusion.

To be honest, I don't really recall how much nonsense I have said there. Probably none, but I don't recall very clearly anyways. It's just like finding things to say and make sure that the lecturer still knows what you are saying by keep on doing eye contacts with him to make sure that he gets what I am actually saying at that point. He got it? Good. He did not? Good too, I can use another half minute to do a little more further explanation.

Source

Probably I'm a little optimistic on that, but it is just a little too tough to live without being optimistic here. Being optimistic in some desperate situations is a good skill too. Trust me. And, it is one of the ways to prevent you from talking real nonsense in desperate situations. Or, looking from the other side, it makes you feel slightly better even if you spoke real nonsense...somehow.

Now I look back at my post title, I guess I am really occupied with this skill then. Probably not really talking nonsense, but converting nonsense stuff into something that makes sense. That is quite useful too?

Probably you should try something similar too. Set your mind blank, put a random post title, and start generating walls of text as your ideas flow. It sometimes work. Even if it doesn't, try again.

See you next time!

--Lilacse