Forever Young

Forever Young---Alphaville

Lets dance in style, lets dance for a while
Heaven can wait we're only watching the skies
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst
Are you going to drop the bomb or not?

Let us die young or let us live forever
We dont have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The musics for the sad men

Can you imagine when this race is won
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders were getting in tune
The musics played by the madmen

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever

Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
Sooner or later they all will be gone
Why dont they stay young

Its so hard to get old without a cause
I dont want to perish like a fading horse
Youth is like diamonds in the sun
And diamonds are forever

So many adventures couldnt happen today
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams are swinging out of the blue
We let them come true

Last Round of Belly-Aching for Now

And so another day continues the drudgery that defines what I am. I am slowly losing patience with people of all sorts, including myself. I'm tired of having to deal with people; I'm just going to not care anymore. Let them think what they want, let them do what they want! I never did fit in anywhere; any sense of fitting in is a delusion on my part. Time to stop these damn delusions, I guess.

Looking at how things are progressing throughout this week, I think I will have a most interesting Friday. There're so many things to think about, and probably to work on, and to actually deal with personally, that perhaps I should just switch back into my colder demeanour and deal with these things, with little regard to what else is going on.

Alright, I'm sick of belly-aching. Time to get back to work.

Blurb

If I ever die tomorrow, for example, I think no more than 10 people will remember me, of which includes my immediate family, the lawyer for A*STAR, the crematorium, and maybe Ida.

No one else remembers me. I am like a passing shadow, leaving nothing behind, not even footprints.

And now, I truly must sleep, or I will face certain death [of another kind].

More Death-related Stuff...

Not too long ago, word has been received that someone that many people on #cslounge who seem to know has died by the way of suicide. While I can understand why this can be shocking to people, I find it strange that within my being, I have hardly any feeling of empathy for them.

Death is the end of life, whether or not you choose to end it yourself or if the state chooses to end it for you, or if your fate chooses to end it for you. At the end of the day, all of us will die anyway; if someone decides to choose how to end his/her life, why should we be all emotional about how the person was a good guy/girl in the past and wallow about it? That I can never undertand---if that person means so much to you, then show that you care whenever you can; why wait till he/she is no longer around before professing your thoughts and feelings about the person?

I find the whole idea very ludicrous.

Call me insensitive, sociopathic, I don't really care. People keep taking things for granted anyway, and dealing with death is one of the ways that demonstrates the rather odd reactions that are peculiar to humans. I had volunteered a kickban from #cslounge while the people are embroiled in their whole ``grieving'' process, because I know that I will end up incurring more wrath than necessary by stating my cold/rational third-party viewpoint on the issue. Frankly, I don't really give a damn---the signal-to-noise ratio of #cslounge is lowering these days, and as I slowly approach graduation and thus the inevitable transplantation from this place back to my hometown, I'm starting to find some of the people's reactions disagreeable. Rather than have an all-out slug-fest, I have judiciously decided to be kickbanned until they have resolved their issues.

Let's face it. These people are only hearing things through the grapevine. I was monitoring the logs after the kickban, and sure enough, the usual after-effects of a death include people making empty promises about how best to live their lives and how great the deceased was, including the reminiscence of the deceased past exploits. I am glad I made the decision to stay out of the group.

The more I ponder about things, the more I realised that I am no different now as compared to when I first entered this place---I never truly belonged to this place. At the end of the day, I'm still the outsider, always trying to look in and watch and figure out how best to ``blend-in'' or at the very least, not appear like some complete and absolute sociopath. Sure, some of these people are friendly enough, but I guess I am not what they might call a ``friend''. In an article from long ago, I've already acknowledged that I'm still the odd-one-out, and even more so now, despite having done so much.

Why do I care? I don't, really. But I also don't want to go all crazy again---those were bad times, they really were. Very few people can imagine how it felt trying to survive through all the nonsense that I had to put up with, both from external sources and from within myself.

I will never be socially appropriate. I will state my observations plainly and with little mincing of words. I should not fear what I say, especially if what I say is provably true. I guess that's where I differ from the usual human, since I have hardly all the characteristics that a normal human has.

Heh. The kinds of horrors one finds when one visits my head space. I think I'm in the position where there is hardly anyone who is fit enough to tell me that the whole suicide thing was bad---they have never understood what it feels to be absolutely out of control of one's life.

So, long story short, I just hope that the bellyaching will cease soon and life continues for all of them. Nevermind if I stay permanently kick-banned---I'm pretty sure my absence will not be noticed, heck the person who passed away recently was not seen for about 4 days by now, and it was only through the ether that his/her death was ``discovered'' by the denizens of #cslounge. I figure that for someone whom they tend to see often enough in the flesh, they probably don't care about me appearing on #cslounge or not.

And now, on to something more relevant to my life---actually getting some sleep to beat off the cold. Till next time...

Auto-Writing and Other Adventures

And so passes yet another day. Another day done here means another day closer to graduation. On the one hand I am glad that I can slowly start to literally make a living for myself. On the other hand, I feel a little sad about the whole business, since I am once again picking myself up from what is now familiar and am going to something that is less familiar. What will the future be? Will I be able to deal with whatever comes my way?

If I were dealing with this alone, I would have much easier answers for these really hard questions, but that is no longer the case---my fate is intertwined with yet another. There are so many things to think and worry about, and even with my excessive powers of planning/worry/thought, I cannot fathom the gravity of the entire issue. That of course is one of the many reasons why I am feeling under the weather of late---I'm thinking too much about the future once more.

I guess the old adage still holds: whatever fate brings you, you take it [sort of]. Almost all of us can figure out how much I am worth as a working person, but how much am I worth as a person? I have no clue, and perhaps that is one of those things that I need to think about---my seeming self-confidence is only apparent when we are talking about professional situations and not personal ones. More things to worry about, no?

And so time passes yet again, and I think more and more about less and less until I think everything about nothing, before realising that at the end of the day, I truly am thinking nothing about everything because this life is just a passing dream---only the eventual death is something that is the most definite among all the experiences that a person can undergo.

But what do I see upon death? Probably alone, somewhere, if I don't go out with a bang that is. Lying in bed, staring vacantly at the white ceiling where the fan whirrs idly under the summer heat. If I'm lucky, I'd be old, and possibly drooling to the side, perhaps still having an active mind, but a failed body of some sort. And when the final moment comes, I will probably be trying to fight it off as much as I can, or more likely to just accept it with an air of resignation, and to die regretting about the things that I should have done but never would. I would be a passing memory to all around me---at death, no one will remember who I was, what I had done, how I had gotten there. All they would know is that a decrepit old man had just died on his bed, possibly choking on his own drool---never knew if the old geezer was thinking anything at all.

Birth, ageing, sickness, death---just part of the cycle of living I guess. I think I'm probably past the stage of fearing death, since I know full well that I will not be remembered anyway (and what else can one be more fearful of that that?). I have not yet gotten to the point of embracing/welcoming death yet---perhaps eventually when my will to live is sufficiently low, I can bring such thoughts into my consciousness. So what if life is just an illusion---we are all just meatbags anyway.

*sigh*

Sometimes I think that I'm just too negative for my own good. I mean, it is true, isn't it, that I'm rather negative? It served me well in the past (and it still serves me now!) but it has this weird effect that affects my affect, causing me to be miserable more than half the time. Negativism---the very epitome of my dark character I guess, something that is so innate that the best I can do is to mask it away, as opposed to trying to correct the judgemental thought. I like to think that I'm matured, but at times I discover I'm probably more naive than most people. Well, I don't know what is really going on anymore, and am just literally following the flow, going where life and life's past decisions have taken me. I'm probably one of those few people who can sit in an empty room all day with nothing but the walls as my companions, and still not feel bored about it.

I dunno... perhaps I am destined to travel alone through the marshes of time, stuck in some forgotten place, pondering about the mysteries of the universe as I assimilate knowledge and information from all corners of my being. Perhaps I'm a modern day recluse, one who, despite living in the city, is more isolated than a hermit living on a deserted island. Perhaps I am secretly just an actor, acting out roles to their final conclusions, never having the chance to truly discover what makes the ``real'' me. Perhaps I'm just being delusional over the whole affair, and I'm just confusing the heck out of myself through all these random and useless thoughts.

``Verbal diarrhoea'' is probably the best term that I can use to explain the current situation that I am in right now---I just keep writing and writing and typing and typing, with little care if what I'm saying makes any sense or not. In some ways, this in itself is a therapeutic affair, since there is little inhibitions that I have in trying to put my thoughts in order. But I sometimes feel sorry for the reader, for he/she has to untangle all these garbled pieces of information that spew forth my dishevelled mind and trying to find some sense of coherence among all the data that is available.

Ah life! You are among the biggest conundrums that I have ever faced. Sometimes you make me happy and savour the moment of living, many times you make me loathe my existence, and pray for a speedy end of my pathetic being; sometimes you inspire me to live on courageously and the infect others with the inspiration I found, and at other times you reject me and make me more dejected than the souls that are bared from heaven despite living a morally upright life. The confusion of it all, the seemingly tellingness of life juxtaposed with its coyness---it baffles all who live it, be it eight or eighty.

I look back upon what I have done and think to myself: I have made many mistakes in the past, and I have made some positive accomplishments. But why can I only remember the damn mistakes and not the achievements? Why is it so that I am programmed to only recall the bad and not the good? Is there something fundamentally wrong with my thought processes, or is this one of those ``error in thought'' things that people talk about but I have never truly seen? I have no idea what I am talking about right now, but I'm just... letting the words flow ever so smoothly from my mind directly to my finger-tips and finally onto the keyboard to be sent into the computer. The feeling... is strange, to say the least, but is comforting to a small degree, as the regular staccato sound of the keys being depressed and released one after another in quick fashion.

I look forward in life, and while I once saw green pastures meeting a clear blue sky in the horizon (with butterflies and flowers and other pretty things no less), all that I see now is a deep fog, much like the one that London infamously has. I can't seem to see past the outstretched hand's distance, and beyond that, all I can see is just this deep fog that hides all that is far away. The fogginess of the whole enterpreise remains even though I rub my eyes and clean my lenses---perhaps it is my mind's eye that requires some form of cleaning and possible debridement.

But I digress... in a multitude of tangents, no less. Some slightly more concrete news then. I have finally made the big move to remap the caps-lock of my laptop keyboard to that of the left control key---this is so that I will get use to the ``correct'' position of where the control key ought to be, and more importantly to avoid the ``emacs pinky'' that is obtained due to prolonged unnatural stretching of the left pinky when trying to hit the ``traditional'' control button. That said, as my graduation gift to myself, I've decided indulge in a $70 keyboard known as the Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite 2. The wonders of this keyboard lies in its portability and sensible placement of keys, as well as the rather comfortable tactile feel of it. That and the ability to set specific functions on the keyboard through the DIP switches in the back---I swear I will bring this keyboard to and fro work for my own edification (and to keep my left pinky from dying unnecessarily).

Strangely, I'm starting to actually enjoy Real Analysis. It is strange because the last time I did an abstract mathematics class, I was basically dying from it because I didn't have any form of intuitive feel nor the deep interest. But with Real Analysis, I find that I am starting to get the hang of it and to develop this mathematical intuition on why the theorems are the way they are and how best to go about proving them. That said, I hope that I won't do too badly for this class, otherwise I would be really sad person in the end.

I don't think that I have much to talk about now... I have basically spewed too much words here already, and it is getting rather late. Perhaps I should turn in for the night, and wonder about how to deal with things later on in the day...

The Signs... They Are Back

The signs... they are back. The signs of an impending escalation into pure and absolute turmoil. This time round, I can't even seem to be able to pinpoint what is the cause of the problem, since most things are moving along alright as far as things are.

Why then are the signs returning? Is there something that I don't know about that is starting to manifest itself again?

Is this the sign of impending doom and sudden upheaval in my life?

Are the good days over, and the bad ones taking over everything else?

Why am I suddenly reacting in the way that I am now? Why all these irritation?

Writer's Block

So with great thought and all, I've decided to convert my really aging Pentium III machine into a headless terminal, and to have (as the main tools) spell-checkers, vim, and LaTeX installed as the main applications, in addition to having some form of VNC/SSH ability. If you still haven't figured out what I am up to, well, let me spell it clearly then: it will be my writing machine.

That's right. Things have gotten to the point where I think that having a dedicated writing machine is probably the way to go. It is not that I cannot write with my current machine; I write a lot (and decently so!) with my current set-up. But there's always distractions here and there, with people trying to contact me over instant messaging. I long for the days where the writer can just sit down in front of his/her trusty typewriter and cobble together words to make stories; there is a timeless feel for that that I cannot truly describe in words over here.

In related news, I've finally got hold of a copy of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style. Again, you might ask, why. Truth is, it has been a long time since I polished/fixed my English, and it has gotten to the point where my English is rather fractured. Sure, I might sound like I know what I am writing, but trust me, I have never felt that my English has improved since I was twelve years old, and it is not a feeling that I particularly enjoy. I have hardly taken any English class seriously ever since I was twelve, since for the most part they were stressing on how to conform to obtaining better grades in examinations, which do not necessarily lead to actual improvement in writing style and diction. I have no real bone to pick about the examinations [here, at least] but the thing is that I don't feel that I have improved my writing abilities at all throughout all these ``gaming'' exercises which basically involves me trying to write such that the examiner will be pleased.

I was not writing because I enjoyed the art of writing, but only to satisfy some requirement set forth by someone who thought that it was a good idea to include in the education system.

But now, after churning out hundreds of rants, and even more poems all over the place, I've decided that I should probably put some structure into my writing and consider working at it a little more seriously. I have the tools, a good thesaurus, a decent style guide, a grammar guide, and a somewhat outdated dictionary (physical) that is fast replaced by an online version. It would then seem to be a good idea to put these tools to good use [finally] and to produce works that I truly am proud of.

I don't have any mentors for writing now; old Mr Lin Min probably has forgotten about me/not too interested in critiquing an amateur's work since he might still be inundated by work, but I think I will survive, sort of.

I guess only time will tell if I'm really doing good. And by golly, I swear that I will work on NaNoWriMo this year, considering that I will be working and not doing busy work all day as it is in school.

I'm a Terrifying Person

Let's face it. I'm a terrifying person, existing in the hinterlands between the sane and the insane. I keep few friends, because few can tolerate (let alone understand!) how and why I react the way I do. I have ideals of sorts, and want to try all kinds of things, simply because I find that life is short enough and to live it fully would be to try all that one can try (at least, for the things that don't kill/hurt/maim us) to feel and understand what lies behind the actions and things that make people tick. I have little regard to the material world, preferring to populate my thoughts with ideas and wonderings of why things are the way they are; my interest in the material world is limited only by what is required to keep me relatively alive and happy, which incidentally does not include having copious amounts of money.

I have little patience with those who want to force their ideas down people's throats, with little regard to whether their ideas are applicable/truthful or not. I believe that people have the right to think for themselves, and should they prove to be incapable of doing so due to lack of understanding, then they should be educated. If they cannot think for themselves because they are just incapable of doing so, then someone responsible should help them with the thinking. But I dislike people who are adamant of forcing ideas down others' throats.

Alright, enough about the big, bad world. Back to reality for now.

Nightmares

The nightmares... they are terrifying. Sometimes I wish I could just not remember them. I know that if I am sufficiently exhausted, the nightmares stay away, but these days (as it is the break), I cannot seem to get myself to be sufficiently exhausted. The other solution is to imbibe a large quantity of alcohol to induce myself to pass out, and thus not be able to remember/dream, but that has its whole host of problems that makes it impractical.

Why do they keep returning to haunt me? What is the problem with me? Why do these nightmares recur? Is there something that my unconscious is trying to tell me? Am I turning even more crazy than I already am?

Due to the lucidity of the said nightmares, I cannot help but wonder if there's something that I need to be aware of that my mind is trying to tell me. Maybe some dream analyst can come up with some ideas.

Meanwhile I will apply my tried and true way of sleeping only when dead exhausted to save myself the grief of having to deal with all these nightmares.

Emblem

`Why the weird new picture?' You might think. Well, first off, here it is:If you have been paying attention to the ``favicon'' on the addressbar of the sites that I have, you would have realised the existence of this new image.

It is sort of the placemarker for me in the digital realm, I suppose. The significance is simple: M, MT are my initials, and the dotted image in the lower right corner is the Glider, a configuration of cells in Conway's Game of Life---a hacker emblem.

This means that I identify with the concept of the ``classical'' hacker (not the media-bastardised version that means breaking into computer systems and such).

Alright, enough of random thingamagigs. That said, it is only an emblem/coat of arms---I do not guarantee that everything that contains that symbol is indeed from me---please be discerning.

That's all for now.

Lucid Dream

Sometimes as I sit quietly in a dark room, I start to think about things that might have been. For instance, what might have been have I not taken up the A*STAR scholarship, or even what might have been have I decided to go into EEE instead of CS. I play the what-if game ever so often, sometimes confusing myself between reality and dreams---that's another reason why I hate to dream at night. The reality of the dreams are almost indistinguishable from that of the actual reality that I am embedded in---in my dreams, things are more coherent than they seem to be in real life, and among other things, there is an air of success that is present in my dreams that does not seem to reflect itself strongly in real life.

There are other reasons why I don't really like to dream that much---dreams can be misleading. The only way that I can tell that I am in a dream and not in reality is only because there are things that are slightly different (and not quite possible in real life) within my dreams, for instance, that I am some hero, fighting off bad people, and trying to save the day and all. You might wonder how I remember these things---the truth is, I am a lucid dreamer.

It is rather strange to be able to recall many of one's dreams, and perhaps it is much stranger to realise that some of the dreams are somewhat premonitional by nature. Maybe that's why I like sleeping only when I am dead exhausted, so that I cannot recall what I am dreaming about. Sometimes my dreams scare me, most times they don't. But the times that they scare me, they leave a rather lasting impression in my mind, often taking days to purge it out of my subconscious.

Dreams, I used to like to recall them, but now I prefer not to. Nightmares are among the most terrifying things that one can ever have, since they shock oneself deep in the core of one's ego, where it is rather hard to reconcile.

But on to other matters I guess. Next time.

Programming Exists in Web Pages Too

Back in the day when I was still in secondary school, I have been an ardent proponent of strengthening the programming abilities of the people in the computer club. Heck, when I was in junior college, I was essentially doing the same thing (but that is another story altogether for another time).

Back then, people thought that I was a crazy-assed heretic---the biggest thing was the whole web phenomenon (that and the whole shebang over video production). No one believed what I had to say, and I paid the price of being further ostracised, more so than just the ``we come from the west of Singapore and you come from the east and so you are less cool'' form of discrimination. Kept physically away from the Big Three Divisions (micromouse, robotics, and web), I was the de facto head of a phantom fourth division---the programming division. It was quite sad actually, me sitting alone, working on algorithms and such, while the rest of the people were basically laughing their socks at me for being the oddball I was, by wanting to do something that the rest of them were not doing.

Fast-forward 10 years. Yes, 10 years. Look around you. Look at the web. What do you find?

Almost all the ``useful'' websites are done clever uses of ``scripting'', a slang term created by web designers to retain their street cred as designers as opposed to those ``smelly'' basement-dwelling hackers/programmers. Throw away all the fanciful terms, and what do we get? It is just a lot of good old-fashioned programming at work.

Except this time, it is not well-trained programmers who are doing the task---it is a bunch of self-styled web designers who think they know how to program.

If you have not been living in a hole in the last 6 years, you would realise that many of the directed attacks and phishing attempts are propagated through the Internet. Things like ``SQL Injection Attack'' should not sound too foreign. The question here is, who wrote the code to allow the ``SQL Injection Attack'' to take place? Could it be the hackers/programmers? Unlikely, since those folks are more interested in hacking on the kernel/userspace programs/applications and will most likely rather be caught with their pants down than to be caught doing web pages.

So yes, it is largely a straw man here. But my point is that I was right and they were wrong, and now the world is a suckier place because many of the kids in the past refused to take programming seriously, and are now reinventing the wheel and causing all kinds of snafus.

Alright, I'm hungry and need food of some sort. This is suboptimal for now.

《爱我的人和我爱的人》 Take 2

Here's the original version by 裘海正:And then the same dude made his own cover:Interesting style though, it feels a bit more smooth than the one that 裘海正 has.

Find the lyrics in a previous post.

《新不了情》

A sad song:

《新不了情》——万芳

心若倦了泪也干了
这份深情难舍难了

曾经拥有天荒地老
已不见你暮暮与朝朝

这一份情永远难了
原来时还能再度拥抱

爱一个人如何死守到老
怎样面对一切我不知道

回忆过去痛苦的相思忘不了
为何你还来拨动我心跳

爱你怎么能了今夜的你应该明了
愿难了情难了

And a variation:Very hip-hop-ish.

``Friendliness''

So I realised that I cannot stand one kind of ``friendliness'' that some people practise---the kind where they are obviously trying to be friendly, to the point of being loquacious and obnoxious. Don't get me wrong, I think it is great that people are trying to erm talk to me and all. But the overzealous form of trying to talk to me doesn't make me feel interested---I actually feel more guarded because I think that you actually want something from me, which is how I have been conditioned from the past.

Poor Person's Noise-Cancelling Headphones

And so I have started to build my version of the poor person's ``noise-cancelling'' headphones. Basically, I got a decent A-weighted ear protection device in the form of ear muffs (for about 20 dollars), and stuck them on top of my in-ear headphones, whatever they maybe. Voilà, noise-cancellation system without the associated 300-dollar price-tag. The good thing about this is that if I'm sick of hearing the noise that surrounds me, I can substitute my earplugs for my headphones, which attentuates most of the sound. Check out the frequency response rate of both:

Freq. (Hz)	125	250	500	1000	2000	3150	4000	6300	8000
Muffs	20.7±2.5	25.2±1.9	36.2±2.5	43.4±2.4	36.0±2.0	35.3±1.9	37.3±2.0	36.0±1.5	36.3±2.2
Plugs	38.4±2.9	40.3±3.5	43.2±4.0	41.8±3.8	38.6±2.6	45.0±2.8	45.7±3.5	49.6±3.8	47.3±4.3

Where the number given is measured in dB (mean±standard deviation) with a reference level of 92dB(A) as the environmental noise. I will not attempt to calculate what the effect is from using both at the same time---I can't tell the covariance between these two sets of data and thus cannot estimate the correct quantities needed. Suffice to say, if I put on both at the same time, someone has to yell rather loudly for me to be able to hear him/her.

Alright, enough of mumbo-jumbo, I need to get to class for my midterm (again). Sigh.

[Ed: If the numbers in the table seem too small, blame IE for rendering things without regard to actual size and dimensions---I had to hack the table to make it fit that way]

《是不是这样的夜晚你才会这样的想起我》

Hmm, this song has been stuck in my head for quite a while.

《是不是这样的夜晚你才会这样的想起我》——吴宗宪
结束忙碌的一天
换回熟悉的寂寞
懒懒地躺在沙发上
像母亲温暖臂弯
转到昨天的频道
让声音驱走寂静
总是同样的剧情
同样的对白同样的空白

是不是这样的夜晚
你才会这样的想起我
这样的夜晚适合在电话里
只有几句小心的彼此问候
系着两端的猜测
是这样的夜晚想起我 哦
是不是这样的夜晚
你才会这样的想起我
这样的夜晚适合在电话里
虽然几句小心的彼此问候
现在牵未来的手
是这样的日子需要改变

结束忙碌的一天
换回熟悉的寂寞
懒懒地躺在沙发上
像母亲温暖臂弯
转到昨天的频道
让声音驱走寂静
总是同样的剧情
同样的对白同样的空白

是不是这样的夜晚
你才会这样的想起我
这样的夜晚适合在电话里
只有几句小心的彼此问候
系着两端的猜测
是这样的夜晚想起我 哦
是不是这样的夜晚
你才会这样的想起我
这样的夜晚适合在电话里
虽然几句小心的彼此问候
现在牵未来的手
是这样的日子需要改变

And yes, it has a rather long title.

Vaseline

Things to do with Vaseline:

• Lubrication [for machine parts] (get your mind out of the gutter you)
• Moisturiser
• Lip gloss
• Wound protector
• Anti-freeze in winter
• Shoe polish
• Fuel (I've not really tried it, but in theory, it ought to work)