Because I felt like ranting

I'm this close to calling this week a wipe out. Not that I didn't get anything done (I actually got a lot done), but that it feels as though I didn't get anything done due to the relatively serene behaviours of all those around me who are taking good advantage of the usual end-of-year lull and just chill out.

Of course this is a bad segue. It's me ranting; what were you expecting?

I'm a little bit pissed off with the way e-books are currently being handled. The popular formats of ePub and/or the Amazon Kindle format are no better than a highly restricted version of HTML, which of course means that the typography is completely at the mercy of the rendering device. Given the variety of screen real estates co-mingling with the varying visual acuities of people using devices with the said screen pixel real estates, it seems to make a lot of sense to surrender the typographic rendering to that of the program that is running on the specific device.

It makes it all very accessible, particularly when the document can be reflowed and the fonts be adjusted to reach a certain level of viewing comfort.

But it pisses me off big time. I try to write, and now for the sake of pseudo compatibility isues I need to blast myself back to the stone age and forsake lovely laid out text just to support all these... things. In other words, if I choose to want to write using the ePub format (for example), I need to redo everything as though I were writing in Word or even (shudders) HTML, therefore leaving behind all the loveliness of what LaTeX brings.

That's just stupid. I refuse to do so.

Also, by virtue of design, these so-called e-book formats stink for presenting mathematical statements, since there isn't really a ``math-rendering'' mode. I doubt they even support MathML, the XML/HTML equivalent of what LaTeX does for rendering the mathematical statements. This means that to publish a work with more than mere paragraphs requires wrangling with generated images of the relevant symbols and statements, which of course defeats the whole purpose of hte format in terms of reflow and readability.

Anyway, not sure why I wanted to rant on that. It's not like I use the ePub format for my writing, yes? I still generate PDF files from LaTeX input, and it works well enough for me. Screw market forces, particularly when one isn't an active participant within it.

``Holiday Meals''

Funny how I have not written much here for most of the year and suddenly, I end up writing so much over the past few days. Let's just say it's just something that came out of pure serendipity and leave it as that.

I feel bloated and fat. For the past three days, I have been binge eating. Wednesday was some steak from Jack's Place, Thursday was an a la carte buffet at Supreme Tastes Jiang Nan Cuisine, and today was sushi nigiri at my favourite sushi place [that I will not reveal here]. If not for the department event yesterday, I would probably have spent upwards of nearly two hundred dollars for all the food that had been eaten.

And so, from tomorrow onwards, I'm going back to something more sane. I'm writing off these meals as ``holiday meals'', something to the effect of eating Hannukah/Christmas/Yuletide/New Year's meals, and leaving them as that.

My progress is still steady with the 5BX. Currently at level B- on chart 1, it won't take long before I progress to chart 2 where the scaling will go up even more. I'm currently using the progression of the 30--43 years old age bracket, which meant upping the progression levels no faster than once every four days. Let's face it, claiming 30 now and one month later is not really different. Considering the constant performance of the exercises (daily), it is also safer to err on the side of conservatism and go at the slowest maximal rate that I can live with.

That said, I feel very hypocritical. The actual words I will reserve for the one who is to hear them, but let's just say that I should also buck up in terms of making myself more presentable and healthy. It is unfair to wish for my companion to be healthy and strong when I'm not even putting any significant effort into the betterment of myself.

Hmmm... what else is there to say, actually? No idea. I'm just rambling now.

Maybe I'll stop here. Till the next update.

``I am emotionally and electrically drained.''

I feel so drained. I feel like I need to curl up into a ball and just silently go to sleep, after downing a few shots of hard liquor.

I hate being referred to as a ``scholar''. I don't care who says it---fact is, I no longer see myself as a ``scholar''. He-who-shalt-not-be-named pointed out to me clearly that I did not fulfil the basic requirements of being a scholar, because I was ``intellectually lazy'' and that I didn't have the perseverance to bull-headedly push my way through the hard parts of the thought process. So to me, being called a ``scholar'' is taken as an insult, since I have to expend that effort to explain why I am not a scholar, assuming I give a damn in the first place. Inasmuch as I like not giving a damn, sometimes it's hard to dodge out due to point-blankness. Maybe my curtness will hint what I am really thinking about. If ever there is a push factor to leave the organisation after my bond is done, it would be that stigma associated with the word that I never seemed to have identified strongly with in the first place, because it is fucking hard to lead a normal life when one is surrounded by PhD holders.

Why can't people see me for who I am instead of who I was supposed to be?

Anyway, I'm drained, socially. Some kind of year-end function of the department at work; didn't feel right if I dodged out of it. So, I just showed up and made do with what I could. Whatever social capital I had left lying around was pretty much used up by the end of the afternoon, where I just didn't want to talk or even listen to anyone.

The things we do to appear normal...

It's funny to be in Singapore during the end-of-year. I was so used to spending new year's eve on my own in the winter that having to face it again this year in tropical Singapore just feels odd. Maybe I'll do what I should have done---go minimal and not give a damn. Just sleep regularly the night before and wake up on new year's itself feeling more or less like usual.

All these holiday things become more and more meaningless as one gets older. Until of course when one brings forth younglings---then the holidays take on a different kind of character where the focus is not on the self but on the said younglings.

I think I'm done here. Till the next update.

Baggage

There are some days where you wake up and wonder to yourself, `why am I still alive?'. Unfortunately for me, today is such a day.

Before anyone panics, no I'm not contemplating suicide. Suicide only works on two occasions: getting attention through the attempt, or when there is literally no one who cares for you left for you to give a damn about so that the most logical outcome is to just end it all instead of prolonging suffering.

I will, of course, go back to the old standby and blame it on the season. But it feels a little frivolous, considering that I am no longer located at a latitude where the amount of sunlight hours is sufficiently low to warrant the appeal towards Seasonal Affective Disorder as the culprit. I could always blame it on the annual panic from realising that yet another physical year has passed while I will soon feel that I have aged by three years over three months again.

Or I can do the right thing and admit that the reason for my own dissatisfaction with life at this point is that I still have not gotten over the emotional baggage that I had been lugging around since a decade ago wheen the world started to make almost no sense to me, the day when I was released from the regimented confines of the education system into the more free-form world where the only real rule to obey is to not get caught breaking any rules.

If you were wondering, yes, that previous paragraph was a single sentence. Loopy huh.

Okay, while I'm on a roll, let me just put it out there. I'm dissatisfied with the way my emotional life is going. It has gotten to the point where it is starting to become somewhat affective of my daily life in a detrimental sort of way. The first large outbreak of this whole nonsense was back during the first couple of years of NS, from the Lunar Princess. Then it got steadily stupid as I clammed up. Then stuff happened in college, stuff happened outside of college, stuff happened during my PhD-to-Masters, and now, stuff happening while I'm working.

I'm self-censoring to protect... I don't know... people who were involved with me during those times, perhaps. I don't want some Google search to lead them here. No need to draw unnecessary attention. Considering that the visitors to this blog are largely people trying to look for malloc()-lab solutions and the Google web spider, one cannot be too careful.

So... stuff. What to make of it, really? Two words: slow [the hell] down. That's what I need to do. My biggest failing as a human (I can sort of pass as a demented AI, but don't tell anyone that of course) is that when it comes to dealing with other humans, I tend to run hot. And by ``run hot'' I mean ``with great enthusiasm''. Except humans being humans, they cannot appreciate nor care to understand that kind of tendencies. Machines don't give a damn---their perception of time, should there be such a thing, is simple. None of that creepiness or weirdness factor. If they need your attention, they need your attention. If you give your utmost attention, they don't balk and get all creeped out; if anything, they are probably happier with it since it means someone who cares is looking out for them.

You do that to a human, you get a ``gee maybe you're coming on too strong and are creeping me out''. Machines run at the time scale of minutes, hours tops per job, while humans run at the time scale of years, with a whole bunch of emotional baggage that comes along with them to boot.

Machines also have the tendency to not associate much meaning to any particular string of characters until they are told how to interpret it, while humans just jump to stupid conclusions on the get go. Here's an example: ``I eat human foetuses.''. To a machine, it's merely a string, but you, a human reading this [hopefully], you are treated to the unsavoury image of an unborn human foetus being macerated by a mouthful of teeth, possibly with the face of a Hannibal Lector adorning it. Naturally, you'd feel disgusted.

But I don't feel such things. Words are words until I choose an interpretation for them. That's why it's easy to pun, and that's why it's easy to introduce innuendo.

That's why after a while, people just... cannot take it. Because I think more machine-like than human-like, despite having a human-ish avatar with the usual biological needs.

Oh don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't have emotions. I feel sadness, I feel happiness. I know how it feels like to be loved, I know how it feels to be rejected or unloved. I know how to feel hate as well, and how to deliver the vitriol necessary to keep some ignorant assholes in line.

I need to have all those to be an effective musician after all. Musicians gotta feel to play music. Otherwise they'd just be a human version of a MIDI controller.

But I've never felt the need to show them strongly in one way or another. It's weakening. It shows a chink in the armour, the hole in the wall that has been built up from too many past trauma of the emotional sort.

I don't like feeling weak. I like to be in control. That's why I design algorithms and write computer programs---to control the machine.

But I can't control other humans. I'm not a dictator, and I'm not rich enough to buy control. I'm too poor. Even cooperative multi-tasking doesn't work when the clock circuit timings ``don't click''.

I don't know why I'm writing all these now. Perhaps it's a way of expunging stupid data in my head so I can forget about all these and get back to my usual low energy state to carry on living.

Or maybe it's a silent cry for help.

You choose.

December

As November ends and December begins, so ends my leave-clearing exercise for this year's excess leave that I cannot carry over to the next. Today was an anomaly---I had a free off-in-lieu that needed clearing from having spent the equivalent of standing around for a whole day during office hours at an exhibition. Go figure on that one.

At this point, almost everyone is in the holiday mood, but for me, the fun is just about to start. It's past NaNoWriMo, which means that the month-long writing extravaganza is finally over, and it's time to get back to the regular schedule. And in my case, it means to get back to cranking out code before the year's end to catch up with the time lost from all those ``management'' related things.

I don't really like working in management. It feels as though it is demanding me of a set of skills that I really don't wish to deploy. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm wholly incompetent in the whole ``leadership'' mess---throughout the near three decades of my existence, I had undergone almost every leadership workshop/seminar/programme thing that was foisted upon me, and have gotten good feedback from it all too. It's just that the whole resource management, planning, and meeting games detract from what my real love is---building things with my brains and hands. There are enough of those MBA holders out there who need a job to exercise their management skills, and since I'm much happier working on systems, I ought to be allowed to work on those as much as I can.

Maybe when I'm old enough and sick enough of technology that I will choose to manage humans. But somehow I don't see that day coming up any time soon.

December. Traditionally a loathed month due to... issues, but this time round, I have a good feeling about it. Okay, so I don't have wonderful snow to play with, but the need to plan for my travels, and crank out code and presentations for the work I have been working on (with a deadline too), at least they are comfortable distractions.

And the reading. Never forget about the reading.

As for the writing... it has been a lost cause for quite a while now. That story-a-day is effectively dead, but it had done it's job. I'll probably try it again next year, or at least, try to write a story a week just to keep things going. A story a day was just too intense, and after a while, it became too much of a chore and less fun.

Alright, enough yapping. Maybe I'll write more stuff soon... before the month's end that is.