September

It's a Saturday once again, and we are now nearing the midpoint of September.

There were at least two other occasions where I felt the urge to write an update of some kind, but didn't, as you can plainly see. It wasn't for a lack of updates -- there are plenty to talk about, really -- but that I was feeling a little under the weather.

You see, the haze is back. Not as vengeful as two years ago, but enough to cause an annoyance. I feel generally lethargic, with little to no incentive to actually get up and do anything physical. And that's why I just stay at home, but that is not anything particularly abnormal, to be had.

What's abnormal[ish] is that I haven't actually gamed in a while.

For some reason, I don't feel a strong need to muck around with the pretend worlds that the games provide. Not something as immersive as Skyrim/Minecraft, or something as abstract as DoomRL. Just didn't feel that urge... at all.

Perhaps it's because my attentions are currently occupied elsewhere, like the two upcoming SG50-related performances in this month. They have a way of diverting my attention from playing games to thinking about my handling of my dizi.

I think I spent most of the past month or so thinking really hard about things that I never really bothered before, things like proper intonation on my dizi and other woodwind instruments that I was messing around with (like the fife and piccolo), articulation (when to tongue each note and when to slur -- jianpu doesn't usually make a difference between ties and phrasing ties), and ornamentation (when vibrato is needed, when notes ought to be ``clean'', when leading notes should be applied). I think it is a sign that I'm starting to level-up again, having more or less stayed at a mild plateau of sorts. Stimulation has a way of really aiding in the rewiring of one's perspective on even the familiar, and I think that the exposure to a new group (Di-Capella) with new folks has given me the jolt necessary for me to do all these thinking.

In terms of music, I think I've reached the age where few will say that I'm a neophyte, even when I'm working on an instrument that isn't my main. Seeing and hearing how other folks (professionals and certified amateurs) handle their instruments provides a kind of external benchmark for me to determine how the outside world has evolved, and helped me determine just what I was missing in my own education of the process.

And yes, despite what folks may say about how I play, I know that I'm missing some stuff in the completeness of my skill set. I am sufficiently inspired to actually work on that, though I will still refuse to subject myself to the formal certification process -- I'm happy to be who I am with regards to music.

That said though, it is hard to want to learn more/express while still keeping a low profile. We'll see what I can do there...

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Software architecting is a very interesting topic, and I find myself working increasingly in that regard instead of just bashing code to get things to work. I have found that over the years, as I work on more and more systems, I tend to write less and less actual code, even to the point that I'm not actually designing new algorithms from scratch the way I used to do maybe some fifteen years ago.

Software architects are the prototypal ``master programmers'' -- they provide the abstract framework of a system, defining the types of component partitioning discipline required to get a system going. There is a strong business aspect to it, as I am starting to learn, because the most efficacious architecture isn't necessarily the one that gets deployed simply because the business resources and decisions do not support it -- cost (time and money) are very important factors towards architecting that the hacker-class programmer will not care too much about.

In some sense, understanding the process behind good software architecting has made me moderate my hacker-sense into something that is more realistic -- I don't feel the kind of invincibility and immortality that I had back when I was fourteen and trouncing my seniors in competitive programming. It's a good thing, since sustainability (maintainability) is a very important aspect of system design that isn't really thought of much by the self-thought hacker-programmer.

Anyway, I think that's all I care to write for now. Here's something mildly related: