Oh December! Where to begin?
We're almost on the home stretch towards the end of the roller-coaster ride we call 2016, and as far as the world is concerned, things seem to be settling down a bit. An apparent demagogue got voted into power in the Land of Opportunity, an old Colonial Power decided to leave the club of former colonial powers, lots of celebrities died, and much more nonsense abound.
But the year is almost done.
Some things that had been part of the plan have to be changed due to circumstances---I am, of course, no longer talking about the world but about my own slice of the world at large---but the extension of the deadline for things that need to be settled doesn't throw too big a wrench into the works, as far as I can tell.
Jump cutting a little, the latest instalment of the TGIO party for NaNoWriMo was a cosy affair like always. Cake was had, conversations turned weird (as always!) and much rejoicing ensued. Some of the old faces showed up again, and there were a couple of new faces who got over their initial shyness and helped to drive the conversations into the weird dimensions where they ought to belong. I couldn't stay for long because of my CO rehearsals, but it was still a good party. I'm a little miffed that the years I was part of the Overseas Word Wars team, we managed to lose, while the years where I was not a part of the Overseas team, they get to win. Man, the fellow word warriors of my time sure sucked. Heheheh...
Jump cutting yet again, more meet ups occurred during the past week or so, and it was an interesting experience. It's getting clear that those of us in my age group are really starting to transit into adult-hood, willingly or not. Even what constitutes as ``fun'' has changed throughout the years.
All in all, a relatively good start for December. I wonder what 2017 holds.
Monday, December 12, 2016
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Here We Go Again...
It's slightly more than a month since I had written anything here, and I assure you that all and any rumours of my demise have been exaggerated.
November is almost done, and with it, this year's installment of NaNoWriMo. This year's entry is a little more angsty than the one's before, and is basically an accumulation of all the odd things that have occurred to me, heavily fictionised of course. As always, grab manuscript from my personal domain. It is merely reflective of the first draft as was done on or around November 20, with no attempts at editing for clarity or conciseness.
I am uncertain if NaNoWriMo is going to continue to be appealling to me in the future. It feels as though that I have told most of the stories that I wanted to tell, and it was getting increasingly hard to come up with newer original concepts without devolving into the realm of fan-fiction. I suppose I can always go back to the fantasy settings like my 2012 entry, but I've been living in the real world for so long that I'm more grounded in reality than before---writing fantasy that does not have some inkling of plausibility has lost its allure, which isn't much considering that I never really had the aptitude for it in the first place. I can't do world-building any more, again because I'm too grounded in this reality to keep living in a reality that I built in my head.
But I have a whole year to think about things, so we shall wait till around this time next year before we decide if we are still continuing. For the sake of a streak, I may just soldier on. It is a good way of having of venting out all the words that I had been keeping inside me for the rest of the year.
In other news, I'm turning into a dizi pedagogue, what with all the new young'uns who are now turning up at my CO. Teaching is hard, and what makes it harder is teaching something that requires fine motor control to a bunch of children who aren't exactly having good fine motor control to begin with. I'm not frustrated yet, but it does leave me with little time to refine the skills of my juniors in the orchestra, something that I think may be more important in the short and middle term. It's sometimes hard to attempt to think carefully about the pedagogy because I'm attempting to use highly scientific/abstract principles to describe things in a field that is traditionally less so---I've got to control for the different levels of understanding, as well as the difference between narrow specialisation and generalised knowledge of the field. All these factors contribute towards the need to sacrifice conciseness of presentation and abstraction with something that is more verbose and specialised without ever drawing the big things together into a refined and refactored form.
If that paragraph made no sense, don't worry about it. It's just complicated.
December is fast approaching, and like the rest of this year so far, it is getting more hectic instead of less. It is almost as though everyone had decided without actually deciding a priori to line everything that needs doing all at one go and demand outcomes all before the year number rolls over to the next. Ah well, such is the nature of life/work.
I don't think there's anything else I'd like to write here. Just thought it a nice gesture to have some update on my blog, even though maybe no more than five actual people I know are actively reading it.
Till the next update I suppose.
November is almost done, and with it, this year's installment of NaNoWriMo. This year's entry is a little more angsty than the one's before, and is basically an accumulation of all the odd things that have occurred to me, heavily fictionised of course. As always, grab manuscript from my personal domain. It is merely reflective of the first draft as was done on or around November 20, with no attempts at editing for clarity or conciseness.
I am uncertain if NaNoWriMo is going to continue to be appealling to me in the future. It feels as though that I have told most of the stories that I wanted to tell, and it was getting increasingly hard to come up with newer original concepts without devolving into the realm of fan-fiction. I suppose I can always go back to the fantasy settings like my 2012 entry, but I've been living in the real world for so long that I'm more grounded in reality than before---writing fantasy that does not have some inkling of plausibility has lost its allure, which isn't much considering that I never really had the aptitude for it in the first place. I can't do world-building any more, again because I'm too grounded in this reality to keep living in a reality that I built in my head.
But I have a whole year to think about things, so we shall wait till around this time next year before we decide if we are still continuing. For the sake of a streak, I may just soldier on. It is a good way of having of venting out all the words that I had been keeping inside me for the rest of the year.
In other news, I'm turning into a dizi pedagogue, what with all the new young'uns who are now turning up at my CO. Teaching is hard, and what makes it harder is teaching something that requires fine motor control to a bunch of children who aren't exactly having good fine motor control to begin with. I'm not frustrated yet, but it does leave me with little time to refine the skills of my juniors in the orchestra, something that I think may be more important in the short and middle term. It's sometimes hard to attempt to think carefully about the pedagogy because I'm attempting to use highly scientific/abstract principles to describe things in a field that is traditionally less so---I've got to control for the different levels of understanding, as well as the difference between narrow specialisation and generalised knowledge of the field. All these factors contribute towards the need to sacrifice conciseness of presentation and abstraction with something that is more verbose and specialised without ever drawing the big things together into a refined and refactored form.
If that paragraph made no sense, don't worry about it. It's just complicated.
December is fast approaching, and like the rest of this year so far, it is getting more hectic instead of less. It is almost as though everyone had decided without actually deciding a priori to line everything that needs doing all at one go and demand outcomes all before the year number rolls over to the next. Ah well, such is the nature of life/work.
I don't think there's anything else I'd like to write here. Just thought it a nice gesture to have some update on my blog, even though maybe no more than five actual people I know are actively reading it.
Till the next update I suppose.
Thursday, October 13, 2016
In Between Worlds
I've said this before, I'll say it again: it is hard to live in between worlds.
In general, I have not found myself to be a party to the mainstream group as a rule of thumb. Back in the day, it has everything to do with how I look---I had bad skin then and less bad skin now---but now, it has more to with how I think about things. On that regard, I have not found myself to be a party to any of the fringe groups that may share similar interests with me either; I think their clique-ish ways are what really turns me off.
As a result, I tend to live in between worlds.
Living between worlds is hard for the simple reason that it takes considerable effort to appear somewhat compliant with each of the worlds that one is in between of without completely allowing the self to be subjugated into that world's rules. A price to pay for ``neutrality'' or rather, the preservation of the sovereignty of one's mind.
Sometimes I feel that the price is a tad too much. After all, by choosing to live between worlds, I have also made the choice to be wholly responsible for what I think and how I think, with little room to relax about it. While it is great when I'm at my peak mental abilities, it also means that any downs tend to be way deeper than one might expect, because there aren't any standardised reaction patterns that I can rely on from the mainstream culture or the fringe sub-culture.
I think that's why I'm half mad.
Living in between worlds has also the side effect of nullifying almost any talent that one may possess. ``Talent'' in the Real World outside of say the education system (think K-12 and not the university) is relative and is dominated by the opinions of the majority, ergo, one has ``talent'' only if there exists a substantial number of influential people who admit that one has that particular talent. So, a great singer is only great because enough influential people have given their stamp of approval, and a scientist's work is great only because enough influential researchers have cited that scientist's work as a fundamental reference from which new work is built upon.
The old stories of the solitary genius are mostly myths and are popular because they help to promote the thought that hard work is sufficient to achieve something great in life.
Unfortunately, hard work is merely necessary but not sufficient. To achieve something great requires a legion of co-conspirators---people who think and believe in the same things that one thinks and believes in. Then and only then do we have sufficient grounds to achieve something great. Luck and timing exist only in the form of careful choice of when one puts in the final big push for the thing that one is interested in; they aren't completely unmanageable.
But back to talent. One word: relativity. Living in between worlds means that there is no easily discernible reference point in which one's particular ability can be measured against, which means that the same ability can be completely talentless under the context of one world and be superlatively talented in another. This is the kind of ennui one must face when living in between worlds, something that I thought I could handle.
Well, I'm having second thoughts, but not enough to abandon my original set up. All it means is that I need to learn more about my own ego, and to learn how to not be proud for no good reason, and to derive strength and satisfaction elsewhere.
I don't really have anything else to say; just felt like venting a little bit to get rid of some of the miasma that had been clouding my mind for a while.
In general, I have not found myself to be a party to the mainstream group as a rule of thumb. Back in the day, it has everything to do with how I look---I had bad skin then and less bad skin now---but now, it has more to with how I think about things. On that regard, I have not found myself to be a party to any of the fringe groups that may share similar interests with me either; I think their clique-ish ways are what really turns me off.
As a result, I tend to live in between worlds.
Living between worlds is hard for the simple reason that it takes considerable effort to appear somewhat compliant with each of the worlds that one is in between of without completely allowing the self to be subjugated into that world's rules. A price to pay for ``neutrality'' or rather, the preservation of the sovereignty of one's mind.
Sometimes I feel that the price is a tad too much. After all, by choosing to live between worlds, I have also made the choice to be wholly responsible for what I think and how I think, with little room to relax about it. While it is great when I'm at my peak mental abilities, it also means that any downs tend to be way deeper than one might expect, because there aren't any standardised reaction patterns that I can rely on from the mainstream culture or the fringe sub-culture.
I think that's why I'm half mad.
Living in between worlds has also the side effect of nullifying almost any talent that one may possess. ``Talent'' in the Real World outside of say the education system (think K-12 and not the university) is relative and is dominated by the opinions of the majority, ergo, one has ``talent'' only if there exists a substantial number of influential people who admit that one has that particular talent. So, a great singer is only great because enough influential people have given their stamp of approval, and a scientist's work is great only because enough influential researchers have cited that scientist's work as a fundamental reference from which new work is built upon.
The old stories of the solitary genius are mostly myths and are popular because they help to promote the thought that hard work is sufficient to achieve something great in life.
Unfortunately, hard work is merely necessary but not sufficient. To achieve something great requires a legion of co-conspirators---people who think and believe in the same things that one thinks and believes in. Then and only then do we have sufficient grounds to achieve something great. Luck and timing exist only in the form of careful choice of when one puts in the final big push for the thing that one is interested in; they aren't completely unmanageable.
But back to talent. One word: relativity. Living in between worlds means that there is no easily discernible reference point in which one's particular ability can be measured against, which means that the same ability can be completely talentless under the context of one world and be superlatively talented in another. This is the kind of ennui one must face when living in between worlds, something that I thought I could handle.
Well, I'm having second thoughts, but not enough to abandon my original set up. All it means is that I need to learn more about my own ego, and to learn how to not be proud for no good reason, and to derive strength and satisfaction elsewhere.
I don't really have anything else to say; just felt like venting a little bit to get rid of some of the miasma that had been clouding my mind for a while.
Wednesday, October 05, 2016
Intermezzo
In case people were wondering, well, I'm still around.
Nearly a month has passed since the last time I wrote anything here, and much of the same is still... the same. The changes are still coming, and the jury is still out on the ramifications of it all.
I'm still in the eye of the storm as the chaos surrounds me. I'm not feeling too great, but I don't think I'm in too shabby a state either. I've taken up running again as my anti-depressant in these stressful times, especially since I've more or less given up on Aikido for now because of my erratic work schedule---evening time is so much harder to plan for as compared to waking up stupid early to run around the neighbourhood.
We've finally moved to our temporary holding place for CO, and we're starting to get a sense of the place all over again. Everyone's lives have started to turn hectic, what with the end of the year examinations and other developments. Maybe things will settle down in a week or two when some form of routine emerges.
Work wise, same old same old---nothing more to add.
I've already decided on this year's entry for NaNoWriMo---The Goodbyes. The entire fubar quality of 2016 is starting to hit me and I feel inspired to write about all these negativity into a novel of some sort as a way of purging it from my system. And of course, like a true Wrimoer, I'm going to wing this when the timer starts come November first.
In between the last post and this, I have finally debuted with Mio. It was pretty rough, trying to play the bass flute with little to no amplification, but I think that gentle buzzing helped to bolster the rather weak low range of our tiny CO. Such luxury can only be had because for those couple of performances we have two other dizi players already, and having a third one (i.e. me) was just a recipe to be overly loud.
Hmm... what else is there to write?
I honestly don't know. There are a few nebulous things floating about in my head, generating the occasional headache, but that's about it.
Maybe till the next time.
Nearly a month has passed since the last time I wrote anything here, and much of the same is still... the same. The changes are still coming, and the jury is still out on the ramifications of it all.
I'm still in the eye of the storm as the chaos surrounds me. I'm not feeling too great, but I don't think I'm in too shabby a state either. I've taken up running again as my anti-depressant in these stressful times, especially since I've more or less given up on Aikido for now because of my erratic work schedule---evening time is so much harder to plan for as compared to waking up stupid early to run around the neighbourhood.
We've finally moved to our temporary holding place for CO, and we're starting to get a sense of the place all over again. Everyone's lives have started to turn hectic, what with the end of the year examinations and other developments. Maybe things will settle down in a week or two when some form of routine emerges.
Work wise, same old same old---nothing more to add.
I've already decided on this year's entry for NaNoWriMo---The Goodbyes. The entire fubar quality of 2016 is starting to hit me and I feel inspired to write about all these negativity into a novel of some sort as a way of purging it from my system. And of course, like a true Wrimoer, I'm going to wing this when the timer starts come November first.
In between the last post and this, I have finally debuted with Mio. It was pretty rough, trying to play the bass flute with little to no amplification, but I think that gentle buzzing helped to bolster the rather weak low range of our tiny CO. Such luxury can only be had because for those couple of performances we have two other dizi players already, and having a third one (i.e. me) was just a recipe to be overly loud.
Hmm... what else is there to write?
I honestly don't know. There are a few nebulous things floating about in my head, generating the occasional headache, but that's about it.
Maybe till the next time.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Just a Tad Depressed
I'm a tad depressed.
I think that I'm one of those people who really prefer stability over change, but am willing to take in the change and adjust accordingly if the change comes over smoothly enough.
Sadly though change hardly ever comes smoothly---it comes amidst a quadrillion other changes all at once.
I'm in the middle of a four-week series of changes, and living through it all has been quite straining on my psyche, to say the least. The few anchor points of my life are now moving their positions about, and as such, I feel like a kite with its tether slackened severely, to be tossed about by whichever way the winds decide to blow.
I can handle change in work or in my hobbies singly, but to have both happen at once is very draining.
I've not reached the point where I just mentally say ``fuck it'' and dive head-first into the maelstrom, mostly because I've not had enough mental reserves to do that plunge just yet.
As the old saying goes, ``this too, shall pass''.
And that's my rant for the day. Amen.
I think that I'm one of those people who really prefer stability over change, but am willing to take in the change and adjust accordingly if the change comes over smoothly enough.
Sadly though change hardly ever comes smoothly---it comes amidst a quadrillion other changes all at once.
I'm in the middle of a four-week series of changes, and living through it all has been quite straining on my psyche, to say the least. The few anchor points of my life are now moving their positions about, and as such, I feel like a kite with its tether slackened severely, to be tossed about by whichever way the winds decide to blow.
I can handle change in work or in my hobbies singly, but to have both happen at once is very draining.
I've not reached the point where I just mentally say ``fuck it'' and dive head-first into the maelstrom, mostly because I've not had enough mental reserves to do that plunge just yet.
As the old saying goes, ``this too, shall pass''.
And that's my rant for the day. Amen.
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
An August Post
This wasn't planned. Well, the others weren't really planned either.
I just felt the urge, nay the need to write something just to vent.
The last time I wrote, I was talking about how things were going swimmingly well. Things still are, but there are some rather significant changes since roughly a month ago.
I stopped to do a stock take on myself, my life, my aspirations, and everything else about me that I hadn't looked at in a while. What I've found was that I was running myself ragged with all the things that I want to do. Then the reality of me being not super duper crazy efficient hit me and I realised that I have to scale down everything that I do.
The question is, what ought I to scale down?
When I was single and somewhat depressed, all the activities that I did had the overall effect of giving me enough things to do that I didn't have to stop to think about how life was sucking and such. Now, things have changed. My hobbies are suddenly taking on a much stronger slant towards responsibilities that cannot be easily taken care of with the paltry two to three hours per week on a single Saturday evening. I simply couldn't do all the things that I had did before, if I wanted to actually be well-rested and contented with life.
This time, I reluctantly chose to let go Aikido, perhaps to pick it up again some time in the future. It's not because that I no longer like the martial art, but really, under the current circumstances, I cannot bring myself to do it. I found myself either being physically unable to due to sickness or injury, or mentally unable to acknowledge that I was going to do something very physically rigorous for two hours after a 10-hour work day.
It does not help that I've been stagnating at my current belt level for nearly five years now.
In short, I found myself burnt out in a different sort of way. So it is with great sadness that I am letting go of Aikido for now. I will need to figure out ways to ensure that I don't lose too much of the conditioning and reflexes that I had learnt from Aikido and Aikijujutsu.
Work-wise, nothing much has changed---I'm still in the business of building large systems. It seems that the [new] management is starting to see the relevance of what we have been working on, which in itself is a great burden removed, though pending another deployment, we'll just be building up the system at a rather relaxing pace.
In other news, I've been copying music for the new dizi solo that I intend to showcase at our next major concert. It was, to say the least, tiring. It is at times like this that I wished there were some less shady-looking, less regionally oriented jianpu software to use instead of the pencil job I'm doing. I think I do a pretty good pencil job, but it's still rather tedious and sometimes the entire piece looks a little natty, especially when I'm not paying too much attention.
It is when I'm copying out the music and the parts that I'm slowly having the realisation that there will be a point where my CO is going to find it extremely difficult to accompany me, especially when I start to pick harder and harder pieces to work on. But that problem will only come in the future, so it is still pointless to think about it now. The CO has surprised me before---I'm sure it can surprise me again; all I need to do is give them a little chance and a nudge in the right direction.
On a less musical front, I had to part ways with the company that has been hosting my personal Subversion repository. They were having a new price increase that was more than 40× what I am currently paying a month, an amount that is unacceptable to me. So I did the next best thing and got a virtual machine instance and set up my own Subversion repository instead. Since I didn't have access to the file system in the original repository, I had to transfer the information out somehow.
Enter
And no, personal experimental code is not something I want published on an open and world-readable repository. I like and support open source, but there's a limit to what one open sources---incomplete personal work is something that falls squarely in the ``not ready for open source'' list.
I think that's about all I care to write for now. Till the next update I suppose.
I just felt the urge, nay the need to write something just to vent.
The last time I wrote, I was talking about how things were going swimmingly well. Things still are, but there are some rather significant changes since roughly a month ago.
I stopped to do a stock take on myself, my life, my aspirations, and everything else about me that I hadn't looked at in a while. What I've found was that I was running myself ragged with all the things that I want to do. Then the reality of me being not super duper crazy efficient hit me and I realised that I have to scale down everything that I do.
The question is, what ought I to scale down?
When I was single and somewhat depressed, all the activities that I did had the overall effect of giving me enough things to do that I didn't have to stop to think about how life was sucking and such. Now, things have changed. My hobbies are suddenly taking on a much stronger slant towards responsibilities that cannot be easily taken care of with the paltry two to three hours per week on a single Saturday evening. I simply couldn't do all the things that I had did before, if I wanted to actually be well-rested and contented with life.
This time, I reluctantly chose to let go Aikido, perhaps to pick it up again some time in the future. It's not because that I no longer like the martial art, but really, under the current circumstances, I cannot bring myself to do it. I found myself either being physically unable to due to sickness or injury, or mentally unable to acknowledge that I was going to do something very physically rigorous for two hours after a 10-hour work day.
It does not help that I've been stagnating at my current belt level for nearly five years now.
In short, I found myself burnt out in a different sort of way. So it is with great sadness that I am letting go of Aikido for now. I will need to figure out ways to ensure that I don't lose too much of the conditioning and reflexes that I had learnt from Aikido and Aikijujutsu.
Work-wise, nothing much has changed---I'm still in the business of building large systems. It seems that the [new] management is starting to see the relevance of what we have been working on, which in itself is a great burden removed, though pending another deployment, we'll just be building up the system at a rather relaxing pace.
In other news, I've been copying music for the new dizi solo that I intend to showcase at our next major concert. It was, to say the least, tiring. It is at times like this that I wished there were some less shady-looking, less regionally oriented jianpu software to use instead of the pencil job I'm doing. I think I do a pretty good pencil job, but it's still rather tedious and sometimes the entire piece looks a little natty, especially when I'm not paying too much attention.
It is when I'm copying out the music and the parts that I'm slowly having the realisation that there will be a point where my CO is going to find it extremely difficult to accompany me, especially when I start to pick harder and harder pieces to work on. But that problem will only come in the future, so it is still pointless to think about it now. The CO has surprised me before---I'm sure it can surprise me again; all I need to do is give them a little chance and a nudge in the right direction.
On a less musical front, I had to part ways with the company that has been hosting my personal Subversion repository. They were having a new price increase that was more than 40× what I am currently paying a month, an amount that is unacceptable to me. So I did the next best thing and got a virtual machine instance and set up my own Subversion repository instead. Since I didn't have access to the file system in the original repository, I had to transfer the information out somehow.
Enter
rsvndump. It's a tool that dumps the Subversion repository from a remote server armed with only regular svn access, into a form where svnadmin can easily use to dump into a new location. Once the dump is completed, all I had to do was to issue svn switch --relocate $oldURL $newURL and I was done, all without having to redownload the entire repository.And no, personal experimental code is not something I want published on an open and world-readable repository. I like and support open source, but there's a limit to what one open sources---incomplete personal work is something that falls squarely in the ``not ready for open source'' list.
I think that's about all I care to write for now. Till the next update I suppose.
Saturday, July 02, 2016
Beginning of the Second Half of the Year
In the blink of an eye, we are now at the start of July, the clear demarcation of when the second half of the year begins.
I'm not sure if this is a side effect of age, or a side effect of apparent bliss. I seem to feel as though time had passed much slower, that more than a year has passed in the time it took for only half of it.
Work is steady but a tad uncertain---we're in the middle of a transition phase after all. I've just completed my first original composition and the first draft of its arrangement and am working on my next original composition for music. I am running a little low on novel ideas but there's still four months more before I have to commit to some plot for this year's NaNoWriMo. Aikido training is restarting albeit slowly, and with a little luck and discipline, I should go for my next grading for it---it's been nearly 5 years since my last grading and it's definitely time to move on from that.
I started on the Witcher series of games earlier in the year, and now, am on the third one in the series. I am liking the lore of the Witcher itself, even reading the books right about now as I am playing The Witcher 3. There's a certain sense of depth and beauty amongst the complexities that lie behind Geralt, the titular Witcher in the video games series and book series. His on-again off-again relationship with Yennefer and his morality are an interesting insight perhaps towards how the Poles look at themselves and at the world.
The latest reboot of DOOM isn't too shabby. It feels like what Duke Nukem Forever could have been instead of the lamed out version of the game that we were presented some five or six years ago. ``Glory kills'' are just another name of the ``Mighty Foot'' attack, and the run-and-gun mechanics are just the same. The main difference is that in DOOM, there aren't any wisecracks from ye olde Doom Guy.
But ah, nostalgia. T'is a weird lens to look back into the past.
The future is getting a little brighter. Soon, I'll find myself settling down more than before, running a household, raising a family, rearing children, and then I'll be waxing about how life was not like what I had expected when I was nearing twenty.
At that point, I don't know if Blogspot is still going to be running. If it is, I should still be updating this blog, or an analogue like it.
That is perhaps the lasting ``legacy'' I can leave behind before I go.
Till the next update.
I'm not sure if this is a side effect of age, or a side effect of apparent bliss. I seem to feel as though time had passed much slower, that more than a year has passed in the time it took for only half of it.
Work is steady but a tad uncertain---we're in the middle of a transition phase after all. I've just completed my first original composition and the first draft of its arrangement and am working on my next original composition for music. I am running a little low on novel ideas but there's still four months more before I have to commit to some plot for this year's NaNoWriMo. Aikido training is restarting albeit slowly, and with a little luck and discipline, I should go for my next grading for it---it's been nearly 5 years since my last grading and it's definitely time to move on from that.
I started on the Witcher series of games earlier in the year, and now, am on the third one in the series. I am liking the lore of the Witcher itself, even reading the books right about now as I am playing The Witcher 3. There's a certain sense of depth and beauty amongst the complexities that lie behind Geralt, the titular Witcher in the video games series and book series. His on-again off-again relationship with Yennefer and his morality are an interesting insight perhaps towards how the Poles look at themselves and at the world.
The latest reboot of DOOM isn't too shabby. It feels like what Duke Nukem Forever could have been instead of the lamed out version of the game that we were presented some five or six years ago. ``Glory kills'' are just another name of the ``Mighty Foot'' attack, and the run-and-gun mechanics are just the same. The main difference is that in DOOM, there aren't any wisecracks from ye olde Doom Guy.
But ah, nostalgia. T'is a weird lens to look back into the past.
The future is getting a little brighter. Soon, I'll find myself settling down more than before, running a household, raising a family, rearing children, and then I'll be waxing about how life was not like what I had expected when I was nearing twenty.
At that point, I don't know if Blogspot is still going to be running. If it is, I should still be updating this blog, or an analogue like it.
That is perhaps the lasting ``legacy'' I can leave behind before I go.
Till the next update.
Monday, June 13, 2016
Graphics Card Upgrade and 10-holed dizi
Some time back, I picked up the news that the NVidia GTX 1080 was released. That got me thinking---was it time to update the GTX 680 currently in Elysie-II? I scoured the info-sheets to get more information on the performance characteristics of the GTX 1080, and compared it to that of the GTX 680.
There was definitely a significant improvement by the numbers. Almost 3× in fact.
So I ended up getting the ASUS GTX 1080-8G Founder's Edition. That it was a ``founder's edition'' was more fluke than planning. So far I am liking the kind of throughput I am seeing from the card. Of course, I probably should replace my aging monitor (it's one of the oldest components that have been around since I first built Elysie) especially since the LCDs along its edges are starting to fade away into white. But it's not like I'm using Elysie-II to do anything important whilst sitting in front of it---I do most of the coding and what-not through SSH-ing into the Xubuntu partition of the machine.
Speaking of Xubuntu partition, I need to install the custom drivers from NVidia on it soon. The existing drivers, possibly from the ``noveau'' package are not working at all with such a new card.
Performance-wise, the GTX 1080 seems to run much cooler than the GTX 680, even at a more punishing setting. That was one the big reasons why I chose to get it now instead of waiting for later. Running cooler in the hot and humid weather is a definite advantage.
Another big push towards getting the GTX 1080 has been because of the games on the list that I'd like to play. I had completed The Witcher and The Witcher 2, and am about to start on The Witcher 3. That last Witcher game is a demanding beast. From what I had read, my GTX 680 was going to have a hard time playing it even at low settings. I am also waiting for the price for the new DOOM game to drop so that I can get it too.
So that's at least two AAA games that require the kind of horsepower that the GTX 1080 can deliver.
I know that the GTX 1080 is supposed to be VR-ready as well, but I don't really care about it since I'm not into the whole VR nonsense. 4k gaming is also touted to be a strong point of the GTX 1080, but again, with a 1080p screen, I'd rather much prefer 1080p@60Hz smoothness than 4k whatever.
All in all, a good use of money for my own entertainment.
------
The other day, my 10-hole dizi finally made its way through the world and on to my door-step. I had asked sifu about his opinions of that instrument before, and he said that it was in general, not really worth it due to too awkward fingering and a general lack of actual pieces that demand its exclusive use. Nevertheless, I got one mostly to mess around with, and to test the particular e-commerce chain that I had not tried before.
He wasn't kidding about the awkward fingering. I found that the fingers on the left-hand suffered quite a bit of strain from trying to keep them bunched up the way one might do while holding a concert flute with a shelf, while trying to simultaneously cover all the wholes that each of them had. It also took me quite a while to figure out how to set up the correct balancing point positions so that the dizi can be held up while the fingers are racing up and down to play the various notes.
But other than that, that dizi actually has a decent tone. It is probably wise to treat it like another instrument in the dizi family as opposed to unifying it under the same ``style'' as the 6-hole dizi.
And that's all I have for now. Till the next update.
There was definitely a significant improvement by the numbers. Almost 3× in fact.
So I ended up getting the ASUS GTX 1080-8G Founder's Edition. That it was a ``founder's edition'' was more fluke than planning. So far I am liking the kind of throughput I am seeing from the card. Of course, I probably should replace my aging monitor (it's one of the oldest components that have been around since I first built Elysie) especially since the LCDs along its edges are starting to fade away into white. But it's not like I'm using Elysie-II to do anything important whilst sitting in front of it---I do most of the coding and what-not through SSH-ing into the Xubuntu partition of the machine.
Speaking of Xubuntu partition, I need to install the custom drivers from NVidia on it soon. The existing drivers, possibly from the ``noveau'' package are not working at all with such a new card.
Performance-wise, the GTX 1080 seems to run much cooler than the GTX 680, even at a more punishing setting. That was one the big reasons why I chose to get it now instead of waiting for later. Running cooler in the hot and humid weather is a definite advantage.
Another big push towards getting the GTX 1080 has been because of the games on the list that I'd like to play. I had completed The Witcher and The Witcher 2, and am about to start on The Witcher 3. That last Witcher game is a demanding beast. From what I had read, my GTX 680 was going to have a hard time playing it even at low settings. I am also waiting for the price for the new DOOM game to drop so that I can get it too.
So that's at least two AAA games that require the kind of horsepower that the GTX 1080 can deliver.
I know that the GTX 1080 is supposed to be VR-ready as well, but I don't really care about it since I'm not into the whole VR nonsense. 4k gaming is also touted to be a strong point of the GTX 1080, but again, with a 1080p screen, I'd rather much prefer 1080p@60Hz smoothness than 4k whatever.
All in all, a good use of money for my own entertainment.
------
The other day, my 10-hole dizi finally made its way through the world and on to my door-step. I had asked sifu about his opinions of that instrument before, and he said that it was in general, not really worth it due to too awkward fingering and a general lack of actual pieces that demand its exclusive use. Nevertheless, I got one mostly to mess around with, and to test the particular e-commerce chain that I had not tried before.
He wasn't kidding about the awkward fingering. I found that the fingers on the left-hand suffered quite a bit of strain from trying to keep them bunched up the way one might do while holding a concert flute with a shelf, while trying to simultaneously cover all the wholes that each of them had. It also took me quite a while to figure out how to set up the correct balancing point positions so that the dizi can be held up while the fingers are racing up and down to play the various notes.
But other than that, that dizi actually has a decent tone. It is probably wise to treat it like another instrument in the dizi family as opposed to unifying it under the same ``style'' as the 6-hole dizi.
And that's all I have for now. Till the next update.
Saturday, June 04, 2016
Sixth Month
A glass of whiskey in hand at the end of a rehearsal as the night grows deeper as I savour and ponder about things that have passed or have yet to come---I have been doing less of that lately.
Now that is definitely a good thing. It means that I am engaged enough in real life that I don't have the spare time to sit around and mope about or wax lyrical about issues imaginary and real.
It is now June. Nearly half the year gone, just like that. Things have been moving along relatively swimmingly, and well, there's really little to complain about.
Here and there, I've been doing some retrospection. I note that my predictions from the past came through somewhat, that I had indeed died when I was twenty-one. While obviously it wasn't a literal sort of death, it was a death nonetheless. What died was my perspective that the world was orderly in nature, that it altruism was a goal to strive for, that friends were forever, and that I was the most matured for my age.
Heh.
In the ten years since, I've learnt that the world was only orderly in the sort of macroscopic way that makes it easy to argue philosophically, that in reality, ``orderliness'' was among the last properties that the world has. I've also learnt that altruism, while a worthy virtue in its own right, is most definitely not the end goal that one should strive for, mostly because people in general aren't necessarily appreciative of one's altruism---better to be altruistic only within the context of close people of one's choice.
I've also learnt that friends aren't really forever---they are bound by the context (both spatial and temporal) in which they occur. Once their life trajectories start to diverge, they are at best acquaintances that one ought to keep in touch with ever so often, but the relationship between they and one will never be the same as it was. And the best part is that when (not if) that happens, it's okay---it's no one's fault. Sometimes life just happens.
And I sure as hell am not the most matured for my age.
A decade is a hell lot of time, nearly an eighth of a person's life based on modern actuary tables. I think I can guess what this decade will bring to me as I make my way towards middle age and establishing my role in society in a more concrete way. But this time, I think the journey will be slightly less harrowing since I have a boon companion now.
=)
Different, but definitely less harrowing.
Alright, enough rambling for now. Till the next update I suppose.
Now that is definitely a good thing. It means that I am engaged enough in real life that I don't have the spare time to sit around and mope about or wax lyrical about issues imaginary and real.
It is now June. Nearly half the year gone, just like that. Things have been moving along relatively swimmingly, and well, there's really little to complain about.
Here and there, I've been doing some retrospection. I note that my predictions from the past came through somewhat, that I had indeed died when I was twenty-one. While obviously it wasn't a literal sort of death, it was a death nonetheless. What died was my perspective that the world was orderly in nature, that it altruism was a goal to strive for, that friends were forever, and that I was the most matured for my age.
Heh.
In the ten years since, I've learnt that the world was only orderly in the sort of macroscopic way that makes it easy to argue philosophically, that in reality, ``orderliness'' was among the last properties that the world has. I've also learnt that altruism, while a worthy virtue in its own right, is most definitely not the end goal that one should strive for, mostly because people in general aren't necessarily appreciative of one's altruism---better to be altruistic only within the context of close people of one's choice.
I've also learnt that friends aren't really forever---they are bound by the context (both spatial and temporal) in which they occur. Once their life trajectories start to diverge, they are at best acquaintances that one ought to keep in touch with ever so often, but the relationship between they and one will never be the same as it was. And the best part is that when (not if) that happens, it's okay---it's no one's fault. Sometimes life just happens.
And I sure as hell am not the most matured for my age.
A decade is a hell lot of time, nearly an eighth of a person's life based on modern actuary tables. I think I can guess what this decade will bring to me as I make my way towards middle age and establishing my role in society in a more concrete way. But this time, I think the journey will be slightly less harrowing since I have a boon companion now.
=)
Different, but definitely less harrowing.
Alright, enough rambling for now. Till the next update I suppose.
Thursday, May 26, 2016
End of May
And May itself is coming to a close very soon. Slightly less than a week actually.
Since the last time I wrote anything here, work has increased its pace once again. It's not so much as doing something completely new, but more along the lines of refactoring/rewriting the systems given what we have learnt from our previous deployment. Had the external pressures not exist, we probably wouldn't be doing this at the rate we are currently going, but knowing what I know now compared to when we first started, I think that it is a good thing that we are doing the rewrite now.
Software, after all, needs a clean slate to work with ever so often just to ensure that the bit-rot from the crufted thinking gets removed through the process of rethinking and re-evaluating the design decisions that are made. The only reason why this isn't done as often is due to the generally monolithic nature in which software tends to be written; modularity with strongly clarifying APIs are a good way of ensuring that the modules themselves can be incrementally updated/rewritten to improve on performance without having to stall the entire system for long periods of time.
Work aside, I have finally written my first piece of non-exercise music. Entitled 暑假, it's my first attempt at writing something that is more than a few measures long. The link I place there is the direct link to the lead sheet complete with chords. For reference, all the stuff I compose can always be found from this page on my domain.
I think that I have grasped the basic concept of melody and harmony, at least pertaining to the much simpler folk-styled Chinese Orchestra music. The next step is to arrange the piece to add voices and what-not so that the orchestra itself can play. I think that I may need to read up a bit more before I can actually continue. Progress is slow at times, and the nature of composition is such that it takes time to actually think through things. Time is literally a limiting factor for composition compared to say writing, which is what I tend to do more of in comparison. In writing, time passes at the rate in which the mind chooses to let it pass, but for music composition, time passes at precisely the rate it is notated---it is, after all, an expression of sound in the time domain.
Maybe when I get more conversant with the notation form that I can simply write without having to have it played out loud, the same way I can write prose or poems simply by typing out the words without having to read them out loud to see if they make sense grammatically/idiomatically.
Well that's about it for now I suppose.
Since the last time I wrote anything here, work has increased its pace once again. It's not so much as doing something completely new, but more along the lines of refactoring/rewriting the systems given what we have learnt from our previous deployment. Had the external pressures not exist, we probably wouldn't be doing this at the rate we are currently going, but knowing what I know now compared to when we first started, I think that it is a good thing that we are doing the rewrite now.
Software, after all, needs a clean slate to work with ever so often just to ensure that the bit-rot from the crufted thinking gets removed through the process of rethinking and re-evaluating the design decisions that are made. The only reason why this isn't done as often is due to the generally monolithic nature in which software tends to be written; modularity with strongly clarifying APIs are a good way of ensuring that the modules themselves can be incrementally updated/rewritten to improve on performance without having to stall the entire system for long periods of time.
Work aside, I have finally written my first piece of non-exercise music. Entitled 暑假, it's my first attempt at writing something that is more than a few measures long. The link I place there is the direct link to the lead sheet complete with chords. For reference, all the stuff I compose can always be found from this page on my domain.
I think that I have grasped the basic concept of melody and harmony, at least pertaining to the much simpler folk-styled Chinese Orchestra music. The next step is to arrange the piece to add voices and what-not so that the orchestra itself can play. I think that I may need to read up a bit more before I can actually continue. Progress is slow at times, and the nature of composition is such that it takes time to actually think through things. Time is literally a limiting factor for composition compared to say writing, which is what I tend to do more of in comparison. In writing, time passes at the rate in which the mind chooses to let it pass, but for music composition, time passes at precisely the rate it is notated---it is, after all, an expression of sound in the time domain.
Maybe when I get more conversant with the notation form that I can simply write without having to have it played out loud, the same way I can write prose or poems simply by typing out the words without having to read them out loud to see if they make sense grammatically/idiomatically.
Well that's about it for now I suppose.
Sunday, May 01, 2016
May-Jan
It is now May.
I wanted to write something before, but could never convince myself that there was something substantial enough to warrant the effort needed to write a post like this one.
Long time readers might have realised that I hadn't written the customary rant that occurs whenever the annual ``celebration'' of my birth rolls around. It isn't so much as me deliberately forgetting to write anything, but that I was actually waiting for something to happen before I wrote anything. The said thing happened a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn't bring myself to write anything until now.
So, as per normal, I used the birthday celebration as an excuse to buy myself some cool stuff. One of them is a brand-new Kindle Voyage reader with the origami cover, nicknamed ``Eirian-IV''. She's a compact replacement of Eirian-II, whom was actually replaced with Eirian-III, my Nexus 10 tablet. The thing is, I've always liked to do my heaviest text-reading over e-ink, but as noted before, Eirian-II was fast fading away. I had used Eirian-III for a while, but the brightness that comes from staring at an LCD display was starting to annoy me. What convinced me to get the Kindle Voyage was the stupendous resolution. At 300ppi, it rivals that of the Nexus 10 (also around 300ppi), is more than 4× better than the Kindle DX (~150ppi---we're looking at area here), and has an amazing battery life. That high resolution made the 6-inch form factor tolerable, and so I got one. Eirian-IV is thus procured and is now part of my daily carry.
I got Eirian-IV a couple of months or so before my actual birthday, but didn't really write anything about her till now.
The main thing why it took me so long to write this was my Grenaditte bass flute, or Mio. An order for Mio was placed a while back, but due to a variety of reasons (some staff changes, Chinese New Year, probable company restructuring etc) it took GUO nearly 3 months before they delivered it to the shop. And when Mio finally arrived, I was right in the middle of my annual trip to the US to meet up and hang out with friends, as well as to go walk around to find geocaches.
It is of no secret that I am starting to explore the lower extremes of sound generation. I have been quite decent with messing around with the really high-pitched stuff (see also my picc, the new Garklein recorder that I got during my US trip, which superceded the sopranino recorder that I had since my days at UIUC), failing only with the highest of the high notes, i.e. everything from A7 and higher. But there is only that much one can go with the high pitched notes---they tend to get a little too annoying on the ears (anything at around 1kHz does that, and when it gets to 4kHz it gets stupid worse---try listening to the screams of a toddler for an idea on how annoying it gets). It may be super impressive and fun, but as I mentioned, it gets annoying. Now the lower extreme, that's not as well explored as that of the middle and high range. Partly because of the skill and resources required. Small instruments need some level of skill to construct, and a relatively iron will to actually play it. but larger instruments require quite a bit of actual material to build, and a fair bit of physiological conditioning to even make a sound out of it, let alone play it well. They also tend to sound way more pleasing to the ear, and in the grand scale (hur hur) of things, more octaves of them for playing with than the high stuff (around 5 octaves of low notes versus the commonly used 3 for the high ones).
So yes, a bass flute. The cheapest metal bass flute costs nearly USD10k, and weigh practically a ton (more like 2kg or so). Mio is made of Grenaditte, the same material as my picc, and weighs less, nearer 1.5kg. She also costs around half the price of the cheapest metal bass flute, while still sounding pretty solid for the price point. In short, a real steal. Of course she can't beat the well-crafted professional silver bass flute, but she is definitely a cost effective way to explore the beginning of the lower reaches of the flute family. In comparison, the standard ``bass'' dizi is only at the range of an alto flute, not counting the scary weird 巨笛 (or ``giant dizi'') that spans nearly 3m in length.Waiting for Mio was the reason why I didn't write this post any earlier.
The more astute among you will know why my Grenaditte bass flute is called Mio. I shall end on this note for now. Till the next update.
I wanted to write something before, but could never convince myself that there was something substantial enough to warrant the effort needed to write a post like this one.
Long time readers might have realised that I hadn't written the customary rant that occurs whenever the annual ``celebration'' of my birth rolls around. It isn't so much as me deliberately forgetting to write anything, but that I was actually waiting for something to happen before I wrote anything. The said thing happened a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn't bring myself to write anything until now.
So, as per normal, I used the birthday celebration as an excuse to buy myself some cool stuff. One of them is a brand-new Kindle Voyage reader with the origami cover, nicknamed ``Eirian-IV''. She's a compact replacement of Eirian-II, whom was actually replaced with Eirian-III, my Nexus 10 tablet. The thing is, I've always liked to do my heaviest text-reading over e-ink, but as noted before, Eirian-II was fast fading away. I had used Eirian-III for a while, but the brightness that comes from staring at an LCD display was starting to annoy me. What convinced me to get the Kindle Voyage was the stupendous resolution. At 300ppi, it rivals that of the Nexus 10 (also around 300ppi), is more than 4× better than the Kindle DX (~150ppi---we're looking at area here), and has an amazing battery life. That high resolution made the 6-inch form factor tolerable, and so I got one. Eirian-IV is thus procured and is now part of my daily carry.
I got Eirian-IV a couple of months or so before my actual birthday, but didn't really write anything about her till now.
The main thing why it took me so long to write this was my Grenaditte bass flute, or Mio. An order for Mio was placed a while back, but due to a variety of reasons (some staff changes, Chinese New Year, probable company restructuring etc) it took GUO nearly 3 months before they delivered it to the shop. And when Mio finally arrived, I was right in the middle of my annual trip to the US to meet up and hang out with friends, as well as to go walk around to find geocaches.
It is of no secret that I am starting to explore the lower extremes of sound generation. I have been quite decent with messing around with the really high-pitched stuff (see also my picc, the new Garklein recorder that I got during my US trip, which superceded the sopranino recorder that I had since my days at UIUC), failing only with the highest of the high notes, i.e. everything from A7 and higher. But there is only that much one can go with the high pitched notes---they tend to get a little too annoying on the ears (anything at around 1kHz does that, and when it gets to 4kHz it gets stupid worse---try listening to the screams of a toddler for an idea on how annoying it gets). It may be super impressive and fun, but as I mentioned, it gets annoying. Now the lower extreme, that's not as well explored as that of the middle and high range. Partly because of the skill and resources required. Small instruments need some level of skill to construct, and a relatively iron will to actually play it. but larger instruments require quite a bit of actual material to build, and a fair bit of physiological conditioning to even make a sound out of it, let alone play it well. They also tend to sound way more pleasing to the ear, and in the grand scale (hur hur) of things, more octaves of them for playing with than the high stuff (around 5 octaves of low notes versus the commonly used 3 for the high ones).
So yes, a bass flute. The cheapest metal bass flute costs nearly USD10k, and weigh practically a ton (more like 2kg or so). Mio is made of Grenaditte, the same material as my picc, and weighs less, nearer 1.5kg. She also costs around half the price of the cheapest metal bass flute, while still sounding pretty solid for the price point. In short, a real steal. Of course she can't beat the well-crafted professional silver bass flute, but she is definitely a cost effective way to explore the beginning of the lower reaches of the flute family. In comparison, the standard ``bass'' dizi is only at the range of an alto flute, not counting the scary weird 巨笛 (or ``giant dizi'') that spans nearly 3m in length.Waiting for Mio was the reason why I didn't write this post any earlier.
The more astute among you will know why my Grenaditte bass flute is called Mio. I shall end on this note for now. Till the next update.
Friday, April 08, 2016
Vacated Blurb
Why hello there. It has been a while since I had written anything here and with good reason too.
You see, I'm on vacation. Still am. I wouldn't have written this entry if not for the generosity of my friend who loaned me the use of his computer via the guest account.
I could, in theory, wait till I was back in SIN before I wrote anything here. But I think that it is a little late then, since I've not really written much for a long time. Nearly a month in fact.
So here I am again, pointing out that I am still around. It's really a rather bland and tasteless blurb, a placeholder until I can get my butt back into SIN and thus be more comfortable in articulating a little more on the things that I have been mulling over while I am across the Pacific ocean.
Till the next update, which shouldn't be too long, jet lag notwithstanding.
You see, I'm on vacation. Still am. I wouldn't have written this entry if not for the generosity of my friend who loaned me the use of his computer via the guest account.
I could, in theory, wait till I was back in SIN before I wrote anything here. But I think that it is a little late then, since I've not really written much for a long time. Nearly a month in fact.
So here I am again, pointing out that I am still around. It's really a rather bland and tasteless blurb, a placeholder until I can get my butt back into SIN and thus be more comfortable in articulating a little more on the things that I have been mulling over while I am across the Pacific ocean.
Till the next update, which shouldn't be too long, jet lag notwithstanding.
Friday, March 18, 2016
Internet Argument
I didn't want to write this entry for a couple of reasons. First, it is stupid o'clock now and I have another day of work to put in in a few short hours. Second, the things I'm about to talk about in this entry are seriously bugging me in a bad way, and I really do not like to write about bad things.
For the past few days, I made a series of mistakes. The entire series of mistakes can be reduced to this one common theme: I got involved in an Internet Argument.
An Internet Argument, for those of you who aren't that familiar with the neologism, is like the Myth of Sisyphus, in which an argument ad nauseum produces exactly zero (or even negative) results, no matter how much effort was put in to craft as good an argument as it is possible in the first place.
So I got trapped in one recently in a rather public way. Geocaching was supposed to be a relatively fun game where one went out to go find the myriad of geocaches armed with a trusty GPS receiver and a set of listings of geocaches that were hidden by other geocachers. In short, it's a game made and maintained by players for the players. I didn't get involve in any regional geocaching group till around two or three years since I first started, and since then, it has been a blast meeting up with other fellow geocachers and doing some of the tougher caches together.
New friendships were made and what-not.
I said `was' for good reason.
Ever so often, some rather... talented people take it on themselves to crown themselves as the local feudal lord equivalent of the community. Some example behavior include disregarding existing guidelines from the geocaching website, spam-bombing the entire island with low interesting-level caches, and in general, acting in a holier-than-thou-art attitude.
I was stuck in an Internet Argument with the most recent iteration.
This recent iteration basically came in on the scene, declared that geocaching in Singapore was ``not in high gear'', and proceeded to initially market themselves as the official regional representative. I didn't really care about anything other than the last bit, because I thought that it was rather deceitful.
And that was how a massive series of vitriol from this one person came about.
Needless to say, I was quite tired from that Internet Argument. I'm just angry now that we are allowing such... talented people to come in and thwack away at things that we like, with the sad part that we are powerless over it. If it is true talent, I feel less discontented.
It's the kind of weaselly snide-filled self-proclaimed elitism that annoys me the most. I don't usually wish harm on anyone, but for this entity, may the flames of eternal damnation smother ye for eternity for thy deplorable behaviour.
I was nearly involved in another Internet Argument.
Again without naming names, suffice to say, I don't think I can talk with this person any more. Said person has crossed into SJW territory---there is never a way to meaningfully respond to that.
Let me repeat myself: there is never a meaningful way to respond to a person who crosses into SJW territory.
I don't exist on ``social media'' to change people's thoughts, inspire people, or to do anything serious. I exist on ``social media'' because sometimes it is fun to discuss things, because the mundane can be incongruous at times, because using humour to poke fun at things demonstrates that we are comfortable enough with the topic at hand to not have to declare it as out of bounds for one reason or another to censor it.
Because declaring something as out of bounds doesn't really make it go away---it's just a way of pretending that it doesn't exist. Pretending that it doesn't exist doesn't really do anything except feed into a form of self-delusion.
I realised that it wasn't so much as the overly positives in other's lives that made me annoyed with ``social media'', it was the rather toxic environment from all the SJW-esque posts that were showing up. Sad to say, much of the SJW-esque posts came from a large portion of #cslounge, the nefarious echoing chamber of a self-selected group of... entities.
Excising them had been a good thing in my life. It went both ways actually---on IRC, they booted me off permanently; I cared earlier only because it was an addiction. Now that I'm away, I feel much better about myself. #cslounge and their infamous ilk scratched an itch I had a long time ago, but it's time to move on.
Everyone is so easily offended. Why should their offense stop me from talking about what I think is hilarious?
I think that the mark of true intelligence is the ability to hold all sides of a perspective in the head and be able to understand the merits of each side before drawing any conclusion, and that conclusions drawn must come logically from the consideration of all sides, no matter how ugly the conclusion may be. I think that was the intent behind the First Amendment made in the Bill of Rights back in the day in the US.
But I am obviously veering off on yet another tangent.
I don't think anything useful can be concluded from these observations, other than that people are easily offended, and easily offended people will be offended over the smallest of inscrutable of things, and when clear arguments are presented for one's case they will be summarily ignored or twisted out of shape just to suit the hidden agenda, ergo there's almost no need to engage with anyone who is easily offended in the context in which I use ``social media''.
Alright, it's stupid late, and I will retire to sleep.
For the past few days, I made a series of mistakes. The entire series of mistakes can be reduced to this one common theme: I got involved in an Internet Argument.
An Internet Argument, for those of you who aren't that familiar with the neologism, is like the Myth of Sisyphus, in which an argument ad nauseum produces exactly zero (or even negative) results, no matter how much effort was put in to craft as good an argument as it is possible in the first place.
So I got trapped in one recently in a rather public way. Geocaching was supposed to be a relatively fun game where one went out to go find the myriad of geocaches armed with a trusty GPS receiver and a set of listings of geocaches that were hidden by other geocachers. In short, it's a game made and maintained by players for the players. I didn't get involve in any regional geocaching group till around two or three years since I first started, and since then, it has been a blast meeting up with other fellow geocachers and doing some of the tougher caches together.
New friendships were made and what-not.
I said `was' for good reason.
Ever so often, some rather... talented people take it on themselves to crown themselves as the local feudal lord equivalent of the community. Some example behavior include disregarding existing guidelines from the geocaching website, spam-bombing the entire island with low interesting-level caches, and in general, acting in a holier-than-thou-art attitude.
I was stuck in an Internet Argument with the most recent iteration.
This recent iteration basically came in on the scene, declared that geocaching in Singapore was ``not in high gear'', and proceeded to initially market themselves as the official regional representative. I didn't really care about anything other than the last bit, because I thought that it was rather deceitful.
And that was how a massive series of vitriol from this one person came about.
Needless to say, I was quite tired from that Internet Argument. I'm just angry now that we are allowing such... talented people to come in and thwack away at things that we like, with the sad part that we are powerless over it. If it is true talent, I feel less discontented.
It's the kind of weaselly snide-filled self-proclaimed elitism that annoys me the most. I don't usually wish harm on anyone, but for this entity, may the flames of eternal damnation smother ye for eternity for thy deplorable behaviour.
I was nearly involved in another Internet Argument.
Again without naming names, suffice to say, I don't think I can talk with this person any more. Said person has crossed into SJW territory---there is never a way to meaningfully respond to that.
Let me repeat myself: there is never a meaningful way to respond to a person who crosses into SJW territory.
I don't exist on ``social media'' to change people's thoughts, inspire people, or to do anything serious. I exist on ``social media'' because sometimes it is fun to discuss things, because the mundane can be incongruous at times, because using humour to poke fun at things demonstrates that we are comfortable enough with the topic at hand to not have to declare it as out of bounds for one reason or another to censor it.
Because declaring something as out of bounds doesn't really make it go away---it's just a way of pretending that it doesn't exist. Pretending that it doesn't exist doesn't really do anything except feed into a form of self-delusion.
I realised that it wasn't so much as the overly positives in other's lives that made me annoyed with ``social media'', it was the rather toxic environment from all the SJW-esque posts that were showing up. Sad to say, much of the SJW-esque posts came from a large portion of #cslounge, the nefarious echoing chamber of a self-selected group of... entities.
Excising them had been a good thing in my life. It went both ways actually---on IRC, they booted me off permanently; I cared earlier only because it was an addiction. Now that I'm away, I feel much better about myself. #cslounge and their infamous ilk scratched an itch I had a long time ago, but it's time to move on.
Everyone is so easily offended. Why should their offense stop me from talking about what I think is hilarious?
I think that the mark of true intelligence is the ability to hold all sides of a perspective in the head and be able to understand the merits of each side before drawing any conclusion, and that conclusions drawn must come logically from the consideration of all sides, no matter how ugly the conclusion may be. I think that was the intent behind the First Amendment made in the Bill of Rights back in the day in the US.
But I am obviously veering off on yet another tangent.
I don't think anything useful can be concluded from these observations, other than that people are easily offended, and easily offended people will be offended over the smallest of inscrutable of things, and when clear arguments are presented for one's case they will be summarily ignored or twisted out of shape just to suit the hidden agenda, ergo there's almost no need to engage with anyone who is easily offended in the context in which I use ``social media''.
Alright, it's stupid late, and I will retire to sleep.
Wednesday, March 02, 2016
Contentless Blurb
I haven't written anything here in a while. There isn't anything much to bitch about recently, so I've that going for me, which is always nice.
Sometimes life is just that simple. I wake up, I get to work, I do some work, I go home, I relax, I rest. No fuss.
Sometimes of course life will through you a curve ball and you'd be fighting for your life, living from one adrenaline moment to the next. It would be nice if those moments were far and few, and thankfully for most people, that is the case.
Man, I'm already rambling before I am done with saying what I...
...well I have nothing much to say.
I should really be adding more content to my personal domain. There's at least some of the old run-on-computer projects that I still have to put up, and then there's the code rewrite for a few more tools that were in the experimental phase before I did the redesign.
Alright, I think I'm done here. This post is more to show that I'm still alive and relatively alright than anything else.
Sometimes life is just that simple. I wake up, I get to work, I do some work, I go home, I relax, I rest. No fuss.
Sometimes of course life will through you a curve ball and you'd be fighting for your life, living from one adrenaline moment to the next. It would be nice if those moments were far and few, and thankfully for most people, that is the case.
Man, I'm already rambling before I am done with saying what I...
...well I have nothing much to say.
I should really be adding more content to my personal domain. There's at least some of the old run-on-computer projects that I still have to put up, and then there's the code rewrite for a few more tools that were in the experimental phase before I did the redesign.
Alright, I think I'm done here. This post is more to show that I'm still alive and relatively alright than anything else.
Sunday, February 07, 2016
Cryptogram Tools, 6-hole dizi Fingering Charts, Earworm
I have seen many people that I know get married over the past few years. Of which, only one invited me to join in their joyous occasion, an invitation that I was, unfortunately, unable to reply favourably because I was in the middle of fighting for my sanity. It made me wonder a little in terms of just how people perceive me, friend or acquaintance: I am either such a serious person in their eyes that I am seemingly unable to share in their joy, or that I'm such a volatile person that they'd rather I not be there to make everyone think that they are not ``normal'' for having known a person like me.
Meh. I don't really think it matters. Some might even say that it is a blessing in disguise, since I am ``blessed'' in avoiding the dreaded ``red bomb''. If marriages are to be celebrated, and as a friend I'm not there, how do you think I feel?
Or do you really think that I do not feel at all?
------
In other news, I have managed to port enough of the cute-sy cryptogram tools from my old web site to my new one. Their landing page can be found here. Instead of a thousand-and-one different scripts implementing the various cipher systems, I had just one minified and compacted file instead. It also gave me an opportunity to experiment with JavaScript's notion of objects, particularly how inheritance is implemented (hint: it is not the same as in C++ or Java). So that's that.
Another rather hidden change is the re-release of my 6-hole dizi fingering charts. The basic one can be obtained from this URL while the complete one can be obtained from this other URL. The biggest difference of these new fingering charts from the the old is the removal of our dependence on MSWord to provide the layout. Both files are constructed from UTF-8 text files with little to no trickery, using this little tool that I had featured before to produce the PostScript file that gets converted into a PDF via ps2pdf. That little tool has been updated to include the glyphs from the SMP (plane 1 of the Unicode; plane 0 is regular BMP), but I had refrained from using those in the documents because there was no easy way to read the entire document at once since there is no font in the world now that can have more than 65535 glyphs at once.
But no matter. The stuff from the SMP are more useful for generating jianpu documents than fingering charts.
The more complete chart of the two has a whole bunch of new fingerings for notes that are higher than the E'-fingering using Boehm fingering notation. I have tested them on my NTS G-bangdi and have certified them as reachable, albeit stupidly. It remains for me to test those out on a qudi for additional verification, and then there's of course the translation of that to the dadi, which, having one more hole in between F♯ and E, meant that it has the chance to achieve a more precise hold on the various harmonics necessary to hit the super high notes.
What I was most proud of for the lists was discovering the G'♯ fingering that works. It works, but is excessively breathy on the bangdi---I will need to refine that a bit more, as well as confirm it on a qudi of some sort where the higher harmonics tend to be easier to reach.
All these and more will be described in fuller detail when I get about towards writing the dizi pedagogy pages.
------
Finally, I have finally found the bloody ear worm that was stuck since 2012. Here it is:And in case that video gets taken down, ``The Way Back Into Love''. And this:Maybe neither will get tossed out.
And that's all for today.
Meh. I don't really think it matters. Some might even say that it is a blessing in disguise, since I am ``blessed'' in avoiding the dreaded ``red bomb''. If marriages are to be celebrated, and as a friend I'm not there, how do you think I feel?
Or do you really think that I do not feel at all?
------
In other news, I have managed to port enough of the cute-sy cryptogram tools from my old web site to my new one. Their landing page can be found here. Instead of a thousand-and-one different scripts implementing the various cipher systems, I had just one minified and compacted file instead. It also gave me an opportunity to experiment with JavaScript's notion of objects, particularly how inheritance is implemented (hint: it is not the same as in C++ or Java). So that's that.
Another rather hidden change is the re-release of my 6-hole dizi fingering charts. The basic one can be obtained from this URL while the complete one can be obtained from this other URL. The biggest difference of these new fingering charts from the the old is the removal of our dependence on MSWord to provide the layout. Both files are constructed from UTF-8 text files with little to no trickery, using this little tool that I had featured before to produce the PostScript file that gets converted into a PDF via ps2pdf. That little tool has been updated to include the glyphs from the SMP (plane 1 of the Unicode; plane 0 is regular BMP), but I had refrained from using those in the documents because there was no easy way to read the entire document at once since there is no font in the world now that can have more than 65535 glyphs at once.
But no matter. The stuff from the SMP are more useful for generating jianpu documents than fingering charts.
The more complete chart of the two has a whole bunch of new fingerings for notes that are higher than the E'-fingering using Boehm fingering notation. I have tested them on my NTS G-bangdi and have certified them as reachable, albeit stupidly. It remains for me to test those out on a qudi for additional verification, and then there's of course the translation of that to the dadi, which, having one more hole in between F♯ and E, meant that it has the chance to achieve a more precise hold on the various harmonics necessary to hit the super high notes.
What I was most proud of for the lists was discovering the G'♯ fingering that works. It works, but is excessively breathy on the bangdi---I will need to refine that a bit more, as well as confirm it on a qudi of some sort where the higher harmonics tend to be easier to reach.
All these and more will be described in fuller detail when I get about towards writing the dizi pedagogy pages.
------
Finally, I have finally found the bloody ear worm that was stuck since 2012. Here it is:And in case that video gets taken down, ``The Way Back Into Love''. And this:Maybe neither will get tossed out.
And that's all for today.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
``The_Laptop's Domain'' Re-Design
I've had my personal domain for the upwards of five-ish years now, and it felt like it was high time for a re-design. There were a few reasons why this was so:
When I first started on my own website back in late 2009/early 2010, I did not have much of a structure to begin with. It was simplistic to say the least. But as time went by, I added more and more unrelated content items, some of them necessary, some of them merely for padding (remember the White Noise and Pink Noise under Digital Music?). This made the flat structure that I was using untenable.
And then there was the whole shebang I did to make things mobile friendly. I won't go into the details here (See here for the gory details), but suffice to say, the script I wrote was not scalable to a richer set up. Thus it was the first thing I rewrote.
Then I looked into the design itself. I didn't like the fact that navigation was particularly frumpy, and that there were many horizontal lines breaking things up. I found it unnecessary especially since I am already relying on variations in size of the text to segregate information. Speaking of fonts, I was also getting appalled at the rather unreadableness of Candara (ironic since this blog is using Candara now), and so had to do something.
The result is what you now see at http://thelaptop.info/. I have retained the colour scheme from the past, tweaked the layout, updated the font to use Open Sans (self-hosted because I know some folks don't really like the fact that Google can track their web access patterns through the resource pull), and overhauled much of the words used. Here are some sample screen shots comparing the old and the new design:
Here we see the much more compact yet loose layout on the home page. When JavaScript is enabled, additional left and right arrows to jump backward and forward in history are provided.
Now we look at samples of really long prose in both the old and new designs. The text is slightly larger but is definitely more readable.
I have removed as much of the ``toggle the list'' tags by conflating them into the ellipsis metaphor that I use everywhere to collapse away objects.
Tables also see a light adjustment to sit more comfortably in the middle.
The single most fun thing about using HTML5: reverse numbered lists to better represent the reverse chronological order.
At this point I can say that the basic skeleton of the new website is in place. Professional credentials, writing, reading and shopping lists are already ported, as well as the grandfathered in tuning layer I wrote for Nyquist---I did not attempt to convert that one to the new format, and it is the only part of the old site that is retained wholesale. Stubs for the new categories are put in place, and I will slowly port over the old material over as and when they are relevant.
I had also done quite a bit of magic in .htaccess to reduce the amount of changes I need to effect outside of the domain, so for the most part everything ought to be transparent.
I can go on, but I think that's as much as I want to really convey.
Go forth and enjoy the new website design!
- The content is getting increasingly haphazard and hard to manage---I hand-code every page without the use of any CMS to make the loading speed as fast as possible and the hosting costs as low as possible.
- XHTML 1.0 Strict was starting to feel very limiting when I tried to write up some online tools/games.
- I was using enough of the ``reverse chronologically ordered list'' to demand the use of reversed in the list tags, but that was not supported in XHTML 1.0.
- Did I mention that maintenance was a nightmare?
When I first started on my own website back in late 2009/early 2010, I did not have much of a structure to begin with. It was simplistic to say the least. But as time went by, I added more and more unrelated content items, some of them necessary, some of them merely for padding (remember the White Noise and Pink Noise under Digital Music?). This made the flat structure that I was using untenable.
And then there was the whole shebang I did to make things mobile friendly. I won't go into the details here (See here for the gory details), but suffice to say, the script I wrote was not scalable to a richer set up. Thus it was the first thing I rewrote.
Then I looked into the design itself. I didn't like the fact that navigation was particularly frumpy, and that there were many horizontal lines breaking things up. I found it unnecessary especially since I am already relying on variations in size of the text to segregate information. Speaking of fonts, I was also getting appalled at the rather unreadableness of Candara (ironic since this blog is using Candara now), and so had to do something.
The result is what you now see at http://thelaptop.info/. I have retained the colour scheme from the past, tweaked the layout, updated the font to use Open Sans (self-hosted because I know some folks don't really like the fact that Google can track their web access patterns through the resource pull), and overhauled much of the words used. Here are some sample screen shots comparing the old and the new design:
At this point I can say that the basic skeleton of the new website is in place. Professional credentials, writing, reading and shopping lists are already ported, as well as the grandfathered in tuning layer I wrote for Nyquist---I did not attempt to convert that one to the new format, and it is the only part of the old site that is retained wholesale. Stubs for the new categories are put in place, and I will slowly port over the old material over as and when they are relevant.
I had also done quite a bit of magic in .htaccess to reduce the amount of changes I need to effect outside of the domain, so for the most part everything ought to be transparent.
I can go on, but I think that's as much as I want to really convey.
Go forth and enjoy the new website design!
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
An Observation
This has been a long coming entry.
Recently there were a couple of comments made with respect to... various social observations. Comments that one can easily finger as being out of touch with reality at best and frivolous lip service at worst.
It made me start to think about the unsteady balance between criticisms/comments from an ``expert'' and the same from ``common sense''.
On the one hand, the ``expert'' is a person who has spent lots of time and effort studying the particular social observation. He/she has probably formulated various formal hypotheses and done some testing on them to confirm/deny the cause of the said observation. He/she has staked his/her entire career into looking deeply into such matters under his/her domain of expertise, and therefore whatever he/she says regarding their domain of expertise should not be taken lightly, since it is generally well considered.
On the other hand, the ``expert'' may be systematically biased due to the prevailing dogma present in their domain, causing tunnel vision that is compatible with said dogma. Such tunnel vision can lead to the ``expert'' missing the entire point of the true causes of the social observation since the systematic biases disallow any alternative explanations for the observation. Under such circumstances, the ``common sense'' perspective is likely to provide a better intuition of what is going on, and can be a good source for further research follow up in the way the Ig Nobel Prizes try to reward.
But proving ``common sense'' is not as glamorous as advancing a dogmatic theory, or if the ``expert'' is lucky, a completely new perspective that no one has seen. Thus much of the ``expert'' population ends up ignoring ``common sense'' as much as possible, which leads to... interesting pronouncements that are simultaneously prognostic and vague.
All in all, if the purpose is merely to explain, I think we can stop right here and be done. The problem arises when actual public policies are to be crafted based on such social observations and their causes to address a particular concern. At what point should ``common sense'' be a strong enough voice to demonstrate that the prevailing ``expert'' opinion is completely inapplicable?
I think that is one of the fundamental problems that affect the way modern democracies and republics are run.
Recently there were a couple of comments made with respect to... various social observations. Comments that one can easily finger as being out of touch with reality at best and frivolous lip service at worst.
It made me start to think about the unsteady balance between criticisms/comments from an ``expert'' and the same from ``common sense''.
On the one hand, the ``expert'' is a person who has spent lots of time and effort studying the particular social observation. He/she has probably formulated various formal hypotheses and done some testing on them to confirm/deny the cause of the said observation. He/she has staked his/her entire career into looking deeply into such matters under his/her domain of expertise, and therefore whatever he/she says regarding their domain of expertise should not be taken lightly, since it is generally well considered.
On the other hand, the ``expert'' may be systematically biased due to the prevailing dogma present in their domain, causing tunnel vision that is compatible with said dogma. Such tunnel vision can lead to the ``expert'' missing the entire point of the true causes of the social observation since the systematic biases disallow any alternative explanations for the observation. Under such circumstances, the ``common sense'' perspective is likely to provide a better intuition of what is going on, and can be a good source for further research follow up in the way the Ig Nobel Prizes try to reward.
But proving ``common sense'' is not as glamorous as advancing a dogmatic theory, or if the ``expert'' is lucky, a completely new perspective that no one has seen. Thus much of the ``expert'' population ends up ignoring ``common sense'' as much as possible, which leads to... interesting pronouncements that are simultaneously prognostic and vague.
All in all, if the purpose is merely to explain, I think we can stop right here and be done. The problem arises when actual public policies are to be crafted based on such social observations and their causes to address a particular concern. At what point should ``common sense'' be a strong enough voice to demonstrate that the prevailing ``expert'' opinion is completely inapplicable?
I think that is one of the fundamental problems that affect the way modern democracies and republics are run.
Friday, January 01, 2016
Quick Summary
So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2015:
That's an average of 0.18 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.77 last year. It's a little low, but I think that it is representative of the new normal for me, where I no longer have the steady supply of stimulating events (both good and bad) that come from intensive social interactions that come from being in a pure academic environment.
The past year itself passed by with very little lows, much to my satisfaction. I now have a steady companion who will be transferring her base of operations back into Singapore, and she has reminded me of a life that I had once denied myself of because I had been hurt quite badly due to my naïveté in thinking that people can and will change, not to mention the whole loss of trust in people due to... let's not talk about it here since it is already in the past.
Last year saw the whole marketing hubbub that was ``SG50'', the year-long government-supported marketing blitz to celebrate Singapore's 50 years of independence. Despite my interpretation of just how tacky that sounded, I was probably involved in more events relating to SG50 than I would care to admit. My interest in my music has heightened and levelled up, partly because of the co-influence of my companion and partner, partly from an exposure to the ``real'' world of professional music through a collaboration or two, and partly from a candid realisation of the trials and tribulations to pursue an ideal. I reaffirmed my love of music not as a means of bragging about my prowess, but as a means of expression, which goes as far as standing up for my own thoughts and views against the establishment.
No regrets there.
I am starting to enjoy the new-found feeling of assertion. Unlike the past where I was subjugated in one form or another and always having to play toady to ensure survival, being older now and a working adult has given me more leeway and conviction to assert myself, that I can think and am willing to think, and am unwilling to let anyone cow me to follow their own perspective of rightness and wrongness without having a convincing argument. I find that I am clearer in my values, and am more willing to assert my values in the face of opposition, mostly because I am now less beholden to many external parties.
In short, I am fast learning how to be my own man.
The value of a good mentor is often understated, and my interaction with an elder is the reason why there is sudden clarity in many things. There is no shame to ask for help and advice when one needs it---it is when one has doubts and yet refuse to seek advice despite spending time thinking through that one is the fool.
Much of my free time not spent on practising on my 笛子 or piccolo/flute was spent on reading. My martial arts training had been slackening from the haze and general laziness, and I will be bringing them back on track this year. Like my companion says, there will be some big and wonderful things happening in the year ahead, and like her, I am looking forward to them as well.
To the future and beyond!
- 22 poems posted here
- 39 essays/rants posted here
- 3 prose/stories posted here
- 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
That's an average of 0.18 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.77 last year. It's a little low, but I think that it is representative of the new normal for me, where I no longer have the steady supply of stimulating events (both good and bad) that come from intensive social interactions that come from being in a pure academic environment.
The past year itself passed by with very little lows, much to my satisfaction. I now have a steady companion who will be transferring her base of operations back into Singapore, and she has reminded me of a life that I had once denied myself of because I had been hurt quite badly due to my naïveté in thinking that people can and will change, not to mention the whole loss of trust in people due to... let's not talk about it here since it is already in the past.
Last year saw the whole marketing hubbub that was ``SG50'', the year-long government-supported marketing blitz to celebrate Singapore's 50 years of independence. Despite my interpretation of just how tacky that sounded, I was probably involved in more events relating to SG50 than I would care to admit. My interest in my music has heightened and levelled up, partly because of the co-influence of my companion and partner, partly from an exposure to the ``real'' world of professional music through a collaboration or two, and partly from a candid realisation of the trials and tribulations to pursue an ideal. I reaffirmed my love of music not as a means of bragging about my prowess, but as a means of expression, which goes as far as standing up for my own thoughts and views against the establishment.
No regrets there.
I am starting to enjoy the new-found feeling of assertion. Unlike the past where I was subjugated in one form or another and always having to play toady to ensure survival, being older now and a working adult has given me more leeway and conviction to assert myself, that I can think and am willing to think, and am unwilling to let anyone cow me to follow their own perspective of rightness and wrongness without having a convincing argument. I find that I am clearer in my values, and am more willing to assert my values in the face of opposition, mostly because I am now less beholden to many external parties.
In short, I am fast learning how to be my own man.
The value of a good mentor is often understated, and my interaction with an elder is the reason why there is sudden clarity in many things. There is no shame to ask for help and advice when one needs it---it is when one has doubts and yet refuse to seek advice despite spending time thinking through that one is the fool.
Much of my free time not spent on practising on my 笛子 or piccolo/flute was spent on reading. My martial arts training had been slackening from the haze and general laziness, and I will be bringing them back on track this year. Like my companion says, there will be some big and wonderful things happening in the year ahead, and like her, I am looking forward to them as well.
To the future and beyond!
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