Marching On

It is, for better or worse, almost the half-way mark for the month of March. I felt this compulsion to write something in this lightly neglected blog, maybe from a sense of nostalgia, or a sense of defiance, depending on how one wants to look at things.

There really isn't much to write out here these days.

Actually, that is a blatant lie.

Actually, that last sentence was the blatant lie.

The fact of the matter is, there are lots to write about---life is starting to get interesting in ways that I don't claim to be completely happiness-inducing. But much of those things cannot be written out here.

Such is the caveat that comes with a semi-public blog such as this one.

2017 had began in a most farcical way, and it's systematically getting worse. I don't write all that I want to write here because it's starting to get dangerous enough in the world to write things that are dissenting of the public opinion, evidence-backed or not.

Populism is on the rise, and with it, the general sense of privilege that comes from the tyranny of the majority. Couple this with the concept of an echo chamber, and one would basically come to the same conclusion that I have made.

It's no longer safe to say anything online.

Not that it was safe to begin with---it just got less safe over time.

Because this time, words can and will be taken out of context against one, and in places where such out-of-context word-taking can lead to real-world ramifications.

If you cannot read between the lines of what I'm saying here, congratulations. You're either very safe, or very stupid---I cannot tell which it is, nor do I want to venture a guess.

I just want to add that, in general, I have a sense of frustration that isn't really abating. Part of me wants to scream out in the middle of an empty field just to release all the pent up annoyance, while another part of me just wants to silently suppress it all and pretend to the obedient automaton that everyone is looking for.

As I'm wending my way through my fourth decade of existence, the costs of open-minded thinking have gone past my threshold of comfort. I don't believe that I'm an opinionated person, but the level of silliness (unintentional or otherwise) exhibited by some people have made me seriously want to stamp my foot and scream at them that they are horrifically wrong about the situation, their assumptions, and worst still, the assumptions that they believe that other people have.

Urgh. So angsty.

Anyway, back to less annoying things in life. Lots of things are afoot for this year, and I am still looking forward to them despite all the other negativity that I'm seeing. As the old adage goes, ``would it really matter five years from now?'' Indeed, no point letting bad things get under my skin---in the long run, we'd all be dead anyway.

At least I've made peace with the Universe---very few regrets are left in me, and I intend fully to keep things that way.

I've been working on some new music recently, and have been revamping my online notes for the dizi. The current form (not linking because the URL will be rendered obsolete anyway) is one overly long HTML page that takes forever to load, takes even longer to read, and is almost impossible to comprehend unless the reader is me. I am breaking it up into more readable chunks of articles, and are in the process of adding more diagrams to illustrate the points. The writing is also being revised to make it easier to comprehend.

The system I'm using is a bespoke one that facilitates it being hosted on a static HTTP server (i.e. the one that I'm currently using for my domain). It's more akin to a blog mechanism, except with statically generated pages instead of the dynamic ones that are prevalent now.

I'm still thinking whether it is time to actually migrate all my current blogs on Blogger to my own self-hosted system, and have not really come to any conclusion yet. Blogger is undergoing small but increasingly annoying amount of changes over time, and it is starting to bug the heck out of me.

Well, what else is there to add before I sign off for this post?