I seriously am not intending of making it a regular thing of writing an entry about once a week. But for now, it seems like it is going to be this way for a while.
I have a busted up right shoulder. It's basically a sprain on one of the anterior ligaments---it's going to take about six weeks for it to be fully recovered, assuming that I do the right thing and not aggravate it. This means that I can't do any of the usual morning exercises from now till roughly the end of NaNoWriMo. This is what happens when I use bad mechanics to move masses around (15kg on the first in an awkward ``up shrugged'' shoulder angle, 20kg ×2 for the water cooler refills). It makes typing on the laptop rather difficult, since the normal typing angle has my arms extended forwards.
I was given some strong NSAIDs in addition to a mild oral steroid dose to reduce the inflammation to reduce the pain and aggravation on the ligament through all the movements. It's definitely much better now, despite not being on any of the meds for the last two days or so. I just need to remember to not load up my arm with weights.
In other news, after more than a year, I can finally start cycling to and fro the office again. It had always been one of my wishes when I started work at the new place, but the time was never opportune---within a couple of weeks of first arriving and settling in, I was ``shipped off'' off-site to work on a project that was... problematic for six months or so, before the whole COVID-19 pandemic kicked in with us having to work from home due to the ``circuit breaker''. After the so-called Phase Two kicked in, I was told to return to work at the office, but my original assigned space was no longer mine to use, and ended up being a nomad, which made stowing away a foldable bicycle in the office a tough thing to do.
It was only recently that we had our office space sorted out that I could finally bring out my bicycle to cycle. And it has definitely helped my mood a lot. In place of the exercises that I did in the morning, I know replaced it with semi-cardio from the daily trip to and fro the office. I am amused that my legs could really take a beating---the round trip was about 8 miles, but every now and then I would throw in a 12-mile ``north east riverine loop'' run.
Because of one such move on Friday, I am pleased to announce that my Eddington Number for cycling is at E15.
I wondered if the cycling was something that was safe for my upper arms or not... so far it seems like that are no adverse side effects. I had obtained a better lifting handle for moving my bicycle about with my left (i.e. off) hand, and have been mindful in not using bad mechanics. The steering on my bicycle is very light, and thus there was little need to jerk my handle bars much.
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I mentioned how cycling was improving my mood. That is a fact. I think the rush from the physical activity was acting as an anti-depressant the way running would be done by me in the past when I was studying in the US to act as an anti-depressant. Already I feel significantly less affected by intrusive thoughts---when the body is adequately tired out through the physical activity, there just seems to be less energy left for the mind to come up with random, unnecessary, and downright bizarre ideation. It is also perhaps a side effect of just time and God doing their things in helping me to heal, which is a hilarious observation considering the massive amounts of changes that I am forced to seriously deal with in general.
But those are thoughts for a different medium, like something that is on paper. You know, like a paper journal.
I recently found out about ElectroBOOM, a cool Youtube dude who talks about electrical and electronics engineering in a way that is not unlike old school Mythbusters or even (haha) Brainiac. The content is really cool, the presentation is a good mix of funny accent, physical humour, and self-deprecative aphorisms all rolled into one. I really recommend giving his Youtube channel a watch to learn something. He does plug his sponsors in his videos, but they are often done in a tasteful way that makes it clear that it is a plug, while still maintaining some kind of continuity with respect to the content of the video that he was making.
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October is almost done, just another 12+ days more to go. And with that, the self-imposed hermitting is likely to end temporarily as we transit into the annual National Novel Writing Month of November. I am probably ready to meet up with people again when next month rolls around, but as always, it's all about the circumstances. It is not that I have everything figured out already---I don't---but that I suppose it is time to just reconnect with people who claimed to be my friends once again.
I have lost my best friend already, and I think that losing even more friends, best or otherwise, really isn't going to be good for my future mental health.
In some ways, I don't think that I have fully resolved the issues that are in my head. In many ways, I think I have just put them aside in the vault that used to be called ``MT's feelings'', the same place that all my feelings have resided in since before I turned twenty. I'm not sure why I opened up that vault when I was twenty-one, and right now, I'm not sure if I want to keep it open still. Only God will know what I ought to do with it, but for now, I'm just putting things away where they cannot harm me.
Jesus Christ is my personal saviour, and in many senses of the word, my life is no longer mine to dictate but His to control.
Maybe I am going to end up becoming even more insufferable. Initially, I was hard to tolerate because I was just so... cerebral about everything. Throw in now the born-again discovery of personal salvation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, would it just be the case that my destiny is to be one who will forever be apart from the rest of the world?
Is that... a good thing?
Sunday, October 18, 2020
Sunday, October 11, 2020
Doom Eternal and Dizi Research
The traditional witching hour has struck once again, and I feel compelled to fill in the void with a little bit of verbiage.
The Monday passed, I took a day of leave. Doesn't matter what the original plan was, but it evolved into a type of R&R for myself so that I don't get completely burnt out. What happened in the end was that I took the opportunity to run a few errands. Some of the errands included sending my bicycle off for servicing (the seat post was sliding a little too often for my taste), and purchasing replacement cup cushions for my over-the-ear headphones.
Those on their own aren't worthy of any major exposition. I just want to share that B-spokes offers damn good service. Very responsive, and very good workmanship. Maybe this is relevant to some of the readers of my blog.
I've also finished reading the Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (2nd Edition) book by Stuart Russell & Peter Norvig. A good refresher in many ways, though the contents may be a bit dated at this point. But anything at this stage is better than just sitting there and vegetating away my training as I do work that is nearly orthogonal to what I have been trained in for about 40% of my life.
------
In other less depressing news, I found out an interesting dizi fingering combination for the elusive low instrument B-C trill. In more traditional terms, when we are using ç’音作5̣, the 3-4 trill is notoriously non-existent. Most ways of treating it are to just play it as 3-4♯ instead, that is, by raising the left index finger and putting it down (assuming orthodox stance). Much of the dizi repertoire assumes this type of trill, based on the principle that trills are to be counted by alternation along the instrument hole design, as opposed to that of the scale used as in ye olde western music concept.
If we were to play 3-4 trill (or instrument B-C trill) normally, it would involve some complex acrobatics for the left hand, alternating between 6 and 54 (using the usual dizi hole numbering strategy). It's horrific.
The inspiration came when I was looking at the 4-5 trill (instrument C-D trill). It involved an alternation of 5421 and 54321, i.e. merely moving the right index finger. I messed with 542 and 5432, and heard a sound whose pitch was a tad sharper than instrument B. So I lowered it a smidgen by half-covering 1, and voila---I got a working instrument B-C trill just like that. This has the advantage of not having to flatten the instrument C pitch through lipping 5432. Works best for extended trills---if it is of a short enough duration, I suppose that alternating between 542 and 5432 is somewhat workable.
Naturally, I've reworked the tremolo fingering chart to reflect this finding.
------
Work-wise, let's just say that things are getting more depressing in a different way. I'm not going to talk much more about it right now---there will be the right time and right place to say more; the time is not now.
I've gotten back to playing Doom Eternal on Eileen-II, in a bid to actually complete the game. I've started to get used to the so-called ``alpha rotation'' mechanism---it involves firing and then immediately switching among the three big single-shot conventional weapons of the Super Shotgun (SSG), the Ballista, and the Rocket Launcher using the mouse wheel.
The original ``alpha rotation'' was a technique for maximised DPS from Doom 2016, and it was done with the Gauss Cannon instead of the Ballista, and often combined with the glitch for ``instant Siege mode''. I first heard/saw it during the speedruns for the original Doom 2016. The key idea here is to use fast weapon switching [via the mousewheel] to interrupt the reloading animation for each of these weapons.
I cannot do the complete rotation now---I'm often just doing SSG↔Ballista. Sometimes I manage to do the SSG→Ballista→SSG→Rocket Launcher→SSG rotation. The main reason why I don't often bring the Rocket Launcher into rotation is that it is still my first play through, and I don't know where the enemy spawns are, and so having a weapon whose AOE can damage myself badly when fired point-blank really isn't that good of an idea.
But the ``alpha rotation'' definitely made the late-game for Doom Eternal that much more manageable. Previously, I would probably just run around with the SSG and maybe throwing in some Chaingun fun to help thin out the horde.
------
Anyway, I think that's about it for this entry. I need to take a shower, and then go turn in for the night.
Till the next update then.
Edit: Made a mistake. The weapon that I used in my interpretation of the ``alpha rotation'' is ``Ballista''---the ``Arbalest'' is the mod that is used for charging to fire a single over-powered shot, sort of like siege mode for the Gauss cannon.
The Monday passed, I took a day of leave. Doesn't matter what the original plan was, but it evolved into a type of R&R for myself so that I don't get completely burnt out. What happened in the end was that I took the opportunity to run a few errands. Some of the errands included sending my bicycle off for servicing (the seat post was sliding a little too often for my taste), and purchasing replacement cup cushions for my over-the-ear headphones.
Those on their own aren't worthy of any major exposition. I just want to share that B-spokes offers damn good service. Very responsive, and very good workmanship. Maybe this is relevant to some of the readers of my blog.
I've also finished reading the Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (2nd Edition) book by Stuart Russell & Peter Norvig. A good refresher in many ways, though the contents may be a bit dated at this point. But anything at this stage is better than just sitting there and vegetating away my training as I do work that is nearly orthogonal to what I have been trained in for about 40% of my life.
------
In other less depressing news, I found out an interesting dizi fingering combination for the elusive low instrument B-C trill. In more traditional terms, when we are using ç’音作5̣, the 3-4 trill is notoriously non-existent. Most ways of treating it are to just play it as 3-4♯ instead, that is, by raising the left index finger and putting it down (assuming orthodox stance). Much of the dizi repertoire assumes this type of trill, based on the principle that trills are to be counted by alternation along the instrument hole design, as opposed to that of the scale used as in ye olde western music concept.
If we were to play 3-4 trill (or instrument B-C trill) normally, it would involve some complex acrobatics for the left hand, alternating between 6 and 54 (using the usual dizi hole numbering strategy). It's horrific.
The inspiration came when I was looking at the 4-5 trill (instrument C-D trill). It involved an alternation of 5421 and 54321, i.e. merely moving the right index finger. I messed with 542 and 5432, and heard a sound whose pitch was a tad sharper than instrument B. So I lowered it a smidgen by half-covering 1, and voila---I got a working instrument B-C trill just like that. This has the advantage of not having to flatten the instrument C pitch through lipping 5432. Works best for extended trills---if it is of a short enough duration, I suppose that alternating between 542 and 5432 is somewhat workable.
Naturally, I've reworked the tremolo fingering chart to reflect this finding.
------
Work-wise, let's just say that things are getting more depressing in a different way. I'm not going to talk much more about it right now---there will be the right time and right place to say more; the time is not now.
I've gotten back to playing Doom Eternal on Eileen-II, in a bid to actually complete the game. I've started to get used to the so-called ``alpha rotation'' mechanism---it involves firing and then immediately switching among the three big single-shot conventional weapons of the Super Shotgun (SSG), the Ballista, and the Rocket Launcher using the mouse wheel.
The original ``alpha rotation'' was a technique for maximised DPS from Doom 2016, and it was done with the Gauss Cannon instead of the Ballista, and often combined with the glitch for ``instant Siege mode''. I first heard/saw it during the speedruns for the original Doom 2016. The key idea here is to use fast weapon switching [via the mousewheel] to interrupt the reloading animation for each of these weapons.
I cannot do the complete rotation now---I'm often just doing SSG↔Ballista. Sometimes I manage to do the SSG→Ballista→SSG→Rocket Launcher→SSG rotation. The main reason why I don't often bring the Rocket Launcher into rotation is that it is still my first play through, and I don't know where the enemy spawns are, and so having a weapon whose AOE can damage myself badly when fired point-blank really isn't that good of an idea.
But the ``alpha rotation'' definitely made the late-game for Doom Eternal that much more manageable. Previously, I would probably just run around with the SSG and maybe throwing in some Chaingun fun to help thin out the horde.
------
Anyway, I think that's about it for this entry. I need to take a shower, and then go turn in for the night.
Till the next update then.
Edit: Made a mistake. The weapon that I used in my interpretation of the ``alpha rotation'' is ``Ballista''---the ``Arbalest'' is the mod that is used for charging to fire a single over-powered shot, sort of like siege mode for the Gauss cannon.
Saturday, October 03, 2020
Each Day I Wake Up, I Thank the Lord
``Praise to the Lord! I thank You for providing me with another day in this world to do what I can with the talents You gave me that I honed through Your guidance. Amen.''
That is how I start my mornings these days, the moment I wake up proper. It's my way of reminding myself that I am not allowed to just die---my work for the Lord on this planet isn't quite done yet. If it is my time to go, He'd just take me like that, and I wouldn't be the wiser.
So each day that I can wake up, is a day of blessing, no matter what comes by. Work is happening still, and thanks to recent developments in the space of my industry, schedules are messed up all over again in different and more fascinating ways, and I find myself being torn in all directions once more.
I believe that amid the madness, there is a grander plan being set in motion that I am not fully aware of yet. With that solidly in mind, I just grit my teeth, pray for wisdom, strength, and patience, and go through the day. Things will need to be handled, I will handle them, and they somehow work out alright. Really, when the Lord is in charge, there is little that I need to worry about.
------
Nothing truly bad has happened---I'm writing here only as a sort of inertia. I have already been writing here once a week, I might as well keep on writing. It at least acts as indirect proof that I have been keeping with my word of not offing myself.
I'll stop here for now. Till the next update.
That is how I start my mornings these days, the moment I wake up proper. It's my way of reminding myself that I am not allowed to just die---my work for the Lord on this planet isn't quite done yet. If it is my time to go, He'd just take me like that, and I wouldn't be the wiser.
So each day that I can wake up, is a day of blessing, no matter what comes by. Work is happening still, and thanks to recent developments in the space of my industry, schedules are messed up all over again in different and more fascinating ways, and I find myself being torn in all directions once more.
I believe that amid the madness, there is a grander plan being set in motion that I am not fully aware of yet. With that solidly in mind, I just grit my teeth, pray for wisdom, strength, and patience, and go through the day. Things will need to be handled, I will handle them, and they somehow work out alright. Really, when the Lord is in charge, there is little that I need to worry about.
------
Nothing truly bad has happened---I'm writing here only as a sort of inertia. I have already been writing here once a week, I might as well keep on writing. It at least acts as indirect proof that I have been keeping with my word of not offing myself.
I'll stop here for now. Till the next update.
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