Friday, April 23, 2021

Scratching Various Itch

Ah... feels great to be sitting in front of Eileen-II to write yet another blog entry after a day of [sorta] gallivanting about. I really could get used to this.

I scratched a few itches today. The first of which was to sort out my Tex-Mex craving with stuff'd at 90 Hougang Ave 10, #01-38, Singapore 538766, near Hougang Mall. Yes, I said Tex-Mex, and I'm well aware that stuff'd is ``mexican, turkish, delicious''. But that applies only if one is ordering the kebab, which I did not. I just went for the Beef Con Carne Burrito with all of the Standard Base and Standard Toppings, with Habanera and Sweet Mustard Sauce. It is mmm mmm good, naturally. I am really happy that stuff'd exists in Singapore now---back in the day circa 2011, I was craving burritos really bad after having come back from the US and learning about Chipotle Mexican Grill, which served delicious burritos as large as my head. There was no easy-to-find burrito place that tasted great---everywhere was some kind of bowdlerised restaurant that charged an exorbitant fee (think SGD 25+) per [tiny-ass] burrito(!). It's kinda like heading out to somewhere not Singapore, and having to pay like SGD 30 equivalent for friggin' Hainanese Chicken Rice in Filet Mignon-sized portions. stuff'd came into existence only in 2014, and it has been a true godsend to me throughout the years that I spent in Singapore after returning from my second round of overseas studies.

Like all things that I love, eating the burrito from stuff'd is bittersweet. I think it was recommended to me by Chara back in the day, and we had many a date spent just sitting at some random place and chowing down on them burritos. It was always burritos, whether it was the chicken or the beef con carne. Well, all these memories are in the past now, and I need to create new memories to move on, and so I shall.

The other itch that I scratched was to go play with my friend's cat. His cat is new, having only been recently adopted from Kittycare Heaven, located at 80 Lim Chu Kang Lane 1, Singapore 718911. He is a real beauty, being a ragdoll cross, and is really friendly too. It took a while, but I was soon scritching his nape, back, and even his belly. He mewed, and purred quite a lot as well. He was still young though, estimated to be around 9 months old or so. According to my friend, he eats a stupid amount of meat, nearly 8× the quantity that his previous cat ate per day, at a rate that would rival any of the conscript soldiers in the SAF.

He is a sweet thing, and I am glad that my friend and his wife adopted him. God only knows they really need a joy-maker in their life, ever since their old cat passed away some time ago from kidney failure.

The final itch that I scratched today was more tweaking of the header colouring and margins. Last time I talked about using colour to ``pop'' the section header out---this time I added more highlights for the sub-section headers and lower to make it easier to pick them out in a wall of text. One version of them can be seen at this dizi article [with missing diagrams], which also shows the adjustments I did to the figure caption as well.

I am satisfied with the results---they provide that additional visual cue on the document structure that the older method of messing with underlines and small-caps alone could not do as effectively. The highlights started at gradient from 50% of width at h3 level, before dividing by 2.5 each time we increase the header depth, till we get to 3.2% of width at h6 level. Why the 2.5 factor? I'm not too sure; I only remembered that a factor of 2 looked lame, while a factor of 3 seemed to decay too much. On hindsight, perhaps I should have messed with using φ or even e as factors, but it's too late---I'm too lazy to do even more adjustments now.

Originally, these highlights used the same starting colour as for the h2 level, but I decided to lighten it up a bit more to make it stand out. I added an additional white border around the text for h3 to h6 levels just so that if for any reason the text gets too long and reaches the blue-ish area, the text will still be readable.

I would add that apart from all these, I watched a bit more Daria Restoration Project while lazily attempted more runs on Jupiter Hell.

All in all, it has been a nice day. Till the next update then.

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