Stuuuuuuuupid O'Clock Again?!

Ah, the true stupid o'clock timing. I can't say that I miss it.

I'm getting old. I don't miss staying up late doing whatever.

I was listening to various covers and originals from the Hololive crew as I was trying to level a mountain in a new Minecraft 1.17.1 world that I spun up.

``But MT, Minecraft is more fun to play with others! And also, why the heck are you levelling a mountain? Isn't it stupid?''

Okay, you got me there. Minecraft is more fun to play with others, but there's a catch---to start playing with others on a server is to continue playing on the same server relatively consistently, otherwise two things will happen.

1. Folks on the server might think you as some kind of weird-ass free-loader not contributing to the barter economy; and
2. Your gear and access to materials will be supremely outclassed by those who put in more consistent time in the game.

It's not unlike some kind of MMORPG, except it is closer to olden-times self-driven goals and some kind of rudimentary economy. It's single-player EVE Online, or Factorio with ``automation'' based on in-game duping mechanics.

Or as I would call it, a full-time job.

Okay, that explains the single player part, sort of. I mean, I play single player so that I can play at my own pace, and do what I want, when I want, without being beholden to any community.

As for the levelling of a mountain, it was because I wanted to keep my cobblestone shack on the higher (and a little levelled) part of my mountain along the range free from spawns from the other less lit part of the mountain [that I am levelling].

Besides, it's cathartic to dig imaginary cobblestone/dirt while listening to awesome music, after having binged quite a bit on SCP Foundation Tome 5: SCP2000--2499 today. I'd like to complete Tome 5 before I go on to read other things for no other reason other than to just... complete it.

Heh. Stupid o'clock is finally living up to its name. Anyway, this was one of the pieces that I was listening to, a cover of 乙女解剖 by Nekomata Okayu (猫又おかゆ):



The original was by DECO*27 and here it is:



Between the two, I prefer Okayu's version by a whole lot more---that silky low voice really sounds much better than the higher Hatsune Miku vocaloid voice.

Incidentally, I ran into this very macabre relyric version in Cantonese:



The relyric changed the tone from a girl who was playing games with other people's hearts suddenly getting hit with a dose of reality to one that was messed with and had some rather gory thoughts.

Still prefer Okayu's version though. Something about high pitch not working as well for this piece. Or maybe I have been influenced over time to enjoy the smooth feel of a mellow voice. I still like my sopranos (I still have to mentally project like one to play 笛子/flute/piccolo well), but maybe for something that is more high-energy? This piece feels more ``cool'' than ``high energy''.

Ah... what's missing from this stupid o'clock entry is being buzzed from booze, either whiskey or whisky. Officially, I'm out of those and haven't replenished stock, for the simple reason that I don't seem to have enough good reasons to keep them in stock any more. I still like me some strong spirits on occasion, but those occasions are getting lesser and lesser over [recent] time. Practically though, I still have a couple of tasters and smaller flash-sized whiskeys lying about that I could sip if I wanted to.

But the urge to drink whiskey hasn't been strong. I have been drinking some lager recently, and that's only because the weather is bloody hot, and I wanted to cool off with something that isn't soda. Thanks to the P2HAHAHA... no wait, P2HA ``Phase 2 (Heightened Alert)'', I can't even head to my favourite bar to just drink stout and read for a whole afternoon; buying the equivalent to sit at home to read/drink just feels different and really not worth it, even though it is cheaper.

In truth, what I really wanted was a change of environment. The drinking was incidental.

Anyway, since the quick summary of the experiment in the last post, I've been tracking for about 17.5 hours at −78.1 mV across the board with the new Intel graphics drivers, and things seem stable. No strange video playback issues from YouTube, average temperatures were comfortable enough (sub-80°C), and the lowest recorded Core VID was 0.485 V. One thing I forgot to add to the summary was the setting of the FPS limit in the Nvidia control panel to about 142 FPS, 3 shy of the main monitor's refresh rate of 144 Hz. It has led to much lower peak GPU temperatures of roughly 70.3°C for the hot spot sensor, as compared to the previous 88.6°C earlier when I kept the FPS limit to 288 FPS instead.

Anyway, I'll continue to run the experiment, and we'll see if it survives the ``idle'' mode.

That's all for stupid o'clock. Thank you for joining in.