Man... unintentional physical labours are really unwanted in this heat, that's for sure.
I was digging through my careful stacks of stuff to look for some stuff I wanted when I realised that the replacement luggage that was provided for by the airline(?) had the rubberised plastic tyres on the four wheels disintegrated.
Okay, that was a lot to unpack, so let me take it a step at a time.
My [hard shell] luggage from yonder year was damaged beyond repair by the airline years ago, and as compensation, they replaced it with another one. I don't usually travel with a hard shell luggage these days, preferring a soft one since I no longer have to lug anything more than clothes as compared to my studying days where books required the hard shells for protection.
So that replacement luggage was just sitting there, and holding on to my deep winter gear.
Thanks to SIN city's atrocious temperature and humidity, the plasticiser leached out of the rubberised plastic and caused it to shatter into a mix of hard chunks and sticky goo.
I just found it sad that its quality was thus though. My previous luggage, the one that this one replaced, was easily older and went through more hell, and yet what defeated it finally was fucked up baggage handling that destroyed the axles of the large wheel.
I think the new design itty-bitty plastic wheels just don't have the same kind of strength as the old one where two larger wheels sat at the corners, and then a couple of metal castors balanced it off.
Because of all that, I had to do some additional clean up as well.
My energy budget did not account for that, and so I ended up getting an extra bowl of wanton noodles and soup. I'll probably balance the energy intake for dinner later by dropping the rice and just eating the stew (which probably has potatoes in them anyway).
The weather has been uncharacteristically hot these couple of days, after having torrential rain just over the weekend. Considering that this is still the rainy season, I think that a correction is about to occur sooner or later, as foretold by the strong winds that kept on blowing. Those winds though, they were not cooling at all---they had the kind of hot desert wind feel, where instead of cooler air moving, it was the hotter one. Hard to explain to someone who has not experienced that before.
In other news, mGBA has been disappointing. It kept crashing while running some of the ROM images that I had lying around. Not sure why, but I'm just going to go back to something a little more tried and true, like VisualBoyAdvance-M, a descendent of the legendary VisualBoyAdvance.
There's a care group meeting online tonight, and I'm looking forward to it. That's about it for now though.
Oh, for what it's worth, today's the end of November. And this means one more month left in my sabbatical.
Till the next update.
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Monday, November 29, 2021
Music in Accent and Language
The music of People X for any X has two parts to it that often get muddled. The first is the accent of the music---this is what most people are fixated about. Statements that talk about instrumentation/orchestration, or even the equivalent of the key signature of the music are often referring to this aspect of accent.
The second is the language of the music---this is what most people don't usually talk about. By ``language'', I mean the musical constructs of rhythm (i.e. sequence of pitch durations), melody (i.e. sequence of pitch values or frequencies), and in some cases, harmony (i.e. the spectrum of frequencies present), though I would place more emphasis on rhythm and melody since we are talking about ``the music of People X''.
The choice of labels is deliberate. ``Language'' has a strong sense of internal grammar and associated idioms that stand independent of whoever is using it. Thus, an Englishman speaking Mandarin Chinese can be identified as speaking Mandarin Chinese, even though his accent may not be the same as that of a native speaker. Similarly, a piece of music of People X can be identified as such no matter what instrument is used to play it, as long as the innate grammar and idioms of the rhythm and melody of the music of People X are followed.
``Accent'' can be thought of as quirks that change the feeling of the underlying ``language'' in subtle ways that do not affect the core meaning, though the ``accent'', if it is too heavy, can end up obscuring the meaning conveyed in the ``language''. To continue the analogy, an Englishman speaking Mandarin Chinese without paying close attention to the tones of the characters may sound less comprehensible than one who does. Or in cases like a Japanese native speaker attempting to speak English and messing up the `L'-`R' pronunciation due to their heavy accents---it takes more effort for a [native-speaking] listener to wade through the accent and reconstruct the actual language below it, but if the grammar and idioms of the underlying language are not garbled, the meaning can still be conveyed.
Bringing the analogy back to music, if one plays a melody in a different key, with instruments that have different behavioural characteristics (a drastic example might be for a cello to play what was originally a native folk drum set piece), then the underlying music of People X may be more obscured, but once someone gets past these differences in ``accent'', they can usually hear the music of People X being the backbone.
I'm writing all these as a reminder to myself (mostly) that we should celebrate that the music we love to play with our traditional/native instruments/orchestration is interesting and lovely enough for others to want to play too, kinda like how (say) people from Japan are learning English to better communicate with us, and not get all pissy when they seemingly play it all ``wrong'' due to the superficial differences from choices of instrument, key, or orchestration.
I mean, there are only that many pleasing melodies that we can make and reproduce ``consistently''---it may be a large number, but it is still finite.
Anyway, that's all I want to write for now. Till the next update.
The second is the language of the music---this is what most people don't usually talk about. By ``language'', I mean the musical constructs of rhythm (i.e. sequence of pitch durations), melody (i.e. sequence of pitch values or frequencies), and in some cases, harmony (i.e. the spectrum of frequencies present), though I would place more emphasis on rhythm and melody since we are talking about ``the music of People X''.
The choice of labels is deliberate. ``Language'' has a strong sense of internal grammar and associated idioms that stand independent of whoever is using it. Thus, an Englishman speaking Mandarin Chinese can be identified as speaking Mandarin Chinese, even though his accent may not be the same as that of a native speaker. Similarly, a piece of music of People X can be identified as such no matter what instrument is used to play it, as long as the innate grammar and idioms of the rhythm and melody of the music of People X are followed.
``Accent'' can be thought of as quirks that change the feeling of the underlying ``language'' in subtle ways that do not affect the core meaning, though the ``accent'', if it is too heavy, can end up obscuring the meaning conveyed in the ``language''. To continue the analogy, an Englishman speaking Mandarin Chinese without paying close attention to the tones of the characters may sound less comprehensible than one who does. Or in cases like a Japanese native speaker attempting to speak English and messing up the `L'-`R' pronunciation due to their heavy accents---it takes more effort for a [native-speaking] listener to wade through the accent and reconstruct the actual language below it, but if the grammar and idioms of the underlying language are not garbled, the meaning can still be conveyed.
Bringing the analogy back to music, if one plays a melody in a different key, with instruments that have different behavioural characteristics (a drastic example might be for a cello to play what was originally a native folk drum set piece), then the underlying music of People X may be more obscured, but once someone gets past these differences in ``accent'', they can usually hear the music of People X being the backbone.
I'm writing all these as a reminder to myself (mostly) that we should celebrate that the music we love to play with our traditional/native instruments/orchestration is interesting and lovely enough for others to want to play too, kinda like how (say) people from Japan are learning English to better communicate with us, and not get all pissy when they seemingly play it all ``wrong'' due to the superficial differences from choices of instrument, key, or orchestration.
I mean, there are only that many pleasing melodies that we can make and reproduce ``consistently''---it may be a large number, but it is still finite.
Anyway, that's all I want to write for now. Till the next update.
Sunday, November 28, 2021
History Being Written and Rewritten
History is both written and rewritten every day, the former fueled by the [major] events that occur, and the latter as part of an update to a narrative given more/new information. On its own, the rewriting of history is not an issue, mostly because the passing of time has a tendency to reveal more and more about something that we once thought we knew---that is the epitome of progress.
But what I do not agree with is the rewriting of history in a way that serves to conceal and obfuscate the context of the past just to fit a narrative of the present.
What I mean about this is the acts of deliberately throwing away bits of history because they no longer fit the current narrative trends in a bid to be ``politically correct''. Examples of these (mostly American, unfortunately) include the destruction of Confederate general statues, the thrashing of Christopher Columbus, and the outright calls for bans of novels that were written using the language of those times (like calling Black Americans ``negroes'').
Awareness is the start of progress towards a better behaviour/psyche, and these acts of destruction against values and thoughts that we no longer identify with because of how wrong they are may seem to be of good intentions (``let us ensure that our young will only know of the `correct' and `good' stuff!''), but they will end up becoming our albatrosses in the long run. The reason is simple: by destroying all these negative examples, we are robbing the future generations of precious knowledge on why these were bad and why the newer ways are right. For instance, it is hard to point out how slavery is bad when no traces of slavery's history are allowed to remain as reference---that removal of a reminder of a bad past that had occurred makes all such future discussions theoretical as opposed to being anchored solidly as a verifiable cause-and-effect sequence of events.
Instead of complete removal of confederate-era memorablia, an additional contextual plaque describing why we no longer venerate them due to the inhuman moral values that they held could be used as a teaching moment for people to learn about their people's past, why it was bad, and how it morphed into the modern day's teachings.
We should not have to atone for our forebears' sins, not because we are sinless, but because the sins of our forebears were borne of their times, and we had no part to play in the cause and subsequent effect of what our forebears have done. But we should always be aware of the sins of our forebears so that we do not commit the likes of those in turn ourselves.
Everyone likes to be remembered as being flawless, but only God can truly claim that. The best the rest of us can do is to never forget the flaws that were made before, and not repeat the same things again now. The purpose of not trashing bad history isn't so much as to assign perpetual blame the way some activists are demanding in the cases of restitution of white people now to black people in the USA for slavery, but to remind all of us that we can be better people.
The ability to forget is not a bad one (the wonders of a new discovery is one of the few things that can truly delight), but if the thing we forget is what caused a lot of pain and harm in the first place, it is probably best that we never forget it so that we never repeat it or the likes of it in the future.
But this type of ``matured'' thinking does not draw as much attention as the physical destruction of statues, or the vocal shouting of a mass of people in protest. I believe that true impactful change is often done over time, quietly, by a large number of people, an evolutionary type of progress as opposed to a revolutionary one. However, I am not saying that having such visible reactions is wrong; I'm saying that some of the applications of these reactions can lead to an over-simplification of the true issue, and it is that over-simplification that can lead to unintended consequences.
Though in the end, it is the most visible, most visceral, and most violent that will be remembered, not those who have been quietly moving behind the scenes. And sadly, I'm not sure what to feel about that.
Till the next update then.
But what I do not agree with is the rewriting of history in a way that serves to conceal and obfuscate the context of the past just to fit a narrative of the present.
What I mean about this is the acts of deliberately throwing away bits of history because they no longer fit the current narrative trends in a bid to be ``politically correct''. Examples of these (mostly American, unfortunately) include the destruction of Confederate general statues, the thrashing of Christopher Columbus, and the outright calls for bans of novels that were written using the language of those times (like calling Black Americans ``negroes'').
Awareness is the start of progress towards a better behaviour/psyche, and these acts of destruction against values and thoughts that we no longer identify with because of how wrong they are may seem to be of good intentions (``let us ensure that our young will only know of the `correct' and `good' stuff!''), but they will end up becoming our albatrosses in the long run. The reason is simple: by destroying all these negative examples, we are robbing the future generations of precious knowledge on why these were bad and why the newer ways are right. For instance, it is hard to point out how slavery is bad when no traces of slavery's history are allowed to remain as reference---that removal of a reminder of a bad past that had occurred makes all such future discussions theoretical as opposed to being anchored solidly as a verifiable cause-and-effect sequence of events.
Instead of complete removal of confederate-era memorablia, an additional contextual plaque describing why we no longer venerate them due to the inhuman moral values that they held could be used as a teaching moment for people to learn about their people's past, why it was bad, and how it morphed into the modern day's teachings.
We should not have to atone for our forebears' sins, not because we are sinless, but because the sins of our forebears were borne of their times, and we had no part to play in the cause and subsequent effect of what our forebears have done. But we should always be aware of the sins of our forebears so that we do not commit the likes of those in turn ourselves.
Everyone likes to be remembered as being flawless, but only God can truly claim that. The best the rest of us can do is to never forget the flaws that were made before, and not repeat the same things again now. The purpose of not trashing bad history isn't so much as to assign perpetual blame the way some activists are demanding in the cases of restitution of white people now to black people in the USA for slavery, but to remind all of us that we can be better people.
The ability to forget is not a bad one (the wonders of a new discovery is one of the few things that can truly delight), but if the thing we forget is what caused a lot of pain and harm in the first place, it is probably best that we never forget it so that we never repeat it or the likes of it in the future.
But this type of ``matured'' thinking does not draw as much attention as the physical destruction of statues, or the vocal shouting of a mass of people in protest. I believe that true impactful change is often done over time, quietly, by a large number of people, an evolutionary type of progress as opposed to a revolutionary one. However, I am not saying that having such visible reactions is wrong; I'm saying that some of the applications of these reactions can lead to an over-simplification of the true issue, and it is that over-simplification that can lead to unintended consequences.
Though in the end, it is the most visible, most visceral, and most violent that will be remembered, not those who have been quietly moving behind the scenes. And sadly, I'm not sure what to feel about that.
Till the next update then.
Saturday, November 27, 2021
暂时换个口味……
又过了一个星期六。
也没什么好写的，只不过花了大部分的时间来读《Zero to Sold》而已；已读的页数为485/564。傍晚时分上一上教堂崇拜，过后就坐了个顺风车回家。路上下着雷阵雨，能见度低，但我们始终平平安安的回来了。
也就这样，无惊无险的过了一天。
写到这儿，等下回吧。
也没什么好写的，只不过花了大部分的时间来读《Zero to Sold》而已；已读的页数为485/564。傍晚时分上一上教堂崇拜，过后就坐了个顺风车回家。路上下着雷阵雨，能见度低，但我们始终平平安安的回来了。
也就这样，无惊无险的过了一天。
写到这儿，等下回吧。
Friday, November 26, 2021
Time Compression
Today's another reading day. I spent time on Zero to Sold, while finishing the last bits of the Persona 5 speedrun. I also watched the latest episode IRyS' memetastic Pokémon Brilliant Diamond run (go go KusaKameRyS!), and followed it up with a Minecraft random seedless any% 1.16+ run, before ending with the latest episode of Ina's Pokémon Shining Pearl run.
``MT, that's 16+2/3+5+5 2/3=27 1/3 hours. How does that work out?!''
Well, firstly it was more like 4+2/3+5+5 2/3=15 1/3 hours, since I watched about 12+ hours of the Persona 5 speedrun yesterday already.
Second, I watch at a minimum of 2× speed, so it's closer to 7 2/3 hours. The Pokémon runs could be comfortably watched at around 2.2× to 2.5× pace depending on how fast the VTuber speaks. Actually most of the livestreams can be watched at a minimum speed up of 1.5×, with rates of up to 2.5× for some people for some games. Thus realistically, it is possible to consume about 15 hours of videos within a ``standard'' 8-hour-ish day.
Watching videos at that pace taxes the 'net speed quite drastically. That is why I cache the videos locally using yt-dlp at 480p resolution. I think I might have mentioned why the 480p resolution, but I will say so again: I tend to run the video in my side vertical screen while working on my main screen, and that has a horizontal span of 1080 px. This means that even the 1280 px width from a 720p video has too many pixels that need to be downsampled, let alone the 1080p one. If there was a 1080 px horizontal resolution setting, I would go for that, but alas, the closest is the 854 px from 480p resolution videos. The visual quality isn't too terrible, and everything works well.
Having the local cached version also means that I can use a different video player that can bring in higher (and more fine-tuned) multipliers of speed into play that the original source player cannot support. I also don't have to worry about taxing the 'net continuously---the caching process can be done with a lower priority batch-like process in the background.
It's a good enough system for me.
------
Earlier in the day, I was thinking a bit about the apparent conflict between science and religion (specifically, Christianity). I think the entirety of the most recent iteration of the argument boils down to this: is Genesis meant to be read as a historical work, or a metaphorical one?
I don't think it is meant to be metaphorical the way Psalms was. It is meant to be historical. But here is the gotcha that stumbles many people: ``historical'' writing needs to have a defined purpose as opposed to a rudderless record of daily events that way a journal might work.
In this case, what is the purpose of the historical writing that is in Genesis? To me, it seems that the purpose of Genesis is to introduce God, and to prepare the setting for Man, like Man's relationship to God, the Fall of Man due to disobedience to God, and how, despite the disobedience, God did not abandon His creation, before eventually bringing in the notion of His chosen people.
More time was spent on defining genealogies than explaining the details of the creation of our universe and earth. Just let that sink in for the moment.
The focus of Genesis then can be succinctly summarised as focusing on the relationship between Man and God, and not between God and the rest of nature that He has created.
``But MT, you've gotta take the Bible literally!''
Yes, yes I am. It is literal. Things got created. Genesis recorded it.
``So you agree that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh?''
Yes. God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh---that was what was written. It was the best that could be done in the language and understanding of the times---who's to say that the inspiration as put into the author(s) by God was incorrect? Again, the point here isn't about the mechanics of the creation, it is about the relationship between God and everything else.
God as Creator is an important point, and the different aspects in which He is responsible for creating are expounded in detail in Genesis 1---that's the relationship between God and the natural world as we know it, of which includes the fundamental forcs of nature, matter and energy, as well as space-time. It also establishes Man's role in the world that God created---that's the relationship between Man and the natural world. It also establishes how Man is related to God (``in His image'', disobedient, yet God does not completely abandon (see Abram/Abraham)).
What I am trying to say here is that Genesis establishes the ground rules of reality by stating the relationships between the major actors; it does not attempt to establish the ground rules of reality from the reductionist perspective of defining inductive rules upon the axioms the way the laws that scientific endeavours tend to end up with. It's the Bible, not NaNoWriMo where we pad words like crazy. Writing stuff down back in the day is hard---no one wants to write more than what is necessary. What is recorded and has been passed down is deemed to be whatever's essential in understanding the cosmic order---don't ascribe more meaning than what was conveyed.
The word that stumbles is the word ``create''. To me, ``create'' defines the intent, the prime motive force; there is no necessity for it to mean ``completeness'' in the sense that anti-evolutionists argue (or their predecessors, the anti-extinctionists (``because God does not kill off His creations'')). Yes, I'm aware that it says in Genesis that God created every living creature that moves and so on---I do not disagree. All things are created by God, but it is not necessarily the case that all created things by God need to come by supernatural means.
The only supernatural means for things to come into creation is the initial motion of the universe, the exact part where science breaks down because there is no experiment that can be created to test it.
``MT, aren't you just playing with words here? You know what I mean...''
No, no I'm not. I'm taking things literally as requested. I never claimed that the Bible is wrong---I claimed that some of the interpretations that people have supplied are not quite correct because they injected too much of their own bias and put words into God's mouth.
The Bible is literally correct. It makes few testable claims about the natural world, but makes many statements about the relationships that people have with God (both good and bad, both the righteous and the unrighteous, both the chosen people of God and the Gentiles). Harping on the few testable claims about the natural world but completely ignoring the greater theme of Man's relationship with God is cherry-picking.
We don't do that here.
The focus of the Bible has always been on God, and Man's relationship with God. Everything else is about setting up and reinforcing this point. Trying to read the Bible otherwise is missing the whole point.
Revelation is experiential and personal---we should not coerce anyone to think the way we think, no matter how good the news is. We can make it accessible, and be welcoming of the curious to learn of it, but we should not use the pooled resources of the public to advance our cause, because the public resources are made up of contributions from both believers and non-believers. If we use the resources of the non-believers to advance the Kingdom, we are guilty of robbing them of their possessions for our agenda; that's not righteous behaviour, is it?
Science is third-party verifiable, reductive, and impersonal---perfect for establishing consensus about how the natural world works. Anyone who disagrees are welcome to come up with their own experiments to disprove established scientific dogma---``repeatability'' is one of the core maxims of scientific pursuits, as is ``falsifiability''. It has nothing to do with any individual; there is no judgement of values or morals here either.
It also says nothing about the supernatural, because it has no ways of dealing with it. Saying nothing does not mean disagreeing---it means it literally cannot make a meaningful statement of any sort, positive/negative/neutral.
To me, science and religion has no conflict. They have their purposes, and those purposes are not antagonistic. They may be used by some people in antagonistic ways, but are really talking about different things on their own, and should be understood as such.
That's about it for today. Till the next update.
``MT, that's 16+2/3+5+5 2/3=27 1/3 hours. How does that work out?!''
Well, firstly it was more like 4+2/3+5+5 2/3=15 1/3 hours, since I watched about 12+ hours of the Persona 5 speedrun yesterday already.
Second, I watch at a minimum of 2× speed, so it's closer to 7 2/3 hours. The Pokémon runs could be comfortably watched at around 2.2× to 2.5× pace depending on how fast the VTuber speaks. Actually most of the livestreams can be watched at a minimum speed up of 1.5×, with rates of up to 2.5× for some people for some games. Thus realistically, it is possible to consume about 15 hours of videos within a ``standard'' 8-hour-ish day.
Watching videos at that pace taxes the 'net speed quite drastically. That is why I cache the videos locally using yt-dlp at 480p resolution. I think I might have mentioned why the 480p resolution, but I will say so again: I tend to run the video in my side vertical screen while working on my main screen, and that has a horizontal span of 1080 px. This means that even the 1280 px width from a 720p video has too many pixels that need to be downsampled, let alone the 1080p one. If there was a 1080 px horizontal resolution setting, I would go for that, but alas, the closest is the 854 px from 480p resolution videos. The visual quality isn't too terrible, and everything works well.
Having the local cached version also means that I can use a different video player that can bring in higher (and more fine-tuned) multipliers of speed into play that the original source player cannot support. I also don't have to worry about taxing the 'net continuously---the caching process can be done with a lower priority batch-like process in the background.
It's a good enough system for me.
------
Earlier in the day, I was thinking a bit about the apparent conflict between science and religion (specifically, Christianity). I think the entirety of the most recent iteration of the argument boils down to this: is Genesis meant to be read as a historical work, or a metaphorical one?
I don't think it is meant to be metaphorical the way Psalms was. It is meant to be historical. But here is the gotcha that stumbles many people: ``historical'' writing needs to have a defined purpose as opposed to a rudderless record of daily events that way a journal might work.
In this case, what is the purpose of the historical writing that is in Genesis? To me, it seems that the purpose of Genesis is to introduce God, and to prepare the setting for Man, like Man's relationship to God, the Fall of Man due to disobedience to God, and how, despite the disobedience, God did not abandon His creation, before eventually bringing in the notion of His chosen people.
More time was spent on defining genealogies than explaining the details of the creation of our universe and earth. Just let that sink in for the moment.
The focus of Genesis then can be succinctly summarised as focusing on the relationship between Man and God, and not between God and the rest of nature that He has created.
``But MT, you've gotta take the Bible literally!''
Yes, yes I am. It is literal. Things got created. Genesis recorded it.
``So you agree that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh?''
Yes. God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh---that was what was written. It was the best that could be done in the language and understanding of the times---who's to say that the inspiration as put into the author(s) by God was incorrect? Again, the point here isn't about the mechanics of the creation, it is about the relationship between God and everything else.
God as Creator is an important point, and the different aspects in which He is responsible for creating are expounded in detail in Genesis 1---that's the relationship between God and the natural world as we know it, of which includes the fundamental forcs of nature, matter and energy, as well as space-time. It also establishes Man's role in the world that God created---that's the relationship between Man and the natural world. It also establishes how Man is related to God (``in His image'', disobedient, yet God does not completely abandon (see Abram/Abraham)).
What I am trying to say here is that Genesis establishes the ground rules of reality by stating the relationships between the major actors; it does not attempt to establish the ground rules of reality from the reductionist perspective of defining inductive rules upon the axioms the way the laws that scientific endeavours tend to end up with. It's the Bible, not NaNoWriMo where we pad words like crazy. Writing stuff down back in the day is hard---no one wants to write more than what is necessary. What is recorded and has been passed down is deemed to be whatever's essential in understanding the cosmic order---don't ascribe more meaning than what was conveyed.
The word that stumbles is the word ``create''. To me, ``create'' defines the intent, the prime motive force; there is no necessity for it to mean ``completeness'' in the sense that anti-evolutionists argue (or their predecessors, the anti-extinctionists (``because God does not kill off His creations'')). Yes, I'm aware that it says in Genesis that God created every living creature that moves and so on---I do not disagree. All things are created by God, but it is not necessarily the case that all created things by God need to come by supernatural means.
The only supernatural means for things to come into creation is the initial motion of the universe, the exact part where science breaks down because there is no experiment that can be created to test it.
``MT, aren't you just playing with words here? You know what I mean...''
No, no I'm not. I'm taking things literally as requested. I never claimed that the Bible is wrong---I claimed that some of the interpretations that people have supplied are not quite correct because they injected too much of their own bias and put words into God's mouth.
The Bible is literally correct. It makes few testable claims about the natural world, but makes many statements about the relationships that people have with God (both good and bad, both the righteous and the unrighteous, both the chosen people of God and the Gentiles). Harping on the few testable claims about the natural world but completely ignoring the greater theme of Man's relationship with God is cherry-picking.
We don't do that here.
The focus of the Bible has always been on God, and Man's relationship with God. Everything else is about setting up and reinforcing this point. Trying to read the Bible otherwise is missing the whole point.
Revelation is experiential and personal---we should not coerce anyone to think the way we think, no matter how good the news is. We can make it accessible, and be welcoming of the curious to learn of it, but we should not use the pooled resources of the public to advance our cause, because the public resources are made up of contributions from both believers and non-believers. If we use the resources of the non-believers to advance the Kingdom, we are guilty of robbing them of their possessions for our agenda; that's not righteous behaviour, is it?
Science is third-party verifiable, reductive, and impersonal---perfect for establishing consensus about how the natural world works. Anyone who disagrees are welcome to come up with their own experiments to disprove established scientific dogma---``repeatability'' is one of the core maxims of scientific pursuits, as is ``falsifiability''. It has nothing to do with any individual; there is no judgement of values or morals here either.
It also says nothing about the supernatural, because it has no ways of dealing with it. Saying nothing does not mean disagreeing---it means it literally cannot make a meaningful statement of any sort, positive/negative/neutral.
To me, science and religion has no conflict. They have their purposes, and those purposes are not antagonistic. They may be used by some people in antagonistic ways, but are really talking about different things on their own, and should be understood as such.
That's about it for today. Till the next update.
Thursday, November 25, 2021
Reading + Wither Smackdown
I spent much of today catching up on Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine (20th Edition), with Part 2 (Cardinal Manifestations and Presentation of Diseases) and Part 3 (Pharmacology) done. I'm now starting on Part 4 (Oncology and Hematology), and it does seem rather interesting, though it will take me some time to get to it.
I also finished Death du Jour today. Next book on the list is Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run, and Sell a Bootstrapped Business by Arvid Kahl. Not sure what to expect, but I suppose it is worth a read.
For the confused, always remember that I track my current reading list.
It felt like a nice day for some 麻辣, and I got it too. This time, however, I cut down the number of ingredients I was picking such that the final price was about 40% of what I normally ordered. I figured I owe it to myself to not stretch out my stomach too much so that I can actually continue on weight loss.
I fought the Wither in the Quarantine Zone in Minecraft today. It was a tough fight, but my full Netherite armour set (``Commando Armour''), combined with Smite V netherite axe (``Adventurer's Axe Mk 2'') and my really overpowered Power V Infinity bow (``Infinite Hunter Mk 2'') made short work of it all. I felt a little silly after building an obsidian bunker deep underground to protect my spawn point, but in the end, it was worth it. I found that my extended duration nightvision potion was an important factor of success, as I did not have to worry about lighting up a terrain that was constantly being re-modelled by the Wither---I could just focus on smacking the Wither down.
At the same time, I was watching the locally cached download of the Persona 5 speedrun in the background at 2.5× speed. That was when I realised that the default file-caching duration set in VLC was insufficient to feed that voracious data rate---I had to crank it from 1000 ms to about 20000 ms or something. Not doing it caused some severe audio drops, and it was only after enabling and checking on the log information (``messages'' in the interface) that I figured out the problem.
I think that's about it. I should get a shower and prepare to turn in for the night. I can't keep sleeping at 0200hrs each day, only to be awakened 6-ish hours later due to the sunlight.
Till the next update.I spent much of today catching up on Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine (20th Edition), with Part 2 (Cardinal Manifestations and Presentation of Diseases) and Part 3 (Pharmacology) done. I'm now starting on Part 4 (Oncology and Hematology), and it does seem rather interesting, though it will take me some time to get to it.
I also finished Death du Jour today. Next book on the list is Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run, and Sell a Bootstrapped Business by Arvid Kahl. Not sure what to expect, but I suppose it is worth a read.
For the confused, always remember that I track my current reading list.
It felt like a nice day for some 麻辣, and I got it too. This time, however, I cut down the number of ingredients I was picking such that the final price was about 40% of what I normally ordered. I figured I owe it to myself to not stretch out my stomach too much so that I can actually continue on weight loss.
I fought the Wither in the Quarantine Zone in Minecraft today. It was a tough fight, but my full Netherite armour set (``Commando Armour''), combined with Smite V netherite axe (``Adventurer's Axe Mk 2'') and my really overpowered Power V Infinity bow (``Infinite Hunter Mk 2'') made short work of it all. I felt a little silly after building an obsidian bunker deep underground to protect my spawn point, but in the end, it was worth it. I found that my extended duration nightvision potion was an important factor of success, as I did not have to worry about lighting up a terrain that was constantly being re-modelled by the Wither---I could just focus on smacking the Wither down.
At the same time, I was watching the locally cached download of the Persona 5 speedrun in the background at 2.5× speed. That was when I realised that the default file-caching duration set in VLC was insufficient to feed that voracious data rate---I had to crank it from 1000 ms to about 20000 ms or something. Not doing it caused some severe audio drops, and it was only after enabling and checking on the log information (``messages'' in the interface) that I figured out the problem.
I think that's about it. I should get a shower and prepare to turn in for the night. I can't keep sleeping at 0200hrs each day, only to be awakened 6-ish hours later due to the sunlight.
Till the next update.
I also finished Death du Jour today. Next book on the list is Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run, and Sell a Bootstrapped Business by Arvid Kahl. Not sure what to expect, but I suppose it is worth a read.
For the confused, always remember that I track my current reading list.
It felt like a nice day for some 麻辣, and I got it too. This time, however, I cut down the number of ingredients I was picking such that the final price was about 40% of what I normally ordered. I figured I owe it to myself to not stretch out my stomach too much so that I can actually continue on weight loss.
I fought the Wither in the Quarantine Zone in Minecraft today. It was a tough fight, but my full Netherite armour set (``Commando Armour''), combined with Smite V netherite axe (``Adventurer's Axe Mk 2'') and my really overpowered Power V Infinity bow (``Infinite Hunter Mk 2'') made short work of it all. I felt a little silly after building an obsidian bunker deep underground to protect my spawn point, but in the end, it was worth it. I found that my extended duration nightvision potion was an important factor of success, as I did not have to worry about lighting up a terrain that was constantly being re-modelled by the Wither---I could just focus on smacking the Wither down.
At the same time, I was watching the locally cached download of the Persona 5 speedrun in the background at 2.5× speed. That was when I realised that the default file-caching duration set in VLC was insufficient to feed that voracious data rate---I had to crank it from 1000 ms to about 20000 ms or something. Not doing it caused some severe audio drops, and it was only after enabling and checking on the log information (``messages'' in the interface) that I figured out the problem.
I think that's about it. I should get a shower and prepare to turn in for the night. I can't keep sleeping at 0200hrs each day, only to be awakened 6-ish hours later due to the sunlight.
Till the next update.I spent much of today catching up on Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine (20th Edition), with Part 2 (Cardinal Manifestations and Presentation of Diseases) and Part 3 (Pharmacology) done. I'm now starting on Part 4 (Oncology and Hematology), and it does seem rather interesting, though it will take me some time to get to it.
I also finished Death du Jour today. Next book on the list is Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run, and Sell a Bootstrapped Business by Arvid Kahl. Not sure what to expect, but I suppose it is worth a read.
For the confused, always remember that I track my current reading list.
It felt like a nice day for some 麻辣, and I got it too. This time, however, I cut down the number of ingredients I was picking such that the final price was about 40% of what I normally ordered. I figured I owe it to myself to not stretch out my stomach too much so that I can actually continue on weight loss.
I fought the Wither in the Quarantine Zone in Minecraft today. It was a tough fight, but my full Netherite armour set (``Commando Armour''), combined with Smite V netherite axe (``Adventurer's Axe Mk 2'') and my really overpowered Power V Infinity bow (``Infinite Hunter Mk 2'') made short work of it all. I felt a little silly after building an obsidian bunker deep underground to protect my spawn point, but in the end, it was worth it. I found that my extended duration nightvision potion was an important factor of success, as I did not have to worry about lighting up a terrain that was constantly being re-modelled by the Wither---I could just focus on smacking the Wither down.
At the same time, I was watching the locally cached download of the Persona 5 speedrun in the background at 2.5× speed. That was when I realised that the default file-caching duration set in VLC was insufficient to feed that voracious data rate---I had to crank it from 1000 ms to about 20000 ms or something. Not doing it caused some severe audio drops, and it was only after enabling and checking on the log information (``messages'' in the interface) that I figured out the problem.
I think that's about it. I should get a shower and prepare to turn in for the night. I can't keep sleeping at 0200hrs each day, only to be awakened 6-ish hours later due to the sunlight.
Till the next update.
Wednesday, November 24, 2021
The Quarantine Zone
It's a quiet day.
I completed my nether railway to about 3k blocks away from the main portal to create a path to an overworld location about 24k blocks away that I'm calling ``The Quarantine Zone''. The overworld portal currently is just lightly protected against basic mobs---the next thing to do is to start blast-proofing it so that when I am ready to summon the Wither, there will be a safe house from which I can spawn from.
Building the railway was quite resource intensive, but was relaxing in its own way. My basic railway in the Nether consists of a smooth stone base, followed by glass blocks two-high on each side, followed by a stone slab capping it off. The rails run at 21 rails to 1 powered rail to 2 detector rails. It's not the most efficient distribution ratio, but it is simple enough for me---it is, after all, still a single player survival world (with cheats to take away some of the stupider things as needed). But I've been collecting/generating these resources for the longest time anyway, so it hasn't really been a problem.
I've also been working through Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs.
That's about it for today. I'm thinking of getting me some 麻辣 for my one meal tomorrow.
Till the next update then.
I completed my nether railway to about 3k blocks away from the main portal to create a path to an overworld location about 24k blocks away that I'm calling ``The Quarantine Zone''. The overworld portal currently is just lightly protected against basic mobs---the next thing to do is to start blast-proofing it so that when I am ready to summon the Wither, there will be a safe house from which I can spawn from.
Building the railway was quite resource intensive, but was relaxing in its own way. My basic railway in the Nether consists of a smooth stone base, followed by glass blocks two-high on each side, followed by a stone slab capping it off. The rails run at 21 rails to 1 powered rail to 2 detector rails. It's not the most efficient distribution ratio, but it is simple enough for me---it is, after all, still a single player survival world (with cheats to take away some of the stupider things as needed). But I've been collecting/generating these resources for the longest time anyway, so it hasn't really been a problem.
I've also been working through Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs.
That's about it for today. I'm thinking of getting me some 麻辣 for my one meal tomorrow.
Till the next update then.
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Privacy: Accomplished
What a day!
I went to pick up Aurelia from WW today, and dropped off Azumi for her ``spa'' session. Azumi requires a bit more work than Aurelia---she has started tarnishing(!) after nearly ten years of not having that problem, and I have started to find the D trill lever and D♯ trill levers were sitting a little too high for comfort (check out Jennifer Cluff's flute diagram for nomenclature). It's interesting, because I never used to have that problem before I had Aurelia; Mr Guo of GUO Musical Instruments Company (GMIC) had pointed it out before a few years ago, but it hadn't bothered me then.
I think it's just my getting used to the sleeker set up that is on Aurelia.
Anyway, after sorting out my flutes, I dropped by MusicGear to shoot the breeze a little with them, and bought some thicker mouthpiece pads. And some discussions of perhaps getting a cor anglais came to play... It is on my shopping list, but the damnable reed is always going to be a problem. All my other single reed instruments are using synthetic reeds, which suit me just fine because they are virtually immutable for the long periods of time that I might not be touching them. Double reed instruments are finicky---I have played the 管 before, and it is horrible to get right.
So... while the offer stands, I might need to do a serious rain check.
Now, much of the afternoon was spent running around looking for the laptop webcam privacy sliding sticker, or as they call it in Amazon.com, ``webcam cover slides''. I thought this would be the easiest item to find, having remembered seeing them freely around, but boy was I wrong. No one sold it.
My only lead was from the Challenger store at Waterway Point when I dejectedly purchased my compressed air twin-pack---the cashier suggested checking out the larger Challenger stores as they were likely to have stock. That lead told me two things:
I couldn't find it. I asked for help, the bro was like ``ah, I think I might have seen it, but I'm not too sure''. He went to get another bro (nicknamed ``the Professional'' for some reason), who was like ``Yeah! I remember seeing it also... it was like a stack of them (emphasis mine)''. Lo and behold, it was found in a corner of a small and low rack facing the cashier counter closest to the exit.
🤦♂️
And there were only two 3-packs left. I bought both---this is going to be something that will remain useful for a long while. I have not had a need to use my webcams on my laptops for a long time, so I usually use the lo-tech method of just taping a piece of paper with cellotape. But, two things:
I also bought replacement ear cups for my QC35 wireless headphones too. At this point, I'm just filing that SGD39 as an annual consumable. Buying stuff of a good enough quality is one thing, ensuring that it stays at that quality with regular maintenance is another. But the cost of such maintenance is still cheaper in the long run as compared to having to frequently replace the entire item each time the low quality version fails.
------
I wondered why did I not learn of lock lacing earlier. That would have solved my ``beat up toe'' problem, where my pinky toe was always bruised, with the latest saga leading to the nails peeling off. The lock lacing technique stops slippage of the foot in the hiking boot, and thus despite being on my feet for the whole day, my toes were completely fine.
Hurrah!
I did a little extra with the prescribed lock lacing technique though---I tied just enough to secure the position before running the boot laces around the groove of my hiking boots back to the front, where I finally actually complete the tie with a knot. It makes hold much more snug, and solves the problem of the excessively long laces that often come with boot laces.
And that's about it for today. I'm bushed. Gonna lay out some blocks in Minecraft in the nether to create an overworld ``quarantine zone'' for future Wither fighting while watching some of Calli's playthrough of Earthbound. Till the next update.
I went to pick up Aurelia from WW today, and dropped off Azumi for her ``spa'' session. Azumi requires a bit more work than Aurelia---she has started tarnishing(!) after nearly ten years of not having that problem, and I have started to find the D trill lever and D♯ trill levers were sitting a little too high for comfort (check out Jennifer Cluff's flute diagram for nomenclature). It's interesting, because I never used to have that problem before I had Aurelia; Mr Guo of GUO Musical Instruments Company (GMIC) had pointed it out before a few years ago, but it hadn't bothered me then.
I think it's just my getting used to the sleeker set up that is on Aurelia.
Anyway, after sorting out my flutes, I dropped by MusicGear to shoot the breeze a little with them, and bought some thicker mouthpiece pads. And some discussions of perhaps getting a cor anglais came to play... It is on my shopping list, but the damnable reed is always going to be a problem. All my other single reed instruments are using synthetic reeds, which suit me just fine because they are virtually immutable for the long periods of time that I might not be touching them. Double reed instruments are finicky---I have played the 管 before, and it is horrible to get right.
So... while the offer stands, I might need to do a serious rain check.
Now, much of the afternoon was spent running around looking for the laptop webcam privacy sliding sticker, or as they call it in Amazon.com, ``webcam cover slides''. I thought this would be the easiest item to find, having remembered seeing them freely around, but boy was I wrong. No one sold it.
My only lead was from the Challenger store at Waterway Point when I dejectedly purchased my compressed air twin-pack---the cashier suggested checking out the larger Challenger stores as they were likely to have stock. That lead told me two things:
- I wasn't hallucinating---they were sold by a chain store (i.e. ubiquity exists); and
- I could just be plain unlikely with stocks being drained from the massive work from home stuff.
I couldn't find it. I asked for help, the bro was like ``ah, I think I might have seen it, but I'm not too sure''. He went to get another bro (nicknamed ``the Professional'' for some reason), who was like ``Yeah! I remember seeing it also... it was like a stack of them (emphasis mine)''. Lo and behold, it was found in a corner of a small and low rack facing the cashier counter closest to the exit.
🤦♂️
And there were only two 3-packs left. I bought both---this is going to be something that will remain useful for a long while. I have not had a need to use my webcams on my laptops for a long time, so I usually use the lo-tech method of just taping a piece of paper with cellotape. But, two things:
- The cellotape was getting more useless with all the stupid dust around, or the quality of the ones we had stank. I breathed on the bloody thing, and it would float off. Unacceptable!
- I have many more teleconference calls these days from care group meetings and baptismal classes, and having the lo-tech solution (with shitty grade cellotape) was just not working out. And this was before going for interviews in the near future while searching for jobs.
I also bought replacement ear cups for my QC35 wireless headphones too. At this point, I'm just filing that SGD39 as an annual consumable. Buying stuff of a good enough quality is one thing, ensuring that it stays at that quality with regular maintenance is another. But the cost of such maintenance is still cheaper in the long run as compared to having to frequently replace the entire item each time the low quality version fails.
------
I wondered why did I not learn of lock lacing earlier. That would have solved my ``beat up toe'' problem, where my pinky toe was always bruised, with the latest saga leading to the nails peeling off. The lock lacing technique stops slippage of the foot in the hiking boot, and thus despite being on my feet for the whole day, my toes were completely fine.
Hurrah!
I did a little extra with the prescribed lock lacing technique though---I tied just enough to secure the position before running the boot laces around the groove of my hiking boots back to the front, where I finally actually complete the tie with a knot. It makes hold much more snug, and solves the problem of the excessively long laces that often come with boot laces.
And that's about it for today. I'm bushed. Gonna lay out some blocks in Minecraft in the nether to create an overworld ``quarantine zone'' for future Wither fighting while watching some of Calli's playthrough of Earthbound. Till the next update.
Monday, November 22, 2021
On My Faith...
Ah, Monday.
The day passes very differently when one isn't actually playing any video games, for example. I finished up the rest of Unspoken Sermons, and have a slightly more nuanced view of the Lord and salvation in general; this is also to be taken into account with the baptismal classes that I am on.
God is Truth; Jesus Christ is God. Therefore Jesus Christ is Truth. The key nuance here is the state of being---Jesus Christ is Truth. Yes, we need to take heart the teachings of Jesus Christ, as well as what his disciples promulgate via the gospel and the various epistles of the New Testament. But the fundamental point should go back to Jesus Himself. Actions, sayings, teachings are manifestations of the Truth that is Jesus---they account for different perspectives to transmit the most important point of all, which is how Jesus is Truth itself. That's why we believe in Jesus, that's why we follow Jesus, and that's why we pay heed to His words.
Jesus was no back-up plan of God the Father---He had always been part of the plan from the beginning. A key theme of Man's fall is due to Man's literal disobedience to God; this is exemplified in both the Old and New Testament writings. Righteousness is not by deeds, but by faith---which explains why old testament figures like Abraham, King David, and King Solomon are deemed righteous despite none of them being perfectly righteous, as only God is perfectly righteous.
But to where is this faith directed at? It is towards God and His righteousness. The failure of Man to obey God's directives features heavily throughout the Bible. Jesus, as both man and God, saves us sinners from our sin of disobedience to God's righteousness through substituting for us in atonement through demonstrating His absolute obedience to God as the representative of the faithful Man. He was obedient to God the Father throughout His life, He glorified the Father, He died as representing Man, and was resurrected from His death into eternal life. Was it punishment for our sins? No... it was atonement, a reparation/satisfaction of the wrath of God that stemmed from our rebellious nature against God. He satisfied the wrath of God as a representative of Man, the way Adam incurred the wrath of God as a representative of Man. In that sense, the sinners (i.e. us) share in the inheritance that Jesus has obtained for us as He was representing us through his crufixion and resurrection.
But being saved is no excuse to continue to sin. We should know better, and more importantly, as God's adoptive children, need to glorify Him through our good works which is reflective of our faith in His Son, and what His Son has done for us. The Law of Moses was good, but there was no exemplary model of being a perfect follower of the said law. Jesus is the perfect follower of the law, and His arrival gave us non-Jews an opportunity to be saved as well.
Did non-Jews in the old testament days get saved also? Yes, if they have faith in God, (see Ruth), but for cultural reasons the old testament texts do not focus on non-Jews---the Jews are the original of God's chosen people.
How am I so certain? Well, it's my faith... and my reading of many different things to also come to a deductive conclusion.
You may disagree---that's your perogative. And we'll leave it as that.
------
Then there's CES Letter: My Search of Answers to My Mormon Doubts by Jeremy T. Runnells. That's a piece of work over the many alleged contradictions from Joseph Smith. I'm not here to bash anyone, but just want to point out that there is often a fine line between what people believe in and what is a blatant lie. Especially one that is based on easily countered cultural misappropriation.
Maybe the Bible is bogus and was written post hoc by a bunch of scholars who decided to advance their agenda through unifying a bunch of mythologies. Okay, that's a possibility, yes? If it really is that bogus, then it must be hard to explain why it still retains relevance today, more than a thousand years after the last texts were laid out. The observable action may be thus, but the unobservable prime mover cause isn't, and there's no one to prove that calling it God inspired is wrong.
In matters of the physical world, where we all can agree on a type of objectivity via a third-party entity, the scientific method rules supreme with its powers of causal predictions.
In matters of the non-physical world, where every one experiences things differently, and grand patterns of experiences occur, the rules of proof are less clear because it takes the life and environment of someone in order to experience the same as that person. And at some level, I think we run out of actual capability of handling the complexity required to derive a proof.
We are limited by the meat hardware we run on, literally.
And that's why faith exists. It's a deeply personal conviction. I am convinced that God is, and He is Creator, and Jesus Christ is His Son, and that the Bible isn't bogus.
I can share with you what I believe in, but I cannot offer you a proof/disproof by the scientific method due to the subjective and relational nature.
Only when we are done with this mortal life will it be proven who is the right one. But at that point, the matter is completely out of our hands anyway.
Meanwhile, my faith will carry me through this life with less fear, knowing that God has His plan for me, and that He is in control.
Amen.
The day passes very differently when one isn't actually playing any video games, for example. I finished up the rest of Unspoken Sermons, and have a slightly more nuanced view of the Lord and salvation in general; this is also to be taken into account with the baptismal classes that I am on.
God is Truth; Jesus Christ is God. Therefore Jesus Christ is Truth. The key nuance here is the state of being---Jesus Christ is Truth. Yes, we need to take heart the teachings of Jesus Christ, as well as what his disciples promulgate via the gospel and the various epistles of the New Testament. But the fundamental point should go back to Jesus Himself. Actions, sayings, teachings are manifestations of the Truth that is Jesus---they account for different perspectives to transmit the most important point of all, which is how Jesus is Truth itself. That's why we believe in Jesus, that's why we follow Jesus, and that's why we pay heed to His words.
Jesus was no back-up plan of God the Father---He had always been part of the plan from the beginning. A key theme of Man's fall is due to Man's literal disobedience to God; this is exemplified in both the Old and New Testament writings. Righteousness is not by deeds, but by faith---which explains why old testament figures like Abraham, King David, and King Solomon are deemed righteous despite none of them being perfectly righteous, as only God is perfectly righteous.
But to where is this faith directed at? It is towards God and His righteousness. The failure of Man to obey God's directives features heavily throughout the Bible. Jesus, as both man and God, saves us sinners from our sin of disobedience to God's righteousness through substituting for us in atonement through demonstrating His absolute obedience to God as the representative of the faithful Man. He was obedient to God the Father throughout His life, He glorified the Father, He died as representing Man, and was resurrected from His death into eternal life. Was it punishment for our sins? No... it was atonement, a reparation/satisfaction of the wrath of God that stemmed from our rebellious nature against God. He satisfied the wrath of God as a representative of Man, the way Adam incurred the wrath of God as a representative of Man. In that sense, the sinners (i.e. us) share in the inheritance that Jesus has obtained for us as He was representing us through his crufixion and resurrection.
But being saved is no excuse to continue to sin. We should know better, and more importantly, as God's adoptive children, need to glorify Him through our good works which is reflective of our faith in His Son, and what His Son has done for us. The Law of Moses was good, but there was no exemplary model of being a perfect follower of the said law. Jesus is the perfect follower of the law, and His arrival gave us non-Jews an opportunity to be saved as well.
Did non-Jews in the old testament days get saved also? Yes, if they have faith in God, (see Ruth), but for cultural reasons the old testament texts do not focus on non-Jews---the Jews are the original of God's chosen people.
How am I so certain? Well, it's my faith... and my reading of many different things to also come to a deductive conclusion.
You may disagree---that's your perogative. And we'll leave it as that.
------
Then there's CES Letter: My Search of Answers to My Mormon Doubts by Jeremy T. Runnells. That's a piece of work over the many alleged contradictions from Joseph Smith. I'm not here to bash anyone, but just want to point out that there is often a fine line between what people believe in and what is a blatant lie. Especially one that is based on easily countered cultural misappropriation.
Maybe the Bible is bogus and was written post hoc by a bunch of scholars who decided to advance their agenda through unifying a bunch of mythologies. Okay, that's a possibility, yes? If it really is that bogus, then it must be hard to explain why it still retains relevance today, more than a thousand years after the last texts were laid out. The observable action may be thus, but the unobservable prime mover cause isn't, and there's no one to prove that calling it God inspired is wrong.
In matters of the physical world, where we all can agree on a type of objectivity via a third-party entity, the scientific method rules supreme with its powers of causal predictions.
In matters of the non-physical world, where every one experiences things differently, and grand patterns of experiences occur, the rules of proof are less clear because it takes the life and environment of someone in order to experience the same as that person. And at some level, I think we run out of actual capability of handling the complexity required to derive a proof.
We are limited by the meat hardware we run on, literally.
And that's why faith exists. It's a deeply personal conviction. I am convinced that God is, and He is Creator, and Jesus Christ is His Son, and that the Bible isn't bogus.
I can share with you what I believe in, but I cannot offer you a proof/disproof by the scientific method due to the subjective and relational nature.
Only when we are done with this mortal life will it be proven who is the right one. But at that point, the matter is completely out of our hands anyway.
Meanwhile, my faith will carry me through this life with less fear, knowing that God has His plan for me, and that He is in control.
Amen.
Sunday, November 21, 2021
Winding Down
Well well... what did I do today?
Read more Unspoken Sermons.
I also fixed some minor issues with my .htaccess file for my web site, as well as some other minor styling issues for a couple of pages.
I had my first group session with the baptismal class over Zoom, which was nice. I still don't like Zoom though, but since I'm ``just'' a participant, there is nothing much to dislike. At least it doesn't try to take over my computer the way an increasing number of Microsoft tools are trying to do.
Apart from all that, it has been a quiet-ish Sunday.
No wait... I remembered one other thing.
I posted a few long-ass posts on Flute Forum.
Argh... I think the NaNoWriMo bug hasn't gone away, despite my completion of this year's entry.
Anyway, till the next update.
Read more Unspoken Sermons.
I also fixed some minor issues with my .htaccess file for my web site, as well as some other minor styling issues for a couple of pages.
I had my first group session with the baptismal class over Zoom, which was nice. I still don't like Zoom though, but since I'm ``just'' a participant, there is nothing much to dislike. At least it doesn't try to take over my computer the way an increasing number of Microsoft tools are trying to do.
Apart from all that, it has been a quiet-ish Sunday.
No wait... I remembered one other thing.
I posted a few long-ass posts on Flute Forum.
Argh... I think the NaNoWriMo bug hasn't gone away, despite my completion of this year's entry.
Anyway, till the next update.
The Search of Your Perfect Flute
In reply to someone asking for advice/opinions on handmade flutes by someone who claims to be intermediate and is interested in perhaps upgrading on the Flute Forum:
Assuming you have lots of time, but have money constraints...
0. COA your current flute to have a baseline to compare with.
1. Start with a budget.
2. Try flutes personally, with a different pair of trusted ears with you. Don't just try flutes within your budget -- try some above also if able. Make notes of what you feel, how you think you sound, how your different pair of trusted ears think you sound. Try more than one flute within the same brand if you are able to. Try flutes that other people are currently playing (if able), and ask them how they feel about their flute. Then, evaluate how YOU feel when you play the same flutes. The more flutes you try, the better you understand how the different brands' design choices work for you, both good and bad.
3. Repeat 2 until you are sick of trying flutes, or if you figured out what properties you are looking for and can narrow the list down, or if you are impatient and want to buy already (not a good idea).
4. Narrow down what flutes you like and are within budget. If budget too small, adjust.
5. Talk to your local flute tech about the types of flutes you've chosen to seek their opinion on the mechanical maintainability. If your flute tech says Brand X is not so good, trust your flute tech.
6. Try the flutes that you narrowed down, with a different pair of trusted ears with you.
6. Decide on which to buy.
7. Buy flute chosen.
Everyone plays flutes differently, so a flute that some say are good may not work out for you either. That different pair of trusted ears may be necessary because the flute can sound different to an audience as compared to you, so you'd want some feedback.
That COA on your current flute is VITAL. If your new flute does not "beat" your current flute even at the new price point after your current flute is brought up to excellent condition, maybe you're not ready for a new flute yet, in which case, save more money and practise more first. Future you will thank past you for this.
When I was shopping around for my "final concert flute", it took me about 3 years to try many different flutes (and to fast-upgrade my playing skills) before I settled on mine with the features I loved at a price point that I was happy with. I tried about 30+ high end flutes during that period too, with maybe a third beyond my budget, just to learn what these pricey flutes can and cannot do for me.
To be fair, I'm no professional player, so it was a very relaxed search pace, nothing too intensive.
If there's a key take home lesson, it is that you MUST try the flute before you buy. Don't just buy it because someone told you Brand Y is a great flute.
(Sorry for being long-winded.)
Saturday, November 20, 2021
DSA and Other Busy Things
Let's talk about the Direct School Admission (DSA) for secondary schools for a bit. The intent is noble---to allow admission to excellent secondary schools based on a broader criteria that goes beyond what the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) scores are. Here's what their ``Who can apply'' states:
Really, it's essentially everything and anything that is not directly tied to academics.
I'm sure the intent is good---most policies generally begin with good intent. But looking at it with a more critical eye, this policy seems to once again benefit the wealthier more than truly levelling out the playing field, for the simple reason that the wealthier has more resources at hand to assist their child in developing their skills in these ``wide-range of talents'' through additional external courses.
``But MT, what about things like `uniformed groups' and `leadership'? Aren't those things that one can only do while in school, with no other possible `enrichment classes' that can help it?''
I don't know. Just because it is listed there as a possible ``talent'' doesn't necessarily mean that it is used, yes? If there are some available statistics that show the intake numbers by category of talent, then I am willing to accept that I am wrong if those numbers prove my words otherwise.
From old article though, it seems that the focus was ``sports and arts''. Actually, that article raises more concerns about the DSA, where the ``general academic ability tests'' are said to be removed (mind you, this is circa 2017---maybe they've changed things again).
My concern, apart from favouring the wealthy, is the future of these children who have been admitted under the DSA scheme. Did they truly end up extending their talents to the point that they can make good with them after leaving school? Considering that the first cohort was circa 2004 (at secondary one), and that it is 2021 now, seventeen years have passed.
We should have data to evaluate if the DSA fulfilled the implied goals of developing people who work better outside of the standard mould, yes?
So...?
Anyway, I just hope that those who underwent the DSA fared better than those who underwent the Gifted Education Programme (GEP). SIN city is notorious for living ``by the numbers'', and anyone who falls out of the ``model group'' is destined to have to do everything in very unorthodox ways, or to have 贵人 in the right places that help them along.
------
In other news, today's been a heavy Bible-reading sort of day. I attended a seminar that taught about the ``linking words'' tool for biblical interpretation, and am making my way through Unspoken Sermons by George MacDonald, finishing two of the three series contained within that book. Actually it isn't just today---I've been hitting the books heavily immediately after my NaNoWriMo win in preparation for my baptism.
Gotta take some time for things to settle in my head. Mucho information download desu. And there's a baptism class seminar tomorrow evening as well. Them all being online helped a little, but not much.
Oh, and the rules for dining in seemed to have changed again, to 5 humans a table? Not sure what to feel about that though... it's been a strange enough time that I have frankly gotten too comfortable moving about like a solitary ghost.
My finger tip skins are cracked again, and it is making my typing horrifically uncomfortable. And so, I think I will stop here for now.
Till the next update.
I'm sure the intent is good---most policies generally begin with good intent. But looking at it with a more critical eye, this policy seems to once again benefit the wealthier more than truly levelling out the playing field, for the simple reason that the wealthier has more resources at hand to assist their child in developing their skills in these ``wide-range of talents'' through additional external courses.
``But MT, what about things like `uniformed groups' and `leadership'? Aren't those things that one can only do while in school, with no other possible `enrichment classes' that can help it?''
I don't know. Just because it is listed there as a possible ``talent'' doesn't necessarily mean that it is used, yes? If there are some available statistics that show the intake numbers by category of talent, then I am willing to accept that I am wrong if those numbers prove my words otherwise.
From old article though, it seems that the focus was ``sports and arts''. Actually, that article raises more concerns about the DSA, where the ``general academic ability tests'' are said to be removed (mind you, this is circa 2017---maybe they've changed things again).
My concern, apart from favouring the wealthy, is the future of these children who have been admitted under the DSA scheme. Did they truly end up extending their talents to the point that they can make good with them after leaving school? Considering that the first cohort was circa 2004 (at secondary one), and that it is 2021 now, seventeen years have passed.
We should have data to evaluate if the DSA fulfilled the implied goals of developing people who work better outside of the standard mould, yes?
So...?
Anyway, I just hope that those who underwent the DSA fared better than those who underwent the Gifted Education Programme (GEP). SIN city is notorious for living ``by the numbers'', and anyone who falls out of the ``model group'' is destined to have to do everything in very unorthodox ways, or to have 贵人 in the right places that help them along.
------
In other news, today's been a heavy Bible-reading sort of day. I attended a seminar that taught about the ``linking words'' tool for biblical interpretation, and am making my way through Unspoken Sermons by George MacDonald, finishing two of the three series contained within that book. Actually it isn't just today---I've been hitting the books heavily immediately after my NaNoWriMo win in preparation for my baptism.
Gotta take some time for things to settle in my head. Mucho information download desu. And there's a baptism class seminar tomorrow evening as well. Them all being online helped a little, but not much.
Oh, and the rules for dining in seemed to have changed again, to 5 humans a table? Not sure what to feel about that though... it's been a strange enough time that I have frankly gotten too comfortable moving about like a solitary ghost.
My finger tip skins are cracked again, and it is making my typing horrifically uncomfortable. And so, I think I will stop here for now.
Till the next update.
Friday, November 19, 2021
A New Phase?
It feels so funny to have completed NaNoWriMo. For eighteen days, I seemed to be operating on a completely different domain, with daily struggles ensuring that I get my minimum requisite of 2 sub-stories of at least 1k words each.
And now that it is over, it feels like I'm off to a new phase.
It's right though, I am in a new phase. I would say that I am in the terminal phase of my sabbatical, where I start to wrap up the unpacked mind and experiences, and rebundle them up to recreate a psyche that is a little more ready to take on the challenges that the world can throw at me. I can already sense a change in mood in me---I feel less compelled to play video games, though I want to point out that Minecraft 1.18 is slated to be released on Nov 30. I'm not sure if I want to start a new world, or continue with 1.17.1, or bring my 1.17.1 world into 1.18. I have built quite a bit of infrastructure in my 1.17.1 world, so leaving it behind feels a little more painful than leaving behind my 1.16 world where I really didn't build much at all.
Maybe I'll just bring my 1.17.1 world into 1.18. It is a relaxed exploration survival world after all---no sense re-building infrastructure again when I have done everything already.
Apart from that, I did quite a bit of reading today in preparation for some bible study sessions.
And that's about it. Till the next update.
And now that it is over, it feels like I'm off to a new phase.
It's right though, I am in a new phase. I would say that I am in the terminal phase of my sabbatical, where I start to wrap up the unpacked mind and experiences, and rebundle them up to recreate a psyche that is a little more ready to take on the challenges that the world can throw at me. I can already sense a change in mood in me---I feel less compelled to play video games, though I want to point out that Minecraft 1.18 is slated to be released on Nov 30. I'm not sure if I want to start a new world, or continue with 1.17.1, or bring my 1.17.1 world into 1.18. I have built quite a bit of infrastructure in my 1.17.1 world, so leaving it behind feels a little more painful than leaving behind my 1.16 world where I really didn't build much at all.
Maybe I'll just bring my 1.17.1 world into 1.18. It is a relaxed exploration survival world after all---no sense re-building infrastructure again when I have done everything already.
Apart from that, I did quite a bit of reading today in preparation for some bible study sessions.
And that's about it. Till the next update.
...And 50 Ways to Die Is Done
And there we have it, my winning entry for NaNoWriMo 2021. I did start the day thinking of marathoning to the end, and tried the best I could, and finally managed to succeed with a tolerance of five minutes.
I mentioned earlier that I would rather write one 50k-word story than fifty 1k-word stories. This year's entry is an experiment on writing fifty 1k-word stories. I tell you, it's a damn pain in the ass.
The theme for the stories was ``50 Ways to Die''. Naturally, each story is ``a way to die''. Just keeping it that spread out as writing 50 ways to die was one sure way to die and fail this years NaNoWriMo.
So what I did was to create five general categories in which the death may be classified as. They are:
It did not reduce the total amount of work done, but at least it helped in narrowing down what to think about.
A further thing that I did was to use a small little Python3 script to randomly pick which of the five categories I should work on each time I was ready to begin a new 1k-word story. The weightage is proportional to the number of stories (out of 10) in that category that I have not written a story for. So the distribution of the categories throughout the novel is truly based on a random process, and not me deciding ``manually'' what I wanted to write.
Oh, it's technically a novel because of the prologue and epilogue, which framed the entire set of stories as being part of some undescribable creatures' view of the insane nightmarish thoughts of a single person.
So, why this topic of ``50 Ways To Die''? As I had previously mentioned, it was meant to be cathartic. It is no secret that I had spent much of last year and this one mentally bouncing everywhere. My pay was cut to save the company (bayl gb or fynccrq va gur snpr jvgu arj uverf sbe zber guna gur phgf V trg juvyr V trg zber jbex ng yrff cnl---ohg gung'f sbe n qvssrerag qnl), my supposed spouse-candidate decided to fly solo, and I was starting to question the ethics behind the entirety of my field. I went on a sabbatical, a break from the craziness of the world, and throughout the entire process, had various occasions where intrusive thoughts of death and despair would keep popping up.
My solution to them was not to ignore them completely or pretend that they don't exist---I write them down in as much detail as I can, daring my brain to put into words all that existential dread that it was sneakily trying to poison itself with.
That is the essence behind 50 Ways to Die. I forced myself to consider 50 ways to die in sufficient detail so as to exhaust and exorcise the demons that were hiding in my head. It works in two ways: those that involve suicide forced me to put into words all the ideation that had floated around, while those that involved non-suicide deaths made me realise that there were just so many ways of dying that it was a much larger miracle that anyone was able to stay alive in the first place.
That whole idea of exorcism through writing is not something new either. Part of the reason why I keep paper journals and even this blog is to allow me to put the thoughts that I have onto them---the act of doing so takes the attention away from the thought, freeing up my mind to do other things.
Compared to the darker periods earlier in the year, I can report that I am feeling more like myself. It's like I reverted back to a time where I was not completely burnt out by the greed that comes from the business world. I was doing and getting into patterns that were comforting to me---see also the whole thing about retro-programming and the like. And those really helped me fight against the demons in my head.
Apart from these physical actions, I think a large factor too for my relative happiness now is that I have found that something that keeps me grounded in ways that are comforting. It was that quality that I was so envious about that made me realise that there was something that could make this journey through life that much better. And it was the acceptance of Jesus Christ as my personal saviour, and the understanding that no matter how bad things of this world are, He is in control, and that His Will be done. We can boldly do what our free will and logical thinking tells us to do, and not fear too much about the uncertainty that we cannot control, because God the Father is there, and we are His adopted children, and in the end, He will not forsake us.
To the unbeliever, that whole paragraph may not make sense---it's okay. Maybe I'm a weaker specimen because I trust and believe in the Father's ability to safely guide me home; or maybe you are stronger because you don't need someone like the Father to help you. I've mentioned it before---it's alright. I don't judge; everyone has to answer to God on their own when the time comes. And no, I'm not even smug---I am just stating it matter of factly.
But I digress. Going back to this year's NaNoWriMo entry then, 50 Ways to Die should not be read as an attention-seeking attempt or a cry for help becaue it isn't written that way; instead, it is my attempt to sober up by pouring out all the bad things that can happen that we can learn from and realise that we truly live blessed lives.
For the really obtuse, no, I am not going to kill myself. I also do not have a death wish. I just want to go through this life peacefully, doing what I am good at, at places that the Lord places me. That is it.
Sometimes simple is the greatest thing.
Anyway, that's all for now. I am really exhausted now... the total word count for yesterday alone was 13k+... or more than 6× what I usually budget myself to do.
And that does not include these blog posts either. ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
Till the next update then.
I mentioned earlier that I would rather write one 50k-word story than fifty 1k-word stories. This year's entry is an experiment on writing fifty 1k-word stories. I tell you, it's a damn pain in the ass.
The theme for the stories was ``50 Ways to Die''. Naturally, each story is ``a way to die''. Just keeping it that spread out as writing 50 ways to die was one sure way to die and fail this years NaNoWriMo.
So what I did was to create five general categories in which the death may be classified as. They are:
- Suicides;
- Self-inflicted accidents;
- Others inflicted accidents;
- Executions; and
- Failure of Survival
It did not reduce the total amount of work done, but at least it helped in narrowing down what to think about.
A further thing that I did was to use a small little Python3 script to randomly pick which of the five categories I should work on each time I was ready to begin a new 1k-word story. The weightage is proportional to the number of stories (out of 10) in that category that I have not written a story for. So the distribution of the categories throughout the novel is truly based on a random process, and not me deciding ``manually'' what I wanted to write.
Oh, it's technically a novel because of the prologue and epilogue, which framed the entire set of stories as being part of some undescribable creatures' view of the insane nightmarish thoughts of a single person.
So, why this topic of ``50 Ways To Die''? As I had previously mentioned, it was meant to be cathartic. It is no secret that I had spent much of last year and this one mentally bouncing everywhere. My pay was cut to save the company (bayl gb or fynccrq va gur snpr jvgu arj uverf sbe zber guna gur phgf V trg juvyr V trg zber jbex ng yrff cnl---ohg gung'f sbe n qvssrerag qnl), my supposed spouse-candidate decided to fly solo, and I was starting to question the ethics behind the entirety of my field. I went on a sabbatical, a break from the craziness of the world, and throughout the entire process, had various occasions where intrusive thoughts of death and despair would keep popping up.
My solution to them was not to ignore them completely or pretend that they don't exist---I write them down in as much detail as I can, daring my brain to put into words all that existential dread that it was sneakily trying to poison itself with.
That is the essence behind 50 Ways to Die. I forced myself to consider 50 ways to die in sufficient detail so as to exhaust and exorcise the demons that were hiding in my head. It works in two ways: those that involve suicide forced me to put into words all the ideation that had floated around, while those that involved non-suicide deaths made me realise that there were just so many ways of dying that it was a much larger miracle that anyone was able to stay alive in the first place.
That whole idea of exorcism through writing is not something new either. Part of the reason why I keep paper journals and even this blog is to allow me to put the thoughts that I have onto them---the act of doing so takes the attention away from the thought, freeing up my mind to do other things.
Compared to the darker periods earlier in the year, I can report that I am feeling more like myself. It's like I reverted back to a time where I was not completely burnt out by the greed that comes from the business world. I was doing and getting into patterns that were comforting to me---see also the whole thing about retro-programming and the like. And those really helped me fight against the demons in my head.
Apart from these physical actions, I think a large factor too for my relative happiness now is that I have found that something that keeps me grounded in ways that are comforting. It was that quality that I was so envious about that made me realise that there was something that could make this journey through life that much better. And it was the acceptance of Jesus Christ as my personal saviour, and the understanding that no matter how bad things of this world are, He is in control, and that His Will be done. We can boldly do what our free will and logical thinking tells us to do, and not fear too much about the uncertainty that we cannot control, because God the Father is there, and we are His adopted children, and in the end, He will not forsake us.
To the unbeliever, that whole paragraph may not make sense---it's okay. Maybe I'm a weaker specimen because I trust and believe in the Father's ability to safely guide me home; or maybe you are stronger because you don't need someone like the Father to help you. I've mentioned it before---it's alright. I don't judge; everyone has to answer to God on their own when the time comes. And no, I'm not even smug---I am just stating it matter of factly.
But I digress. Going back to this year's NaNoWriMo entry then, 50 Ways to Die should not be read as an attention-seeking attempt or a cry for help becaue it isn't written that way; instead, it is my attempt to sober up by pouring out all the bad things that can happen that we can learn from and realise that we truly live blessed lives.
For the really obtuse, no, I am not going to kill myself. I also do not have a death wish. I just want to go through this life peacefully, doing what I am good at, at places that the Lord places me. That is it.
Sometimes simple is the greatest thing.
Anyway, that's all for now. I am really exhausted now... the total word count for yesterday alone was 13k+... or more than 6× what I usually budget myself to do.
And that does not include these blog posts either. ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
Till the next update then.
Thursday, November 18, 2021
Pushing Towards the Finishing Line...
Man, I am exhausted.
I basically marathoned 9.9k+ words for my NaNoWriMo entry, and am now at 47/50 ways to die done.
If someone asked me now, whether it is better to write one 50k-word story or fifty 1k-word story, I can safely say, it is better to write one 50k-word story. The key difficulty here is that when writing all these individual stories, there is a cognitive overhead needed to begin anew a setting, characters, and associated activities. That is hard and tiring. I find that while in past years I can easy crank out my 2k+ words per day in one hour, I simply cannot do so this time round.
Too much cognitive overload.
Anyway, I will probably talk more about this year's NaNoWriMo entry after I'm done with the story. I have hit the 50k+ word requirement already, but I still need to end this novel. And that will be for tomorrow... I simply cannot grok what I am thinking any more.
------
In other news, the entry for yesterday was late because I spent too much time playing on the saxophones. It was sort of a work out that I was tossing at them, with the new palm key risers that I talked about earlier. I spent more time on the alto saxophone this time, doing more noodling that involved the left pinky. So that low instrument B♭ key? I've never really figured out why I would use that.
Well, if instrument B♭ is the third degree, we get instrument G♭-major. Which, when we translate to regular concert pitches, is A-major. Now, if instrument B♭ is the first degree, we get instrument B♭-major (d'uh), which is D♭-major. That D♭-major makes playing certain pop music just that much easier to go for.
I won't talk about instrument B as third degree, since that's really just regular concert B♭-major.
Figuring all these out including the associated finger work was too interesting to stop, and after I had to put them away at around ten o'clock, I started to do more reading here and there.
And by the time I realised it, it was late already.
So there's that.
Anyway, that's all I want to say for now. Till the next update.
I basically marathoned 9.9k+ words for my NaNoWriMo entry, and am now at 47/50 ways to die done.
If someone asked me now, whether it is better to write one 50k-word story or fifty 1k-word story, I can safely say, it is better to write one 50k-word story. The key difficulty here is that when writing all these individual stories, there is a cognitive overhead needed to begin anew a setting, characters, and associated activities. That is hard and tiring. I find that while in past years I can easy crank out my 2k+ words per day in one hour, I simply cannot do so this time round.
Too much cognitive overload.
Anyway, I will probably talk more about this year's NaNoWriMo entry after I'm done with the story. I have hit the 50k+ word requirement already, but I still need to end this novel. And that will be for tomorrow... I simply cannot grok what I am thinking any more.
------
In other news, the entry for yesterday was late because I spent too much time playing on the saxophones. It was sort of a work out that I was tossing at them, with the new palm key risers that I talked about earlier. I spent more time on the alto saxophone this time, doing more noodling that involved the left pinky. So that low instrument B♭ key? I've never really figured out why I would use that.
Well, if instrument B♭ is the third degree, we get instrument G♭-major. Which, when we translate to regular concert pitches, is A-major. Now, if instrument B♭ is the first degree, we get instrument B♭-major (d'uh), which is D♭-major. That D♭-major makes playing certain pop music just that much easier to go for.
I won't talk about instrument B as third degree, since that's really just regular concert B♭-major.
Figuring all these out including the associated finger work was too interesting to stop, and after I had to put them away at around ten o'clock, I started to do more reading here and there.
And by the time I realised it, it was late already.
So there's that.
Anyway, that's all I want to say for now. Till the next update.
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
Late Entry...
Egads! A very late entry.
The day was busy. I got my 2k+ words in.
That's it. Till the next update.
The day was busy. I got my 2k+ words in.
That's it. Till the next update.
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Projects for Minecraft and Other Diversions
You know, I was thinking that I had done almost all that I could in Minecraft.
Then I realised that I had not fought the Wither. The set up for this fight is quite onerous---the component materials that are used to summon it are rare, and after getting those components, there is also a need to prepare the arena a la Terraria (another game that I love but could not find the energy to complete) before a truly epic boss fight that is many times worse than that of the Ender Dragon for the sole reason that the Wither destroys terrain like a madman.
The outcome of all that is the Nether Star, a component for end-game super tool known as Beacons. It is also a great way enable much massive builds in survival mode too.
Maybe I'll target towards that and building a fishing hut as my next projects in Minecraft.
In other news, I've sent Aurelia to WW for the COA. Davie had the two trill key pads replaced, but his case suffered a zipper damage when I was too excited and forgot to move the zipper all the way past the corners before lifting the box open.
🤦♂️
I also got me some palm key risers for my alto and tenor saxophones, though none of them are made of any of the materials that I have linked to in the URL---those were just samples of what I was talking about for the confused.
``Wait MT, you play saxophones?''
``Always have.''
No, seriously. I've always played saxophones. My first saxophone was a soprano saxophone, and I slowly branched from that to the alto, and now to the tenor; and I upgraded them from junk-tier to decent tier. It's like my tertiary/quarternary instrument of proficiency too.
I don't play it as much because I don't have that much direct use of it in Chinese Orchestra settings as compared to say the 笛子 or the concert flute. But I like jamming out on it ever so often---it has that kind of panache that the concert flute cannot match, and is a little more street-friendly compared to the repertoire that I'm used to for 笛子.
The palm key risers are useful because of the way I hold the alto/tenor saxophones: I keep them on my right side. This means that the palm keys that are operated by the left hand (that kick in when we play high notes) will require me to have a much deeper dorsal flexion. That is uncomfortable. The palm key risers give an additional 5 mm of material so that I don't have to dorsal flex that much to get at them---a much more ergonomical feel.
Nothing to do with size of hands, just comfort.
And I think that's about it. I've completed 37/50 ways to die, leaving 13 more. The end to this year's instalment of NaNoWriMo is close, and I would really be happy for it to be over, not because of desperation, but because all things that have a beginning, ought to have an end.
Till the next update.
Then I realised that I had not fought the Wither. The set up for this fight is quite onerous---the component materials that are used to summon it are rare, and after getting those components, there is also a need to prepare the arena a la Terraria (another game that I love but could not find the energy to complete) before a truly epic boss fight that is many times worse than that of the Ender Dragon for the sole reason that the Wither destroys terrain like a madman.
The outcome of all that is the Nether Star, a component for end-game super tool known as Beacons. It is also a great way enable much massive builds in survival mode too.
Maybe I'll target towards that and building a fishing hut as my next projects in Minecraft.
In other news, I've sent Aurelia to WW for the COA. Davie had the two trill key pads replaced, but his case suffered a zipper damage when I was too excited and forgot to move the zipper all the way past the corners before lifting the box open.
🤦♂️
I also got me some palm key risers for my alto and tenor saxophones, though none of them are made of any of the materials that I have linked to in the URL---those were just samples of what I was talking about for the confused.
``Wait MT, you play saxophones?''
``Always have.''
No, seriously. I've always played saxophones. My first saxophone was a soprano saxophone, and I slowly branched from that to the alto, and now to the tenor; and I upgraded them from junk-tier to decent tier. It's like my tertiary/quarternary instrument of proficiency too.
I don't play it as much because I don't have that much direct use of it in Chinese Orchestra settings as compared to say the 笛子 or the concert flute. But I like jamming out on it ever so often---it has that kind of panache that the concert flute cannot match, and is a little more street-friendly compared to the repertoire that I'm used to for 笛子.
The palm key risers are useful because of the way I hold the alto/tenor saxophones: I keep them on my right side. This means that the palm keys that are operated by the left hand (that kick in when we play high notes) will require me to have a much deeper dorsal flexion. That is uncomfortable. The palm key risers give an additional 5 mm of material so that I don't have to dorsal flex that much to get at them---a much more ergonomical feel.
Nothing to do with size of hands, just comfort.
And I think that's about it. I've completed 37/50 ways to die, leaving 13 more. The end to this year's instalment of NaNoWriMo is close, and I would really be happy for it to be over, not because of desperation, but because all things that have a beginning, ought to have an end.
Till the next update.
Monday, November 15, 2021
JRPG Phase?
While technically not exactly a ``low-effort'' post, I'll write something over and beyond what I had written earlier as a reply to an entry on Flute Forum.
I played Breath of Death VII today, and completed it. It was alright, the mechanics were definitely rougher than Cthulhu Saves the World, but it was still a fun romp. Playing the latter (and later) game first and immediately following up with the earlier was a great way to see the similarities and differences. The key difference was the diversification of the skills on level-up---Cthulhu Saves the World has a more varied set up than Breath of Death VII. It is better in the objective sense, because it does raise the possibility of different types of specialisation. In many ways, the update of the game mechanics between the two is similar to that of FF5 to FF6---where in FF5, we have the four ``jack of all trade'' characters that can level up almost anything, while in FF6 each of the fourteen different characters have job specialisations.
I tried running Dark Souls: Ready to Die Edition, and well, it lived up to its namesake of dying---being unable to run. I cannot remember when I bought it, nor do I want to find ou, but one thing's for certain: I'm not going to buy the ``remastered'' version just to play it.
Oh well.
I also advanced [slowly] through Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition. It's not a bad game, it's just that... it really doesn't appeal to me that strongly that I feel compelled to complete it?
Yeah, I'm working through my back log of games, almost as a desperate plea as my sabbatical rapidly comes to an end. Only one and a half months left before I start my job hunting proper.
Exciting, and terrifying simultaneously.
What does the future bring?
------
I've also checked out two emulators, Nintendulator and bsnes. The difference between these emulators from some of the older ones that I have used before is that these are aiming at 100% accurate emulation. I got a little interested in them after using DOSBox-X for a while.
You see, DOSBox-X tries to provide accurate emulation of the hardware that runs DOS to ensure that DOS programs (not just games: the games-only approach is strictly for DOSBox and is partly an ideological one (commercial products ought to have paid support on ancient systems)) can work on it well. And considering that the CPU that I have running can clock at a high enough clock speed to handle the overhead of all the simulation, it seems time to try out something that runs more like hardware.
Anyway that's about it for today, just doing things here and there, not reading.
I might want to crank out another 1k-word sub-story for my NaNoWriMo entry while having Ina's art stream running on the side screen.
Till the next update then.
I played Breath of Death VII today, and completed it. It was alright, the mechanics were definitely rougher than Cthulhu Saves the World, but it was still a fun romp. Playing the latter (and later) game first and immediately following up with the earlier was a great way to see the similarities and differences. The key difference was the diversification of the skills on level-up---Cthulhu Saves the World has a more varied set up than Breath of Death VII. It is better in the objective sense, because it does raise the possibility of different types of specialisation. In many ways, the update of the game mechanics between the two is similar to that of FF5 to FF6---where in FF5, we have the four ``jack of all trade'' characters that can level up almost anything, while in FF6 each of the fourteen different characters have job specialisations.
I tried running Dark Souls: Ready to Die Edition, and well, it lived up to its namesake of dying---being unable to run. I cannot remember when I bought it, nor do I want to find ou, but one thing's for certain: I'm not going to buy the ``remastered'' version just to play it.
Oh well.
I also advanced [slowly] through Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition. It's not a bad game, it's just that... it really doesn't appeal to me that strongly that I feel compelled to complete it?
Yeah, I'm working through my back log of games, almost as a desperate plea as my sabbatical rapidly comes to an end. Only one and a half months left before I start my job hunting proper.
Exciting, and terrifying simultaneously.
What does the future bring?
------
I've also checked out two emulators, Nintendulator and bsnes. The difference between these emulators from some of the older ones that I have used before is that these are aiming at 100% accurate emulation. I got a little interested in them after using DOSBox-X for a while.
You see, DOSBox-X tries to provide accurate emulation of the hardware that runs DOS to ensure that DOS programs (not just games: the games-only approach is strictly for DOSBox and is partly an ideological one (commercial products ought to have paid support on ancient systems)) can work on it well. And considering that the CPU that I have running can clock at a high enough clock speed to handle the overhead of all the simulation, it seems time to try out something that runs more like hardware.
Anyway that's about it for today, just doing things here and there, not reading.
I might want to crank out another 1k-word sub-story for my NaNoWriMo entry while having Ina's art stream running on the side screen.
Till the next update then.
Playing High Notes on the [Concert] Flute
In response to a question on Flute Forum regarding high notes going flat:
0. Have you had your flute checked out by a flute tech yet? If not, you might want to start with this. Eliminate issues with the flute first before trying to figure out if the player is the issue.
After doing 0, you might want to try the following by dynamics...
1. If you are playing at moderate dynamics, and only the high notes are flat as compared to the other notes, take note on HOW they go flat. If they start off IMMEDIATELY flat, it means your air stream speed isn't fast enough; in which case, you may need to push the air stream speed higher (while keeping as relaxed an embouchure as you can get away with). If they start out right, and then go flat, it means your embouchure isn't sustaining the right air stream speed, in which case more practice to strengthen the relevant muscles are in order. You might benefit from a lesson or two from a teacher to help with this; there is no shame in doing so.
2. If you are playing forte or louder, consider pushing a higher air stream speed -- [high] notes don't usually go flat at louder dynamics. There is a minimum air stream speed that can energise the correct harmonics for the high notes, but that is not necessarily musically correct. So, increase your air stream speed to tune it accordingly.
3. If you are playing piano or softer, close your jaw a little bit more to raise the air stream speed without cranking up the loudness.
Hope these can help solve your issue.
Sunday, November 14, 2021
Cthulhu Saved the World
Okay, we're now at 31/50 ways to die for NaNoWriMo. We're getting there... just another 19 more ways to die to document.
😬
I completed Cthulhu Saves the World. As an RPG, it's definitely not a long game, even with lazy-ass unnecessary level-grinding. But the writing, the writing is funny. That's the reason why I play it. I think I might want to play their older game, Breath of Death VII, a parody of JRPGs. The same developers also did the last two episodes of Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. For reference, these are the four episodic games in the series:
Anyway, it's a short update. I'm just tired/lazy, having written 4 sub-stories for NaNoWriMo. Till the next update.
😬
I completed Cthulhu Saves the World. As an RPG, it's definitely not a long game, even with lazy-ass unnecessary level-grinding. But the writing, the writing is funny. That's the reason why I play it. I think I might want to play their older game, Breath of Death VII, a parody of JRPGs. The same developers also did the last two episodes of Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. For reference, these are the four episodic games in the series:
- Precipice of Darkness, Episode One
- Precipice of Darkness, Episode Two
- Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3
- Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4
Anyway, it's a short update. I'm just tired/lazy, having written 4 sub-stories for NaNoWriMo. Till the next update.
Saturday, November 13, 2021
On Cheap & Lesser-known Brand Instruments.
In response to a question on Flute Forum about some cheap but lesser-known brand alto flute and whether it is worth it:
I'll do more than just tell you the answer: I'll give you some reasons to think of WHY people are telling you the answer. I'll also provide you with another useful resource for you to look into to assist your choices as well. I can do that because I'm not completely jaded with these types of questions that pop up once every week... yet. 😅
The keyword here is "online". All musical instruments are very personal objects that extend one's music making ability, and thus the act of physically trying things is of utmost importance.
Not all lesser known brand instruments are bad, but you will never know if you only see it "online" because you cannot try and see what it is really like. Even if someone else has used it and found the product good, you are still not assured that it is CONSISTENTLY good, or if that person lucked out.
Because lesser known brand instruments are lesser known due to much smaller number of people using them. All big name brands begin by being lesser known, but they only become big once they have established a good reputation OVER TIME. The higher price that we pay for quality instruments is for the amount of effort (in terms of R&D and quality control) that these big name brands put into building their instruments.
Also, while price is not a perfect proxy to quality, it is usually a decent indicator. If something appears way cheaper than what one might expect, there could be very good reasons why. Maybe the craftsmanship is inconsistent due to poor quality control; maybe it's a bad batch that the factory is trying to off-load to recoup some costs; maybe it's someone trying to make a quick buck by dumping flute-like objects on the market. It is easier to tell if you can handle the flute and judge the instrument's quality for yourself.
If "online" is all you can afford in your search, the most conservative approach is still to stick with well-known brands. At the very least, you can be confident that these well-known brands will have good quality control on products with their brands on it, because their reputation is worth a lot to them.
If you have more time and less money, consider paying a visit to your local flute tech to see what they have to say about various brands -- their answers may actually surprise you. After all, no matter WHAT flute you buy, THEY are the ones who will be there to support you by expending time and effort, and to flute techs, they REALLY don't want to waste any of those on junk-tier instruments. And if THEY say "Brand X is alright" (for any value of "Brand X"), you can be assured that if you bought Brand X flute, your flute tech can support it.
Friday, November 12, 2021
Is It Still a ``Sushi Meal'' If 60% Was Sashimi?
To say that I went to get sushi isn't technically correct, considering that more than 60% of what I got from Ichiban Sushi was sashimi in nature. But yes, I had sushi today to satisfy that craving.
I also found the anchovy chilli paste at Fairprice @ Kang Kar Mall. Paul had gifted a bottle to me last Saturday, and by today, it is already three quarters gone. And so, I needed replacements.
Progression through Cthulhu Saves the World is back to roughly where my aborted first play through had left off, with the exception that I probably had grinded my characters' levels a little bit more than what I was doing before.
My Logitech F310 Gamepad was suffering intermittent connection problems with Eileen-II. I verified that the USB port was working, so it had to be the contact of the USB connector of the F310 that was at fault.
*sigh*
Welcome to living in SIN city, where oxidisation/sulfurisation of all sorts is the norm, thanks to high humidity and high air pollution from vehicles and even from our friendly neighourhood slash-and-burn farmers. The solution was from a can of the 3M Quick Drying Contact Cleaner 16-102. It is basically an aerosol solvent that works very well at removing the oxide layers on the electrical contacts, without much fuss. I would get Isopropyl 90%, but that shit is as rare as unicorns out here. As what GY has mentioned, 3M products might be pricier, but they sure know their chemistry well.
Every 3M product that I have used so far has exceeded expectations on performance.
Am I shilling? No... they pay me absolutely negative dollars to speak well of them (for the slow, it means I paid for my own product and am not sponsored). But I like calling it as I see it, and I see a good product that fulfils what I need, and then some.
I'm also just pass the halfway point of 25/50 ways to die. Slowly but surely I will complete this NaNoWriMo novel... even if it means busting the 50k words limit.
And now, I'm spent. I think I'm going to turn in ``early''---it is, at least, earlier than when I had been sleeping at recently.
Till the next update.
I also found the anchovy chilli paste at Fairprice @ Kang Kar Mall. Paul had gifted a bottle to me last Saturday, and by today, it is already three quarters gone. And so, I needed replacements.
Progression through Cthulhu Saves the World is back to roughly where my aborted first play through had left off, with the exception that I probably had grinded my characters' levels a little bit more than what I was doing before.
My Logitech F310 Gamepad was suffering intermittent connection problems with Eileen-II. I verified that the USB port was working, so it had to be the contact of the USB connector of the F310 that was at fault.
*sigh*
Welcome to living in SIN city, where oxidisation/sulfurisation of all sorts is the norm, thanks to high humidity and high air pollution from vehicles and even from our friendly neighourhood slash-and-burn farmers. The solution was from a can of the 3M Quick Drying Contact Cleaner 16-102. It is basically an aerosol solvent that works very well at removing the oxide layers on the electrical contacts, without much fuss. I would get Isopropyl 90%, but that shit is as rare as unicorns out here. As what GY has mentioned, 3M products might be pricier, but they sure know their chemistry well.
Every 3M product that I have used so far has exceeded expectations on performance.
Am I shilling? No... they pay me absolutely negative dollars to speak well of them (for the slow, it means I paid for my own product and am not sponsored). But I like calling it as I see it, and I see a good product that fulfils what I need, and then some.
I'm also just pass the halfway point of 25/50 ways to die. Slowly but surely I will complete this NaNoWriMo novel... even if it means busting the 50k words limit.
And now, I'm spent. I think I'm going to turn in ``early''---it is, at least, earlier than when I had been sleeping at recently.
Till the next update.
Thursday, November 11, 2021
Like She Was New!
What an eventful day.
The Dell on-site engineer came down to replace the fan and heatsink assembly, and I learnt a few things.
Armed with the new knowledge and assurance from the on-site engineer, I now have a better way of preventing all that weird frictional vibration thing from fans that were dust-imbalanced.
The difference was pretty dramatic, before and after the assembly change. I am getting 40--46× multipliers even on full load with the PROCHOT limit of 83°C that I had set. The idle temperature is now roughly 40°C at an ambient temperature of about 27°C, which is about 4--7°C lower than before.
There was little throttling when I was running Minecraft at 32 chunk rendering distance (just for fun), and the lag spikes that I was seeing before even with Iris Shaders (on 12 chunks rendering) was much lower.
It's like Eileen-II was brand new all over again. And now, to monitor things before I confirm the closure of the ticket.
------
I also managed to set up a servicing date next week for Aurelia, my artisan-quality concert flute. She's doing well, just that she has missed her annual Clean, Oil, and Adjust (COA) session. I was tempted to bring S.O.S. and maybe Azumi down too, but I just wanted to keep it simple. Those two (and maybe Picc) can go for their COA next year instead.
I might need to bring Davie down for a look-see by Sean though... one of the pads looked like its bladder had ripped. Still need to arrange a date with him for that.
If you are bloody confused, do not be afraid.
I can't believe that Aurelia is already 2 years old, and that Azumi has been with me for more than a decade. Time does seem to fly along.
------
I'm thinking I might want to go for some sushi tomorrow for late lunch/early dinner; I've been craving for sushi for a while, so it might be time to satisfy that craving.
NaNoWriMo has been going well; I've already busted the 25k milestone, and have ``only'' written 23/50 ways to die. It's very cathartic despite its macabre nature; it really puts things into perspective.
Anyway, that's about it for now. Ironically, I am in the middle of replaying Cthulhu Saves the World, which does not need the higher powered computational powers that the refreshed heat sink+fan assembly provides.
Till the next update.
The Dell on-site engineer came down to replace the fan and heatsink assembly, and I learnt a few things.
- Dust was the true killer;
- The heat pipes ran keyboard side up, in total inversion from most other systems, explaining the finger frying;
- The fans were really integrated with the heat sinks;
- The replacement of this assembly was as good as having a repaste job;
- Most of the upper half of the flat-laying part of Eileen-II are just vents, so air blowing through all of them has no risk of clogging the way old laptops were; and
- Daughter boards everywhere despite the motherboard being more complicated than I had ever seen.
Armed with the new knowledge and assurance from the on-site engineer, I now have a better way of preventing all that weird frictional vibration thing from fans that were dust-imbalanced.
The difference was pretty dramatic, before and after the assembly change. I am getting 40--46× multipliers even on full load with the PROCHOT limit of 83°C that I had set. The idle temperature is now roughly 40°C at an ambient temperature of about 27°C, which is about 4--7°C lower than before.
There was little throttling when I was running Minecraft at 32 chunk rendering distance (just for fun), and the lag spikes that I was seeing before even with Iris Shaders (on 12 chunks rendering) was much lower.
It's like Eileen-II was brand new all over again. And now, to monitor things before I confirm the closure of the ticket.
------
I also managed to set up a servicing date next week for Aurelia, my artisan-quality concert flute. She's doing well, just that she has missed her annual Clean, Oil, and Adjust (COA) session. I was tempted to bring S.O.S. and maybe Azumi down too, but I just wanted to keep it simple. Those two (and maybe Picc) can go for their COA next year instead.
I might need to bring Davie down for a look-see by Sean though... one of the pads looked like its bladder had ripped. Still need to arrange a date with him for that.
If you are bloody confused, do not be afraid.
I can't believe that Aurelia is already 2 years old, and that Azumi has been with me for more than a decade. Time does seem to fly along.
------
I'm thinking I might want to go for some sushi tomorrow for late lunch/early dinner; I've been craving for sushi for a while, so it might be time to satisfy that craving.
NaNoWriMo has been going well; I've already busted the 25k milestone, and have ``only'' written 23/50 ways to die. It's very cathartic despite its macabre nature; it really puts things into perspective.
Anyway, that's about it for now. Ironically, I am in the middle of replaying Cthulhu Saves the World, which does not need the higher powered computational powers that the refreshed heat sink+fan assembly provides.
Till the next update.
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Impish Indri
Okay, let's first give credit where credit's due. I mentioned about my distaste of the new CPF UI, and how I sent in feedback without really expecting it to be read. That was Nov 01.
Well today I received an email from a human that thanked me for the feedback and that they would consider the tabular preference that I mentioned as part of their regular reviews to make their website better. This slightly more detailed reply came after an initial one on Nov 05 that acknowledged receipt of my feedback and informed me that they needed more time to address my ``enquiry''. That email from Nov 05 was also from the same human, though it did sound a little mechanical.
And so, I stand corrected. They really do seem to actually look at the feedback---whether or not they take any further action about it to correct things according to my feedback is immaterial and irrelevant. That they took 10 calendar days before giving me a solid enough reply that is based on my feedback suggests that they probably did go through an internal process. So if there's anyone who have similar issues (or others really) regarding anything interface related, it might well be worth dropping them a message using their mechanism.
------
I updated my mum's computer to ``Impish Indri'', since ``Hirsute Hippo'' was really a stop-gap to obtain kernel-level support for the full 1080p graphics support. It's been more than 3 months, so in theory the backporting to the 20.04 LTS ought to have taken place... but I really don't want the hassle of going backwards.
I think I'll just keep updating until we hit the next LTS release and stay there. So at present, my mum's machine's upgrade path is now 20.04→20.10→21.04 (beta)→21.04→21.10.
Oof. The next LTS is slated to be 22.04 ``Jammy Jellyfish'', so we're just one more upgrade to it. At that point, I've gotta decide if I want to keep it at the LTS or keep going. The main pro of staying is that of stability and familiarity since the hardware hasn't changed. The main con is... uh... I might have to maintain an LTS VM somewhere on my machine to keep track of what is going on? Though I'm not really certain that that can be considered a con.
Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. Till the next update.
Well today I received an email from a human that thanked me for the feedback and that they would consider the tabular preference that I mentioned as part of their regular reviews to make their website better. This slightly more detailed reply came after an initial one on Nov 05 that acknowledged receipt of my feedback and informed me that they needed more time to address my ``enquiry''. That email from Nov 05 was also from the same human, though it did sound a little mechanical.
And so, I stand corrected. They really do seem to actually look at the feedback---whether or not they take any further action about it to correct things according to my feedback is immaterial and irrelevant. That they took 10 calendar days before giving me a solid enough reply that is based on my feedback suggests that they probably did go through an internal process. So if there's anyone who have similar issues (or others really) regarding anything interface related, it might well be worth dropping them a message using their mechanism.
------
I updated my mum's computer to ``Impish Indri'', since ``Hirsute Hippo'' was really a stop-gap to obtain kernel-level support for the full 1080p graphics support. It's been more than 3 months, so in theory the backporting to the 20.04 LTS ought to have taken place... but I really don't want the hassle of going backwards.
I think I'll just keep updating until we hit the next LTS release and stay there. So at present, my mum's machine's upgrade path is now 20.04→20.10→21.04 (beta)→21.04→21.10.
Oof. The next LTS is slated to be 22.04 ``Jammy Jellyfish'', so we're just one more upgrade to it. At that point, I've gotta decide if I want to keep it at the LTS or keep going. The main pro of staying is that of stability and familiarity since the hardware hasn't changed. The main con is... uh... I might have to maintain an LTS VM somewhere on my machine to keep track of what is going on? Though I'm not really certain that that can be considered a con.
Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. Till the next update.
Tuesday, November 09, 2021
Fast and Pretty Minecraft Is Possible
There's something about Minecraft that makes it quite relaxing, especially in survival single player. Physics is a thing, one can play as normal as possible, and can switch over to something less onerous should the whim come on.
I spent time extending my nether rail to have a more direct route to the Blaze spawner. At the same time, I used the new location in the nether that I connected to to open a new overworld portal to somewhere unknown and unexplored. Those are fun.
What was truly fun was testing out Iris Shaders with Complementary Shaders for Minecraft release 1.17.1.
Originally, I ran in vanilla, but never got performance beyond a slightly better potato PC despite Eileen-II's specifications. It did not help that some changes to the rendering was done that led to a slow down.
Then I got Optifine---that improved the performance. Then I fell into the shaders rabbit-hole and ended up with Complementary Shaders after testing several others. It performed well unless the dynamic shadows was turned on, at which point the frame rate tanked---mind you, this is an NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super we are talking about here.
My workaround then was to turn off the dynamic shadows. It looked pretty, but had passable frame rates with some lag spike here and there.
I have heard of Iris Shaders and an associated alternative Minecraft rendering engine that was newer and ``better'' than Optifine called Sodium. I didn't try it till today.
My goodness. What a game changer.
Dynamic shadows was running in Complementary Shaders, and yet the performance was still acceptable at a render distance of 12 chunks (I've given up on using 16 chunks in general, Optifine or Iris Shaders).
Only catch was that the glass blocks did not link up seamlessly, but that is really quite minor.
Pretty world and better than vanilla performance, what's there to not like?
That's all for this entry. Till the next update.
I spent time extending my nether rail to have a more direct route to the Blaze spawner. At the same time, I used the new location in the nether that I connected to to open a new overworld portal to somewhere unknown and unexplored. Those are fun.
What was truly fun was testing out Iris Shaders with Complementary Shaders for Minecraft release 1.17.1.
Originally, I ran in vanilla, but never got performance beyond a slightly better potato PC despite Eileen-II's specifications. It did not help that some changes to the rendering was done that led to a slow down.
Then I got Optifine---that improved the performance. Then I fell into the shaders rabbit-hole and ended up with Complementary Shaders after testing several others. It performed well unless the dynamic shadows was turned on, at which point the frame rate tanked---mind you, this is an NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super we are talking about here.
My workaround then was to turn off the dynamic shadows. It looked pretty, but had passable frame rates with some lag spike here and there.
I have heard of Iris Shaders and an associated alternative Minecraft rendering engine that was newer and ``better'' than Optifine called Sodium. I didn't try it till today.
My goodness. What a game changer.
Dynamic shadows was running in Complementary Shaders, and yet the performance was still acceptable at a render distance of 12 chunks (I've given up on using 16 chunks in general, Optifine or Iris Shaders).
Only catch was that the glass blocks did not link up seamlessly, but that is really quite minor.
Pretty world and better than vanilla performance, what's there to not like?
That's all for this entry. Till the next update.
Monday, November 08, 2021
Today Was A Good Day
Today was a good day.
I began the day late by waking up late due to having slept late the night before (see a pattern yet?). I got my 2k+ words done for NaNoWriMo, and lurked about till it was time to head out to NEX.
I had several things that I needed to do there. First was to treat myself to a nice steak from Collin's again. I've not had a nice steak in quite a while, and it felt like it was time; not that I disliked the food that I have been eating at home and around home, but that I just wanted something a little more luxurious. I had wanted to get their ``35 Days' Whisky Dry Aged Black Angus Ribeye Steak'', but they were out (how can one be out of something like that?), and ended with their ``Australian Margaret River Wagyu Ribeye Steak'' instead.
Man. That was some good steak. The meat was deliciously fatty, with the fat giving that fragrant flavour over the meat and myosin. A real treat for my taste buds. Is it worth the 78 bucks? I'll say yes, and only because it's a once-in-a-long-time type of consumption that I was going for. If I were to be having a ``regular'' steak each fortnight or month, I might go for something around half the price or lower, but as is, it was great. They had suggested their ``21 Days' Dry Aged Black Angus Tomahawk'' steak as an alternative to the Wagyu, but I uh... didn't buy it. Not wholly because of what some Reddit user say, but that I just want the meat damnit, not the whole bone.
After the late lunch/early dinner, I went to ye olde Uniqlo to get some new clothes. My currently oldest batch of boxer briefs have run their course, and it was time to shop for replacements. I had bought two from Uniqlo before to test, and I liked them well enough to buy a similar make. I also took the opportunity to increase the number of colours of my polo T-shirt wardrobe by 50%---I bought a couple of black polo T-shirts to augment my two red, and two white, the latter which are the oldest of the lot; I might want to replace those two... but not right now. At nearly 30 bucks a piece, they are a little pricey, but considering that they need to/have to last some five years or so, that's about 6 bucks a year---a relative steal.
The one thing that I liked about the NEX Uniqlo outlet was their contactless self-check out. The idea was, dump all the stuff you picked off in the provided area, and the machine will read all the RFID tags at once and add them to the check out list, after which it is a simple case of paying with the card and then heading out into the sunset. It was so smooth and fuss-free that I was quite amused at the line of people who were crowding in front of the sole cashier. I did mumble under my breath about whether there was anyone at the self-check out, and noticing that there was no one there, just skipped the entire line and headed there myself.
Other than that, I spent the rest of the afternoon just walking about in NEX. It has been a while since I left the apartment of my own volition to go somewhere (anywhere, really) just to sightsee.
As I said, it was a good day. And now, I shall hide in the safety of my room in the apartment and wait till tomorrow comes.
Till the next update.
I began the day late by waking up late due to having slept late the night before (see a pattern yet?). I got my 2k+ words done for NaNoWriMo, and lurked about till it was time to head out to NEX.
I had several things that I needed to do there. First was to treat myself to a nice steak from Collin's again. I've not had a nice steak in quite a while, and it felt like it was time; not that I disliked the food that I have been eating at home and around home, but that I just wanted something a little more luxurious. I had wanted to get their ``35 Days' Whisky Dry Aged Black Angus Ribeye Steak'', but they were out (how can one be out of something like that?), and ended with their ``Australian Margaret River Wagyu Ribeye Steak'' instead.
Man. That was some good steak. The meat was deliciously fatty, with the fat giving that fragrant flavour over the meat and myosin. A real treat for my taste buds. Is it worth the 78 bucks? I'll say yes, and only because it's a once-in-a-long-time type of consumption that I was going for. If I were to be having a ``regular'' steak each fortnight or month, I might go for something around half the price or lower, but as is, it was great. They had suggested their ``21 Days' Dry Aged Black Angus Tomahawk'' steak as an alternative to the Wagyu, but I uh... didn't buy it. Not wholly because of what some Reddit user say, but that I just want the meat damnit, not the whole bone.
After the late lunch/early dinner, I went to ye olde Uniqlo to get some new clothes. My currently oldest batch of boxer briefs have run their course, and it was time to shop for replacements. I had bought two from Uniqlo before to test, and I liked them well enough to buy a similar make. I also took the opportunity to increase the number of colours of my polo T-shirt wardrobe by 50%---I bought a couple of black polo T-shirts to augment my two red, and two white, the latter which are the oldest of the lot; I might want to replace those two... but not right now. At nearly 30 bucks a piece, they are a little pricey, but considering that they need to/have to last some five years or so, that's about 6 bucks a year---a relative steal.
The one thing that I liked about the NEX Uniqlo outlet was their contactless self-check out. The idea was, dump all the stuff you picked off in the provided area, and the machine will read all the RFID tags at once and add them to the check out list, after which it is a simple case of paying with the card and then heading out into the sunset. It was so smooth and fuss-free that I was quite amused at the line of people who were crowding in front of the sole cashier. I did mumble under my breath about whether there was anyone at the self-check out, and noticing that there was no one there, just skipped the entire line and headed there myself.
Other than that, I spent the rest of the afternoon just walking about in NEX. It has been a while since I left the apartment of my own volition to go somewhere (anywhere, really) just to sightsee.
As I said, it was a good day. And now, I shall hide in the safety of my room in the apartment and wait till tomorrow comes.
Till the next update.
Stupid O'Clock Ramblings Yet Again
Oooo... would you look at it? Stupid o'clock!
Man, it's rare to have a stupid o'clock entry, especially in the middle of NaNoWriMo. All those wasted uncounted words! What am/was I thinking?
Well, anyway, here we are again. I'm woozy because it is late at night, and I'm running towards the end of my sabbatical. Some big issues have been resolved in my head, but there are still others that lurk about, never truly having a proper answer, just because of the way things work. But that is life, isn't it? If everything is completely predictable from the get-go, then there's no need to go through the entirety that is life itself. There's always some portions of it that we will never have control over, direct or otherwise, mostly because it is emergent behaviour that requires an intelligence far superior than our own to know and manage the complexity (looking at you, God).
I was reading an old article about software engineering (No Silver Bullet---Essence and Accident in Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. circa 1987 for those who want to keep score), and it has succinctly summarised the issues that I had once tried to explain to a bunch of middle managers about how software is much more complex than hardware despite the fact that it seemingly takes less specialised physical processes to create. My explanation revolved around the analogy of how in software, we needed to create the physics of the system in addition to working out how the business rules need to be implemented, whereas in hardware, regular physics would already provide a natural limiter that takes away much of the complexity that appears within the solution.
Brooks is even more blunt. He points out that the real complexity with software engineering is that it is an entire discipline that takes away a human's strongest reasoning power: the ability to literally visualise---only in the most trivial or restricted of circumstances can any graphic come close to illuminating with its visualisation than otherwise. To Brooks, having newer and higher level programming languages solve what he calls ``accident'' aspects of software engineering---examples of which include the lack of machine power (either in terms of computational cycles, or in memory), which impacts how many issues that a software engineer needs to handle that is not directly solving the problem at hand (like the lack of garbage collection, or say abstract data types and their associated operations). The essence itself is still not an easy to solve problem (circa the late 1980s), and it is still true today: specifications are the hardest things to get right, for the reason that even the client does not know what they want.
In this time and age, that problem comes even before we start throwing in more nonsense that is only useful for gargantuan companies like Google and friends with their planetary scale information systems. I cringe when I think about how small and medium sized companies want everything to run on The Cloud using the latest in micro-service architecture just to save money on running and maintaining their own servers, only to discover that the true cost is the programmers' time, because much of their task are about translating business rules into program code (the dreaded ``enterprise-level CRUD'' type of programming). And the bulk of that time is spent in understanding and formalising the arcane business rules that no one in their right mind would sit down and codify completely, which also brings up the other cringe-worthy aspect of outsourcing everything to allegedly save on manpower costs, only to discover that the lack of a close working relationship between the software engineer and the system users causes project schedules to be overrun, software quality to suffer, and blame being thrown at everyone except those who have mismanaged through myopic penny-wise pound-foolish choices.
Well, so what do we do then?
Like many things, giving people a proper education with the ability to think critically is always a good baseline for everything. With critical thinking abilities, it is slightly easier to have clients who can be a tad clearer about what they want, and can understand things better when the software engineer points out some of the contradictions/edge cases that their own incomplete rules can generate, instead of paying the blame game.
The other thing is what I have been advocating for a while: use the right tool for the job. It is important to not re-invent the wheel as much as possible, but the cost needed for adapting an existing tool to fit the rest of the system needs to be taken into consideration also. Just because something is new doesn't mean that the old is no longer applicable---all things need to be evaluated critically. And above all, system design knowledge should be prized. Note that I did not say ``knowledge of frameworks should be prized''---I am literally pointing to something different from the type of job description that says something like ``Must know XYZ framework''. What is ``know'' here? Know of its existence? Know how to use it? Know its design principles? Know whether it is the right tool for the job?
Maybe I'm just curmudgeonly, but I think that anyone who believes that their three-month intensive NodeJS code bootcamp is sufficient for them to call themselves a system designer is just hubris. But then again, that's what the HR drones look for, so I guess it is just a way to play the game.
After all, who doesn't like a slice of that juicy infocomm tech pie, am I right? And companies love these people because they can be paid much less (but still a lot compared to other industries) due to being ``junior staff''.
Urgh. I hate the way this world works. Sometimes I wonder why I have not gone into the mountains to be a monk of some sort.
Till the next update.
Man, it's rare to have a stupid o'clock entry, especially in the middle of NaNoWriMo. All those wasted uncounted words! What am/was I thinking?
Well, anyway, here we are again. I'm woozy because it is late at night, and I'm running towards the end of my sabbatical. Some big issues have been resolved in my head, but there are still others that lurk about, never truly having a proper answer, just because of the way things work. But that is life, isn't it? If everything is completely predictable from the get-go, then there's no need to go through the entirety that is life itself. There's always some portions of it that we will never have control over, direct or otherwise, mostly because it is emergent behaviour that requires an intelligence far superior than our own to know and manage the complexity (looking at you, God).
I was reading an old article about software engineering (No Silver Bullet---Essence and Accident in Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. circa 1987 for those who want to keep score), and it has succinctly summarised the issues that I had once tried to explain to a bunch of middle managers about how software is much more complex than hardware despite the fact that it seemingly takes less specialised physical processes to create. My explanation revolved around the analogy of how in software, we needed to create the physics of the system in addition to working out how the business rules need to be implemented, whereas in hardware, regular physics would already provide a natural limiter that takes away much of the complexity that appears within the solution.
Brooks is even more blunt. He points out that the real complexity with software engineering is that it is an entire discipline that takes away a human's strongest reasoning power: the ability to literally visualise---only in the most trivial or restricted of circumstances can any graphic come close to illuminating with its visualisation than otherwise. To Brooks, having newer and higher level programming languages solve what he calls ``accident'' aspects of software engineering---examples of which include the lack of machine power (either in terms of computational cycles, or in memory), which impacts how many issues that a software engineer needs to handle that is not directly solving the problem at hand (like the lack of garbage collection, or say abstract data types and their associated operations). The essence itself is still not an easy to solve problem (circa the late 1980s), and it is still true today: specifications are the hardest things to get right, for the reason that even the client does not know what they want.
In this time and age, that problem comes even before we start throwing in more nonsense that is only useful for gargantuan companies like Google and friends with their planetary scale information systems. I cringe when I think about how small and medium sized companies want everything to run on The Cloud using the latest in micro-service architecture just to save money on running and maintaining their own servers, only to discover that the true cost is the programmers' time, because much of their task are about translating business rules into program code (the dreaded ``enterprise-level CRUD'' type of programming). And the bulk of that time is spent in understanding and formalising the arcane business rules that no one in their right mind would sit down and codify completely, which also brings up the other cringe-worthy aspect of outsourcing everything to allegedly save on manpower costs, only to discover that the lack of a close working relationship between the software engineer and the system users causes project schedules to be overrun, software quality to suffer, and blame being thrown at everyone except those who have mismanaged through myopic penny-wise pound-foolish choices.
Well, so what do we do then?
Like many things, giving people a proper education with the ability to think critically is always a good baseline for everything. With critical thinking abilities, it is slightly easier to have clients who can be a tad clearer about what they want, and can understand things better when the software engineer points out some of the contradictions/edge cases that their own incomplete rules can generate, instead of paying the blame game.
The other thing is what I have been advocating for a while: use the right tool for the job. It is important to not re-invent the wheel as much as possible, but the cost needed for adapting an existing tool to fit the rest of the system needs to be taken into consideration also. Just because something is new doesn't mean that the old is no longer applicable---all things need to be evaluated critically. And above all, system design knowledge should be prized. Note that I did not say ``knowledge of frameworks should be prized''---I am literally pointing to something different from the type of job description that says something like ``Must know XYZ framework''. What is ``know'' here? Know of its existence? Know how to use it? Know its design principles? Know whether it is the right tool for the job?
Maybe I'm just curmudgeonly, but I think that anyone who believes that their three-month intensive NodeJS code bootcamp is sufficient for them to call themselves a system designer is just hubris. But then again, that's what the HR drones look for, so I guess it is just a way to play the game.
After all, who doesn't like a slice of that juicy infocomm tech pie, am I right? And companies love these people because they can be paid much less (but still a lot compared to other industries) due to being ``junior staff''.
Urgh. I hate the way this world works. Sometimes I wonder why I have not gone into the mountains to be a monk of some sort.
Till the next update.
Sunday, November 07, 2021
Late Entry...
This came late, but it will have to do.
I got my 2k+ words in for NaNoWriMo. I caught up on Red Team C's perspective at the second Hololive Sports Festival.
I also built yet another nether rail, this time to connect my end portal in the overworld to my home base in the hills.
That's about it. Till the next update.
I got my 2k+ words in for NaNoWriMo. I caught up on Red Team C's perspective at the second Hololive Sports Festival.
I also built yet another nether rail, this time to connect my end portal in the overworld to my home base in the hills.
That's about it. Till the next update.
Saturday, November 06, 2021
Why I Would Get a New Flute Over an Old One
In reply to a recent post in the Flute Forum regarding different flute scales, after a few posts on history:
I like the history lessons, so I'll share a different aspect of things.
What we call "scales" here are really schema for tone hole placement relative to specifically defined flute tube dimensions. Boehm, in his bid to build a better flute, did one thing better than just defining an acoustically better (relative to flutes of that era) schema for his new flute design: he made it "open source".
This meant that anyone who wanted to build flutes that had similar characteristics as what Boehm did could do so relatively easily, assuming they have the necessary skills.
Boehm's schema had interpolation built in to take into account the different tuning standards of the day. But I don't think the interpolation was as good as it should be, since some of the design decisions that could work for [say] A435 probably didn't apply to A442.
Further down the line, adjustments to the Boehm schema took place, but they were generally shrouded behind trade secrets of individual makers. The Cooper scale is a major "open source" update to the schema of the Boehm flute.
An interesting question to ask is, if the concert flute has already been around for more than one hundred years, why do we still need to create such "improved" schema? I conjecture that it comes from two main drivers: pedagogy trends, and better manufacturing techniques.
Pedagogy trends mean that the manner in which we play and teach the flute has changed over time, so what was originally considered an in-tune schema from the past may not be applicable now. This is evident over the past one hundred years as well, when we move away from older music towards newer sonorities as demanded by the new compositions (and the proliferation of 12-tone equal temperament as The Scale), where nimbleness across different intervals across the different registers of the flute demands an embouchure that is just as flexible. That requirement of a flexible embouchure means that flutes which can be "in tune" without lipping will be much easier to control than those who have more "character' and demand more lipping, for the simple reason that it requires less effort from the player, and that reduction in effort can then be applied to the interpretation of the music instead.
Changes in manufacturing techniques also mean that the original design compromises of less correct intonation to mitigate hard-to-fashion-by-hand parts can be done away with, restoring an acoustically more correct schema that demands better making techniques. Case in point: the C# hole doubling as a vent hole for the second instrument octave that made it much smaller than it should be for a correct C# -- we can now put in the C#-trill hole, which is much larger and thus gives a better venting for a "true" C#. That additional C#-trill requires extending the posts longer to support two axes, or some weird rod-in-rod connection to allow two independent rotating axes (don't ask me how it can be done that way -- I'm not a mechanical engineer!). Doing that with only hand tools without our modern knowledge of manufacturing is nasty, to say the least.
Ultimately though, the player is still the biggest part of the flute's sound. It doesn't matter what schema the flute is in -- what matters is if the flute can assist the player's physical abilities to achieve what the player wants to achieve musically.
I would, however, state categorically that with our modern concert flute, mechanism stability and operability becomes a great limiting factor in general, and sadly it is often only with newer flutes that we get the improvement in mechanism design and precision machining. So, to get a flute that has mechanisms that work well, longer, one might need to just get used to the new scales as they come into vogue. Or hope that we always have great flute technicians who know how to retrofit better mechanisms to our favourited old flutes so that they can benefit from that without losing their tonal character.
Friday, November 05, 2021
Burning All That Excess Energy
*stretches*
Alright, we're nearing the end of the first week of November, the NaNoWriMo month. Incidentally, remember remember the fifth of November. It is a day after the gazetted public holiday, but for someone who is on sabbatical, it is a day that is no different from any other day.
Well, scratch that. I had this weird amount of energy that I felt like burning off, and so I pumped my tyres back to the 80/100 psi for the front and rear tyres respectively, strapped on my integrated GPS receiver/heart rate monitor, and went cycling around the North Easatern Riverine Loop once more. Not much has changed since the last time that I cycled through it in September, but it was still a treat to go down some familiar paths.
I mean, that circuit has undergone various works over the past five years, among which included:
All in all, it was a good cycling round. My heart rates were uncomfortably high though, generally falling into the VO2 Max and Anaerobic heart rate zones---those two took up more than 83% of my total cycling time of about an hour.
Uhhh...
...I would like to say that the sensor might be busted, but I did get some thumping headaches on the left side of my head. I suspect that it is due to the twin reasons of probably going a little hard [after not having done anything this hard in a long time], and partly due to possible dehydration. I was supposed to drink like 250 mL of water before heading out, but I only realised that I forgot to do so only when I was already on the ground floor, ready to go.
I could have gone back up for that water, but since the elevator is currently out of commission due to upgrade works (only done near the end of November!), I just decided to heck it and go. It probably didn't help that the weather was generally humid and hot at eleven in the morning.
It was so humid that just minutes after I put away my bicycle at home and had taken a shower, it rained. Hard.
I am going to sleep really well tonight, I think.
Anyway, that's all I have for now. A pity I can't/won't use any of these blog entries as part of my NaNoWriMo word count due to the principle of the matter; otherwise my word count is probably going to be some 50% larger than the 12880 words that it is right now.
Till the next update.
Alright, we're nearing the end of the first week of November, the NaNoWriMo month. Incidentally, remember remember the fifth of November. It is a day after the gazetted public holiday, but for someone who is on sabbatical, it is a day that is no different from any other day.
Well, scratch that. I had this weird amount of energy that I felt like burning off, and so I pumped my tyres back to the 80/100 psi for the front and rear tyres respectively, strapped on my integrated GPS receiver/heart rate monitor, and went cycling around the North Easatern Riverine Loop once more. Not much has changed since the last time that I cycled through it in September, but it was still a treat to go down some familiar paths.
I mean, that circuit has undergone various works over the past five years, among which included:
- Re-paving the tarmac along Punggol Promenade Nature Walk;
- Raising the height limits on some of the overhead barriers;
- Repainting the PCN lane to split up the pedestrians from the cyclists;
- Re-repainting the PCN lane to re-integrate the pedestrains and cyclists;
- Re-re-repainting the PCN lane to demarcate ``PMDs must use this lane'';
- Improvements to the shelters surrounding;
- Upgrading of various paths to make sure bends are actually safe to take at the 10--25 km/h speed (I'm looking at you, old 90° turn opposite ``Coney Island'');
- Better lighting; and
- Updated crossing at Seletar North Link.
All in all, it was a good cycling round. My heart rates were uncomfortably high though, generally falling into the VO2 Max and Anaerobic heart rate zones---those two took up more than 83% of my total cycling time of about an hour.
Uhhh...
...I would like to say that the sensor might be busted, but I did get some thumping headaches on the left side of my head. I suspect that it is due to the twin reasons of probably going a little hard [after not having done anything this hard in a long time], and partly due to possible dehydration. I was supposed to drink like 250 mL of water before heading out, but I only realised that I forgot to do so only when I was already on the ground floor, ready to go.
I could have gone back up for that water, but since the elevator is currently out of commission due to upgrade works (only done near the end of November!), I just decided to heck it and go. It probably didn't help that the weather was generally humid and hot at eleven in the morning.
It was so humid that just minutes after I put away my bicycle at home and had taken a shower, it rained. Hard.
I am going to sleep really well tonight, I think.
Anyway, that's all I have for now. A pity I can't/won't use any of these blog entries as part of my NaNoWriMo word count due to the principle of the matter; otherwise my word count is probably going to be some 50% larger than the 12880 words that it is right now.
Till the next update.
Thursday, November 04, 2021
What About the World?
Expectations can be swayed with careful enough application of restrictions. The idea here is that if we push someone down long enough, it conditions them to regard that oppression as a new status quo, from which the relaxation of any of the restrictions is enough to generate an undeserved amount of thanksgiving.
It's like the age old question: can one truly understand any specific state of being without first being in that state of being. Paraphrasing with a more specific analogy, it's akin to trying to explain happiness to someone who has never experienced it, or depression to someone who has never experienced it, or the colour red to someone who cannot see.
The idea of a liberal education is to provide enough stimulus to the person in question so as to open them up to more perspectives to cultivate their own way of thinking. It is a means to show them a world beyond the one that they experienced. There is nothing inherently good nor bad about this---all it does is to provide choices, and with it, the ability to exercise one's free will.
If, at the end of the day, the said person decides to go back to their comfort zone and not leave it, they do so knowing that they had made an informed choice, and not because they had done so due to not having seen any possible choices.
Cosmically, this is why I think that we must find our way to God through confessing our sins and accepting Jesus as the Christ and our personal saviour, despite God being all-powerful and having sovereignty over the universe. Some may reject Jesus for one reason or another after their exposure to the gospel---that's alright by me, since it is ultimately between they and God, and literally not for me to judge, while others may accept Jesus accordingly, which is also alright by me, since it is still ultimately between they and God.
But let's get back to the more mundane and secular world. A liberal education is in many ways, an anti-thesis to authoritarianism. It's not so much an anti-thesis because of the questioning nature that comes from having a liberal education, but that the authoritarian perceives the need to provide ripostes against any and all criticisms as a waste of their time, under the assumption that as the authoritarian, they are, by definition, the righteous, and therefore all criticism serves to distract them from the ``obviously right path forward''. So, the more a population has liberal education experiences, the more work the authoritarian perceives that they have to do to maintain the status quo of power structures.
Luckily for them, it is not the case that the majority of populations have the sort of thinking that comes from a liberal education. It is partly from a difference in aptitude of independent thought, and partly from either the existence of dependents that keep them in thrall with the status quo, or that they have been chained down with other obligations that they do not have enough energy to channel into independent thought and therefore assuming the bystander effect of ``eh, someone else will handle it'' even though they may agree that something is/has gone wrong.
Combine what I said in the last paragraph with an overtly oppressive environment, then the smallest of liberties that are revealed will lead to an over-reaction of thankfulness to those who had done the oppression.
This is true not just for SIN city, which is probably the likeliest conclusion someone might draw from reading this. It is part of the realpolitick playbook. There is a reason why the United Nations have tried to create the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as a means of leveraging on existing power structures to coerce some semblence of empathy/sanity towards the treatment of people. There are two big problems with UDHR though: first is that it is unenforceable because there is no one to enforce it, and the second is that the UDHR does not preclude exceptions that stem from the much stronger aspect of ``national security'' or ``national emergency''.
The public eye has a tendency to judge the effectiveness of politicians by the amount of action that they take on the current hot-button issues---the problem with that is that sometimes, when the best course of action is to literally do nothing, that cannot be done, a type of political zugzwang. This explains a lot of the behaviours of various politicians across the world in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is safe to assume at this point that there are no politicians who are in politics just to serve the people to their abilities, and that everyone who is involved in politics are there for their personal benefit. With that kind of default perspective, many actions will make a lot of sense.
Is this a rather cynical view of the world? No, I disagree---it is a pragmatic view of the world. I can say that we live in Fallen times where Sin fills the world, but I will say instead that the types of social structures and rules that we put in place to select the people to tend to the public problems have selectively allowed this breed of politicians to appear. And to these politicians, we have ceded a tremendous amount of power in the hopes that they will do their duty as sworn in, but they have failed us for the most part, with some using the very powers that we ceded to them to use against us.
The only way then for any citizenry to fight back is to claw back the powers that were ceded. In that sense, Gandhi was right all along: nonviolent resistance at a large enough scale is the solution to change without forcing the chaos that comes from a breakdown of social structures the way violent resistance brings. That last part of the largeness of the scale, is my own emphasis. I put it there because I think that a critical mass is always needed in order to have something to tip over and change. So a small group of three people protesting non-violently can be easily hushed into silence, but if three million people did so, it would be many orders of magnitude harder.
Am I then, a dissident of sorts? No, I'm not. The world is full of principalities beyond the control of regular humans that act in human ways---they are, after all, the true immortals that can rival that of the gods of old. I have chosen to participate in the world to the extent that it is necessary to maintain this body I have, and will attempt to sway whatever part of it that falls within my sphere of influence towards a more righteous nature as thanksgiving to Christ who saved me from my sins. Other than that, I don't have any more stake in the world---I have no desire nor the ability to cause changes against the principalities at large.
Understanding how a principality acts is the first step towards innoculating oneself against their methods of bending people to their will. As the aeroplane safety manual says, save yourself first before assisting others.
Whether everything I said earlier makes sense or not does not matter in the least. Till the next update.
It's like the age old question: can one truly understand any specific state of being without first being in that state of being. Paraphrasing with a more specific analogy, it's akin to trying to explain happiness to someone who has never experienced it, or depression to someone who has never experienced it, or the colour red to someone who cannot see.
The idea of a liberal education is to provide enough stimulus to the person in question so as to open them up to more perspectives to cultivate their own way of thinking. It is a means to show them a world beyond the one that they experienced. There is nothing inherently good nor bad about this---all it does is to provide choices, and with it, the ability to exercise one's free will.
If, at the end of the day, the said person decides to go back to their comfort zone and not leave it, they do so knowing that they had made an informed choice, and not because they had done so due to not having seen any possible choices.
Cosmically, this is why I think that we must find our way to God through confessing our sins and accepting Jesus as the Christ and our personal saviour, despite God being all-powerful and having sovereignty over the universe. Some may reject Jesus for one reason or another after their exposure to the gospel---that's alright by me, since it is ultimately between they and God, and literally not for me to judge, while others may accept Jesus accordingly, which is also alright by me, since it is still ultimately between they and God.
But let's get back to the more mundane and secular world. A liberal education is in many ways, an anti-thesis to authoritarianism. It's not so much an anti-thesis because of the questioning nature that comes from having a liberal education, but that the authoritarian perceives the need to provide ripostes against any and all criticisms as a waste of their time, under the assumption that as the authoritarian, they are, by definition, the righteous, and therefore all criticism serves to distract them from the ``obviously right path forward''. So, the more a population has liberal education experiences, the more work the authoritarian perceives that they have to do to maintain the status quo of power structures.
Luckily for them, it is not the case that the majority of populations have the sort of thinking that comes from a liberal education. It is partly from a difference in aptitude of independent thought, and partly from either the existence of dependents that keep them in thrall with the status quo, or that they have been chained down with other obligations that they do not have enough energy to channel into independent thought and therefore assuming the bystander effect of ``eh, someone else will handle it'' even though they may agree that something is/has gone wrong.
Combine what I said in the last paragraph with an overtly oppressive environment, then the smallest of liberties that are revealed will lead to an over-reaction of thankfulness to those who had done the oppression.
This is true not just for SIN city, which is probably the likeliest conclusion someone might draw from reading this. It is part of the realpolitick playbook. There is a reason why the United Nations have tried to create the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as a means of leveraging on existing power structures to coerce some semblence of empathy/sanity towards the treatment of people. There are two big problems with UDHR though: first is that it is unenforceable because there is no one to enforce it, and the second is that the UDHR does not preclude exceptions that stem from the much stronger aspect of ``national security'' or ``national emergency''.
The public eye has a tendency to judge the effectiveness of politicians by the amount of action that they take on the current hot-button issues---the problem with that is that sometimes, when the best course of action is to literally do nothing, that cannot be done, a type of political zugzwang. This explains a lot of the behaviours of various politicians across the world in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is safe to assume at this point that there are no politicians who are in politics just to serve the people to their abilities, and that everyone who is involved in politics are there for their personal benefit. With that kind of default perspective, many actions will make a lot of sense.
Is this a rather cynical view of the world? No, I disagree---it is a pragmatic view of the world. I can say that we live in Fallen times where Sin fills the world, but I will say instead that the types of social structures and rules that we put in place to select the people to tend to the public problems have selectively allowed this breed of politicians to appear. And to these politicians, we have ceded a tremendous amount of power in the hopes that they will do their duty as sworn in, but they have failed us for the most part, with some using the very powers that we ceded to them to use against us.
The only way then for any citizenry to fight back is to claw back the powers that were ceded. In that sense, Gandhi was right all along: nonviolent resistance at a large enough scale is the solution to change without forcing the chaos that comes from a breakdown of social structures the way violent resistance brings. That last part of the largeness of the scale, is my own emphasis. I put it there because I think that a critical mass is always needed in order to have something to tip over and change. So a small group of three people protesting non-violently can be easily hushed into silence, but if three million people did so, it would be many orders of magnitude harder.
Am I then, a dissident of sorts? No, I'm not. The world is full of principalities beyond the control of regular humans that act in human ways---they are, after all, the true immortals that can rival that of the gods of old. I have chosen to participate in the world to the extent that it is necessary to maintain this body I have, and will attempt to sway whatever part of it that falls within my sphere of influence towards a more righteous nature as thanksgiving to Christ who saved me from my sins. Other than that, I don't have any more stake in the world---I have no desire nor the ability to cause changes against the principalities at large.
Understanding how a principality acts is the first step towards innoculating oneself against their methods of bending people to their will. As the aeroplane safety manual says, save yourself first before assisting others.
Whether everything I said earlier makes sense or not does not matter in the least. Till the next update.
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