~72 Hours After mRNA-1273 Booster...

Frankly, nothing noteworthy. The soreness of the intramuscular injection site (missed it the first couple of times) is nearly non-existent. There seems to be light pain from potential lymph node swelling in the left arm-pit, but I only notice it when I choose to notice it, i.e. also not noteworthy.

I spent a little bit of this morning reposting some of the longer Flute Forum posts that I had put up yesterday, spelling errors and all, and elaborated a little more on one of them. But that's not really noteworthy either.

I did power through The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew last night. Fuelled by a little too much energy drink/soda, and the relatively interesting subject matter of secession from Malaya that the last third of the book was talking about, I completed that book. I must say that after I had read through this volume, I can see why the Old Man treated unions the way he did---unlike in the western countries, the unions in SIN city had been tainted with communist tendencies in the past, and the Old Man had observed how they were wielded as a blunt weapon of subversion against the governing body.

I mean, he literally worked with the folks who did all that right in the beginning when SIN city was still under colonial control.

An organisational weapon that was used successfully before to force control away from the incumbent becomes a prime target for nerfing when the new person takes control: this is to be expected.

I wonder if such extreme influences still exist these days. It's hard to tell because unlike SIN city of that era, there is no obvious oppressor/emergency to deal with. The problems of today have a longer horizon than the problems of the 1950s--1960s. We are, on average, still wealthier than 80% of the world's population despite all the complaints that we have, though the nature of the complaints need to be taken into the context of actually having to prosper here in the face of mounting pressures.

Politics then shares similar characteristics as today, but with one key difference: there really isn't a strong identifiable rival to unite against per se. That could be a reason why the modern SIN city politician seems to be ``softer'' than those of that era.

But hey, what do I know? I'm an armchair critic---who knows what kind of deep negotiations are going on in the background to guarantee SIN city's continued independent existence even as the world's superpowers posture for hegemony as regional powers continue their game of subtle one-upship.

All I know is, that's probably the last book for 2021, with 《毛主席语录》 by 毛泽东 being my next book to read.

In the event that this post is the last for this year, take care, and see you all in the annual summary tomorrow.

Does There Exist a Trade Off In Bore Geometry for [Concert] Flutes?

As a reply to a post on Flute Forum that segued from how a flute played easier in the altissimo range compared to the regular, with the poster musing about conical versus cylindrical bores, and asking if there is generally a trade-off between ease of play in low and high register:

Short answer: yes.

Less short answer: it's not "just" about cylindrical bores versus conical bores -- the bore's inner diameter, the stopper position, tone hole positions, the size of tone holes, and the relative outer dimension at the tone hole (or tone hole height for the Boehm flute) matter as well. Acoustic models often simplify the flute to an open pipe ideal, with a column of massless air molecules that instantaneously form stationary [longitudinal] waves when a suitable energy source is provided.

But the reality is that real flutes have real air molecules with real mass/inertia, and we don't excite the end of the "open" pipe directly (we do it transversely), relying on the stopper to "bounce" our real energy source through with losses from all the air molecules' inertia, whether they are moving longitudinally down the pipe or venting through a tone hole. This means that the kinetic energy received from the air molecules farther from the embouchure hole is significantly less than the air molecules closer to the embouchure hole where the driving force (our air stream) is. Not to mention that sometimes, if the energy imparted is high enough (like playing high register notes), the air molecules farther away may still have enough energy to continue on beyond where they are "supposed" to "stop".

Long story short, without suitable engineering compensation, your flute will be horribly out of tune when you don't take into account all these real losses that the models simplify away when they are trying to explain things. "Cylindrical" bores and "conical" bores are just simplifications of the two broad compromises in flute design -- "cylindrical" bores have slight tapers nearer the head joint while the majority of the flute (i.e. the body + foot) are true cylinders; while "conical" bores have their tapers towards the foot of the flute body, with the head joint retaining a more or less cylindrical shape.

The ease of playing in low and high registers with respect to these two design choices is subjective. Humans are highly adaptable, so the real question is which of these two designs results in a flute that is more in tune with itself. A flute that is more in-tune with itself (i.e. when you overblow the pipe to select the appropriate standing wave mode, they form integer multiples of the fundamental frequency) will be easier to play across the registers. As to whether you can REACH the high notes, it depends on how easy it is to force anti-nodes at places where you WANT the wave length to be shorter (i.e. where you open your tone holes, and their sizes).

That said, I'm not the most knowledgeable about this. 😅

To add on a little for things that I didn't have the chance to write more about because it is, after all, still a Facebook post despite the length, real-world instrument making has many musical/artistic expression considerations that need to be taken into account even before the specific engineering trade-offs are chosen. The concert flute, for instance, had its shaped drastically adjusted and its first register flattened just so that its ambitus can be raised from the traditional 2 octaves and a fifth to a full 3 octaves, while overtone flutes like the fujara has the ratio of its inner diameter to bore length reduced greatly to facilitate the production of overtones instead.

I would go as far as to say that in many cases, any differences in musical/artistic expression considerations end up with that particularly designed/made flute being designated differently---you can see this even in the Wikipedia list of flutes.

But for my internal learning reasons, I tend to group them differently to facilitate cross-system training, keeping close mind to how to express the actual music with the particular flute, while also observing the subtle differences in choices for the positions of the tone holes. That latter bit usually does not affect the lowest register of the flute in question (it's usually a diatonic major scale, or rarely, some minor scale like the shakuhachi's pentatonic minor scale), but it does affect what kind of middle/high register pitches we can attain.

In the end though, as what sifu said before: we adapt to the instrument; the instrument does not adapt to us---that is the very fundamental fact. It is after our experience from adapting to the instrument that we eventually learn of its limitations, and then decide if those limitations are truly stumbling blocks for our expression (in which case it is time for a ``better'' version of the instrument), or if they were deliberate artistic choices.

Playing High Notes Requires Blowing Edge Angle Changes, Not More Volumes of Air

In response to the poster replying ``It's a wooden bamboo flute brand new.. (sic)'' when the suggestion of leaks/bent keys was proposed in response to the poster's original complaint about inconsistency in sounding out the low notes while in scale with the knowledge that ``high notes have to be blown harder and the lower notes softer'', and the observation that when the poster focuses on just getting the right tone for these notes, it was effortless. The poster's original question was if more practice with breath work was required, stating an experience of about a year:

OP, no offense, but that doesn't mean anything.

If it has keys and associated pads, leakages are possible. Doesn't matter if it is metal, plastic, wood, or bamboo.

If it is a simple flute system with no keys/pads, leakages are still possible, except this time it is your fingers that aren't covering the holes properly. Again, it doesn't matter if it is metal, stone, plastic, wood, or bamboo.

It is only half correct that high notes need to be "blown on harder". You need a higher air speed, but you need it at a shallower angle (relative to directly across the embouchure hole) as compared to the low notes. So blowing "harder" but with the wrong angle does NOT cause the higher frequency harmonics of the standing wave to sound.

Air stream angle of attack on the blowing edge changes as the register of the flute being used changes, with the lower registers have steeper angles compared to the higher registers.

Air steam angles of attack are also affected by how you seat your flute's embouchure hole relative to your embouchure. Assuming that your flute is of a decent playable quality, you will need to find that sweet spot.

If you haven't had lessons with a teacher, you might want to consider having one to more accurately and quickly diagnose and fix any issues that you are facing as they can observe how you are playing. Often times when people are facing trouble in playing and they try to describe it in words, they tend to miss out quite a few very important points, because they aren't aware of what it is to look out for since there are so many minor things that can stack into a major problem. A good teacher can help with the awareness bit and can lead to geometric improvements in playing ability.

You have also asked the correct rhetoric question: everyone can always benefit from more practice, provided they are practicing CORRECTLY.

~48 Hours After mRNA-1273 Booster...

Okay, we're more than 48 hours since the booster jab, and frankly, I'm fine. I'm probably going to take one more dose of paracetamol, but then switch back to a more normal set up of... nothing.

This means that by the time I am done, I would have consumed 16× 500 mg of paracetamol for pain/fever relief. This also means that I am not doing any drinking to celebrate the upcoming new year.

That's not really that big of a problem, I suppose.

By my estimates, I think I will be completely fine by tomorrow.

That will be all for now. I'm going to continue putting together more fingering charts specific for the piccolo---I realised that the charts that I had set up for the regular concert flute are not that applicable for the piccolo due to the different acoustics. For one, the concert flute has a longer pipe with vent holes (C-foot/B-foot), which allows higher harmonics to be energised more easily. This means that the higher notes (instrument third register) require slightly different venting set ups on the piccolo (which cuts off at the end for register #1 D) to enable the higher notes to come out more correctly.

I can't make use of the chart for the one-keyed flute for the same reason why I cannot use the piccolo's fingering charts for the the dizi---the addition of two more ``trill key holes'' beyond the C♯ hole means that the piccolo can force new anti-nodes that are of a shorter wavelength than what the dizi and the one-keyed flute can.

Anyway, that last bit is a big tangent over what I wanted to report---the post 48-hour mark of the booster shot.

My point still stands: take the damn booster shot if one is eligible and able to. The cost-benefit analysis should weight outrageously towards being more beneficial than otherwise.

Abuse Mechanic in PayNow?

So okay, thanks to the exigencies that is COVID-19, I find myself dragged through necessity to setting up and using ``PayNow'', sort of in the same way I got dragged into the whole stupid mess that is WhatsApp (that's another story for another day).

Anyway, I just want to share a potential abuse mechanic of the PayNow onboarding process. After one is set up, the next thing is to register the mobile phone number/NRIC of the recipient. You can basically enter any number there, and eventually you would be brought to a page where you would be required to enter a six-digit OTP that is sent to one's cellphone via SMS.

Now the potential abuse mechanic here is that the registering of a recipient number automatically reveals the name/nickname of the recipient number if the recipient already has a PayNow account linked up with their cellphone number. Considering that the effort here is ``just'' a single SMS OTP, it becomes a quick way to obtain more information that can be used in a targeted approach.

So, instead of just phishing with a generic message, with just a little effort, it is now possible to convert the generic phishing attempt into a spear phishing one.

I wonder what the mitigation can be for such an abuse mechanic?

~24 Hours After mRNA-1273 Booster...

It's a little more than 24 hours since my booster shot. Frankly, apart from the soreness of the intramuscular injection and the overall fatigue that comes as my body consumes energy to activate the immune system to fight off the generated spike protein, I am still doing fine.

Brain's slow due to the fatigue though, that's for certain, and I definitely will not be literally running around for a bit, as stated in the suggested behaviours with respect to the post-booster shot.

That will be all for now. Till the next update.

Boosted But Sleepy

That booster shot... was something else.

I was at Buona Vista CC bright and early this morning, way ahead of the appointment time of eight. The stations weren't manned, and the signs were not really set up either. Eventually everything would be ready, and I just waited patiently for it.

Registration proceeded painlessly. The booster shot mRNA-1273 used a much lower amount compared to a regular vaccine dose (250 μL versus 500 μL), and the protocols seemed to be updated to require only 15 min of observation time as compared to 30 min. There were quite a few others who were present for their booster shots as well, but everything went smooth.

The injection site is a bit sore as per the usual intramuscular injections, but was generally un-notable. I did end up sleeping the whole day though, and supplementing myself with more food than usual.

And that's about it. Go get your damn booster shots if you are offered it---this is especially the case when they are heavily subsidised by your government in their overall management of the pandemic. That potential few days of impairment from side effects of the booster shot is nothing as compared to becoming yet another vector of infection for COVID-19, especially if one is living with or has close contact with people from the more vulnerable demographics.

And for those who have not even gotten their basic vaccination series for COVID-19 for no other reason than willful disobedience, fuck you and the horse you came on. You've had two years to observe how the pandemic has spread, and how the vaccines have protected people from death and the vulnerable from infection (the vulnerable's constitution isn't strong enough to fully recover from the infection). There is no excuse to not take the damn vaccine at this stage. And don't quote random verses from the Bible to protect your indefensible position, and don't even bother quoting whatever constitutional law that claims that your freedom of expression or whatever is being violated---the pandemic is not a conspiracy limited to only your country; it is happening world wide. No single national government in the world has that level of influence to create a national level conspiracy that seems to be global, and no group of national governments are competent enough to synchronise their conspiracies to such a degree that they are coherent, so get off your stupidity horse and start listening to medical experts for once.

Don't get me wrong, it's not the stubbon unvaccinated that I am trying to save here with my righteous anger---it's for those vulnerable who are medically unable to take the vaccinations or benefit from the vaccinations that I am trying to save here. Whenever there's a pool of people where the virus is allowed to proliferate, the overall likelihood of a new mutation that can evade whatever defenses we created via vaccination goes up geometrically. The more people are vaccinated, the less likely we have large pools of people from which the virus can pass on useful mutations across the different mutation groups. And the less likely we have useful mutations being passed along, the faster we can wind up this pandemic with an overall win for humanity.

That initial burn of COVID-19 has already passed---we are now in the tail-end management phase of the pandemic. This is likely to be long drawn as we strike ever deeper into harder and harder to reach populations to train their immune systems to fight off the virus faster. For reference, small pox took ten years of constant effort to eradicate complete. COVID-19 isn't going to be eradicated in ten years... especially not with this kind of ``vaccine hesitancy'' nonsense. In the mean time, death will still happen due to a failed fight against the infection, and there will always be those who are maimed badly from a prolonged fight without the pre-emptive training of the immune system via vaccination.

But I suppose those who do read my blog aren't completely dumb enough to fall into that category of people, right?

Everything Comes Together

One theme from my baptism testimony was how God was always orchestrating things according to His way, and how I have always been caught up by His plans in general without my interfering.

Today is something of that example.

I finally received notice from MOH in the morning that I am now eligible for the booster vaccine, and so I quickly went online to sort out the appointment date. Considering that I would be starting work on Monday, it was important that I do not start it while under the side effects of the booster. I had been on Comirnarty earlier for the original shots, and naturally I was going for the Spikevax (Moderna COVID-19) one instead. The unfortunate thing was that the number of vaccination centres in SIN city that provided Spikevax had been greatly reduced, and more importantly, most had their earliest available time slots being set on Thursday. That is a little too late for my liking, and it was a showdown between Buona Vista CC, and Hong Kah North CC. Of these two, I was most familiar with the location of Buona Vista CC, and so I grabbed the earliest slot that they had, which was tomorrow first thing in the morning.

Subsequently, I received notice from my audiologist's secretary that my earplugs were ready, with a request for a convenient time for me to show up and test them out. By that time, it was past one, and had this come earlier, I would have set the appointment to Tuesday instead. But I already had it marked down for the booster shot---I was not going to risk running about with potential side effects to test out something that required my fullest attention to learn how to use effectively. And so I suggested some time today, before the meet up with the care group's dinner.

The timing worked out well, and I went down to have it tested, only for us to realise that our worst fears on how the sharp angle on my ear canal made the insertion of the ear plug exceedingly difficult. And so it would be another week before a modified version would be ready for trying. I had also taken the opportunity to take the complimentary hearing test, and it turned out that I was not as deaf as I thought I was. There was some discrepancy for my hearing between my two ears across the tested frequencies of 125 Hz to 8 kHz in octave bands, with my left ear being less sensitive to the lower frequencies while my right ear was less sensitive for the higher frequencies. A bone conduction test was done and it was verified that there was nothing wrong with my hearing nerve, and a further test confirmed that my ear drum was not as flexible as it should. All in all, my overall hearing sensitivity spanned between 15 dB HL to 30 dB HL, which translates to the qualitative assessment of mild hearing loss, which leads to minor confusion of sounds. Any further assessment would likely involve the ENT, though to be fair, most of my hearing was within the normal hearing range on average.

There was no dip near the 4 kHz frequency, a usual indicator for noise-related hearing damage. Neither was there any noticeable drop logarithmically as the frequencies in the high range increased from 1.5 kHz to 8 kHz---this means that age-related hearing loss was not present.

So I am satisfied with my hearing, and now know how best to mitigate the types of sounds that I want to hear most clearly.

Relating back to how God's plans work out, it's a good thing in many ways that I could get all these important things sorted out before I started work. I am glad that it has turned out the way it has.

Fellowship dinner with the care group was heartening, as always. The food was good, and the company was great. The weather was trolling, but that was to be expected considering that the place where we were meeting to eat was near the coastal regions of SIN city after all.

And with that is the entry for today. Till the next update.

Today, Was a Good Day

Today, was a good day.

An old friend reconnected with me, and I shared the news of my baptism with a couple of other dear friends as well.

The day passed on by uneventfully, with me reading a few more chapters of The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew.

If only all days were to be like this... but that can not be. Simply because we are still living in the fallen world, and in this world, there will always be ups and downs in the days just so that we can separate between them, to learn from the days that are down, and to rejoice in the days that are up.

I don't really have much else to talk about, so I will keep this short. This end-of-year moment is really one that I would remember for quite a while, not because it was very eventful, but how it was the end of the true and proper break that I had in so long.

There really isn't many days left till the end of 2021. Here's to hoping that it will pass on by quietly and without drama.

Till the next update.

I Am Baptised

Long story short, I have been baptised in a Protestant church.

Henceforth I am a publicly declared man of God.

That's all for this entry. Till the next update.

Blunt Affect or This Title Does Not Fit the Contents, Mayhaps

I spent much of the day digging out another couple of floors in the hill of my base in Minecraft while having various Hololive VODs running in the background to keep my company. I also watched a few ESA Summer VODs as well, and discovered Lion Speedrunners Assembly, a SIN city speedrunning crew.

It's the eve of Christmas; there isn't much to talk about since I'm holed up in my apartment with only my thoughts to myself. I satisfied my craving of hash browns in the morning with a big meal from McDonald's, and compensated with a light dinner of only two small Char Siew Paus and a Hong Kong styled Chee Cheong Fun washed down with a herbal tea.

That last meal was about seven hours ago. It's fine.

Tomorrow I am getting baptised. Am I excited? Well... barely. I hope it isn't because of some blunted affect thing that I have going on---I also have the same level of excitement when it came to actually starting work on Jan 03, i.e. barely.

More realistically though, logistics is on my mind, but it isn't something that I am not ready to handle.

I swear it is possible to simultaneously belong to a group of people and also feel like one is an outsider---it is, after all, my default state of being anyway. And unlike most people, I have more than thirty years of experience doing that, so I ought to be fine.

Mayhaps.

But as they say, if one wants/needs something and doesn't say it out loud, it is unrealistic to expect others to realise that one is having a need/want. So the real question to ask is, to what extent am I willing to lose myself into a group so that I am inexorably intertwined with the group's identity.

The short answer is probably slim to none. I believe in thinking for myself and making my own damn decisions about things. Groupthink is the one big thing that I always try to avoid as much as I can.

``But MT, didn't you just say that you are getting baptised? Isn't the church like the biggest groupthink organisation in the world?''

Yes, sort of. I don't follow a personality or a denomination of church---I aim to follow Christ Himself. That is why I am at this particular [independent] church, whose doctrine can be distilled to ``please read the Bible carefully and apply it accordingly''. Personalities can be corrupted by the relative power that a congregation can bring, while denominations of churches can introduce other elements that are more likely to be substantiated by a cultural tradition than what is based on Biblical truths. To me, the Bible is an inerrant source of truth for living---one should not take away or add things to it and claim that it is still a part of the Bible itself. If the Bible doesn't say about something, it's because that something is irrelevant to the moral living code that the Bible seeks to explain, together with the great plan of salvation since fallible humans can never be righteous on their own merits.

``But MT, you still didn't refute the `groupthink' aspect I raised!''

I think I did. ``Groupthink'' is the mindless following of a paradigm; there is no attempt to even consider alternatives or explanations as to why a particular decision/course of action is made. One is in groupthink when one seemingly loses their ability to exercise their own mental faculties and free will; one is not in groupthink just because they agree with someone's words alone. In many ways, while both outcomes are the same, the path taken by someone in groupthink is devoid of critical thinking, while the path taken by someone not in groupthink has at least some semblence of internal debate for understanding before a free-willed decision is made.

So, following a body of people blindly is groupthink, while following a body of people after thinking long and hard about their positions and comparing against one's personal positions isn't.

Anyway, groupthink is just a diversion. The point here is that while I am in a group, I just don't believe that the joining of the group involves the sacrificing of one's self to lose free will. If we fall into that type of behaviour, then we are no better than a machine as opposed to a thinking, feeling, living person. That ``outsider'' feeling is probably just a visceral reaction towards this sense of self that I am unwilling to lose completely while in a group.

Does that make me hypocritical in the sense that I use a ``manufactured'' persona in groups then? No, I don't think so. There's nothing ``manufactured'' about the way I behave---I am the same pendejo within and without the group, to misquote a comedian.

Anyway, it's still more trite observations and drivel. I'm sorry that you have to read the 600+ words of uninteresting brain-dump that is ultimately meaningless.

Till the next update, I suppose.

Disappointment and Bird's Eye Tour of Hilltop Base

Hm, the ``year end blues'' have finally started hitting. I was expecting it any day now, so it wasn't really that much of a surprise.

Speaking of expecting things, here's a lesson for the road: to avoid disappointment, try to remove as much expectation as possible within one's life. The logic is at least explainable without having to invoke God (sorry God, not that You are not in charge, but that I am trying to convince someone, so faith is not a valid approach). Let the set of possible outcomes be U. If we develop expectation, what we are saying is that there is some subset S such that S⊂U contains the set of outcomes that we are interested in. We define a disappointment as the event where we obtain an outcome o∈U such that o∉S. Clearly then, the more specific our expectation (i.e. the smaller S is), the larger the number of events that are not contained in it. Sicne we are not clairvoyant, we may assume that the events in U are all equiprobability, so the cardinality of U\S is directly proportional to the probability of disappointment.

Thus, if we set S=∅, then we can never be disappointed since U\S=U, i.e. we are willing to accept whatever possible outcomes appear and roll with it.

Us believers are assured by our faith that in the long run, God is in control and has a plan, and so any small ``bumps'' of seeming set backs are unimportant to the whole picture.

The reason for raising the whole disappointment arc (and the year end blues really) is just a light reflection of an outcome that showed itself up today. I just want to say that if something is important enough for one, then it is always important to plan contingencies to the extent that one is able to assert control over, after which everything else we will leave it to God. That's what I do... partly because I never want to be a burden to others, and partly because as a trained computer scientist working (or going to work) as an engineer, it is our duty to think ahead from the perspective of what the system can/cannot do, and to engineer things so that we maximise what we need the system to do, minimise what we don't want the system to do, all while keeping things affordable and on time, applying the knowledge and experience that we have developed in our specific domains of expertise.

That's about all I want to raise about this for now. Maybe I'll have more to mumble about, but we'll just have to see.

------

The thing about Minecraft is that every thing that we do in the world has a sense of permanence. Minecraft has been described by some as virtual Legos, but the analogy doesn't quite capture the allure of the game. As most of us know, at the end of the day, all Legos constructions need to be taken apart back to their original component pieces to be packed away so that we can play with them another day. Some might protest about this concept, but I would gently point out that they are building Legos model kits as opposed to playing with the Legos---they are not the same.

Minecraft, as I mentioned, has permanence. Build a house today, and the next time we load the world, the house will still be there, especially if it is in single player. Dig a long-ass tunnel underground, and it will remain there, possibly populated with mobs the next time you log in. Permanence... this is what makes Minecraft an excellent game to putter about when there's nothing better to do, since any and all changes stay in the game world. Not to mention that there is no real ``end state'' of the game---it being a genuine sandbox game means that apart from the basic physics and [crafting] chemistry, the scope of what one does in game is limited only by the imagination of the player. Yes, there is a game-like ``goal'' of killing the Ender Dragon, but even after doing that, it is not the end of the game itself---there are more resources to gather, more physics to play with, and more construction/exploration of the world map one can get involved in.

That was also why I was hesitant of dropping my old map to launch a brand new one in 1.18.1.

Anyway, I spent much of the day just puttering about. I seem to develop an interest in digging out the hill that my base is sitting on, but through layers and using glass to cap the exposed ends, creating something that looks like an apartment layout. You can see the exposed ends of it here:

I also built a simple red-stone based archery range with distance markers every 5 blocks. At the 15-block mark, I built a moving minecart to simulate movement of the target. Man, shooting from that moveing minecart is hard.

Actually, let me just put up the hilltop base plan and give a simple tour.

The bottom red-bricked rectangle with the six beacons atop an iron block pyramid is my sleeping area, warehouse, and enchantment corner. To its right is my miniature factory for smelting cobble stones, glass, beef, as well as my mini-iron farm which also generates bone meal. Exiting to the left are two parallel minecart rails---they are the original overworld lines that lead to my mob farm (line below) and the end portal (line above).

Across the one-block chasm from my red brick living quarters where I split the original hill is the large rectangular farming platform. On the extreme left is the wool farm with all sixteen coloured wools. Then sweeping from left to right and top to bottom are my automated chicken & feather farm, my automated chicken egg farm, my manual cow pasture with dual fence gates, my manual watermelon and pumpkin farms. The middle is then my airlock controlled apiary with associated flower bed, with the red brick structure housing my nether portal, and my netherwart plot.

Continuing the sweep, one would find the newly constructed archery range, the manual carrot farm, the manual potato farm, and manual wheat farm. The right side would find my manual beet farm, followed by a small complex of my automated sugar cane farm, my semi-automatic bonemeal composter, and automatic cactus farm.

It's not a great Minecraft build by any account, but it has been quite fun building it up all throughout this sabbatical year. The surrounding areas (except for the left) have been denuded with my tree chopping sprints, and there is an extensively empty 3-block high layer that is my deep mines that supplied all the stone and minerals I needed. Glass came from sand way out in the desert. I used Jack O'Lanterns as my main light source due to their relative ease of creation compared to Glowstones that require extensive digging through the nether (Jack O'Lanterns just required carved pumpkins and torches, and those are quite easy to make/obtain).

Well, that's about all I want to talk about. Till the next update, I suppose.

Dragging My Quasi-Survival Solo Player into 1.18.1

Alright, today was a calm day.

I talked about the whole Minecraft 1.18.1 updates, and how I wasn't sure if I wanted to bring my tech-laden world up from 1.17.1 to 1.18.1. I chose to in the end. The reason was simple: I had lots of resources and the associated technology/buildings from 1.17.1 that would remain unchanged in 1.18.1, and the new extension of the depth by another 64 blocks did not affect my resources in any bit, since I already have generated much of the chunks before, and have mined lots of resources beforehand.

Besides, I did try to play a 1.18.1 map from scratch, and was really bored. The cave systems was fine from an adventure perspective, but when it comes to resource accumulation and the cathartic ``mindless'' mining part of Minecraft, it really felt lacking.

And I had invested in enough infrastructure in my 1.17.1 world that having to start all over again in 1.18.1, with the newer more scarce resource distribution just felt like work. This was different from the transition of the new 1.17 world while ignoring my old 1.16.5 map---I really had not advanced far in 1.16.5, and there was sufficient distance of time for me to be willing to forego the scant progress that I had made in that map and start anew.

The 1.17.1 world that I have represents a compact-type of set up that I was striving for---I had miniature factories and my warehouse all set up in a moderate building atop a hill. I dug a deep shaft to the then bedrock level, and mined out three blocks height's worth of resources along the plane. It was as compact a mining operation as it could be. I had carved the hill into half, and flattened the other side enough to create a massive platform from the mined resources to house the more spread-out factories. My nether portal led to a miniature rail hub that led to various interesting parts, like my end portal, my blaze hunting grounds, the jungle biome, and my simple mob farm.

I liked what I had done, and I had done much more than I had ever thought I would in Minecraft. Ditching all that for 1.18.1 felt wrong.

And so, my 1.17.1 world is now brought into the 1.18.1 one, and I did some work dropping another shaft down to the new bedrock level, and extended my water elevator to service that. I also lit up the deep cave that was present, but have no plans to develop anything at that layer just yet. I think I might bring this world map into 1.19 when it turns up, with the fabled Warden and other tough mobs in the deep dark. I also started creating large rooms within the hill that my base was sitting on---so far I had only built upwards, using the hill mostly as a foundation, rather than actually building into the hill itself. I couldn't do it before because it would require too much resources that I didn't have then, things like glass, or even pick-axes with silk touch or just better mining efficiencies. I've cleared out two floors for rooms, and that's when I stopped---I'll probably work out what to do with them later on. Maybe a larger storage mechanism or something?

Anyway, that's all I'd like to update for now. Till the next one then.

Inching to the End of the Year

Today was mostly a reading sort of day, and a continuation of the slow shutting down of various internal processes that were allowed to run free during my sabbatical.

You see, as the sabbatical year reaches its end, and I start to get closer to when I begin work anew, a certain adjustment in my lifestyle is required once more. No more am I allowed by the conditions stipulated for work to wake up at nine or ten in the morning having slept at like two. There is also a need to change my mindset to rebalance it, from the more ``survival'' instinct that I was having during my sabbatical to one that is closer to being of a ``thriving'' instinct.

I wasn't kidding when I said that it would be a closing of a long chapter and the opening of a new one. Not sure if I said that some where among the 370+ posts this year over here, or in some conversation with someone.

Future is still bleak, don't get me wrong. There are still many things that can and will go wrong, and not all of them will be controllable by me. But among the bleakness that might extend for several years, there are still pockets of happiness that I can look forward to, and that's where I suppose my sabbatical has done the most in helping me remember and rediscover.

Like the voracious habit of reading without caring about the world.

Like the ability to just improvise tunes continuously on any flute (or instrument that I am competent in, really) for as long as I care to.

Like the silly retro-programming involving vintage technology.

Like playing those PC/video games that I used to play in years back via legally gray means that I can now (over the past decade, really) pay for official ports/versions to play.

Like catching up on a more active [unscripted] slice of life type entertainment that is Hololive, an extension and evolution of the slice of life comics that I loved (of which many have either stopped after fifteen years, or have evolved into more unbelievable contexts as the disconnect between the writer/artist and the characters increases) and the artist collective-type videos that I enjoy.

Like going for walks on my own, just taking in the sights of the world around, being an observer.

Like remembering who I am, what I stand for, and how I really don't have to put up with certain types of behaviour/people not because of my superiority, but because I am an adult and have the means to live through the consequences of my choices in a more robust way.

Like writing down the things that I observe and think about for no reason other than just wanting to write it down.

The future is still bleak though, but those little things I highlighted that I learnt from my sabbatical, they are the little bits of happiness that I can hold on to when I need them. Notice also that ``linking up with friends'' isn't on the list, for the simple reason that as I enter this particular age group (``middle age'' for those who are keeping score), we don't really have friends any more.

Or rather, we don't really have [many if any] close friends any more. The few we have are still close, but the reality is that everyone, on hitting ``middle age'', have their own [out-sized] demons to slay. And a large number of them will have significant others, either in the process of getting married or already married. And as they say, the heart of a lover is as jealous as the fragility of glass---they might be married, but they aren't some twenty-year old couple who really know each other inside out to not second-guess whether that old friend of theirs is truly just an old friend, or someone else altogether.

With that kind of a major life commitment, their life path just isn't going to be as parallel as mine, no matter how close we were before. It's never an outright rejection---everyone's just too polite to do that---but the drift will always happen.

Actually, it has already happened. Many times, in fact.

I feel a little bad about it, but it's just the way it is. Maybe ten years down the road, someone might remember and try to look me up again to talk about the old times, but that's not a bet I am willing to take.

As they say, out of sight, out of mind. And it happens both ways too---there are people that I end up just not wanting to reconnect again for whatever reasons, most of which is prosaic in nature. Or maybe they are just terrible people that I shouldn't reconnect because I'm just not strong enough to withstand their terribleness the way Jesus is strong against His critics.

No need to set up my own stumbling block, eh?

------

I completed Robert's Rules of Order in Brief today. It's a nice little hand book that summarises the basic rules when it comes to running decision meetings.

``MT, a rule book on decision meetings? That sounds lame... and more importantly, it exists?''

Yes, it exists. This is just the summary though---there is a more authoritative tome that describes the basic rules (20%) and all the other exceptions (80%) that is called Robert's Rules of Order. I don't think I'm going to read it.

In general, the book (the brief one I mean), is an interesting read. It is a bit overkill for small decision meetings (small being less than five people), but it provides an excellent framework for handling massive deliberative meetings that involve tens of people.

Think ``parliament'', ``senate'', ``company annual general meeting'' and the like.

It's really a communications protocol book for humans. There's a mutex (``being recognised by the chairperson to have the floor''), a trusted central coordinator (``the chairperson of the meeting''), formal messages and associated syntaxes (the different ``motions'' available), all set up to ensure that the conveyance of the question that requires a decision will be understood by all, debated/deliberated fairly and timely, before being finally resolved (or postponed).

In my years working with people who make decisions in meetings, this is the first time that I am exposed to such a formalised rulebook. At no time was I ever told that such a protocol book even existed; much of how I conducted meetings was based on whatever I learnt from the meetings that I was a part of.

And somehow, I suspect that many of the meetings that I was a part of were run by people who probably also did not know about the existence of such a protocol book, and were just cobbling whatever they had observed before in imitation.

No wonder meetings are seen as the bane of the modern workplace.

In other readings, I have finally started on The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew by Lee Kuan Yew. Make what you will of it; I'll just say that it is interesting to see the context that had shaped his point of view and choice of style in ruling SIN city.

I think that's about it for today. Till the next update.

Inverse of Brevity

And just like that, two thirds of the month are now gone.

I honestly do not know what to feel about that. I've been marathoning me some books, like Why Are You So Sad?, and the a couple of the latest crop of Hugo award short stories, Metal Like Blood in the Dark by T. Kingfisher and Two Truths and a Lie by Sarah Pinsker. Combined with having read about surveillance capitalism as well recently, to say that my mind is ``flooded with dark thoughts'' is probably pretty accurate.

The type of dark thoughts though are of a different timbre (to borrow from music) than the ones that I had been harbouring nearer the start of the year. They are of a more impersonal nature, a vicarious type of experience about someone else's pain. This naturally differs from the personal existential dread of a life post-serious relationship or the general ``world is fucked'' type of existential dread that I was experiencing before. The vicarious nature provides sufficient distance that I could feel without being overwhelmed, something that I am finding necessary these days.

Anyway, enough of those types of dark thoughts.

I had a brief post yesterday about the meet up with some of the old fogeys, so I'll just do a slightly more detailed post today to round things up more thoroughly. It was nice to meet up and talk with some old friends even as the raging pandemic has basically diminished most opportunities that we used to have before through our weekly rehearsals.

Frankly at this stage, I still don't know if we are ever going to have rehearsals again, and how soon, but that's a tangent for a different post.

The order of the day was about housing---after all, we did meet at one of our group's apartment for our catch-up activities. Naturally I'm the single weirdo left, and everyone is at different stages of their planning with their significant others to get their first apartment to kick start their long life journey together.

To say that I was not affected at all by the talk is a big fat lie. Of course I was affected by it... I was supposed to be en route towards spending my life with someone whom I thought I could spend the rest of my life with before everything fell to pieces in the shockingest most unkindest way. But I don't fault them; I simply can't. House/apartment hunting with a significant other, married or about-to-be-married is a major milestone in a person's life. For many living in SIN city, it's probably also the first time that they are living on their own outside of their parents' place. SIN city is repressed, so having that sense of independence in the form of living is of paramount importance, especially for couples wanting to start a new family unit together.

Therefore I can understand the enthusiasm that they share. I mean, I an equally talkative and excited over the things that I enjoy or am about to sink a huge chunk of money in to, and even though sometimes (okay fine... most times) they don't share the same amount of enthusiasm, they were still polite in listening and participating, and generally being decent people.

They did try to be inclusive and asked if I was going to get my own place, but I just replied that there was really no net benefit for me to do so, being single [and weird]. Unless one is rich, SIN city really does not like to support singles in their bid to live independently---most affordability schemes are geared towards singles who have literally no other family left, or are too old to contribute to the total fertility rate, and even then, they are severely limiting such that in the miraculous outcome where the single person suddenly has a chance of not being that single, they will need to hunt for a new apartment anew since it is not possible to have two people live in a one-room apartment.

Seriously though, it really isn't beneficial for me to be moving out to live on my own. Sure, having my own place means more room to house my books, musical instruments, a server rack, and other paraphernalia associated with my needs and wants, but all that does is encourage more hoarding behaviours and make me more tied to the material world. Besides, I'm only committed to the child-free lifestyle, not sure if I am committing myself to being a single weirdo forever or not yet.

I'm okay with what I am at the moment. I'm not exactly praying to the Lord for a wife or anything of that sort---all I am praying for is some kind of clear signal on whether I am to be wedded, or to be single to be made known to me at His pleasure. Again to be fair, a marriage is as long as one lives anyway, so there really isn't any loss to not be married if it were meant to be the case.

I'm okay living with myself and with the Lord guiding me from above. So whatever God has in store for me on this front, I think I should be ready enough for it.

Maybe.

Anyway, after the talk about housing and what-not, there were other meandering discussions that also revolve around our rehearsals, work from home nonsense, what food to eat and the such. A fun time was had by all, and the evening passed on by really quickly.

Yeah, I think that's about it for this entry. Till the next one then.

Making It Brief

This will be brief.

I met up with some TGCO old fogeys for an afternoon/evening of catching up.

It was fun.

It is late now, so this post will have to do.

Till the next update then.

``Tonguing''

In reply to a Flute Forum comment asking what is ``double tonguing'':

Assuming you're not trolling...

Single tonguing uses only the tip of the tongue with either the "T" or "D" consonant sound + harmonic-specific vowel as articulation. So if you see people say things like "Tee Tee Tee" or "Duu Duu Duu", it's single tonguing.

Double tonguing uses the tip of the tongue and the base of the tongue in a coordinated way to produce articulations that are double the speed of single tongued articulations. The tip of the tongue is still "T" or "D" consonant sound + harmonic-specific vowel, while the base of the tongue uses "K" or "G" consonant sound + harmonic-specific vowel. So if you see people say things like "Tee Kee Tee Kee", or "Duu Guu Duu Guu", it's double tonguing.

Triple tonguing is double tonguing, but for faster rhythms. The main use of triple tonguing is for handling triplets -- you'll often see people say "Tee Kee Tee; Kee Tee Kee", "Tee Kee Tee; Tee Kee Tee", "Duu Guu Duu; Guu Duu Guu" or even "Duu Guu Duu; Duu Guu Duu". In other circles, the rhythmic pattern of quaver-double-semi-quaver may also be referred to as triple tonguing ("Tee <breathe> Tee Kee", "Duu <breathe> Duu Guu").

Of course it is a bit more detailed than that, especially the part on the ``harmonic-specific vowel''. The details may be found at my dizi article explaining the matter.

Drivel

Ah... what a hectic day it was!

As a rule of thumb, I don't like scheduling more than three activities in a day. There is nothing magical about the number three---it's just a good rule of thumb that I figured out over time. Assuming a general non-sleeping 16-hour day, the three-activity rule reduces activities to a duration of about 5 hours or so. Now note that these 5 hours includes any travel time, and so realistically in SIN city, without the assistance of ``Uber''/``Grab'' and/or taxis, we're looking at roughly 3--4 hours of unfettered activity time.

Now, doesn't that sound like a good amount of time?

More realistically though, we don't use 16 hours that freely---the most that we can mess with a single day for activities is closer to 12 hours, and it works out to about 4 hours, and with careful transit planning, can easily see about 2--3 hours per activity. That still sounds quite reasonable by every regard.

So anyway, today was hectic because I had two activities scheduled back-to-back of sorts in the vening. The first is the usual Saturday church service, and the second is another session of the baptismal classes. They were not long by any regard, but they do consume [travel] time. And by the end of it all, I'm just exhausted.

Thankfully the baptismal classes aren't super extended, so it's still alright.

------

Anyway, that's quite a bit of drivel, isn't it? It's the end of the year, and it is easy to become more retrospective. But I kind of want to reserve that for the annual statistics write-up instead---the end of year is near, but the end of the year is not done. Plenty of time for weird things to happen really, and while I am not wishing for weird things to happen, I also am not completely naive to assume that they won't happen.

So let's just leave it as that for now.

I could watch some more VODs of my favourite Holomem's videos while reading Why Are You So Sad? Selected Poems of David W. McFadden edited by Stuart Ross, but I think I'll just turn in for the night.

Till the next update.

Ear Impression: Done

I finally completed The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff. To say that she has put into words what have been vague ideas that was floating in my head is a severe understatement---she named things and gave definitions on what she means.

And as I have mentioned before in the recent past (not going to self-cite---too lazy/tired), anything that can be named/labelled can be discriminated against, with discrimination being a technical term meaning a classification of whether something is the in-group or the out-group. In this case, naming the behaviours as ``surveillance capitalism'', the type of dysfunctional society we are living in as being under an ``instrumentarian one'', and explicitly pointing out just how the surveillance capitalists managed to get away with things has created a mental framework from which one can think further.

But enough of that---I think I do the book an injustice with my lousy summary here. It's probably much better to read the book for oneself---it is quite readable, especially for those who have lived through the ``before'' and ``after'' of things.

------

In other news, I had gone and have impressions of my ear canals made, and have placed an order for the −25 dB non-distorting filter for my musician's ear plugs. I'll probably write more about the whole process once I have the ear plugs themselves, so for now, just let this little note act as a stand in.

I managed to indulge in some Five Guys food again after the consultation with the audiologist. The burger's still nice, but as usual, grease was just spilling everywhere due to the order itself. I got myself a small cajun fries, and it was definitely not as crazy as the normal amount of fries that one would expect from a Five Guys. I spent some time after that just walking through Plaza Singapura and paid a visit to the Yamaha shop. The baritone saxophone that had been sitting there for so long was no longer present---in its place was a bass clarinet instead. I did think of getting a pianica (the three-octave range one), but thought better of it. I managed to see the new Alto-Venova up close, but felt that for that dimension, I can just play on my soprano saxophone. The YPC-82 piccolo looked really tempting with its price point of about SGD3k, but as I said, no budget.

Maybe I'll get it later when I do have the budget. Maybe.

Anyway, that's all for now. Till the next update.

Scratching That Aburi Nigiri Itch...

Mmmm. It really is much easier to realise what one has missed once it is gone out of one's life.

And I'm referring to awesome aburi nigiri sushi that I have been missing since my favourite sushi place has wound up.

Today, I scratched that itch again by heading to the Sushi Tei out at Serangoon Gardens Circus at the odd hour of three in the afternoon. It was fairly quiet; I was one of three customers that were present in the restaurant. I had some aburi nigiri sushi, and had me some ootoro.

Mmmm. That was nice.

It was not the same as my favourite sushi place, but it did scratch the itch.

In other news, I have decided on the birthday gift to myself for 2022---a pair of customised musician ear plugs. It's not exactly cheap, but compared to the price of a new instrument, it's about a tenth the price, but with an effect that is probably worth 10× more---a more comfortable and complete protection of my hearing while I play my 笛子. It is something that I have been thinking of getting for a while, but have been delaying for one reason or another. I am currently using some Vic Firth musician's ear plugs; they work well, but I'm just looking for... something more.

It's like Azumi all over again---she works well, but I ended up looking for something more, and thus ended up with Aurelia.

I said that it works well because with all the restrictions that have been in place, test playing of new instruments is not allowed. Apart from that, I also don't have the budget for any new instruments anyway, since my income for this sabbatical year is zero.

Anyway, that customised musician ear plugs require impressions of my ear canals, and so it will be a trip to the audiologist to get it done. Because of that, I am getting myself this gift right now, before the start of work makes it harder to run about meeting appointments.

That's about all I want to write about. Till the next update.

More Rambling

Reading a few articles/posts about how an official representative of the company quoting ¤X to enact a repair being rebuffed by someone who demonstrates a technique that costs ¤0.01X to ¤0.1X made me think about why the official representative's cited price are that high.

Sometimes the [immediate] reason why the price is higher is obvious---the official company representative quotes a cost for a replacement of the component, while the someone is talking about fixing some part of the component instead.

Naturally, if the fix of the part of the component is obvious, simple, and limited, it will cost cheaper than if an entire replacement were done.

But before we claim that the company is practising predatory behaviours, we need to stop and take a step back to see what the situation really is. In many cases, the reason why the company representative is offering a replacement of the entire component is because of certification, the process in which a particular component is legally acknowledged to fulfill specific legal and technical requirements. That certification process is costly because of the tests that need to be conducted on the component itself. So when the person says that he/she can fix it for cheaper, it is often because the cost of certification is taken out of the equation---the costs of labour and parts are still taken into consideration.

For things that are non-structural in nature, relying on a reliable third party fix is probably fine. For structural stuff, it is probably better to rely on the replacement that is offered by the official representative. For things involving safety, it is probably better also to rely on the replacement that is offered by the official representative.

The difficulty then is reduced to determining if the particular component to be repair/replaced is indeed structural/safety, or non-structural. This is where some level of trust in the both the integrity of the person (repair or representative) and his/her technical ability. The integrity of the person determines how likely one is going to be hoodwinked by the said person, while their technical ability controls how correct their technical assessment is likely to be.

Anyway, just throwing this out there. Not really trying to make any deep point or something.

Till the next update.

Rambling

One thing that I have observed is that there is always an allergy towards having stored value sitting somewhere that seemingly isn't doing anything other than existing. So we see things like businesses always balancing their revenue and expenditure in such a way that at no point in time do they actually have any cash sitting around, and the so-called ``hustle culture'' that has been developed over the past decade through gig-work platforms and retail-investor platforms where again, no money is allowed to exist in any form other than movement.

There is nothing inherently wrong with having money flowing around---after all, it is the flow of money that undergirds the notion of trade in the first place, regardless of the system in which the trade/businesses are run. In fact, it is often lauded when someone manages to run his/her business/life in such a way that they have practically exploited every single currency unit to their name, with no currency unit allowed to sit around just existing.

That's fine when things are smooth. Business be booming, and everyone's an expert when the market is bullish or something.

From a systems perspective though, that is... a terrible idea. Running everything this close to the edge of insolvency is playing a very risky game of balancing one's absolute certainty against the chaotic nature of emergent systems. There is always an unfounded optimism that self-satisfies the assumption of absolute certainty. And given the ``growth only'' mindset in which the economies of the world are run (it's a historical thing), it only reinforces that unfounded optimism that in the long run, things will be great!

Except in the long run, we are all dead. Or rather, we don't know if the future is truly unbounded, or if it is bounded by an unfathomably large (but still finite!) number, or if the path to get there is always ``in the black'' without any catastrophic losses that we must get through.

And it is those catastrophic losses that I want to talk about. Let's take a little step back. ``Catastrophic losses'' cannot be defended against adequately for the very same reason why we call them ``catastrophic''----these are large negative values in the objective function that are often at a scale where individual participants in the market/economy have little to no power in influencing. Hedging against these are nearly impossible, and most won't try. The best that they will do is to exit under the legal concept of bankruptcy, or the more prosaic idea of ``winding up the business''.

But there is a spectrum of losses that range from nothing to catastrophic, and it is this spectrum of losses that I think all that ``hustle culture'' is nullifying. Weathering a loss requires having some kind of slack, or war chest, or emergency reserves that one can draw upon while the usual capital flows are disrupted. It is not a permanent solution; it is more of a capital-time trade-off, where these reserves are used to buy enough time for the participant to figure out how to route around the damaged capital flow.

Naturally, the more reserves available, the longer the duration that can be bought, but at the flip side, the more reserves available, the less capital there is to be used in motion to generate revenue to balance off the expenditure.

This dilemma is where the notion of risk appetite comes into play.

Thanks to the way corporation laws work, it is possible for non-proprietorship corporations to have a much larger risk appetite, i.e. have less reserves in general. This is due to the limited nature of the liabilities---anything that the corporation owes comes from its own accounts, and not from the people that make it up.

And if the corporations get large enough, they can be deemed as ``systematically important'' and thus have government interference as a back stop.

Because of these rules, it incentivises corporations to always go balls deep in whatever they do.

But therein lies the problem: once this line of thought is started, it self-perpetuates, creating a perverse cycle where the corporations pursue capital over all else. Which is a sad thing for those who are not the corporations (i.e. the people). People are dehumanised---the nature of ``the human nature'' is reduced into semi-self-sustaining automata whose sole purpose of existence is to contribute back into the machine that is the corporation.

Life's experiences, the meaning of life itself, and all other deeply personal experiential moments are all subsumed into the feeding of the massive capital machines.

Some are so depersonalised that they end up acting sub-human, losing their empathy, and acting no different from the data-driven Algorithm when confronting other humans. This is particularly sad when one realises that it is the middle managers (those who are really just other workers with no real benefit from the corporation's success the way shareholders do) that are the most likely to demonstrate such inhumanity.

I sometimes wonder how these people sleep at night. Is their conscience clear from having pwned another person? Or are they unfeeling machines that are covered with the veneer of meat?

More Flute Forum Hijinks

In response to yet another single post of a picture of a poorly made 笛子 with a question on how to play it on the Flute Forum:

I'm going to make a BIG assumption that you are approaching this from the experience of a concert flute player (and that you're not trolling).

First off, make sure that the membrane over the hole closest to the embouchure hole has the right amount of tension. Since this is your first time, err on the side of having high tension over low -- the lower the tension, the greater the "buzz", but there is a minimum amount of tension before it effectively acts like a venting hole. The higher the tension, the more the membrane acts like a "hard" wall instead of a hole, and the more concert flute-like it sounds (is bad in the case of dizi), and the easier it is to get a sound out of the instrument initially.

It also lowers the pitch slightly when the tension is maxed out, but that's a detail you don't need to worry about now.

Ensure also that whatever light adhesive you use actually covers all the parts of the membrane that is not directly over the hole. It is a beginner's mistake to have gaps in the adhesive coverage, which causes leakages.

Second, familiarise yourself with the "simple system of flutes" -- the fingering patterns are similar, from the number of holes (6), the overblown fingering patterns (i.e. jumping to the next octave/register), and the interval relative to the "bell tone". There are subtle differences, but I don't think you are at a stage where you need to worry about that.

To avoid getting yourself into future trouble, please play it orthodox, i.e. the flute extending out to your RIGHT, your left hand closer to the embouchure hole, and your right hand farther away, like how you would normally play the concert flute.

Now comes the difficult part -- the embouchure and air control.

The embouchure needed for the dizi is closer to piccolo than concert flute due to how the embouchure hole is shaped (curved according to the body of the dizi with no lip plate and riser), or if your only experience is with the concert flute, think about how you play the third register -- that's roughly the shape, and size for your embouchure. You will also need a fast air speed similar to the amount you use for third register concert flute pitches. For reference, the first register pitches on a usual dizi corresponds to the second register pitches on the concert flute, so have that mental model in mind when you try to play anything on the dizi.

In addition, the air stream for the dizi needs to be a tad stronger [more volume per second] as well, as compared to the concert flute.

In concert flute, your air stream needs to only work in the transverse direction (i.e. up and down the pipe) for the appropriate standing waves to operate. In the dizi though, we also need the air stream to work in a radial direction as well (i.e. bounce the walls from the centre and back). This means that you need more POWER in your air stream to allow this effect to happen and vibrate the membrane. Power in air stream translates to more cubic-centimetres of air per second, relative to the concert flute.

A common problem with concert flute players who first switch to the dizi is not giving enough power in their air stream. It ends with a really flat tone which causes them to choose rolling the dizi out more to fix it. The dizi was never meant to be a "meek" instrument, it often leads the orchestra in melody, as such its sound is bright and piercing, requiring enough POWER in the air stream to sound right. Give the dizi the power it requires and it will sound fine without having to compromise on ergonomics, mechanics, and tone production.

There are definitely more things than what I said that you should look out for, but I think this should be enough to get you started. If you want to go deeper, you might need to find a teacher to help you with it. No I can't be your teacher. 😅

Now, that all said and done, a quick glance at your picture of your dizi seems to suggest that it is of a really cheap make. This means that you may get poor results even if you have done everything well.

If you want to match the pitch to the tuner, I suggest you look at what the letter next to the fourth hole from the membrane hole states. Cover all the finger holes above it and play it into your tuner -- that note letter should show up. An alternative tuning mark may be found at the sixth hole from the membrane hole, in which case cover all the six finger holes and then play into your tuner -- that note letter should show up.

Your tuner should be set to A442. I also notice that your dizi does not have a tuning slide/joint. That's rather unfortunate because it means that if your dizi was tuned in an ambient temperature/humidity that is too far away from where you are playing it, you might find it difficult/impossible to actually get it in tune.

Okay, essay done. Get out there and try it out!

I Can't Say I've Never Said This Before

A thought came to mind while I was showering: there's a high chance that I might be talking about something that I had talked about before in any post that I might put up here.

I mean, I have been writing here since 2006, so a revisit of some topics is inevitable. It is not like I'm trying to compile a compendium of unique thoughts or something in this blog.

I say this in reference to what I was thinking about on the side in Thirds of Months, where I was wondering if I had talked about my liking for dividing months up into thirds as opposed to the weeks that normal people do (with the unspoken alternative of dividing into halves as being too crude for anything useful).

I guess past-me had already prepared for this eventuality with the particular choice of words in the disclaimer that appears at the bottom of every page:

Disclaimer: All views expressed in this blog are #1 mine and mine alone unless otherwise indicated, and #2 are consistent only at the time of publication of the particular entry. Specifically, my views do not represent any communities, groups, societies, or companies that I may be a part of at the time of the entry, and that my past views are not strongly correlated with what my current views are. However, if you realise that there are factual errors, do not hesitate to inform me through the comment box. Comments are moderated, and if you would like me to not publish your point of information comment, you can say so as well.

Sasuga past-me for thinking ahead!

Seriously though, while it is likely that I maintain a similar view point despite the passage of time, it is not guaranteed---the mark of an educated person is to always reconsider his/her position when new and relevant evidence is displayed. It takes a particularly obstinate and immature person to continually cling on to their viewpoint without applying the associated critical thinking.

Actually, at some level holding any sort of view point without first applying critical thinking can be considered a problem. Many people offer their opinions about everything and anything, regardless of whether they actually know what is going on, or have ``done their `research' ''---that's generally fine by me, since an opinion is nothing more than a person's expression of his/her thoughts about something, no matter how shallow or deep. What rustles my jimmies are when they position their opinion as ``objective fact'', and then get all offended when their ``objective fact'' gets disproven with actual third-party verifiable counter facts.

I mean, there's no need to be offended; if the new evidence does not cause one to change one's opinion, that's fine, but to demand that people discard the evidence to follow only your opinion, that's not right in my book. If you're going to be that sort of person, then I'd rather you keep your opinions to yourself.

That actually applies to the comments in this blog too. Even though I talk about moderating the comments, in reality, I have a rather lax policy. As long as the comment is reasonable and reasonably polite, I don't mind publishing it and/or responding to it. The main purpose of moderation is to stop spammers and scammers more than anything else---my blog has a low enough traffic that this one-man lax policy is sufficient to keep things from getting out of hand.

That's about it for this entry. Till the next one.

Enslaved

You know, Genesis did get it right.

That fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil? It really is too much power to behold without the moral righteousness to wield the power appropriately.

And God was rightfully angry about it when Adam and Eve partook of that fruit.

Now I am not saying that it is wrong to learn more about things. I am saying that the act of learning more about things must be backed with an equivalent increase in understanding of the associated moral and ethical ramifications.

This is largely summarised in the trite observation that ``they did it to see if they could, but they never stopped to think if they should''.

While reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff, I am getting increasingly depressed at the future that we are facing (this is after reading Parts 1 and most of Part 2). Much good can come from applying automation to assist in our understanding of the world, and yet what transpired from all that automation was just new ways of exploiting people in the name of capitalism, with seemingly futile push back from those who stand in defense for whatever is left of our collective conscience on what is ethnically and morally acceptable. The new ways of exploitation are ethnically questionable for the simple reason that they rely on deceitful practices and interfere strongly in ways that impinge upon one's ability to make one's choices to live one's life.

It's appalling and saddening.

It would seem like instead of merely being born into fleshly slavery that came about from the industrial revolution, we are now being born into mental slavery as well that comes from this second revolution of capitalism that Zuboff calls ``surveillance capitalism''. The cages now have bars that are invisible even to the mind's eye, because these generations now grow up in a world where a true sense of self was never experienced before. Combine that with the pervasive influences of commercial interests with these thought ``hijacking'', the generations after mine can no longer tell if a thought that they have was borne of their own experience, or if it is from a carefully guided one through the non-stop intrusion of surveillance capitalism.

It is depressing, to say the least, and in many ways, strengthens my resolve to not bring in any humans into this new-age serfdom.

But the money is always so good... its spillover effects seemingly benefitting society, creating that hard-to-answer rebuttal question: ``oh you so smart, you see this thing that everyone likes as a problem... then what is your solution, smarty pants!''.

If I knew, I would have been a hegemon of the world, and not an armchair prophet metaphorically shouting about how we are ending the world with our own hands.

We're supposed to tame our creations with the knowledge of computation, not enslave ourselves who aren't created by us. Why did it all go so wrong then?

Chop Chop

Alright alright, I'm almost late.

Or maybe I am truly late by the time I post this.

I ran some errands today. Had to get Eliana's issue sorted out, and it was. Went to church.

Watched Amelia Watson's new outfit reveal, followed by Bae+IRyS in ``rat review''.

All's well. Till the next update.

Edit: Forgot to add that I also spent time digging out more cobblestone and what-not in my mines in Minecraft. I think I'm going to keep to the 1.17.1 world for now, and if I want to run the 1.18.1 version, it's likely to be a new world instead of extending this one. The changes in the new version are too drastic for me to comfortably keep my current set up, and honestly I want to try different things in 1.18.1. But it will be a while before I go there though.

Thirds of Months

And just like that, a third of the month has gone. Not sure if I had mumbled about this before, but I generally like dividing a month up into thirds as opposed to the more usual weeks. It's mostly due to the peculiar way in which we number off the days in a year.

When we divide the month in thirds, each third is usually 10±1 days, where that ±1 applies to the last third of the month.

Dividing a month into weeks is ugly. While each month has at least 4 weeks, the remainder of between 1 to 3 days quickly adds up more interstitial weeks. Thus, 12 months of 4 weeks each yields only 48 weeks or 336 days, leaving another whole ``month's'' worth of 4 weeks.

Incidentally, that's where the ``13th-month pay'' comes from. Note that in SIN city, it is gaslighted as an annual wage supplement, a means for companies to potentially not award under the undefended claims that the business results are ``exceptionally poor that year''. It is for this reason that I'd rather talk about annual compensation instead of monthly too.

Note also that for SIN city, CPF rates are taken into account from the company's perspective for compensation as well. So any annual salary package quoted will need to adjusted to take the CPF rate into account, either by subtracting (to find comparable take-home salary), or adding (to find the cost from the company's perspective). But I digress severely.

10 calendar days translates to about 7 working days even, and gives a much easier effort estimate with built-in slack compensation. It is also less susceptible to the aliasing effects of using weeks alone, and allows faster back-of-the-envelope calculations too.

But mostly, it really is that much easier to see which third of the month we are in by just staring at the date itself. And I like that a lot.

------

Anyway, I spent much of the day doing my reading for my baptismal classes, as well as just general contemplation as part of the winding down of my sabbatical year. I managed to secure a job through Providence even before I formally started on my job search, and with that, I am thankful to the Lord who always provides. I pray that my role at this job will be a fruitful one, and that I will have joy working at it.

I have an appointment tomorrow morning to bring Eliana down for a technical look-see. For the confused, Eliana is my anomalously designed alto flute. Her issue is that the padding between the B-key and B♭-key seems to either get too compacted and hard, or had fallen off---each time I play instrument C, that rebound of the B-key from the spring keeps giving me a loud ``piak'' sound.

It really doesn't help that I play Eliana like how I would play a D 曲笛, i.e. using the instrument C-major fingering to play concert G-major. For the non-flute player, this means that I will keep hearing that ``piak'' sound non-stop.

Due to that appointment, I think I will just turn in for the night. Before I go though, I will just drop off a link to the Smol Calli concert that was produced by Amelia Watson. I think it qualifies as a legendary Hololive EN video, as it is the first all-in-home-based-VR/3D concert. Other Hololive 3D concerts had been done through Cover Corp's studios in Japan, so this alternative set up can be seen as a watershed moment for the Hololive EN crew since they span the entire planet as opposed to being in Japan itself. It's worth checking out for the legendary moment.

And with that, I'm done with this post. Till the next update.

Mega Man X

Okay, just a minor update for today's entry.

I completed Machinarium: that was a fun romp. It was less convoluted than anything in the Deponia series, and I enjoyed the aesthetics.

I got my hands on Mega Man X Legacy Collection and Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2. They were not exactly cheap (about SGD60 in all), busted this year's game budget, but considering that they are official and legitimate releases of the Megaman X series on the PC (with each of the 8 games probably retailing at about SGD50 each), it's a real steal.

It also allows me to take on the games to as close to as how they are originally designed as it can get, i.e. with a controller.

Now, to be fair, I'm using a Logitech F310 Gamepad, which has a hybrid layout of the PlayStation Dual Analogue Controller and the XBox Controller. The F310 inherits the positions of the analogue sticks, D-pad, and buttons of the Dual Analogue Controller, but have the XBox Controller's action-key layout, which looks something like:

 Y 
X B
 A 

For the Mega Man X, Mega Man X2, and Mega Man X3 games, they make use of the Super NES Controller layout, which looks like:

 X 
Y A
 B 

The Mega Man X Legacy Collection had thankfully assigned the default keys according to the XBox Controller key names, but with the Super NES Controller action key positions. This means that the default actions are assigned as:

Action	SNES	XBox
Shoot	Y	X
Jump	B	A
Dash	A	B
Switch Weapon ←	L	LB
Switch Weapon →	R	RB
Menu	Start	Start

The problem with this layout is that it is bloody cramping to dash jump while holding a charge, a move that allows for very fast movement that I could easily pull off via the keyboard back in the emulator days of aeons past, because all these three buttons need to be operated by the right thumb.

In theory, I could use my thumb tip to hold the charge (it's just holding the shoot action button), then use the base of my thumb to wiggle between the dash and/or jump buttons, but it is horrifically imprecise. In any Mega Man game, imprecision is a great way to fall into bottomless pits, and since this is a legit port to the PC, there isn't any ``saved states'' available to recover from.

I needed a better scheme.

I looked through the speed run tutorials for Mega Man games. There was the ``claw grip'', which used the [right] thumb to control the jump/dash buttons, while curling the index finger to control the shoot button, and using the middle finger to manipulate the Switch Weapon ← button---it was used by a large majority of players since it didn't involve changing the default controls in anyway. The main drawback of it was the inevitable cramp from this rather unnatural position.

There was the ``piano grip'', which involved resting the controller on a lap, and then use [right] index finger to control shoot, middle finger for jump, and ring finger for dash. This was the grip that I was using when I played through the first seven robot masters in Mega Man X, and it felt uncomfortable. The space on the F310 was not large enough to support the three fingers smooshed into it, and the need for using a lap to balance meant a certain imbalance when combined with movement control on the D-pad with my left hand.

Then I came across this old Reddit thread which proposed something radical: use the L-button for dash instead.

It made me think hard. I didn't use the quick weapon switch buttons much anyway, preferring to select more carefully through the menu page instead. By shifting the dash button to the LB-button [on my F310], it reduced the amount of crap my right hand needed to do.

Intrigued, I set up my control scheme to operate this way now:

Action	SNES	XBox
Shoot	Y	X
Jump	B	A
Dash	L	LB
Switch Weapon ←	X	Y
Switch Weapon →	A	B
Menu	R	RB

That definitely did the trick, and I was playing more comfortably. There was an added benefit of using a more comfortable button (the RB-button) to access the frequently used Menu action instead of the awkwardly placed Start button.

It did take another bit of re-adaptation (the first was the switch from using my right hand to control movement on the keyboard to using my left thumb for the same on controller), but after that, things felt much smoother.

The only caveat is that since Mega Man X (and X2 and X3 for sure) did not actually save anything, I had to re-assign the control scheme in the options menu item each time I booted up the game to play.

A small price to pay for a more comfortable play.

And yes, I did complete Mega Man X legit, i.e. with no save states, and on controller. It felt great! I was no speedrunner for sure, but there's this sense of accomplishment for actually completing the game ``as intended'' with no cheat mechanism.

I'm going to get started on Mega Man X2 soon. The only caveat is that the ``save'' mechanisms will never save the hidden upgrades and the actual final boss stages, and so I am probably going to have to ensure that when I am ready to take on the final boss stages, I actually give myself enough time to finish it all at one shot, including any farming of resources that are needed both before and after getting the overpowered hidden upgrades. In the end though, I do end up not relying too much on the hidden upgrades and fighting the bosses legit anyway---the hidden upgrades may be powerful, but they do need good timing to actually pull off; they are not a ``sure win'' action that can be done without practice.

Anyway, hope that this little nugget of information may prove useful for others who may want to play these games. Till the next update.

Potential

You know, with this single entry, I can stop writing any for the remaining twenty-two days, and I would average out to about one ``rant-y'' post per day.

But let's not do that. =)

Today was a day that I spent in some level of contemplation about random things here and there. The thoughts were strangely unstructured, but were more ``free association'' in nature. A key theme that ran through them though, was the idea of ``letting someone live rent-free in one's head''.

The idea here is that there is a certain quantity of potential (I'd like to call it ``energy'', but since I cannot quantify it the normal way, ``potential'' will have to do) that we begin the day with in our minds. We can roughly correlate the amount of potential to the amount of actual food energy available for the brain, or to the numbers and types of neurotransmitters available.

The functional aspect of potential in mind is that it quantifies the maximum amount of effort that we can expend throughout the day running through mental tasks. This can include active activities like hard thinking, consistent conscious observation, and passive ones like rumination, worries, and the like.

Since the potential is finite, if we consume too much of it, it depletes, and we feel mentally drained.

As we get older, two things to such potential happens: we are more aware of what limits there are, and the sheer amount of potential that we have per day tends to decrease over time, not because we are getting older, but because of certain life choices that we made that either depletes potential faster, or recharges potential slower.

Activities that recharge potential include sleep, doing fun things (which is paradoxical when some of the fun things we do can also consume potential), and reconnecting with other low stress situations that promote relaxation.

Considering the hypothesis that we have a finite amount of potential per day, we consume potential when we use our minds, and we recharge it each time we rest/sleep/do something fun, the ``life hack'' way of ``optimising'' potential use would be to consider implementation measures that:

1. Lower the per unit time use of potential;
2. Lower the total potential to be used in a day; and/or
3. Increase the amount of potential we regain at the end of our day.

This is where ``letting someone live rent-free in one's head'' comes in. That statement is a demonstration of a type of potential drainer, a finite upkeep cost that increases either the per unit time use of potential, or increases the total potential used in a day. When we think of someone, most particularly on how they had wronged us, we consume potential to fuel that thought, potential that we could have used on something else. Most of the time, the situation is far worse, because even more potential is consumed to think about ways to thwart that person who wronged us, or even to explore scenarios of comebacks that we could have done/could do to ``right the wrong'' so to say.

The problem here though, is that everything that we just spent all that potential on is completely in the mind-space, and has no [good] consequences. The thoughts of acts of vengeance do not get realised, there is a feedback loop that reinforces the bad memory to make it even easier to conjure up in future causing more potential use, and the impotence of no apparent justice from the lack of visible vengeance makes us consume even more potential getting angry, all without the target of all that anger even being affected.

In fact, it is the ``I'' who have been doing all these thinking that is affected negatively. That person has obtained ``immortality'' vicariously through our constant waste of potential of thinking about them.

No wonder we are told to leave vengeance to the Lord, for it is His to enact according to His will.

All that wasted potential on someone who is flawed and just as sinful as we are... all that potential that could be used to do something that we needed to do (like work), or that we liked to do (like doing a fun thing that requires concentration), all wasted on the imagined version of the person who knows nothing about it.

And if you think I am referring to specific people in my life, you are not completely wrong. Where you are wrong though, is completely missing one very important person.

You see, most of the time I am talking about the past me. Yes, there are some people that I really don't want to waste my potential on by remembering them, but since I spend most of my time with me, past-me is more often than not what keeps appearing.

That's why we are also told to forgive past-me, and strive to be the best we can as present-me, so that future-me won't need to waste potential getting angry at future-me's past-me (i.e. present-me).

No one else knows about the bad things and mistakes that I have done better than me. In fact, I doubt most people will remember any of those things, unless I make the tactical mistake of raising it up to them first, from which point the event can become more strongly ingrained in their memory. We should remember the lessons we learnt from the mistakes we make, but we should not play the guessing game of ``what-if'' about the scenarios that we had made the mistakes in, mostly because it is essentially busy work that has no useful outcomes.

If I claim that my motto is ``do it once, do it good'', then I should learn to live up to my motto---do the things that I need/want to do once, and do them good. If I made a mistake, realise that it was not for a lack of planning and understanding because I did do them as good as I could have done at that point in time---future-me has the benefit of hindsight while past-me didn't.

Even though past-me is my friend (some might even say one of my two truest and closest friends), he can't live rent-free in my head through second guessing; him doing that drains precious potential that present-me needs to prevent catastrophies that would prevent future-me from thriving.

And that's about it for now. Till the next update.