Heyo Stupid O'Clock Ho!

Well well well... it's stupid o'clock. Has it really been this long since a stupid o'clock post?

I don't know... you tell me.

We are way past the halfway mark of 2022, and are rapidly heading towards its end and eventual start of 2023. I'm not really the type to do a mid-year review of the goings-on, but a stupid o'clock post has little holds barred.

Anyway, let's go back to some old topics: writing as catharsis.

I enjoy writing. Some see writing as a creative outlet, but I find that writing serves its purpose as a means for me to do a mental purge. Anything, be they related to work or personal issues, once committed to the metaphorical paper, becomes something that I have removed from the immediate working memory of my mind. Because of this phenomenon, I have a tendency to take indexing of my written items a little more seriously than most---if I do not index something, it will be lost to the ages.

Fiction is a little bit different in that there is an attempt to perform a reframing of something that I had experienced/read about into a situation where that said experience (vicarious or otherwise) can be somehow applied, while retaining the overall make-believe nature that is demanded of fictional works.

Strangely though, I find that I am preferring prose over poetry these days. Not sure why. Maybe it is connected to the whole lowered affect that I have about things? Poems have a tendency to relate more strongly towards that of song/music, and are usually powered/inspired by emotive moments.

These days, the only emotion I feel is just... is ``tired'' an emotion? Maybe the closest word is ``ennui'', though that ``dissatisfaction'' bit seems to be less apt in describing my true inner state. I want to claim that I am at peace with the world, but that isn't right---I still get riled up by some of the more blatant but obviously stupid things that I observe. Thoughts of death have come by at a much reduced frequency now, and I suspect that part of it is due to me being ``tricked'' into having responsibilities in the form of holding a job.

Speaking of jobs, hiring of extra help is always painful. Let's see what God wills for us. Many strange things are afoot, and I am not a liberty to discuss them anywhere. Needless to say, I am still preparing for the worst case scenario of having to tank everything, and that over-sized task is daunting, to say the least. If it does reach that point, there is a pretty large chance that I will just leave my current role when things go beyond what I can comfortably bear.

Let's hope it doesn't get to that point.

Emotions... I had an epiphany recently. I started cutting off more people whom I think are better to leave out of whatever is left of my sad life. Most of them, I've not spoken to in a decade; their lives have diverged greatly from mine, and being sober enough to realise that apart from that one very forced meet up, neither they nor I have bothered to keep in contact.

So I just felt it best to cut them off. They don't need to know what I am doing, and I don't care about how their children are growing up.

Then there are those who are loosely acquainted to me only through her. It's her social circle, not mine---without her as a catalyst, any relationship that I might have with them will not stand up to anything. No need to let them worry about any potential awkwardness---I didn't exist in their lives before she introduced them, and even after introduction I played little to no part in their lives thereafter.

So I just felt it best to cut them off. It's not like they would care about me anyway.

I picked up my dizi and played a little on it today. It was nothing serious, just a little noodling on a beidadi that required stretching of the fingers, even for someone like me. I guess that's an improvement over the whole sentiment of quitting music altogether. I did sort through my overly thick ``practice'' music folder to reduce its weight through careful selection of pieces that I wanted to work on, so that's also a great restart.

I finally completed AI: The Somnium Files, not-so-accidentally 100-percenting it. The story was a little more complex than any of the Zero Escape games, and the later puzzles could get frustrating at times, but I like the character development for the most part. A fun game.

Will I start on AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES---nirvanA Initiative? Eh, maybe not so soon. I feel a little gamed-out on the adventure visual novel puzzle genre of games. I might try to complete A Hat in Time (not 100-percenting it for sure), and get back to What the Golf? (unsure if I want to 100-percent it), with splatterings of rogue-likes in between (I'm staring at you, Jupiter Hell, Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, FTL, and Enter the Breach).

The weather for the past week has been unusually nice---lots of rain, not a lot of mugginess despite the humidity, and not a lot of crazy sunshine. Such weather conditions aren't likely to last anyway due to the whole convectional rain that SIN city has a tendency to undergo. Ah well.

I think that's enough of a brain dump for a stupid o'clock post. Till the next update then.

CSS User-defined Constants and Auto Font Size Scaling

Okay, the last post was quite negative and triggering, so let's change gears a little and talk about something different.

I've been tweaking my personal domain in the recent few days, partly to streamline a bit to make things more maintainable, and partly to fix some long-standing aesthetic issues.

One of the first things that I figured out is the use of CSS variables, or more specifically, the global ones. I use them not as variables, but as some kind of symbolic constant to keep those magic numbers away from appearing from within the CSS file itself. Some examples of the magic numbers that I magicked away include:

• The basic indentation space;
• Highlight colours of various sorts; and
• Contrast colours of various sorts.

That made it much easier to set various HTML elements' properties in a more consistent manner.

The other thing that I was tweaking involved what I would call ``font size rescaling''. The problem I was facing was this: when I was using (say) <pre> tags to create ASCII art, they tend to stay more or less the same, until the browser window is sufficiently narrowed to the point that the original text extends out to scroll horizontally.

I fixed that issue (and the other one involving tables, most notoriously for my Instrument Range Visualiser) through auto-injected JavaScript that does funky-ass mathematics and DOM manipulation to sort-of achieve the effect of rescaling the font sizes so that things fit correctly.

That solution was very flaky, and did not solve the problem well. There were two reasons:

1. Setting the minimum font size of the browser to anything other than 0 would screw things over---this was to be expected.
2. All that DOM manipulation nonsense didn't sit right with me due to all the arbitrariness.

And that's where I learnt of the vw unit. Simply put, 1vw expands to 1% of the view port's width in pixels.

Combining that with the calc() function and the storage of variables in the :root element to be used as global variables allowed me to define a new scaling factor that is based on both the ``ideal'' width that I had defined, as well as the current width of the view port. That allowed me to eliminate all the funny JavaScript code that was doing the manipulation, and reduce everything down to just a few lines of CSS code.

There was still on technicality though---I didn't want to up-scale the fonts if the width of the view port exceeded my defined ``best fit'' design. This was easily solved through judicial application of the min() function, the original designed value, and the scaled version accordingly.

I liked the end result.

That's about it. Till the next update then.

Vitriolic Catharsis

Warning, the kid gloves are off in this post. Go away if you don't want to be triggered.

Vg unf orra dhvgr fbzr gvzr, naq V unir orra nygreangvat orgjrra frrguvat va fvyrag natre naq dhvrg npprcgnapr bs jung unf unccrarq. V unir gevrq gb sbetvir, ohg V sbhaq vg ynpxvat. V unir gevrq gb sbetrg, ohg bayl gvzr pna cebivqr rabhtu qvfgnapr sbe vg gb jbex zber rssrpgviryl.

Gur natre vf ng gur ybff bs qernzf bs gur shgher. Gur gevttre vf fhecevfvatyl onany---gur nofbyhgr erzbiny bs nyy Tbbtyr qbphzragf gung jrer bapr funerq orsber nobhg ohpxrg yvfgf naq bgure funerq gubhtugf nobhg gur shgher gung jr jrer cynaavat gb unir gbtrgure.

V chg va guvatf gung V jnagrq gb qb jvgu ure nf cneg bs bhe ohpxrg yvfg, guvatf gung V crefbanyyl jbhyq jnag gb qb ng fbzr cbvag ohg arire ernyyl gubhtug zhpu nobhg gvyy fur pnzr vagb zl yvsr naq jr jrer ng n yriry gung V gubhtug jnf ernql gb urnq ba gb gur shgher gbtrgure.

Fur qryrgrq gur ragver qbphzrag. V arire unq gur punapr gb znxr n onpx-hc sbe vg---vg jnf n yvivat qbphzrag, V jnfa'g rkcrpgvat vg gb or tbar whfg yvxr gung gur zbzrag V npxabjyrqtrq erprvcg bs gur oernx-hc yrggre.

Shpx.

Juvyr gur zrgncubevpny ybff bs n shgher vf zber be yrff tbggra bire, gur npghny culfvpny ybff bs erpbeqf bs n funerq shgher sbe zr gb hagnatyr onpx gb jung jnf bevtvanyyl zvar naq jung jnfa'g vf jung znqr zr yncfr vagb natre rire fb bsgra.

Fbeel Ybeq, V pnaabg sbetvir---V npxabjyrqtr gung guvf jvyy or zl nyongebff sbe dhvgr fbzr gvzr gb pbzr. V fcrag zber guna svir lrnef jvgu guvf jbzna, gnxvat zl gvzr gb pnershyyl ohvyq hc gehfg jvgu ure, znxvat pbzcebzvfrf nybat gur jnl erfcbafvoyr nqhygf qb gb erfbyir ceboyrzf. Jr obgu npxabjyrqtrq gung pbzzhavpngvba jnf xrl, naq V jnf qbvat zl orfg gb zrrg gubfr rkcrpgngvbaf nf orfg nf V pbhyq, xabjvat shyy jryy gung V jnf zber bs gur xvaq gb abg gnyx zhpu nobhg zlfrys va trareny, rira va fvghngvbaf jurer V xarj gung V pbhyq abg pbzzhavpngr jung V jnf srryvat---V fgvyy gevrq gb yrg ure xabj bs zl cerqvpnzrag.

Jung V tbg va erghea jnf zber guna whfg n fync va gur snpr, be n fgno va gur purfg. Vg jnf n evccvat bs gur ovg bs zl fbhy gung V unq funerq jvgu ure.

V qvqa'g whfg ybfr gur ybir bs zl yvsr gura; V ybfg n ovt puhax bs zlfrys nf jryy.

Gung shpxvat uheg.

Vg jnf bayl irel erpragyl gung V znantrq gb gnxr fgbpx bs whfg ubj zhpu qnzntr V jnf uvg jvgu.

Zl vagrerfg va zhfvp unf qebccrq gb cerpvcvgbhf yriryf, juvpu jnf abg urycrq ol gelvat pbaqvgvbaf gung PBIVQ-19 unf oebhtug nybat jvgu erfcrpg gb erurnefnyf naq cresbeznaprf. V qvqa'g rira jnag gb cvpx hc zl syhgr/qvmv/jungrire vafgehzrag gb cynl. V qvqa'g rira jnag gb jevgr nal zhfvp, naq gurer jrer gvzrf jurer V jnf gblvat jvgu gur vqrn bs fryyvat/qvfcbfvat nyy bs gur zhfvp vafgehzragf gung V unir.

Zl gnfgr va ivqrb tnzrf unir nyfb punatrq, juvyr zl vagrerfgf va gurz unir fgnegrq jnavat nf jryy. V nz nyfb fgnegvat gb trg jnel bs ernqvat, naq nz rira zber bs n fuhg-va guna orsber.

V cnff rnpu qnl nf vg vf. Vs gurer'f n gnfx gb or qbar, V pbzcyrgr vg jvgubhg srryvat zhpu. Znlor n fznyy frafr bs fngvfsnpgvba, ohg gung'f nobhg vg. Gurer vf ab bar gb funer zl qnl jvgu, naq V unir fgnegrq gb abg obgure jvgu jnagvat gb funer jung vf rssrpgviryl n ebhgvar qnl.

Gur hetr gb whfg vfbyngr naq xrrc va fgnfvf gb nibvq perngvat arj zrzbevrf naq trarengvat snyfr shgherf vf rire-vapernfvat. Bayl erfcbafvovyvgl unf xrcg zr sebz tbvat nyy-va ba guvf cngu.

V pna'g frrx uryc---jung xvaq bs uryc vf gurer gb or fbhtug? FVA pvgl unf fuvggl zragny urnygupner gb ortva jvgu, naq V senaxyl qb abg arrq gur fgvtzn va jung vf rffragvnyyl n tybevsvrq ``qrirybcrq'' pbhagel jvgu n fgebat qrirybcvat pbhagel zvaqfrg. Nf sne nf fbpvrgl vf pbaprearq, V'z fgvyy shapgvbany---jurgure be abg V nz shpxrq va gur urnq vf bs ab pbaprea gb fbpvrgl ng ynetr.

V qba'g rira jnag gb ratntr jvgu npdhnvagnaprf naq/be sevraqf gung zhpu, orpnhfr V xabj gung gurl pnaabg uryc zr, naq gung V qba'g jnag gb chyy gurz qbja gb zl yriry---gurl unir gurve bja snzvyvrf gb ybbx bhg sbe, naq gurl ner nyfb abg nqrdhngryl rdhvccrq gb uryc zr naljnl.

Orfvqrf, jnf V ernyyl ybbxvat sbe uryc sebz gurz?

V arire jnag gb pbagnpg ure ntnva---fur unf gnxra njnl zhpu bs jung znqr zr uhzna njnl sebz zr, nyy va ure frysvfu jnlf hfvat gur Ybeq'f anzr nf ure svt yrns. V bayl pbagnpgrq ure gung bar gvzr gb shysvyy n cebzvfr V znqr; V unir abg pbagnpgrq ure rire fvapr. Bu naq gur tnyy gb cersnpr n frrzvat bssre bs na byvir oenapu bs n pbssrr jvgu ``...vs lbh ner pbzsbegnoyr''.

Jryy, shpx gung. Shpx univat ure npgvbaf yvivat erag-serr va zl urnq nyy gurfr juvyr. Gung jnf gur ynfg wno gung V jbhyq rire gnxr sebz ure---ab zber.

Gurer. V'ir fcrjrq vg nyy bhg urer. Creuncf guvf jvyy uryc zr er-senzr guvatf zber pbzsbegnoyl naq svanyyl zbir gur shpx ba.

Midnight Locke

Man, I'm really getting old. Just past midnight and my eyes are barely able to keep themselves open.

So the weekend has arrived once again. Hurrah!

The past week has been a mixed bag. Lots of work was done, and I also made some headway in AI: The Somnium Files. I've also read some more books, including John Locke's Treatise of Civil Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration.

I would like to talk a little about Locke's work here, even as my mind slows down from the lateness and the exertions of the day.

Locke presents an interesting thesis with respect to ``Toleration'' which I find to be resonant with my own personal thoughts that can be summarised simply as a proverb:

What is good for the goose, is good for the gander.

Our behaviours in the cosmopolitan society need to take into account that we share living space with others who may not believe in the same things that we do. We know through our belief that they are wrong, but it is not our place to force them to conform to our beliefs, just as they know through their belief that we are wrong, and that it is not their place to force us to conform to their beliefs.

``MT, how can both of your beliefs can be simultaneously right and wrong?''

It's a belief---it's experiential, and deeply personal. It's an axiom within our own system of reasoning, something that is truthful on its own, a tautology. A base case in the inductive reasoning that we are wont to make. There are ways to test the extent of the truth of the belief, but eventually we run out of derived truths (i.e. theorems) and reach a set of statements that can only be described as belief.

We will only know who's wrong at the end. And it is not the end just yet.

Anyway, Locke's work here spends quite a bit of time talking about the role in which the civil government plays. And he quite rightly summarises it as being about the protection of one's possessions and property. Mind you, this is circal 17th century, nearly 70 years before the founding of the United States of America. This means that the possessions and properties being covered are that of the material and physical ones.

He states then that the civil government maintains and upholds laws that preserve the right of [material] property that people can hold, and has no jurisdiction over aspects involving the spiritual. Similarly, systems that deal with the spiritual have no jurisdiction over aspects of the material, especially since much of such doctrine either has nothing to say about it, or says something that makes sense for the time, but is of net harm to society in the now.

Locke's work spans 200 pages or so; any form of summary I can contrive will necessarily be insufficient and incomplete. But the point to be made here is that if we choose to live as a community, then the rules/laws that we as a community set ought to be even-handed for all the members of the community. Moreover, such rules/laws should strengthen one's freedom of choice, as opposed to strengthening coercion of the tyranny of the majority.

Reading all that just made me feel sad when I looked at the world today. Morality and ethics are considered liabilities, and the less that they can be bothered with, the better the overall outcome. All these just for the accruing of wealth and power in the fallen world. No wonder Scripture points out that it is impossible to serve both God and Mammon---one inevitably has to make the choice as no amount of finagling can change the fact that these two contraindicate each other.

Other than those observations, there is no other new point that I have not made before that I want to be making here---I just found it interesting that someone some three hundred years ago have made similar observations and statements as me so far in the future relative to him.

But let's divert away from civil government and go back to more godly matters---the overpowering sense of the ego trumping over doing what is pleasing to God.

There are many things that God declares as sin. Sadly, almost all of human behaviour is sinful in nature. And no, I'm not even thinking about the ``big sins'' that most people associate with immediately when ``sin'' is heard---I mean the ``tolerable sins'' in the sense of what Jerry Bridges wrote in Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate. There is no one who has told a lie (white or otherwise), there is no one who hasn't forgiven someone, and there is definitely no one who doesn't give in to anger at some point. All these are sins---they seem tolerable and ``all natural'', but they are still sins nonetheless in the eyes of God.

``Who said that all these things are sins? This is human nature! It's normal variation of human behaviour!''

And that is why everyone of us needs a saviour to intercede on our behalf with God to forgive us our sins. The ``who'' here is God---God is perfect, God is ``good'' defined. But we have our own ego, our own free will. We defy God by trying to seek our own self-justification and self-identity away from God.

That whole self-identity and self-justification is the start of the long way down the path of sin among all the contentious issues that many modern-day Christians claim controversy over. We self-justify because we believe that we are more enlightened than those who came before us, and that our technological prowess can even defy God's power as well. Our hubris in medical technology has kept alive way more people that could be au naturale, and our development in information sciences allow us to collate, process, and promulgate data/knowledge in ways that seemingly beat that of the Bible, the earthly representation of the inspired Word of God. We rely heavily on our empiricism to prove many factual observations that seemingly mock and challenge God, and most show no respect to the Almighty.

With so much power, it is of little wonder that Man thinks of his own identity as being of paramount importance as compared to that of God---such pride is a great cause for much sin. And even among those who claim to be Christians, their arguments to justify the sinful actions that they take are no different from the biblical Pharisees' actions.

So what point am I making here?

Nothing more than just a small reminder to always take a few steps back to look at the bigger picture to understand things for what they are as opposed to getting some serious tunnel vision from parrotting the latest sound bite.

And with that, I'm spent and need to crash out before I burn out.

Till the next update.

Old Man Rant

Happy National Day I suppose?

Niceties aside, welcome to Tuesday in SIN city, which also happens to be a public holiday.

Bah... both attempts at openers ring hollow, because I really just want to mouth off on something completely unrelated to those two things.

So the thing about hitting middle-aged in life, and hitting ``lead engineer'' level in professional terms is the gradual realisation that these changes in epoch also mark the change between ``one who follows orders'' to ``one who decides the orders'', or to paraphrase, from being a mere follower to being a leader (not manager!). The unsubtle difference between a follower and a leader is that the follower is almost always assured of safety guide rails to keep them in spaces that are well-trodden, with mostly understood risks, and clearly defined activities that obviously needs doing with little to no argument, while the leader is often operating in a mostly unstructured space with some sense of a framework (moral, ethical, budgetary, woolly ``strategic concerns'') and a need to make decisions on how to carve out that safety space for his/her team of followers to operate in.

That last bit on decision making is truly what makes the role of a leader a more difficult one than a follower. Managers are not the same as leaders despite their equivalent superior status as compared to followers---while managers make decisions as well, often their decisions are more towards that of the management of people (hence ``managers''), and less about some of the harder abstract technical engineering parts. Leaders cannot operate alone inasmuch as managers cannot operate alone---both have their roles to play within an organisation, and they must communicate with each other to keep in sync on what they are doing so ensure that the net direction of the organisation is ``forwards in the direction of the organisation's vision''.

It's a tough role to play. The mentality required to be a leader is quite different from that of a follower. For the sake of proper debate/discussion to rationally determine the overall best outcome given the environment and resources available, a strong sense of rationality (i.e. objectively defensible decisions) is required, though a large part of the decision's progenition lies in the murky world of experience-driven intuition. The leader needs to have at least two minds at once---on the one hand, the need to have one foot within the technical engineering parts to ensure currency of knowledge to keep abreast of what is available in the field, and on the other hand, to have one foot firmly within one's experience to make sense of all the information that is coming in to continually update and strengthen the correctness of one's intution to avoid the dreaded ``analysis paralysis'' or its counterpart of ``extinct by instinct''.

Some say that leaders are born, not made. I say that the predilection towards being a leader is correlated with certain character traits, but there is definitely a path of training that can take such people and fashion them into future leaders. And funnily enough, it requires such people to learn to make decisions from as early an age as possible to increase the number of decisions (and associated consequences to learn from!) that they make so that they become effective leaders.

Am I a leader? Never thought of myself that way, though I will admit that I am thrusted into that position in almost everywhere I go. I suppose it's not that I am a leader-type, but that circumstances often end up with me being a strong candidate for taking on a leadership role.

The sooner I embrace this, the happier I will become as I continuously make decisions and learn of my consequences to further inform my future decisions. Can't keep resisting what keeps coming my way. I suppose God has His way of making us realise certain aspects of ourselves that becomes hard to dodge.

I mentioned two things though, so let's talk about being middle-aged in life. Being middle-aged shares similar trajectories as that of being ``lead engineer'' in professional terms in the sense that the number of frameworks that constrain and control us in life are much reduced. When younger, the education system acts as the safety guide rail of what is permissible; the discriminative (in the technical sense!) laws for minors act as society's trade off between punishing bad behaviour against the fact that younger members of society may not have a well-developed sense of ethics and control. As one steadily progresses in age, other forms of safety guide rails fall into place: student loans start to constrain one's decisions on what to study (need to get a good enough job after studies to pay back said loans), giving in to one's libido eventually leads to wed-lock that further constrains what one can do (generally don't do things that jeopardises the family), having children further guides one towards making decisions that prioritises the children/family over other activities that contribute less to personal values.

That's for normies. (=

For single middle-aged men like me, we... don't really have such constraints. By now, all student loans (and their equivalents like scholarship bonds and what-not) are settled, one's general career direction is more or less on a known trajectory (known does not mean permanent), and there's copious free time compared to those who are running their own families.

In a way, we are the free variables in the equations that govern society. This is a very strange but strong power. If we choose to, we can be movers and shakers of societies in ways that cannot be beat, because we can reduce the attack vector surface against ad hominem more readily than someone with a family in tow.

Or we can realise that the world's fucked because the vast majority of normies don't give too much of a shit of anything that is beyond a two-year time horizon and/or affects themselves or their immediate relatives and let them all face the consequences of their own hubris, leading to us just doing whatever the hell we want that makes us feel not-too-bad, and let the damned be damned.

I wonder where on the spectrum I am.

As to why this rant came about, check out this video from Veritasium about becoming an expert.

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In other news, I've been experimenting with fail2ban, an intrusion detection system (IDS). It operates through analysing logs of several net-facing services, and then automatically manipulates the firewall rules to block/unblock IP addresses according to search patterns that are defined as ``bad behaviour''.

I was getting sick of watching my server logs being filled up with many exploit attempts. So it was time to experiment with this. As to which server this is running on, I'm not going to talk about it. Suffice to say, the list of IP addresses is steadily growing. Hopefully I don't have to worry about seeing these exploit log entries/attempts.

Till the next update.

GI Tract, AI-Ball, and a Hat in Time

Feels good to be sitting in the seat with no fear of having to make a quick run to clear the deluge that might be hidden away within my colon.

The week came and went as a blur. It started about this time last weekend, when I was having the runs at roughly once per hour. I was... not expecting it. Saturday night's sleep was fitful at best---I was awakened by a super bloated abdomen and a strong urge to let out a deluge of fluids that had gathered within my colon at the rate of about once every one-and-a-half hours. I was running a low grade fever, and was giving my body enough time to actually incubate the SARS-CoV-2 (if it were present) so as to not waste the two complimentary ART kits from work. I ran a test on Sunday morning---negative, and was doing my darndest to take control of my wayward GI tract to the best I can.

My usual doctor was not open on Sundays. There were other clinics, but if I weren't COVID-19 positive, it was not worth it to bum-rush to those clinics, because they would be flooded with the others. This meant a risk of cross infection, something that I was less willing to accept considering that I have two more vulnerable people living with me.

So I tanked whatever it was on Sunday. I wanted to take another ART after twenty-four hours just to exclude a COVID-19 infection with stronger statistical power, and it all worked out well when I took the test again on Monday morning.

Negative. By then, my low grade fever was non-existent, so the likelihood of me actually contracting some variant of COVID-19 was made even lower.

And so, I finally managed to visit the doctor on Monday morning, and was promptly prescribed some medication to control the abdominal pain from the bloating, and to control the diarrhoea. This came with two days of medical leave to rest at home.

I slept for most of the two days. By Wednesday, I was feeling less uncomfortable as compared to the weekend prior, but was not confident of surviving a work day in the office with a total of nearly four hours of commute. Considering the limited amount of medication I was prescribed (three-ish days worth), I informed my reporting manager of my decision to work from home for the rest of the week and did so.

Thankfully, the heat situation was not as severe as a couple of weeks ago (where the UK was, incidentally, running a heat wave), and thus it was all tolerable. I had multiple long meetings on Thursday, but by then, I was well enough that the only problem that remained was largely the gassiness---I was not having frequent diarrhoea, though the stool was still watery. It wasn't until Friday evening that the situation changed from watery stools to the opposite of constipation from a week's diet of low fibre, no dairy, high soup meals.

The doctor said it might be food poisoning or something viral in nature. There were two likely candidates that caused this: the laksa soup yong tau foo that I had in Fusionopolis on Friday evening for dinner, or the large ice-blended hazelnut coffee I bought from the bubble tea shop in my neighbourhood.

My money's on the hazelnut coffee for a couple of reasons: I don't know how long they have kept the hazelnut coffee mix (bubble tea shops don't move coffee as fast as tea), and I don't know the state of the ice used.

Anyway, I'm just thankful that I have healed over sufficiently. I had seen Brian's comment earlier, but it was also at when I am writing this entry, so I did not say anything. Thanks Brian for your well wishes!

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In other belated news, I've completed all three Zero Escape games that I referred to about a month ago. I'm currently starting on AI: The Somnium Files, while also playing the base game of A Hat in Time, a 3D platformer similar to Psychonauts 2, the last 3D platformer that had played a few months ago.

Some time in between the Zero Escape games and the recent two games I'm playing, I put down some serious money to get the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 to replace my Logitech F310 Gamepad.

``Why MT, why? Comparing SGD249.90 to SGD35.00, it's a solid 7× the price!''

It's probably closer to 8× if inflation is taken into account, but that's okay. I can list the following reasons why I wanted to get the new controller:

1. Adjustable triggers (i.e. RT and LT). My biggest complaint about my old controller was that the triggers required a good amount of pull before it registers. I hate that so much. I prefer the L2/R2 buttons that the PS controllers had---literally a button as opposed to a trigger. Or ``hair-trigger'' as they call it. The new controller allows me to do this.
2. Wirelessness. One less USB port to mess around with. In this hot and humid weather that is in SIN city, the less physical contact required, the more likely a connection is going to hold. The new controller can use Bluetooth.
3. Left thumbstick being higher and forward (just compare the pictures and you'll see what I mean). This is a minor detail, but it feels less crunky than having both thumbs squished near the centre of the controller.
4. Stability from mass. The new controller has a higher mass (and better ergonomics), and just feels better when playing with it.

Yes, I'm aware that there have been various reports of complaints on the build quality and what-not, but come on... All those features that the new controller has over the old fully justifies the 8× price increase.

I would have gotten the regular Xbox Wireless Controller if not for the fact that the trigger distance was not adjustable, and that it required AA batteries. Like... no. I don't want to be scrounging for the AA batteries... that shit's expensive and hard to find these days.

And that's about it for now, I suppose. Probably the only other thing I would add before publishing this post is that I am going to be on leave on Monday, in addition to the public holiday on Tuesday that is National Day.

It's just a long weekend to do whatever I want. Most probably sleeping, if I'm not playing AI: The Somnium Files or the base game of A Hat in Time. I keep saying ``base game'' because I have not and will not buy the DLC expansions for it.

That's it. Till the next update then.

Unplanned and Short

This is unplanned and short. I'm down with either food poisoning or gastroenteritis. COVID-19 is still being dodged so far, and I'm just letting God decide if I'm to get hit with that ever.

Gur nahf ernyyl qvfyvxrf qvfpunetvat infg nzbhagf bs syhvqf rirel pbhcyr bs ubhef---gunaxf gb zbqrea zrqvpvar, gur serdhrapl vf abj erqhprq gb rirel sbhe ubhef.

It will take another day or two before things get to normal.

Urgh. What a way to start the new month.

Till the next update.