...and Before OP Trashes The [Troll] Post

In re a post on Flute Forum about the difference between the concert flute and the Chinese flute (笛子):

Okay, assuming you are not trolling, both concert flutes and the dizi are from the same general family of edge-blown aerophones.

I won't talk about the concert flute because we're in the [Concert] Flute Forum.

The dizi is a member of the simple system flute, where pitch is controlled through tone holes that are covered by the fingers. Unlike most simple system flutes, the dizi stands out with the addition of a membrane hole that is affixed with a membrane derived from the interior of the reed using a water soluble adhesive.

This membrane, when affixed with the right tension, adds a characteristic buzz to the tone that gives the dizi its robust character as compared to other flutes of comparable size.

The dizi's relative tuning with itself by the tone holes have two main families, one being the diatonic scale, and the other being the traditional one, which is differentiated by the position and size of the fifth tone hole as counted from embouchure hole end first (diatonic has it shifted slightly closer embouchure hole-ward, while traditional has a more even spacing).

Dizi are often made of bamboo, and can come in a wide variety of sizes/pitch ranges, from around alto flute range all the way to garklein recorder range.

No matter the size, the dizi's effective range is usually 2 octaves and a second, and sometimes hitting 2 octaves and a sixth.

The most commonly seen dizi are usually nearer the piccolo range, or the alto recorder range. More modern [Chinese orchestral] pieces may use additional dizi nearer the concert flute range.

The function of the dizi is usually quite different from that of the concert flute -- its strident but sweet tone usually means that it is often one of the leading melody lines in musical pieces.

All flute techniques are applicable to the dizi, with chromatic runs being among the harder things to pull off on the dizi.

Some advanced techniques on the dizi are impossible to play on the concert flute -- like 飞指 (rapid sliding of the the fingers up and down along the tone holes), and using the closest tone hole as an embouchure hole for a haunting effect while using the rest of the tone holes for pitching.

Even though the dizi is usually cheaper than a concert flute by monetary value, finding a high quality concert flute is ironically much eaiser than finding a high quality dizi.

That's because a high quality dizi requires bamboo of high density, and that material is getting increasingly harder to get due to increased global temperatures.

Bamboo is a fast-growing grass, and the higher the overall ambient temperature, the faster it grows, leading to decreased density.

Hope this helps!

...and Then The Body Says ``No''

What a fustercluck.

I fixed my mental wellness issue with an urgent leave on Friday, only to be slammed with an acute upper respiratory tract infection from Sunday to Tuesday, necessitating the visiting of a GP to get some meds and an appropriate amount of sick leave to sleep it off.

And of course, today's Hack Day is nullified, since I need to catch up on the stuff that had occurred between the previous two days.

But then again, I am belly-aching a little. Things are tight in terms of timing, but as usual, some preparation on my end, and the Providence of God meant that things will all turn out right in the end.

Frankly, there isn't much to write today, except for that little bit of complaining about how I basically lost some time due to the failure of my meat body.

Till the next update.

P.S.: You. The one running the bots that are based on AWS scraping my blog. I see you there. Don't be a dick.

Urgent Leave---Mental Wellness Day

Urgent one-day leave taken today---a ``mental well-ness day'' if you will. Work has been rather insufferable to the point where my ``brain no worky'' (official reason submitted to my reporting manager, by the way). It was insufferable not because it was tough (it was tough), but that there were just too many things going on that I was context switching way too much, and way too hard.

Couple that with an abysmal sleep cycle, and you have ``brain no worky'' syndrome.

And so, a day of rest was taken.

``But MT, tomorrow is Saturday! Couldn't you have waited till then to have a rest?''

Eh, not really---we have a performance in the evening, so it is less of the usual ``rest day'' (it's never a rest day) and more ``go-time!'' instead.

Anyway, what I then did with the day was just something that I was thinking of doing for quite a while: do a cycling trip to East Coast Park.

And so, I did. Going down Still Road, then East Coast Park towards the City, then backtracking up the entire park towards the Tanah Merah Coast Road, through Changi Beach, before finally ending in Changi Village for ``dinner''. It worked out to something like 27 mi, which brought my Eddington Number up to E17.

It's been a while since I went up the Tanah Merah Coast Road towards Changi Village. It has changed a whole lot---there was heavy fencing everywhere with major constructions. The trees that grew next to the road/path were allowed to overgrow into the cycle path itself, which made it fairly dangerous to stick with the ``keep left unless overtaking'' rule.

The other major change was the forced switching over to the Changi Bay Park Connector at the end of Tanah Merah Coast Road which connects over to Aviation Park Road. Aviation Park Road itself had a whole lot of construction going on, which made it impossible to pass through (this is going to be a common theme today). Changi Bay Park Connector was within a stone's throw from the coast line, and it was gorgeous as it was quiet [at about one o'clock on a Friday].

The rest of the route up to Changi Village was scenic. Quite a few old trees were chopped down for some reason, with bits of their trunks left lying about.

I severely underestimated just how fast I could go without any other people blocking my way, and as a result, ended up having ``dinner'' at around 1500hrs at Changi Village itself.

Heading home from Changi Village via bus... was an experience. Loyang was a fucking mess from all the construction, as was Pasir Ris. I'm just glad that I had already planned ahead to just take the bus home as opposed to attempting to ride back---there were simply no viable cycling routes through those two neighbourhoods at all.

And so, now as I write this up, I feel my legs be tired, and my brain yearning for sleep. I suppose this is the best outcome for dealing with mental wellness day.

Till the next update then.

It's May

It's May.

April was one helluva month, for sure. Many things were moving, fast, and the weather was downright atrocious, leading to many a time where I was just left physically out of it.

And this month, May, is likely to be just as hectic, if not more so.

(sigh)

Damn I'm tired.

I did manage to finish up my LEGO Bugatti Chiron build, which was exciting. The detailing part of the build (second booklet) was just a smidgen more interesting than the base frame build (differential gearing, simulated gear box, and simulated W16 engine). I would take pictures, but just not today---am just tired.

After nearly four whole months, The Great Negotiator finally arrived. It's the BAHCO 87, a rather large adjustable wrench, 30 in long, and coming in at a mass of 5.7 kg.

``MT, why the hell do you need a large wrench like that?''

Well... it's ludicrous. It's the embodiment of ``speak softly but carry a big stick'', but put into a slightly more plausible context of being a Crazy Old Man Engineer. No one expects the satisfying ``thunk'' of a 5.7 kg single-piece high performance alloyed steel on a table over a rather mundane discussion; hence the epithet of The Great Negotiator. It is also a rather visceral demonstration of an engineer, and is thus why I got it, despite it costing quite a fair bit of money, and taking so long to make its way over.

I will attest to the quality of the build though---the tolerances are pretty tight for the size, with a full clamp of 0.0 mm on the span-scale having no room to slip a thin sheet of 80 gsm paper through.

------

My reading has taken me back to the era of the old WOWIO---an online storefront for digital graphic novels/comics, just at about the time the first Amazon Kindle was released. They released lots of free digital graphic novels/comics then, and it was only up till now that I have a chance to really read them. Many of the graphic novels stopped at issue #1, with their stories never completed, their artists being lost in the mist of time. But there were still some gems among them that I wished could have continued, like the Lullaby series.

Unfortunately, to get them working on Eirian-V required me using Ghostscript to remove the ``sponsored by'' pages---they were full page sized URLs that made turning pages on Eirian-V impossible due to Eirian-V relying completely on touch screen for all interactions as opposed to the external buttons from all the other Eirians before.

Ah well.

I'm abandoning Elden Ring even though I didn't complete the game---I think I've derived all the fun that I want out of it. That's probably the first and last Fromsoft game that I'll play this lifetime, mostly because I'm really getting to the point in life where I can't just sit there for hours on end just to ``git gud'' on a game.

I watched Kronii's playthrough of Blasphemous, and got interested in the game. It's yet another metroidvania, but it did not appear as punishing as [say] Hollow Knight nor as clunky as Feudal Alloy. I think it scratches that metroidvania itch adequately.

And then there's The Talos Principle II that I uh... need to complete. It's a puzzle solving game, so I think I was just puzzled out for a bit. I'll get back to it.

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I think that's all I care to talk about for now. Till the next update, I suppose.