Part One of Pain: Done

And that's part one of pain mostly done---there's still one more thing that technically happens right smack in the first of the next month, but the build up to it is close enough proximity to this month that it might as well be a part of it; hence the ``mostly done'' qualifier.

The thing about technology demonstrations, is that everyone expects things to run smooth. That is normally the case, especially when one controls all the inputs to the said technology demonstration.

But what happens if a critical component is dependent on a reluctant contributor whose technical chops are not completely under one's control?

Well, there are two ways to play it.

1. Be strict and demand code reviews before we even bother with integration; or
2. Be lenient and just integrate what is provided.

On hindsight, I should have played the bully card harder---I don't mind dying on my sword [proverbially] if it is my team that cocks up, but I mind a bit when I'm doing so because of a third party whose stuff we are integrating who cocked up network resource programmming 101.

The onus is still on me though---I take full responsibility for not instituting the first of the two options which led to the technology demonstration failures. Thankfully, that issue could be worked around with some tight timing of restarting the components and getting the crowd worked up to interact with the demo, so I didn't actually die completely (still lost some reputation, but at this point in my life, considering that I have no intention in climbing the corporate ladder, I don't give too much a shit).

All in all, the technology demonstration was a qualified success---the overall vibes was positive despite the initial failure.

Being a manager is hard---everything that one does and decides are exercises of balances. On the one hand, one wants to ensure absolute control in order to bring the variances down to improve quality, and on the other hand, there is a need to let people make mistakes to learn from to better build up their capabilities, be it team members [whom I'm more willing to ``tank damage'' for] or even third party contributors. The need to balance between these two is mostly the reason that I am driven crazy more than half the time.

The temptation to take everything into one's hands is always strong, but it is important to realise that by doing so, it defeats the purpose of building a team in the first place. The reason we put a team together, is to leverage on the extra brains & hands to achieve greater parallelism, thus allowing the total effort in work-days to be fitted into a much shorter effective calendar-day count. Pulling everything back to oneself does nothing to allow projects to be delivered faster, and in the worst case, can cause bigger issues in general due to the increased cognitive load required to deal with the nitty-gritty [that the team members should be able to handle] while still maintaining a view of the big picture [that only the manager/leader can do].

I think that is the biggest lesson to learn when transiting from being an individual contributor into a manager/leader.

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shapez 2 has been my new diversion from the vagaries of pain. It all started with this video from one of my favourite YouTubers:

Now, Josh's a mad man who captures the same kind of energy as Zisteau (he's more a Twitch streamer these days than a YouTube video maker, while having his Twitch streams archived here). I love games like Factorio, but what I like about them aren't the survival aspects(!), but on the factory aspect. And shapez 2 scratches that itch.

Of course, the first thing I did was to look for the original shapez. I could have bought the Steam version as part of the pack, or I could buy from GoG.com which was at 90% discount. And so I was pushing through last week while spending some time here and there on shapez after hours to chill out, even as I was drilling the music that was for the upcoming performance with the King's Flute Choir on 2024-09-01 on Davie.

Now that I'm mostly done with the major upgrades in shapez, it was time to start on shapez 2, and start on it I did.

It is definitely as fun as Josh made it in his video---having come from shapez, there are quite a few quality of life improvements that I enjoyed. The 3D-render of the game space took a little getting used to (shapez was laid out on a 2D-grid similar to Factorio), but that was not a problem. The key difference between shapez and shapez 2 lies in a few new ``meta'' levels of building. All things in shapez are single units of machinery, be it extractor, or belt, or stacker. shapez 2 has all the stuff in shapez, but has space platforms, which are like their own self-contained modules that are made up of the shapez elements, as well as layers, which brings extra expressivity even at the shapez component level through effectively doubling and then tripling the original 2D grid space.

Oh, and it's really colourful and cool.

Pillars of Eternity is currently seeing my party in the city, which is a slow part of the game; I do go back to it every now and then. I've since completed The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures some time back, and am likely to start on its sequel, The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve soon.

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

On ``Open Relationships''

Each time I read about an ``open relationship'', I just shake my head first in utter confusion, and then in disgust.

I simply cannot understand it.

It's worse when the proposer is the man in the heterosexual relationship. I mean, what was he thinking? That he was some kind of reproductive stud that could get lots of sex when he opens up his relationship?

That somehow the woman in that relationship is chopped liver?

Need I be Captain Obvious and point out that it is supremely easy for women to find sexual partners than men---in fact, they don't really need to look that far, for most men are horny to begin with, and a vagina is a vagina, especially if the owner of said vagina provides consent.

There's a good reason why prostitution is known as ``the oldest profession'', and most of the purveyors are women, while the consumers are largely men.

Even the ``fugly ones'' can get sexual partners relatively easily compared to the average man through the magic of make-up, a good enough dress sense, and just displaying the slightest interest in the man they might want to sleep with.

If a man in the heterosexual relationship chooses to open up the said relationship, the only outcome is just regret.

While I first cannot understand it, I also have a certain amount of disgust about such ``open relationships''.

I am a jealous lover. I do not like to share my partner with anyone, especially our most intimate moments, be it emotional or sexual. While I am jealous, I'm not possessive---she is still her, but ``us'' is us---we stand together as one unit against the world, together.

No sharing of that with anyone, emotionally or sexually. And that includes the hypothetical her (at this time) sharing with her girl-friends our most intimate moments.

In some sense, the idea of a ``work spouse'' also disgusts me at some level. We can have close working colleagues, but calling them (especially if they are of the opposite sex) a ``work spouse'' is a type of emotional cheating that I just do not want to be involved in.

I work well with them, I am not married to them at work. I do not have a codependency issue with said person to be considered as though we have some kind of ``platonic intimacy''.

Whoever came up with that term needs to be taken to task. Whoever decided to propagate that term, ought to be shot.

``MT, why are you so conservative? Get on with the times man... sexual freedom! Emotional freedom!''

Sorry, I never claimed to be a liberal---if anything, I'm at best a progressive. I believe that everyone has their freedom of choice, with the usual caveat of accepting all consequences of their choices.

Spousal relationships (and any relationships that lead to that) are special---it's the type of relationship where one literally is at one's most vulnerable with another, with the deepest of trust being placed in the other person's hand, in reciprocation reciprocity, just so that the spousal couple thus formed is stronger than each individual, hopefully making living the rest of this banal existence a little more meaningful, lively, and stimulating. Any one who cannot fulfil this role just isn't worth it, no matter how sexy that person is, or how good a listener that person is---if they do not build up, but instead tear down, or manipulate, then that person is not worth it, ever. And naturally, reciprocation reciprocity is key---to have someone like that as a spouse implies that you need to exemplify the same qualities as well---the relationship is then ``equally yoked''.

With all that I said, bear in mind that while I make a judgement in what I say, I do not believe that it is my place to enforce my values on others---they live how they want, and deal with the consequences, be they good or bad. It is, however, my place to enforce my own rules on myself, and the relationships that I may get involved in, with the word ``may'' doing a whole lot of heavy-lifting.

Because as at now, I remain unconvinced that I am going to start a new relationship, let alone get married.

I'd write more, but it's getting depressing. Time for some Suntory Whisky---I've not had a drink in a while, and the upcoming week is prime time for drinking [my pain away], if my bank account allows for it.

Till the next update.

P.S.: There's this someone from Singapore who is zealously loading the mobile version of the main page of this blog. Hi there, I see you, though I have no fucking clue who you are. Did you know that you can use the Atom feed available from the desktop version to have an RSS feed-based notification of when a new post comes up?

National Day Grab-bag

Okay, it's a public holiday today celebrating SIN city's independence. That's excellent.

Naturally, most denizens in SIN city that are able, have found ways to head out of country to enjoy the ``free'' long weekend. As for me, I have an even longer weekend due to the extra days of leave that I took for yesterday, and the upcoming Monday.

``But MT, aren't you in the middle of a high-key period? Why the sudden long leave?''

The leave... was planned before any of these things went bananas. And it was roughly when I first learnt that Cat Quest III is released on 2024-08-08. Naturally I had to take leave to play it!

So far, Cat Quest III hasn't been disappointing. True, it is no Elden Ring, but notice that I've given up on Elden Ring, whereas I am still having fun with Cat Quest III.

The primary purpose of a game is to be fun, so as to encourage the key reason for its existence---play. Any game that doesn't encourage play isn't really a game anymore, and should be called something else altogether. And what constitutes as fun is highly subjective, which is absolutely fine---everyone's life circumstances are different. Some things that one finds fun (like playing a musical instrument or programming a computer) might be a job/chore for another (think professional musician/music teacher, and software engineer), but that's diversity and freedom of choice right there.

Speaking of games, I finally completed the last two achievements of Faerie Solitaire, which involved:

1. Raising all 32 pets to adult forms; and
2. Completing all Challenges.

It only took me ten years to finish up those two, and after that is done, I promptly installed Faerie Solitaire (Remastered) to have this little game with the updated features (graphics and general quality-of-life updates) set up.

Talk about addictive.

And while we are talking about old games, Jupiter Hell Classic was recently announced to be available on Steam soon. It's really DoomRL v0.9.9.8 in disguise, reskinned heavily to avoid the ZeniMedia Doom IP. I stopped caring about ChaosForge after realising the KK was now beholden to his shareholders instead of the fans, and have not looked into the ChaosForge Forum ever since that day back in 2022.

And no, I haven't really gone back there. And I don't think I will head back there. I never wish KK ill, and sincerely hope that he will continue to succeed. It's just that I will no longer play an active part in his endeavours.

Will I get Jupiter Hell Classic when it is released? Maybe... for old time's sake. It'd be nice to see Nyarlaptoptep's Boots once more, as well as the Mother-In-Law, two items that I have had a hand in naming in one way or another.

And while we are on the old stuff, WordStar 7 has seen a release by science-fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, as noted in his blog entry. WordStar is among the OG of word processing---they came at a time just between the typewriter, and the advent of WYSIWYG word processing, roughly when people were looking for more out of their text processing beyond full-screen text editors.

I sadly never had the need to work with WordStar, but I do enjoy me a good text-mode word processor as a concept. I'm part of that ``weird'' group of people who prefer writing in as distraction free a manner as possible, which was why something as arcane as TeX or the much better successor LaTeX appeals more strongly to me than good ol' MSWord (or these days on Eileen-III, LibreOffice Writer). My writing tool of preference these days is either good old vim, or Q10 on Windows.

There's just something about the 80-character wide monospace font form factor that makes the writing feel more fluid than trying to bang something out in a GUI with proportional fonts, and twiddling with formatting every which way, even though almost all word processors actually have semantic styling defined from the get-go.

But back to WordStar. The modern user may be put off by the need to run this old DOS program in one of several DOS emulators (Sawyer's 680MB package has all these sorted out, while I already have a DOSBox-X set up on Eileen-III), but I think they will be really put off by the entire keyboard interface. The semantics are quite foreign to the modern user as the interface was designed for a time where the keyboard standards weren't standard yet.

The ``WordStar Diamond`` is easy enough to get used to---it's like WASD, except it is ESXD, with control held. It is slightly less arcane than vi's hjkl movement, and thus more tolerable.

The problematic part is text selection (``marking blocks'' in WordStar lingo) is persistent. This means that the text can be marked [in a block], and other things can happen, while the marked block remains marked. So, if one wants to replace the selected text, it is important to execute a block-cut or block-delete before typing in the new text, otherwise the outcome is... not as expected.

I've had my fill of this back in the old days of working with the IDE of Turbo Pascal and Turbo C/C++ from Borland International. They followed the WordStar semantics, and it was usually a pain to turn that option off, mostly because of my scenarios of using them at programming competitions where the hardware and environment are provided for by the organiser.

It's not hard to get used to it, but it does get old pretty quickly.

Old software aside, Beyond Compare 5 has been out for about a month now. I love this file comparison tool---it's multiplatform, it's fast, it can compare stuff over the network, and the price is always reasonable for the functionality it has. The big thing for me to upgrade (for free in my case since I bought Beyond Compare 4 within the window for it) is the ability to have word-wrap enabled when doing text comparison. Oh, it can also handle table comparisons better than before---no more single-sheet preparation like before.

There's also the last bit of switching back to Mozilla Firefox from Google Chrome for my ``serious'' web applications (i.e. logged in stuff that companies would love to use tracking on) due to the shitstorm that is Manifest V3 and how it nerfs ad-blocking. The modern web is not usable without ad-blocking---everyone seems to want to load as many advertisements as they can on their puny web sites. On its own, it's not a problem per se, if these advertisements are tastefully done. But that has not been the case for the better part of a decade now. Apart from the technical problems of increasing the attack surface area, these advertisements (full-blown multimedia extravanganza too, for some of them!) consume precious network bandwidth, making that gigabit Internet connection trudge along slower than the bad old days of dial-up.

Do I recommend switching? Sure... it's pretty painless. But it's still up to individual choice whether to do so.

And anyway, I think that's about it for now. Back to Cat Quest III for me.

Till the next update.

Bus Ride Thought

It's stupid o'clock now.

As I was riding the bus to the office this morning, this thought came to mind:

The seeking of validation of oneself through another person is simultaneously the most romantic and the most depressing thing.

It came to mind as I was just daydreaming a little, wondering whether I am ever ready to even consider accepting another person into my life as a partner, or forever forfeit that opportunity through the rapidly closing window of whatever is left of my ``dating years''.

Look, in a few months, I'm forty. That's not young.

I'm never going to start a family with children, for sure.

But maybe, just maybe, I'd be with someone who is willing to be an equal partner with me, to be there so that we can support each other as we grow old.

And then I was thinking about how sometimes we all ``need'' to talk to someone as a way of sharing our thoughts, to have some kind of sanity checking, and you know, get validation.

And if that person is the closest person in one's life (i.e. partner/spouse), then it is probably one of those types of gestures that is considered ``romantic''.

But if that person is not some closest person, but it just happens to be whoever is within striking distance (think acquaintances), then it's pretty depressing. It is an indication of just how starved of human contact and empathy one is that they are trying to establish some kind of rapport, any kind of rapport, just to feel like a human.

It is a rather sad kind of existence.

I wonder if I'll just end up like that...