Comically Oversized Apple

I ventured farther than ``downstairs'' today. All in the search for this:

Okay, I did more than just look for a comically oversized apple, but one of the goals was to find the comically oversized apple. It's sort of a nostalgia trip---a core memory I had from way back when was that I won something, and Mr Lin Min asked what I wanted as a prize, and I said ``a large apple'', and he fuckin' delivered. I think it was just a ``regular'' fuji apple instead of the ironically named ``red delicious'', but when one's a wee kid, that apple is comically oversized, and I remembered grinning like an idiot at it for quite a few days before finally eating it.

------

It has been a while since I last stepped onto the famous Orchard Road in SIN City. Now, to be fair, the road itself is not too shabby---five-metre wide sidewalks that allow a good amount of walking without getting run into by people [for the most part], and the remnants of 2025's Christmas decorations still lining the one direction road itself.

But Orchard Road the metonym never really sat well with me. It is the epitome of profligate consumerism, with brand names dotting every possible retail space as idolatory shrines, with their cult-like worshippers in the rattiest clothing flocking eagerly to suck on the teat of the mighty brand by buying whatever over-priced campy knick-knack that is on sale.

``MT, don't you buy really expensive shit too?''

Well... yes. Just not in the form of jewellery, watches, handbags, clothing and the like. I mean, I can make the argument of utility here, but realistically, I'm just not a fan of these crazy brand name things. Especially not after a certain conglomeration effectively controls the seemingly disparate brands. To be fair, there are also other such conglomerates, but this one is just a bit too easy to remember.

In other words, the exclusivity that people are seeking through these brand names are effectively a sham. But then again, the people who end up buying these items don't want something so exclusive that no one knows that they have just spent ${large-number}-dollars on the thing.

A-hem. Anyway, Orchard Road. Good walk from Orchard Station all the way to Dhoby Ghaut Station. The trip to Orchard Station involved navigating the cluster-fuck that is now happening at Ang Mo Kio Station due to its expansion into an interchange for the CRL. The route from the bus stop to the station isn't complicated, but the fools who walk the narrow pathways... Mein Gott!---absolute cunts they are. Sauntering in the middle of the fucking pathway, walking two/three abreast over a space that is no larger than two metres; it's enough to piss me off.

Since they didn't give a damn about others, I decided to return the favour Exodus/Hammurabi's Code style. But to explain that requires a small divergence into something a little off-tangent.

I used to walk like a normal person, you know, arms swinging to the front and back. Then I smacked someone on the rear swing at some point, and reduced it to just from the neutral to the front, with the added benefit of not giving someone behind a free arm to lever into a lock. Then at some point between 2019 and now, the sheer number of people being packed into a unit square of fixed dimensions went up, and coincidentally, the idea of personal space/courtesy went down. That's when I started to switch over to the so-called ``interview stance'' when I don't have my backpack in front, which has one's hands between the belt and the chest, front facing, neutral, but ready to move where necessary. From this position, if something/someone stupid comes in, I can at least parry off and/or guard. With my backpack in front, I don't usually have to do weird things like that, but instead just touch my opposite shoulder with my hand to create a nice elbow lead for anyone who wants to push themselves into my backpack-leading front.

For the purposes of the story though, the backpack is where it ought to be (i.e. behind), and I'm just walking. I raised a guard, and just walked through the space without losing momentum. I think I heard swearing, but I had my noise-cancelling earphones, and had already walked on, including crossing the road.

``MT, couldn't you just say `excuse me' like a civilised person?''

I could. But no one is listening to anyone anyway, and I've also gotten to the point in my life where I realise that if no one else gives any fucks, then I'd be a monkey's uncle if I abode by the same.

AAaaaaaaaaanyway, Orchard Road. Nice walk. I went into Ngee Ann City for a spell, and had lunch out at OrchardGateway on a whim. Hopped on the NEL for one stop to Clarke Quay Station to swing by the Don Don Donki there to get the comically oversized apple, and other supplies. And yes, it included some Nikka Black Deep Blend Whisky, which is damn strong (or I'm getting damn weak only chugging parallel imported Jack Daniel's).

------

In other news, I found myself playing Mad Max on Steam. It's... under-rated, for sure. It has that Borderlands vibe with Batman: Arkham Asylum combat mechanics. I'm still in the early game, but it has gotten me hooked.

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

Oh, and that comically oversized apple? It's really too much apple for one person at one sitting. Also, I think it might actually be a Hokuto.

Decide...

When a choice is made, it necessitates an excision of all other choices other than the one that one has chosen to proceed with. Such is the nature of choice, and the associated jargon of ``discrimination''.

But the spurring of all other options to commit to the one choice that one decides on is scary, because commitment is scary, with the one true reason why few dare to leap head first into this.

What if the choice you made... was wrong?

There is no one out there who has to make decisions that do not have this thought lurking at the back of their minds---absolutely no one. The only times where this poses little issues are when the choices to be made are trivial and of no consequence (``Should I wear this shirt or the other today?''). For all other times, there is always that foreboding sense of a choice that was made in error, with the associated need to live through the consequences that come about.

But here's the thing. I think that for the most part, almost all decisions that we make do not matter at all from the perspective of ``correct'' and ``wrong''. The reason is that fundamentally, the choices that are made have consequences that spread out into the time beyond, and given the innate flexibility and adaptability of being humans, even the ``wrong'' decision can lead to a favourable (but possibly previously unaccounted for) outcome, should one continue to improvise, adapt, and overcome.

Therefore, the choices that we make are really determining from whence we are beginning our chain of consequences from.

This scenario matters less so should we be the only people who are affected by our decisions (which itself can be considered an over-simplification---how many times have a ``decision that is only affecting ourselves'' end up spiralling out of our ambit and end up troubling others?), but in the event where there is an immediate effect upon the people who are around us, the stakes are a little higher.

Then the usual methodology for decision-making is under the Kantian concept of the categorical imperative:

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

---Immanuel Kant

Effectively, a decision needs to be made in a form consistent with defensibility by a rational person, which may not involve a quantitative approach the way a utilitarian might go for (because almost all numbers are made-up due to reframing and rationalisation, and humans are realistically not as numerately literate as we like to believe ourselves to be).

``But MT, doesn't this eschew the consequences, which is sort of what you are talking about?''

In a way, yes. As I said, the consequences from a decision matter in the sense of where we start from along the chain of consequences---decisions are not static, and neither are the actions that come from them. If we choose a ``good'' choice over a ``bad'' one, we may start from a favourable consequence, but there is no guarantee that the favourable consequence will remain favourable to the extent in which we are bothered enough to track the chain of events. Choosing a ``bad'' choice may put us on a ``bad'' start, but no one can say if the way thereon is only down, and not up.

But what matters then in choices is about convincing enough people that the choice that is to be made at that point in time is the ``best'' one. To do that, we need to explain to others who are affected by our choices why we are making them. The more they can share the context (i.e. assumptions and observations) that we have in making the decision, the more they can be convinced that we are choosing correctly. And the more they are convinced, the more they are likely to have the right buy-in, with the result of influencing the chain of events towards a direction that everyone is happy to be in.

Then what is the best way to achieve a greater shared context to reason from? The easiest is to have shared values, but the danger of having too much of an overlap of values is the subsequent shared blind-spots that come from having almost the same values, without the awareness of other possibilities that are out there. The next more objective form is to get measurements under the hypotheses that govern the choices to be made---if the methodology for these measurements and hypotheses testing can be agreed upon, then there is a shared pool of knowledge from which to reason from, thus creating that necessary shared context to decide from.

When the decision has been made, a good faith effort to commit to it should be applied---if the defense of the decision has been done right, this should not come as a surprise. But like all things involving actions, the decisions themselves need to be revisited whenever new relevant information/knowledge enters into awareness---this is the part that many people forget to do, which explains why people tend to over-emphasise making the ``correct'' decision, instead of making a timely and good-enough decision, and rolling with it until new relevant information questions the relevance and correctness of the previous decision.

If re-examining a past decision is hard, rescinding the previous decision to correct for the updated circumstances to issue a new one is even harder. Because it means having to admit that one is wrong, and in the modern society of heroes, the decision-maker can apparently never be wrong because that's a serious flaw of character.

To which I exclaim: ``Bollocks!'' The time for prophets are over, and even when prophets roamed the earth, they made prophesies that were ``understood'' to be eventually coming true, and not of an immediate nature. Making mistakes should be tolerated, and if the mistakes are righted, the entire action loop should be celebrated, studied, and venerated.

Because that's how we learn new things!

What's the point of being correct all the time? How do you know that you are correct because your process of reaching a decision is correct, or if you are just damn lucky? Want to feel like an imposter? That's easy---never make mistakes and create a complex on yourself on whether do you truly know what you are doing, or if you are just an undeserving hack.

SIN City does not tolerate mistakes. SIN City penalises mistakes. A person who made a ``big mistake'' is condemned, shunned, and marked for a long time as ``he who made a `big mistake' ''. That's why the Yellow Ribbon project has to exist, and even then, it is at best a fig leaf.

Because SIN City does not tolerate mistakes.

``MT, what's the point of this tirade again?''

You tell me. I'm just venting randomly during the last few days of 2025.

Good Ol' Times?

Were the old days really good, or is it one of those delusions that come from the fact that [human] memories of events passed are always rewritten each time they are being retrieved, and are therefore not even remotely accurate about what they were?

I'm not even talking about the current trend of the sixty-/seventy-year-old politician taking over their country trying to bring back ``the good ol' times'' because the current generation (which?) has brought on enough decadence to decimate what is considered the core of the nation's identity and prestige.

I'm just talking about the whole ``nostalgia'' factor that afflicts us in one way or another. It is the kind of reason why someone might want to go back to an ex-anything (girlfriend/boyfriend, company), or to revert to some kind of earlier behaviour in the face of issues that stem from the current behaviour. It is the kind of meaningless argument that is trumpeted about as the ``final word'' when there seems to be no other viable arguments left to be made in a debate.

Personally, I don't think the old days were really good, when compared to the present. The key premise here that I am relying on is the idea that personal agency of choice is a key component of separating the self from the not-self, and that more [relevant] knowledge/information often leadsd to better choices that can be made. In other words, I think that ``good'' happens when one can make better choices than before due to the knowing of more [relevant] information.

In that sense then, the old days were not good at all. The ideas of decorum and etiquette were based on society rules that were put in place by the privileged few, and even so, their politeness acted as a fig leaf over the still-existent discrimination that comes about from [deliberate] incomplete information for actions and states of being that do not conform to what is widely believed as the norm. It may be good for the majority of people then (we'll use 80% a la 80/20 rule ceteris paribus), but for the minority who had to live through that, it can be a true living hell.

And the thing is, what is majority and minority is never set in stone. So to make an unqualified statement of ``the good ol' times'' is to make yet another improbable [population] assumption that will age poorly in time to come.

Now compound this with the observation that memory is always retrieved in the manner in which it was last remembered (i.e. retrieved). A contradiction of sorts, but such is the mechanism of the original abstract demonstration of sentience before all the logic theories and Turing tests. The ``good ol' days'' are just an exaggeration of the parts of memory that we believe to be ``good'', where the quotation marks are to indicate that it is a heavily biased/conditioned context that we are referring to said memory. Just as the cringeworthy moments remain exceedingly embarrassing on recall, the ``good stuff'' are also exceedingly ``good'' on recall as well---the mind works on the same general middleware regardless of the valence of the specific thought. It is, from neurological formulations, an example of the ``network effect'', where the ``rich get richer'' (i.e. the more retrieved the memory, the more the memory is strengthened), but with the caveat that each time the memory is retrieved, it needs to be rewritten as part of the retrieval process.

Which means that we can actually self-brainwash to believe something when it isn't so, whether we realise it or not.

The infidelity of memory is why there has been a change in eye-witness interview protocol in the face of an inquest into a criminal act---no one is supposed to talk to the eye-witness before the official interview, and that interview needs to occur as early as practically possible from the criminal act's occurrence.

``MT, what about the historical writing?''

I think that the historical writing can show that ``the good ol' times'' are mythological for the most part. First hand accounts are rarely taken in situ, and are often taken years after occurrence. Second hand accounts are summarised works with the benefit of hindsight of many other perspectives that no one from the same era would have easily seen. And when these are written up in the more prevalent manner of the narrative form, hardly any ``good ol' times'' are spelt out---most historical writing is about how badly folks from the past screwed up. Anything writing that makes it sound like it was a dandy old time then are often marked out as propaganda, and more often than not, it is the correct assessment.

It is unlikely that anyone who isn't a propagandist will go through the effort to dig through the records, interview the people, just to write only positive things without identifying the issues that were actually being dealt with by the participants of the era.

So where does this leave us?

A sobering realisation that the past remains there, it wasn't really good, yet many are trying to rewrite that narrative to advance their own agenda.

And that the future is still not wholly certain nor deterministic, and yet can be sufficiently influenced through the actions we take today.

Which therefore means that we should always seize the day, and not let history dictate what actions we ought to be taking.

After all, history is just one of the two advisers we have to make decisions for today.

Welcome to Stupid O'Clock

Oh hey, check it out---it's stupid o'clock. It feels like it has been quite a while since I had an entry out at stupid o'clock. These things, you know, you've got to have just the right mood before things will fall in place, and the words that befit stupid o'clock will show up.

So the day just passed was a long one. It's the last official day of work for this year (I've broken my usual rule, and have decided to actually take a bloody big block of leave at the end of the year), and since I was playing at the Christmas Eve service out at PPCC, it just made more sence logistically to wake up at the usual nonsensical hour, spend half a day in the office working, and then chilling there for another few hours before hopping on a short bus ride down to church.

What happened during service is not important---I brought Stella instead of Aurelia, and managed to flub the soaring bits of Joy to the World because I didn't write the bloody part down.

The important part was that it was the last day of work for the year. And now I'm sitting here, nursing a 18-year Glenfiddich after showering and having listened once more to End of a Life by Mori Calliope, and having all these weird feelings that I need to expunge.

Of course it doesn't help that I was reconstructing my original ``Loved.m3u8'' play list after having reconfigured my entire [offline] music collection, and ended up listening to quite a few of the songs that were unironically pretty damn emo.

Oh, and I finished reading Komi Can't Communicate the manga, where Shoko and Hitohito were getting all lovey dovey here and there, with all the other usual childhood stuff from high school gloriously drawn and drawn out over the 500 chapters.

Now that the setting is made, let's proceed with stupid o'clock.

------

It's funny. There was a time where I made the realisation that with the effective excommunication that my family made with their various factions of families, I was a man without a history, which meant that I could choose how to shape my own future. I was back from my second scholarship run (left it because I finally realised the I didn't want a PhD that badly enough to want to sacrifice everything, and that for what I truly wanted to do, I didn't really need a PhD), and was serving out my bond. I thought of an old friend whom I sort of lost contact, reconnected, and one thing led to another, and we dated for a while.

And I thought I was going to have a future with her. I thought we had aligned our values well, and communicated our expectations, I thought we approached the relationship with the level of maturity that was to be expected.

I thought, you think, who confirmed?

---Every Encik in SAF

Long time readers of this blog will know what happened eventually. Spoilers: we're not together anymore. I think that I can converse with her normally by now, but I am not strong enough to try for a whole tea-break of chatting, and have no reason why I would want to test that out.

That day, a part of me died utterly. And today, some donkey years later (I'm not going to ``do research'' to figure this shit out precisely for obvious reasons), I still maintain that that part of me has stayed dead.

I kinda lost interest in creating a future for myself. And I definitely lost interest in creating a future for myself where there's a spouse involved, though that took a few more years after that to figure it out a bit more. Turns out that the kind of woman whom I am attracted to, are precisely the kind of women that I should never start a life together with.

``MT, is it because they are smart?''

No, it's because they... are different kinds of weird. I like weird---it's interesting. Weird has a way of building up that kind of synergistic passion that is usually lacking in most prosaic conversations with the normies. Unfortunately, if they come in the package of ``woman'', then the subsidiary sub-system that doesn't usually trigger called ``libido'' turns up eventually and starts to mess with my brain, and then I get all attracted, and have weird thoughts of ``maybe this person is dateable?''

Spoiler: they are not dateable. Good for conversation, great for doing random shit with, just don't fucking date them.

You know, just treat them as friends. But whether one is actually friends with them is a whole 'nother philosophical question. Because to weird people, other weird people are just blips in the sea of noise---they don't necessarily register as ``people'', let alone ``people one tries to build a relationship with'', i.e. befriend. Weird people are weird because they are weird (i.e. not normies).

Took me forty years to figure this shit out. But at least I managed to figure it out.

Can I stand normies? Of course I can stand normies; I just don't see myself dating them.

Anyway, the point isn't about whom I'm intending to date, but more on that ``future'' part of things. I didn't really have big ambitions to begin with, always being the people pleaser that I was when I was a child (pleasing adults seemed like a better idea than trying to out-argue them at times where they are clearly in the wrong---no adult will ever acknowledge that a child makes a better point than they have). I wasn't born/living in a hyper-competitive environment---even my secondary school was more of a phase of life than something that I was trying my best to ``beat'' and turn out champion. Do enough to get paid enough to pay off the bills that are needed for existence and to serve my hobbies---that's about it. Still stand by that.

But it is funny, isn't it? I was having chicken chop, and I was looking at the hawker stalls. We're talking about stalls that have been there from anywhere between one month and thirty years. The people who serve at the stalls have been there for almost as long as the stall has been---day in, day out, doing the same work, reproducing the same services, producing the same goods, all day, every day.

Is that their ambition then? Do they even ``have'' ambition? And no, ``winning the lottery'' is not the kind of ``ambition'' that I am referring to here.

I examined myself. I don't think I can run the same thing day in, day out. In other words, I cannot see myself running operations. To put it bluntly, it is boring as fuck [to me]. I like trying out new things, challenging myself to new things. As part of doing these new things, some ``short period, high intensity'' type operations are probably fine, but running operations for a whole year and beyond like in the IT department or data centre operations or anything that is primarily structured around the routine... just sounds like death to me.

So, is this inner urge to do something new and challenging is ambition then? If not, then in many ways I should find commonality with the folks who are still at the hawker stall, cutting up chilli padi in the evening to mise en place for the next day's cycle of the very same.

But I don't. And not because I'm working in an office and not at a hawker stall---it's about the routine-ness.

Yes, I sound like a snob, but there was never an intention of being a snob.

Like I said, it has taken me nearly forty years to figure these things out for myself, and even then, I'm unconvinced that I have the full answer on what it is that I am. And frankly, I think that for most people who need to figure out what it is that I am, they might have similar issues.

But future. Funny thing that is. If today, I were to just keel over, dead, everything still goes on the way it does. There will be a slight pause as the information of my death propagates, but once the waves start travelling far out enough to decay to irrelevance, the world reconfigures itself quickly, and then everyone moves on, even as I ash up from the cremation and lose all corporeal form.

So in some sick sense, perhaps ``ambition'' and ``future'' are both overrated as things to have/possess. It may just be better to do whatever we want/can, now.

``MT, what's the point you are making here?''

No point---it's stupid o'clock. Think of it as a trite observation and nothing more. As I mentioned, I just wanted to dump out some thoughts that have been floating in my head, just so that I don't have to think about them when I officially chill out during the upcoming week and change from the block leave at the end of the year.

------

Recently, I went out to Decathlon out at City Square Mall to get one of those foldable safari chairs. Considering that I recently fucked up my ability to download videos from YouTube for offline viewing without having to log in, I decided to lie low during this period, and just use the logged-in download mechanism only for things that I cared about, like music releases, or some of the Let's Play series from my favourite VTubers (like Pavolia Reine), or even Karaoke (looking at you, Alpha Betta and Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame).

So in the meantime, I'd replace background YouTube offline viewing with some new Steam games I bought, and the ridiculous backlog of books to read, of which not all are of the e-book variety.

Which is where this foldable safari chair comes into place. It unfolds into a low chair with arm rests that I can put in the middle of my room so that I can sit there like a Boss and read.

``MT, what about reading it on-screen on Eileen-III?''

Sometimes, it is just not the same. Part of the reason is that there are physical books that I want to read, and reading that on-screen is impossible while reading them on a table is annoying considering that the angles are all wrong. ``Book in lap'' is a really comfortable position in comparison.

So I got the foldable chair. Nothing funny there.

But while walking about, I learnt of a new shop: Puzzletopia. This is opposite my favourite shop in City Square Mall: Super Dario Lasagne---the best damn lasagne in SIN City. I've known about Super Dario Lasagne, and it was one of the places that I had gone with her when we were still dating. I cannot remember if I went there alone after that and before the recent outing just to create new memories and therefore associations of the place, but I severely digress.

Puzzletopia. Dangerous place. Lots of fun puzzles, and there were some that was in their retail. I went in, looking for a portable tangram set. Their small ones were still 3 inches across (while being out of stock), while the one that they had stock on was still 5 inches across.

I wanted something smaller.

I already have a nice 6 inch set that came with this Tangram puzzle book that I recently sanded down more properly. The problem is that when the packing square is around 6 inches a side, some of the puzzles will end up taking linear dimensions of nearly a foot, which is... bad. Earlier this year while doing my ``I'm forty bitches'' week, I tried to play some tangrams while having a nice lunch... and it didn't work out well because of the lack of space.

I was looking for a much more compact version of tangram. And I couldn't find it. And Puzzletopia didn't have a small enough one.

That is, until I stumbled upon this little gem from Shire Post Mint. The damn thing is downright perfect. Naturally, I placed an order for it, and it's making its way to me through the mail even as we speak.

``MT, thought you could find this easily.''

Nope. This was only released in 2025-08, so the search during the months immediately after ``I'm forty bitches'' week would turn out nothing.

Praise the Lord!

In theory, I could make it out of thick cardboard, or even leather pieces, or heavy felt, but the sharp-ish 45° corners from the parallelogram and triangles are likely to fray under heavy use. This little gadget? It's copper---solid metal. It has enough mass to not fly away, and enough stiffness to not fray. And at 1.8 inches (with container), it is small!

And so, instead of debating what fancy-pants flute to get for my upcoming birthday gift to myself, it will be this. And there's also this other tangram book that I have, which will further increase the amount of fun I'm going to get with manipulating these tangram pieces while doing pattern matching/decomposition.

Now I'm debating whether I want to drop by next week (that's when the Puzzletopia staff said their new stock of the smaller tangrams will arrive) to show my discovery so that they can stock those up should anyone else want something that tiny.

It is at times like this that I wish I had enough space/resources to have a small workshop. Nothing much I suppose---a work table, hand tools, maybe a lathe and a press drill. Should allow me to mess about with making headjoints, simple flutes, and do other crafty work like making my own tangrams out of aluminium/brass.

------

And as I reach this part of the post, I find that my shot glass of Glenfiddich is done, and that I more or less have run out of things that I want to talk about during this stupid o'clock. Tomorrow (eh, you know what I mean) is going to be a new day, and I would like to start it by sleeping well, and then doing whatever the fuck I want.

Like maybe beating Last Judge in Silk Song.

Till the next update.

What a Fucking Mess

As the year draws to a close, I cannot help but stop and think about just how much of a sea change it has been over the past year.

And no, I am not talking about my own personal circumstance---I've done that throughout the year, and find no need to revisit it again right now.

Much of the world is run on the idea of precedence, with a bit of courtesy put in place. In a place of low trust (i.e. where one is more likely to meet strangers than familiar people), precedence and courtesy provides the kind of basic interaction protocol that ensures that at a minimal level, people can talk with each other. One may not like the other person, but at least there are grounds to work with the other person.

But the past year has shown that precedence is to be ignored, and courtesy gets one no where except continual abuse by those whose lack of courtesy is not only unpunished, but allowed to flourish due to the increasing self-inflicted hopelessness of the patient.

Looking away from the world stage, similar patterns of misbehaviour can be seen at a much lower level, where the Karens are starting to get more of their way, upending the precarious balance that once existed in society to allow its many different denizens a quiet room to exist.

On a different scale, there is the increasingly instable structural changes in the economy that makes the future highly uncertain. Services need to be rendered, products need to be manufactured, and food needs to be grown to ensure the basic level of sustenance of people, and yet there is this overzealous obsession being spent on trying to obsolete everyone, a type of techno-driven extermination programme.

While I am not fully in favour of bullshit jobs in the first place, the increased erosion of such jobs that have once kept a large proportion of the population fulfilled and out of trouble is a cause for alarm. The most fingered culprit for this is ``AI'', but it is less about the AI and more about the directions of the companies who have declared themselves the harbingers of a new Utopian Age---they just happen to be doing things relating to AI, directly (release of pre-trained large language models of all sorts), or indirectly (infrastructure providers for the training and use of all these prepared models).

Two decades of lacklustre investment opportunities have created a pent up greed that is suddenly released upon the world, consequences be damned.

Money. Money at the expense of what it may mean to be human (the replacement of the process of ``creating''). Apparent short-term gains at the expense of the preparation for the next generation's lives. Consumerism beyond mere material goods, as material goods have a true physical limit for consuming (how many washing machines can one buy?), while abstract services with low marginal costs can be consumed indefinitely often and intensity, with money being the only true limit.

In the past, machines are brought in with the explanation of freeing humanity from menial labour so that they can better cultivate the human's true power---intellect. What about now, with AI acting as an alternative model to accessing intelligence without all the pesky ethics that using a human has?

And what happens when everyone's out of a job, and yet we are all still living in the city? How can we survive when the object of trade is no longer easily accessible?

Bleak. It pains me that I cannot see any easy way out of this. Governments need to stand their ground and actually look out for their citizens, yet they can claim that they are---it's just that some citizens are much more important than other citizens. Corporations that misbehave need to be taken on at a scale that befits their juggernaut-nature---a multi-national corporation is a multi-headed hydra, and the current laws make it impossible for a country to exact punishment that can actually hurt the corporation as opposed to merely ``increasing the price of business''.

The problem with peace is that people keep forgetting that it is the viable threat of violence that helps keep the peace.

``MT, doesn't that go against your whole `courtesy' concept?''

Perhaps. I don't claim to have my thoughts in order---it would be folly to believe so. That's probably part of the reason why my head hurts half the time, and my anxiety keeps shooting through the roof. And we're not even talking about the actual things that are happening to me personally.

What a fucking mess.

I think I'll stop here for now. It's too depressing to continue. Till the next time.

Patches to Build Python3.14.2 on Cygwin

Well, that took a while, but I finally did it.

First, here's the payload (for 3.14.2).

Next, the explanation on what it is.

Cygwin remains as my preferred UNIX-like interface while operating in a primarily Windows environment. The Python interpreter that is still present in Cygwin is Python3.9, which is fine for me.

But the useful yt-dlp tool has pushed their support from Python3.9 to a version that is at least Python3.10, because Python3.9 will not be getting security support from 2025-10-31.

I understand. yt-dlp is a tool that targets a slightly more tech-y user, but not by much. It is also a tool that needs to be continuously updated due to the ever-evolving nature of video services, so having a Python environment that has proper security patches is a good thing.

But Cygwin hasn't a good working Python environment beyond 3.9 as at now. There's a weird Python3.12 build in the background, but it is incomplete and weird. Moreover, if you looked at the same site I linked to earlier, even Python3.12 is seeing the end of security supports at 2028-10-31, which really isn't that far away, should the maintainer of Python in Cygwin actually fix the current build.

So, it's probably better to build my own.

Building Python isn't hard... in Linux. On Windows/Cygwin, it gets complicated.

Which is what the payload (for 3.14.2) is supposed to ease. The contents of the payload can be seen in detail here, but I will outline the rough changes here as well.

1. uuid support library detection was broken;
2. List of support libraries defined (in static-compilation for ease of use);
3. Incomplete detection for clk_id for Cygwin;
4. Messed up refactoring on LDLIBRARY use that got an unusable name (libpython3.14.dll.a versus the actual libpython3.14.dll); and
5. Fixing up the way compileall.py does multi-processing (Cygwin's spawn() and forkserver implementations don't work as compared to simple fork()).

So now, I have a nearly-clean build of Python3.14 from which yt-dlp can run well enough.

``MT, why not contribute back the changes to upstream and/or take over the maintenance for Python3.14 on Cygwin?''

Well, it takes time due to the additional responsibilities and accountabilities on these patches that I have done up basically only to get working in my circumstance. So I think I've done the next best thing by putting it on my website, and talking about it here (where it can get indexed and highlighted).

I think that's it for now. Till some update in the future.

More Jibber Jabber

It's now December. Like everything in life, nothing happens for a long time, and then many things just surge within a short period of time.

That is basically what happened at work. I won't talk about it here though. Instead, I will muse about the things that had been floating in my head on and off over the past few days.

Also, this was started sometime late last night, before I got completely side-tracked chasing down various rabbit holes (like changing the default system font of Windows 11, a process that was in-built, and easy), and deciding at stupid o'clock that it was the perfect time to rename more of my music files so that they don't eat up the 260-character path length limit while also satisfying some sequencing constraints from the dumbness of music players (yes, it's you, Foobar2000, for some damn reason).

------

How does an all out psychotic break down feel like? I sort of understand that being in psychosis effectively means that one has lost connection with reality, but what went through my mind was, what is that supposed to mean?

Is it a scenario where the regular implicit understanding of physics just goes awry? Or is it ``only'' just hallucinations and delusions that are akin to a ``day-time'' version of some messed up dreams?

No, it's not about me trying to get into a state of psychosis, but more of how do I know that I am currently not in a state of psychosis in the first place.

That last bit came about because I was having some rather strange-ish dreams... that felt more real than the reality that I am currently in.

They weren't bad dreams---they seemed to present the ``could have been''. A different kind of future, whether a hypothetical one from the past where the ``timelines diverged'', or of a future that is yet to come should I choose differently now.

------

There was a day where I saw a dude who showed an MRI of his brain. What immediately struck me was just how close the brain-stem was to... the parts that one would normally be aware of (throat, and tongue). It's obvious that the brain-stem needs to pass close to these other commonly ``sensed'' body parts since we have not developed wireless connections to the rest of the body, but the realisation of the close proximity (all within 2 inches) was mind-boggling.

Imagine that as you are swallowing that bolus of macerated food, that the nerve bundle that links up to the rest of your body is just behind all that, under protection from the bones that make up the spinal column. Then imagine that if you slam your tongue backwards hard enough, you can probably slam the nerve bundle against the bones too.

Food going down in front of the dangling spinal cord bundle.

Trippy.

------

I think that the recent few years saw me massing more music than I had done since my undergraduate days. I was collecting music from my childhood (yes, very clichéd), mostly a mixed bag of 1980s and 1990s mando-pop music that originates primarily from Taiwan and Singapore-Malaysia, as well as various English oldies (between the 1950s to 1990s) of the pop-genre. Then I kind of slowed down hard after that---there just wasn't anything worth looking for(?).

Now, some twenty odd years later, I find myself hunting out the vintage stuff (think Prince, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson), and new things (like The Hu, a whole stack of hololive Production materials, Bruno Mars, Sabrina Carpenter, Zara Larsson). I've also taken the opportunity to tweak the naming conventions of the files to deal simultaneously with the limited path length, as well as the sequencing problem of the tracks---I know I blamed Foobar2000 above, but considering that I like loading entire directory trees into a single playlist, it is not even wrong that the playback order is governed by the lexicographic order of the file names as opposed to the sort order of the track number.

What really cheesed me off is that the mobile version of Foobar2000 does not handle sorting the playlist by any criteria after it is loaded. I suppose they are expecting users to use the Media Library for all these finagling, but I don't (the Media Library is objectively more useless for anything other than answering queries on ``which music was that with this fragment of a title'', and even then it is still hampered by the IME that is needed---this is true for both the deskop and mobile versions of Foobar2000).

But new music! Cornering the heavy tail of the music from my childhood stuff is getting much easier, since I do not need to rifle through shady music CD sellers with various ``compilation'' CDs that have no clear provenance---as long as I can remember some unique-ish sub-string of the lyrics, the search engine can get me close enough.

Then it becomes a case of how well I can recall and render the lyrics (quality-wise, we're hardly going to find anything better than OPUS sampled at 48 kHz for 128 kbps unless we put on our tricorn hat and sail the seven seas). And I tell you, trying to recall stuff when one's barely trying to actively memorise said stuff back in the day for future recall is hard.

Till date, there are still lost music that I don't know until I hear it and go ``That's it! That's the piece! Damn!''. See 《羞答答的玫瑰静悄悄地开》 as an example---it took me a damn long time to figure out that this is the piece.

But old stuff aside, the new stuff from the land of VTubers is astounding. hololive Productions is a music powerhouse, and to fully embrace it... lies madness. Here's the official stuff that they sell (primarily original music), and here's a fan wiki of original songs.

Chuck in covers, and the madness is going to set it.

But hololive Productions aside, here's a great indie-ish VTuber singer to follow: Alpha Betta. She does frequent karaokes, and she sounds wonderful too. And she probably needs the love from new viewers compared to the larger and more established folks.

------

And that's about it. I'm not apologetic about all the non-sequitur---despite what it may seem, it has been a hard week that just passed.

Why Do I Even Bother?

It's been a while, innit?

Knowing that a fucking bot is actively scraping this blog kind of takes out the wind in the sails of wanting to write in it.

``But MT, this is a public blog! Shouldn't this be expected?''

Sure, if you'd consent to being chased by a photographer who is trying to capture your every moment as you are walking down the street. And God help you if you're wearing a skirt---you're in a public place, so decency and privacy is not to be expected, eh?

Anyway, bot nonsense aside, I'm just also tired, and maybe a little depressed. But I'm no psychologist, so take that last bit with a heavy dose of skepticism.

It's the end of the year, the traditional period where I just feel sorry for myself. It's a time period where I get a little more pensieve than usual, reflecting on the year just pass, the year that is ahead, and partaking in the self-destructive behaviours of comparing myself against other people.

And this year, 2025, is a shitty year in many ways as it is a great year, in many other ways. But you're not here to hear about that---go join the fuckin' bots and just read the rest of the entries here, eh?

Often times these days, I just wonder about why I'm here. ``Here'' as in here, i.e. in SIN city, doing what I've been doing, putting on a brave front and my best foot forward for my so-called professional stuff (i.e. things that I get paid to do), and just sitting in the corner like a powered down automaton when my work-face is not needed.

Why?

On the one hand, it'd be nice to be acknowledged, but on the other hand, the act of being acknowledged feels banal and phoney to the point that the mere thought of it disgusts myself to the point of contemplation of ritual suicide to cleanse myself of such thoughts, but I digress.

Ever since work has re-instituted the now-known-to-be-stupid five-day work-in-office week, I've not been feeling myself. I was fine with that nonsense before, but I ended up deciding to work from home for one of the days after a long period of not doing so, because I realised that it was definitely better for me to have a day where I could do some day-time activity that could allow me to do something physical, to just sweat it out hard, as a means of relieving the inherent stresses that eventually coalesces into mental issues.

But fuck the people over in the name of capitalism and trend-following, eh?

I'm so fat and lethargic now that I just cannot stand doing anything unless I need to.

I spent the last weekend sleeping most of my 48 hours, spending only roughly 10+ of them out and about doing whatever it was that I needed.

And don't get me started on ``hanging out'' with people. I cannot take it---everyone feels so shallow and callow. Either I cannot identify with what they are saying (what do I know about child-rearing?), or they cannot identify with what I am saying (who gives a shit about the deep exploration of the sound producing features of a recorder?).

With this the ``holiday season'' coming about, it magnifies this disconnect much harder than any other period.

Is this what they call ``anhedonia''? Who knows; surely not me.

I'm just tired.

But am I tired of living? Not so sure about that yet.

I don't even know what I am talking about here now, unsure to what extent I am merely ranting, and to what extent that it is a plea for help.

Because if it is the latter, what kind of help am I looking for? Acknowledgement of perspective? So what? Advice? History has shown that there are very few who can give me advice, let alone good ones, and only because I am not known to approach anyone for advice, preferring to brain it out on my own---you can call this a trauma response from the past where adults have failed me in terms of justice (they actively accused me of an unjust act, and the fuckers threatened to punish me for it should I not kneel), or that I'm acommunicative in articulating the facts for advice dispensation (if I can articulate the facts clearly enough to get advice, I can probably figure out what needs to be done without involving some busybody third-party thankyouverymuch). Empathy? Please... the kind of empathy that many have given me were more pity than anything else, and the few that weren't about pity, I couldn't accept because I felt that I don't have that much of a shit life in comparison with them to feel it as a level ground for sharing.

``MT, you have issues.''

Thanks eagle eye, really appreciate the trite observation.

And with that, I think I should stop here. The bots are circling, and I don't really want to see them doing so while I'm still here.

What's This Title Again?

What, you thought life was going good, because I had said nothing for a while?

Of course not! Just because I didn't say anything here doesn't mean that life is going swimmingly---always remember that ``life'' is what happens in between the planned activities that one wants to do, even if the number and type of such activities are becoming more and more rare over time.

Anyway, I've been hit with yet another cold. The weather is ass-tier---too-hot nights, with random bursts of heavy rain. The air is muggy enough that perspiration refuses to evaporate, leaving behind that sticky feeling that everyone who had ever lived in a hot and humid environment would find unmistakeable.

And the sad thing is, I barely remembered what had transpired over the weekend. That's how bad the whole week had been.

Right, barely remembered. Work side has had a small turnabout, and so things are looking a little better from the whole chunk of happenings with respect to the longer-term fate. However, last Thursday we had a stupid pipe leak that ended up nearly drowning the electronic fixtures at our work areas---thankfully we have this weird habit of leaving plushies around [for emotional support], and the large-ish shark plushie was soaking up the water all night until we came in the next morning to discover the horror.

We took the shark plushie out into the sun to dry it out and get back its fluff. True MVP.

That pipe... has been bothersome with respect to leaks. It had steadily made its way along itself, and by last week it was ``our turn'' to get hit with it. The previous leaks were less problematic because the nearest work areas were not directly beneath the pipe, unlike ours. And there were also cross ducts that acted as conduits for moving the leaks around, which of course made things worse.

Such is facilities management---until some really expensive shit breaks, no one is going to do the full overhaul that is needed, and instead rely on quick kludges.

But enough about work stuff.

------

Anything that has a beginning, has an end.

And the sad thing about the saying is that often times, we do not realise that the end has already come until we stop and reflect upon things that have come to pass. For instance, the day where our parents stopped giving us uppies is a day that is shrouded in mystery, but we all know that such a day had indeed happened, and the sad part was that at the moment when that last uppy was given, no one realised that it would be the last one.

Just like there will come a day where we will have the last conversations with our parents, or with our close friends, or even with ourselves.

All the others, I suppose everyone can understand, but that last one is probably something that is a form of existential dread.

``MT, what do you mean that there will come a day where we will have the last conversation with ourselves?''

Ever lost your mind before, you know, the kind where things seem to happen, yet you don't seem to be doing anything particularly, nor really willing it, and yet things still happen. If you can read this and nod your head, it means that you have come back from that---cool.

Now imagine that you never return from that. That last time that you had your cognitive abilities to actually have a conversation with yourself, it will happen, and you won't realise that it has happened, because after that, mayhaps you are no longer ``you''.

Hold that thought for a while.

Recently, Veritasium made a video that explained the idea on how evolution was more related to molecules trying to perpetuate themselves, with a rather implicit head-nod to how the configuration of a set of molecules was really the key attribute that is being evolved along (I am simplifying his already simplified explanation).

And that got me thinking a little about how in some loose sense, the ``I'' that you are interacting with is merely a configuration of the molecules that make me up, the same way that ``you'' are also a configuration of the molecules that make you up. The configurations are always changing at the lowest level, but as we start aggregating behaviours over space and time, the overall statistical configuration only seems to shift very subtly over time, to the point that only through the distance of years can another realise that someone else has indeed changed.

So, is the ``you'' of today, the same ``you'' as it was ten years ago? If not, what has happened? Who is the real ``you'' then? And how do you know?

``But MT, how does God know then?''

God must know because He is supposed to know His creation---my headcanon is that outside of the universe, there are things that allow ourselves to be uniquely identified by God within the Book of the Living. Sometimes we call them True Names, or we can even call it some unnamed identifier of our soul, but the innate assumption is still the same that our particular configuration (and series of metamorphosis from the earliest configuration to the latest) is known to God, though not necessarily to everyone else.

``In that case MT, isn't it obvious that by definition `you' are the real `you'?''

Not really. All I said is that God Himself knows---but you do not know what God knows, so can you really make the same claim?

------

Anyway, I just realised that I had failed to fulfill yet another old ``tradition''---I did not buy any of the arowana fish biscuits that I would normally get during the mid-autumn festival.

I don't know why---was it because of all the nonsense that was happening that distracted me, or was it because at some deeper level, everything that I am doing that used to give me joy just feels like... nothing.

Don't really know, and not sure what else to say, so I'm just going to end this entry here.

Ball x Pit

Well, at least the bots are not hiding themselves, and are being honest about where they are from.

I still don't like the crawling though. But what can one do when one is using a ``free'' almost-always available tool for blogging?

Anyway, it's finally November. NaNoWriMo the organisation has imploded, so NaNoWriMo the event is kind of dead, at least officially. Personally, I probably should continue with the whole ``writing a novel in a month'' deal, but realistically, it's a nice change to do something a little different.

Last month was a doozy. Much happened at work (I won't talk about it other than pointing out that all the waiting for details is exhausting), and even more happened in not-work. The Great Yamaha has arrived! It's a maple great bass recorder from Yamaha (YRGB-61), and according to Wee Aik, it's the first time he's ever heard/seen anyone order it. Mind you, he's a Yamaha products veteran for nearly two decades, so that statement has way more heft to it than expected.

First impressions of The Great Yamaha are good---the tone is sweet, the range is similar to that of the bass flute. I had a brain fart in my excitement at receiving The Great Yamaha that I forgot that the recorder is tuned by moving the headjoint away from the body---we were trying to tune by adjusting the adjustable boccal.

🤦‍♂️

There is a minor issue that I'll need Sean to help remedy---the felt on one of the bumpers seemed to be a little too thin, making it a little harder to hold down the lever that ought to cover the two linked holes. But that's something for the upcoming Friday.

------

I went and played with Atelier Flute Ensemble (AFE) JB over the previous weekend at the auditorium of Afiniti Medini in Medini Iskandar (it's ``across the road'' from Malaysia's Legoland). It's a nice space, but as an auditorium, it meant that it was better at absorbing sound than acoustically bouncing stuff nicely the way some recital spaces do. I spent two nights over at Yong Kang's mum's place, with Friday and Saturday almost fully locked in on the rehearsal and performance respectively. Yong Kang was a good host, but I think that my ``rock bottom'' expectations from living a mostly monk-ish lifestyle probably threw him off by a lot, giving him some serious anxiety of whether his hosting was adequate.

It was more than adequate, for sure. But let's be real:

• I sleep on a mattress on a floor at home;
• The apartment I live in has no air-conditioner;
• I average about one-and-change meals a day;
• My philosophy to food is usually ``eat to live'';
• Armed with Eirian-VI, I can kill time better than most people; and
• I don't really have this urge to buy random junk.

All in all, my expectations are really ``rock bottom'' due to the way I have chosen to live my life, and not because I was trying to be polite or anything.

I think it really throws people off because there really isn't any other obvious indicator that in addition to acting like a weirdo, I actually do live like one [apparently].

Ah well.

The concert itself was fun---I thoroughly enjoyed playing the repertoire that was put together. Going nuts on the articulation with Davie was something that I had not expected myself to do, but considering some of the crazier dynamics that are written for the low flutes, I think it fully justified. One interesting thing to note was the use of direct amplification on the contrabass flute, as well as us bass flutes---it served as a good alternative to the KFC way of having another friendly low instrument player (contrabass or bass clarinet) to join in. They even had me play something for the demo when they were introducing the flute family---I started with a fragment from 《平湖秋月》 to feature the low-B at the penultimate rehearsal but was told it was too short, so I switched to a transposed version of 《瑶族舞曲》, but then someone made a comment about it being played in an orchestra, so I finally just played a transposed version of 《草原的思念》, all to show off that low-B on the bass flute. I think they liked it.

At the end of the concert was a whole series of photo-taking sessions. I was a part of the main groups, but as everyone else had their friends and families coming up to them for a photo in memory of the event, hardly anyone came to me, and I just sat there and absorbed the environment.

It felt a little melancholic, but it was fine---I felt contented from having played more [bass] flute. The location was not in SIN city, and therefore I never really felt comfortable trying to get folks from within SIN city to get tickets to travel waaaaaaaaaaay out of the way just to hear me play the bass line. No matter how I swing it, it just sounds ludicrous.

That said, if AFE JB were to have another concert, I would happily join in and play with them, should they still want me.

------

In other news, Ball x Pit is taking time from Silksong, Persona 5, and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles 2.

It's Arkanoid combined with Vampire Survivors for the action part, and then there's a bit of Tetris with Plinko for the city-building part (which is a slightly more convoluted mechanism for unlocking new characters and get bonus stat increases---now they involve skill, and feature additional resource gathering/management).

It's fun, and I'm still really new in it. Stay tuned for more information as I [slowly] unlock stuff.

If there's a reason to get a portable hand-held, it might be this one.

------

I've restarted on some digital signal processing work involving the FFT once again. Reason: I needed a better way to extract the chords from sample music files, and I didn't want to rely on some dodgy third party website to do that.

The last time I was experimenting with FFT, I ended up needing scipy and other random-ass Python packages to install. On a Cygwin set up, this is a royal pain in the ass.

The solution is to grab FFTW and libsndfile, and write my own C++ program to do the expensive part of running the FFT, before using Python to do the processing after.

The FFT part is done, and I'm now working on the bucketing of the resultant Discrete Fourier Transform to propose the associated pitches for examination.

But Ball x Pit awaits me!

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

Had I Chosen Wrong?

So here's a quandary. To have people empathise with one on something, one needs to share/talk about the said something. In contrapositive terms, if one does not share/talk about the said something, then people will not [have a reason to] empathesize with one on the something.

The quandary comes when the said something either cannot be easily talked about because of a lack of the appropriate concretisation of the said thing, or because it is something that is bound by other rules/regulations akin to omertà. At that point, what can one do?

Of course, the easiest recourse is to pray---to speak to God. Prayer is good, prayer is necessary. The most pious will also say that prayer is sufficient, but I'm more base, and therefore am unsure. Yes, we are but sojourners through this world, with our Lord holding our places for the next world once He raises us from the death that we all undergo having lived out our lives in this world.

Meanwhile though, there is this pesky situation where we're still living in this world, with all its sin-sickness, and while our mortal bodies slowly age out and decay.

How then is one to live?

Personally, I just suck it up, and at various times, shout in to the void that is the 'net through this blog, and others. But I know the limits of the medium---I can keep on shouting into it forever, even as the bot-masters try to squeeze out whatever bits of originality they can from a source that is still untainted by generative AI output, but nothing ever happens from all these shouting, at least not directly.

The best that I can hope for is that with enough expunging of the negativity that is within my immediate thought-space, I can generate enough capacity to take on more of the new negativity that is out there that is coming straight at me, without completely losing all my marbles.

``But MT, that's sounds stupid---why do you even put yourself in the position where absorbing negativity is a thing in the first place?''

Not a day passes by where I do not ask myself this question. There were two moments in my life that I could have changed paths, one back in 2009, and one back in 2021, and in either, I came back to the same one of operating in the ICT/AI space in Singapore.

Had I chosen wrong?

Ass

Ass. A royal pain in the ass.

Okay, since the last entry where I called out the bot-masters who have been unsympathetically hopping IP addresses but still with the same spoofed user agent information of ``Chrome 125.0/OS X/800×600'', things have been going all over the place for me.

The most recent pain in the ass (literally), is getting hit with gastroenteritis. Not fun, and not sure why I even got hit with this, but I am assuming that it has something to do with the increased stress levels that have muted my immune response, which resulted in the rise of the effects of the nasty-ass bugs that have always been lurking within the body, ready to strike when the forces that usually keep them at bay have lowered their vigilance.

The previous two nights with respect to gastroenteritis wasn't pleasant. The first night (Thursday night), I had very fitful sleep, having to sprint out of ``bed'' to evacuate my bowels. Then I messed up, having the foresight to wear more pants ``just in case'', but forgetting to realise that I was still sleeping on a mattress on the floor (hence ``bed''). So when I finally got into some semblence of deep sleep, a bad leak occurred, and I ended up having to do late night washing, and subsequent sunning of the very lightly soiled (just fluids that made it through the four layers of cloth) mattress.

Last night, I just slept on the floor hard core, no mattress. Drugged up with the right types of meds, I slept fine, without any embarrassing leakages and what-not. The day between the nights was spent sleeping fitfully on the same floor, in a bid to try and recover whatever missing sleep that I had from the night prior, and to just avoid having to think/be conscious about the bloatedness and discomfort that came from gastroenteritis.

Today, I feel better. Gassy as one can get, burping and farting (I don't trust anything that comes out of that orifice!). Head's feeling less woozy to the point that I can sit here and start writing about the nonsense that I had undergone. It also meant that I had to forego the penultimate rehearsal that was held this week for the upcoming concert on 2025-10-25. That is fine---there's one more rehearsal this upcoming Friday, just before the performance. And considering that I'm playing on Davie, a bass flute, we're good, especially since I had fixed the compacted score for one of the pieces---I had missed out an entire row, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that.

------

If one had checked out my domain recently, one would notice that there's a new field that is located in the lower right corner that talks about when the page was ``created''. And a closer look at the usual ``updated'' field on the lower left corner would also reveal that its form has changed somewhat. If the dates look like some ISO-8601 nonsense, it means that the underlying Javascript file is still the very old cached version---it is best to force refresh without using the cache to get the updated version.

Anyway, this is actually part of the mild adjustment of how I handle the ``fuzzification'' of dates, and the realisation that despite having the timestamp of when I updated a page, the provenance (particularly on when the page first came about) was missing. This is something that I had been thinking of doing for some time, but before the changes that I did to conform to the ``new'' security headers, I had no natural space to put that information. With the external validation links for the page with respect to its HTML5/CSS standards conformity having to be retired, I now have the space to put that information, and thus that's where the ``created'' timestamp (with suitable fuzzification) is located.

``But MT, how'd you get these information? Isn't it hard to track when the page is first created?''

See, this is where having my entire website hosted on my own source code repository comes into play. Each page has their own history stored across the commits/revisions/time, and it was just a boring case of finding timestamp of the earliest incarnation of the file. I did that over an evening, and slapped it all together, and finally have what you see today.

And yes, I have this website for at least 17 years as at today. So anyone who claims that they cannot find me on the 'net really hasn't tried hard enough. Hell, this blog has been in existence since 2006, so there's really no excuse whatsoever.

It is the same with finding me by cellphone number---that stupid number has not changed since 2003. So anyone who claims that they cannot find me... haven't really tried.

------

``So MT, you were talking about wanting to cry in some recent post, and yet you cannot. How's that going?''

Oh... I still want to cry, don't get me wrong. But it's getting less terrible, at least for now. Some semblence of a direction has been provided, with some form of assurance being made by someone whom we have little reason to distrust. The gears of bureaucracy have finally started grinding, and it is still a matter of time before we truly see what/where we are heading.

Incidentally, I wrote an extractor specifically to pull out Psalms from ESV, and have been reading through it. Psalms is an interesting form of wisdom literature---they are songs that teach us, songs that show the entire range of emotion of the human condition, while at the same time, reminding us of who/how God is to us.

It is comforting in many ways, and I would like to think of Psalms as being less studied as compared to say Isaiah, Luke or even Romans.

Because how does one go about studying 150 seemingly disparate poems that have crappy meter due to the translation from the original Hebrew to English?

And I think that's all that I want to yammer about for today. This weekend is a long one that is supposed to be relaxing, and I fully intend to try and relax in it, despite the ongoing troubles with gastroenteritis.

May God allow me to heal before the next segment where I need to run hard once more. Amen.

👀

Hey bots.

I see you. Don't be a dick.

I Feel Like Crying

Now, I feel like crying. But somehow, I can only cry inside, just not outside, even though I can feel every inch of myself wanting to cry.

You know how one knows that bad news is coming, and then one readies oneself to receive it, and when the harbinger claims that the bad news release has been postponed, and more specifically, that fucked up feeling of pressure, sadness, depression, and listlessness that comes from that?

That's how I'm feeling now.

That's how I've been feeling for the past few months.

I wanna kill myself. I wanna kill everyone around me first, then kill myself. I wanna kill everyone who had been ``playing'' around with important shit first, then maybe everyone around me, before myself.

That's how I have been feeling for the past few months.

I can't wallow in a corner---for some reason, everyone needs me to be strong for them.

But who becomes strong for me?

If there is any reason why I envy folks who are married, is that like Jaeger pilots in Pacific Rim, they can share the neural load.

I have to eat all the shit myself, and smile while doing so. Because everyone is relying on me.

``But MT, don't you have God on your side?''

If you said that mockingly, fuck you and the horse you came on. If you said that in earnest, I'll just add that if I went the way that God intends, then everyone who relies on me will get fucked, for we are mere sojourners on this plane of existence---we live in the world, but we are not of the world.

To [mis]quote Paul the Apostle, to go the way that God wants is for my gain, but it does not edify those around me. And that isn't exactly a good thing.

``MT, seek help.''

The problems do not go away if I talk to someone---everyone has their own pile, and frankly I feel like a phoney just sharing what I am going through even as I hear what others are. Real people are really dying and/or suffering, while all I am going through is ``in my head''.

All the news that are coming out about SIN city are not helping matters---day in and day out, all we are seeing is the proclamation that everything is going to shit. I put out a brave front, but the more I hear/read/see what's being reported, the more I get depressed and just want to be home with the Lord and say fuck it to this sin-sick world.

This feels like when I was nearing twenty-one, and thinking about how I couldn't see past twenty-five, except probably worse since the size and amount of responsibilities that I have now are greater than before.

``MT, just chill.''

Why do you think I'm saying things here then, if not to try and expunge stuff from my head?

Still can't cry though.

The Calm Before The Storm

No, do not expect posts to come here like clockwork. I still say things when I feel like doing so.

I had to swallow my pride and drop my principles for two unrelated events and do things that I did not particularly agree with, and that does not make me a happy camper.

``MT, you could've walked away.''

I could have. But the ramifications of walking away are worse than the consequences of just biting my tongue, doing what needs to be done, and never going back to them again in future.

------

I just joined the Atelier Flute Ensemble JB (AFE JB) for my first rehearsal with them for the upcoming concert on 2025-10-25. The trip to the rehearsal grounds was a cross-border adventure of going through the Woodlands checkpoint, the CIQ checkpoint, dining and chilling at Restoran Khi Ten, having the rehearsal, before the mad scramble back across the border after to catch the last bus back home from Woodlands interchange.

I won't go into too much details of the adventure, but I will share that folks from AFE JB were confused when I pointed out that it was my first trip out to Johor Bahru. I mean, I'm not exactly the kind of person who ``travels for the sake of travelling''---even when I was visiting the US back in the past, it was to visit old friends. I don't really like being the touristy tourist, nor am I the sort to travel ``for the sake of'' shopping for ``cheap'' goods (the price of anything one gets should always take the opporunity-cost into account as well).

AFE JB was very welcoming of me, and they remind me much of TGCC Chinese orchestra in terms of engagement, ethos, and skill level. I definitely have found a sort of kindred spirit for flute-playing with them away from SIN city. If you happen to be in the area over the time frame, do consider getting a ticket to check AFE JB out in concert.

I'm playing on Davie for this concert, and am looking forward to it!

------

In other news, pay day came and went, and I got myself a Hollow Knight: Silksong. So far, it's been fun-enough. Yes, I still get my ass kicked by the bosses, but that's to be expected for an old fart with shit-tier coordination especially with controllers (these contraptions use reversed controls, where the left hand is for movement while the right are for actions, something completely different from when I play with just the keyboard).

For some reason, I tend to fare a little better with the 2D side scrolling type games, compared to the 3D stuff like Elden Ring. But considering that I'm still in the ``tutorial area'' (i.e. Act 1), I won't be holding my breath for a completion of the game any time soon.

------

Phases 1--3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe were a fun watch. Not as fun as John Wick (which I'm going to re-watch again for the sick gun-kata-esque moves), but still fun enough. Not sure if/when I'll start on phases 4 and beyond.

------

I recently curated a collection of all national anthems for listening. I got inspired to do this from my recent readings on A Critical History of New Music in China by Liu Ching-chih (tr. Caroline Mason), particularly on how music was co-opted to instill inspiration and will for the... nation 😏. Maybe this collection of national anthems can act as a strong pick-me-up for days where I just want to kill myself.

------

``MT, that's a lot of random <hr />-esque segues in this one post.''

I am well aware. This is just a short update on things that have happened.

I call this week, ``the calm before the storm'', because lots of really high-stakes events are happening next week. It also does not help that for many of these high-stakes events, I have more or less exhausted all actions that I can take, and am at the mercy of happenstance.

That's all for now. We'll see what happens ahead. Future-me, hope you are doing well; Present-me is exhausted from being this anxious about what may come, as the weather continues its unrelentless steamed broiling.

In Sum...

Soon it'll be the mid of 2025-09; what do I have to show for it?

Maybe the multitude of mental scars, a mostly uncontrolled weight increase ``programme'', and a couple of gigs to come in the upcoming month that I am allegedly preparing.

(sigh)

Look, life's not bad---I am still alive and well enough to be bitching about things here. But life's not completely dandy either: I've been plagued with bouts of anxiety about many things that I have little control over. I also hurt my right third toe bad enough to have to buddy tape the bloody thing for the whole past week. It has gotten better, which makes me reduce the likelihood that I had actually broke the poor thing---not going to the doctor's to waste four hours to wait for a referral and X-ray to be told of something that is ultimately insignificant.

But let's just look back at the good stuff for the past week.

------

I went to the Bach Concertos Extravaganza played by Red Dot Baroque with GY on Sunday. Loved the playing, loved the programme---the German ambassador was present too due to how the event was ``also'' celebrating 60 years of diplomatic relations between Singapore and Germany.

It was the first time that I was watching/listening to J.S. Bach in concert, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. That toe injury? I got it while sitting wrongly after standing up to make way for other folks on the same row. The circumstances are too embarrassing to talk about, so I'm not going to.

GY had to bugger off immediately after the concert, but other than that, we had a great time.

------

I did some tidying up of my own stash of code/configuration scripts. Among those include:

• Tweaking the update period of the NVENV re-coding tool of ffmpeg to stop spamming my screen too hard;
• Adjusted the depth of the histograms of my tempo-estimator to make it easier to see;
• Fixed the Python3.11.13 setup configuration to actually have a usable readline library;
• Upgraded the support library (and build script) for the Ghetto FTP server (it's been waaaaay out of date, seeing that I kept it working for Python2);
• Added a new script to yield the LAN IP addresses to deal with the new access-point specific router/DHCP;
• Added a Ghetto uptime command using /proc/uptime to replace the missing one from Cygwin;
• Reworked my bash prompt to also show the uptime using the new tool;
• Wrote a new Unicode-aware Ghetto del command that allows bash in Cygwin to use the Windows Recycle Bin;
• Updated the way some self-written tools are built/managed to simplify their set up; and
• Updated my .bashrc to take into account all these new alternatives where necessary, as well as fixing up some other default behaviours.

That was definitely fun. I've learnt the deprecated way of handling UTF-8 conversion in vanilla C++ too (2025-09-16 edit: Changed to use codecvt_utf8_utf16 to handle Unicode strings that span both the BMP and SMP---using only codecvt_utf8 means breakage when an emoji like 🍔 shows up in the string):

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <locale>
#include <codecvt>

std::wstring_convert<
  std::codecvt_utf8_utf16<wchar_t>, wchar_t> converter;
.
.
.
int main (int argc, char *argv[]) {
  for (int i = 1; i < argc; i++) {
    std::wstring s(converter.from_bytes(argv[i]));
    std::cout << converter.to_bytes(s) << std::endl;
  }
}

It's deprecated in the sense that std::codecvt_utf8 is basically slated for removal in C++26. What a bummer.

But for now, it will do what I want it to do, which is good enough.

------

The Lord of the Rings trilogy---it's nice to re-watch them again. I miss that adventure story feel, and the re-watch is a nice trip down nostalgia. There's also the start of Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that will take a while to go through.

Binge-watching films [at 1.5× speed] is a new past time/relaxation protocol that I am taking part in. Maybe it's because I'm currently reading too many heavy-weight books (between Fruits Basket, A Critical History of New Music in China, and HBR's 10 Must Reads Ultimate Boxed Set (14 Books), I'm looking at around 9.4k pages of stuff to read, and that's not counting the ESV study bible).

I recently got hold of The Complete Guide to the Flute and Piccolo (2nd Edition) by J. James Phelan and Lillian Burkart, one of the ``crown jewels'' of flute mechanics/acoustics theory. Nice book---I'm almost done with it, and am likely to just carry it along to finish up on my commute.

------

I've started back on Persona 5 Royal. I realised that past-MT has set up his team enough that we can immediately go into Sae's palace without having to do any more preparation work, which was cool. The flow is starting to return, and I am enjoying myself again.

I also ``completed'' Beltmatic, a factory-esque game that involved numbers (kind of like Factorio, or even shapez or shapez 2). I say ``completed'' because I was just referring to the Steam achievements, which provide a good enough measurement of progression. Like many of these games, one can go on into ``forever'' with no true end in sight.

But sometimes, the factory has reached its full amount of fun that it can have, and should be retired, and without even starting a new game.

I know of Silksong, but I'm not sure if I ever want to play it myself. I didn't complete Hollow Knight, the predecessor to this game, and from what I've heard, Silksong is just harder than the original game. Besides, I get to watch Tenma Maemi's playthrough the whole game, which I think is good enough.

And no, I don't watch it real-time---VOD, and at 3× speed.

Maybe I might get Silksong when I feel like I have the time to play it (and the money---it's getting a little tight with the focus on food that I have been doing, leading to that weight gain).

------

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

Do You Remember...?

And that's two days of just shutting myself down and doing nothing but passive entertainment as a means of temporarily walking away from the dumpster fire that is life.

``MT, dumpster fire? Are things really that bad?''

I don't know. Are they? I'm still alive and not completely maimed, and frankly, there might be a bit of catastrophising that is wont, given where we are saying all this.

All I can say is, I will keep doing what is Right to the best of my abilities, and leave everything else up to God. I only pray that I have the strength, skill, and wisdom to deal with whatever that comes by.

------

Movies! I've not watched them in forever. I watched the John Wick tetralogy recently, and was blown away by it all. Keanu Reeves is a nice guy, but his acting has the same dimensions as a line for the most part, but as the titular character, he kicks ass. There are so many references back to the other action stuff that he did, with bits and pieces of his Matrix movements coming in to play.

And the ground-breaking bit of filming that makes it refreshingly different wasn't that obvious until I had started on the so-called ``Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Two'' series of films: single and steady point of view showcasing the marvel of the choreography in John Wick, as opposed to the shaky cam, jump-cut filled versions that were happening within the Marvel films.

One doesn't really realise the number of jump cuts and the amount of shaky ``in the scene observer'' type footage until one watches things at 1.5× speed (because, why not?). The lack of shaky-ass jump cuts meant that every single movement that John Wick et al executes has that sense of reality just properly placed in, giving that extra boost to suspend disbelief.

Suddenly the relative positions of where everyone is relative to each other and the props are much clearer. It really helps the brain orientate itself to the set, and to truly admire the artistry that is Keanu Reeves as he portrays John Wick. John Wick is not a superhero who fires infinite bullets and takes blows like a champ---he sees, he moves, he reloads, he shoots, he gets shot at, he deals with those who come too close before going back into observing, than planning, then moving into positioni, then executing, in all senses of the word.

But in Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Jump cuts everywhere when there's action---hard to tell the impact of the movements. It's just an iota better than the cheesy ``kill-cams'' from the 80s/90s, where the final blow to the Big Bad gets repeated in clichéd slow motion from three to five different angles.

I shouldn't really complain though. It's a movie---it's a story that someone chose to tell via a fusion of both the sound and video media.

In the end, entertainment was still had, and isn't that truly what matters more than anything else?

Till the next update then.

...and a Rebuttal

I am, as one might call it, an evolutionary dead end. This means that anyone who, for whatever strange reason, decides to use me as an inspiration to live their life, is asking for trouble.

Boohoohoo! What a whiney little bitch.

Don't emulate my life. I made enough poor choices among those pitiful few that I have done well.

Woe be me! How much self-pity can you even get?

The first poor choice was to revere my teachers back in the day. There is nothing to revere about them---they are just [young] adults trying to make a living doing a job that involves them doing the same song and dance routine that recurs every year, while dealing with whatever politicking that occurs in the background, their responsibilities increasing, their salary dropping, and with each batch of students getting increasingly disrespectful.

That was not a poor choice---as a young child, you really did not have much in terms of adult role models. It is not as though that you were brought up in a village where there are more adults to look at, with potentially more to look up to. Teachers are the authority figures in your life then, so it is natural to keep them in high regard. Technically, that does imply ``revere'', but you were a kid then---how/why would you know otherwise?

The second poor choice was to spend so much time reading to amass book knowledge, instead of going out there and learning street smarts. All the book knowledge that I have learnt over time is steadily being eroded by the ever-increasing reach of this current generation of machine learning/artificial intelligence, where the indefatigable Machine is allowed free reign to slurp up all the digitsed human knowledge and then create a new walled garden where they rule supreme in the art of Knowing. As I get older, the skills that are increasingly less redundant over time are those that involve the coordination and coaxing of people to do things, i.e. street smarts or social/emotional intelligence, stuff that the so-called books of learning are sorely lacking.

Don't be an ass. All the street smarts in the world without a solid foundation of knowledge to back things up is just going to lead you through a more convoluted path than what you have gone through before. Street smarts without maturity is a fast way to stray off the straight and narrow, and the skills that you have learnt from sitting down quietly and reading are still relevant in the face of the Machine. In fact, the ability to synthesise these book knowledge with street smarts is what will make you successful, so don't piss on that through the magic of 20/20 hindsight.

The third poor choice was to go study overseas on a scholarship, instead of staying in SIN city and studying at one of the local universities. The overseas experience might be useful from the social/emotional intelligence point of view from the broadening of horizons with respect to the continual refinement of one's understanding of the human condition, but the stuff that is learnt there, and the friends that were made there are effectively useless when I'm not there.

You are thinking too small. Are you saying that meeting people like Brian, Mo, Alisa, loliponi, Liesel, Oat, and the like are useless? Why must you view relationships with the earthly notion of ``utility''? Why can't you just enjoy the fact that you have spent time with people far diverse and different from your own cultural centre, thus expanding each other's horizons of what the humman condition is? If you think that all the stuff you learnt there is useless, then you truly have not learnt anything. After all, to learn is to take a thesis, and its antithesis, and synthesise a new understanding. To claim uselessness is a demonstration of the lack of the synthesis step, a true measure of a thinking person.

Which brings me to the fourth poor choice---to return to SIN city and decide to stay here, for the sake of patriotism, and a sense of duty to repay the tax payers for supporting my education abroad via scholarships. Having not been in the local environment during the most important early years of one's professional life meant that I started off in greater isolation than one who has been studying at the local universities, and mingling with the very same people who are likely to be one's compatriots in the working world, thus developing that covetted ``network'' that allows one to thrive better.

Now you're being an asshole. Why conflate who you are with what you do for a living? You are not what you do for a living---your true nature is known to you and your Father in heaven. Isolation itself is meaningless out of context---if the mainstream is highly daemonically influenced, then perhaps isolation is a good thing. A ``network'' is whatever web of relationships you make of it, and the reality is that there are more people who are willing to give a chance and relate to another person than one might think there are, with the only barrier being the mere thought that everyone is contented enough to be alone to want to be reached out to. Unless that person is a sociopath, it is simply not the case that you can't create that network to thrive. Get out of your damned comfort zone, shake off that anxiety, and go with the flow for once.

Prestige is bullshit. Don't go Harvard because it is Harvard---go to Harvard only if the programme you are interested can only be found in Harvard. So, don't study overseas for the sake of ``prestige''---go overseas to study only if what you are interested it can only be found overseas, and not here.

A non sequitor. The first half is not wrong, but the second half is contradictory with all that you have said so far. What is it you are admitting, that you messed up by going overseas due to the ``prestige'', or that pursuing what you are interested in that is better foundt here than here that is messing you up? If you cannot figure out what you want to say, you might as well just shut it.

I can go on, but I think the pattern is clear---there are many that will try to sell a vision to you. Know that the vision is just that: a vision only. Reality is often much different from what the vision holds, and more importantly, even for those who claim the title of ``master planner'' are unlikely to know that much more of the consequences of the vision that they are zealously selling. There are no gods among men---only One True God Above; anyone who claims to be a god among men is not just not a god, but also not a man, for that person is really a demonstration of the qualities that are more akin to that of the devil.

Probably the only paragraph that is as true as truth gets, though the whole claim that ``the pattern is clear'' is just hubris. See also Colossians 3 (specifically v23), as helpfully pointed out by a Sister---your life is hard because you chose to walk the straight and narrow, to do what is Right as opposed to what is Easy or what is Nice. And you do so because your Father in heaven demands it, because He is Right, and He likes it when you do Right.

``MT, what's wrong?''

Response: What isn't?

``MT, did you just argue with yourself?''

Past MT can be a prophet at times, but he is also a bit of a bitch when he gets overwhelmed. And that fucker gets overwhelmed when he feels that he hasn't prepared enough, though these days, when everything is always out of step with each other, the natural state is often to be unprepared. Past MT often knows what needs to be done (i.e. what is Right to do), but many times he second guesses himself because of the fear of arrogance. Present MT thinks that for that fear, past MT can be a bitch. Present MT tries to do what past MT is too afraid to do, so that Future MT will have a better time. But sometimes Present MT falls short, because that fear-shit is contagious. Present MT is a bit wiser than past MT---he seeks help from wherever he can, through supplication, or through talking with other people that past MT is too much of a whiney bitch to ask.

There are some days I wished I were black-out drunk: all that happened this week are precisely the days for that, even though I have promised myself to never be that wasted again.

Yeah, I get that. But don't be black out drunk---you can only live in this material world if you keep on thinking. And when you are black out drunk, you cannot fucking think, and that will kill you.

Not much else to write except for the need to vague-vent for a bit. Till the next update.

That wasn't even a vague-vent---it was a really poor attempt. I hope that you are proud of yourself for dumping such asinine observations in a pique of anxiety-laden fear.

Because if you hadn't, maybe I wouldn't be here to argue with you.