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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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``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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.