Urgh... I've been utterly miserable over this weekend. The reason? Having the runs.
It all started on Friday. I was at AWS Singapore for some training/seminar about using Generative AI to transform legacy databases/applications to a more modern set-up that was cloud-native. I had their bento box for lunch, a ``Basil Thunder Tea Rice'' from GRAIN. Then a couple of hours later, my stomach was seriously rumbly, and I had to make a run to the nearest toilet for a dump. It was not a pretty one---splatters with no sign of solid waste. And the amount of gas too... it was not good. After the event, I made my way home, and towards the last leg, the familiar ``it's gonna be a shart, innit?'' feeling started on my rectum, and I panicked prayed my way to scamper home, where I dropped off yet another big blast of gas, liquid, and mass, all out of my ass.
I would add that over the evening till the next day, I had another two to three bouts of them.
In the morning of Saturday, I was thinking hard. I would ride it out, except I was due to man a booth out in the east side as part of some work thing; it was voluntary, and I wanted to do my [limited] part, and was thus slated for a two-hour slot within the first four-hour shift.
So, I went to the doctor, who was mercifully open---the old GP (literally) had cut back on his hours, and was open only on not the second and fourth Saturday of the month, and only in the morning. I told Doc my woes, he looked at me, and gave me antibiotics (ciprofloxacin), something for the stomach pain (hyoscine), and something for the runs (loperamide), and gave me instructions on how to front-load the antibiotics to help hold my insides in place long enough to do the shift.
I reported back to the event leader at my organisation, who was horrified that I was going to show up, ordered me to stay the hell at home (paraphrased and emphasised by me), pointing out that the place was (1) hot, (2) humid, and (3) the toilets there were ripe, totally not the kind of place that a guy with the runs in need of constant hydration was supposed to be at.
I felt like I had let down the team.
But the rest of the day, I spent sleeping in, trying to let the meds and my body do their thing. The runs were almost clockwork-ish---about one toilet blast per three hours. Not exactly ideal, but it was... tolerable. At least there was no leaks, nor was there any surprise sharts either.
Oh, it went through the night till this morning. Sleep was... there. I had weird-ass dreams that I chalked up to my mind trying to process all these nonsense while being forced to detach itself from the world at large from all the sleeping. Or it could be a rumination from reading The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng.
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In other news, I'm excited that the fourth hololive English concert, Serendipity, is doing the same thing for the duolive of Kiara and Ina: live viewing in cinemas is being supported!
Finally, a chance to watch all the ladies of hololive English in concert, with other fellow kaigai-nikis who don't have the money to travel all the way to the US to do so!
This time, I'm also going for both days, instead of only the first one for Kiara and Ina's duolive.
Now I'm just wondering if IRyS's sololive later in the year will also have the same live-cinema view... that would be in October. One can Hope, eh?
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I think that in between all the highs and lows in life, it is important to just realise that life just happens. There can be no great pleasure without great pain, and while we all love to believe that we can strongly control what we want, where we go, and how we get there, the reality is often more sobering. God is in control, and our path through life is about getting to know Him, to worship Him, and to refine ourselves to be ever closer to the paragon that He is.
And that's about it for now. Forgive me as I listen patiently to the gurglings of my gastro-intestinal tract to determine if it is time for yet another toilet blast, or should I wait to accumulate more ``material'' before expending one more ass-wipe moment that risks irritating my butthole.
Till the next update.
Sunday, June 21, 2026
Saturday, June 06, 2026
Fast Fashion and Generative-AI
You know, I had this conversation recently with GY and a few others, and I think there might be some logic behind the mess. Like all good rants, let's start with the conclusion:
It all goes back to the capitalistic mode of operation. In the beginning, clothing was made coarsely at the individual level. For the fancier stuff, one would head to the tailor for something that fits better. Eventually many wanted fancier stuff, and a market for it was created, which incentivises leveraging economics of scale to build factories to churn out decent quality clothes at an affordable price.
But clothes have a shelf-life that is independent of utility---no one wants to look dated with clothes that are otherwise functional. So the capitalism evolves into hyper-capitalism with extreme consumerism, with clothes that are designed to be much cheaper through reducing durability, but with the advantage of being faster to evolve as tastes change.
This is the fast fashion we are talking about.
People still wear fancy suits and dresses, and the tailors are still being approached for that. But this is not the norm for the large variety of people over most of the time.
Translating the analogy over, software used to be bespoke, with proper requirement gathering steps, followed by development, before undergoing testing to validate fit-for-purpose. Old computer systems were unique enough that software was truly bespoke to the architecture---the gradual rise of standardised platforms that come from leveraging economics of scale and Moore's Law made creating common software libraries to abstract out the bespoke parts a major pathway towards writing one source code, but cross-building to more than one operating system.
Then the web-browser became an even greater unifier that went across hardware and operating system, and everyone started building software on that as a platform. The old web relied on the open-ness of reading source files loaded into the web-browser to spread ideas, and the content-distribution network (CDN) invention took standardisation to a whole new level. The rise of the smartphone made ``app-ification'' a real thing, and many are conditioned to demand an ``app'' for even the simplest things that an web-browser-run page could handle.
Software development then started to hit the hyper-capitalism and extreme consumerism phase.
This was also aided by first the so-called Agile methodology that favoured rapid iterative prototyping over formalised design over a shortened time frame of two weeks or so instead of ``when it is done'', and now by the power of generative-AI that allegedly reduces the gap between the user who wants the functionality, and the ability to achieve those.
Kind of like how ``typist'' and ``letter writer'' are no longer legitimate jobs now, because almost everyone knows how to operate a [computer] keyboard, as well as communicate with each other over on-screen text/audio-visual teleconferencing/email in their favourite language of choice.
So in some real way, the rise of generative-AI does change the nature of software development; it prioritises and promotes the ``fast fashion'' style of doing things, arguing that maintainability is not important since the entire software can be re-written through appropriate prompts that includes the new featurers in it.
After all, if we are truly following the philosophy of being outcome driven, why then should anyone be harping about the nature of the source code?
Of course there are still uses for bespoke software, but this is likely to be something that only a small population and/or niched one will truly care about. For the rest, something quick and dirty can be concocted with generative-AI with little effort for near-immediate use by anyone. The ease of access to the generative-AI also obviates the need for code hygiene sensu change request handling/feature adding.
Depressing? I don't know. I always have a saying to myself that I freely share:
Anyway, that's all for now. Fast fashion, or bespoke tailor---which end of the spectrum is the most lucrative then?
Generative-AI powered programming is the ``fast fashion'' movement equivalent for software development. People aren't interested in paying more for something that is future-proof when they can pay exponentially less for something that satisfies their needs now, and to replicate that process again if they need to update the feature set.There's quite a bit to unpack here, so let me step through this a bit more carefully.
It all goes back to the capitalistic mode of operation. In the beginning, clothing was made coarsely at the individual level. For the fancier stuff, one would head to the tailor for something that fits better. Eventually many wanted fancier stuff, and a market for it was created, which incentivises leveraging economics of scale to build factories to churn out decent quality clothes at an affordable price.
But clothes have a shelf-life that is independent of utility---no one wants to look dated with clothes that are otherwise functional. So the capitalism evolves into hyper-capitalism with extreme consumerism, with clothes that are designed to be much cheaper through reducing durability, but with the advantage of being faster to evolve as tastes change.
This is the fast fashion we are talking about.
People still wear fancy suits and dresses, and the tailors are still being approached for that. But this is not the norm for the large variety of people over most of the time.
Translating the analogy over, software used to be bespoke, with proper requirement gathering steps, followed by development, before undergoing testing to validate fit-for-purpose. Old computer systems were unique enough that software was truly bespoke to the architecture---the gradual rise of standardised platforms that come from leveraging economics of scale and Moore's Law made creating common software libraries to abstract out the bespoke parts a major pathway towards writing one source code, but cross-building to more than one operating system.
Then the web-browser became an even greater unifier that went across hardware and operating system, and everyone started building software on that as a platform. The old web relied on the open-ness of reading source files loaded into the web-browser to spread ideas, and the content-distribution network (CDN) invention took standardisation to a whole new level. The rise of the smartphone made ``app-ification'' a real thing, and many are conditioned to demand an ``app'' for even the simplest things that an web-browser-run page could handle.
Software development then started to hit the hyper-capitalism and extreme consumerism phase.
This was also aided by first the so-called Agile methodology that favoured rapid iterative prototyping over formalised design over a shortened time frame of two weeks or so instead of ``when it is done'', and now by the power of generative-AI that allegedly reduces the gap between the user who wants the functionality, and the ability to achieve those.
Kind of like how ``typist'' and ``letter writer'' are no longer legitimate jobs now, because almost everyone knows how to operate a [computer] keyboard, as well as communicate with each other over on-screen text/audio-visual teleconferencing/email in their favourite language of choice.
So in some real way, the rise of generative-AI does change the nature of software development; it prioritises and promotes the ``fast fashion'' style of doing things, arguing that maintainability is not important since the entire software can be re-written through appropriate prompts that includes the new featurers in it.
After all, if we are truly following the philosophy of being outcome driven, why then should anyone be harping about the nature of the source code?
Of course there are still uses for bespoke software, but this is likely to be something that only a small population and/or niched one will truly care about. For the rest, something quick and dirty can be concocted with generative-AI with little effort for near-immediate use by anyone. The ease of access to the generative-AI also obviates the need for code hygiene sensu change request handling/feature adding.
Depressing? I don't know. I always have a saying to myself that I freely share:
Never do something that a fourteen-year-old can do for a job if one can; that's not where one's true value lies.Fourteen-year-olds have more time than life experience on their hands, and epitomise what I think is the best representative of naïve brute force approaches. I know because I was fourteen once, and had the drive to grind things out to inexorably change my life forever.
Anyway, that's all for now. Fast fashion, or bespoke tailor---which end of the spectrum is the most lucrative then?
Monday, June 01, 2026
...Ending with a Whimper
I wanted to make it a lark and talk about how the week of hedonism went down with a big bang and me wanting to never want to get back to work again. Alas, that's just a fantasy that isn't worth thinking about.
Today is also a Monday, and the start of the new month. Incidentally, it is also a public holiday due to how Sunday was a public holiday (Vesak Day out here in SIN City). So I have about a week of recap to go before I return to the fray as part of work, and also about the wandering wondering of when my next long break is.
So on the Tuesday after the last entry, I had an unplanned trip down to Bike31 to sort out a broken Birzman pump that I had got in 2017-ish. The head could not mate with the new Presta valves that my new bicycle had---I was always using Schrader valves for the previous bicycle(s), and the pump worked well with those. The lady at Bike31 sorted it out quick with a 20-dollar replacement part, with no labour cost. I did have to take a Grab down and back, totalling up to another 40 more dollars, but that 60-dollar cost seems to be a fine amount to pay for hopefully another 7 to 8 more years of good use out of the originally 120(?)-dollar pump. I then spent the evening cycling out to meet up with GY out at Georges by the Bay (i.e. at Punggol Settlement), where we commiserated and bitched about what's wrong with the world/SIN City while chugging booze of all sorts.
On Wednesday, I had to make an emergency trip to IKEA to get a new chair, because my old chair finally broke itself apart. This was not the first time that it has ``broke''---I think one of the key latch springs was disengaged a few years back, and to re-attach that, Pa had to slice through some plastic part, and I didn't know what else did he tweak. Anyway, the chair broke when a metal part had rusted through, and decided to break at that spot. I didn't hurt myself, but it was a quick trip to IKEA to get a replacement HATTEFJÄLL again. This time, they didn't have an arm-less version, but it was possible to just not attach the arms that came with it.
``MT, if the stupid chair is said to have 10 years of guarantee for parts, and you broke the damn thing in year 5 or so, why did you go back to the same chair?''
Because it is comfortable, cheap enough (SGD345-ish), can fit where I am seated, and can be gotten pretty damn quickly.
Mind you, Wednesday was also a public holiday, this time it was Hari Raya Haji.
In addition to the cost of the chair, I had to chuck in another 40 more dollars for the Grab ride, because I was damn sure that I was not taking the bus with a bulky-ass box that had 20 kg of mass.
That same day, I took yet another Grab (SGD30 this time!) to head to the Arts House at the Old Parliament House for a baroque harpsichord/cello concert. It was a nice change of pace, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I have no memory of what I heard (baroque music is still too hoity-toity for me), but I remembered liking what I had heard.
Dinner was at the Gyukatsu place in Raffles City. The beef cutlet is always wonderful, and the free-flow tea and cabbage with associated sauce makes it a great way to fuel up after a long day.
Thursday began with a planned trip to the Singapore Musical Box Museum. It's a private museum that was tucked away in Circular Road, and could only be visited via a guided tour through making a reservation. The reservation process was also arcane, partly because the museum seemed to be slowly winding down their operations (my perspective), but there were enough usable hints within their website to execute the correct reservation process. They are going to be at their current location till 2026-09, after which they are allegedly heading back to Telok Ayer.
But that aside, that museum was a true hidden gem! Many antique (i.e. at least 100 years old; anything at least 20 years old is merely vintage) musical boxes were available to view, and the guide gave good explanations for all of them. What intrigued me the most was watching the use of the studded logs (and then discs) gradually changing from directly sounding the tines of the comb to create the characteristic tingling sound, to using them as a control mechanism to activate lever systems that worked other types of percussive instruments. There was also the ingenuity of using small offsets between the spaces of needle-tipped tines to allow a single control log to hold more than one piece of music (the next music is obtained through a small displacement longitudinally); the use of replicated tines to allow that strumming effect without necessarily making it harder to manufacture the punched disc; aligning the lower notes closer to the centre of rotation of a disc while leaving the higher notes farther from the centre of rotation to leverage on the different linear velocities to play slow notes versus fast; and various indexing mechanisms that can be used to trigger other actions like disc changing, or accepting new coins for another song. The power mechanisms were very mechanical in nature due to the clockwork background, using coiled springs, weighted pendulums/pulleys, and combining with various flywheel governator designs to ensure that the output rotational rate is constant regardless of the energy levels of the mechanism.
All in all, a very fascinating trip that I thoroughly enjoyed.
I then roamed about the Upper Thomson Road area to kill time before meeting up with YT for dinner. The old Thomson Plaza has changed quite a fair bit---the games shop no longer exists, and there were many more new PRC-heavy shops too. The actual shophouses along the road were still quite interesting, and I even found another ``hidden gem'' location out at Thomson V Two.
Friday was when I chilled out a whole lot, spending much of my time watching The X-Files, before meeting up with CP for drinks out at Al Capone's Cuppage.
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday was also mostly just me staying at home and watching The X-Files. My only comment is: thank God for the 'net to ensure that good television from the 1990s when I was too damn young then to understand can be easily obtained to watch when I am old enough to appreciate the content. I was supposed to take on the Rail Corridor on Saturday, but my Garmin eTrex 30 decided to have its plasticised rubber be brittle and fall apart, making the buttons effectively disappear. Without a back up like that, I was unwilling to take unnecessary risks, and so a replacement cover was searched and ordered from Amazon Singapore, and it's slated to show up on the upcoming Saturday. Once I have the GPSr sorted out, I will attempt the rail corridor proper. Considering that the route is unlit for protecting wild life, it would make more sense then to go only when I can tap into daylight hours.
And that brings us to now. It's time to sleep, and close this intermission for now, and to get back to the daily grind of work that both delights and drains me.
Till the next update.
Today is also a Monday, and the start of the new month. Incidentally, it is also a public holiday due to how Sunday was a public holiday (Vesak Day out here in SIN City). So I have about a week of recap to go before I return to the fray as part of work, and also about the wandering wondering of when my next long break is.
So on the Tuesday after the last entry, I had an unplanned trip down to Bike31 to sort out a broken Birzman pump that I had got in 2017-ish. The head could not mate with the new Presta valves that my new bicycle had---I was always using Schrader valves for the previous bicycle(s), and the pump worked well with those. The lady at Bike31 sorted it out quick with a 20-dollar replacement part, with no labour cost. I did have to take a Grab down and back, totalling up to another 40 more dollars, but that 60-dollar cost seems to be a fine amount to pay for hopefully another 7 to 8 more years of good use out of the originally 120(?)-dollar pump. I then spent the evening cycling out to meet up with GY out at Georges by the Bay (i.e. at Punggol Settlement), where we commiserated and bitched about what's wrong with the world/SIN City while chugging booze of all sorts.
On Wednesday, I had to make an emergency trip to IKEA to get a new chair, because my old chair finally broke itself apart. This was not the first time that it has ``broke''---I think one of the key latch springs was disengaged a few years back, and to re-attach that, Pa had to slice through some plastic part, and I didn't know what else did he tweak. Anyway, the chair broke when a metal part had rusted through, and decided to break at that spot. I didn't hurt myself, but it was a quick trip to IKEA to get a replacement HATTEFJÄLL again. This time, they didn't have an arm-less version, but it was possible to just not attach the arms that came with it.
``MT, if the stupid chair is said to have 10 years of guarantee for parts, and you broke the damn thing in year 5 or so, why did you go back to the same chair?''
Because it is comfortable, cheap enough (SGD345-ish), can fit where I am seated, and can be gotten pretty damn quickly.
Mind you, Wednesday was also a public holiday, this time it was Hari Raya Haji.
In addition to the cost of the chair, I had to chuck in another 40 more dollars for the Grab ride, because I was damn sure that I was not taking the bus with a bulky-ass box that had 20 kg of mass.
That same day, I took yet another Grab (SGD30 this time!) to head to the Arts House at the Old Parliament House for a baroque harpsichord/cello concert. It was a nice change of pace, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I have no memory of what I heard (baroque music is still too hoity-toity for me), but I remembered liking what I had heard.
Dinner was at the Gyukatsu place in Raffles City. The beef cutlet is always wonderful, and the free-flow tea and cabbage with associated sauce makes it a great way to fuel up after a long day.
Thursday began with a planned trip to the Singapore Musical Box Museum. It's a private museum that was tucked away in Circular Road, and could only be visited via a guided tour through making a reservation. The reservation process was also arcane, partly because the museum seemed to be slowly winding down their operations (my perspective), but there were enough usable hints within their website to execute the correct reservation process. They are going to be at their current location till 2026-09, after which they are allegedly heading back to Telok Ayer.
But that aside, that museum was a true hidden gem! Many antique (i.e. at least 100 years old; anything at least 20 years old is merely vintage) musical boxes were available to view, and the guide gave good explanations for all of them. What intrigued me the most was watching the use of the studded logs (and then discs) gradually changing from directly sounding the tines of the comb to create the characteristic tingling sound, to using them as a control mechanism to activate lever systems that worked other types of percussive instruments. There was also the ingenuity of using small offsets between the spaces of needle-tipped tines to allow a single control log to hold more than one piece of music (the next music is obtained through a small displacement longitudinally); the use of replicated tines to allow that strumming effect without necessarily making it harder to manufacture the punched disc; aligning the lower notes closer to the centre of rotation of a disc while leaving the higher notes farther from the centre of rotation to leverage on the different linear velocities to play slow notes versus fast; and various indexing mechanisms that can be used to trigger other actions like disc changing, or accepting new coins for another song. The power mechanisms were very mechanical in nature due to the clockwork background, using coiled springs, weighted pendulums/pulleys, and combining with various flywheel governator designs to ensure that the output rotational rate is constant regardless of the energy levels of the mechanism.
All in all, a very fascinating trip that I thoroughly enjoyed.
I then roamed about the Upper Thomson Road area to kill time before meeting up with YT for dinner. The old Thomson Plaza has changed quite a fair bit---the games shop no longer exists, and there were many more new PRC-heavy shops too. The actual shophouses along the road were still quite interesting, and I even found another ``hidden gem'' location out at Thomson V Two.
Friday was when I chilled out a whole lot, spending much of my time watching The X-Files, before meeting up with CP for drinks out at Al Capone's Cuppage.
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday was also mostly just me staying at home and watching The X-Files. My only comment is: thank God for the 'net to ensure that good television from the 1990s when I was too damn young then to understand can be easily obtained to watch when I am old enough to appreciate the content. I was supposed to take on the Rail Corridor on Saturday, but my Garmin eTrex 30 decided to have its plasticised rubber be brittle and fall apart, making the buttons effectively disappear. Without a back up like that, I was unwilling to take unnecessary risks, and so a replacement cover was searched and ordered from Amazon Singapore, and it's slated to show up on the upcoming Saturday. Once I have the GPSr sorted out, I will attempt the rail corridor proper. Considering that the route is unlit for protecting wild life, it would make more sense then to go only when I can tap into daylight hours.
And that brings us to now. It's time to sleep, and close this intermission for now, and to get back to the daily grind of work that both delights and drains me.
Till the next update.
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