Bye Bye NaNoWriMo, and Nanashi Mumei of hololive EN

NaNoWriMo is now truly dead. The news was to have been sent out via email with an attached YouTube video, but I never did receive that email, and I will not watch the video that is said to be 27+ minutes of ranting by the last and acting Executive Director.

The implosion that led to the collapse of NaNoWriMo is well-documented, and if you are reading this in the far future where the link is dead, know that it was a pathetic fall from grace that could be saved at every step of the way, should the management pay attention to what the community is saying. Not that the community knows best, but that the community that was formed around the NaNoWriMo concept as the rallying call, and thus the community is not just some filthy casual tourist who cares not about the direction and enjoyability of NaNoWriMo.

To be had, NaNoWriMo had a good run. Founded back in 1999 on a whim by Chris Baty who wanted to challenge the concept of novel-writing as a one day event (as in, ``one day I will write a novel''), it survived twenty-five years. And of those twenty-five years, I had winning entries for fifteen of them. For a hobbyist programme, that is a damn good run.

So many nice memories from the past. I remembered first meeting Dylan and Mint back in one of the TGIO (Thank God It's Over!) parties, and then there's of course Joelyn, Max, Sarahcoldheart, Raven Silvers, Shermine, and quite a few others whom I would recognise by face but almost never by name. Almost always winning the early bird prize (for being early on venue at the Kick-off and the TGIO parties), and then having all kinds of discussions with them; the write-ins on Saturdays at various parts of the CBD that I would never have gone on my own; the different rooms at different National Libraries that our Municipal Liaisons (MLs) Sarahcoldheart/Raven Silvers/Joelyn would book for the two main parties; meeting and chatting with random irregulars who wrote at one or two of the NaNoWriMos (Valdimire---you're remembered and hope you are doing well!); inspirations from a now-forgotten writer after the forums were ``updated'' (but made worse) who would consistently churn out 1 Mwords per NaNoWriMo; word wars with the different sections of SIN city; convincing folks like Chara to join in the writing mess; the 2 kword lunch hour sprints during November, and being well-known at where I work for doing it; and of course, fourteen publicly available first draft manuscripts of stories from different settings (one of them is not quite right, and so I didn't release it).

And now, the era is over.

I've honestly done all my grieving last year, when I decided to not take part in NaNoWriMo. The writing's been on the wall for quite a while---just read the linked to document for a concise summary of the downfall of NaNoWriMo the organisation. It's just that I always feel a little wistful when something comes to a close.

...just like how Nanashi Mumei of hololive English has announced her graduation.

While I'm more selective about watching what Mumei puts up as compared to Ina/Fauna/Vesper, she does have a lovely voice. And her original music has got that interesting mix of wonder and power behind it that is hard to explain. It is sad that she has to leave hololive primarily due to her health issues, and more specifically, the fact that her voice is in trouble.

One cannot be a streamer/content creator with an avatar with voice troubles---that is literally the most important part of being a VTuber, the other being a generally acceptable avatar to work with.

I can keep going on, but damnit it is April already---the months of being maudlin are more in January for crying out loud!

(sigh)

We cannot keep looking back and wondering how to go back---moving forwards is already hard as it is. We should allow ourselves to look back every now and then as a means of reminding us of how we got to where we are, to give thanks to those who helped us along the way, and to pray for the very same souls who helped us then, but whom we have lost touch since.

But we can never go back to how things were. No matter what we try.

Till the next update.

Out of Spoons/Empathy

Okay, it's the time of the year where I'm prone to getting maudlin. I could say, ``Wait, I can explain!'' but after nearly eighteen years here, just read the damn archives.

Grumpiness aside, I was assaulted on all fronts by the many sub-twelve children. It was... annoying, to put it mildly. As clichéd as it sounds, I blame the parents. These children were screeching, talking rather loudly, and all without much control by their parents.

``But MT, taking care of children is hard! Have some empathy!''

I'm shit out of empathy after two days of classes relating to being a manager. And honestly, I was a little disappointed. The content was fine; there were some interesting things to think about. But man, the contextualisation of it all was sooo typically gaslighting. Again, it is consistent with the brand in terms of where the classes were offered and the background of the instructor, but it doesn't mean that it felt right. Naturally, work must dominate the reason of existence of one's life, and ``work-life balance'' is some woke shit that is terrible for everything, and it should be ``work-life integration''.

🤦‍♂️

As I said, it's on brand, as disappointing as it was. But I'm always of the opinion that something good can almost always be gleaned from any circumstance, no matter how good or fucked up they are, and in that sense, I was not disappointed. The other participants of the class naturally made me realise that there is much of the world that does not revolve around [infocom] technology, and also everyone seemingly thinks of AI as some kind of magic genie.

🤦‍♂️

Thus, I am absolutely out of fucks left to give. Having young children screeching about on public transport is just terrible, and this is coming from someone who was already shoving well-fitted ear plugs in their ears. Yeah, it was not pleasant.

In my previous post, I briefly talked about this year's NaNoWriMo entry. I won't talk more about my entry specifically (go check it out from the usual place), but talk a little bit about a controversy that had been brewing in the background. Apparently there had been some moderators on the forums who were doing some shady stuff with respect to the Young Writers' Programme (YWP). Complaints were raised, nothing was done, the Board was activated, the Panic Button was smashed, and much of the forums came to a stand still during one of the most high key periods of its use as the Board figures out what their reaction should be over the American Thanksgiving week.

Naturally, other grievances got tossed into the mix as well, and I frankly do not know what to say about them. Some of these grievances included things about inclusivity, and about how the Code of Conduct (CoC) should be updated to reflect that, as well as to ``other'' (my terminology) groups that are ``generally known to be discriminative for one reason or another''. It's a clusterfuck.

I can sort of start to see why the older one gets, the less liberal one's tendencies get, with a general shift towards conservatism. Some of the stuff said by the liberal-minded is batshit insane, as though they had forgotten about the fact that humans are gonna human, exploiting any and all rules that they can to their advantage. Now this does not mean that the conservative-minded are sinless---they are batshit insane, but for wholly different reasons.

The only thing I will say to these all is: what the fuck, man!?

But I digress. I'm seriously contemplating whether to continue with NaNoWriMo next year. It's not so much as I'm running out of stories to tell (this is but a small reason), but that NaNoWriMo is starting to lose what is fun about it. I'm sure I wrote some time back when they did their website and forums update a few years back, and it wasn't good. And now, software aside, the people are starting to get weird too. If this all gets to a head with all the fun gone, why should I continue to expend energies on it?

That all said, this will be a question that I will only need to answer next year, so I'll just leave it for now.

I suppose that's all for now. Till the next update then.

NaNoWriMo 2023 and Other Stuff

And now that I'm finally done with NaNoWriMo 2023, let's talk about stuff here.

First off, I'm feeling bloody sick. I think my days (or was it nights?) of not having enough sleep are catching up to me, that and perhaps a messing up of my body chemistry due to the period of anti-histamine change/non-use. So let's unpack this sentence for a bit.

After one bloody long-ass loop, I should have just gone back to my usual pharmacy instead of trying to bank on the ``closer to my office'' ones. All the cock and bull story about supplier issues and what-not... my usual pharmacy still had what I needed in stock at a price point that does not make me want to kill myself. Only caveat is the need to go a bit more out of the way, but I'm learning. For a 10× difference in price, yeah, I should have just gone out of the way.

Not having enough sleep... not sure why. Might be a combination of general restlessness from reaching our first major system deployment while still having no access to the funds to actually deploy(!), other preparatory work for the upcoming year, where I need to also feed the pipeline that my team draws upon for work to do, and maybe also the upcoming two-day course that I have to attend.

Moving back to NaNoWriMo 2023, the core concept for this year's entry is about the apartment block, and its neighbours (sort of), framed under the context of the funeral of the key person who provides the linkages. Why this particular setting, I don't know---I have done much less planning for this year's entry as compared to other years.

Writing it was tough mostly due to all the other competing items for attention, as well as trying to make sure I don't end up completely out of action due to illness. But it is damn hard to stay healthy.

------

In other news, I have done some upgrades to my Minecraft world. I'll list them loosely here:

• Updated the world to 1.20.2, which includes updating the major mods I used as well;
• Fixed my iron farm to take into account the forced day/night life-cycle for the villagers (i.e. they need to sleep so that the iron golem can be spawned periodically);
• Fixed my mob farm's killing/collecting system to channel experience orbs more efficiently instead of getting trapped in hoppers;
• Freed up space in the item collection sub-level by pushing the auto-trash disposal and item elevator to a new sub-level;
• Finished the nether rail system to connect to the newly discovered Sakura tree containing biome;
• Clearing out trees near to my industrial complex to reduce vandalism by the damned Endermen;
• Changed up the map that was placed in my hill-top base's bedroom to show the actual hilltop base;
• Farmed up more packed ice and blue ice from the ice spikes biome near my guardian temple area; and
• Upgraded my archery range set up to have a higher resolution target indicator.

I think that's about all I can write now.

I'm going to collapse for a bit. Till the next time then.

Dig It All Realisation---Done!

Ah... I've not seen the interior of Q10 for 3 days---the last time I used Q10 was to fill in the last 2.8k to my NaNoWriMo entry for 2022. Weighing in at 50127 words, Dig It All Realisation is a play on a break down of the word ``digitalisation''. Now, this should not be confused with ``digitisation''.

If we use what SAP says, the gist of their definitions can be understood as thus:

digitisation

Process of converting analogue data into digital form.

digitalisation

The processing of digitised using advanced information technologies to improve/change fundamental processes.

Hence the title break down of dig ([data] mining), it (quantification, i.e. making everything into an object, an ``it''), all (everything), and realisation (the combination of all the steps leading to a system).

And that's the basic story line behind this year's entry.

I would rate this year's attempt as being average---there was no point in time where I was particularly inspired to sprint harder than the usual 2k words per day, nor did it got so difficult that I could not come up with enough words to cover the day. A nice difficulty curve.

That's all I want to write about this on this off-day I took leave for no other reason than to have an off day. I've put it on my personal domain, so download and read it if you'd like.

Till the next update.

...And 50 Ways to Die Is Done

And there we have it, my winning entry for NaNoWriMo 2021. I did start the day thinking of marathoning to the end, and tried the best I could, and finally managed to succeed with a tolerance of five minutes.

I mentioned earlier that I would rather write one 50k-word story than fifty 1k-word stories. This year's entry is an experiment on writing fifty 1k-word stories. I tell you, it's a damn pain in the ass.

The theme for the stories was ``50 Ways to Die''. Naturally, each story is ``a way to die''. Just keeping it that spread out as writing 50 ways to die was one sure way to die and fail this years NaNoWriMo.

So what I did was to create five general categories in which the death may be classified as. They are:

• Suicides;
• Self-inflicted accidents;
• Others inflicted accidents;
• Executions; and
• Failure of Survival

With five categories, that meant that I needed to ``only'' come up with 10 different ways to day per category.

It did not reduce the total amount of work done, but at least it helped in narrowing down what to think about.

A further thing that I did was to use a small little Python3 script to randomly pick which of the five categories I should work on each time I was ready to begin a new 1k-word story. The weightage is proportional to the number of stories (out of 10) in that category that I have not written a story for. So the distribution of the categories throughout the novel is truly based on a random process, and not me deciding ``manually'' what I wanted to write.

Oh, it's technically a novel because of the prologue and epilogue, which framed the entire set of stories as being part of some undescribable creatures' view of the insane nightmarish thoughts of a single person.

So, why this topic of ``50 Ways To Die''? As I had previously mentioned, it was meant to be cathartic. It is no secret that I had spent much of last year and this one mentally bouncing everywhere. My pay was cut to save the company (bayl gb or fynccrq va gur snpr jvgu arj uverf sbe zber guna gur phgf V trg juvyr V trg zber jbex ng yrff cnl---ohg gung'f sbe n qvssrerag qnl), my supposed spouse-candidate decided to fly solo, and I was starting to question the ethics behind the entirety of my field. I went on a sabbatical, a break from the craziness of the world, and throughout the entire process, had various occasions where intrusive thoughts of death and despair would keep popping up.

My solution to them was not to ignore them completely or pretend that they don't exist---I write them down in as much detail as I can, daring my brain to put into words all that existential dread that it was sneakily trying to poison itself with.

That is the essence behind 50 Ways to Die. I forced myself to consider 50 ways to die in sufficient detail so as to exhaust and exorcise the demons that were hiding in my head. It works in two ways: those that involve suicide forced me to put into words all the ideation that had floated around, while those that involved non-suicide deaths made me realise that there were just so many ways of dying that it was a much larger miracle that anyone was able to stay alive in the first place.

That whole idea of exorcism through writing is not something new either. Part of the reason why I keep paper journals and even this blog is to allow me to put the thoughts that I have onto them---the act of doing so takes the attention away from the thought, freeing up my mind to do other things.

Compared to the darker periods earlier in the year, I can report that I am feeling more like myself. It's like I reverted back to a time where I was not completely burnt out by the greed that comes from the business world. I was doing and getting into patterns that were comforting to me---see also the whole thing about retro-programming and the like. And those really helped me fight against the demons in my head.

Apart from these physical actions, I think a large factor too for my relative happiness now is that I have found that something that keeps me grounded in ways that are comforting. It was that quality that I was so envious about that made me realise that there was something that could make this journey through life that much better. And it was the acceptance of Jesus Christ as my personal saviour, and the understanding that no matter how bad things of this world are, He is in control, and that His Will be done. We can boldly do what our free will and logical thinking tells us to do, and not fear too much about the uncertainty that we cannot control, because God the Father is there, and we are His adopted children, and in the end, He will not forsake us.

To the unbeliever, that whole paragraph may not make sense---it's okay. Maybe I'm a weaker specimen because I trust and believe in the Father's ability to safely guide me home; or maybe you are stronger because you don't need someone like the Father to help you. I've mentioned it before---it's alright. I don't judge; everyone has to answer to God on their own when the time comes. And no, I'm not even smug---I am just stating it matter of factly.

But I digress. Going back to this year's NaNoWriMo entry then, 50 Ways to Die should not be read as an attention-seeking attempt or a cry for help becaue it isn't written that way; instead, it is my attempt to sober up by pouring out all the bad things that can happen that we can learn from and realise that we truly live blessed lives.

For the really obtuse, no, I am not going to kill myself. I also do not have a death wish. I just want to go through this life peacefully, doing what I am good at, at places that the Lord places me. That is it.

Sometimes simple is the greatest thing.

Anyway, that's all for now. I am really exhausted now... the total word count for yesterday alone was 13k+... or more than 6× what I usually budget myself to do.

And that does not include these blog posts either. ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Till the next update then.

Pushing Towards the Finishing Line...

Man, I am exhausted.

I basically marathoned 9.9k+ words for my NaNoWriMo entry, and am now at 47/50 ways to die done.

If someone asked me now, whether it is better to write one 50k-word story or fifty 1k-word story, I can safely say, it is better to write one 50k-word story. The key difficulty here is that when writing all these individual stories, there is a cognitive overhead needed to begin anew a setting, characters, and associated activities. That is hard and tiring. I find that while in past years I can easy crank out my 2k+ words per day in one hour, I simply cannot do so this time round.

Too much cognitive overload.

Anyway, I will probably talk more about this year's NaNoWriMo entry after I'm done with the story. I have hit the 50k+ word requirement already, but I still need to end this novel. And that will be for tomorrow... I simply cannot grok what I am thinking any more.

------

In other news, the entry for yesterday was late because I spent too much time playing on the saxophones. It was sort of a work out that I was tossing at them, with the new palm key risers that I talked about earlier. I spent more time on the alto saxophone this time, doing more noodling that involved the left pinky. So that low instrument B♭ key? I've never really figured out why I would use that.

Well, if instrument B♭ is the third degree, we get instrument G♭-major. Which, when we translate to regular concert pitches, is A-major. Now, if instrument B♭ is the first degree, we get instrument B♭-major (d'uh), which is D♭-major. That D♭-major makes playing certain pop music just that much easier to go for.

I won't talk about instrument B as third degree, since that's really just regular concert B♭-major.

Figuring all these out including the associated finger work was too interesting to stop, and after I had to put them away at around ten o'clock, I started to do more reading here and there.

And by the time I realised it, it was late already.

So there's that.

Anyway, that's all I want to say for now. Till the next update.

Clichés

Hmmm... Thursday it is.

Still a hot day. I will probably say this a few more times before stopping completely because any statement, no matter how new or interesting, will eventually get overused and become a bloody boring cliché.

Clichés. A long time ago when I first got hooked onto the writing bug, my English teacher of the day warned us all to not resort to writing clichés. Thus, even though I was in primary six at that point (twelve years old), I tried my best to come up with interesting story lines, seeking inspiration from books that were more of the ``young adult'' genre instead of the children one (whatever that means). While the standard requirement was at least 150 words [for primary five/six], I was easily writing 800+ words in cursive with the ballpoint pen. Considering that the GCE A-levels General Paper writing requirement is 800+ words, I was capable of writing beyond my level at that point. It got to the point that I pretty much brushed aside secondary school English, but that's a story for another day. On another short tangent though, 800--1000 words is roughly the essay length that is still somewhat pleasant to write/read---that's why much of my blog entries here tend to stay close to that range and rarely go beyond that.

Anyway, the point is, it is important to avoid clichés---that was the lesson to learn. Except that as time went by, I had less time and inclination to think up new story lines, considering that I had discovered the wonderful world of computer programming, and was deeply involved in reading and learning about mathematics, physics, and computer science in general. Then there was the whole ``the more one reads, the more one sees, and the more one fears about writing something novel'' syndrome. I mean, when there's an entire website dedicated to documenting such clichés, it is almost impossible to come up with something new. It's sort of the creative writing version of how science is about learning more and more about less and less as the easier to test and formulate ``big ideas'' have been found.

So I turned to life's more original source of all plots: uhh... life itself, or more specifically, my life's experiences. I mean, just go read my first ever NaNoWriMo entry, my second one, my third one, my eighth one, and my twelfth one. They all draw ideas from things that I had lived through. Now, don't be fooled---they are still fiction, but their source material came from things that I have experienced in one form or another.

And as twisted and masochistic as it sounds, the more fucked up a life I have, the more material to start from and work with. It's not just me nor writing though, almost all forms of art seem to benefit more from having a life experience that is sufficiently deviating from the norm to be worth memorialising in the particular art form. There's a reason why archaeologists get very excited when they discover some artefact that happens to record the really mundane---those are rare solely because they are so mundane that no one ever goes through any thought about attempting to replicate and preserve them. We have literally lost whole languages because people then did not bother to keep enough records of how their languages are to be used.

So what goes ``on record'' as an expenditure of effort is not about the mundane (and by extension, boring) but the more... exciting aspects. I mean, I cannot see myself sitting down to write the daily goings on that just keep... going on, like how I wake up, I brush my teeth, wash up, take a shower, walk around and so on. Just take a look at my blog entries here for the past year where I have been trying to keep up my routine during this sabbatical year. There were some threads that I had written before that I dropped because they got too mundane to be included here---one prominent example is my no longer talking much about the reading progress that I have done.

Thus, at some level, clichés kill the content creator's output. Yet one cannot be wholly without any form of structure/familiarity; that is a good way of scaring people away. Content creators of any sort that would like to be successful need to have some kind of audience, and [most] people like certain things for the way they are and are more resistant to change because having something that is low-surprise is quite comforting, particularly in the current state of the world where everyday is a [bad] surprise since no one can tell if the existing pandemic is going to throw up a new curve ball that will further derail any plans, hopes, and dreams that anyone has. Having structure [in the form of clichés] also ensure that the content creator can spend less time figuring out what needs to be done and can instead focus on filling in the rest of the content.

The unfortunate thing is that if a content creator follows too closely to that modus operandi, they would effectively be considered as having sold out as compared to being a bonafide artist who is always seeking to expand his/her media of expression.

Now that all said and done, I don't see myself as a content creator in that sense. I am an amateur hobbyist, and there's a big difference. This big difference is in the intent behind the action. As an amateur hobbyist, my priority is self contentment and sense of achievement, some kind of personal growth in something that is skilled based, or something that I can point to and proclaim ``hey check it out---I made that!''. The compensation I get from what I do comes largely from my sense of having achieved something from what I had wanted to do, with a secondary feeling of humble pride when there is an appreciative audience.

The last priority is getting paid for it. Amateur hobbyist basically means that I am not doing it for the money, literally. However, it doesn't mean that I can't push it as far as I want to go, even to a level that might impinging into the space of the professional. To be fair though, I would not do things that would undermine the professionals' work---they are doing it as their livelihood, and I respect that, especially since as an amateur hobbyist who wants to excel too, I know just how difficult the going can be. But the biggest difference here is that I can take as much time as I like to get from one level to the next, while the professionals do not have such a choice---they have to remain relevant or they must find a way to make themselves relevant, most possibly through setting themselves up to be in a niche area of very appreciative audiences who can make up the shortfall from lacking mass appeal.

All these go back to clichés because the ever-changing requirements of the landscape means that while clichés aren't preferred, they are still here to stay. Because they work at the level of the masses. They don't help if one is attempting to create a masterpiece, but they can be there to help with ``grinding out the XP'' through incremental improvement.

And that's enough yammering from me. Till the next update.

6 More Pints of Guinness Down the Hatch

I went to my favourite bar again today, and drank 6 pints of Guinness while having a salmon sandwich (totally counts as part of the burger+beer deal on Tue and Thu), luncheon chips, and eventually a rib-eye steak, before topping it all off with some Anderson's ice-cream.

Then a thought came to me: do I have a drinking problem?

I mean, I'm not exactly drinking every day, but I do drink moderately every week. That's not a drinking problem... right?

Well I'm no expert. According to this FAQ though, the warning signs of a drinking problem include (numbered for ease of reference):

1. Spending a lot of time obtaining, using, and recovering from the effects of alcohol.
2. Being unable to cut down on alcohol use despite a desire to do so.
3. Cravings, or a strong desire to use alcohol.
4. Having a tolerance (i.e. needing to drink increasingly large or more frequent amounts of alcohol to achieve desired effect).
5. Developing symptoms of withdrawal when efforts are made to stop using alcohol.
6. Using alcohol in higher amounts or for a longer time than originally intended.
7. Giving up previously enjoyed social, occupational, or recreational activities because of alcohol use.
8. Being unable to fulfill major obligations at home, work, or school because of alcohol use.
9. Continuing to abuse alcohol despite negative interpersonal or social problems that are likely due to alcohol use.
10. Using alcohol in physically dangerous situations (such as driving or operating machinery).
11. Continuing to abuse alcohol despite the presence of a psychological or physical problem that is probably due to alcohol use.

Hmm... based on that list, I think the answer is an emphatic... no.

I don't have a drinking problem. That's good to know. Phew.

------

In other news, I've completed page 804/1321 of Handbook of Data Structures and Applications, the whole of Animorphs Series: The Stranger and Guerilla Warfare by Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara, and page 25/99 of Animorphs Series: Megamorphs #1: The Andalite's Gift. I've also completed all possible side quests for Cyberpunk 2077, and am about to start on the quest ``Nocturne Op55N1'', which is the penultimate main story mission, and the so-called point of no return, where the ending of the game is locked depending on the choices made during ``Nocturne Op55N1''.

As I said before, I suck at doing endings, so it won't be done tonight---I still want to sleep [relatively] peacefully. It'll be tomorrow, and from the looks of it, I will conclude my foray into Night City, after which I will promptly uninstall the game, reclaiming some 64+ GB of space while recollecting the experience that was the game.

I have also come up with the broad concept for this year's entry for NaNoWriMo. Tentatively titled 50 Ways To Die, it will feature... umm... yes, fifty ways to die. It will give me the right excuse to do the necessary research to ensure that I can actually come up with the fifty ways.

Is that a cry for help? No no no no... I already said that if I were to die by my own hand, it would be after both my parents have passed on, and even so, only if there are no more responsibilities left for me. I'd like to consider this exercise as a way of confronting the random suicide ideation issue more directly and thus remove its power over me through massive amounts of thinking.

Alright, that's it for today. I'm going to munch on some Tao Kae Noi hot and spicy seaweed snacks while chilling in front of some video---probably a couple of Futurama episodes since the recent HoloEN stuff is a bit on the long side (3+ hours, even with 2× pace we are still looking at 1.5 hours---ain't nobody got time for that tonight).

Till the next update.

Digit Grouping, SI-Style @ Stupid O'Clock

Yes, I'm well-aware that it is stupid o'clock.

No, there isn't an incoming rant. However, there is a quick technical update.

I tweaked my personal domain a bit more to better handle large numbers by following the SI style (English version) of grouping digits. I decided to follow the Wikipedia example and use CSS magic to attain the needed grouping/spacing without adding extraneous space characters that would foul up the search (this search issue is a problem for the pretty-printer that uses many different kinds of hidden spaces to achieve the specific requirements). However, Wikipedia chose to use a regular space as the separator (0.25 em), while I preferred the thin-space instead (0.15 em). Part of the reason for that preference (other than the stronger grouping characteristic of the digits to form a single number) is that the thinner space fouled up the dotted underline that comes with the <abbr> tag much less.

That last sentence may not make much sense until the easter egg is found.

Anyway, going back to the main reason for wanting to do this: the summary page of my NaNoWriMo attempts/wins. The five-digit word counts looked a little annoying without the digit grouping, and thus needed to be rectified.

As a small bonus, I could quickly script up a life-time word count for all my NaNoWriMo entries and present that up front as well. In this case, the grouping of digits was even more important since as at this point in time, I have written about 650k words across the 12 years of NaNoWriMo.

Okay, itch scratched.

Bed-time it is for me. Till the next update.

I ATEN'T DED YET

About a month of silence. A little worrying in some ways, given the recent trend of posts and the subject matter in them.

But I have a valid excuse: honest! I was working on my NaNoWriMo 2020 entry. And it had been a rather weird month. For one, my usual writing time was no longer that of the lunch hour, but at stupid o'clock in the morning before work (it's more like 0630hrs to 0745hrs, so not really stupid o'clock). For two, I have not been having enough sleep for several weeks now, often turning in at around midnight, and waking up nearer 0530hrs.

Why? I don't know. I suspect dis-stress. I only claim that conclusion because I would often be nursing a tension headache from around 0900hrs till whenever I stopped work at the end of the day. I was really wired, and I am not referring to the amount of coffee that I was drinking. Before, I had been downing like four or five mugs of that thing before noon, but I had since cut it back down till like two or three at the most.

No change---the headaches still came. I've just learnt to live with it. I don't think any amount of sick leave or medication will help me deal with it. There were some fundamental things that needed to be addressed, and as long as they weren't going to be addressed, I would continue to have these headaches.

Anyway, back to waking up at stupid o'clock in the morning. One moment I would be dreaming, and the next moment, my brain would be running at full steam, jerking me wide awake. I dragged myself up only through the sheer power of will and prayer, praying to God and thanking Him that he had allowed me to live another day (I wasn't dead yet), and praying that He would bless me with wisdom to get through the day.

He hasn't disappointed me so far, and I have no reason to believe that He would disappoint me ever.

And at the end of the day, I just give a little prayer to God, thanking Him for the day that had gone, and asked Him to grant me good rest so that perhaps I would awake again the next day with renewed vigour to do what I do to bring glory to His name.

But all that aside, this year's NaNoWriMo entry is named The Lost Year, and is a real-life inspired fictionalised re-telling of all the nonsense that had gone on in my life for this year. In a meta sort of way, I had talked about it in the novel itself. Allow me to bring it up here to avoid having to re-think how to present it:

I had a rough plan of the story structure for this year's entry for NaNoWriMo---I had observed that the whole year had basically been shot down to hell for whatever reason, and that just trying to keep track of what had been happening in real life was already more dramatic than any form of fiction that I could come up with; this year was just that bad. There was of course the obvious relationship status change on my end, and my discovery and acceptance of Jesus Christ as my personal saviour, but there were also other bad things that had been happening, like the wild fires in Australia, the droughts in Africa, the overly severe hurricane season within the month, and of course, the once in a lifetime experience of living through a true blue pandemic during the era of technological supremacy guided by the most mal-organised of the natural world hegemon, the United States of America. With that in mind, the structure for this year's novel entry was straightforward---set up twelve months' worth of stories and events into individual chapters, and divide out the fifty thousand evenly among them, leading to roughly forty one hundred and sixty seven or so words per chapter. Given my usual rate of about two thousand words per hour, and limiting myself to an hour of writing a day (given my rather punishing work schedule for now), the numbers worked out to about twenty four days total time of writing, well within the range of the duration provided.

That of course was the basic plan. And so for the twenty or so days, I would diligently put in my two thousand or so words per day, completing one chapter roughly every couple of days. The more I wrote, the more amused I was seeing that I could actually find enough odd or bad events that had occurred to fill up the spaces---for what it was worth though, since it was fiction I took the liberty to alter the source event information in ways that I felt was more conducive to story telling, shifting time periods a little, changing the names of the guilty and innocent, and using inspired events to create fictional ones. Calling this novel ``The Lost Year'' was starting to prove prophetic---it was the lost year for me and world because it was the year where almost all of our plans were rudely stopped and forced to be reconsidered anew, as though there was no progress whatsover throughout the year. In fact, in some ways, it could even be thought of as the world undergoing a regression instead of a progression instead.

It was definitely a sobering thought.

And that was how this year's entry was completed.

Consider it a catharsis for myself as a new chapter begins once again.

Oh, the not-so-new website is still as bad as before, but I suppose we just need to make do with what we are given---it is not as though they are going to fix it anyway, considering that it has been a year already, and nothing has changed.

------

In other news, I'm back to doing a lot of reading once more. Part of the reason is to re-saturate my brain with knowledge as I keep it soaked deep with the wisdom from the Bible, and the other part of the reason is to fill in the apparent copious amount of free time that come about from not having another person whom I need to spend time with, considering that I am single now. It's funny how quickly I got over things this time round, not ``got over'' in the sense that I am ready to date again, but ``got over'' in the sense that I was not drowning myself in alcohol or any of that sort of nonsense the last time something serious was seriously marred that way.

I am either getting more jaded, or just have found better coping mechanisms. It is hard to tell.

Knowing that God is there and is with me helps keep the darkest thoughts at bay, but there is still a sense of hollowness that is not easily filled in. It is not spiritual hollowness---that has been filled with the lovingkindness of Christ---but some kind of physical/interactive hollowness that drove me away from my original thoughts of slugging it out alone some fifteen years ago, and into the experimenting with being in intimate relationships with people. I suppose as one gets older, the concept of ``No man is an island'' will hit harder and harder until one of four things happen: I eventually settle it by having a spouse and starting my family (no matter what size); or I eventually settle it by having a robust community network of friends (regular or church family---it doesn't matter); or I eventually settle it by being overly engrossed in some kind of mission/vision that it did not matter to me any more; or I eventually settle it by being dead corporeally.

I still think that Ecclesiastes 3:1--8 is applicable. God will guide the way when I choose to listen to Him. I'm not as spiritually endowed the way some other believers are, but I believe that He knows the best way to get His message to me, and I have seen some of the ways that he is doing that. I just need to listen, and obey. So far nothing He has told me to do has gone against what is essentially my nature, and for that I am grateful, as it is a personal validation that God is indeed who He is.

Alright, that's all I want to write here for today. It's just a quick note to show that I'm not dead yet (thankfully perhaps). A semi-regular update will happen from now on, since there isn't a NaNoWriMo to absorb all the writing that I can do.

Till the next update then.

NaNoWriMo 2019 & Concert Aftermath

This year's NaNoWriMo is finally done, and even then, it feels like a bust.

I originally had the idea of having several (haha) storylines of characters interacting with each other, but ended up with what I wrote because of two big reasons:

1. That required sufficient planning and time;
2. I didn't have enough planning and time due to project from work and preparing for the concert.

So, all in all, a Bad Situation for the type of story I was writing.

I am not really super pleased with the result, but a win is a win, and I will take it. This is probably the slowest and most boring NaNoWriMo that I have done in all my eleven years for the following reasons:

1. The new web site is atrociously designed -- it was appealing to the ``modern'' aesthetic of quirky in the moment conversations as compared to the thread-based forums of old;
2. Write-ins were minimal because of scheduling issues, and even if they were held, I'd have to miss most of them due to my Saturdays being burnt from all the other different things I have going this month;
3. All my writing buddies from the old days are basically non-existent due to incomplete data migration from the web site, removing one source of inspiration to write more and write harder;
4. There is no official word count validator this year due to oversight in the redesign process of the web site(!)

For the previous ten years, I'd always chip in a little each time I take part in NaNoWriMo, but this year, I'm protesting against the awful changes by not donating anything. Petty, I know, but well... sometimes we have to take the actions we have to just to make a point.

But enough of NaNoWriMo for now -- let's hope next year is better.

------

The concert last Saturday was a smashing success, given all the weirdness that we had found ourselves in from an administrative and logistics perspective. Ding, GY + father, and YT came down to support, and from the various feedback from both they and other friends of friends, the overall sound effect from the Chinese Orchestra was well received. It was the first time we were bringing in some heavy bass line support from brasswind friends with trombone, bass trombone, and saxophone, boosting our usually bass-poor section.

No need to talk about bringing in the alto and bass flutes because that was something that I had been doing forever anyway; but that said, it was a good thing that Chara and her friends came by to help. It made the sound all that much richer, and when coupled with the rearrangements of slightly more modern folk/pop music, gave a very lovely mixture that would be hard to beat with a more traditional line up.

Next year is an exciting year for the Chinese Orchestra -- we would be preparing for our 30th anniversary concert. Planning should begin now, and the brasswind folks have said that they were happy to come back and play with us for this one, provided we gave them enough time to work on the scores. That part was a little messy this time round, because I could not directly support due to all the other things I have been working on, both for and not for the concert -- much of the transposition work was undertaken by Chara, who was also undergoing lots of stress at work herself. I am appreciative of her help, and acknowledge that if she had not helped take care of this aspect, I think the concert would not go as well as it did, and the brasswind friends would probably have a less fun experience than they had this time round.

Okay, enough of writing. I am so sick of writing now, especially having just completed this year's 'orrific installment NaNoWriMo. Till the next update then!

TGCO Performance 2019!

This year's NaNoWriMo promises to be a drama-fest, and that's not because of what I am intending to write.

The web site itself, the lifeblood for the whole NaNoWriMo movement, underwent a series of rather drastic changes for whatever reason that I cannot immediately comprehend. The interface is much slower than before, and is very clunky, with an extremely steep learning curve. It tries to be more social media-esque, but did not migrate the associated ``writing buddies'' data from the old system, leaving one's profile completely devoid of any connection with anyone whatsoever.

I honestly don't know what they were thinking.

Web site weirdness aside, this period of this year, I am stuck in the middle of two other major events that will suck out the life of me. One's work related, and the other is related to my hobby. That which is work related, we will not talk about it. That which is hobby related, I will mention it.

For those old friends who are still reading my blogs, it's that time again where I am performing with my Chinese Orchestra from Teck Ghee Community Club. We are performing on Nov 16 this year, from 1930hrs to 2100hrs, at the newly reopened and renovated Teck Ghee Community Club hall.

The OnePA web site has an entry for our performance, including ticket price.

It's a different type of concert for various reasons, but the most obvious one is that it features some low brass and low woodwinds of the western concert band tradition for some our pieces, thanks to a few of our friends who were interested in playing something different. While we aren't really fielding super massive pieces that night, we hope that the selection we have provides a more cosy and community feel, a sort of ``welcome home'' vibe as we inaugurate our return to the community club's building after those two years of renovations.

------

Colds have a way of knocking me off my feet that defies common explanation. While the nasal blockage/discharge cycle is something that I can get used to, the feverish and somewhat delirious state is something that I can never work with, almost literally. It makes the mind foggy and very lethargic, limiting the storage capacity to the point that after reading through one part of a system, I would find myself forgetting it almost immediately. Then there's that dull throbbing headache that permeates through---unshakeable except perhaps with a few extra hours of solid sleep that is not drug-induced.

Nasty nasty stuff.

I know it's a cold and not the flu mostly because I did not go completely delirious with an unstoppable fever. Nevertheless, it sucked a good deal out of me, and during this rather trying period, it becomes even more important that I keep my health in a good state.

Too many people are relying critically on me. I cannot afford to fall right now.

But already I think I've said too much. Till the next update then.

NaNoWriMo 2018

Yes, it's time for NaNoWriMo once again. I'm sorry that I didn't say anything earlier---just too many things to think about and work on to the point that it was not easy to just bring myself around to writing anything about writing anything.

This is year 10 for me, and may this novel be a fun one! As always, my progress can be tracked in the widget on the side.

A NaNoWriMo-esque Update

This post should have gone out earlier, but well, things happen, so what's to be expected?

I did not write anything about last year's NaNoWriMo entry. It's been a year since then, and the situation that inspired its genesis has become the new norm. So I think there's no point trying to avoid the topic any more.

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As for this year' NaNoWriMo entry, it was largely influenced by a cross between Das Kapital and the story arcs in The Venture Brothers, with influences from the rather sorry state in which the world is in now. It's probably more of a precursor to a new world in which other stories can be written about than any specific social commentary-type writing.

I think that's all I care to write about now. I had planned for a longer piece earlier, but thanks to various interruptions, I've lost track of what I wanted to say.

Till the next update.

December begins...but soon will end?

Oh December! Where to begin?

We're almost on the home stretch towards the end of the roller-coaster ride we call 2016, and as far as the world is concerned, things seem to be settling down a bit. An apparent demagogue got voted into power in the Land of Opportunity, an old Colonial Power decided to leave the club of former colonial powers, lots of celebrities died, and much more nonsense abound.

But the year is almost done.

Some things that had been part of the plan have to be changed due to circumstances---I am, of course, no longer talking about the world but about my own slice of the world at large---but the extension of the deadline for things that need to be settled doesn't throw too big a wrench into the works, as far as I can tell.

Jump cutting a little, the latest instalment of the TGIO party for NaNoWriMo was a cosy affair like always. Cake was had, conversations turned weird (as always!) and much rejoicing ensued. Some of the old faces showed up again, and there were a couple of new faces who got over their initial shyness and helped to drive the conversations into the weird dimensions where they ought to belong. I couldn't stay for long because of my CO rehearsals, but it was still a good party. I'm a little miffed that the years I was part of the Overseas Word Wars team, we managed to lose, while the years where I was not a part of the Overseas team, they get to win. Man, the fellow word warriors of my time sure sucked. Heheheh...

Jump cutting yet again, more meet ups occurred during the past week or so, and it was an interesting experience. It's getting clear that those of us in my age group are really starting to transit into adult-hood, willingly or not. Even what constitutes as ``fun'' has changed throughout the years.

All in all, a relatively good start for December. I wonder what 2017 holds.

Here We Go Again...

It's slightly more than a month since I had written anything here, and I assure you that all and any rumours of my demise have been exaggerated.

November is almost done, and with it, this year's installment of NaNoWriMo. This year's entry is a little more angsty than the one's before, and is basically an accumulation of all the odd things that have occurred to me, heavily fictionised of course. As always, grab manuscript from my personal domain. It is merely reflective of the first draft as was done on or around November 20, with no attempts at editing for clarity or conciseness.

I am uncertain if NaNoWriMo is going to continue to be appealling to me in the future. It feels as though that I have told most of the stories that I wanted to tell, and it was getting increasingly hard to come up with newer original concepts without devolving into the realm of fan-fiction. I suppose I can always go back to the fantasy settings like my 2012 entry, but I've been living in the real world for so long that I'm more grounded in reality than before---writing fantasy that does not have some inkling of plausibility has lost its allure, which isn't much considering that I never really had the aptitude for it in the first place. I can't do world-building any more, again because I'm too grounded in this reality to keep living in a reality that I built in my head.

But I have a whole year to think about things, so we shall wait till around this time next year before we decide if we are still continuing. For the sake of a streak, I may just soldier on. It is a good way of having of venting out all the words that I had been keeping inside me for the rest of the year.

In other news, I'm turning into a dizi pedagogue, what with all the new young'uns who are now turning up at my CO. Teaching is hard, and what makes it harder is teaching something that requires fine motor control to a bunch of children who aren't exactly having good fine motor control to begin with. I'm not frustrated yet, but it does leave me with little time to refine the skills of my juniors in the orchestra, something that I think may be more important in the short and middle term. It's sometimes hard to attempt to think carefully about the pedagogy because I'm attempting to use highly scientific/abstract principles to describe things in a field that is traditionally less so---I've got to control for the different levels of understanding, as well as the difference between narrow specialisation and generalised knowledge of the field. All these factors contribute towards the need to sacrifice conciseness of presentation and abstraction with something that is more verbose and specialised without ever drawing the big things together into a refined and refactored form.

If that paragraph made no sense, don't worry about it. It's just complicated.

December is fast approaching, and like the rest of this year so far, it is getting more hectic instead of less. It is almost as though everyone had decided without actually deciding a priori to line everything that needs doing all at one go and demand outcomes all before the year number rolls over to the next. Ah well, such is the nature of life/work.

I don't think there's anything else I'd like to write here. Just thought it a nice gesture to have some update on my blog, even though maybe no more than five actual people I know are actively reading it.

Till the next update I suppose.

Post Oblivion Rant

Double post much? There's of course a good reason for that: this is the traditional post-NaNoWriMo rant. And I don't really want to have it conflated with that other thing that I was talking about earlier.

This year's NaNoWriMo concept had been vague. I was reading H. P. Lovecraft's works earlier in the year, and his eldritch happenings gave me the idea to rethink of them as some kind of five-dimensional creatures. The Illuminatus! trilogy did little to turn me away from that idea, and so that was how the concept was born.

Initially, it was supposed to be a series of short stories based on a five-dimensional prankster---let's just call him F for short. F was supposed to be the unseen protagonist, and each short story would involve some poor soul (different across stories) who was afflicted by a particular five-dimensional nonsense from F and how that fella lived through his life.

Naturally, that's not what happened in the final execution.

``A series of short stories'' requires more planning than I care to, and the number of five-dimensional gimmicks I could come up with was insufficient to carry through the 50k words needed. So I switched it a bit, and made it into some kind of α versus β story. You can of course view the result from here.

That last bit shall remain a mystery for now. Kudos to those who can read and understand it.

I'm not as proud of this as some of the older entries I have, but I'm not complaining. A win is a win---50k words were reached in around 14 days(!) and I am satisfied with the story. And that marks my seventh NaNoWriMo win. I'm not sure about the eighth NaNoWriMo, but I'm sure whatever I'm reading in between should give me inspiration on what to write next.

------

I'm not really a fan of using fan fiction as a source for NaNoWriMo; it feels a little... cheap. The taking of characters that had more than twenty thousand prior words to characterise them and clobbering them together to compose a series of hijinks feels hackish. Of course I do not disparage the use of fan fiction for NaNoWriMo; it's just that I will try my best to avoid doing that myself. Part of the fun of writing up new characters is to allow the said characters to grow, to become what circumstances have made them to become. In some ways, fan fiction limits the character's growth because such work often emphasizes the ``canonical'' traits and behaviours of the character, unless there is an actual attempt to revisit the character's traits and behaviours from a completely new environment and do an interpretation there. That latter is excellent for writers because it forces one to make evaluations and decisions on directions that can be exciting, instead of the long drawn out bore that an in-universe styled fan fiction tends to end up becoming.

Anyway, rant over. Head over and download that first draft of Oblivion.

Les Novembre Bleues

I shouldn't be writing this now. No, really, I mean it.

I'm at work. I have around 14k+ words left to go for NaNoWriMo.

And I have a letter to reply to.

I really shouldn't be writing this now, but I already am. What can I do about it?

This month is passing by quickly. My sister has kindly lent her spare room for mother and I to stay in while the apartment toilets are undergoing some government-funded renovation project to upgrade after nearly thirty years. It is a kind gesture from her.

But I feel trapped, like a bird in a gilded cage.

I'm used to crashing out on folk's couches, or in many cases, floors with my trusty sleeping back from 1998. But on those occasions, I'm not on a schedule --- it's mostly for fun stuff, like vacations or visiting conferences.

This time, I need to keep to my work schedule. Waking up early to get to work, work, then going to my surrogate home to rest.

Harrowing.

I do get my sleep for sure --- I am too used to sleeping in a thin sleeping back on a hard-ish ground. But I'm missing lots of other amenities in life, mostly ways to vent and relax.

Elysie-II is not available because it is not nice to lug her all the way to the apartment to be set up. I left my dizis in the CC because it's much more convenient. I do have my concert flute and piccolo, but I dare not play them for fear of annoying my temporary neighbours and incurring bad karma for not me.

And NaNoWriMo demands every word I have for it each day as a sacrifice to appease its greedy nature.

To be had, it isn't all as bad as I make it sound, but I do miss the things I get to do back at home. Particularly the access to better laundry facilities. I was raring to return to Aikido training after having to miss two months of it thanks to the haze/smog.

Now I have to miss another month more because there is no way to wash my gi and have it dried in time. I'm not going to go to an out-of-the-way laundromat and spend an hour sitting there watching my gi wash and dry just so I can train.

And now I've made myself sad.

October-End

So one of my younger sisters got married recently. I'm happy for her, and wish her all the best.

The day itself had been rather tiring for me, and I am still feeling its effects today. A long day was spent with my relatives. I had expected the worst of it, but everyone turned out to behave rather well, which was a relief. A cousin-in-law of mine termed my role being there as a ``bouncer'', and I think it suits what I was doing to a tee and will use that term from there on instead of ``enforcer'', the term I had been using whenever I had to be present at a family event. The reasons for that will be left unsaid here -- send me a message or something to find out more, if you care to.

I wish I could write more, but I'm really out of material for now. Maybe next update.

Also, did I mention that NaNoWriMo is coming soon?

The Post 50k Rant

Alright, now that I am safely past the goal post for NaNoWriMo with only a story to finish as opposed to 50k words to write, I can sit back a little and write a little something here.

Let's start from the benign shall we?

This year's story is a social commentary of sorts from the small and large scale social turmoil that we see in the world today. Inspired by happenings in Singapore, Hong Kong and even Ukraine, I put together a fictional ``neo city-state'' that is the setting for the three different viewpoints that I explore in the city. The framing device is that of the protagonist doing a history project, and having to interview three people who had lived through a particular era that involved something that was known as the Restoration Conflict. Since that said event happened roughly forty or so years earlier in the time line of the framing device, we run into the obvious issue of the Unreliable Narrator, and in this case, three of them, which is also a subtle hand waving mechanism for me to pay a little less attention to continuity among the three different perspectives as compared to the other stuff that I hard written before the involved parallel perspectives in the writing. In its current state as at now, I have completed two of the interviews, and am in the middle of a segue to bring out the third and final interview before writing a conclusion of the whole affair. I estimate that it will take at least another fifteen thousand words or so before I can claim that the story is done.

But for now I will give myself a break for today (it's Sunday!) and instead focus on validating the 500 generated datasets from work. Yes, it's mind numbing and is a doozy, but like I said before many times, if something is worth doing, it's worth doing right. I'd rather take the pain now to verify the stuff instead of waiting till much later when we need it that I start to panic and patch things together.

Work-wise, there are still a couple of server programs that I need to write, some calculus I need to sort out (logic system, not the stuff Newton/Leibniz invented), and some inane but annoying bugs I need to fix in the existing server program. Some of the stuff can be delayed, but there are a couple that needs to be in ship-shape by Wednesday, which is a tough but not completely impossible call.

And now, for some brain-hurting stuff.

I was reading articles online recently, and came across these two rather interesting stories. I'm linking them below with my own titles:

• Dad's Ghost Car
• My Grandma's Mii

So what was it that I found interesting about them?

The concept of death versus immortality.

I'm pretty sure I had talked something about how one dies twice before, if not here then at some random Facebook post. But in case it is one of those delusions I have, here's the concept again.

One does not die once in reality, one actually dies twice. The first time one dies, one loses one's overt consciousness over one's body. The second time that one dies is when no one can remember what the essence of one is, i.e. one gets forgotten by everyone.

I'm not talking about planar travel and transcendence the way most people might choose to tackle this, I'm merely pointing out that the existence of any person is validated by his/her physical manifestation, and his/her abstract essence of his/her nature. If both are lost, then they have effectively died twice, with little to no chance of recovery.

Funny enough, this concept isn't invalidated by a future archaeological discovery. True, the bodily remains may be found, but a body does not make a person. The words said may capture some aspect of the abstract essence of a person, but it's a snapshot view, not as integrative as the whole interaction that had occurred with the person, and if the attribution is lost, the abstract essence loses its identity and just becomes wisdom of the ages, i.e. you're still pretty much forgotten.

The two stories thus highlighted have provided a new dimension to the notion of ``abstract essence'' of the person. Instead of a snapshot of a single instance, or being locked in the mind as a memory, we have an interactive recording of what the person did. In a way, it's a projection of the person's abstract essence into the space spanned by the interactions permitted in the digital medium. So in the first story, it's the boy's father's driving being captured, and in the second, a symbol that was drawn up by a now deceased grandmother.

There's a certain amount of immortality behind these two stories. They are sort of like memories, but they are also stronger than that, since they capture something that can be shared with other people losslessly. The same ghost driver in the driving game can be experienced by other players of the game in the same way, and the grandmother's Mii can still be involved in in-game interactions. So in that sense, they haven't died the second death.

At this point, I will stop and admit that stupid o'clock cometh, and will end what I'm writing because really, I have no clue what I was getting at. Blame it on the NaNoWriMo-ing I have done.

Till the next update.