Maintenance...?

And so, this weekend is about to end.

It's the weekend of maintenance. Aurelia, Stella, and Picc are off to Windworks for COA; my bicycle went to B-Spokes for maintenance, and one of my longest run geocache needed some maintenance [from me] as well.

In theory, things would have been peachy by Saturday, but there was something innately wrong with the rear-shifter for my bicycle that necessitated my bringing it back today for rectification, which resulted in me having to skip out on church today.

``But MT, why must it be today? Couldn't it wait?''

No, not really. It was just after a major maintenance---had I waited for longer, it would have been a bigger mess than it really is now.

Sadly though, a new line of dead pixels have started showing up on Eirian-V. Why and how that happened, I have no idea. But as at now, it isn't completely annoying just yet, so I might just live with it; sort of like my Brother laser printer showing random low-toner density (I think the drum is kaput, but haven't had enough wherewithal to pull up the money to buy a replacement to test the hypothesis).

I also took the chance to use my air-blower to clear out the dust on Eileen-III, as well as my work laptop, something that I had been neglecting to do for about five months now.

Then of course, there is some self-maintenance. I finally chopped my hair down to the right length [of stupid short] with the hair clippers, and am relying on occlusive treatment to force the weepy and inflamed skin on my fingers and palms to calm down. I also replaced my toothbrush, which was at least two months overdue.

Mentally though... I think I might not have done well there. Feeling a little overwhelmed with the barrage of new ``fun'' that came in from the work side. It's not bad, it's just... a lot to take in at once. Not to mention the whole set of loss of spoons from being involved in two large gatherings of people.

I probably should just turn in earlier tonight, after re-packing my backpack to set it up for work, as opposed to errand-running mode.

Sorry this is a short entry---till the next time.

Soreness

Ah man... played the tenor part at my first church service with Davie, and I am absolutely sore. The soreness isn't from having to lug Davie and the bass clarinet stand that doubles up as my bass flute stand from home to church with a busted up left forearm while still carrying my usual gig backpack of Aurelia and Stella, as well as my own music stand.

The soreness is from the unfamiliarity of reading the bass clef for the tenor part and translating it to playing on Davie.

Let's face it. As a whole flutes are an entitled bunch the way saxophonists are---no matter how high or how low an instrument we are playing, we expect it to be transposed so that we can play it a la ``instrument key''. This means that notes that would really be in the bass clef when considered in concert pitch will be rewritten into the treble clef just so that it can be read and performed. This is true even in consort playing.

This is unlike the poor recorder player (and the !@#$% nonsense picked up by those who wanted write dizi music in staff notation) who is doomed to stare at the parts in concert pitch, and figure out how to play. This isn't too bad for the gang of `C'-recorders (Garklein, Soprano, Tenor, Great Bass, and Sub-great Bass), but is absolutely horrid for the `F'-recorders (Sopranino, Alto, Bass, Contrabass, and Sub-contrabass).

For the hymns, I could transcribe it off hand in LilyPond, but apart from the the obvious effort, I just think that I should develop the ability to transpose from any commonly seen clef right there in my head.

And thus came today's little experiment. I don't know why, but I picked a day where two thirds of the hymns had four to five flats in their key signature (A♭=major, and D♭-major), with only on that has a single sharp (G-major). That probably added to the soreness.

Well, that's that.

I don't really have much else I want to talk about for now, so till the next update.

Quick Summary

So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2023:

1. 1 poem posted here
2. 52 essays/rants posted here
3. 0 prose/stories posted here
4. 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
5. 1 pieces of compositions/rearrangements posted here
   

And thus the grand total here is 55 articles, down from the 77 articles in 2022.

That's an average of 0.151 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.211 last year.

2023 was a weird year. I lost a team member, gained a whole section's worth of subordinates, got a new team member, transited from solely being an engineer to a leader/manager-engineer (running appraisals and all the other crazy things asssociated with the managerial-class work), caught/recovered from COVID-19, completed my set of dizi, pulled the trigger to get Stella before the price increase (and before the master maker passed on due to age), started serving in the music ministry of PPCC with Aurelia/Stella, performed with the TGCO in a couple of performances with quite a few newbies, and a whole bunch of other things that I cannot remember precisely.

What else is there to say about 2023 in retrospect? Nothing much, surprisingly. I think I'm fast reaching the age/period of life where I just don't bother looking back any more, not because I'm some kind of visionary (I'm not), but more that the past is starting to become something that is just not worth looking back one. I mean, when we look back at the past, it is usually to reminisce about something that was from back then that made one feel all nice and fuzzy about.

But for me, I don't have much to look back into the past any more. The ``good times'' are long gone, and no thanks to the great time separation that has been humourously called ``before COVID'' and ``after COVID'', the ``good times'' feel even deeper in an era that bears almost not resemblence to who I am now.

The running theme that seems to be with me is that of isolation. Yes, I may be serving in the church, I may have a care group to work with, and yes I have may have made a couple of newer close friends as compared to before, but somehow I was always alone. Okay, Jesus is with me, but He doesn't talk back the way regular people do. It's kinda okay though; while I may be alone, but I'm never truly lonely, if you can understand the difference.

For those who cannot understand, I'm afraid that I have no other means of explaining it. It's like the crude but effective metaphor of ``I can teach you to take a dump, but in the end, you'll need to do it yourself to figure it out'' (a similar concept works for gaining enlightenment, no matter your predilection for beliefs).

``MT, are you then resigned to your fate of not having a significant other?''

Yeah, I suppose so, though I have not completely killed off the possibility by taking what I would call ``irreversible changes'', like reallocation of my budget that were originally set aside for prosaic things like the wedding ceremony, the joint spousal account and the like. Call me a hopeless romantic, but maybe a miracle may happen, though like all people who sort of understand miracles, I cannot see how one might occur if all I do during times when I'm not working, or at rehearsals, or serving in the music ministry, is to stay the hell at home and do whatever I want without leaving my room.

🤷‍♂️

Anyway, that's as much retrospection that I'm willing to allow myself for now. The year 2024 is upon us, and there is a lot to be done. Work-wise, we are starting to see some of the stuff that we need to deliver, and so there's that. Music-wise, we need to ramp up [a little] on our performances just so that we can rebuild the much decimated TGCO due to COVID and other life priorities of the members that got in the way.

As for my personal life side, may the Lord be merciful.

Amen.

Getting High in Church, and Elden Ring

Whew... that was something.

So let's start from the beginning. Back in April this year, I got Stella. There were some logistic issues and what-not in getting her, but those were eventually settled. In that same entry, I talked about serving in the Music Ministry. I played a simple hymn in a quick audition on Aurelia, and had a quick chat with the music coordinator, her husband, and the deacon in charge of the music ministry. It was a very casual chat, and they were just trying to see how I could fit in with the current structure of the ensemble, seeing that I was bringing in a flute to a piano-[electric-]organ-violin ensemble. I started playing every other week, then building up towards playing every week. I came in earlier to rehearse with music coordinator to get a better sense of the play style and the repertoire of the hymnals, and that was before we had the usual rehearsal with the playing group before the service itself.

I built up confidence over time with the ``feel'' of the hymns, and got used to the keys that I had not played much of since my Kiltie Band days (hi A♭-major, E♭-major, and D♭-major) on Aurelia. My goal was to play good enough to blend in with the ensemble---the music works with the congregational singing to praise the Lord, and therefore it was not necessary to stand out in any way.

That changed for these couple of days, namely for the Christmas eve service and the Christmas service. I pulled out Stella, and for the carols, just went high as needed, going 15ma as opposed to the usual 8va that I would play with Aurelia (hymns tend to stick within the grand staff, with the main melody staying completely within the treble clef, but largely having middle-C and lower, making it impractical for the concert flute to play as is without the 8va).

Stella was wonderful. I didn't play everything at 15ma---much of the carols were played at the usual 8va, but since Stella is 8va higher than Aurelia, it means playing in the first register. This is where Stella's access to B4 was amazing. I would sneakily play Stella at how I would play Aurelia, before bursting into full technicolour 15ma for that added sparkle and sweetness.

The feedback for the two days' playing this way was positive; the congregation apparently loved it, and had fedback to the music coordinator about it. Even Paul, who is self-declared not musically-inclined, finally made a comment of hearing me play and liking the lilting sparkle that Stella imparted.

Was it vindication? Vindication of what though... that I could control myself and sound sweet at 2 kHz range? That the MINI (not really a piccolo, but I just called it that to avoid a looooooooong discussion point) is the perfect instrument for this range?

Nah... I mean, my personal bar for myself is kinda high. While I have about 12 years of piccolo experience (damn it has been 12 years?!), it is the 31 years of 笛子 playing that is pulling much of the weight. I go ridiculously high all the time with my dizi playing, and I think it has conditioned me to handle the 2 kHz range with greater control than I would normally have without having done that.

But, at the risk of being smug, it is nice to be appreciated.

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In tangential news, the bag that holds my special music stand finally ripped the seams beyond the 50% mark. I spent part of yesterday afternoon sewing that stitch back, before using fabric glue and some spare fabric salvaged from an old T-shirt to strengthen the seam more. It held out well today, but only time will tell.

Part of the reason why the bag gets ripped at the seam was the way that I'm carrying it. Previously, I would sling it on my right shoulder like normal, but I didn't like it. With the backpack gig-bag, it was always in the way whenever I had to switch the backpack to the front before sitting down at a seat on public transport. So I started to cross sling the music stand bag in the front, with the left shoulder being the higher holding part. And this is where additional stress from the poke-y bits of the folded up stand act on the seam on the bag, which is already supporting the entire mass of the stand (it's heavy) due to the position and design.

Having the bag slung in front allows me to just quickly switch my backpack between the front and back.

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Aaaaaanyway, I talked about waiting to see if Elden Ring was on sale.

It was.

It had a 40% price drop, which was pretty large. I took the opportunity to get the Deluxe edition just so that I would have the soundtrack as well.

And since I was already buying something, I bought a few more other games from the Steam sale. But you probably don't care about this.

Elden Ring. Oh yes, fucker's hard... but it is actually still fun. There's just so much to see and do, and each fight is like a timed puzzle.

Don't get me wrong, this fucking game is hard, and there were some bullshit moments [when fighting the Tree Sentinel in the beginning area] that I thought was unfair (got trapped in the scenery, for crying out loud). Runes are used for everything, and dying does make one drop it all. Hollow Knight does that as well, but what Elden Ring made better was to allow that dropped runes be persistent between gaming sessions until either one picks up their dropped runes, or when one dies again.

The routing to the Boss that one died to in Elden Ring also tends to be straightforward, allowing resets to happen faster and not overly punishing the player to redo the entire dungeon to get back there.

The levelling up system is slow as molasses, but then I realised that it would be exactly like how I would want to create a game that tried its best to mimic reality while keeping the fantasy moments. The action RPG nature of Elden Ring means that apart from just the numbers, there is still that meta-game of actually being skilled at the mechanics.

And I like it. It scratches the kind of itch that rogue-likes have, but without the perma-death that can frustrate one who is a little more time-sensitive. The use of the numbers to replace the skill meta-game is interesting without taking the fun of mastering a gamme completely, and I like it.

A lot.

And anyway, that's enough for now. Till the next update.

Control and Another Experiment

So I completed the main story of Control. The end-run was a little unexpected---I thought there was going to be a major fight with some end-boss, but it ended up being a gauntlet followed by another gauntlet instead.

Don't get me wrong---the bosses in Control are bullet sponges, but judicious use of a maxed out Launch skill trivialises many (not all!) of them. In many ways, the gauntlet fights of the Hiss are much more aggravating, with each type of Hiss having their own ways of defeating them over and beyond just blasting away at them with Shatter (Control's name for the shotgun). It doesn't matter if the Launch skill is maxed out---some of the mobs have enough dodge that the Launch skill is completely mitigated, requiring some careful gun play to take them out.

But perhaps Control's true end isn't at the end of the main story; I have started on the other DLC, aptly titled Foundation (I've completed the other DLC ``by accident'' as part of the exploration phase before advancing the latter parts of the main story). I'll probably continue that some time later this week as I have other things that I'd like to work on in the meanwhile.

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Today it was cool and humid, well, cooler than what one might expect from what SIN city has to offer. It rained heavily in the morning as I was making my way to PPCC, and it rained intermittently thereafter. I find that it really isn't the temperature that annoys me, but the humidity.

In other words, cool but humid is still terrible. It took me a good 15 minutes just to cool off enough to stop perspiring all over Aurelia and screwing up my embouchure.

I ran another experiment today---instead of keeping Aurelia fully assembled on the stand and waiting for 45 minutes (or however long it takes for the sermon to complete before the closing hymn is needed), I took the headjoint off when I went to sit among the pews, having it wrapped up on the microfibre cloth and held it close to me to keep the whole headjoint warm. The reason for this odd behaviour was to reduce the amount of condensation that would gather within the headjoint when my humid and warm breath contacts the cold metal walls when playing that last hymn after having Aurelia sitting out in the cold. Condensation within the headjoint near the embouchure hole made controlling the intonation at least twice as hard, and that was something I didn't want to have to deal with.

The experiment was a success---the condensation occurred nearer the C♯ vent hole, and I found that I retained control of the intonation much better than when I didn't do that.

So that's something new that I learnt.

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

Experiment: Success!

The scraper that lives on Amazon is back, and there's nothing that I can do about that. I just hope that they aren't using what they scraped for nefarious reasons.

Anyway, I ran an experiment earlier today while playing during worship service. Instead of playing Aurelia, I switched over to the AF-1 Grenser one-key traverso. Three of the hymns we played were ``simple'' keys (C, & F), with the only problematic one being A♭. Since its a one-key flute, the single toughest note on the simple flute system, E♭/D♯, is easily handled with the single key. As for the other chromatic notes (A♭, B♭, and D♭) are ``easily'' handled with cross-fingering patterns similar to the ones I put up for the AF-3 Stanesby Jr.

Note that the word is ``similar'', not the same. Have a look at the PDF of the fingering chart. Due to the different tuning (A440 vs A415) and possibly different geometry (AF-1 is based on the Grenser, hence the name, while AF-3 is based on the Stanesby Jr., hence that name), the cross-fingering patterns for the AF-1 Grenser is much simpler and systematic as compared to the AF-3 Stanesby Jr. I actually derived quite a bit of inspiration from the one-key flute fingering patterns while building my own 12-tone fingering chart for the 笛子.

Now, the reason to raise all that allegedly diversionary tangents is just to point out that I was really in my element when doing all the funny chromatic stuff on my AF-1 Grenser, even for the A♭-key hymn.

The experiment was a success. No one complained about intonation and other issues, and I found that even without the much louder set up that was Aurelia (and other modern concert flutes), I could still play the upper envelope without being drowned out by the four violins, one piano, and one electic organ. I suspect that was due to the other instruments staying out of the upper octave that I was in than how the AF-1 Grenser was ``loud enough''. In fact, the music coordinator remarked that when I was doing my runs for warm-up before the quick group rehearsal sounded much smoother than when I was with Aurelia.

I think that smoothness just came about because the reaction time of a simple system flute was always faster than that of any keyed ones.

I was really afraid of intonation, but thanks to what I have realised to be non-broken ears, that was within control. And therein lies on of the reasons why the one-key flute isn't as well used these days as compared to the concert flute. The music ministry group that is playing at the worship service is sufficiently small that I could still control the intonation carefully, and I can see how it can get progressively harder to do so as the number of players increase.

All in all, this just means that I have other options to bring to the table whenever I'm rostered to play.

Till the next update.

Saturday...

Ah... Saturday.

I love Saturdays.

I love Saturdays because they are mostly the days where I actually get to relax, on leave or otherwise.

Generally speaking, I spend my Saturdays just sitting about the room, reading, playing some games, or rehearsing some music. If I'm slated to play for church service on that Sunday, then the Saturday before was often when I spent some time rehearsing the pieces, annotating [in pencil] on the score problematic areas that I need to pay closer attention to. That occurs often for Hymns of Praise for rhythm because for some reason, none of the eighth/sixteenth notes have connecting beams. This meant that the usual visual cues of how the rhythm look like are pretty wonky. Thankfully, there's 简谱 at the top, and it allowed me to ``cheat'' and grok the necessary rhythms as needed. As for The Wilds Songbook, the problematic areas proved to be some of the more unfamiliar interval progressions that seemingly defied what my inner music voice was telling me, where I ``knew'' that the next note should be this, but the score laughs at me with a ``Nope!'' and makes it that.

There's TGCO rehearsal in the evening, and I usually turn up about 30 min earlier to ``warm up'' outside of the music room, mostly because my 笛子 is literally powerful enough that warming up indoors while the other folks may want to do their warm up is not a good idea.

Well, I call it ``warm up'', but it really depends on my mood in terms of what I would play. Most times it was an actual warm up in the sense of playing etudes to set up my embouchure and limber up my fingers. Sometimes I would take the time to play through some repertoire pieces. Or maybe I would do like what I did earlier today, where I sight-read a new piece (《月夜》by 胡结续). There are also times where I just noodled on my 笛子 in a ``head empty no thoughts'' sort of way.

Today's rehearsal was fun in a couple of ways. We finally have something that resembles a proper 二胡 section, which is remarkable because our 二胡 section had been decimated when most of the regulars disappeared after COVID-19 (some got married, some developed different interests; it's the usual attrition issues that got accelerated by the pandemic nonsense). Granted, the section was made up of really new and really green players, it was definitely better than nothing. Hopefully this first performance gives them enough of an interest to stay around, level up their skills, and continue playing.

The other fun thing was that I finally had a reason to learn the E₇ fingering on the concert flute. I mean, I have consistently used D₇ on Aurelia before (it's basically the 5′ in 筒音 as 5͵ for when I'm playing the part of the 梆笛 while on concert flute), but have not really had the need to go for E₇ until today (because I needed to play a 6′ in 筒音 as 5͵).

Of course Aurelia can have that note appear---she's a well-made Muramatsu flute after all. It's really more on my getting used to the specific embouchure, air stream direction, and the amount of force to push, transiting smoothly from the prior B₆ to the E₇.

And that's about all I want to talk about for now. The other thing that happened this day was more progression in Halls of Torment, but I suppose it's getting a little too repetitive to keep talking about that.

Till the next update then.

The One About the 盐酥鸡

August: here we go!

I hate being right on things. So, remember this recent post on hero worship? Well, as if on cue, we have this little bit of news on Lizzo. Now, being sued doesn't imply guilt (that's for the courts to decide), but usually people do not sue another person unless there is some perception of grievance.

``MT, why are you picking on Lizzo?''

I'm not. She just happened to be a recent example. She's a media darling, with many from Flute Forum actively idolising her outright as a hero.

She's alright as a flute person. But it's okay to just appreciate it without going into hero worship.

But on to different things.

August is a month that promises lots of things. First up is an engineered long weekend starting from National Day. Then after that, actual courses/training on Manager 101.

Am I excited? ``Trepid'' might be a better word. It's definitely going to be a start of some rather harrowing work, what with my first annual appraisal exercise for the six under my charge. But it is something that needs to be done, and the we are doing important work; projects that need to be moved forward to ensure that we help with SIN city's future.

It is unfortunate [for me] that I'm just the most senior engineer among the group, and is therefore de facto manager/leader.

Work stuff aside, TGCO is likely to see its first performance in a long while. We're not as big as we were, possibly even smaller than our smallest so far as some of the married members start having children, so this performance is going to be a good morale booster.

I'm also starting to get the hang of the hymns that we are playing for worship service, and am slowly making my way to being a more regular player in the ensemble on Aurelia. I did mention to the coordinator of the possibility of bringing out Davie (my vertical bass flute) to play the tenor parts with the cellist whenever he may be available, and it would seem that it was likely to be in November.

The only caveat is that I need to brush up my ability to read the bass clef. I'm getting much better at it now, having to ``count'' only every time the pitch skips larger than a fourth or so. But that can be a rather interesting skill to develop.

There's also a pasar malam that is running along the street, and I am getting severely addicted to the 盐酥鸡 from one of the stalls. It's deep-fried chicken bits in light batter, dusted with sour plum powder, and paprika(?) powder.

Apart from that... I suppose there isn't anything else to talk about for the moment. And so, till the next time.

It's July Already?

Woah, the second of July is upon us. As at noon-ish, literal halfway point of 2023.

Not sure how/what to feel about this. On the one hand, we're getting closer the end of the year, and with it perhaps we will get to cast the dark shadows that came from the COVID-19 pandemic away from our collective trauma, to redevelop a new sense of optimism.

That new sense of optimism is important in this time and age. The doom-saying has been on overdrive for the past three to five years, and it really does show, at least for me.

I cannot seem to live the day without getting blasted with information on global warming, some new development in the spats that come from geo-political posturing/brinkmanship, ever-increasing threats to the livelihood of the vast majority of the white-collar workers through ``AI'', uncontrollable price increases ``due to inflation'', and all the associated over-corrective behaviours that some of these events trigger.

No wonder I'm feeling down more than half the time.

I personally cannot tell how some people can maintain their optimism. Everything just looks so... bleak. The ``Me! Me! Me!'' world that we have today is just such a cavernous echo chamber that there are many times where I cannot even hear myself think.

One might say that I can always walk away. And the truth is, I have been doing so.

Of the few [online] communities that I have been a part of, I've more or less walked away from them all. Some I left because the members became too militant and extreme in their desperation of defining their own safe space, which often times end up creating a similar toxic environment as the one they are acutely hurting from. Some I left because the nature of the community has changed---from an indie passion-project where I could interact nearly personally with and willing to support with whatever I have, to a complete commercial entity that only cares about their shareholders, who incidentally prefer using an unpaid-for third-party ``community'' environment that I didn't agree with.

But these are all about the past---thinking about them isn't bad per se, but if all they are giving are these bad vibes, I really shouldn't be thinking about them, if possible.

(sigh)

With the next half of the year coming up, what should I be looking forward to?

Well, there's always NaNoWriMo in November. It'll be the fifteenth year I'm a part of it (URL will point to the correct place some time in November 2023, so don't fret). The community there was always fractured along the axes of old-bird versus newbie, professional writers versus amateur writers, the non-students versus the students. It's... not a bad thing, but just something to take note of. I'm an old-bird amateur writer who is not a student, and am probably one of the few old-birds that have not done fiction writing professionally (i.e. getting paid to publish).

There are couple of engineered long weekends here and there through careful set up of my leave, so that's always nice. I'm steadily building back my stamina and strength in cycling, and am slowly incorporating cycling back into my set of activities. Nothing hardcore with the road cycles and what-not---just me, my Brompton from November 2017, and wherever I can go, depending on the time of day/week. So some longer trips during the off-peak periods from the engineered long weekends are going to be a part of what's happening.

We're probably going to get a couple of [small] performances coming in for TGCO, which is always a treat---I've always felt it weird if a performing arts group... doesn't perform. Aside from TGCO, I'm starting to prepare my way towards being a more regular musician (with Aurelia) for worship as a part of the music ministry of PPCC.

Aside from all that, more reading, I suppose, and more games to be played on Eileen-III. Nothing on the horizon for the dating front, because honestly, I don't have a good feeling about dating and getting in a relationship. At my age, it feels like... the pros of being with someone are no longer as superlative as the cons. When young, one's future is much more vague, making it easier to meld/remodel it according to the shared expectations of one's partner.

When one gets older and more set in their ways, there is almost no room for negotiations---the keyword being ``almost''. So... the odds aren't good.

As I might have mentioned before, when it's my time to go, it'll be my time, and I'll just... go. I don't expect to be remembered, so it's okay to be alone in the end.

I just kinda pity whomever is going to do the final clean up because I probably won't be able to settle things properly before my time's up. Sorry in advance to whomever that is.

Anyway, I ran out of momentum with what to write. Just wanted to rant a little at the half-year mark for 2023, before I become completely dejected at the prospects of life in general.

Till the next update.

Dead Tired

So ends yet another Monday.

My left shoulder is busted up... again. I suspect it's a mix of sleeping badly, and possibly twisting it one too many times when moving my [heavy] backpack between the front and back carrying orientations. I can lift my arm normally, but trying to reach my back is where the pain kicks in and causes me grief.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day [for this busted up arm].

------

Yesterday was the second time that I was playing Aurelia at PPCC as part of the music ministry during the worship service. It was still a pleasant experience. I am starting to get used to the hymnal repertoire. Part of the difficulty that I was facing was that the lead sheets were often written with STAB-chorale in mind, which meant that the soprano and alto parts, though still in the treble clef, tended to cluster near the lower ledger lines.

For a flautist, that's quite an unnatural thing to look at, considering that we were more used to staring at stuff on the upper ledger lines. I obviously cannot play all those low notes (only the clarinettists can pull that off), but instead just played it an octave higher. So many of the cock-ups from me came about when I misread a low B as something else.

Generally though, it was easy to avoid the cock-ups by practising enough, pencilling notes at the problematic areas, and actually paying attention when playing.

Slowly I will be part of the regular crew playing the worship music. But we'll let time take care of that.

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I recently bought quite a few items from both Amazon Singapore and regular Amazon. It matters little in terms of what I ordered, but it does bother me a little in terms of how they got delivered.

The long story short is that the Ninja Van lived up to its name of being a ninja---delivering the packagess at the door step, before disappearing almost immediately the way a ninja supposedly operates. It's not bad per se, but it's still a little annoying that they don't at least ring the bell to indicate that they had stopped by.

------

And that's about it for now. I'm dead tired---the wave of psychic damage hasn't quite completed yet. Till the next update.

May Too?

I could, in theory, have taken my off-in-lieu for previous Saturday's Hari Raya Puasa some other day.

But I chose to take it today, the day immediately after Labour Day, for the sole reason that it will be a day off on a day that isn't a day off for most people.

I would have spent it at MusicGear just putsing about, but since I already did that last Saturday when I took some of my ladies (Stella, Aurelia, and Eliana) in for a look-see at WindWorks. Stella was due for her tune-up after the first month of playing, Aurelia was in for a worn out bumper for the B♭ lever, and Eliana was in for... too many clacky sounds due to worn out bumpers and imperfect regulation to begin with. And Sean has brought in something interesting that I play tested---not sure if I would buy it since it involves electronics and I'm not particularly kitted out for that, but it definitely does bring some rather interesting possibilities. The other classically trained woodwind players in the shop found that interesting thing a little tough to work with though, possibly because they operated from the absolute pitch world of music, as opposed to the relative pitch one that I worked with most of the time.

That and probably because the interesting thing used the simple system as opposed to the keyed systems that most woodwind instruments these days have.

Anyway, an additional day off, and I went cycling along the North East Riverine Loop once more. The Loop... each time I go cycle on it, it shows changes. This time round, some parts of the tarmac were converted into pure concrete, and damn it was hot when I went over it in the morning on my bicycle---I could feel the infra-red energy just blasting at me; it was not at all comfortable.

But cycling is fun. I should do more cycling. I used to cycle to my office, but thanks to all the constructions now, that is not possible any more, and so the next best thing is to actually make an effort to cycle around my side of the island.

Cycling made me think of an old acquaintance with an unusual name, and as such, I shall simply call her ``E''. I met E back when I was still active in Aikido, and she was a fun person to train and hang out with. She got married (of course), and while I don't actively chat with her, I still follow her adventures of cycling all over the world with her husband.

It's interesting because that whole cycling persona was something that she developed much later, after her short foray into Aikido, and her longer one in outdoor adventures in general.

I did muse to myself if there was some new persona that I would like to take up, not with the intention of getting hitched of course, but as a different means of living yet another type of life.

No answer to that now. I suppose one dependency on it was whether I wanted to run my own household. I'm past the age in which the government gives a crap with respect to housing, i.e. I can, if I wanted to, get ahold of some brand new one-room/two-room apartment, be chained to a multi-decade mortgage, and have all the space that I need to run all the interests that I have.

But it also means that some fifteen or so years later, I will need to somehow come back to my childhood apartment to take care of matters after my parents have passed on. Not to mention my quiet worry of my parents living alone without some kind of alert observational supervision the way that I am doing now---they aren't dumb people, but sometimes they are so set in their ways that they need a proverbial bonk in the head to wake up a bit more and look at the world for what it is.

Decisions, decisions, decisions. The mark of an adult, especially when the decisions matter. And when the decisions start to matter for more than just oneself, be it family or subordinates, maaaaaaaan it starts to be Serious Business---the mark of an adult in middle age.

Anyway, that's enough for today. Tomorrow, I'm back to the office, and there are things that need to be done. Meanwhile, playthrough two of Nier: Automata awaits.

Till the next update.

Singapore Flute Fair 2023, and What I Did There

A week ago today was the Singapore Flute Fair 2023 hosted by MusicGear, with her sister companies. The draw of the Flute Fair was the assembly of flute and accessories sellers/distributors from around the region, together with the appearance of Muramatsu and Miyazawa flute technicians to do light servicing on concert flutes, either in-brand for the respective company flute technicians, or out-brand, as long as the flute itself is not made of inferior materials. That last bit might sound a little elitist, but the reality is the these light services are more akin to fine-tuning than performing major correction, and many of the lower-valued flutes are made of materials that do not subject themselves to fine adjustments, and more importantly, do not keep said fine adjustments should they be somehow applied.

There was also a recital, but since it was to happen in the evening of Saturday when I had my rehearsals with the TGCO, I bowed out from attending it.

This year was the first time in as many years of COVID-19 being the obsession of the world that it has been held. The scale was small-ish, but it still managed to attract a healthy number of participants, based solely on my now third-party observation.

I had fun over the two-day exhibition, trying all kinds of piccolos, and playing with various flutes. I'm not really in the market for buying a new flute (Aurelia is my End Flute anyway), but I am definitely scouting around to learn more on getting a better piccolo. I've tried a Powell Signature, the Burkart Resona and Elite samples, one Bulgheroni Piccolo, and a couple of Haynes piccolos.

Conclusion thus far: the traditional embouchure cut is excellent for wailing like I wanna completely emulate the dizi, but trying to get soft dynamics out of it for the high notes tend to be tougher, compared to wave cut. The wave cut ensured that the air stream was well targetted to provide that sweet sweet pianissimo dynamics for concert pitch G7 and higher. As for low notes, both cuts across all the piccolos were alright---that old problem I faced with a somewhat non-projecting concert pitch D5 was due to me not angling enough of the air-stream towards the embouchure hole to bring it out. There are some slight differences in the timbre, but they tend to be a bit more minor compared to just getting the fullness of the right-hand low notes (i.e. concert pitch F♯5 and lower) out in the first place. Again, the wave cut has a tendency to bring out a more centred (i.e. purer) tone, while the traditional cut allowed a little more noise surrounding it, which does make the tone seem fuller without necessarily contributing to the harmonic content.

Piccolo trying aside, I met a few new people, as well as caught up with some old ones. It was definitely different from before---I was running around as myself, as compared to the past flute fairs where I was running around essentially as her plus one. She was there at the fair, unexpected but unsurprising to me, helping out with being the minder of the Muramatsu technicians and generally being involved with the logistics of the light repair service. That is my guess, based on what I saw.

We exchanged no words. What was there to say, anyway?

Two days of standing about, talking to many people, playing piccolo using dizi repertoire to tease out the compatibility between me and the instrument while keeping the dynamics soft enough to not incur a warning from Brando... it was a very tiring yet very fulfilling weekend. Musospace, the location for this year's edition of the Flute Fair, was an interesting location, to say the least. Good to learn of yet another cool place that I may end up wanting to consider, should I ever decide to put together a personal recital as a private celebration of more than three decades of actively playing on the dizi.

A man can dream, can't he?

Recalling the Last Four Days

As I write here, the day is ending.

A trite observation in some sense, but then again, this is one of two ``mandated'' long weekends for this year from my employer due to the addition of a gazetted break day to the government declared one.

So four days. Across these four days I...

• Finished re-reading The Sandman;
• Caught up on the latest for One-Punch Man manga adaptation;
• Caught up on Komi Can't Communicate manga;
• Completed A Hat in Time;
• Completed version 1.0 of Vampire Survivors;
• Replaced my 12-year-old mattress with a new one;
• Finally started on The Complete Calvin and Hobbes: Book One (1985--1988);
• Completed the perimeter wall shape for my castle project in Minecraft;
• Hung out with some friends old and new playing games (Singapore Dream, Splendor, and Unstable Unicorns);
• Finally picked up Aurelia to doodle on---I've been meaning to do so, but kept being distracted on other instruments like Eliana, and Mio;
• Accidentally partook in the Deepavali lighting festivities out in Little India while on the last bus heading home (the police presence was heavy with deployed riot police command centres);
• Continued with a summoning build that I started quite a long time ago in Grim Dawn; and
• Catch up on some of the Hololive/Holostars EN folks.

It was definitely a feature-filled four days, coupled with generally adequate amounts of sleep (that is going to go awry when the work week begins anew).

Head is comfortably empty; I feel fairly relaxed. With that new mattress, there is definitely a break between before this four-day break, and the last quarter of the year.

Oh, and NaNoWriMo is coming up. I've a rough idea of my new novel, currently titled Dig It All Realisation. Still needs to have the draft structure set up though... which I think I will do some time later this week.

I think that's about it. It's a really short post as these posts go. Just wanted to make a note of it here so that perhaps some time in the future, I can look back on this date and summon up the memories that I didn't write in here.

Till the next update.

A New Gig Bag and Other Diversions

The last weekend before March 2022 goes away into history. What shall I talk about today then?

Let's start with some good news. We are finally starting rehearsals proper---we have actually started meeting up as a group at the beginning of the month, but having not rehearsed together for two years or so, we spent the first three weeks just sorting out our instruments. The cupboards housing them were opened up and aired, the cobwebs were metaphorically (and sometimes literally!) dusted, the mould on some of the old wooden instrument cases were treated with anti-mould and left to air, strings were checked on and replaced/retuned, and the works.

Sifu is now at a stage of his life where he can come back to play with us again, and I am really happy about it.

Of the ``core pillar'' players, we got back about 60% of them or so, the remaining 40% being less able to commit their time due to the changes in their life that have occurred during the past two years of pandemic nonsense. Naturally, the more transient members who were students have attritted away, hopefully just for now, but given the entire drought of actual extra-curricular activities (calling it ``co-curricular activities'' is what I now see as yet another fig-leaf manoeuvre to pretend that the school system in SIN city truly raises people who know how to both play and work hard) involving group activities, I really am not expecting these numbers to return any time soon.

TGCO isn't flashy, it isn't large, and it isn't some award-winning and highly visible organisation compared to some of the other community orchestras (Chinese instruments or otherwise) out there. None of us are true professional musicians, and we definitely lack the resources and the connections that those who do it professionally have, mostly due to our ethos of keeping the orchestra as a place for those who are interested in playing to gather and play to their abilities, without demanding superlative qualifications.

Only time will tell what will happen. For now, we're just putting the band back together so to speak. That thirty-year anniversary concert isn't likely to be happening, and maybe we'll see if we can live up to our fortieth instead.

It's always good to be playing the dizi again in an orchestral setting. Playing alone has its perks, but ultimately music is meant to be played together as a group---no single instrument can sound better alone as compared to being with others in a well-composed piece. And a performance group is not really one if it doesn't perform---that's the immediate goal that I think we are striving for. Maybe once we get our first performance post-pandemic out, we can start to bring in some more members, for however long they choose to play with us.

------

In other news, I had to finally retire my music backpack, the one that I have used since 2015(?) to move the flute/piccolo stands, flute (Azumi and then later on, Aurelia), piccolo (usually Picc, sometimes S.O.S.), and scores. After more than 6 years, the main zipper have finally given way completely. The bag was used extensively over the years, being taken out weekly on rehearsal/performance excursions. A side zipper's slider had failed and was replaced, the pleather handle flaked off and had a new fabric cover sewn on it, one of the two sliders in the main zipper failed the interlocking and was left unused while the other did the rest of the tour, and the elastic that held the flute box had loosened and was recently replaced. And now, finally, even that last slider failed to hold create the interlocks properly, with the only fix left being a complete replacement of the entire zipper, which was... just not going to happen.

The gig bag lasted as long as it did for the price I paid for. It did its job well and faithfully, and it was truly time to retire it.

o7

Some might find it dumb that I can get sentimental over things, but well, in a world where no one really knows what each person is thinking (even with letters that were supposed to share what one was thinking), the only things we have left are the things that we exchange and hold on to. And for the things that served as our tools of the trade, for whatever trade it is, there's a certain part of it that has become an extension of ourselves to the point that we unconsciously grow an attachment to it. I can't say that I take the greatest of care for my stuff, but I do generally try to do so. It isn't the fact that I spent my own money on them that makes me treasure what I have, but that having these things working means that I could do what I wanted to do with them more effectively and painlessly that makes me want to treasure them more.

The new music backpack is also from ROI MUSIC, as brought in by MusicGear. It definitely has seen some improvements over the years, with the most obvious being the `X'-stitching pattern on the interior that holds the padding together (compared to the original vertical-only stitches). The material does feel a little stiffer, but it's not clear if it's only because it is new or if there was something that was changed.

I suppose only time will tell.

------

The Great Aquarium has its water filled in, and the kelp has all been harvested. I tweaked the deepslate smelter into a kelp smelter by replacing the furnace with a smoker---I didn't realise that the kelp could be treated as a food item and therefore the smoker would smelt it faster (by time) as compared to the furnace. From that tweak, and leaving things to run throughout the day, I have completely smelted all the kelp.

I took part of today searching for a Ocean Monument. I needed to find it to get the materials needed to make that conduit in my Great Aquarium. Well, I found it---it was a ways away from the frozen river where I had dug up my ice to fill the Great Aquarium with. After building a nether-portal in the overworld, I cleared a path towards the nearest minecart station (the frozen river exit) and built a cover over it in the nether to prevent the Magma Cube spawns from clogging up the place.

And that's about it for this post. Till the next one.

Scratching That Aburi Nigiri Itch...

Mmmm. It really is much easier to realise what one has missed once it is gone out of one's life.

And I'm referring to awesome aburi nigiri sushi that I have been missing since my favourite sushi place has wound up.

Today, I scratched that itch again by heading to the Sushi Tei out at Serangoon Gardens Circus at the odd hour of three in the afternoon. It was fairly quiet; I was one of three customers that were present in the restaurant. I had some aburi nigiri sushi, and had me some ootoro.

Mmmm. That was nice.

It was not the same as my favourite sushi place, but it did scratch the itch.

In other news, I have decided on the birthday gift to myself for 2022---a pair of customised musician ear plugs. It's not exactly cheap, but compared to the price of a new instrument, it's about a tenth the price, but with an effect that is probably worth 10× more---a more comfortable and complete protection of my hearing while I play my 笛子. It is something that I have been thinking of getting for a while, but have been delaying for one reason or another. I am currently using some Vic Firth musician's ear plugs; they work well, but I'm just looking for... something more.

It's like Azumi all over again---she works well, but I ended up looking for something more, and thus ended up with Aurelia.

I said that it works well because with all the restrictions that have been in place, test playing of new instruments is not allowed. Apart from that, I also don't have the budget for any new instruments anyway, since my income for this sabbatical year is zero.

Anyway, that customised musician ear plugs require impressions of my ear canals, and so it will be a trip to the audiologist to get it done. Because of that, I am getting myself this gift right now, before the start of work makes it harder to run about meeting appointments.

That's about all I want to write about. Till the next update.

Privacy: Accomplished

What a day!

I went to pick up Aurelia from WW today, and dropped off Azumi for her ``spa'' session. Azumi requires a bit more work than Aurelia---she has started tarnishing(!) after nearly ten years of not having that problem, and I have started to find the D trill lever and D♯ trill levers were sitting a little too high for comfort (check out Jennifer Cluff's flute diagram for nomenclature). It's interesting, because I never used to have that problem before I had Aurelia; Mr Guo of GUO Musical Instruments Company (GMIC) had pointed it out before a few years ago, but it hadn't bothered me then.

I think it's just my getting used to the sleeker set up that is on Aurelia.

Anyway, after sorting out my flutes, I dropped by MusicGear to shoot the breeze a little with them, and bought some thicker mouthpiece pads. And some discussions of perhaps getting a cor anglais came to play... It is on my shopping list, but the damnable reed is always going to be a problem. All my other single reed instruments are using synthetic reeds, which suit me just fine because they are virtually immutable for the long periods of time that I might not be touching them. Double reed instruments are finicky---I have played the 管 before, and it is horrible to get right.

So... while the offer stands, I might need to do a serious rain check.

Now, much of the afternoon was spent running around looking for the laptop webcam privacy sliding sticker, or as they call it in Amazon.com, ``webcam cover slides''. I thought this would be the easiest item to find, having remembered seeing them freely around, but boy was I wrong. No one sold it.

My only lead was from the Challenger store at Waterway Point when I dejectedly purchased my compressed air twin-pack---the cashier suggested checking out the larger Challenger stores as they were likely to have stock. That lead told me two things:

1. I wasn't hallucinating---they were sold by a chain store (i.e. ubiquity exists); and
2. I could just be plain unlikely with stocks being drained from the massive work from home stuff.

And so, I tried my luck by heading out to NEX's Challenger.

I couldn't find it. I asked for help, the bro was like ``ah, I think I might have seen it, but I'm not too sure''. He went to get another bro (nicknamed ``the Professional'' for some reason), who was like ``Yeah! I remember seeing it also... it was like a stack of them (emphasis mine)''. Lo and behold, it was found in a corner of a small and low rack facing the cashier counter closest to the exit.

🤦‍♂️

And there were only two 3-packs left. I bought both---this is going to be something that will remain useful for a long while. I have not had a need to use my webcams on my laptops for a long time, so I usually use the lo-tech method of just taping a piece of paper with cellotape. But, two things:

1. The cellotape was getting more useless with all the stupid dust around, or the quality of the ones we had stank. I breathed on the bloody thing, and it would float off. Unacceptable!
2. I have many more teleconference calls these days from care group meetings and baptismal classes, and having the lo-tech solution (with shitty grade cellotape) was just not working out. And this was before going for interviews in the near future while searching for jobs.

And with that, I've got to get them. And boy am I glad to have gotten them.

I also bought replacement ear cups for my QC35 wireless headphones too. At this point, I'm just filing that SGD39 as an annual consumable. Buying stuff of a good enough quality is one thing, ensuring that it stays at that quality with regular maintenance is another. But the cost of such maintenance is still cheaper in the long run as compared to having to frequently replace the entire item each time the low quality version fails.

------

I wondered why did I not learn of lock lacing earlier. That would have solved my ``beat up toe'' problem, where my pinky toe was always bruised, with the latest saga leading to the nails peeling off. The lock lacing technique stops slippage of the foot in the hiking boot, and thus despite being on my feet for the whole day, my toes were completely fine.

Hurrah!

I did a little extra with the prescribed lock lacing technique though---I tied just enough to secure the position before running the boot laces around the groove of my hiking boots back to the front, where I finally actually complete the tie with a knot. It makes hold much more snug, and solves the problem of the excessively long laces that often come with boot laces.

And that's about it for today. I'm bushed. Gonna lay out some blocks in Minecraft in the nether to create an overworld ``quarantine zone'' for future Wither fighting while watching some of Calli's playthrough of Earthbound. Till the next update.

Projects for Minecraft and Other Diversions

You know, I was thinking that I had done almost all that I could in Minecraft.

Then I realised that I had not fought the Wither. The set up for this fight is quite onerous---the component materials that are used to summon it are rare, and after getting those components, there is also a need to prepare the arena a la Terraria (another game that I love but could not find the energy to complete) before a truly epic boss fight that is many times worse than that of the Ender Dragon for the sole reason that the Wither destroys terrain like a madman.

The outcome of all that is the Nether Star, a component for end-game super tool known as Beacons. It is also a great way enable much massive builds in survival mode too.

Maybe I'll target towards that and building a fishing hut as my next projects in Minecraft.

In other news, I've sent Aurelia to WW for the COA. Davie had the two trill key pads replaced, but his case suffered a zipper damage when I was too excited and forgot to move the zipper all the way past the corners before lifting the box open.

🤦‍♂️

I also got me some palm key risers for my alto and tenor saxophones, though none of them are made of any of the materials that I have linked to in the URL---those were just samples of what I was talking about for the confused.

``Wait MT, you play saxophones?''

``Always have.''

No, seriously. I've always played saxophones. My first saxophone was a soprano saxophone, and I slowly branched from that to the alto, and now to the tenor; and I upgraded them from junk-tier to decent tier. It's like my tertiary/quarternary instrument of proficiency too.

I don't play it as much because I don't have that much direct use of it in Chinese Orchestra settings as compared to say the 笛子 or the concert flute. But I like jamming out on it ever so often---it has that kind of panache that the concert flute cannot match, and is a little more street-friendly compared to the repertoire that I'm used to for 笛子.

The palm key risers are useful because of the way I hold the alto/tenor saxophones: I keep them on my right side. This means that the palm keys that are operated by the left hand (that kick in when we play high notes) will require me to have a much deeper dorsal flexion. That is uncomfortable. The palm key risers give an additional 5 mm of material so that I don't have to dorsal flex that much to get at them---a much more ergonomical feel.

Nothing to do with size of hands, just comfort.

And I think that's about it. I've completed 37/50 ways to die, leaving 13 more. The end to this year's instalment of NaNoWriMo is close, and I would really be happy for it to be over, not because of desperation, but because all things that have a beginning, ought to have an end.

Till the next update.

Like She Was New!

What an eventful day.

The Dell on-site engineer came down to replace the fan and heatsink assembly, and I learnt a few things.

1. Dust was the true killer;
2. The heat pipes ran keyboard side up, in total inversion from most other systems, explaining the finger frying;
3. The fans were really integrated with the heat sinks;
4. The replacement of this assembly was as good as having a repaste job;
5. Most of the upper half of the flat-laying part of Eileen-II are just vents, so air blowing through all of them has no risk of clogging the way old laptops were; and
6. Daughter boards everywhere despite the motherboard being more complicated than I had ever seen.

The dust was of a very uniform fineness that looked awfully like the kind of concrete dust one would see from a construction site, and not the kind of skin-dust that is the more normal.

Armed with the new knowledge and assurance from the on-site engineer, I now have a better way of preventing all that weird frictional vibration thing from fans that were dust-imbalanced.

The difference was pretty dramatic, before and after the assembly change. I am getting 40--46× multipliers even on full load with the PROCHOT limit of 83°C that I had set. The idle temperature is now roughly 40°C at an ambient temperature of about 27°C, which is about 4--7°C lower than before.

There was little throttling when I was running Minecraft at 32 chunk rendering distance (just for fun), and the lag spikes that I was seeing before even with Iris Shaders (on 12 chunks rendering) was much lower.

It's like Eileen-II was brand new all over again. And now, to monitor things before I confirm the closure of the ticket.

------

I also managed to set up a servicing date next week for Aurelia, my artisan-quality concert flute. She's doing well, just that she has missed her annual Clean, Oil, and Adjust (COA) session. I was tempted to bring S.O.S. and maybe Azumi down too, but I just wanted to keep it simple. Those two (and maybe Picc) can go for their COA next year instead.

I might need to bring Davie down for a look-see by Sean though... one of the pads looked like its bladder had ripped. Still need to arrange a date with him for that.

If you are bloody confused, do not be afraid.

I can't believe that Aurelia is already 2 years old, and that Azumi has been with me for more than a decade. Time does seem to fly along.

------

I'm thinking I might want to go for some sushi tomorrow for late lunch/early dinner; I've been craving for sushi for a while, so it might be time to satisfy that craving.

NaNoWriMo has been going well; I've already busted the 25k milestone, and have ``only'' written 23/50 ways to die. It's very cathartic despite its macabre nature; it really puts things into perspective.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Ironically, I am in the middle of replaying Cthulhu Saves the World, which does not need the higher powered computational powers that the refreshed heat sink+fan assembly provides.

Till the next update.

Final Solution to Eileen-II's Temperature Issues?

Ooo, a somewhat early entry!

I got quite a few things done today, so let me begin.

The first thing that I did was complete The Outer Worlds, completing both the ``good ending'' (The Hope colonists revived) and the ``bad ending'' (Capitalism forever!). That happened at around 0200hrs this morning, and thus counts as a ``today'' thing, even though it was more of yesterday on extended time.

I spent some time in the morning replacing the elastic strap in my Roi backpack. This elastic strap holds the concert flute (Aurelia, in this case) in position. I have had this backpack since 2015, and after carrying it weekly with a nearly full load of flute/piccolo, music, and flute/piccolo stands, it has slowly fallen apart. The top handle's pleather has flaked off, and has a corduroy handle cover (made from an old pant leg) sewed in place by Chara, one of the two zipper sliders is no longer aligning the zipper and is kept permanently in one side, and the latest of course was the loss of elasticity of the strap that was used to hold the flute case down. I carefully unpicked it and sewed in a new one with 1 in thickness, and it is now as good as new.

I just can't wait for us to get back into rehearsals at the Chinese orchestra. I have a new double-width collapsible music stand that I can't wait to make use of---I only need to either buy a carrying case for it, or make one. I'll probably make one, but to do so would mean that I need to source for cloth (probably canvas), and set up the sewing machine. There is also that possibility that I end up hand-sewing it; it's not something new. I have a tendency of doing that most of the time anyway, except for that one time that I was patching back together my pen case for my fountain pens.

------

The last time I talked about Eileen-II, I mentioned about turning off hyper-threading to reduce run-time temperatures. There was only one small problem with that entry that I want to correct: the temperature did not drop to around 80°C---it was more like 89°C to 92°C, as compared to 95°C to 100°C when hyper-threading was turned on.

The other thing that I didn't mention was that the idle temperature was about 66°C.

I don't like these numbers at all. It's partly because such high numbers would imply a shortening of the lifespan of the components (in this case, the CPU), but more importantly such high numbers meant that when I was using the keyboard of Eileen-II herself I would end up actually burning myself slightly should I accidentally touch the institial parts of the frame instead of the plastic key caps of the keyboard.

I knew of a solution to this, but I have not had the wherewithal to do it, because of how time consuming it was---it was the pseudo-inverse of overclocking, a technique called undervolting using a tool like ThrottleStop. CPUs, like all electronic components, require a certain potential difference across it too provide enough electrical energy to do the computations that they need to do. Loosely speaking, for ``greater performance'', the CPU should get as much energy as it can take, which is indirectly controlled by regulating the voltage of the supply going into it.

But the catch is that ``greater performance'' is not the same as ``greater apparent performance'', the reason being that if the CPU gets too hot (for instance, 100°C), the CPU is forced to downclock itself to avoid burning itself from the excess heat. Following the math from this subsection on CPU power, this excess energy is proportional to the square of the voltage supplied.

Every CPU has its own sweet spot voltage where there is a minimal amount of energy that is supplied that can give the CPU its maximal performance without actually generating excessive thermal energy that forces a temperature-based shut down. For reasons of sanity, the factory defaults for the make of Eileen-II are set to be ``performance-oriented'', i.e. they do not attempt to find such a ``best'' voltage. This ensures that the machine will always attempt to run at its ``best performance'' regardless of the situation.

So yeah, the first thing I did then was to find out what that lowest voltage is. To help me with it, I turned off the Turbo Boost capability from within ThrottleStop, and carefully experimented on the voltage offset for the CPU Core and CPU Cache. This was the most time consuming part because if I ever went too low, the CPU would freeze up, and I would have to do a hard reset. Granted, with Eileen-II's specs, a hard reboot doesn't take too long, but it still takes time to pull off. The final values that I ended up was −90.8 mV---starting at the default −100.0 mV voltage offset was just too much and made Eileen-II crash. This led to an idle temperature of around 50°C.

I could try to tweak down to the 1.0 mV precision, but at this point, I don't think it is worth it.

The next thing that I tried to tackle was the way Turbo Boost worked. Disabling Turbo Boost was a good way to get low temperatures, but I didn't just want low temperatures---I wanted Eileen-II to actually run more powerfully if there's a need to, but without the whole hot-enough-to-burn-my-finger-tips thing.

Turbo Boost worked by applying a multiplier on the basic clock speed. For Eileen-II, the basic clock speed is 99.768 MHz (as reported by ThrottleStop). At the published ``base frequency'' of 2.60 GHz, we are looking at a multiplier of around 26×. The maximum reported frequency that the CPU can support is 5.1 GHz, which works out to around 50--51×. Thus, any multiplier larger than 26 and less than 51 are considered potential ``Turbo Boost ratios''.

At this point, I think a screenshot of the Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator (FIVR) screen will make things more enlightening.

Observe the lower left corner frame under ``Turbo Rate Limits''. The Max value is the maximum ratio that the CPU is reported to support---going any higher than that counts as overclocking (i.e. out of specifications). The table below lists down the multipliers to be used when Turbo Boost is triggered, sorted by the number of active Cores.

My understanding of active Cores are those that are assigned the particular process/thread to operate on [at 100% capacity].

Now I just want to point out that I live in Singapore, and naturally, am operating Eileen-II in Singapore. In case you were wondering, Singapore has a climate that is simply terrible for high performance electronics if one does not have/use air-conditioning.

So those default numbers in Turbo Ratio Limits that start at 50× for one active Core to 43× for 6 active Cores? Yeah, they are waaaaaaay too optimistic. For reference, the highest I ever saw the clock speed went was about 4.2 GHz, and even then, it immediately faced thermal throttling.

I went ahead to get my favourite prime number tester to generate the types of high CPU loads that I needed to benchmark the relationship between the multiplier and resultant temperature. I first did a full 6-core ``Small FFTs'' torture test with the undervolt conditions and Turbo Boost turned off. According to the options, the ``Small FFTs'' torture test tests the L1/L2/L3 caches, generating maximum power/heat/CPU stress, which was exactly what I wanted. The idea for this initial test is to spot the empirical distribution of which Cores have a tendency to run hotter than others. From this empirical distribution, I would then pick the hottest n cores when I am trying to tune the multiplier for n active Cores.

My goal was to ensure that no matter how many Cores are active, the maximum temperature of all the Turbo Boosted Cores do not exceed 85°C. There is no scientific reason why 85°C over other temperatures, but there are two good ones:

1. 85°C is roughly the top end of the temperature where the frame is merely warm to the touch;
2. Any lower temperature than 85°C would lead to a multiplier that is basically useless, in which case I might as well just turn the Turbo Boost off.

Empirically, the Cores from hottest to coolest on Eileen-II are Core 5, Core 3, Core 2, Core 4, Core 1, and Core 0.

One last piece of the puzzle was to do the actual assignment of Cores for the job. The way I did this was to pull up ``Task Manager'' with Ctrl-Shift-Esc, get it to show more details (this is by default for me), get to the ``Details'' tab, search for prime95.exe under the process name, right clicking on it to pull up the context menu, then selecting ``Affinity''. And from there, I would choose which Cores (or CPUs in this case) to assign prime95.exe to.

Then it was just a case of trial and error on the multipliers with careful execution of the ``Small FFTs'' torture test with the associated number of workers.

The multipliers that you see in the FIVR screenshot above are obtained through this process. Notice that at 6 active Cores, the multiplier is 30× (corresponding to a clock frequency of not more than 2993.04 MHz), and at a single active Core, the multiplier is 40× (clock frequency not more than 3990.72 MHz). These numbers are definitely much lower than the very optimistic defaults.

Notice that I am being very conservative here---I chose to ensure that the hottest Core spike does not exceed 85°C; this does not mean that the hottest Core will operate at 85°C. To illustrate this point, I have taken yet another screenshot, this time with a 6-core ``Small FFTs'' torture test with all the settings set up in the FIVR screenshot.

As you can tell, it runs much cooler now, with the lowest spike temperature being 78°C, and the highest spike temperature being 85°C. Notice also how the empirical distribution works for both the instantaneous measurement and the Max measurement.

That was not the end though. I re-ran the ``Small FFTs'' torture tests again from 6-core down to 1-core, but this time without forcing the processor affinity. The temperature profiles are definitely much cooler, since the fewer active Cores often meant that the workload was being shuffled randomly among all the available Cores, leading to less sustained work.

Hopefully I don't have to do anything more drastic to keep the temperatures at this comfortable level.

------

Technical nerdry aside, I also started reading a short anthology of poems/prose/plays by Robert Wilks. Rainbow: A Collection of Stories, Poems and Plays (Volume 2) is funny because it was actually my secondary two English Literature text book from back in the day. It is one of a few books that I kept from my secondary school days, mostly because past-me sort of knew that there would be one day where future-me would be interested in reading the wonderful writings from then. Thank you, past-me!

I have also watched Dick Tracy, a 1990 film about the eponymous comic-book detective. It's funny---I remembered that I loved the concept of Dick Tracy (he's a detective, and when I was young, I loved the idea of being a detective, and also a spy), but I never seemed to like read/watch anything about the character. And so, I rectified that today. To my surprise, Madonna was in it as well.

Woah.

The film itself was fun, but what really drew me in was how normalised all the comic book weirdness was---this is a testament on how well the film was directed/produced. Big coats in all the colours except black, canary yellow hat and coat while trying to be sneaky and somehow not getting seen, colourful back drops despite the 1930s ``hard-boiled'' aesthetic.

And Madonna sings like the nightingale she is. Ho yez.

Anyway, that's all I have for today. It's a long entry, no thanks to nerding out. Till the next update, I suppose.