Fine-tuning Timestamps, and The Great Aquarium

Ah. Night time. Not quite stupid o'clock, but I feel like writing something here.

I spent some time working on a little bit of code between yesterday and today to fine-tune my publishing process for my personal domain. For the uninitiated, I have a customised Python3 script that does minification of the hand-written static HTML/CSS pages, and generates a GZip version to be served faster. I had added a sitemap XML file that is autogenerated as part of the build+deploy process. The final step is to make use of rsync to update the actual files on the server, but without incurring the complete cost of copying all 38M+ bytes.

The bit that requires fine-tuning was something to do with timestamps. Practically speaking, there are three different timestamps associated with the HTML/CSS files. They are:

1. Logical timestamp as seen by the ``Updated at 2022-02-26T23:44:31+0800'' lines in the pages;
2. The physical file's timestamp as reported by the operating system through the stat(), more practically observed through output of ls -ltra or whatever the modified date is under Windows Explorer;
3. And the timestamp of last commit as stored in the Subversion database.

The logical timestamp is useful for the human viewing the page after it is served, but the various caching mechanisms (as well as the rsync process) of the HTTP server uses the physical file's timestamp. There is a fourth (stored timestamp within the GZip file), but that has been adjusted to ensure that it matches the source physical file's timestamp.

The timestamp business affects how many bytes get sent via rsync to the HTTP server. This is because rsync transfers the differences among the files over, and I was frankly getting annoyed with seeing a long list of files that were changed even though I did not change them. Another side problem occurs when I checkout the Subversion repository into a new machine---the physical file times of the same file from that new machine will be different from the ones of my other machines. This means that rsync-ing from one machine to the HTTP server and rsync-ing from the other machine to the HTTP server will guarantee more unnecessary bytes being sent due to the different timestamps.

Thus, I decided to just force set all the local files' timestamps to match what the commit timestamp was for it in the Subversion repository. With the help of this Python3 svn library, I could access the Subversion information for any given file (assuming it's in the repository in the first place). Using that, I managed to update all the timestamps of my files to match those exactly in the Subversion repository yesterday.

But that was insufficient in the long run, because the moment I edit any file, save and then commit, the timestamps [of the physical files] are no longer in sync. And using the simple script that I put together yesterday (till late) meant waiting for 2+ min just to update all the timestamps of the files, even though I only touched like... 2 files. Thus, I spent this morning working on a smaller delta-version that, instead of crawling through the Subversion repository (slow), crawled through the local file system (fast-er), and only triggering the Subversion repository look up if the file in question is ``sufficiently recent''. This strategy only added about 1.0+ s to the overall run-time, but kept the timestamps in sync.

That was a fun little exercise to update my process.

-----

I spent much of my afternoon clearing the other half of the hill in Minecraft. I had this thought of creating a large aquarium using the space beneath my large ``industrial complex'' platform. It was much easier to clear out the space because I didn't have to be as careful as clearing the mountain beneath my brick apartment---I didn't have to worry about accidentally puncturing the dedicated ``floor space''. Being near to my large beacons with the Haste II and Jump II enchantments made my mining speed superlatively high. So by the time I took a break and start writing this, I have already cleared something like three quarters of the hill.

After clearing out the space, I will lay out some sand to form the base. There's a ravine cutting through though, and I need to decide how I want to deal with it. One way could be to set up a glass ceiling in the ravine and lay the sand on top---the other is to set up a network of signs and lay the sand on top of that. The second is much trickier to do, but consumes more wood than glass.

Sand aside, the walls of the space above the sea-level will be made of glass blocks that I have. The hard part after is how to populate the space thus walled up with water---I have an idea, but I need to try it out to see if really works.

Anyway, it's late. I'm tired. I think I'll go take a shower, and then turn in for the night. Till the next update.

Jump Cuts

I just felt like I needed to say something on this date 2022-02-22.

First of all, it's no palindrome in ISO-8601. It's kinda like a palindrome in the UK traditional format of 22-02-2022, which I don't use any more because of ambiguity.

Second of all, it being Tuesday and coincidentally (is it, really?) the twenty-second day of the Chinese calendar is also somewhat noteworthy.

But it's one of the few lights over the past 2 years, so it's nice to live a little.

------

For those who visit my blog via mobile, I hate to point out that while there is a nice ``mobile-friendly'' version that Blogger automatically generates, it is woefully incomplete---I had to do some serious tweaking just to even get the disclaimer in place. Check out the non-mobile version. There is a nice collapsible history of all entries ever made here, as well as a tag collection of posts as well.

I sure as hell didn't ``only'' write fourteen entries a la the mobile friendly version. Fixing up the blog's template/formatting system to work well even in mobile mode is nasty,

------

That COVID-19 omicron variant is really ripping through SIN city. Previously the case numbers were just that, numbers, with no faces put to them. But now, I already personally know three people who have tested positive on an ART (Antigen Rapid Test) self-test kit. One I dodged completely, one was a passing interaction at a meeting, with all participants fully masked up and more than a metre apart, and the latest was with masks fully on unless we were eating.

It's harrowing. Somehow, I feel that it's just going to be a matter of when that I will eventually be tested COVID-19 positive at one of the weekly ART self-reports that my current work place requires us to do.

Or alternatively, I had already been hit with COVID-19 without realising it as the symptoms were mild enough that my threshold of tolerance was never breached, and that they were subsided long enough that the weekly ART did not pick it up.

One can hope, I suppose.

------

The demons I talked about yesterday, they're mostly in remission for today. Maybe it was the little bit of playing some familiar music on the S.O.S. (my Armstrong 204 piccolo) before I wrote the entry, or perhaps it was the sleep I got, or even the sense of purpose as I tackled a rather awkward enhancement/bug at work. In any case, I feel better.

I did stray in thought about how it would feel like standing at the epicentre of a nuclear bomb blast, a thought that came about only because I was reading Hiroshima by John Hersey. It was a different kind of bad compared to Grave of the Fireflies---there is emotion, but there is also a certain amount of journalistic detachment, a near omniscient view of the goings on to provide that perspective for one who did not live through that horror to learn what it was like.

Anyway, I'm tired. I'll probably turn in now. Sorry for all the incoherent vignettes---just felt like dumping what was on my mind. No big thoughts for today.

Till the next update.

Demons Came Out to Play Today

The demons came out to play today. But I managed to keep them at bay. For now.

I was walking home from the bus, and just thinking to myself, realising that at some point, I would simply forget about that particular moment. And I asked myself, how would I feel when I forgot that particular moment that just passed?

And I was sad to realise that since I had forgotten about that particular moment, there was nothing to feel about.

It was... surreal at the very least, and rather disturbing all in all. I don't know why the demons of nihilism chose today to show up, and in that form.

Apart from that little episode, I wafted through the whole day, quietly working on things in the mostly empty office.

The week that had ended yesterday was alright for the most part. I met up with some ex-colleagues who miraculously avoided getting hit with COVID-19 for dinner on Friday, and got a lot of stuff done throughout that week itself. The week that begins today is likely to be of a near opposite nature, with more introspection being necessary as compared to action. Such is the work life.

I have managed to successfully maintain my mass for the most part. It's good, except that I was trying to lose weight. I think I need to muster more self-discipline to stick to the one meal a day set up, and not get tempted by tasty lunch food made even more tempting through the massive amounts of body heat I lose each day from overly cold air conditioning in the office. I do muse every now and then on whether it was truly better to just work from home instead---it was allowed after all, and my presence in the office was mostly my own decision to head on back to ensure that my psychological separation of work time and me-time was backed by actual physical separation.

February is almost up, and March will be upon us. How quickly the days go on by.

I think I'll turn in earlier this night. Those demons have got to go, and the best way is to have my mind not in a state of exhaustion.

Till the next update.

Metaverse?

Okay, let's talk about something a little different.

The ``metaverse''. An old concept that was recently made new all over again. For the lost, this is referring to the idea of having people interacting within a virtual world, with as many real-world equivalent concepts being brought into it as possible to literally be a space that people can live in.

I call it an old concept because virtual worlds have been the mainstay for much of the multi-player experience ever since computer networking was a thing. The key difference though is that the ``metaverse'' tries to have a stronger tie-in between the virtual world and this one that we live in, mostly in the form of linking what we would call ``valuable'' in this real world with what is in the virtual one. Another big difference is that unlike a multi-player game, the ``metaverse'' might not have game-like mechanics of goals and/or progression, both of which are replaced with metrics that are more closely aligned with how the real world operate, like real-world money.

Some might say that the ``metaverse'' is defined by the extensive use of virtual reality technologies, but I beg to differ. Virtual reality technology might be cool (well, cooler these days compared to before), but the technology companies involved in them aren't really looking at these technologies for the coolness---they are looking at them from the perspective of how much value capture they can exploit the way how old school industrial capitalism is always about exploiting the surplus labour of the workers to generate value. In the work by Zuboff (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism for the confused), it has been established that a large part of modern day capitalism is tied around the exploitation of behavioural surplus, an information-type resource that is used both directly and indirectly to manufacture real-world demands through [targetted] advertising. The ``metaverse'' can be seen as the extreme version of that surveillance capitalism, where the very physics of the world itself is controlled, observed, and milked by the companies that own the infrastructure to run and use them.

What separates the ``metaverse'' from the previous concepts of virtual worlds is the very strong tie-in with the real world, as I have stated earlier. Instead of role-playing a character in the virtual worlds like the old way, the ``metaverse'' demands that you appear in the system as yourself. This bit is important because it forces you to bring in everything that you do in the real world into the virtual world, and it also allows the owners of that ``metaverse'' to use the real-world clout of personalities/intellectual properties within their ``metaverse'' to create the strong false equivalence that whatever that happens in the ``metaverse'' is as valid as what is happening in the real world.

Suddenly no one can role-play their favourite celebrity any more---if Real World Celebrity So-and-So shows up within the ``metaverse'', it can be ascertained that it really is who it claims to be, and not one of their many fans who are role-playing as them. Similarly, if you are fed-up with being an office drone and want to go into the ``metaverse'' to role-play as a rock star, you probably can't do that because your real world identity is immediately shown to everyone---there's no way to hide that away.

Or maybe you could hide it away... for a price and a limited amount of time as dictated by the company who owns that ``metaverse''.

Real-world money that goes into the ``metaverse'' to pay for anything does not come out of the company that runs it---it is a means of capturing money. Throw in some equivalent of digital real estate and add the human value of prestige, and the most successful company running that particular ``metaverse'' will make bank.

I think that's too much power for any single company or even conglomerate of companies to hold. And I don't think that it takes a genius to realise that all that hype on ``metaverse'' is just the techno-gasm equivalent of Centrally Planned State Control. And that's not counting the obvious subscription fees that are needed just to keep one's place within the ``metaverse''. I mean, in real-life, we sort of have such ``subscription fees''---we call them taxes---and even then, the tax rules tend to be a little more progressive, with a general slant towards being used mostly for the social good.

Would a company do that? Especially for a company that is built around the modern day principles of ensuring that their quarterly reports show great progress?

Maybe this ``metaverse'' would be the equivalent of this duodecade's version of the dotcom bust in the early 2000s.

Maybe.

An Early Will

In the event that I am dead, here is roughly what I would like done:

1. Cremate and scatter my cremains into the waters off the Singapore coast---ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
2. All physical objects I possess, burn in a great bonfire as they are no longer of any value to anyone.
3. The money that I might have in my accounts, let them lie in oblivion in where they are stored in.

Yes, I'm well aware how this post is probably triggering all kinds of red flags. No, I am not about to off myself---perish the thought. Considering that one of the most likely futures that I am going to end up in is one where I live alone, I felt it necessary to start leaving some ``future instructions'' in case the inevitable does happen and I did not have the opportunity to write a ``proper'' will.

Naturally what is written here can and will change in the event that circumstances change. Now that I am well on my way through the middle age phase, I feel less invincible as compared to being in my teenage years, and it will progressively be worse as time goes on.

That's all I will write here for now, till the next update.

Clearing Some More FPSes in My Steam Library

I feel much better today, with the much cooler weather and having a good night's rest.

I completed Serious Sam 3: BFE. Man, it was such a grind, with wave after wave of enemies. It made Doom Eternal and Doom 2016 feel like a relative walk in the part (except maybe in Nightmare! difficulty). As someone has said before, never before has a first person shooter game demonstrate extensive use of the `S'-key. For the uninitiated, the `S'-key is the backpedal key, a completely necessary movement just for survival purposes. It is one of the few first person shooter games where I relied more heavily on my rocket launcher for area damage to take out the large swarms of mobs as compared to using the most powerful shotgun that is available a la Doom. The final fight was gruelling, with a new mechanic of a jet pack and associated poles that needed to be thrown like javelins into the back of the Big Bad Final Boss to draw lightning to stun/slow down its regeneration just so that lasting damage can be done via the heavy weaponry that I had.

Very cathartic, to be had.

I also completed Bright Memory Infinite, an interesting one-developer first person shooter with mechanics that remind me of Shadow Warrior and Shadow Warrior 2. There is a mix of both gunplay, and a variety of powers-based melee attacks, sort of like the class-specific specials from say Borderlands, but without too much of the skill tree elements. It is the ``full game'' version of the original Bright Memory, a sort of tech demo of sorts. I completed this on ``easy'' though, because I really wasn't in the mood to be dealing with unnecessary difficulty.

It was still quite fun. My favourite combo was to alternate sword strikes with shotgun blasts while dealing with the ``ancient warrior'' enemies. It was also the combination that I used a lot when fighting the boss characters as well.

I tried to play a bit more Ion Fury, but was a little turned off by the rather weak weaponry. I suppose it might be time to start on Crysis---I seem to have it in my Steam library.

And with that, I'll probably turn in for the night or something. Till the next update.

My First [Proper] Pyramid in Minecraft

This is a prepared entry; it wasn't written near the time in which it was posted.

This week... it has been a bust of sorts. I had been feeling a tad under the weather, partly due to annoyance from work, partly because my stupid finger tips are still having those cracked fissures in them (and I need to type on the keyboard for a living, so go figure), and partly because the weather has been erratic and causing me to feel awkward in the head due to poor quality sleep.

It wasn't a complete bust, because I managed to completely clear the peninsula sand-desert that I was referring to, and built my first pyramid in Minecraft. That's right, my first pyramid. I've never really built one of those properly before---the iron block pyramids needed to sustain the beacons don't quite count.

I wanted to build the largest orthogonal pyramid (i.e. with edges parallel to the natural grid structure in Minecraft) in the cleared space, and settled with a base that was 2×20+10=50 blocks by 2×20+9=49 blocks, and a height of 37 blocks arranged in a 1--2 step pattern from the base. I ended up with that 1--2 step pattern because a single-step height increase seemed to create a pyramid that felt a little too short relative to the base dimensions.

The main building block was the sandstone that I obtained from clearing the land. But I didn't stop there---I covered each top surface with smooth quartz slabs to deal with the mob-spawn problem (I didn't want to mar the pyramid with ugly torches, and mobs did not spawn on surfaces where the lower half was a slab), and to fit the aesthetic of the original limestone pyramids being covered with white ``casing stones'' for the smooth and flat finish. Considering it is Minecraft, there was a limit on what ``smooth'' meant in an angled structure like a pyramid.

Anyway, here's how the pyramid looks at night from some height (in spectator mode, obviously):

Here's the same pyramid, but at ground level:

And here's the interior, which houses the fully-powered up two-beacon set up (Jump II and Speed II were used to make navigation on the surface of the pyramid faster) with their own topping of smooth quartz slabs for the same reason why the exterior was topped the same way.

The observant might realise that the beams from the beacon in the interior are of a different colour as compared to the ones to the exterior. That's because I added a yellow glass and a white glass at the very top of the pyramid to further shade the beam colour.

Note that the base is completely hollowed out of all sandstone and sand, with glass replacing at sea level. Mobs don't spawn on top of glass, but they spawn on the non-glass blocks below it due to the darkness of the interior. They are completely contained by the glass though, so I can keep the hollow interior of the pyramid looking as mysterious as it is this way.

That's about it for this entry. Again, this is a prepared entry that was not written at the time when it was posted---I am in no condition to be writing anything today.

Till the next update.

More Goodbyes

Well well well... yet another New Year's Eve, this time for ye olde Chinese Lunar New Year. To many it's a day of the fabled reunion dinner, the time of great festivities and feasting, a time to temporarily set aside any differences to bring out the courtesies to avoid befouling the symbolic start of a new year.

To me, it's just Monday. And it's not even a half-day Monday as it was stated in the employees' handbook, because of the great fallback of ``exigencies of the job''. That last bit though... despite me making it sound as terrible as it is, isn't too bad particularly when I do get good cooperation to actually get the stuff done, making that OT sort of worth it.

But let's not talk about work---what happens at work ought to stay at work, unless it starts to affect my not-work.

Now to be fair, I did manage to get home in time for a simple meal with my parents a la ``reunion dinner'' style, so it isn't that bad. I just wished that I could have gotten home at the designated time instead of forfeiting it.

Ah well.

Anyway, I've started to clear the peninsula sand-dessert near my mob-farm in Minecraft. No reason why other than it seemed like a relaxing thing to do each day just to unwind after spending the whole day figuring work stuff out. Maybe I might spend a bit of tomorrow playing more of Serious Sam 3 to actually complete the game, but knowing me, it's likely to end up being yet another Minecraft event.

In other news, after 12+ years of being a regular on the ChaosForge forums, I've finally realised that it was time to go. I was effectively a global moderator guarding a cemetery against spam bots trying to find a foothold to peddle their brand of nonsense as the community has moved on to other third party platforms that have more pull, like Reddit, Discord, or even Steam. Even KK himself doesn't make any appearances in the forum for the most part---it was definitely clear that the community has moved on.

But I don't like those places. And since I cannot follow, and am sick of being the night watchman of a cemetery, I just drop out/off. I did send a farewell message to the old fogeys who were fellow night watchmen (including KK), but only God knows if they will ever see it.

There were lots of great memories I had with ChaosForge. The old DoomRL times, the play by forum (PBF) role-playing, the 3D renders of space marines doing Doom-y things, all the amusing and amazing ways to die in DoomRL... But the times have changed... hell, I have changed. KK's no longer running a labour of love any more---it's a revenue generating company with its own capital contributing shareholders that he needs to answer to now. I've always been, at best, a ``whale'' scale donator, or at worst, a bleedin' heart sucker. But no whale scale donator can ever beat the raw mass of actual capital. I'm not angry nor disappointed with his choice; I'm just sad that I hit the realisation that I can no longer follow along where he is going. I wish him all the best still, and will enjoy whatever creations that may come out from ChaosForge after Jupiter Hell---as the outsider that I have been in the past five years.

Why does it feel like I'm preparing for my own death or something...?

My life is exceedingly boring in general. I think I will stop here. Till the next update then.

The Most Valuable Thing That You Possess

What is the most valuable thing that you possess?

To me, it is you, the you who is willing to spend time with me. Goods perish, money/assets depreciate, skill levels wax and wane as our minds/bodies reach their peak and then fade away with time.

But you, the you who is willing to spend time with me, that is the most valuable thing that you possess that cannot be replaced with anything else.

Time is something that cannot be easily banked---once that second is gone, it is gone with no way of recouping it. Sure, I did mention before how money is an accounting measure in which humans have devised as a means of ``banking'' time, but it's just not the same for the same reason why money supplies always need to have some form of inflation built in---future time is always more valuable than past time because the past has already occurred, while the future is always hopeful, with so much potential and non-deterministic outcomes that make it a crime to ascribe less value to as compared to the past.

And that's why commitments are treated as being valuable---it's the staking of the most valuable asset that one possesses on something that makes the action so valuable.

Speaking from a position of relative privilege, money can always be made in other ways ``easily''. But time, the time that you choose to spend with me, that can never be made back. For you to choose to spend time with me means that you have chosen to prioritise our relationship (platonic or otherwise) over all else, and to share that precious unrenewable possession of yours with me. What we end up with spending time together is to create that unique gift that is indestructible---the memory of the moment.

No one can take away that precious memory short of destroying all that is objectively what makes us ``us''.

On Flute Stands...

In reference to a post on Flute Forum by someone who was seeking advice on making their own wooden flute stand for piccolo, concert flute, alto flute, and bass flute:

I'm in no position to dictate specifics that way, but here're my thoughts:

1. Ensure your dowel lengths extend past the foot joint tenon to relieve stress, especially for your alto and bass flutes. The longer the dowel lengths, the more stable you can hold your flute, but the more annoying it is to "load" the flutes on.

2. The diameter of your dowels should be close to the ID of the flute that it needs to hold to keep the flute's centre of mass centred over the axis of the dowel as possible to use the longitudinal strength of the tube to hold its weight as much as possible while vertical. In other words, don't have too much wiggle room built in -- just enough to slip the flute body on and off with some (but not complete) focus.

2. Whatever material is in contact with the inner tube of the flute should be softer than the material of the flute itself to avoid scratching the finish of the inner walls. You might need to consult some surface hardness scales for details on this. Geometry can help a little (i.e. tapering of the end that points upwards), but you need to take the whole centre of mass aspect (points 1 and 2) into account when you do that. From my observation, the main points of contact that you need to worry about are the upper edge of the dowel, and perhaps the lower edge. The rest of the body of the dowel does not really contact any point of the flute body at rest, and to really affect that would require a particular effort by the user to "scrape" the dowel.

3. The base of the dowel (where the end edge of the foot joint is supported) should dampen the inevitable drop when one releases the flute upon the dowel, i.e. make sure it is thick enough.

4. I don't think that moisture control is that big a deal, mostly because I don't think that the amount of moisture (from condensation) within the flutes is sufficient to swell your unsealed wood enough to get past the wiggle room. The metal flutes do not change their ID from humidity, while the wooden ones might. The range of the ambient humidity of where you use the pegs are probably the bigger issue for this.

5. This probably goes without saying, but do ensure that your base is sufficiently massive (either in absolute mass or in the amount of moments generated relative to the centre of masses of the mounted flutes) to support the protuding tubes of flutes to keep things in stable equilibrium. Since it sounds like you are intending to do a combination stand, this might not be as straightforward as it seems.

I'm sure someone else will have much more specific information, but I hope what I have here can help you.

The Demons Are Strong Tonight

The demons are strong tonight. I wonder if it is because of just my draining my brain juice from work, a lack of sleep, or listening to some pre 1980s English pop music that is of the melancholic/nostalgic sort.

Well, whatever it is, the demons are strong tonight. Let's hope I get through it safely.

Till the next update.

The Day That Isn't Really Mine

On this day some thirty nearly forty years ago, the grace of God and my mother's hardship allowed me to appear in this world.

I did not choose to be born. There are many things that I can make choices in subsequently, but being born just isn't one of them.

But that does not mean that I am not grateful for having been brought into this world.

Being born into the world is a great direct risk to the mother, and is, in general, a risk to my parents.

Because there is no way of knowing anything about the child. Only God knows what He has planned; the rest of us just hope for the best.

This day that people call MT's birthday, is not really dedicated to me---I think it inappropriate, for all I did was merely start to exist. The ones where this day should be dedicated to isn't me, but God and my mother, the former for His inscrutable plans, and the latter for well having me through her labour.

I think it took me more than three decades to realise this. And I am glad that I have realised this before my ability to be thankful to those who contributed to my creation is forever nerfed due to the mortal coil.

That is all. Till the next update.

The First Stupid O'Clock of the Year

Well well well... it's stupid o'clock. Whatever should I do?

Ideally, I should go sleep. But as the season for feeling old rolls about, I cannot help but think about feeling old.

This year is special though. The time duration between regular New Year's, ulang tahunku, and 春节 is probably at its shortest of about a month between the earliest event and the latest event (citation needed). That makes the profound aging effect hit me a little harder than expected.

I'm not in anyway depressed, as far as I know. A little melancholous perhaps, but definitely not to the level where I am actively sulking. I mean, I am already considered a middle-aged man for all purposes and intents---give me another few years and I would soon be in the age demographic of the neither here nor there, the so-called 不惑之年.

Melancholy strikes me because I realise that in many ways, I'm kind of a failure for not accepting/following society's expectations. I was supposed to head on to get a PhD and return as some kind of research hero for SIN city, but at best I was just some weird software engineer who helped build a system that could never reach the full potential of scale and use because of where it was designed and built in---the constant posturing for ``strategic reasons'' was never fully backed by the resources and management oversight needed to truly bring the system up to fulfill its namesake.

Peers of my age group have already gotten married, with some of them having their second or even their third child. Yet here I am, having spent five years in a long term relationship with nothing left to show of it, and my heart numb enough from the experience that the phrase ``我心已打烊'' makes perfect sense, even though I truly haven't committed myself to the single life just yet.



For the confused, that video (assuming it remains up) is the earworm that has been stuck for nearly thirty years that I only managed to find today---《我心已打烊》 by 叶瑷菱. The lyrics, as obtained from MyMusic, is as follows:

我曾有过那么一段
背着阳光横过沙漠
只为了找寻爱神的梦幻
爱神的模样
我曾有过那么一段
踏着星河奔向穹苍
只为了逃避死神的追寻
死神的挑战

岁月带着微笑
又将春天吹干
而我只有茫茫然
无奈的回头望
挥别了梦幻挥别了忧伤
我心已打烊我心已打烊
我心已打烊
我心已打烊我心已打烊
我心已打烊

It's by no means a comforting piece of music, but it does seem to capture that melancholous feel that I have.

A while ago, I had put away Twinkletoes, my emperor penguin plushie. I was at home, not on-site at the customer's place, and most definitely not under all kinds of unreasonable pressures both implicit and explicit that I needed Twinkletoes for that reassuring hug.

I found myself retrieving him from my wardrobe two days ago, and giving him a tight squeeze for a short while, before carefully putting him back.



Watching the first serious original song from the HololiveEN -Myth- crew also brought out more of those melancholous thoughts due to the heartfelt lyrics that encompassed the hopes of Myth through their ups and downs being the pioneer gamble of a Japanese technology-turned-entertainment company to break out of the typecast and head into the wider world.

I also found myself just thinking about various futures like the way the Myth crew did, but those thoughts never truly got far because of the fog of uncertainty partly due to the management-by-committee approach of handling the pandemic, and partly because the already present ills of society have finally showed up in their true form when the usual fig leaves are blown askew due to the very same pandemic itself.

I turned to my God, and He gave me some comfort. He is close, yet there is still a distance between He and I. I have comfort knowing that my far future is certain with the salvation that came about through Jesus, but my near future is less so. Each day is just a careful movement from one state to another, until I am exhausted and turn in for the night, just to repeat it all again the next day, if God is willing.

And that is why I merely have that melancholous feel, as opposed to an outright depressive episode. I have no expectations on what can/will happen on ulang tuhanku---like the New Year's, it's just another day that needs to be gone through. Is there anything in particular that I am looking forward to?

Sadly, not really---none of the things that used to spark joy are present any more.

Anyway, that's all I have for this instalment of stupid o'clock. Before I finally get some sleep, I'll just leave Jude 17-22 as my parting thought.

Peace.

Well... A Fortnight Has Passed...

With the blink of an eye, the work week is over.

And that was the second week.

Working in a mostly empty office is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, silence except for the humming of the blowers whenever the air-conditioning decides to kick it up a notch means lots of concentration time. On the other hand, it kinda sucks that I am mostly just talking to myself, even during the ``down'' time in between handling units of work. It's a new team that I am working with, and it's nice to observe them and make small talk to learn more about each other's idiosyncracies, obviously not in a destructive sort of way.

My working title is finally confirmed after the many different versions that I had seen; that's also a good thing.

Reading is kicking back into gear, with my old plan of handling The Economist first going well. Considering that I now have about 2 hours of reading time from all the commutes (and perhaps another 30 min during the lunch break), that's ample to get through an issue---I take roughly 3--4 hours to handle one issue of The Economist.

One thing I've noted is just how fit most people seem to look even during my short walk to and fro from the office to the bus stop. Perhaps it is a case of them being nearly twenty years younger than me, or perhaps it is just their choice of attire---everyone was wearing either some kind of ``active wear'' sports clothes (think yoga gear, then think running gear; both sexes), or some kind of mid-riff baring barely there body-con clothes (for the females), you know, symbols of being youthful and by extension, fit. I'm glad that I am no longer at 80+ kg though, but that said, I still have another 10 kg to go to get to the regulation mass.

Ah well. I'll get there eventually.

I'm rediscovering eating places in Harbourfront Centre. They tend not to be as crowded as the ones in VivoCity nearby, and have a certain ``home-y'' kind of feel, like an old friend from a more quaint old time. So far I've eaten at Yoshinoya, Pastamania (for the pizza), Hitoyoshi Sushi, and Dunkin' Donuts. There is a ramen place that I would like to try, as well as a couple of other chain casual restaurants (including Pizza Hut, Elemen, and Crave).

Closer by at Seah Im, I'm pending the trying of some char kway teow, after having sampled quite a few of whatever's available in the evening spread across the fraction of stalls that were open.

------

I spent a little bit of time yesterday just building yet another rail extension in the nether, this time connecting my end portal station to my mob farm station. In many ways, my mob farm station is fast turning into a mini-hub, being the stop-over point for the second farthest station (the jungle biome, while the farthest station is the one waaaaaaay out in the quarantine zone for fighting the wither). A day or two ago, I ended up digging out yet another floor of my hill top base, effectively creating some kind of underground building complex. I just wonder how far I want to take it though... while the materials obtained is always welcome, I really should start thinking what I would like to do with all that space.

Maybe forcing an artificial village for trading purposes? It doesn't have to be 100% legit by bribing/dragging/kidnapping villages from the ``nearby'' village---that's where the semi-survival nature of this map comes into play; I will do enough of the grind work as long as it is fun, and when that stops getting fun while I still need to use that resource, I don't mind just conjuring something out of thin air using creative mode.

It's literally my own world that I play just for fun---no need to deliberately make my own life difficult here.

I guess that's about it for now. Till the next update, whenever it might be.

And There Goes The First Week

I had originally wanted to write something about how the focus on stopping the objectification of women is misplaced because the reality of the matter has moved on to actually objectifying all human beings through the consistent slicing and dicing of the human experience in the form of various clustering/categorisation in a bid to attach attributes to the person in order to ``make sense'' of where this person ``stands'' on a variety of issues that relate to either politics or commerce, and that this particular denigration of human dignity is wide spread, under-reported, and seemingly tacitly accepted as part of the ``new'' social contract for existing these days.

But it felt like too much effort, because there was just so much that I need to deconstruct and explain just to ensure that I don't sound as though I am trivialising the also real issue of objectification of women through whataboutism.

So instead, let's just talk a little about the week that just passed.

It was an interesting start of my new tenure. Reporting to an office with a less-than-skeleton crew is a new-ish experience. The last place I worked at had a similar initial day, though for completely different reasons---instead of staff working from home due to a pandemic, it was due to how most people were stuck on-site to work in a tiny room due to contractual obligations.

While most people/places have a ``honeymoon period'' of a few days to get used to the new environment, I did not have much of that luxury. Lots of things were happening very quickly, and I had to start running as hard as I can just to keep up. Even at today, I'm not sure if I have actually caught up with everything that is needed for me to start working meaningfully at my responsibilities---but I'll just try to do what I can.

Mainly though, I'm doing my best to avoid unnecessary anxiety-causing situations. I am sincerely going to enforce the ``your lack of planning is not my emergency'' policy just to keep my sanity in check. Is this a case of insubordination then? I argue that it is not---seriously, if boundaries are not drawn clearly from the get-go, trying to set them again in the future is going to prove rather tough.

Talking about boundaries, I really dislike the mandatory installation of some app on my phone together with the installation of the TraceForever app when there is a perfectly working and acceptable alternative from the government involving the use of a token. The only good thing from it is that I have an alternate phone number that I can use with an associated ``burner'' phone for such intrusive requirements without compromising on the integrity/privacy of my own personal data on my personal phone.

For the confused, the reason for this is that depending on the policies of the IT department, devices that are linked in some way to the ``bring your own device'' policies may be subjected to destructive processes by the said IT department. The details of these policies are usually hidden deep within the security/use policies from the IT department, and even if the policies do not prescribe such remote destruction, all it takes is an incompetent operator from the IT department to nuke one's device from orbit. And the best part is that they can often take on indemnity using the guise of corporate data protection as their aegis. Sure one can always find some way to fight back, but it really is too late---one's personal stuff on one's personal phone is nuked already.

Thus, it's better to have a ``burner'' phone for such gray areas. Yes it set me back by nearly one hundred and fifty dollars, but I sleep well knowing that if they decide to nuke it, they can not overstep their authority.

Speaking of the ``burner'' phone, it's a Redmi 9A, not the A9 as initially indicated. I've managed to tune it to the point that it runs as well as the old Android One based Mi A2-lite that I was using before as the prior ``burner'' phone.

Also, for future reference, this is an important formula (from this documentation page):

px = dp * (dpi / 160)
⇒
smallest_width = (160 * screen_width) / screen_dpi

That's all I think.

I'll spend the rest of the day reading, I suppose.

Till the next update, the date of which I don't know. Ciao.

I Really Need to Remember to Set My Alarm When I Sleep

Okay, so I'm not out of three hundred dollars---it's roughly half of that.

I ponied up some spare change to grab myself a puny Redmi A9 for work-related shenanigans---it's puny because it only has 2 GiB of RAM. That anxiety-inducing Whatsapp aside, there are also ``mandatory'' apps that the organisation demands we install just to be on-site, otherwise they will actively disrupt our ability to work.

I already have an existing subsidiary phone line that would work well, and just spent the past hour or so setting things up.

I'm tired.

I think I will go sleep.

That's all for now. Tomorrow's Friday. Yay.

It's Day Three and I'm Getting 'Nam Style Flashbacks

I'm getting some 'nam style flashbacks, all because someone I have not met before decided to add my personal cellphone number (how this person obtained it, I know not, since I did not go round telling people to call me/use my cellphone number to contact me) to one of the infamous ``Whatsapp groups for work-related collaborations'' despite us having at least four different communication channels already (not counting the two email addresses). Oh, and this is all before I even have a chance to know the full terms of the arrangement, having only been told vaguely about it near the end of the day.

I foresee message pings at all hours on everything that is ``urgent'' with no proper triage, confuddled requests for changes that come in ad hoc ways, no over-arching understanding of what it is that is needed, with everything piecewise hacked together without any form of documentation of the underlying process as well as the overall managing process. Everything is a favour, everything is needed yesterday, everything is urgent, and whatever I say eventually becomes irrelevant.

I accidentally drank too much coffee (in a relative to baseline sense) to the extent that I find my hunger suppressed, my ability to sleep at night impinged as I wrestled the bugs and enhancements on a code base that I barely knew/understood. Lunch break hour today was essentially gone, and I had just clocked ten hours like that.

Already I had skipped out on a meeting for ``brainstorming'' because of this ``urgent'' issue, a meeting that I need to make it back up in the morning and beyond. The head honcho had laid his expectations quite clear about that item.

I drew the line for the Whatsapp group add; I've marked the hill I am willing to die on. It looks like I'm going to be another three hundred dollars poorer as I survive another day to finally get a replacement phone to run that second line once more--that delay of a day is because the shop is only open at a time that I can only reach after work. Not that it will completely remove the anxiety, but at least I can safely shove it in the box at the end of the day and not develop unnecessary anxiety. Maybe.

Somehow I feel that quitting within the first week from anxiety isn't exactly a good thing, no matter how one looks at it.

Oh, and I still have a nice pile of orientation to do too. And still, I feel wakeful, possibly due to a combination of that anxiety and caffeine.

God help me.

Back to Work!

Alright, I'm not gonna lie, the momentum from entries nearly daily over my sabbatical year doesn't die completely like that---I still feel a little... compulsion to write something.

So I started work at my new place---it's located on the NUS campus even though it isn't really NUS related. It's close to the old I²R place where I worked at waaaaaaaaay back in 2006. After nearly twenty years though, they finally built a covered walkway for that flight of stairs up to the old building, which is nice.

This time though, I didn't go for the boots option: the bus-only route in the morning seems to work well. The same irritations that I mentioned so many years ago still hold---the field still exists, it still gets muddy, and there are still tons of uphill stairs to walk on.

Some things change, some things just seem not to.

The good news though is that I don't take the train in the morning to commute to work---I only take the train back at the end of the day, after which I just take the lazy way and use the concrete path to cross the road via the traffic lights, as opposed to the distance-optimised path. No real reason why I tend to do that either... maybe it's just being older and less wanting to ``optimise the shit'' out of everything?

First impressions of my new work place and role? Well, it'll pay the bills for sure. Thanks to the control measures of COVID-19, I ended up being the sole soul in the entire room that houses my section of the organisation, which means that it is really friggin' cold most of the time. I finally found where the water dispensers are, which means I can substitute my canister of coffee and bottle of water with a bring-once cup, spork, and instant coffee set up.

Role's sorta grounded with ``payin' the bills'' type of work, but has quite a bit of flexibility to expand/extend into other areas that are more research-y. It's too early to tell much though, mostly because I haven't really interacted much with the rest of the team just yet.

The pace that I seem to be going right now feels a little too hurried as compared to the pace that I am sensing---not sure if it's because I cannot actually see the folks to have a proper gauge, or if I have been too traumatised from the on-site work that I was doing at my previous place that default to running at beyond full-tilt, even though I'm literally new. It's okay---the faster I do the ``payin' the bills'' type of work, the more time I will have left to work on the research-y things.

Who knows... maybe something wonderful can come out of that.

And that's about it. I'm beat---I reckoned I've walked more over the past couple of days than I had in a typical week while on sabbatical, and this time, with the additional heavy load of lugging my own work equipment around (just like the bad old days while working on-site). About 1.1 km of walking split between walking to my first bus stop (450 m) and walking from the last bus stop to the building (550 m) in the morning commute, followed by about 1.7 km total on the trip back (550 m from my office to the first bus stop, 1.1 km).

Shit. And here I was, thinking that I was doing sub-2 km walks while I was really walking some 2.8 km a day just for commute alone. No wonder my legs are feeling beat up.

Well... as long as I'm not blistering, I think I'm fine. It can be a good aid to me to accelerate that weight loss that I started on back in late 2019 that got horrifically side-tracked during the work from home and subsequent sabbatical year from COVID-19 control measures.

Here's to reaching my target goal of 65 kg then!

...?

...

What, you're expecting a post for today? Fine, I'll oblige, but bear in mind that since my sabbatical is over and I'm officially starting work tomorrow, it will be increasingly/extremely unlikely that I will write as much or as often as I did last year.

I watched me some RoboCop today, the 1987 version. Damn it's graphic, and damn the story is dark. The practical effects really held up well, except for the stop motion work for the ED-209 scenes---I think that cannot be helped as it is one of those cognitive dissonances that come about when trying to map the much lower frame rate of stop motion techniques against the ``real'' frame rate from filming the rest of the action. I have no reason why I wanted to watch RoboCop... just had that inkling to.

I spent quite a bit of the day preparing my backpack for tomorrow's first day at work. It was an interesting set up to say the least. I think that I might have a little bit of excitement to start on a new job/journey.

Yay to improvements over blunt affect, perhaps?

Anyway... after hermitting at home for the past year, I finally did my first ART kit at home, ``just in case''. It was a boring-as-hell wait of 30 minutes to get a confirmed negative result: like most self-test kits, there was the control line and test result line. The instruction said to observe at the 15-minute mark, and added a remark that if there was no test result line, to wait till the 30-minute mark to see if it shows up, after which the kit is no longer giving meaningful results.

So if one is positive, the wait time is likely to be shorter than if the test is negative. Ah well...

I think that's about it for now. I don't have anything else that I care to talk about any more for the day, other than a comment that there was just so much rain as predicted by the meteorological station. In fact, rain's predicted for the next couple of weeks.

Here we go I suppose.

Till the next update. Not sure when. Eventually I will have to slow down/cease writing here; when much of the day is dominated by work, it is inevitable that work-related thoughts will dominate. And it usually is not a good idea to talk about work stuff in personal blogs like this, even though there is a big fat disclaimer at the bottom. It's not even about the non-disclosure agreements, just a general sense of professionalism.

Those keeping score will probably also realise that this month is my birth month, but be forewarned that it's likely to be boring quiet---my favourite sushi place is gone, I'm single, there's no rehearsals at the TGCO in the near future, and the omicron-variant of COVID-19 is kicking into high gear. I just don't know what is going to happen then.

Ciao for now.

Quick Summary

So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2021:

1. 15 poems posted here
2. 393 essays/rants posted here
3. 4 prose/stories posted here
4. 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
5. 1 piece of compositions/rearrangements posted here
   

And thus the grand total here is 414 articles, up from the 49 articles in 2020.

That's an average of 1.134 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.134 last year. While seemingly dramatic in the increase, I would file it under ``understood anomaly'' due to it occurring during the year in which I was on sabbatical.

So much has happened in 2021. For starters, I have read a stupid amount of books/articles, with the last item completed being The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, and the first item completed being They Spent 12 Years Solving a Puzzle. It Yielded the First COVID-19 Vaccines.. It was to be expected: reading has always been one of my core activities when not doing anything else that involves other people (or sleeping, for that matter). I love reading because it allows me to live more lives than the one that I have, and it is a relatively cheap way of obtaining more experience in general.

And in the middle of yet another year of the COVID-19 nonsense, it is a great way to save money and be safe as well, while not going absolutely insane.

As noted also in an earlier retrospective, I have also rediscovered behaviours and habits that had kept me alive before I started falling into the delusion that I was going to be some kind of family man with a stable income, a spouse, children, and all the other trappings that would make any government/capitalist salivate at the amount of labour capture. After all, the more debt a person has, the more that person is motivated to keep on working, and will continue to keep on working even if the environment is absolutely toxic to work in, because all that toxicity is apparently preferable to failing the dependents that one has? Such a nonsensical statement...

Now that all said, I still have not committed myself to a spouse-less life just yet---I don't think nor do I feel that I have enough information to make a decision. Childlessness is definitely high on the list---I cannot, in good conscience, bring in another life who never asked to be born into a world that is heading towards ruin. Let the more worthy/ignorant be the ones who take on this fecundity requirement---if I had more ambition, I would follow them considering that my history is considered unencumbered no thanks to things that had happened in the generation before me. Alas, I'm no ambitious fellow---I just want to contribute my bit to society to avoid being a bum, and then call it when the time comes.

But still, I don't think I'm ready to start another relationship with anyone just yet. Unrich and unattractive middle aged men like me are among the lowest priorities for people seeking a spouse, so I've got that going for me, which is fine.

Enough of looking backwards---I've done lots of that throughout my 2021 blog entries.

What I have not done much is looking ahead, and for good reason: the crystal ball is murky as hell here. SIN city as a whole has no obvious forward trajectory---there is nothing inspirational, nothing aspirational, and nothing good to look forward to, especially for the low/middle socio-economic class folks. COVID-19 is one major factor (it's a global pandemic for crying out loud), but it is what I would say merely the straw that breaks the camel's back. It unearthed the insecurities of SIN city in ways that are harder to keep under wraps, and exposes the many ugly hacks that are being used to prop things up that used to have a thriving-ish economy as a fig leaf cover. Tactical errors were definitely being made, but I will not go as far as to claim that strategic errors are made for the simple reason that I don't have enough information. The power play of the superpowers at the global scale are messing up the international order in ways that make keeping to an obvious strategy hard---I don't believe that it is in SIN city's interest to be seen as taking anyone's side other than our own, though that is often easier said than done given the massive partisanship that was developed over the past decade as personality cults start to become in vogue again.

It is almost as though everyone is trying to compete to see who can best distract their population away from the really tough problems that need decades to concerted effort to truly resolve them.

At a personal level, I'd like to take things a little simpler---just a day at a time. In many ways, I've already made that choice a decade ago when I decided to return to SIN city to serve out my bond instead of making a break for it to carve out my own path through the fabled Silicon Valley. Spite is a very powerful motivator to push oneself outside of one's comfort zone to achieve great and crazy things. But spite is not sustainable---I would end up killing myself. Inasmuch as I had all those weird suicide ideation stuff (and how I still find that life really isn't all that meaningful), killing myself because of unsustainable spite towards external factors feels a little... dumb.

And so I've told myself quietly that I would treat myself a little better and do things in a sustainable way so that when I die, it's not on other's terms but on my own. I don't need to get the latest luxury just to feel good about myself---the mere fact of existence should be its own reward, with everything else as a bonus.

That's probably the closest thing to a ``new year's resolution'' that I will write, I think.

2022 is probably going to still be a year of large amounts of personal introspection as I start to mull what kind of old age life I would live, assuming that I haven't tapped out before then.