Short Blurb

``Hey, we haven't heard from MT for a while, probably means he is doing well, right?''

Well... no. Sometimes, having a longish interval in between entries is not a sign of the good times---it just means that I either have nothing to write about, or that I don't feel like writing anything. Those are literally the direct causes. Everything else is just a possible indirect cause, though I think there really isn't a good reason to delve too much into those distinctions.

So yes, that's basically it. Either nothing to write about, or I just don't feel like writing anything. And for the latest interval, it's more of the latter.

Words feel so superfluous, so superficial. And considering that I am not really intending to write here to change the world, it seems even less important for me to bother writing things.

Anyway, let's just keep up with the shallowness of it all, the whole charade that things are daijoubu.

Past few weeks, I've been feeling rather drained---just didn't feel compelled to go out interacting with people. I didn't feel well enough to want to play on my dizi, and definitely didn't feel well enough to want to write here.

The only compelling reason I can think of is the large numbers of strangers that I needed to interact with at work during this phase. All that interaction just drains whatever energy I have left.

That and perhaps running multiple days of sub-six-hour sleep might be strong contributory factors.

Combined worship at church began last week, which I did not attend the service because of a prior appointment. Which means that tomorrow will be the first time that I will face the whole congregation at once.

With my drained energy state, I have no idea what will happen.

Randomly though, the past has been coming back to me here and there. Really, it's hard to just ``get over it''; the best we can do is just to reframe things so that new meaning can be attributed to them over the original interpretation. It didn't help that the second International Low Flutes Festival happened over last weekend (I didn't attend, even though it was online).

For those who didn't know, I was supposed to attend a similar event a couple of years ago, just as COVID-19 was starting up. That was also around the same period when my original life trajectory went south (I may have remembered this wrong, but I'm not going to try and find the truth). So to say that there's a sour-ish taste in my mouth about this is... probably much closer to the truth than I am willing to admit.

Well, that's about all I want to write here for now. Life's still progressing one day at a time. Most days are alright, albeit zombie-ish, while some days I just drag myself through pure determination and trust in the Lord.

Till the next update.

6 Tomes in ~5 Years---Thanks For All The Joy and Wonder, SCP Foundation

Staring at the ``Thematic Projects'' section of my reading list should reveal a big omission: the entire series of the SCP Foundation is no longer present.

Well, I've completed the series, and hence it is no longer there.

Just for records purposes, I got them from this location in the SCP Foundation website, specifically under ``Foundation Tomes''. The date of the dump was in 2017-02-01 (in ePub), which I converted into the Kindle-friendly Mobi format on 2017-02-20 (incidentally, the best Mobi format reader on the PC isn't SumatraPDF nor FBReader---it is unironically the Kindle program for PC). The astute will realise that there are twelve tomes in total, while my last read tome in the last read list is only Tome 6.

The absolutely anally retentive will observe that SCPs have gone all the way into the 6000--6999 range now, while Tome 6 stopped at SCP2999.

So what in the blazes do I mean?

It means...

1. I have indeed read 6 of the 12 tomes and have called it a day.
2. The 6 tomes covered till SCP2999.
3. I am wholly satisfied with the fun I derived from reading these 6 tomes of nearly 3000 SCP articles.

The remaining 6 tomes from the original dump were more of fan-fiction based on/around the implied world where the SCPs exist in---they lack the kind of faux seriousness the way the SCP article is structured (for the confused, an SCP article shares similar structure to other technical documents like MSDS or Material Safety Data Sheet). That official-looking structure encourages concise writing, with specific characteristics elucidated as clearly as a technical report would, but without sacrificing the kind of science-fiction creativity that is needed.

The fan-fiction stuff were more prose-y, and the quality is all over the place. I didn't read SCP articles for the story, I read them for the kind of Lovecraftian ethos of trying to secure, contain, and protect these barely understandable Eldritch objects, delivered in as pithy a way as possible.

And after 3000+ of them, it's enough. There is definitely a gradual decline in the quality after a while, and this is talking about what's within these 3000+ articles. It's kinda what happens to most world-building situations---the initial works are always the most interesting for the novelty, but as time goes on, each new work is always trying to make itself stand out just a bit more than being mediocre, but they can barely succeed just due to how cramped the space is for exploration after the initial burst of creative energy.

SCP articles are a guilty pleasure, and I loved them when they weren't blown up into this massive 7000+ articles thing. And so I keep them at where I love them the most, and gently put away the rest.

The SCP Foundation, what it stood/stands for, and the strange, scary, and sometimes horrifying objects that they try to secure, contain, and protect, will always be there. Perhaps in the future, when the itch strikes again, when what is old becomes anew, I might just see if I can stand to read the next 3000+ SCP articles.

But for now, this thematic project is done.

Till the next update.

``Extra Cool'' is Actually Quite Cool!

Weekend. Last vestiges of.

Sometimes I wonder why I still keep a blog when only a small handful of people are even actively reading it. But then again, I just remind myself that my writing of this and other blogs is less for others but more for myself---a way of purging whatever is bugging me in the head that might be of some interest to some of my friends. This is, of course, opposed to the other form of purging where I dump stuff straight into my paper journal.

Anyway, let's talk a little about what happened over this weekend.

I felt really out of it yesterday. The weather was definitely one major reason, but it was hardly the only one. I was out of sleep, and probably didn't caffeinate myself enough. That ended up with me just crashing out for a long afternoon nap of a couple of hours. I went for the evening's rehearsal, and tapped out at the end of it to head back home instead of joining the crew for a post-rehearsal drink and chill.

I still felt at little out of it this morning, which ended with me waking up about a couple of hours after what I was intending to. But I drank the equivalent of 2 mugs of coffee just before working on this upcoming Bible study, and was feeling generally fine, though still not as gregarious as I should be. I hitched a ride for church service, but headed out on my own after that instead of joining for lunch.

I think that's going to be the new thing, not joining for lunch. For one, I really shouldn't be doing lunch as a rule of thumb, and I ought to keep to it. For two, my hitching a ride back home feels like I'm imposing myself upon what is obviously time for my church friends to run their errands and do other things that they would find it hard to do within the rest of the week.

It's nearly 2200hrs now, and after I post this, I'm probably going to crash out for the night.

------

I dug up more terracotta out in the mesa biome (or Badlands as they call it these days) in Minecraft. I set up a rudimentary conveyor belt system based on hoppers to allow me to quickly offload my inventory when it was full to send it to the shulker boxes automatically, reducing the amount of walking that I needed to do to and fro to get it done manually. I also dug out more materials from the mining floor for no reason other than to relax.

I also managed to unlock Toastie in Vampire Survivors, which I still maintain is one of the best bang for buck for the amount of fun obtained with about SGD4.

Games aside, I've also discovered that Rohto had come up with a more potent version of their Cool Eyedrops---the Rohto Extra Cool Eyedrops (emphasis mine). On their provided ``Cooling Level'' scale, the Cool is at 5 (out of 8), while the Extra Cool is at 7 (out of 8). I'll skip the coyness and just say that I could hardly feel the Cool eyedrops when I was using them---not sure if it was related to having gotten LASIK, or if it was just my general tolerance to the effect of menthol on the cold-sensitive receptors, even as regular people were feeling the cool ``burn'' when they tried it.

Extra Cool---yeah I felt it. It was a nice ``cold burn'', much less intense as compared to having Axe Brand Universal Oil accidentally ending up on the sclera (that sucker was pain---it felt good after the pain levels drop, but it does leave the sclera rather bloodshot), and sufficiently intense to overcome whatever it was that made me not feel the Cool as much.

I'm liking it already.

But I want to point out that even the Extra Cool ranks ``only'' a 7 (out of 8). It made me wonder just what it was that counted as a full 8 (out of 8) in the ``Cooling Level'' scale. Rohto seems to have different marketing arms across their different markets, so trying to figure out which existing product might be cross promoted as the unseen 8 (out of 8) was pretty much in speculative territory with no reprieve.

But I don't think that I need to get that 8 (out of 8) cooling eye drops when this one works well enough.

Anyway, I'm beat. Going to turn in for the night now. Till the next update then.

Heckin' Long Hack Day

Today was a long day. It is the longest uninterrupted day of work that I had done in a while---no naps either on the trip to the office, nor in the middle of the day during the lunch break, nor any time after. Straight up being awake since 0500hrs to what I think should be 2330hrs before I crash out from exhaustion.

But let's back track a little.

Hack Day is one day in the work week that I deliberately set aside to have uninterrupted blocks of time to work on things that require time to think. Back in my I²R days, it evolved from having to deliver software artefacts while being involved in various meetings with various parties. For me, meetings are disruptive to my thinking process for two big reasons:

1. As working level staff, I need to prepare for the meetings, and the said preparation work is non-trivial. It's more than just clobbering some slides together---it is also about getting the framing correct, and simplifying enough of the material so that the other attendees of the meeting (not all of them at the same technical level as what I am working on) can actually understand enough of what is going on to give useful feedback. This is one of the reasons why I absolutely detest meetings with no agenda, because it will be a colossal waste of everyone's time. By extension, I have unbridled righteous anger at those who enjoy calling such agenda-less meetings, and beginning said meeting with ``Do you know why I've called you all here?''.
2. As a person who dislikes having to deal with people as a matter of principle, I personally need to summon energy reserves to ``put on my game face'' to attend meetings---the more external parties there are, the more energy I need to summon from my reserves. Since I'm no ``big boss'' calibre person, it means that such meetings often require me to actively participate to understand enough of what is going on to provide timely and accurate technical input/feedback to my bosses so that they can make the best decision---that also drawns upon that energy reserve. Meetings with my team are less draining due to the more candid nature we have to adopt to get things moving as fast and misunderstanding-free as it is practically possible, but they still require some energy expenditure.

For a deeper explanation that is more general than what I have said here, I highly recommend Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule by Paul Graham.

Hack Day used to be on Tuesdays back in I²R; they were made obsolete with the deathmarch-esque grind at my next place of work. Now I have instituted them again because of the nature of the work, but it is on Wednesdays instead.

Hack Days usually mean that I come earlier to the office, and leave later so as to maximise the number of large enough blocks of time (about 3 hours per block). The keyword here is ``usually''---the time of arrival/departure to/from the office is less important than the number of big blocks of time that I can have. As noted in this brief description of my typical day, the standard bus-only route that has maximal comfort cannot provide that early arrival time. I²R Hack Days were usually executed through driving the family car, which allowed me to arrive at the office at around 0630hrs, and leave at 2000hrs.

I'm cutting back on the driving these days just so that I can acclimatise myself to a lifestyle where there is no access to a car (or taxi for that matter). It's a choice thing because sooner or later, the family car isn't going to be around. I see no reason to feed a beast that I use at most once a week, and eventually even my father would be too old to actually make use of the car more often than he currently has, making it even harder to justify continuously feeding the beast.

So... no car. I had to come in earlier today because I needed those large time blocks, not to mention that there was some production issue that I needed to quickly look into. That issue was minor, but it still needed some labour to rectify after all.

To come in earlier though means forgoing the use of the bus-only route. Because the two-hour travel time meant that I needed to be on the bus at around 0540hrs, which meant leaving the apartment by 0530hrs, which (working backwards some more) meant that I needed to wake up earlier to ensure that I still got my morning exercise, shower, and coffee going.

I'm already running on dangerously low levels of sleep. Getting up even earlier is a no-go.

Thus, it would be by subway. And if by subway, it means no nap for two reasons:

1. No guaranteed seating in subway;
2. Travel duration per leg is too close to the 20-minute mark that my naps on public transport tend to take, making it very risky.

That explains the no nap this morning.

As for no nap during lunch break, well that's much easier to explain. I needed sunlight, and getting sunlight meant no nap either, since there is no comfortable way to actually nap. It's not like there were chairs to snooze in, and I didn't bring along those straw mats to allow myself to lie completely flat on the floor.

Thus, a long day.

I wanted to write something about the vastness of space and how it is a good thing because it protects us from being annihilated by monstrous levels of energies that are out there, energies that are far beyond what our science/engineering can manipulate to create ``perfect'' localised conditions such that we have leverage on to effect our will, but it got all complicated.

So all you're going to get is just that small paragraph above.

And that is that. Till the next update.

Messin' With the CSS to Flex

Last chance to squeeze in an entry before 2022-05 closes ``forever''.

I managed to tweak my personal web site to make it behave a little less stupidly when displaying it in a browser window that is more landscape oriented. The old behaviour limits the width to 740 px, but I used some media queries to allow the width to scale larger proportionately as the browser's width gets past 970 px, with a hard limit of 1920 px for the sole reason that I think a single-line paragraph looks really stupid.

I've also messed around with using the flex display to fit my figures, and to adjust my footer to not require the messiness that is the float display.

On the whole, I'm satisfied with the results, even though I still think that 740 px for the given font size is roughly the sweet spot for on-screen reading. But then again, not everyone uses the implicit screen-split that I do through the Windows-Left and Windows-Right key commands.

And before I post this and restart Eileen-II due to some software update, I just want to point out that the weather in SIN city is atrociously hot and humid. It is so hot and humid that the interior wall temperature at night is a blistering 32 °C.

Just let that sink in for a moment.

Anyway, that's all I have for this entry. May is about done, June is coming up, and before I know it, 2022 will come to an end and there's next year to... look forward to?

Till the next update.

A Short Blurb

I'm always a little confused on what Sunday symbolises: is it the start of the week, or is it the end?

Traditionally, it is considered the start. But I found it mentally a little easier to consider it as part of the end of the week instead, mostly because the start of the week is considered when I need to start working on work things.

These days (for quite a while, actually) work starts on Monday for me, so it feels logically more correct to consider the week as begining on Monday.

Perhaps.

The reason I'm bringing up this rather subjective experience here is from how with each passing week since the relaxation of the COVID-19 control measures in SIN city, there's that unacknowledged urge to return to a sense of familiarity through the types of rituals and conditions that once dominated our lives before everything went side ways for more than 2 years. Whether it is due to fatigue from being on the alert for too long, or the fear of a future with greater uncertainty, it is the general sense that one gets just from existing around.

I can tell because as the one who more often than not lives as an interloper, the tolerance of my presence in general has started to wear thin.

Anyway... the weekend has passed on by quickly. I dug up more teracotta in Minecraft, replaced the signboards with item frames for my mini-productivity factory, added a glow berry farm to my industrial platform, and spent time just AFK-ing at my mob farm to get more gunpowder.

I also finished getting the latest goodies from the recent update for Vampire Survivors, which I still maintain as well worth the SGD 3.25 price tag. I mean, according to Steam, I have sunk in 55 hours into it so far, which works out to about SGD 0.06/hr. That's roughly the order of magnitude of play-time for a more regular AA/AAA game, though to be fair those are more for a one-time play through while this is an accumulation of multiple 30-minute bouts.

The heat and humidity is starting to get to me, and I'm feeling a need to crash out for the night. So that's about it for now, and till the next update then.

My Typical Day is Boring

It's yet another Friday.

I don't really have much to say. I mean, what is there to say? I wake up at 0500hrs in the morning, spend some time with God, catch up on the news over the RSS feed, do the short set of exercises from The Hacker's Diet to maintain my muscle mass, take a cold shower, brush my teeth, chug a cup of weak instant coffee to take my antihistamine, head into my room to check out other news sources online (hello /., and Reddit), start getting dressed by 0610hrs, leave the apartment by 0625hrs, take the bus between 0630hrs to 0645hrs (napping for the first 20 min and then proceeding with reading), change to the next bus at around 0730hrs to 0745hrs (mostly reading), alight at the bus stop between 0800hrs to 0810hrs, march up the hill and set up my work laptop between 0810hrs to 0825hrs while making my next mug of coffee, work till 1130hrs, hide somewhere far from my work space for one hour (spent mostly reading, unless I feel knackered, in which case I'd begin with a short nap of 15 min), make my last mug of coffee before continuing my next bout of work till 1750hrs, do my daily document back up, lock away everything except the LAN cable and monitor into the puny pedestal drawer, leave by 1815hrs, hop on the bus en route to Harbourfront (reading all the way), decide to have dinner there or otherwise, and eventually make my way home by 2030hrs, shower, chill in front of Eileen-II either reading or doing something in Minecraft or write some program or write something else (like a blog entry) or catching up on more news while simultaneously watching/listening to Hololive archives at speeds between 2.0× to 3.0× depending on the streamer and content, grab my other antihistamine and a multivitamin pill by 2330hrs, set up my mattress on the floor, set my alarm to 0500hrs the next day (0515hrs on the device, because I purposely run it 15 min faster than real-time), spend some time with God while in seiza, do my squats, do my hamstring and adductor stretches, do my crunches, then crash out by 0000hrs.

That is literally my typical day. There is hardly time for anything or anyone else.

Is this living? I don't know... what is living for a middle-aged Asian man in Singapore with a middle-of-the-line income like me anyway?

🤷‍♂️

If you know the answer, do write a comment and let me know. Because I really don't know.

------

SumatraPDF recently updated to v3.4.1 (as at writing). While it supposed to have improved features from the updated components, I do not recommend its widespread use just yet. There are two deal-breakers for me that preclude its use:

1. The F12 key to show the bookmark side panel has bad focus after, which means that after showing the bookmark side panel, one can no longer press F12 to toggle the side panel away again. As noted in the link, it will be addressed in the next release, either v3.4.2, or the pre-release of v3.5.
2. The removal of FontName and FontSize options (compare the help file on settings for v3.3.1 against the one for v3.4.1). It's a deal breaker because the default font for Ebooks (that I can't seem to change/patch directly) is Georgia, while my preferred reading font these days is Atkinson Hyperlegible just for the much better readability. I'm not a fan of the E-book format (i.e. Mobi or EPUB) that isn't PDF anyway, but the SCP Foundation tomes are necessarily in those formats due to the sheer size and unwieldiness otherwise. Reading these 3k+ pages with Georgia instead of Atkinson Hyperlegible is eye-strain city, and is a hard-pass from me.

Hopefully these will be resolved eventually.

In other news, Frescobaldi finally released a Windows build for v3.2, some 22 days after the Linux builds were released.

``MT, I thought you worked with Linux? What's with the Windows daddy-o?''

Linux is for work stuff---for not-work stuff, I use a mix of Windows+Cygwin to get things done, with a side of Linux command-line from a VM when there is absolutely no other [easy] way of doing it.

That said though, Frescobaldi in the new 22.04 LTS release of Ubuntu is broken for the same reason why v3.2 exists---Frescobaldi v3.1.3 cannot run with the Python 3.10 interpreter due to some increased strictness involving types (see Issue #1433 for an example of the class of errors). I'm not sure when the package maintainer will fix this, but that also slows/stops me from setting up a 22.04 update on machines under my control.

Anyway, that's it. It's 2315hrs as I write this sentence, and I'm just going to push this out and call it a night.

Till the next update, whenever it might be.

Thank You for Your Graciousness in Putting Up with Me

Well, the day started off nice enough.

And I think I never learn because of my obstinacy and arrogance. Not ``perceived arrogance'' or ``alleged arrogance'', but just plain ``arrogance''. I do not ``choose'' to be arrogant---it is something that appears in the way I carry myself.

It's funny because here's the definition of arrogance:

arrogant

1. exaggerating or disposed to exaggerate one's own worth or importance often by an overbearing manner
2. showing an offensive attitude of superiority; proceeding from or characterised by arrogance

I say it is funny because I do not think of myself as being particularly worthy, nor do I think of myself as being particularly important. Remember that I am happy to be dead at any time, as long as it does not inconvenience other people too much, though I am too much of a coward to willingly walk towards my own death, currently preferring the more ``hopeful'' type of death that involves waiting for the natural expiry at an unknown date/time.

Probably the only thing that applies that rubs people wrongly is being of an overbearing/offensive/obnoxious attitude. So-called being ``intense''.

I cannot open my mouth: if I do so, whatever I say is considered arrogant because I try my best to reason it out based on what I have read up/learnt. I cannot keep my mouth shut: if I do so, my expression conveys a certain smugness indicating that I somehow believe that I know more than what the other person is saying.

Thus, any form of interaction will deem me as arrogant. Perhaps then the only right move is to walk away and not interact at all.

🤔

Maybe.

Or alternatively, stop engaging in what I like to do (like reading, writing, or making music), and partake in what the ``normal people'' do---be a consumer and buy all the latest gadgets, watch lots of television, have passive hobbies waiting for people to tell me what to think, engage in work that everyone can do/understand, attempt to get married, raise children, be a wage slave paying off everything until I am dead. Without the heretical thoughts put in place through all these reading and thinking, my arrogance will be curbed because I will be like everyone else.

Maybe if I fry my brain enough with different drugs, I can do that---but as it is now, I cannot see how I can change in character so drastically.

Ultimately though, I think that people are just putting up with me because they are gracious enough to. And I'm a terrible person for just living in my own little world, as done by a person who has enough privilege to do so.

Geez... just kill me already.

Nicer Separators for Read List

I'm satisfied with a little change that I managed to enact.

In my read list, I had evolved it over time to have little separators in between the list items to mark out the different years. As at today, I have finally evolved it to exactly how I'd want it:

Here's a list of the evolutions over time that I had done:

1. The first incarnation of the separator came about as a border at the top of the last entry of the year.
2. One minor adjustment I did after that was to have the right side show a border as well to make the demarcation a little more obvious. I wasn't happy that the horizontal separator did not extend into the space where the numbers were though.
3. I added more space to the separator to make it more obvious, and was starting to get annoyed at the right border being uneven---it was heavily reliant on the vertical space taken up by the list item. I also didn't like that it was impossible to know what year the separator encompassed.
4. On a whim, I switched up the list element that I was using for the separator, and the [re-]discovery of the ::after CSS3 pseudo-element allowed me to add the year through some attribute grabbing.
5. I also remembered about the whole negative margins trick and used it to set up the separator into the form that you see in the screenshot above.

There is only one draw back from this set up---if the element anchor is used, the mini-animation from accessing it highlights the entire block which includes the separator. In theory, I could cheat with using a single span element to simulate that, but it feels a bit dirty considering that span elements shouldn't really appear as children for the ol element.

Apart from fixing the separators from my read list, I also did a little house-keeping in collapsing the style-related issues of nested cite, em, and i elements through using the :is() CSS3 pseudo-class to generate the relevant Cartesian products. So now, any nested combinations of these three primarily italicised contents are consistent: un-nested, they get italicised; the next nesting adds underline effects; the next, bold; and the final converts the text to small-caps. Superb!

Anyway, that's all I want to write for now. I'm just happy that I have put to bed one of the more annoying styling issues for a while.

Till the next update... some other time.

Marking Time

With a blink of an eye, the 3-day long weekend is about to be over.

I completed The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design by Roman Mars, & Kurt Kohlstedt. It's a guilty pleasure type of book, and in this particular case, is a survey of many of the design decisions that were made with respect to the urban city, be it organic or otherwise. It's a fun book, and the illustrations really give it that chic that made me glad that I got the dead-tree version.

Apart from that... I just played more Minecraft. This time, I decided to build an exploratory over-land rail trail in the southward direction with an initial detour to avoid crossing over my industrial square. Nearly six full shulker boxes of smooth stone were consumed, with about half a shulker box full of Jack O Lanterns to provide illumination to avoid mob spawns. I finally found one of those lush caves and grabbed some Azalea and Glow Berries---worthy additions to my farms. I also found a few more rare biomes, like the various ocean variants, the Taiga, and eventually ending at a Woodland Mansion. I'll probably lay out the rails to get me there first before attempting to subdue the Mansion---this can be a fairly long-ish project in Minecraft.

I think that's all that I care to write. I'm actually quite tired now, and am going to take a shower before turning in for the night.

Till the next update.

The Fucked Art of Not Giving Subtlety

``Oh no! He used a bad word in his title! Let's cancel him!''

Yeah... fuck that. Who cares?

🤷‍♂️

Okay, that aside, this week has been a doozy. Very little down time, a little bout with some half-assed cold that I suspect is due to the massive temperature/humidity changes of the week and the like.

Still alive though.

So about that title. ``The Fucked Art of Not Giving Subtlety`` is an obvious poke at The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson, the same guy who also wrote Models: Attract Women Through Honesty, and Compatibility and Chemistry in Relationships. He is [hopefully] not the same as Marilyn Manson, nor Charles Manson---too man-y man-sons around these days. Easy to get confused.

The book, the book is alright. It codifies what I believe any rational adult will eventually figure out on their own, that choices are what governs our journey through life (the destination being death, though what happens after is determined by whether one's a believer or otherwise), and that no matter what choices we make, it inadvertently discriminates and closes off a whole series of choices/things that we cannot reach out to. That's the high level abstract summary that holds true.

Of course, reading something like that would be as fun as having a root canal done (this is a borrowed simile---I thank God that I have a well-taken care of set of pearly whites), so it is couched in more familiar terms of ``giving a fuck'' to something. One of the important lessons within the book is to develop more intrinsic measures of progress (i.e. character development) over extrinsic ones, the reason being that intrinsic measures are under more of our own control as compared to the extrinsic ones, and with more control, the satisfaction of attaining them tends to be more complete than the extrinsic ones that are effectively some kind of luck of the draw.

Or as Saitama of One Punch Man puts it: ensuring that the You of today can beat the You of yesterday---that's progress.

I like another aphorism that complements what Manson is trying to get at in this book.

Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.

In short, it's a case of ``you do you'', subjected to the usual civic-mindedness of not infringing on other people's choices as much as possible.

Speaking of ``you do you'', I did wonder what the fundamental difference between [political] liberalism and [political] conservatism. One working definition that struck me was this:

In [political] liberalism, the ideology is defined by what they don't do, while in [political] conservatism, the ideology is defined by what the do do.

In short, it seems to me that [political] liberalism's boundaries begin unbounded, and where they exist, they are defined by a decision plane that states what lies outside of the ideology's existing ideological space. So, one such boundary might be ``we do not discriminate people by their skin colour''---it means that anyone who discriminates people by their skin colour (i.e. a positive assertion of action) is outside of the [political] liberalism ideology, while those who do not, whether because they never thought of it, or if they once used to but has since decided not to, they are inside of the [political] liberalism ideology.

Comparatively, [political] conservatism's ideological boundaries always begin bounded, with new decision planes being allowed to push the boundaries outward only if it is [somewhat] consistent with existing assertions. But with a bounded system like [political] conservatism, there are few ways in which the boundaries may be pushed outward---the existing axioms within the reasoning system comprises a closed set no matter how complex the new consequences are generated. So it would seem that new candidate boundary assertions need to come from outside of the [political] conservatism's ideological boundary, i.e. from the [political] liberalism camp.

In short, neither side can exist on their own---[political] conservatism alone leads to static and staleness, while [political] liberalism in extremis leads to anarchy with no shared sense of values. It is the creative tension of boundaries between these two that allows the civil society to flourish.

``Eh MT, you talk so much cock about conservatism and liberalism. You're a Christian right? How does that fit into the picture? Isn't Christianity conservative by definition?''

A low blow indeed. In many ways, the fact that Christianity is biblically defined (i.e. from the canon) makes it a poster child of conservatism due to the rules/principles at present within the biblical canon. A central premise is that God is good, and God is all-knowing, and so the rules/principles that He set is indeed good and ought to be followed.

That part is true. But is Christianity's conservatism the same as the political conservatism we see around? That is debatable, because of a difference of opinion of biblical interpretation through suitable amounts of cherry-picking---this is the flaw of humanity, especially for those who claim their political conservatism as stemming from the Bible. Recall that the Bible has both Old and New Testaments---the New Testaments are part of the New Covenant with Jesus from which us believers derive our identity of ``Christians'' from. So, I'm not saying that the Old Testament is wrong, but I am saying that the Old Testament teachings need to be interpreted according to the New Testament in order to be of a Christian teaching; otherwise it is no different from Judaism.

Another point of note is that just because something appears in the Bible, it does not mean that it is a God-approved action. There are many different genres of writings within the Bible, and each should be interpreted and understood according to what they are. Thus, reading say 1 Samuel and claiming that it represents the rules and ordinances that God set upon us is just dumb, dangerously dumb no less.

Again, as Christians, we believe in Christ. Loving the Lord is foremost, then loving one's neighbours is next---I didn't say this, a lawyer who was thinking of tricking Jesus did (Luke 10:27), to which Jesus affirmed in the next verse (``And he said to him, `You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.' ''). The other thing is that it is not up to us to exact judgement---that role is up to the Lord Himself. Our role on Earth is to exemplify the transformation we had undergone when we declared our faith publicly, and to evangelise the lost. But evangelism does not mean forcing our beliefs upon people---we show them how our belief has changed us for the better, and God will work upon their hearts in due course.

So... long story short, Christianity's conservatism has little to do with political conservatism---the former is about conservatism of human behaviour to avoid sinning after being saved, while the latter is about enacting human rules to keep to an arbitrarily chosen set of rules that may be cherry-picked from the Bible to borrow the prestige of God's word to legitimise their agenda.

If one were a true believer, one would realise that this world is fallen, and that accruing power and wealth in this world is antithetical to what Jesus had been teaching; if anything, those who cling on mindlessly to strange notions of political conservatism act more like Pharisees than disciples of Christ.

But who am I to judge?

------

Going back to the title of this post ``The Fucked Art of Not Giving Subtlety''---that's sort of how I generally operate. I have no subtlety---life's too short to molly-coddle everyone we meet. For the most part, there's no need to engage---I don't know them, they don't know me, there's no need to give unsolicited... anything. For those who know me, I suppose they begrudgingly appreciate the unsubtley that I have, though I know that just because they can appreciate it is no pretext to keep on doing that.

And hence the modifier of ``fucked art''. Do not be unsubtle all the time---a light touch is the way to go. Observe, orient, decide, and then act.

Till the next update.

Uncharacterised Restlessness and a Mob Farm Fix

A certain restlessness is within me that I cannot describe because I cannot characterise the why.

The weekend has come, and is almost gone. I spent yesterday in a type of mental fog, just sitting in front of Eileen-II in a mostly ``head empty, no thoughts'' sort of way. Just thinking back to what I did right now, I realise that I cannot remember anything about it. Evening church service was attended, and rehearsals at TGCO were done, and the day ended.

Today, I spent the morning finishing up the bible study that was due later on in the week, and then just sat there for quite a while just stoning listlessly. I tried a bit of Hyper Light Drifter, but my heart really wasn't in it. I will say that it does play a little like another game that I had completed before, namely Hob, the last game by Runic Games, the makers of Torchlight and Torchlight II, two of my favourite games for quite a while. It's mostly wordless, with an almost minimalistic aesthetic to it.

What I did do was to tweak my mob farm once more. The previous upgrade I did for it had a major issue: while the dual layers gave more space for mobs to spawn, the alternating checker board pattern, combined with the use of slabs to prevent the spawning of hole-clogging spiders meant that after running the farm for long enough, mobs were being trapped on top of these slabs while being blocked by the full-sized blocks in the second level. This meant that eventually, the mobs would all be trapped instead of fall freely down the delivery shaft, leading to the mob cap being reached while not having any mobs for annihilation at the AFK area.

🤦‍♂️

That was bad, of course. The fix I did was to tear out both levels, clear out the mob collection floor of water, and rebuild them to use the more traditional four water-channel mob farm schema. The idea is to have four 2-wide water channels with a single source block on the farthest end to push mobs that fall into them down the shaft. Spawning platforms are built in the quadrants created by the water channels. I built the second layer above it using slabs set in the upper half of the height, with an additional platform over the central drop shaft to prevent mobs that spawned on the second floor from getting too much fall damage from direct fall. I wired up the red stone lamps that I ran on the outside of the second layer previously such that when I pulled the lever to turn on the maintenance lights for the first layer, it also turned on the second one. ``Maintenance mode'' was basically activated through turning on the red stone lamps to light the interior, followed by me falling straight into the ocean to put about 128+ blocks difference to force a de-spawning of all the existing mobs. This would clear out the spawn chambers, allowing safe entry for maintenance.

Anyway, I had to do some adjustments. In order to build the water channels, and to make it a little more spider-clog proof, I had to raise the effective height by one block, which mean that I had to raise the floor of the drop shaft by one block also to ensure that fall damage was insufficient to kill any mobs that fell. That was quite easy to enact---I just shifted the apparatus up by one block while adding another layer of hoppers. There was some minor tweaking of the surrounding access point to make it easy to still reach in to whack at the mobs' feet, but it was just using stairs correctly.

After all those changes, the mob farm was tested, and I'm happy to report that it works well. The spawn rate does feel high enough, and it had the advantage of also allowing spiders to fall to the auto-kill lava layer as well. This meant that I could harvest string for free, or have spider eyes if I decide to do some manual killing. To be had though, spider mobs are still quite rare when it comes to falling through the drop shaft---this is purely due to the passive mob farm design. I was contemplating if I should build an active mob farm design instead, but did not follow through because it involved an almost completely inverted design (the AFK spot is above the body of the mob farm). It was way to drastic for something that I absolutely didn't really need to have in the most efficient ways since I am playing my map as a mostly Survival mode, switching over to Creative mode once in a while to handle stuff that would be fun but would require too much busy work [that I didn't feel like engaging in] to get.

Having the working canal-design mob farm with spiders meant that I did not have to build that other spider-only mob farm next to it. I spent some time taking that edifice down to reclaim the materials, and it was nice.

------

Today's Mother's Day. I had pre-ordered 4× regular-sized pizzas from the venerable Canadian 2-for-1 Pizza to celebrate the occasion with family at home. As stated in their story, they have been around since 1995 in SIN city, which translates to being around during much of my teenage years and into my adult ones. Their pizzas are delicious, and are good value for money most of the time. We always love their pizzas.

I also liked their new ordering system. Throughout the years, I have experienced about 3  of their systems. The first was the usual hotline method with their catchy number, namely 241--0--241 (before 2002), and then 6--241--0--241, all the while referring to their menu which someone would have lying about as a pamphlet/flyer. Then there was the time when they were using Foodpanda to handle their orders. And now, it was back to using their own internal system.

As long as they don't stoop to demanding that I install some weird-ass app on my phone (or elsewehere) just to order pizza, I figure that I'll continue to support them. They are my go-to for home delivery pizza after all.

Anyway I'm beat. I should go get a shower and then prepare to turn in for the night. The long weekend week is segueing into a more regular work-week, and there are things that are coming this week that does require some level of concentration that I may not be looking forward to. The things we do to earn our coin.

On another note, the sheer stupidity of this new plan of effectively holding citizens hostage to the government through only issuing digital certificates of birth and death is something that I cannot comprehend. The excuse that was put up sounds great in theory---everything is authenticated and directly from source, reducing data loss/theft, where ``...government agencies and private entities, such as industry associations and financial institutions, can use QR codes included on all digital certificates to verify their authenticity''.

But I take offense to that. Here's why. The servers that control access to these digital data are government owned, and by virtue of the design of information systems, any access of them via URLs (implied through the QR code) will be logged. This means that if someone were to be doing any sort of business with any entity that requires the use of the birth certificate (there are very few reasons for these, the most prominent being emigration), the SIN city government will know about it, whether they ought to know it or not. Sure they can say things like the law exists to protect the information and not for surveillence of the citizenry... but we all know that laws are only as good as they are actively enforced, and even then, laws can and are often changed. See also the latest brouhaha over the US Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade.

People will also throw about the ``I have nothing to hide from the government, so why should I care about this?'' excuse to claim that I am over-reacting.

In an extreme scenario, anyone whom the government has a beef with and needing asylum elsewhere can, in theory, be fucked over by having the access to the digital version blocked through a ``technical issue'', real or manufactured, i.e. the said person can be made into an unperson with no effort on the part of the government. This is undesirable for individual liberties. It does not matter if you have ``nothing to hide''---in the face of power, if any one of us in the minority is not safe, then none of us are safe for the sole reason that we will never know when we might end up being in the minority.

A more prosaic scenario is that the reliance of a highly complex and expensive device like a laptop or mobile phone with associated high dependencies of network connection and associated working infrastructure is just begging to be taken down---all the benefits of centralisation are also weaknesses in times where these very documents are needed the most, in crises where complex supply chains and infocomm infrastructures are strained to their limits. It also places an undue amount of pressure on the economically less able to pay more indirect taxes through having to fund for all these devices/services just to exercise their rights and privileges as citizens. That is not right either.

It is also much easier [relatively speaking] to preserve a physical document over a digital one. The skeptical can be asked to do a simple exercise: can you easily retrieve the file that you saved into your 3½ ″ floppy disk? And no, this is not a fake problem---``bit rot'' is a real issue for modern day archivists who are trying to preserve the digital history. The rule allows people to download the digital certificate for safe-keeping in their physical device, but considering how the average person operates, the digital copy is bound to end up in some third-party cloud storage provider...

...which totally nullifies all the argument about having a centralised system for security purposes.

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

This does not affect me directly---I'm so old that my birth certificate will never be affected by this new rule. But it does make me think even harder of having a child in the first place, not that I want to have children.

Each day that passes by just keeps reinforcing the fallenness of this world, and how we are all really just slaves. The only difference is that the figleaf that was keeping us from this realisation is starting to get increasingly transparent the more the polities start applying their traditional skulduggery using infocomm technology.

*sigh*

Till the next update.

NEW FONE WHO DIS? Season 2

Oof. New phone, new contract, pay 29% more, but gain 15× more mobile data, 4× more storage, 2× more RAM, and a whole host of other benefits.

Eh, just check out this comparison between my old work horse of the Pixel 2 XL versus my new Xiaomi 12.

If I had a choice, I wouldn't be upgrading. But there is little choice to be made. The old super-grandfathered plan was really too pricey for what it was providing, and I am getting concerned over the fate of my Pixel 2 XL, considering its age. I've had it since 2018-08-22, and today is 2022-05-05... that makes it roughly 3.7 years. That's a pretty long time for a daily carry device.

But who am I kidding? I just wanted a new start.

Let's see... new EZ-Link card (qvssref sebz bar gung V tbg sbe fbzrbar ryfr orsber), new ink (qvssref sebz gur bar V hfrq gb jevgr yrggref jvgu orsber), new phone (n qvssrerag qrivpr sebz gur bar V hfrq gb fraq fubeg zrffntrf qnvyl jvgu orsber), new gig bag (qvssref sebz gur bar gung unq cngpurf znqr ol fbzrbar orsber), and of course, a new job.

Almost all the utilitarian things that have undergone their associated wear and tear have been replaced, their sentimentality pushed aside.

Stuffie though... Stuffie is still the same. I love Stuffie---Stuffie is irrevocably mine, a gift for me to keep. Stuffie reminds me of the good times, and reminds me that happiness sometimes do come in small packages, and is what you want to make of it. My new work place (it's not really new considering that I've worked there for four months now) does not have enough table space to set up my takoyarnie army, but remember that I only started bringing out more and more critters to keep my sanity when things started to go sideways for whatever reason.

Anyway... yes. A new start, in many ways.

One can keep telling oneself that one has moved on, but one never has truly moved on until one has taken actions to demonstrate that one has moved on. And the more I keep thinking/talking about this, the more narcissistic this all feels.

Not sure what to feel about that.

There are strange stirrings from the US, and I'm not comfortable about it. I had said some time back that it would be years before I was comfortable to visit the US, and it seems that what I had said then holds true even today. There are also other odd rumblings elsewhere, and overall the vibes I'm getting from the world at large Is Not Good. I think too many people who are in power have gotten too drunk with their power, and that many have convinced themselves that they have subjugated the very people that they were supposed to lead (not rule over, mind you) to be completely pliant.

I fear that there might have been some rather serious miscalculations, and that the masses are slowly building up in their restlessness against what they believe to be injustices. It does not matter if they are politically conservative or liberal---the voices of dissent are rising from the quiet background noise to something that is metaphorically audible as whispers. Soon it will reach talking, and then shouting, before an invisible level is breached and outright violence breaks out.

Oh, I didn't mean just the US for that matter; I do mean it for places all over where there is seemingly no good trade-off from the oppression. People are willing to accept some oppression if whatever they get in return is considered to be of greater value. I am not declaring that they are wrong/right---I am merely making an observation.

Well... there's not much that I can do except to pray. Not to pray for world peace, but to pray that I fulfill God's purpose for me here and then fuck off to Judgement Day before reaching into eternity.

Fallen world is fallen. We can fight entropy, but it will always win in the end.

Always.

朝顔の伝説

Okay, it's stupid o'clock, but lemme tell you a story.

A story of how I got hold of my bottle of asa-gao iroshizuku ink.

For a long time, I was using the Pelikan 4001 Blue-Black (packed in 62.5 mℓ bottles). This was a relative cheap and wonderful work horse ink that I used for my Pelikan Souverän M400. As seen in the sample scribbles from nearly 13 years ago, the colour is lovely.

But the recent years of using the same make of ink saw a general degradation. Gone was the blue---what was left behind was some ugly fading gray mess that I found to be utterly disgusting and unreflective of what it used to be. It might have been due to an exceptionally old batch of ink (the bottle was white capped instead of black), or it could be due to my changing taste, I just didn't like what I saw.

It also didn't help that the new Pelikan inks were more complicated. While Pelikan 4001 inks are available now (albeit in smaller than 62.5 mℓ bottles after their rebranding), they were much harder to find in SIN city. Much of the Pelikan ink series revolved around their ``Edelstein'' series, which all had wonderfully misleading colour names, super high price point (we're talking SGD30 vs SGD4 here), and in smaller quantities (50 mℓ vs 62.5 mℓ, resulting in a comparisong of 0.60 SGD/mℓ compared to 0.064 SGD/mℓ) during a time where I was more price conscious.

Which brings me to today (or thereabouts). I was running very low on my blue-black ink, and decided to finally look for a replacement. I didn't bother with trying to hunt down the Pelikan stuff, but instead turned to the iroshizuku series of inks from Pilot. The price point was similar to that of the Pelikan Edelstein series, and had similar wacky abstract names. But there was one big difference that swayed me towards going for the iroshizuku inks.

I knew I could find them easily.

I saw them in Tokyu Hands before, and I was pretty sure that I had seen them in Books Kinokuniya as well; a prior search online also revealed CityLuxe as another potential source with physical presence (I've not physically checked them out). As a brand presence, Japan's Pilot was definitely more visible compared to Germany's Pelikan in SIN city.

And so I found myself en route via bus to Jewel Changi, where a larger Tokyu Hands branch was at. The trip was not worthy of mention, other than the observation that there were still people in this time and age who would watch videos at full volume in a public but enclosed area with no headphones. I zoomed in to the store, and went to where I remembered they stored the inks (second store floor), and checked out the asa-gao labelled drawer.

Wait a minute---that's no asa-gao! It was a yama-guri for some reason. That made no sense... and so I looked about. There were 15 mℓ bottles of asa-gao next to the transparent drawers for the 50 mℓ bottles, but those were sold more dear with stranger requirements (need to purchase 3 at once for a grand total of about SGD33, which works out to 0.73 SGD/mℓ, compared to the 0.44 SGD/mℓ for the 50 mℓ bottle at about SGD22), and there was no way to tell if one could buy three of the same colour in the first place. I looked about as much as I could, and was going to settle for a tsuki-yo (sort of a more blue type of blue-black) instead. As I walked about, I made a side discovery of the black 4.0--8.5mm uniPAINT marker PX-30 was from Tokyu Hands instead of Popular, and picked two up.

Then I went over to the fountain pens corner and just browsed the display drawers. And there, tucked in a little unnoticed corner, was a 50 mℓ bottle of asa-gao just sitting there, without its gray string necktie.

I was... shocked, to put it mildly. It fuelled my hopes, and so I boldly asked the staff member who was operating the automated engraving machine if there were any more asa-gao stocks left as I could not find any among the drawers. He acknowledged my question and told me to wait a little as he was servicing the other customer's engraving requests. I nodded in assent, and watched him multitask on the controlling computer to pull up their internal stock take. After settling the other customer's needs, he turned to me and informed me that the system said that they still had stock, and that he would head out to the stacks to find it for me.

I waited eagerly.

He came back after a while with an ashen look on his face, apologetically telling me that he could not locate the stock.

This was when I pointed out that bottle in the corner of the display drawer, and asked him if that counted as being part of the stock as well. There was a chance that it was part of the display and not for sale---it was a display drawer for fountain pens after all, possibly with the ink wells surrounding them as a kind of decoration.

He was a bit stunned, did a double-take, and realised that the bottle was indeed of asa-gao after removing it from the drawer to examine it. And he said that yes it was that stock that the system said they had---he hadn't realised that they would put a bottle so far away from the rest of the bottles.

I thanked him profusely, and headed off to the cashier's on the first store floor and paid for my purchase.

To say I was delighted is probably a severe understatement. I could only thank God quietly for having such good fortune. I ended my time in Jewel Changi by heading off to NY Verdan Bar and Grill, where I enjoyed a lovely steak, tater tots, apple cider, and a tiramisu.

The bus trip home was also not very noteworthy, other than the further observation of people still watching videos on their phones at full volume in public, coupled with singing(?!) in the bus.

🤦‍♂️

I changed the ink on my Pelikan Souverän M400, and wrote a new dead-tree journal entry. The colour difference was literal night and day (asa-gao literally means ``Morning Glory''). Since it is my dead-tree journal, I can't really post any samples here. Take my word that it is a much brighter blue than the blue-black from the scribble samples from before.

This entry is starting to run a little too long, so I'll just add one last point before posting it: I could have gone through this entire purchasing process online, but I don't see a need to do so when I live in a place as accessible as SIN city. Besides, it's yet another 4-day weekend---I do need to get out of the apartment to do something just to ensure I don't get a fat ass.

Anyway, it's getting real late. It's still a public holiday... today (Tue), and I would like to do some stuff later on too. And thus, sleep is still needed, remembering that I generally do not sleep past sun-up.

Till the next update then.

Edit: Here's a small scan of the sample after I have had some sleep:

Lovely colour, ain't it?

May Day May Day May Day...?

It's the First of May. Jonathan Coulton has some choice words for this date (and season). Before you go crazy, I just want to point out the lyrics are NSFW, so don't listen this in public with no earphones.

One really shouldn't be listening to music with no earphones as a general rule of thumb anyway...

There are just some phrases that auto-trigger some memories. ``First of May'' is one of those, ``I'm on a Boat'' is another, ``Long long time ago...'' is yet one more.

Songs that I grew up to? Close... more like songs I aged into adult-hood to. Those were some fun times.

Diversions aside, the past two days of the weekend was on a different level of comfiness. I overdid Hack Day last Wednesday among other things, and I paid the price with some really messed up head space. But despite all that tiredness and weirdness, I came to a startling realisation.

I honestly do not know how to be a husband of any sort, godly or otherwise.

For some reason, when I started to picture myself in a domestic relationship, I suddenly came to a blank. A literal blank. I just... couldn't see it happening.

It wasn't even the case of ``oh I'm out of a relationship and thus cannot picture who my wife would be''. It was literally a ``I just cannot see myself living in a domestic arrangement''.

And I don't know why.

Does it terrify me? A little... not enough to be unduly worried, but enough to realise that eternal singleness might be the true life path of mine.

I mean, I've been readying myself for that for quite a while.

It's okay---people are terrifying. Trust is not something to be given freely---look where I ended up each time I decided to trust someone. Anyone who claims otherwise has been exceedingly lucky, or has managed to block every single bad memory of trust that has failed.

------

In other news, I've started on SanctuaryRPG (Black Edition). I have mine on GOG.com for a while, and I must say, it has that ``head empty---no thoughts'' type of fun that I crave after working my head too hard. It is reminiscent of some MUDs that I played before, and is related to an old idea I had about a text-based duelling system. I still haven't finished a run, but this is to be expected.

Anyway, the weather conditions are starting to get ridiculous once more. Night time interior temperatures are at 30 °C, with humidity in the 60% to 70% range. Without air-conditioning, it's just going to be a grind to get enough sleep.

Tomorrow and the day after are both public holidays, one being the extension of today's Labour Day holiday (being on a Sunday and what-not), the other being Hari Raya Puasa. In calendars that were printed much earlier, the two gazetted day-offs were swapped because Hari Raya Puasa was originally slated to be on Monday, which pushed the day off-in-lieu for Labour Day to a Tuesday. This was eventually rectified through the various religious authorities who did their usual computations/observations to reach their associated declarations.

Urgh... I think that's all I can write for now. It's getting muggy.

Till the next update then.

How Did They Mess Up Making Public Transport Payment Actually Convenient?

I spent a large part of my off-hours in the evening attempting to sort out the mess that is auto-reload of my new EZ-link card.

For the busy, I failed: there will be no auto-reloading of my EZ-link card from now on.

For the less busy, here's a longer narrative.

SIN city uses the contactless (wrongly named, since we still need to contact the card to the reader to ensure it gets read properly anyway) card that is run by the EZ-link company. This EZ-link card has a built-in ``expiry date'' of around five years---I suppose there's a technical reason, if not for the policy one of ensuring that any new technology will be rolled out eventually without having to support too many legacy cards out there.

The normal way of topping it up (or ``reloading'' the said card) is to use one of the ticketing machines found ubiquitously at MRT stations and bus interchanges and pay using one of the standard cashless payment mechanisms to add value to the card.

Then there's the auto-reload way of linking it via a GIRO order. For the confused, a GIRO (short for General Interbank Recurring Order) is a system that allows direct payment via bank transfers within SIN city between participating banks and associated billing organisations. This system of auto-reloading for the travel cards has been in place since the late 1990s, from the old magnetic farecards of yesteryear to the current generation of CEPAS cards (check out this CNA article for some details).

To say that it is convenient is to severely undersell it.

Fastforward to today.

My old card is about to expire this year, and so it was time to get a replacement. It's my third overall card ever since the contactless farecards were in use (or my second replacement). I did my due diligence of heading to the EZ-link website to find out about how to enable the beloved feature in my new card.

To my horror, I discovered several things:

1. They phased out GIRO for regular cards, (but kept it for concession cards);
2. Any auto-top up required the installation of yet another app onto one's mobile phone with its associated finagling; and
3. There was a severe restriction of payment methods available for actually doing the top-up.

I verified this myself while going through the process to see if there was any way around it.

I couldn't install the app in my standard phone because my Google Play account was tied to the US for some reason, and the app limits itself only to SIN city Google accounts. Changing countries involved surrendering payment details to the Google Play store, an action that I refuse to partake because I do not intend to purchase anything from the Play store (need to know basis). And even if I did, there were a whole bunch of other waiting times that were just not worth it.

That was not that big a problem---I had an alternative phone that could set it up.

Then I underwent the whole song-and-dance of adding a payment method. I only have a debit card, and the app allowed me to proceed with the whole registration process, only to fail when I tried assigning the card to the auto-top up. Now the debit card that is verified (through Stripe, no less), but is grayed out.

What does it mean? I have no fucking clue.

Reading the reviews, it turns out that the app used to allow debit cards too... but they were mysteriously removed. So now the app is effectively useless for anyone who doesn't have a credit card. There were also other reports on how the NFC feature was a hit-and-miss, and there were weird double-deduction issues for payment, with resolutions taking as long as three weeks.

🤦‍♂️

I feel like I've dodged a bullet there. It's okay, I can be a peasant and just top it up manually. It works out to be around SGD50 a month for me anyway, so it's not that big a deal. The routes I take tend to pass by some kind of ticketing machine, and there's always the ATM top-up route if I'm really lazy.

``But MT, why don't you have a credit card?''

Good question. Short answer: I don't feel like getting one. I don't spend often enough to justify holding one of these ticking time bombs that implode if I don't pay enough attention to it.

There was an alternative plan of using the so-called SimplyGo account-based payment option. They touted a lot of benefits, but the actual implementation sounded even dodgier to me than the stunts that EZ-link was pulling.

No feedback on the amount left on entry/exit, even heavier dependence on the existence of a mobile phone (with associated app and payment method), more finagling to ensure that the correct payment method is used, and the creation of a definite point of failure that is the mobile phone with dodgy NFC capabilities.

Yeah... hard pass.

I did muse that if I had to have a bloody good reason to spend nearly 100k on a new car, it would be to avoid all these increasingly bullshit nonsense for basic public transport travel.

And yes, I was sufficiently annoyed at the whole sordid affair that I took the time to write something here as we near stupid o'clock, instead of turning in early in preparation for yet another work day of meetings.

Till the next update then.

``I'm Tired, Boss''

``I'm tired, boss. Tired of being on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. I'm tired of never having me a buddy to be with to tell me where we's going to, coming from, or why. Mostly, I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world... every day. There's too much of it. It's like pieces of glass in my head... all the time. Can you understand?''

---Stephen King, The Green Mile

There are days that I feel like that. Is today one of the days? It is a little too early to tell.

That scene as played by Michael Clarke Duncan in the film adaptation was one that stayed with me throughout all these years. A quiet, simple scene that was full of emotion that I feel ill-equipped to describe properly, despite being some kind of a quasi-writer myself (or was it just a hack, in the sense of the generalised ``hacker'' that I keep alluding to?).

I do feel the compelling urge to just want to hug something or someone and just curl up and sleep with it/them in my arms, forgetting about the world, even for a moment, and feeling that sense of safety and comfort that seems sorely missing in my life these days.

``Eh MT, thought you were a Christian? Doesn't God provide you with that kind of support? If you can still feel like this, does it mean that you're not really that faithful a believer after all, and are just as phoney as those who proclaim the prosperity gospel, right?''

It... doesn't work that way. God's promise in the form of Jesus' sacrifice at the cross and His subsequent resurrection is about fulfilling the law of having sinful humankind be reconciled with God, after the Fall of Adam and Eve for disobeying God. It is about future glory, and the cultivation of the soul through the Holy Spirit to be ready for when we are done with our time on the mortal plane.

It was never about achieving some kind of ``heaven on earth'' state, where there is no pain, no anguish in the now. As long as I am still bound by my flesh, I can and will still suffer whatever nonsensical temptations that my flesh brings with it to me---that's the core concept behind being a disciple of Christ. The realisation that we are all sinners, and even though Jesus has redeemed us from God's wrath through His death and resurrection, we need to live up to our regenerate selves through taking up our cross daily, to deny ourselves against sin, to follow Him.

So yes, while my fate in the far future into eternity is assured, I still need to live through this life first.

Speaking of living through this life first, I recently read Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God's Grand Story by Christopher Yuan. The key takeaway from it is that an ego-centric identity is the true sin that we should all be aware of and work against. Part of the transformation of a believer is to shift the ego away from personal self-interest towards one that is God-centric (or more specifically from the New Testament, that is Jesus-centric since Jesus being both Man and God is infinitely more identifiable by us as humans). People who start declaring this identity or that identity, or prematurely judging people in terms of their actions as being sinful or otherwise have both sinned, no matter their self-declared intentions, the sin being completely ignoring God's ultimate moral authority over all. That as believers in a church body, it is our duty to help our brothers and sisters in Christ to redirect themselves towards a life that is centred upon Jesus, while keeping in mind that we are no better than they ourselves, and that all are sinners who need Jesus to save them (see Matthew 7:1--29). Religious hypocrisy is one of the biggest pet peeves of Jesus that He keeps pointing out to in the gospels, and it makes me sad that despite having the entirety of the Holy Bible today, we still see that as a norm.

Dr Yuan does a better job at explaining all these than I---he is with a PhD on this topic after all---and I think that this overarching theme used in reframing of what has been largely a series of cherry-picked skirmishes is helpful in seeing the world anew.

It does give me comfort. But again, I am still human, and need to work through some crap still.

------

Theological discursions aside, I went back to my Minecraft map and did some quality of life adjustments. I moved my Nether wart plot to make space to grow me some cocoa beans that I had grabbed from my deforestation runs in the jungle biome way out in the map. After doing that, I built a couple of automated farms for my melons and pumpkins, and situated them on top of my manual farm.

The last thing I did was to build a small and simple lava farm in preparation for future builds where I would need stupid amounts of lava without necessarily having to hunt for these pools in the world. Unlike the video that is present in the linked-to page, mine is literally just an enclosed lava source block with attached pointed dripstone and a cauldron beneath it. I do have 2 double-chests worth of lava from deep mining before, but it's always good to have a renewable source somewhere within reach as well.

Anyway, I think I'll go for a ride on my bicycle. It feels right, and I've been too tired throughout the week to do so---time to rectify that.

Till the next update.

A Short Entry

Today was rough.

There were times when I was just sitting there, realising that the past had no meaning other than random pangs of pain from memories from those who hurt me, and that the future was not worth it to look at.

It didn't help that I was reading Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, and was at the part where Fat Charlie was prevented from reaching home by Spider, where the latter took the opportunity to... get fresh with the former's fiancée.

That made me irrationally angry.

I'm feeling a bit better as I write this, but that dark cloud still hovers nearby.

I know, because I can feel it.

Anyway, perhaps it is time to do some mindless click booming with Ghostlore.

Sorry this entry is this short. Till the next update.

End of 4-day Long Weekend

And with that, this very long 4-day weekend comes to a close, and the usual daily grind returns once more in about ten or so hours.

Was it a ``productive'' break? Depends on what it means by ``productive''---if it is referring to getting work done, then hell no because I refuse to work over non-working hours if I can help it for the two simple reasons that 1. life is too short to be spent on working for not my owned business and 2. I'm not paid for over-time anyway. Moreover, work is never-ending---if work truly ends, then either one is finally made irrelevant at the job that one was working in, or the company/business is at a dead end and have literally nothing else to do.

Now, if ``productive'' was meant in a way that is more tailor-made to the fact that it was a break, then in some ways, it had been quite productive. I completed Psychonauts 2, and by ``complete'' I do mean 100%-ing it too, collecting all that is collectible and maxing out all my character upgrades.

I like Psychonauts 2. It's a 3D platformer with RPG elements, a genre that I honestly don't play much of due to the general requirement of using a controller [with twin analogue sticks] to operate. The closest in genre to it is those third-person action RPGs (think The Witcher 3, something from the Batman/Arkham series), but those I tended to play with keyboard and mouse... just because. 3D platformers with controllers are something of a recent thing for me, with the latest prior to Psychonauts 2 being Bayonetta for the PC, which I abandoned about half-way through due to some serious input lag issues.

I enjoyed the exploratory aspects of Psychonauts 2. The combat mechanics were a little clunky at times since certain enemies could only be dealt with using one of the eight skills (that were mapped to the four shoulder buttons/triggers for activation). Most of the time though, three of the four PSI-based weapons (or skills) are more or less permanently assigned---one for the AOE fire damage, one for effectively ``fast move'', and one for medium range shooting, leaving only one button for whatever ``special'' skill needed. I usually assign the slow-time skill to that button---that slowing of time allows a higher relative DPS to be applied to the enemies, which is always great and is a more general but effective tactic.

I'm bad at the actual platforming though, mostly because judging distances are hard even when one has control over the camera---this was made particularly worse with moving platforms over void with collectibles (that cast no shadow) overhead. Thankfully, there was an option in the game menu that allowed the negation of fall damage from failed platforming, and that made the gameplay smoother than it should, given my not-so-great 3D platforming capabilities.

It was a fun game, and I definitely enjoyed the 40+ hours that I had spent in it.

------

In other news, Vampire Survivors introduced a new mechanic called ``Arcana'' to their basic gameplay loop. At this point, I'm not really sure what to feel about it---it does add a little variety to the builds, but it is starting to feel like it may reach Binding of Isaac levels of randomised gameplay, which sort of defeats the quick fun that is the draw of Vampire Survivors? It's related to the issue I have with the cross-game skills meta---there is really no reason why the order of purchase of a skill upgrade should matter in the cost of getting the next available level. What I mean is, there should be no difference in the overall cost of (say) upgrading in the order ``ABC'' as opposed to ``BCA'', or any other order, for that matter, for the three cross-game skills of A, B, and C.

------

On a separate note, Ghostlore is finally in Early Access stage on Steam. Ghostlore is a game made in SIN city, and is based on the mythology of the SEA region. It's a hack-and-slash built along the same vein as ye olde Diablo, but with some interesting mechanics that differ from the regular skill tree. I tried their demo some time back and found it interesting enough to keep an eye out on, and when they finally released their Early Access a few days ago, I just snapped it.

There are some instabilities at the moment, and I will probably play a bit more on it in a few days once the more obvious bugs are fixed. I think this might be a cool game to look forward to, if the developers keep up what they have done so far.

------

Okay, game-related stuff aside, there is little else to talk about over the four-day long weekend. I mean, okay I attended church service for Good Friday in person, and the Easter service this morning via live-stream, but those aren't exactly things that I generally write about here anyway. I mean, it's a worship service to God... the general contents are more or less the same, and while there is definitely reflection involved with the message that was preached, much of it probably falls into the ``better to put them into the paper journal instead'' category.

I think that's about it for now. Till the next update.

Good Friday

Today is Good Friday.

It is the day that we remember the crucifixion of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. He died on the cross as propitiation for our sins, and through His work on the cross, we are now reconciled with God and have eternal life.

``But MT, this does not make any sense! There is no scientific evidence to prove any of your statements here!''

If I were trying to convince someone [who values the scientific method] with my statement, then I admit that there are no scientific evidence that can be provided ever, for the simple reason that Christ's entering of the world (as divinity entering humanity through history, as Pastor likes to remind us) is an event that cannot be replicated/repeated the way scientific experiments can be. There are many different types of evidence out there, and each of them serve a slightly different purpose in how and what it is that they can support the claims.

God is Creator (another unprovable statement within science), and as such He is situated outside of the natural world (much like how the system administrator of a Linux operating system sits outside of the operating system proper). He encompasses all that is knowable, eventually knowable, and never knowable, by us. He is as real to me as any phenomenon that has actual effects but unexplainable causes to you---the moniker ``God'' is what we have chosen to give Him while referring to Him. His own name for Himself is simply I AM, a simple logical axiomatic assertion that self-substantiates with no need for anything else within the logic framework.

To refuse Him is to refute that single statement that He is, and there will never be a way to prove/disprove that within the confines of what we have to work with. It is, in many senses of the word, a leap of faith, something that one has to make up their minds on to know it ``deep within their bones''.

``Okay MT, you don't have scientific evidence... fine. You claim historicity... then show me the historic evidence!''

The Holy Bible exists. It is the inspired Word of God that is without error. It holds Truth in it---the Truth of what it means to be a human in relation to the literal pinnacle of the Moral Good. The New Testament itself encompasses all that is to be said about Jesus, His Ministry and Mission, what happened after, and what will happen in the end. The remarkable thing about it all is the sheer lack of pomp and overall low-keyness of His work. He did not operate the way kings and other people of high places were ``supposed to'' operate befitting of their role---there were no big flashy parades, there was no hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, there was no demand that people adhere to man-made social rules that had no linkage with God's commandments, and more importantly, there was no distinction of who is to be saved and who isn't by birth---it was all by faith and faith alone.

Events in the New Testament can be matched with other contemporary sources to mark their historicity---scholars have been doing that for years now, and it would be a disservice of me to not acknowledge their efforts. If the New Testament did not stand up to the scrutiny of the work earnest scholars, then it would be the biggest news to hit everyone, considering the sheer number of people who claim to be Christians (cultural or otherwise).

``Okay... I suppose I could look up the scholars' works on the New Testament for historicity. What about the Old Testament and its whole lot of contradictions then?''

The Old Testament is the backdrop of who Jesus is (as well as the mission that He is given), and should be understood as a collection of many different types of writings. Some are more documentary of events (in which case, the moral message is not as the text writes, but as the text appeals to---the actual text records the actions of the parties involved), some are actual prophecies embedded in the record of actions taken by people, and some are songs that are sang by the people. Usually it is the pre-historical stuff that gets people grinding their gears (Genesis, specifically).

How does one conceive and record pre-history in a form that exemplifies the start of history? That in itself is a common problem, both in the Old Testament sense, and in a more regular and ``common'' scientific sense in the secular world. To be precise, even the modern treatment of pre-history is superlatively vague---the actual [physical] evidence that we have of pre-history is actually quite patchy, and the further we go back in time, the larger the spans of time between the samples of evidence that we base our inferences from, and all these under the twin assumptions of a 4.5 Ga Earth and 14 Ga universe. Part of the reason lies with the sensitivity of our detection methods---from the crudest of observations we can only surface the largest of events; with gradual refinements of said observations, we start to surface the more mundane. Eventually the sensitivity of our methods can unearth the most mundane of everyday existence, up to the entropic floor where natural processes wipe out all the other micro-evidence.

We get the benefit of updates over time, while the pre-historical stuff in the Old Testament do not. Hence, we are always seemingly applying the most up-to-date understandings against a piece of writing that has been around for longer than 1.5 ka---an unfair comparison, perhaps? More importantly though, the pre-historical account in Genesis serves as an introduction to the more important theme that the Old Testament wants to convey---that humankind are sinful with respect to the Moral Good that is God, and that God cannot not punish Sin due to His very nature.

As for the contradictions, it's just cherry-picking all the way down. Many love to poke fun at the Holy Bible by claiming contradictions by picking a single verse that says (for example) ``killing is bad'' (say Deuteronomy 5:17) and then pointing out that another says ``killing is justified'' (say Exodus 22:19 or something), and declaring a contradiction.

🤦‍♂️

Literal cherry-picking. I don't think I want/need to say more. For the confused, remember that any and all citations, no matter where, need to be taken in context for them to make sense. A single line conveying a thought may be part of a piece of satire (for example) that completely negates what the surface meaning is. In a similar way, just because a particular verse appears in the Holy Bible does not mean that it is a factual assertion---the type of writing that it is appearing in (recording of an event, prophecy, parable, poetry), as well as the immediate context in which the verse is embedded in, needs to be taken into account as well.

``Alright, alright... I can sense your annoyance, MT. But why are you talking about all these now? Are you trying to say something?''

In a way, yes. I am declaring myself as a disciple of Christ, in a fairly public way; and this is after my baptism some time back. But I am also declaring that this declaration is just my own, and that I have no intention of demanding that everyone submit to the same beliefs that I do. I would be happy to share whatever little I know with whomever is interested, bringing them to the more learned Christian when their interest goes beyond what I have comprehended and can explain, and defend my own beliefs to someone up to the point beyond which it is just bickering for the sake of bickering, but I will not follow the paths of those who rely on force and deceit to evangelise the Word of the Lord.

Because for Him, the means is as important as the ends.