Never thought I'd write an entry on my phone in an SMS-like setting, let alone at around 1am. June came and went, and it hasn't been a productive month. Lots of diversions coupled with terribly warm and humid weather meant that I was always trying to find something else to do.
Work has been alright -- I've been coasting along on auto-pilot for a while and it's about time to dig the spurs in a little to push things over the current gravity well that comes from being in limbo between funding tranches and a less-than-obvious engagement strategy with potential partners. Frankly, it's not the most ideal situation for my operational efficiency -- reminds me too much of the nebulous direction that I'd experienced in grad school, where the direction that I think I was heading was totally not where I was heading. There will come a day where that traumatic experience will be gone from me, but today is not that day.
I've been taking French lessons on and off on Duolingo, a web site built by Dr Luis von Ahn, an old teacher of mine back when I was still an undergraduate in CMU. No real reason on why, except perhaps the feeling that it is time to expand my understanding of the Romance languages. Incidentally, I've also started on Spanish, and am hoping that the similarities will help rather than hinder progress. Maybe this is my way of preparing for Finnegans Wake, to be read some time in the unknown future.
Ah well. I think I'm sick of lying prone and propping myself on my elbows to type this all out on a tiny phone. Till the next update.
Monday, June 29, 2015
SMS Musing #7
Wide awake from perspiring too much:
Monday, June 15, 2015
Typewriterisms Part Deux
First, read typewriterisms.
So I sat down and decided to work on the second part of what I had written in that old post. For reference, here's a Courier-based (non-jitter) version:
At first, I tried to attack the problem by trying to figure out how to encode and embed a pan-unicode font, which in our case is GNU Unifont. Then I realised I had two problems: I had to vectorise the raster format of the GNU Unifont (no easy task considering the tricks used to mimic a higher resolution for the CJK ideographs via a careful play of negative spaces), and I had to somehow shove that into a dictionary in the PostScript file to be referred to by the page layout program. I spent some time looking at all that and it all seemed like too much work.
Then I discovered the image PostScript command and figured that I could just render the GNU Unifont as a monochrome bitmap instead.
I put together a database from the GNU Unifont source hex files (and the combining characters list for all the diacritics) and slowly put together an increasingly sophisticated sequence of line renderers. With that (and some numerical tweaking on the driver program to make it look like lpr-emu.py), I present the output of ulpr-emu.py, a Unicode aware monospaced font ``typewriter'' renderer. Here's the output with the same input as before:
Kind of boring, I know. Apart from the different looking glyphs, there isn't anything particularly Unicode about it. But here's a render of the lyrics to 粉雪 by レミオロメン:
That's almost pure Unicode (technically UTF-8 with CJK ideograms).
I don't think I'm going to add that jitter thing to the rendering process this time. This can be seen as the prelude towards my 简谱 rendering system. I'm still debating whether to release ulpr-emu.py, since it is using the GNU Unifont dataset. But we'll see how it all turns out.
Till the next update.
Edit: I've released the sources.
So I sat down and decided to work on the second part of what I had written in that old post. For reference, here's a Courier-based (non-jitter) version:
At first, I tried to attack the problem by trying to figure out how to encode and embed a pan-unicode font, which in our case is GNU Unifont. Then I realised I had two problems: I had to vectorise the raster format of the GNU Unifont (no easy task considering the tricks used to mimic a higher resolution for the CJK ideographs via a careful play of negative spaces), and I had to somehow shove that into a dictionary in the PostScript file to be referred to by the page layout program. I spent some time looking at all that and it all seemed like too much work.
Then I discovered the image PostScript command and figured that I could just render the GNU Unifont as a monochrome bitmap instead.
I put together a database from the GNU Unifont source hex files (and the combining characters list for all the diacritics) and slowly put together an increasingly sophisticated sequence of line renderers. With that (and some numerical tweaking on the driver program to make it look like lpr-emu.py), I present the output of ulpr-emu.py, a Unicode aware monospaced font ``typewriter'' renderer. Here's the output with the same input as before:
Kind of boring, I know. Apart from the different looking glyphs, there isn't anything particularly Unicode about it. But here's a render of the lyrics to 粉雪 by レミオロメン:
That's almost pure Unicode (technically UTF-8 with CJK ideograms).
I don't think I'm going to add that jitter thing to the rendering process this time. This can be seen as the prelude towards my 简谱 rendering system. I'm still debating whether to release ulpr-emu.py, since it is using the GNU Unifont dataset. But we'll see how it all turns out.
Till the next update.
Edit: I've released the sources.
Friday, June 05, 2015
Pens
Ah June. The month of the hot weather. The month of the start of a really serious case of heat, haze, and humidity. The month where school-going children get their first major reprieve from the academic year. The month that... I could go on, but it's pointless.
What I mean to say is, it's 2015, and June. So, an entry is in order, and what better thing to talk about than the fountain pen and penmanship in general?
I got my first ``proper'' fountain pen back in 2009, and it has been nearly 6 years since. I never looked back---I've been using my fountain pen for almost all forms of writing, save cheque writing because fountain pens do not allow the underlying carbon copy to record the transaction correctly.
Man does it take me back to look at that writing sample from the past. I've fixed my cursive since then. Specifically, my capital `I', `F', `Q', `T', `J', `H', `A', `N', small `r', `f' have been fixed to conform to something more traditional looking. The reason for that was due to a reply from T-Mobile some time back, when I wrote a handwritten letter asking for a waiver of some fees due to me not being in the US any more and that I had already cancelled the phone account---the details didn't matter as much as what happened in my address. The first letter of my street name was misread as ``Fl'' instead of ``H'', which made me seriously reconsider how I was forming my words.
Of course, later on I adjusted my writing even more because I realised that there was a very good reason to have a ``standardised'' cursive script, and that the form that I was using was far from being standardised. In fact, it was some kind of bastardised form of pseudo-calligraphic-cursive-printed nonsense which was ugly, and more importantly, prone to misreads like the anecdote I referred to earlier. So I fixed them as best as I could, and I think that they look a little better now. Which of course segues (I adore this word---it does not sound like [SEG-ewws] but more like [SEG-ways]) into the other thing I want to talk about, that is, penmanship.
I'm not sure about the current school curriculum in SIN city, but back in the day, I remembered that we took up some form of cursive writing in class as part of English lessons. I believe it was in primary three or four that we were first introduced to cursive writing. I didn't really care for it much, ended up doing lots of printing, until I reached primary six where my awesome English teacher Mr Lin Min would basically be writing in cursive for everything. Note that these were the days where the ``word processor'' was mostly ye olde typewriter, and often times it was much faster to write notes out for the students with pen and paper instead of relying on the typewriter. The typewritten texts were reserved for the massive vocabularly lists, things that were better suited for the rigid formatting that typewriters are awesome at, but I digress.
In a world where reaching for a word processor is as convenient as coughing, it would seem that penmanship is dated at best and completely irrelevant at worst. I disagree with that thought for a variety of reasons. Logorrhea is the chief symbol of our times, as people (including me!) will happily type hundreds upon hundreds of meaningless drivel in order to convey a simple point, defenestrating conciseness of diction. Part of the reason for that is that typing on a word processor (I'm using this in the most general form of the noun) is quite effortless as compared to picking up a pen and then writing it down on a piece of paper. In the time it takes to write up this entire blog entry, I can probably write down only half of what I have typed up right here. It sounds counter-intuitive then to say that penmanship is even more needed now than before, but it is true---requiring an actual effort to put thoughts down on paper will skew the writer to actually sit down and think carefully what he/she wants to say before finding the right expressions and thus writing them down. This will naturally yield a much concise and pithy piece of writing.
Thus, it is still possible (and preferable even) that a handwritten essay of five hundred words is more worthy of reading than a thousand-word essay that was typed up in a word processor on a computer.
Pithiness aside, penmanship also trains one thing that we are sorely lacking in this day of the ``service industry''---fine motor control. Back in the manufacturing/artisan era (industrial/pre-industrial society), people did lots of fine craft work with their hands. That requires some rather exquisite fine motor control. Musicians, artists, they all have to keep the fine motor control up if they want to be successful at what they do. Even the peasant needs fine motor control to repair their own gear, weave their baskets and what not. But these days, with lots of push-button automation, we are finding that the need for such activities is gradually fading away. Writing is among the last bastions of easily accessible fine motor control activities that is left. While it doesn't necessarily mean that one ought to write lots of essays with the pen, it does mean that one should take the opportunity to write whenever they can, just so that they maintain their fine motor skills. Need a list? Don't pull up the damn word processor (or spreadsheet program; ugh) and just handwrite it. Need to inform someone something? Write a quick memo instead of sending yet another email---this is especially true when the person is like... a family member.
Anyway, I'm just ranting and losing steam. I think I'll stop here and move on. Till the next update then.
What I mean to say is, it's 2015, and June. So, an entry is in order, and what better thing to talk about than the fountain pen and penmanship in general?
I got my first ``proper'' fountain pen back in 2009, and it has been nearly 6 years since. I never looked back---I've been using my fountain pen for almost all forms of writing, save cheque writing because fountain pens do not allow the underlying carbon copy to record the transaction correctly.
Man does it take me back to look at that writing sample from the past. I've fixed my cursive since then. Specifically, my capital `I', `F', `Q', `T', `J', `H', `A', `N', small `r', `f' have been fixed to conform to something more traditional looking. The reason for that was due to a reply from T-Mobile some time back, when I wrote a handwritten letter asking for a waiver of some fees due to me not being in the US any more and that I had already cancelled the phone account---the details didn't matter as much as what happened in my address. The first letter of my street name was misread as ``Fl'' instead of ``H'', which made me seriously reconsider how I was forming my words.
Of course, later on I adjusted my writing even more because I realised that there was a very good reason to have a ``standardised'' cursive script, and that the form that I was using was far from being standardised. In fact, it was some kind of bastardised form of pseudo-calligraphic-cursive-printed nonsense which was ugly, and more importantly, prone to misreads like the anecdote I referred to earlier. So I fixed them as best as I could, and I think that they look a little better now. Which of course segues (I adore this word---it does not sound like [SEG-ewws] but more like [SEG-ways]) into the other thing I want to talk about, that is, penmanship.
I'm not sure about the current school curriculum in SIN city, but back in the day, I remembered that we took up some form of cursive writing in class as part of English lessons. I believe it was in primary three or four that we were first introduced to cursive writing. I didn't really care for it much, ended up doing lots of printing, until I reached primary six where my awesome English teacher Mr Lin Min would basically be writing in cursive for everything. Note that these were the days where the ``word processor'' was mostly ye olde typewriter, and often times it was much faster to write notes out for the students with pen and paper instead of relying on the typewriter. The typewritten texts were reserved for the massive vocabularly lists, things that were better suited for the rigid formatting that typewriters are awesome at, but I digress.
In a world where reaching for a word processor is as convenient as coughing, it would seem that penmanship is dated at best and completely irrelevant at worst. I disagree with that thought for a variety of reasons. Logorrhea is the chief symbol of our times, as people (including me!) will happily type hundreds upon hundreds of meaningless drivel in order to convey a simple point, defenestrating conciseness of diction. Part of the reason for that is that typing on a word processor (I'm using this in the most general form of the noun) is quite effortless as compared to picking up a pen and then writing it down on a piece of paper. In the time it takes to write up this entire blog entry, I can probably write down only half of what I have typed up right here. It sounds counter-intuitive then to say that penmanship is even more needed now than before, but it is true---requiring an actual effort to put thoughts down on paper will skew the writer to actually sit down and think carefully what he/she wants to say before finding the right expressions and thus writing them down. This will naturally yield a much concise and pithy piece of writing.
Thus, it is still possible (and preferable even) that a handwritten essay of five hundred words is more worthy of reading than a thousand-word essay that was typed up in a word processor on a computer.
Pithiness aside, penmanship also trains one thing that we are sorely lacking in this day of the ``service industry''---fine motor control. Back in the manufacturing/artisan era (industrial/pre-industrial society), people did lots of fine craft work with their hands. That requires some rather exquisite fine motor control. Musicians, artists, they all have to keep the fine motor control up if they want to be successful at what they do. Even the peasant needs fine motor control to repair their own gear, weave their baskets and what not. But these days, with lots of push-button automation, we are finding that the need for such activities is gradually fading away. Writing is among the last bastions of easily accessible fine motor control activities that is left. While it doesn't necessarily mean that one ought to write lots of essays with the pen, it does mean that one should take the opportunity to write whenever they can, just so that they maintain their fine motor skills. Need a list? Don't pull up the damn word processor (or spreadsheet program; ugh) and just handwrite it. Need to inform someone something? Write a quick memo instead of sending yet another email---this is especially true when the person is like... a family member.
Anyway, I'm just ranting and losing steam. I think I'll stop here and move on. Till the next update then.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Be Professional
Well, I was about to write a ranty piece on how discrimination is innate in human nature, and how we as an advanced society (as compared to the past anyway) just learn how to downplay that natural reaction just so we can get along with each other, but seeing these couple of videos made me decide to write something altogether different. First, watch the videos I have in mind:Notice that they are from the same group. No I have no affiliation with them.
The thing is, it is important to treat everyone with the same basic attitude, and to never be condescending. Just because it's the first time you meet someone doesn't mean that the first impression you get is the actual behaviour of the person. It is much better (some might even say professional) to keep an open mind, a neutral stance, and defer judgement till later. Just because she looks like a cute stereotypical ``nerdy'' girl doesn't mean that she isn't in the top class of her art. While the videos were made largely with pranking in mind, they do convey a much deeper lesson to the instructors involved, and it is exactly what I said earlier. The monkey brain in us will naturally condescend others perceived to be physically unintimidating, but the human brain in us must be disciplined enough to override that sentiment and apply the cold hard truth of logic, that sometimes that unassuming exterior hides something superior and thus more dangerous.
What the videos do not show is the other end of the spectrum, where people get all subservient and obsequious in the face of ``authority''. See this next video, which does:Again, it's the monkey brain at work. ``Oh it's a motorcade with important-looking people; I should be as nice as I can because there's someone important in it and important people do not like to get stopped.'' Again, it's a failure of professionalism, where the trained human brain does not triumph over the monkey brain within. Don't get me wrong, the ability to immediately sense authority and adjust one's role accordingly is a useful skill for survival, but when one has a job to do, that job's requirements overrule any of these instinctual habits, particularly when the instinctual habits contradict what the job requires.
Here's a slightly different example on that concept. Take your regular soldier. After filtering out all the fancy euphemisms, a soldier's roles can be reduced to two principles: to kill on demand, to follow orders even if it means their total annihilation. The first goes against our usual social notions of ``acceptable'' behaviour, and the second goes against our innate monkey brain notion of fight/flight. If you run off without following orders to hold the ground and be overrun, you're a deserter---it's unprofessional, and more importantly, it jeopardises other plans that aid in the larger scheme of things.
The crux of it all is merely this: if you are taking up a job, be it a professional driving instructor, martial arts trainer, security personnel, or a soldier, do your job according to what your profession requires and do not let your monkey brain take over. Modern society has little place for monkey brain thinking under the highly specialised job structure we have, but it is an unfortunate trend that is going on now. Much of the cop problems brought up in the US are due to police officers not being professional on their job.
Before we can evolve to the next phase of human society, I think we need to rethink and relook how to be professional all over again. Otherwise that twentieth century notion of ``division of labour'' is no longer applicable and we'll need to come up with something better.
The thing is, it is important to treat everyone with the same basic attitude, and to never be condescending. Just because it's the first time you meet someone doesn't mean that the first impression you get is the actual behaviour of the person. It is much better (some might even say professional) to keep an open mind, a neutral stance, and defer judgement till later. Just because she looks like a cute stereotypical ``nerdy'' girl doesn't mean that she isn't in the top class of her art. While the videos were made largely with pranking in mind, they do convey a much deeper lesson to the instructors involved, and it is exactly what I said earlier. The monkey brain in us will naturally condescend others perceived to be physically unintimidating, but the human brain in us must be disciplined enough to override that sentiment and apply the cold hard truth of logic, that sometimes that unassuming exterior hides something superior and thus more dangerous.
What the videos do not show is the other end of the spectrum, where people get all subservient and obsequious in the face of ``authority''. See this next video, which does:Again, it's the monkey brain at work. ``Oh it's a motorcade with important-looking people; I should be as nice as I can because there's someone important in it and important people do not like to get stopped.'' Again, it's a failure of professionalism, where the trained human brain does not triumph over the monkey brain within. Don't get me wrong, the ability to immediately sense authority and adjust one's role accordingly is a useful skill for survival, but when one has a job to do, that job's requirements overrule any of these instinctual habits, particularly when the instinctual habits contradict what the job requires.
Here's a slightly different example on that concept. Take your regular soldier. After filtering out all the fancy euphemisms, a soldier's roles can be reduced to two principles: to kill on demand, to follow orders even if it means their total annihilation. The first goes against our usual social notions of ``acceptable'' behaviour, and the second goes against our innate monkey brain notion of fight/flight. If you run off without following orders to hold the ground and be overrun, you're a deserter---it's unprofessional, and more importantly, it jeopardises other plans that aid in the larger scheme of things.
The crux of it all is merely this: if you are taking up a job, be it a professional driving instructor, martial arts trainer, security personnel, or a soldier, do your job according to what your profession requires and do not let your monkey brain take over. Modern society has little place for monkey brain thinking under the highly specialised job structure we have, but it is an unfortunate trend that is going on now. Much of the cop problems brought up in the US are due to police officers not being professional on their job.
Before we can evolve to the next phase of human society, I think we need to rethink and relook how to be professional all over again. Otherwise that twentieth century notion of ``division of labour'' is no longer applicable and we'll need to come up with something better.
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Some Music-Related Mumbles
I have an old Nyquist project from my last semester at CMU that I've hosted on my domain for quite a while. Recently, someone emailed me about it to clarify some points of how the library works. Consider me... amused. I suppose it's a good thing that people are actually using stuff that I had put together, right?
On another note, as I was casually looking about dizi resources on the web, I realised that fingering charts are among the most often asked questions. I have probably the most complete fingering charts for the dizi, covering all the basic fingering for all the 5 traditional keys per dizi, and then some. But I suppose it's too complicated for most people, which is funny considering the amount of effort I had put into simplifying the whole shebang. The long and short of it is, the charts make it easy to figure out how to play the dizi chromatically, assuming that one has a decently built dizi to begin with.
I am partial to Ng Teck Seng's (NTS) dizi myself over Dong Xue Hua's (DXH). It's not that DXH makes bad dizi, but that NTS is just more accessible for me, considering that he is a friend of my sifu from back in the day. I prefer dizi that are nimble in response, bright in timbre, and projective in tone, and the NTS ones are excellent for my purposes. I have also spoken with NTS and know that his dizi are crafted with acoustic principles in mind---there is a lot of physics that goes behind each of the bamboo flutes. It makes each instrument very consistent, and that is a very important thing when playing in an orchestra with different genres of pieces to play. A good dizi should consistently be able to reach the equivalent of the high-E note (by concert flute/piccolo fingering---actual pitch is dependent on the native key of the dizi), with the ability to eke out the high-G on occasion as a transient note. All of the NTS dizi that I own have this ability, which goes to say how consistent the workmanship is.
Anyway, that aside, time for more random ranting.
The past week had been quite tiring. I spent a lot time reading up various documentation to gain a deeper insight into the design trade-offs for the various sub-systems that we are intending to put together for the new framework. On the not-work front, I've finished reading Illuminatus!, and am switching over to non-fiction for a while, refreshing my knowledge on economics once again. Once that is done, I think I'll read Hamlet before moving on to some Russian literature (translated of course).
I know that I don't really have much to say, but I suppose it's a good idea to pen some things down here every now and then. After all, should I fall off the net completely (or in a more morbid sense, off this reality), this is one of the few things that are left behind to show that yes I had existed once before.
Till the next update.
On another note, as I was casually looking about dizi resources on the web, I realised that fingering charts are among the most often asked questions. I have probably the most complete fingering charts for the dizi, covering all the basic fingering for all the 5 traditional keys per dizi, and then some. But I suppose it's too complicated for most people, which is funny considering the amount of effort I had put into simplifying the whole shebang. The long and short of it is, the charts make it easy to figure out how to play the dizi chromatically, assuming that one has a decently built dizi to begin with.
I am partial to Ng Teck Seng's (NTS) dizi myself over Dong Xue Hua's (DXH). It's not that DXH makes bad dizi, but that NTS is just more accessible for me, considering that he is a friend of my sifu from back in the day. I prefer dizi that are nimble in response, bright in timbre, and projective in tone, and the NTS ones are excellent for my purposes. I have also spoken with NTS and know that his dizi are crafted with acoustic principles in mind---there is a lot of physics that goes behind each of the bamboo flutes. It makes each instrument very consistent, and that is a very important thing when playing in an orchestra with different genres of pieces to play. A good dizi should consistently be able to reach the equivalent of the high-E note (by concert flute/piccolo fingering---actual pitch is dependent on the native key of the dizi), with the ability to eke out the high-G on occasion as a transient note. All of the NTS dizi that I own have this ability, which goes to say how consistent the workmanship is.
Anyway, that aside, time for more random ranting.
The past week had been quite tiring. I spent a lot time reading up various documentation to gain a deeper insight into the design trade-offs for the various sub-systems that we are intending to put together for the new framework. On the not-work front, I've finished reading Illuminatus!, and am switching over to non-fiction for a while, refreshing my knowledge on economics once again. Once that is done, I think I'll read Hamlet before moving on to some Russian literature (translated of course).
I know that I don't really have much to say, but I suppose it's a good idea to pen some things down here every now and then. After all, should I fall off the net completely (or in a more morbid sense, off this reality), this is one of the few things that are left behind to show that yes I had existed once before.
Till the next update.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Technodiocy and An Irresponsible Parent
Today, I was supposed to write a piece lambasting a group of irresponsible individuals that I have observed. Work was sufficiently engaging and onerous that I had to delay that piece till now. And now, after riding the public transport back, I have found yet another group of irresponsible individuals that I feel I ought to lambast.
And so now you have the dubious honour of two rants for the price of one.
Let's begin with an assertion. I am a techie. Read my posts here from time to time, do a Google-stalk of me, read my personal domain and you ought to come to a similar conclusion soon enough. I like tech---I live tech, breathe tech and work on tech. Tech is my way of life, tech is my livelihood. There is no denying that I am no luddite by any means.
I own a smart phone. I own portable computers, several in fact, and work on powerful desktops and servers. I own some e-readers, and even a tablet. So I'm not exactly completely ignorant of the so-called mobile future.
Yet you don't see me lapsing into becoming a gorram phone zombie. I wasn't fully aware of just how bad the epidemic was until I started to look about me one day and realise that, to my horror, nearly 8 out of 10 people who were standing around me on a train or bus were burying their heads in one mobile device or another. That alone doesn't make them zombies of course---it is the modern day equivalent of say reading a paperback while on a transport.
What's infuriating is when people continue to use their mobile device while they are walking from one point to another that makes them phone zombies. It's ludicrous---a person, head all hunched up, staring at their tiny (or not so tiny) screens, sometimes plugged in with earphones, and justwalkingshuffling through the streets, oblivious of the situation around them. I took to observing just what it was that could make a person thus engrossed, and from my unscientific observations, more than 7 out of 10 of them were on some kind of messaging system.
Messaging system. While walking. How much more ridiculous can it get? I mean, if they were walking and watching some silly video that they had downloaded (or doing comparative shopping, which is on a whole new level of idiocy that I will not rant about today), it's probably less laughable. But on a messenging system? I fail to see just why a conversation cannot be left alone for the [short] time it takes to get from one lousy point in SIN to another on foot.
And if you thought that I was just ranting about adults, think again. I don't really care much about adults---they should, by definition, have the good sense to pay attention to what they are doing after all---but school-going children. Let me emphasize that a bit: school-going children. Not on holiday, not over a weekend out in the streets. Early in the morning while they are getting their collective asses to school. That's how stupid it has gotten.
It's an old saying to be bitching about how the newer generations are never like the old, but in this case, I feel highly justified in thinking so. I mean, wow, just how much interesting things can a sub-eighteen-year-old say particularly when five sevenths of their week is already spent in school? I have friends all over the world (mostly congregated in the North American continent), and am a techie, but I don't even see the need to be staring at the chat screen all the damn time. And lest any one starts saying any nonsense, allow me to point out that my generation was among the first to make use of ``personalised'' messaging systems or IMs (not IRC which predates all these and is an example of the ``group chat'' that the sheeple are rediscovering) on a consistent basis, and yet we don't even see the pressing need to always be staring at the stupid chat screen.
My children will never get a smart phone of that nature while they are in school. I'll get the dumbest phone I can still get my hands on and give them that, and only because payphones have gone the way of the do-do bird while the need to maintain contact between parents and children still exist. I am glad that my consort-candidate is in agreement with this as well.
And that's the first rant point. I feel a little better getting it out of my system, even though I know that this post is going to do absolutely nothing in reversing the rise in technodiocy.
The second rant point is triggered from an incident that occurred no more than an hour ago. I was on a bus heading home, and had secured my usual backward-facing seat. It's my usual because for some reason, no one will willingly choose to sit facing in the opposite direction of travel of the bus, which of course means that I have better than even odds of actually having a place ``reserved'' for the likes of me. Out of so many trips, it is on no more than five occasions that I failed to secure my usual place, but that's a mere diversion of this other point.
The bus stopped at one of the many stops, and a mother (I think) and child came onboard. Said child was probably no more than seven, all puny and what-not, and the mother was carrying a bulky but light looking plastic bag of widgets. They made their way to the back of the bus where there was only one seat left, the centre one that opened directly into the walking aisle with hardly any thing else.
Now, if you've not taken any of SIN's public buses, allow me to make yet another diversion. The centre rear-most seat is a bloody dangerous seat---it's slippery, has no other seats in front of it for bracing against sudden stops, which is a problem because more often than not the bus driver is a maniac that likes to accelerate and decelerate really quickly due to having an automatic transmission. For safety reasons, the centre seat of the buses now have a seat belt to help mitigate some of the risks. Most able-bodied people don't use it because it is often too damn annoying to find and buckle up in.
Now this mother and child pair made their way to the seat, and the mother sat in it and led the child to stand between her legs. I got pissed---it was clearly an at-risk behaviour for the child. I saw that the mother was hugging her child, but let's be realistic here; if something were to happen, the chances of the hugging being strong enough to hold the child such that the latter doesn't fly off to injure itself is just miniscule.
So, I stood up and looked at the mother, offering my seat and telling her, ``please sit here''.
That woman merely looked back at me and said no.
I felt like running up to her, and shouting straight in her face at the stupid risks she was taking with her child. But I remembered an important lesson---one cannot teach another a lesson if the other refuses to learn. Inasmuch as I'd like the child to be safe, that child is of the responsibility of that woman, her mother. There was nothing else that I could have done that would be right while still satisfying society's notion of etiquette.
I didn't go back to my seat. I fumed and stared daggers at the mother before alighting the bus a few stops later, thinking to myself that I need to write this down to expunge it from my mind. That such idiotic adults exist is one thing that I cannot forget.
And so now you have the dubious honour of two rants for the price of one.
Let's begin with an assertion. I am a techie. Read my posts here from time to time, do a Google-stalk of me, read my personal domain and you ought to come to a similar conclusion soon enough. I like tech---I live tech, breathe tech and work on tech. Tech is my way of life, tech is my livelihood. There is no denying that I am no luddite by any means.
I own a smart phone. I own portable computers, several in fact, and work on powerful desktops and servers. I own some e-readers, and even a tablet. So I'm not exactly completely ignorant of the so-called mobile future.
Yet you don't see me lapsing into becoming a gorram phone zombie. I wasn't fully aware of just how bad the epidemic was until I started to look about me one day and realise that, to my horror, nearly 8 out of 10 people who were standing around me on a train or bus were burying their heads in one mobile device or another. That alone doesn't make them zombies of course---it is the modern day equivalent of say reading a paperback while on a transport.
What's infuriating is when people continue to use their mobile device while they are walking from one point to another that makes them phone zombies. It's ludicrous---a person, head all hunched up, staring at their tiny (or not so tiny) screens, sometimes plugged in with earphones, and just
Messaging system. While walking. How much more ridiculous can it get? I mean, if they were walking and watching some silly video that they had downloaded (or doing comparative shopping, which is on a whole new level of idiocy that I will not rant about today), it's probably less laughable. But on a messenging system? I fail to see just why a conversation cannot be left alone for the [short] time it takes to get from one lousy point in SIN to another on foot.
And if you thought that I was just ranting about adults, think again. I don't really care much about adults---they should, by definition, have the good sense to pay attention to what they are doing after all---but school-going children. Let me emphasize that a bit: school-going children. Not on holiday, not over a weekend out in the streets. Early in the morning while they are getting their collective asses to school. That's how stupid it has gotten.
It's an old saying to be bitching about how the newer generations are never like the old, but in this case, I feel highly justified in thinking so. I mean, wow, just how much interesting things can a sub-eighteen-year-old say particularly when five sevenths of their week is already spent in school? I have friends all over the world (mostly congregated in the North American continent), and am a techie, but I don't even see the need to be staring at the chat screen all the damn time. And lest any one starts saying any nonsense, allow me to point out that my generation was among the first to make use of ``personalised'' messaging systems or IMs (not IRC which predates all these and is an example of the ``group chat'' that the sheeple are rediscovering) on a consistent basis, and yet we don't even see the pressing need to always be staring at the stupid chat screen.
My children will never get a smart phone of that nature while they are in school. I'll get the dumbest phone I can still get my hands on and give them that, and only because payphones have gone the way of the do-do bird while the need to maintain contact between parents and children still exist. I am glad that my consort-candidate is in agreement with this as well.
And that's the first rant point. I feel a little better getting it out of my system, even though I know that this post is going to do absolutely nothing in reversing the rise in technodiocy.
The second rant point is triggered from an incident that occurred no more than an hour ago. I was on a bus heading home, and had secured my usual backward-facing seat. It's my usual because for some reason, no one will willingly choose to sit facing in the opposite direction of travel of the bus, which of course means that I have better than even odds of actually having a place ``reserved'' for the likes of me. Out of so many trips, it is on no more than five occasions that I failed to secure my usual place, but that's a mere diversion of this other point.
The bus stopped at one of the many stops, and a mother (I think) and child came onboard. Said child was probably no more than seven, all puny and what-not, and the mother was carrying a bulky but light looking plastic bag of widgets. They made their way to the back of the bus where there was only one seat left, the centre one that opened directly into the walking aisle with hardly any thing else.
Now, if you've not taken any of SIN's public buses, allow me to make yet another diversion. The centre rear-most seat is a bloody dangerous seat---it's slippery, has no other seats in front of it for bracing against sudden stops, which is a problem because more often than not the bus driver is a maniac that likes to accelerate and decelerate really quickly due to having an automatic transmission. For safety reasons, the centre seat of the buses now have a seat belt to help mitigate some of the risks. Most able-bodied people don't use it because it is often too damn annoying to find and buckle up in.
Now this mother and child pair made their way to the seat, and the mother sat in it and led the child to stand between her legs. I got pissed---it was clearly an at-risk behaviour for the child. I saw that the mother was hugging her child, but let's be realistic here; if something were to happen, the chances of the hugging being strong enough to hold the child such that the latter doesn't fly off to injure itself is just miniscule.
So, I stood up and looked at the mother, offering my seat and telling her, ``please sit here''.
That woman merely looked back at me and said no.
I felt like running up to her, and shouting straight in her face at the stupid risks she was taking with her child. But I remembered an important lesson---one cannot teach another a lesson if the other refuses to learn. Inasmuch as I'd like the child to be safe, that child is of the responsibility of that woman, her mother. There was nothing else that I could have done that would be right while still satisfying society's notion of etiquette.
I didn't go back to my seat. I fumed and stared daggers at the mother before alighting the bus a few stops later, thinking to myself that I need to write this down to expunge it from my mind. That such idiotic adults exist is one thing that I cannot forget.
Friday, April 24, 2015
I Sped Up An Already Spartan Website
Recently I was reading about the Mobile Friendly Search Initiative by Google. On a whim, I decided to subject my domain to the test. To my utter horror, it reported that my simple design was not very mobile friendly.
Well, it wasn't exactly old news to me. I have used my own web site every now and then to look up some of the lists that I have online, from my reading list to my shopping list. I've long discovered that the ``auto-reflow'' option that was present in my phone's web browser was breaking my web site, and I never really knew why.
Now that I had a third party tool to demonstrate objectively that yes, my web site was not very mobile friendly, I started to find ways to fix it.
The first and most important thing was to add a new meta tag to my pages so that the page will scale according to the device's actual width as opposed to the raw pixel count. This is important because of higher pixel densities of the mobile devices compared to the usual run-of-the-mill generic monitor, but expect this to change over time as those 4k (and 8k) displays become more mainstream. For the sake of completeness, the tag looks like this:
Before doing the second one, I made a note of the total file size of all the files that are involved (XHTML, CSS and Javascript only)---it was 205640 bytes. To actually do the second one, I wrote a customised script in Python that made use of csscompressor and slimit together with the built-in
The next step is to turn on browser caching. It took me a while, but creating a .htaccess on the root directory of the public-facing web site with the following lines did the trick:
The last step of turning on compression on the payload turned out to be the hardest to pull off. At first, I was trying to use the deflate or gzip mods for Apache 2.2 (the server that NearlyFreeSpeech.net uses), but after not noticing any changes by spying on the response headers from HTTP in the client browser, I changed tack by using mod_rewrite instead. This meant that I had to append the following lines to .htaccess:
Even with the overhead though, I find the new set up way more responsive and totally worth it. It does mean that I need to do a little bit more work before I upload an updated file, but it does mean that now, the already spartan web site can be accessed much faster in more places.
Alright, enough of this babble talk. Till next time.
Well, it wasn't exactly old news to me. I have used my own web site every now and then to look up some of the lists that I have online, from my reading list to my shopping list. I've long discovered that the ``auto-reflow'' option that was present in my phone's web browser was breaking my web site, and I never really knew why.
Now that I had a third party tool to demonstrate objectively that yes, my web site was not very mobile friendly, I started to find ways to fix it.
The first and most important thing was to add a new meta tag to my pages so that the page will scale according to the device's actual width as opposed to the raw pixel count. This is important because of higher pixel densities of the mobile devices compared to the usual run-of-the-mill generic monitor, but expect this to change over time as those 4k (and 8k) displays become more mainstream. For the sake of completeness, the tag looks like this:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"/>However, that got me thinking even more, especially after using the Page Speed Insights tool from Google. They highlighted some interesting things to think about, namely:
- Removing blocking Javascript/CSS;
- Minification of HTML/CSS/Javascript;
- Enabling browser caching;
- Enabling server compression.
async="async" keyword to each of my script tags, but it failed the XHTML 1.0 DTD validation, so I had to abandon it. That was a big no-no, so I had to abandon that tip that was suggested.Before doing the second one, I made a note of the total file size of all the files that are involved (XHTML, CSS and Javascript only)---it was 205640 bytes. To actually do the second one, I wrote a customised script in Python that made use of csscompressor and slimit together with the built-in
HTMLParser object to walk through the XHTML tree and perform the minification. I didn't replace the files with the minified forms---I am still editing them by hand with Vim---but created an output directory to dump all these files in. This step alone reduced the file size to 185602 bytes, around 90% of the original set of files. Specifically, prettyprint.js shrunk from 3876 bytes to 1299 bytes, or around 34% of the original file size. This is significant considering that all the pages that I ever author end up pulling that file. This is definitely a drastic saving in the long run even without turning on browser caching.The next step is to turn on browser caching. It took me a while, but creating a .htaccess on the root directory of the public-facing web site with the following lines did the trick:
<ifModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 1 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 604800 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/javascript
"access plus 216000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript
"access plus 216000 seconds"
</ifModule>
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
<filesMatch "\.(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2592000, public"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\.(css)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\.(js)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=216000, private"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\.(xml|txt)$">
Header set Cache-Control
"max-age=216000, public, must-revalidate"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\.(html|htm)$">
Header set Cache-Control
"max-age=300, private, must-revalidate"
</filesMatch>
</ifModule>
Caching made a nice difference in that the scripts and CSS (like prettyprint.js) need to be loaded only once and everything is nice and dandy.The last step of turning on compression on the payload turned out to be the hardest to pull off. At first, I was trying to use the deflate or gzip mods for Apache 2.2 (the server that NearlyFreeSpeech.net uses), but after not noticing any changes by spying on the response headers from HTTP in the client browser, I changed tack by using mod_rewrite instead. This meant that I had to append the following lines to .htaccess:
<ifModule mod_rewrite.c>
Header add Vary accept-encoding
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP:accept-encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.gz$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.gz -f
RewriteRule (.*\.(js|css|html)) $1.gz [L]
</ifModule>
AddEncoding x-gzip .gz
<FilesMatch .*\.html.gz>
ForceType text/html
</FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch .*\.css.gz>
ForceType text/css
</FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch .*\.js.gz>
ForceType text/javascript
</FilesMatch>
What this does is that it tries to look for a pre-compressed version of the requested file (seen as %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.gz) and returns that while adjusting the headers to inform the client that a GZIP stream is incoming. It's a form of trickery but it got the job done well. The last part of it was to adjust the minification script I wrote to generate the pre-compressed files as well. This new set of files generated an overhead of 66252 bytes, which meant that now, the total size of files hosted is 251854 bytes, or roughly 122% of the size of my original set of files. Specifically, prettyprint.js is now only 565 bytes, a cool 15% the size of the original file. The original files are needed in the event that the client browser doesn't support a gzip stream.Even with the overhead though, I find the new set up way more responsive and totally worth it. It does mean that I need to do a little bit more work before I upload an updated file, but it does mean that now, the already spartan web site can be accessed much faster in more places.
Alright, enough of this babble talk. Till next time.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
A Rant on Tuesday
I have no idea why I am writing so often for the past few days. Could it be a side effect from having getting away from Facebook, where I once used to leave behind some nuggets of thoughts that I happened to have at the moment, with only a handful of unblocked people being interested enough to look at them to reply?
I was out sick yesterday with a nasty cold. It was something that probably had been in the making for a while, considering how many people in the office are getting sick from the change in the weather conditions. The way colds work for me is more or less the same -- I end up with heavy congestion to the point where my Eustachian tubes become all bunged up. When that happens, I know that I have been hit with a rather nasty version of the cold bug and have to see a doctor as soon as I can before things go out of control like that time, where it led to a middle-ear infection with pus so bitter and nauseating that---let's not continue that line of thought.
I rested at home, of course, after seeing the doctor and getting all kinds of medication that are necessary to keep the congestion symptoms down. The problem with the medication, of course, is that it does end up making me a little drowsier than usual, what with all the old generation anti-histamines and other fancy stuff that are used to handle the symptoms. I'm too lazy and tired at this point (after putting in a 13-hour day) to actually sit down and list down every single active component in the medication that I'm taking.
The social climate on the whole in SIN is not getting any better. The annual Star Awards is upon us, and with it come the natural celebration of the man-made glitzy (but shallow!) world of television. I don't really like the whole Star Awards thing, and come to think of it, I never really liked all these award ceremonies thing ever since I became old enough to get disillusioned by all these awards. To be given an award by the same group of people who are working with you day in and day out feels strangely out of place, as though it is some kind of artifice to ensure that everyone keeps on working with everyone else in the long run, that everyone will pat each others' back when the necessity arises. That is not my kind of thing, I think. I have my own small bed of coals to walk through for the ``promotion ceremony'' that is coming up, so we'll see how that goes.
I used to like winning awards and prizes. When I was in primary school, it was the one thing that I could consistently get. There was always a reason for me to appear on stage for one award or another. It wasn't so much that I was prolific, but that my primary school itself was not among the elite that even a poseur like me can do enough to be recognised. But when I started to get into secondary school, and later on into junior college, all these awards things start to get on my nerves, even though I still kept on getting them, partly as a trick to see how far I can go, and partly because there was nothing else to be done in the context of school. School work was boring, there was always something more interesting while still academic out of it, and these awards were the one thing that helped to motivate me towards working outside of the curricula. Eventually though, the phoneyness of it all got to me and I soon started to slow down and not give too much of a damn about all these awards thing.
That would also explain why after primary school I refused to join any of the school Chinese Orchestras. The school Chinese Orchestras seemed to be more interested in winning the biennial Singapore Youth Festival awards, with a lot of focus on achieving technical prowess at the expense of actual enjoyment of making music. But that's a rant for another day.
I have no real agenda here except to toss a few words out there to cool off. It is the end of the day, and I think that I have achieved some progress, despite not writing a single line of code for work. I know it's shocking, but sometimes, reading can give a lot of interesting things to think about. As I like to say these days, ``think, don't hack''.
Till the next update.
I was out sick yesterday with a nasty cold. It was something that probably had been in the making for a while, considering how many people in the office are getting sick from the change in the weather conditions. The way colds work for me is more or less the same -- I end up with heavy congestion to the point where my Eustachian tubes become all bunged up. When that happens, I know that I have been hit with a rather nasty version of the cold bug and have to see a doctor as soon as I can before things go out of control like that time, where it led to a middle-ear infection with pus so bitter and nauseating that---let's not continue that line of thought.
I rested at home, of course, after seeing the doctor and getting all kinds of medication that are necessary to keep the congestion symptoms down. The problem with the medication, of course, is that it does end up making me a little drowsier than usual, what with all the old generation anti-histamines and other fancy stuff that are used to handle the symptoms. I'm too lazy and tired at this point (after putting in a 13-hour day) to actually sit down and list down every single active component in the medication that I'm taking.
The social climate on the whole in SIN is not getting any better. The annual Star Awards is upon us, and with it come the natural celebration of the man-made glitzy (but shallow!) world of television. I don't really like the whole Star Awards thing, and come to think of it, I never really liked all these award ceremonies thing ever since I became old enough to get disillusioned by all these awards. To be given an award by the same group of people who are working with you day in and day out feels strangely out of place, as though it is some kind of artifice to ensure that everyone keeps on working with everyone else in the long run, that everyone will pat each others' back when the necessity arises. That is not my kind of thing, I think. I have my own small bed of coals to walk through for the ``promotion ceremony'' that is coming up, so we'll see how that goes.
I used to like winning awards and prizes. When I was in primary school, it was the one thing that I could consistently get. There was always a reason for me to appear on stage for one award or another. It wasn't so much that I was prolific, but that my primary school itself was not among the elite that even a poseur like me can do enough to be recognised. But when I started to get into secondary school, and later on into junior college, all these awards things start to get on my nerves, even though I still kept on getting them, partly as a trick to see how far I can go, and partly because there was nothing else to be done in the context of school. School work was boring, there was always something more interesting while still academic out of it, and these awards were the one thing that helped to motivate me towards working outside of the curricula. Eventually though, the phoneyness of it all got to me and I soon started to slow down and not give too much of a damn about all these awards thing.
That would also explain why after primary school I refused to join any of the school Chinese Orchestras. The school Chinese Orchestras seemed to be more interested in winning the biennial Singapore Youth Festival awards, with a lot of focus on achieving technical prowess at the expense of actual enjoyment of making music. But that's a rant for another day.
I have no real agenda here except to toss a few words out there to cool off. It is the end of the day, and I think that I have achieved some progress, despite not writing a single line of code for work. I know it's shocking, but sometimes, reading can give a lot of interesting things to think about. As I like to say these days, ``think, don't hack''.
Till the next update.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Mumbling on a Sunday
Just a grab bag of thoughts, no real coherent theme except perhaps ``real life and what transpired''.
First off, I'm off Facebook once again. This time, however, I'm going to keep the account ``live'', but just not log in to do anything. I've left a single post on my wall indicating the ways of contacting me, and if you are one of those people who come here from that post, congratulations and thank you very much for keeping in touch somehow.
With that out of the way, let's get back to what I intended to mumble about.
Not too long ago, I made a trip to Teck Seng's place (NTS to those who play the 笛子) to get a replacement for my G-key 梆笛. That poor 梆笛 of mine had been in service since 1993 or so, and I would've continued playing on it if not for the fact that it had developed an extensive network of cracks particularly around the 膜孔---the hole where the paper-thin 笛膜 is placed. That has, naturally, caused me great grief over the past few years as I had to keep replacing the 笛膜 ever so often despite having fixed the cracks by filling them in with super glue. I had wanted to go to Teck Seng's place to get a replacement for a long while, but Sifu's timing had always been off---it was always better to go over with Sifu because then there will be lots of interesting conversations about 华乐 and 笛子 construction in general, among other sundry; it's basically like a meet-up with old friends. The new bangdi that I got is a wonderful instrument---it played wonderfully at the rehearsal last night. It's sweet and nimble, and more importantly, accurate in tuning, with the ability to hit the highest E, F♯ and G, of which the last two notes are notoriously hard to hit with any old 梆笛.
I've also got a G-key 大笛, thus fulfilling one of the items in my shopping list items. This instrument plays with the same range as a regular concert flute, with the chief difference of the added ``buzzing'' provided for by the 笛膜. I like its material feel; the bamboo is dense and even, it felt solid to hold and had a solid tone that resonated well. The only [minor] defect was that it was a little top heavy---the headjoint would feel much better if around two to three centimetres of the bamboo were sawed off. But with a change of fingering technique to use a more ``open'' holding method (I was using the concert flute style of holding with the index finger ``shelf'' resting on the 笛子 body), the weight imbalance can be mitigated almost completely. I have great hopes for this lovely instrument, and am looking forward to the day where I get to use it for a piece in the orchestra. There are a couple of pieces where the use of the 大笛 is necessary, but those have been elusive in rehearsal these days due to the rebuild phase of the cycle. The day will come, I'm sure.
Recently too, I had a big surprise---I got promoted at work. I wasn't expecting it because in my mind, I didn't fulfil the time-dependent criteria that HR set out due to my time in and out of studying overseas. But I'm not complaining; I feel a little more mollified that my work is getting recognition officially. That's a good type of incentive. Now I'm just wondering if they will keep promoting me a la Peter's Principle or will they know where's the sweet spot that best meshes my interests, abilities and capabilities. Only time will tell for this one.
I have started reading S. and it is a very interesting piece of work, with all the sub-texts here and there complete with their own conspiratorial tendencies. Unfortunately, much of S. is of a tactile/haptic nature with a lot of feelies and false documents to further enhance the frame story, it is not a book that I can easily read while I'm on the bus or MRT. Because of that, I am also simultaneously reading The Illuminatus! Trilogy on my Nexus 10, having switched over from my Kindle DX just for variety. The Trilogy can also be loosely described as being somewhat ergodic in nature, with the simul-flow texts and slight time independence in which the concurrent events are sometimes described with, though it still maintains a relatively linear layout without the fancy typographic adjustments the way House of Leaves uses to heighten the emotive content it is trying to convey.
I have finished reading The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night just a few days ago, and it has been a wonderful journey of slightly more than a year through it. The stories are at times moralistic, sexy, and sometimes just pure comedy, and I feel a little sad now that it is all over. It is a different sense of achievement as compared to reading say the KJV. Incidentally, I have placed the NIV on my list of things to read, just to compare and contrast between that and the KJV to see how imagery and interpretation changes over time. I have also added the Saheeh International Translation of the Quran to my list as well---it serves as a good complement to 1001 Nights because a lot of the imagery and moral lessons highlighted in 1001 Nights are strongly steeped in Islamic practices. I think these will all be excellent reads in the future---just not right now. I've read too many epics and need a little break (the Dune series is an epic).
On a last note, I think I will have to break a promise I made with a friend over War and Peace. We don't even talk much anymore, and even if we did, we barely trade a dozen of words. Somehow, I don't even think my friend is going to ever read War and Peace, so I will just go ahead and do whatever I want.
I think that's enough mumbling for a Sunday. Till the next update.
First off, I'm off Facebook once again. This time, however, I'm going to keep the account ``live'', but just not log in to do anything. I've left a single post on my wall indicating the ways of contacting me, and if you are one of those people who come here from that post, congratulations and thank you very much for keeping in touch somehow.
With that out of the way, let's get back to what I intended to mumble about.
Not too long ago, I made a trip to Teck Seng's place (NTS to those who play the 笛子) to get a replacement for my G-key 梆笛. That poor 梆笛 of mine had been in service since 1993 or so, and I would've continued playing on it if not for the fact that it had developed an extensive network of cracks particularly around the 膜孔---the hole where the paper-thin 笛膜 is placed. That has, naturally, caused me great grief over the past few years as I had to keep replacing the 笛膜 ever so often despite having fixed the cracks by filling them in with super glue. I had wanted to go to Teck Seng's place to get a replacement for a long while, but Sifu's timing had always been off---it was always better to go over with Sifu because then there will be lots of interesting conversations about 华乐 and 笛子 construction in general, among other sundry; it's basically like a meet-up with old friends. The new bangdi that I got is a wonderful instrument---it played wonderfully at the rehearsal last night. It's sweet and nimble, and more importantly, accurate in tuning, with the ability to hit the highest E, F♯ and G, of which the last two notes are notoriously hard to hit with any old 梆笛.
I've also got a G-key 大笛, thus fulfilling one of the items in my shopping list items. This instrument plays with the same range as a regular concert flute, with the chief difference of the added ``buzzing'' provided for by the 笛膜. I like its material feel; the bamboo is dense and even, it felt solid to hold and had a solid tone that resonated well. The only [minor] defect was that it was a little top heavy---the headjoint would feel much better if around two to three centimetres of the bamboo were sawed off. But with a change of fingering technique to use a more ``open'' holding method (I was using the concert flute style of holding with the index finger ``shelf'' resting on the 笛子 body), the weight imbalance can be mitigated almost completely. I have great hopes for this lovely instrument, and am looking forward to the day where I get to use it for a piece in the orchestra. There are a couple of pieces where the use of the 大笛 is necessary, but those have been elusive in rehearsal these days due to the rebuild phase of the cycle. The day will come, I'm sure.
Recently too, I had a big surprise---I got promoted at work. I wasn't expecting it because in my mind, I didn't fulfil the time-dependent criteria that HR set out due to my time in and out of studying overseas. But I'm not complaining; I feel a little more mollified that my work is getting recognition officially. That's a good type of incentive. Now I'm just wondering if they will keep promoting me a la Peter's Principle or will they know where's the sweet spot that best meshes my interests, abilities and capabilities. Only time will tell for this one.
I have started reading S. and it is a very interesting piece of work, with all the sub-texts here and there complete with their own conspiratorial tendencies. Unfortunately, much of S. is of a tactile/haptic nature with a lot of feelies and false documents to further enhance the frame story, it is not a book that I can easily read while I'm on the bus or MRT. Because of that, I am also simultaneously reading The Illuminatus! Trilogy on my Nexus 10, having switched over from my Kindle DX just for variety. The Trilogy can also be loosely described as being somewhat ergodic in nature, with the simul-flow texts and slight time independence in which the concurrent events are sometimes described with, though it still maintains a relatively linear layout without the fancy typographic adjustments the way House of Leaves uses to heighten the emotive content it is trying to convey.
I have finished reading The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night just a few days ago, and it has been a wonderful journey of slightly more than a year through it. The stories are at times moralistic, sexy, and sometimes just pure comedy, and I feel a little sad now that it is all over. It is a different sense of achievement as compared to reading say the KJV. Incidentally, I have placed the NIV on my list of things to read, just to compare and contrast between that and the KJV to see how imagery and interpretation changes over time. I have also added the Saheeh International Translation of the Quran to my list as well---it serves as a good complement to 1001 Nights because a lot of the imagery and moral lessons highlighted in 1001 Nights are strongly steeped in Islamic practices. I think these will all be excellent reads in the future---just not right now. I've read too many epics and need a little break (the Dune series is an epic).
On a last note, I think I will have to break a promise I made with a friend over War and Peace. We don't even talk much anymore, and even if we did, we barely trade a dozen of words. Somehow, I don't even think my friend is going to ever read War and Peace, so I will just go ahead and do whatever I want.
I think that's enough mumbling for a Sunday. Till the next update.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Motivation, Drive, Discipline
- motivation
- The psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; the reason for the action; that which gives purpose and direction to behavior. (WordNet)
- drive
- The trait of being highly motivated. (WordNet)
- discipline
- A system of rules of conduct or method of practice. (WordNet)
Motivation is the prime mover for people to work towards their goals, for without motivation, there is literally no reason for the person to be doing whatever he/she ought to be doing. Everyone should have some form of motivation to get things done if they want to get ahead in life, or as I would like to call it, to improve upon what they are currently experiencing in life.
Drive is the kind of can-do spirit we often find in those we look up to as leaders and luminaries. It is the trait that manifests itself as the relentless pursuit towards excellence, the hyper-enthusiasm that surrounds the particular person that many are aware of but know that they cannot emulate for one reason or another.
The two traits of motivation and drive are what most people will tend to associate with the generic notion of a ``successful'' person in life (and society), but to claim that that is all that is needed, is a serious lie.
You see, motivation and drive aren't things that are around forever. There are days where one will feel unmotivated (or worse still, de-motivated, the kind of motivation-killing often ascribed to external influences), and if all that one runs on is mere motivation, productivity under its many guises will fall drastically. Leaders have their ``off'' days, and it's usually not a concern because these people don't always have to be making decisions all the time. So their ``off'' days can be covered up a little.
For those of us who are a little more minion-like (rank-and-file as they call it in a more politically correct way), we cannot afford this kind of ``off'' day. In fact, there may even be cases where we aren't even motivated with what we are doing at all, because the going is hard, is monotonous or is otherwise torturous, but we like the end result (being strong, having money), we know we have to keep chugging along despite the lack of motivation.
That is humankind's superpower: discipline.
Discipline is what gives you your steady gains in life, it's what keeps you going when motivation decides to take it easy in Tahiti. And the best part is, discipline can be cultivated, unlike motivation and drive.
Yet few people actually realise that simple fact. And that's what makes me sad/angry some times.
I don't like baseball, but I like a metaphor that is often associated with them. In a game of baseball, there are many innings, and the idea is to score as many runs through the bases as possible for each inning. There are many strategies to do that, but the two most extreme ones are going by singles and going by home runs. In a home run, the batter thwacks the ball waaaaay out and tries to run through all the bases at once, thus scoring a run on a single bat. It's high risk, but high return---similar to that of being driven. But the other strategy is to hit singles---have the bases loaded, with each runner advancing one base at a time per bat. It's lower risk, but it yields a steady stream of successes---but it requires discipline. You can keep going, but you won't get spectacular results on the get go.
Life's like this most of the time; small moments of overwhelming triumph with large amounts of just regular survival/living stuff. You need to grind through some stuff in life; it's inevitable. Don't rely on motivation for that, instead, rely on discipline. It keeps the output going while you are still feeling down, thereby reducing the negative impact from your lack of motivation. Can't wake up on time? Develop the discipline to---when your alarm clock rings, sit up right immediately and get off the bed. Do it till it becomes systematic. Now if you want an out, find a new motivation and build a new discipline while abandoning the old system.
If you want to be an innovator, then you will need to learn how to balance these two in a different way. Unfortunately, I have no words of advice for that for now---you're on your own. The proper balance between motivation and discipline is in itself a secret superpower that only the best in the world have perfected.
To paraphrase,
Discipline is what keeps you doing the thing after you've lost your motivation.
Wednesday, April 01, 2015
Patterns and Anti-Patterns
Patterns and anti-patterns. Conformity and deviation. One cannot live without either. With patterns and conformity, we stagnate through complacency, entrenchment, and hubris. With anti-patterns and deviation, we course all through the known knowledge space, each on its own, losing synergies from mutual survival dependence, each fighting each other on their own principles, and end up with chaos.
So the trick is the balance between the two extremes.
The current SIN-'net [in]famous A. Yee is a manifestation of the anti-pattern, the deviant. Except he is without balance, which caused him to end up in his current predicament. I pity him. An easy mistake to make, one that could've been avoided easily had he chosen to do so instead of letting the inner chaos erupt and take over. I envy him, because by sheer matyrdom, he managed to draw attention to the exact struggles that many have in the latencies of their consciousness but have been too comfortable to dare to voice it out in a repressive environment.
It's hard to decide which of the two feelings I have towards him is the dominant, since I only have this one-shot snapshot of the person himself. Maybe he's choice of a shock delivery was a calculated move, his choice of matyrdom for the greater good as his form of altruism -- never mind the self-death if the sheeple learn! Or it could just be the naïveté of one who hasn't figured out the right balance between patterns and anti-patterns, between being conforming and being deviating. The choice between interpretations of his intent itself is probably more revealing on me than on him.
But back to the point: the balance between the two extremes. Patterns are comfortable, they streamline the decision-making process by providing an easy pattern of ready-made questions with relatively ready-made answers. Routines and procedures are exactly the type of ready-made questions with automatic ready-made answers -- the decisions have been made before, and it is merely the execution of the decisions. Computers are excellent at following routines and procedures, as are most orthodox bureaucrats. There is a danger to that of routines and procedures though, as many a person who has used a computer can tell. If the input to the routine or procedure varies vastly from the assumptions behind the designed routine/procedure, the results are unpredictable at best and detrimental at worst. Most system designers know of that limitation, and so they end up trying to account for as many such assumptions as they can to make the routine/procedure seem ``resilient''. Much of debugging falls into that category as well.
That, however, ends up hiding the fact that as time goes on, the assumptions themselves change beyond the scope of the changes made to the routine/procedure, and it will be time to rewrite the routine/procedure. We know this for computer systems, but the same thing can be thought of for social constructs.
Laws are like routines/procedures. They are patterns -- patterns of society that has undergone codification and formalisation. ``One may not generate noise greater than 90dBA after 2100hrs'' can be one such law. ``Everyone must kow-tow to the local Inquisitor should he/she show his/her authority medallion'' can be another such law. Both are patterns, both are routines/procedures to guide behaviour under specific circumstances.
Both are also not always right.
That's where the anti-pattern/deviation comes into play. Anti-patterns/deviations serve as the search frontier for the novel -- new ideas to solve existing problems, new problems that the current patterns do not already solve. We codify this as ``research'' (yet another pattern!) but have mostly confined it to the fringes of human existence, and at a level that is more impersonal than most. Anti-patterns/deviations relating to science (both hard and soft) are acceptable only when confined to those researchers -- people invested with the power to research via their PhDs and their research tenure.
Once you bring it to the mainstream it's no longer research and is an implementation and with it comes different levels of expectations. Implementation of social change has become much harder ever since we gained better communication connectivity. Yes it's much harder, not easier. It's a contrary view and let me explain a little on the why.
You see, bottom-up social change is never smooth nor gradual. It comes like a whiplash in the form of an uprising or revolution, peaceful or otherwise. It is the accumulation of too many patterns that anger people past the point of repression into downright oppression that makes them spring back with a vengeance. And that is how it gets messy, since all the patterns that were present before now get swept away at once by the angry mob. A society without patterns to guide it (in the form of law, bureaucracy or authority) is a mob, and all mobs have the intelligence of the lowest common denominator, until a leader emerges that can somehow influence the mob towards a more patterned behaviour. Ease of communication provides a feedback mechanism for such bottom-up affairs, which can be seen in the Arab Spring of recent times, as well as the Maidan protests. Some of the feedback is from the local people involved, but due to the 'net's reach, we end up having feedback from outside of the local region, which can be good or bad depending on who's evaluating the situation.
What about top-down social change then? It has always existed, but it is confined to the patterned-thinking of whoever is in charge. After all, if it ain't broke, don't touch it, right? If the current set of laws and bureaucratic mechanisms are working, there is little to no incentive to shake them up in any way. More importantly, most of such top-down social changes are too feeble, particularly when it is done by committee. For some things that affect the status quo, the changes will come swift, but for those that can impact on whoever's in power's power base, the changes will be... less swift. Top-down social changes done by a Prince (feudal lord, warlord, dictator... well you get the idea) moves much faster, though the Prince is not immune to the lure of maintaining or elevating his power base.
Much of the [economically] developed world suffers from too many patterns, while much of the less [economically] developed world suffers from too many anti-patterns. International laws, trade agreements, even the status quo itself are patterns that get enforced ad nauseum, whether or not they are actually as effective as they were before. These patterns raise the barrier of entry into the mainstream, which partly explains why the less [economically] developed world remains so. Internally, the less [economically] developed world has too many anti-patterns, which naturally leads to the anarchy that is chaos.
Clearly, I've been reading too much of the Dune series.
Balance. Balance is key. But balance is hard to attain. Seeking a balance between the pattern and the anti-pattern is the goal that we should all strive for, especially in SIN city.
So the trick is the balance between the two extremes.
The current SIN-'net [in]famous A. Yee is a manifestation of the anti-pattern, the deviant. Except he is without balance, which caused him to end up in his current predicament. I pity him. An easy mistake to make, one that could've been avoided easily had he chosen to do so instead of letting the inner chaos erupt and take over. I envy him, because by sheer matyrdom, he managed to draw attention to the exact struggles that many have in the latencies of their consciousness but have been too comfortable to dare to voice it out in a repressive environment.
It's hard to decide which of the two feelings I have towards him is the dominant, since I only have this one-shot snapshot of the person himself. Maybe he's choice of a shock delivery was a calculated move, his choice of matyrdom for the greater good as his form of altruism -- never mind the self-death if the sheeple learn! Or it could just be the naïveté of one who hasn't figured out the right balance between patterns and anti-patterns, between being conforming and being deviating. The choice between interpretations of his intent itself is probably more revealing on me than on him.
But back to the point: the balance between the two extremes. Patterns are comfortable, they streamline the decision-making process by providing an easy pattern of ready-made questions with relatively ready-made answers. Routines and procedures are exactly the type of ready-made questions with automatic ready-made answers -- the decisions have been made before, and it is merely the execution of the decisions. Computers are excellent at following routines and procedures, as are most orthodox bureaucrats. There is a danger to that of routines and procedures though, as many a person who has used a computer can tell. If the input to the routine or procedure varies vastly from the assumptions behind the designed routine/procedure, the results are unpredictable at best and detrimental at worst. Most system designers know of that limitation, and so they end up trying to account for as many such assumptions as they can to make the routine/procedure seem ``resilient''. Much of debugging falls into that category as well.
That, however, ends up hiding the fact that as time goes on, the assumptions themselves change beyond the scope of the changes made to the routine/procedure, and it will be time to rewrite the routine/procedure. We know this for computer systems, but the same thing can be thought of for social constructs.
Laws are like routines/procedures. They are patterns -- patterns of society that has undergone codification and formalisation. ``One may not generate noise greater than 90dBA after 2100hrs'' can be one such law. ``Everyone must kow-tow to the local Inquisitor should he/she show his/her authority medallion'' can be another such law. Both are patterns, both are routines/procedures to guide behaviour under specific circumstances.
Both are also not always right.
That's where the anti-pattern/deviation comes into play. Anti-patterns/deviations serve as the search frontier for the novel -- new ideas to solve existing problems, new problems that the current patterns do not already solve. We codify this as ``research'' (yet another pattern!) but have mostly confined it to the fringes of human existence, and at a level that is more impersonal than most. Anti-patterns/deviations relating to science (both hard and soft) are acceptable only when confined to those researchers -- people invested with the power to research via their PhDs and their research tenure.
Once you bring it to the mainstream it's no longer research and is an implementation and with it comes different levels of expectations. Implementation of social change has become much harder ever since we gained better communication connectivity. Yes it's much harder, not easier. It's a contrary view and let me explain a little on the why.
You see, bottom-up social change is never smooth nor gradual. It comes like a whiplash in the form of an uprising or revolution, peaceful or otherwise. It is the accumulation of too many patterns that anger people past the point of repression into downright oppression that makes them spring back with a vengeance. And that is how it gets messy, since all the patterns that were present before now get swept away at once by the angry mob. A society without patterns to guide it (in the form of law, bureaucracy or authority) is a mob, and all mobs have the intelligence of the lowest common denominator, until a leader emerges that can somehow influence the mob towards a more patterned behaviour. Ease of communication provides a feedback mechanism for such bottom-up affairs, which can be seen in the Arab Spring of recent times, as well as the Maidan protests. Some of the feedback is from the local people involved, but due to the 'net's reach, we end up having feedback from outside of the local region, which can be good or bad depending on who's evaluating the situation.
What about top-down social change then? It has always existed, but it is confined to the patterned-thinking of whoever is in charge. After all, if it ain't broke, don't touch it, right? If the current set of laws and bureaucratic mechanisms are working, there is little to no incentive to shake them up in any way. More importantly, most of such top-down social changes are too feeble, particularly when it is done by committee. For some things that affect the status quo, the changes will come swift, but for those that can impact on whoever's in power's power base, the changes will be... less swift. Top-down social changes done by a Prince (feudal lord, warlord, dictator... well you get the idea) moves much faster, though the Prince is not immune to the lure of maintaining or elevating his power base.
Much of the [economically] developed world suffers from too many patterns, while much of the less [economically] developed world suffers from too many anti-patterns. International laws, trade agreements, even the status quo itself are patterns that get enforced ad nauseum, whether or not they are actually as effective as they were before. These patterns raise the barrier of entry into the mainstream, which partly explains why the less [economically] developed world remains so. Internally, the less [economically] developed world has too many anti-patterns, which naturally leads to the anarchy that is chaos.
Clearly, I've been reading too much of the Dune series.
Balance. Balance is key. But balance is hard to attain. Seeking a balance between the pattern and the anti-pattern is the goal that we should all strive for, especially in SIN city.
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Second Death
Grief is a normal human emotion. It is evoked whenever something or someone dear that was once available suddenly becomes unavailable, forever.
Before I flew off to the US, Leonard Nimoy passed away. When I returned from the US, LKY passed away.
One affected a large part of the anglo world, the other affected mostly a tiny island-nation with light ripples elsewhere.
No, this is not going to be a tribute piece to either men. The objective of this piece is to talk about grief. Grief is the predominant emotion that is present now, particularly in the case of the demise of Singapore's de facto strongman. Among the people that are best known for their general lack of emotion whatsoever (other than bitching about how things are broken), there is an almost universal deadness that comes about from national grief.
Universal deadness -- I can find no other way of expressing this. Almost all official government business is practically stopped, the usual propaganda machines are now churning out praises, memoirs, and eulogies from personalities who have had close contact with the former strongman instead of their usual selection of revenue-generating advertisements or even materials that help promulgate the particular merits of the latest public policy that has been published. The people I talk to seem more lacklustre than usual, as though their life had been sucked out of them. Everyone's thinking about attending the wake of the former strongman, and how to maintain things in the most sombre way possible.
Well, that's how they express their grief for the final loss of an era of nation building as epitomised by the actions of this one man.
If it's not obvious enough, I don't share in the same way of expressing such grief, not because I do not respect the man, but because I prefer a more active and positive form of expressing grief.
I celebrate the person's achievements, I celebrate the person's vision. I do not wallow about the losses, but try to look forward to the future.
Just in my last post, I mentioned about the second death. One only truly dies when the second death comes. And for LKY, that second death isn't about to come for a very very long time.
Is it a loss for us that he is gone now? No.
Look around. The man is mortal, but what he had done is still here. No loss. Celebrate what he did, look forward to the future, share in his vision. Mourn not the loss of the mortal flesh. That's how I choose to handle grief.
Rituals and funerals are for the living and not the dead. Let everyone have their rituals and funerals to provide the closure, but wallow not in the past. The future is already here, and we need to keep things going if we want our little island-nation to keep punching above our weight.
Most importantly though, when the dust settles, it is time to put away the glowing memories of the man, and to examine critically what it is that we need to do for our survival into the future. This may even mean having to tear apart the assumptions and arguments that were put forth in the policies by the strongman himself. It takes courage for sure to do that, courage and time specifically, but it has always taken courage to live for the future.
Living in the past glories is the sure way of ensuring our demise, and that is the single most disrespectful thing that we can do to the man that we claim to bring us up to where we are now.
Before I flew off to the US, Leonard Nimoy passed away. When I returned from the US, LKY passed away.
One affected a large part of the anglo world, the other affected mostly a tiny island-nation with light ripples elsewhere.
No, this is not going to be a tribute piece to either men. The objective of this piece is to talk about grief. Grief is the predominant emotion that is present now, particularly in the case of the demise of Singapore's de facto strongman. Among the people that are best known for their general lack of emotion whatsoever (other than bitching about how things are broken), there is an almost universal deadness that comes about from national grief.
Universal deadness -- I can find no other way of expressing this. Almost all official government business is practically stopped, the usual propaganda machines are now churning out praises, memoirs, and eulogies from personalities who have had close contact with the former strongman instead of their usual selection of revenue-generating advertisements or even materials that help promulgate the particular merits of the latest public policy that has been published. The people I talk to seem more lacklustre than usual, as though their life had been sucked out of them. Everyone's thinking about attending the wake of the former strongman, and how to maintain things in the most sombre way possible.
Well, that's how they express their grief for the final loss of an era of nation building as epitomised by the actions of this one man.
If it's not obvious enough, I don't share in the same way of expressing such grief, not because I do not respect the man, but because I prefer a more active and positive form of expressing grief.
I celebrate the person's achievements, I celebrate the person's vision. I do not wallow about the losses, but try to look forward to the future.
Just in my last post, I mentioned about the second death. One only truly dies when the second death comes. And for LKY, that second death isn't about to come for a very very long time.
Is it a loss for us that he is gone now? No.
Look around. The man is mortal, but what he had done is still here. No loss. Celebrate what he did, look forward to the future, share in his vision. Mourn not the loss of the mortal flesh. That's how I choose to handle grief.
Rituals and funerals are for the living and not the dead. Let everyone have their rituals and funerals to provide the closure, but wallow not in the past. The future is already here, and we need to keep things going if we want our little island-nation to keep punching above our weight.
Most importantly though, when the dust settles, it is time to put away the glowing memories of the man, and to examine critically what it is that we need to do for our survival into the future. This may even mean having to tear apart the assumptions and arguments that were put forth in the policies by the strongman himself. It takes courage for sure to do that, courage and time specifically, but it has always taken courage to live for the future.
Living in the past glories is the sure way of ensuring our demise, and that is the single most disrespectful thing that we can do to the man that we claim to bring us up to where we are now.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Death and Idolisation
I am unsure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I finally have material to write a post here.
Leonard ``Spock'' Nimoy just passed away recently, while a certain old school strongman is hanging in the balance between life and death. A friend posted a note on my Facebook Wall (yes I'm still using that... for now) commenting about how as time went by it was starting to be a little weird to see the pillars of one's youth dying one by one.
I remember talking about the second death before, the idea that one truly dies when everyone forgets the essence of what one was.
So, in some sense, when one is physically dead, one doesn't truly die when one's essence is still remembered. Leonard Nimoy will be remembered as the man who brought us Spock of Star Trek, and he will also be remembered less so as the poet/musician/director he was, while his relatives will remember him as a part of family. He may no longer be among the living having died the first death, but he has not died the second death, and therefore he is still alive in that sense. So, I don't feel the need to feel sad.
Same for the certain old school strongman, should the time comes where he ends up on the other side of the balance.
I suppose I'm odd in the sense that I don't attach too much to the physical embodiment of any particular person. No, I'm not cold. What I mean is, unless I know the person well personally and have interacted with the person on an emotionally more intimate level, if they are a public figure of some sort, I will only know them for their work, and not them as who they are. So, even if they did pass on, I do not see them as a loss, not in the way that is most emotionally jarring. Sure, they're not going to have anything new from them (they're dead), but the body of work that captures their essence isn't gone, and therefore they still live. After all, that is what we know them for, and in some sense it is more real to live in their works than in what we believe we know about their lives.
Because of that, I don't feel too bad or feel that things are crumbling when important people from my childhood age and eventually pass away now, some twenty odd years later. Death is part of life---there can be no distinction of life if death didn't exist. It may sound cold, but I think this is the right type of attitude to face the world.
Idolise the work, idolise the values, but do not idolise the mortal. Mortals die, works and values are eternal.
Leonard ``Spock'' Nimoy just passed away recently, while a certain old school strongman is hanging in the balance between life and death. A friend posted a note on my Facebook Wall (yes I'm still using that... for now) commenting about how as time went by it was starting to be a little weird to see the pillars of one's youth dying one by one.
I remember talking about the second death before, the idea that one truly dies when everyone forgets the essence of what one was.
So, in some sense, when one is physically dead, one doesn't truly die when one's essence is still remembered. Leonard Nimoy will be remembered as the man who brought us Spock of Star Trek, and he will also be remembered less so as the poet/musician/director he was, while his relatives will remember him as a part of family. He may no longer be among the living having died the first death, but he has not died the second death, and therefore he is still alive in that sense. So, I don't feel the need to feel sad.
Same for the certain old school strongman, should the time comes where he ends up on the other side of the balance.
I suppose I'm odd in the sense that I don't attach too much to the physical embodiment of any particular person. No, I'm not cold. What I mean is, unless I know the person well personally and have interacted with the person on an emotionally more intimate level, if they are a public figure of some sort, I will only know them for their work, and not them as who they are. So, even if they did pass on, I do not see them as a loss, not in the way that is most emotionally jarring. Sure, they're not going to have anything new from them (they're dead), but the body of work that captures their essence isn't gone, and therefore they still live. After all, that is what we know them for, and in some sense it is more real to live in their works than in what we believe we know about their lives.
Because of that, I don't feel too bad or feel that things are crumbling when important people from my childhood age and eventually pass away now, some twenty odd years later. Death is part of life---there can be no distinction of life if death didn't exist. It may sound cold, but I think this is the right type of attitude to face the world.
Idolise the work, idolise the values, but do not idolise the mortal. Mortals die, works and values are eternal.
Friday, February 20, 2015
Luni-Solar New Year
So it's day 2 of the Chinese New Year thingy. Not that big a fan of it all, considering that the people that we hardly ever talk to for the rest of the year suddenly feel compelled for one reason or another to meet up and keep up with the pretense of interest and concern. Farcical to the core, but since it is beyond my direct control considering that we are talking about my elders here [respect of elders is relatively inviolable, short of having the said elder doing something so heinous that it will cause the heavens themselves to revulse in horror], there's nothing else to do except to keep my cool and wait out the timer till everything returns to normalcy.
It's funny though. It seems that as each year passes, I find it less and less enticing to keep up with the whole charade that comes with the whole ``Chinese New Year'' experience. House visiting is a chore, and given the swelling numbers of people in general, even visiting the festivals of the according theme is a lacklustre proposition. Or it could just be a sign of the innate dysfunction, but I am really in no mood to over-analyse this whole thing.
It really doesn't help that this year we have the equivalent of four days of wasted time. I'm not sitting around to waste the time though---I'm heading back to the office tomorrow and the day after to get some work done, things that I could probably do at home since I mirror the code I need to work on via my own private code repository. That said, getting that done at home is impossible due to the whole need of humouring those who decide to visit, hence the excuse to make the excursion back to the office, braving the slow circulation of air and lack of air-conditioning to get the uninterrupted time needed to get the work done. I have discharged my duties well for the first two days of the lunar new year, so I don't feel guilty for doing the ``ditching'' thing.
Life has clearly evolved to a new phase. Some time back I was thinking a lot about how to steel and gird myself against the world, to eke out some kind of living on my own and dealing with the ramifications from that choice. A change occurred and soon that single-minded craze started to evolve into something a little warmer and more encompassing, and now I daresay that my perspectives and targets have changed again. I was never really ambitious to begin with, preferring to do live a life akin to the older days where work was just something to do to pay the bills and keep the roof over one's head, and the new choices that were made are further reinforcing this when the limited resource of time is taken into consideration. New things to think about, more worldly things, but not necessarily a bad thing.
I'm being deliberately obtuse because things aren't fully ripe for the telling just yet. Patience.
In a couple of weeks or so I'll be heading off to the US once again for my annual long break, a necessity to ensure that I don't go completely insane given the work load that I have. I'm looking forward to it, but probably with less enthusiasm than what I had started with nearly a year ago when I was mooting the idea.
As I said, a new phase of life.
And now, I should stop, because I'm rambling again. I'm not sure if I want to do that and provide material for people to over-analyse. Till the next update then.
It's funny though. It seems that as each year passes, I find it less and less enticing to keep up with the whole charade that comes with the whole ``Chinese New Year'' experience. House visiting is a chore, and given the swelling numbers of people in general, even visiting the festivals of the according theme is a lacklustre proposition. Or it could just be a sign of the innate dysfunction, but I am really in no mood to over-analyse this whole thing.
It really doesn't help that this year we have the equivalent of four days of wasted time. I'm not sitting around to waste the time though---I'm heading back to the office tomorrow and the day after to get some work done, things that I could probably do at home since I mirror the code I need to work on via my own private code repository. That said, getting that done at home is impossible due to the whole need of humouring those who decide to visit, hence the excuse to make the excursion back to the office, braving the slow circulation of air and lack of air-conditioning to get the uninterrupted time needed to get the work done. I have discharged my duties well for the first two days of the lunar new year, so I don't feel guilty for doing the ``ditching'' thing.
Life has clearly evolved to a new phase. Some time back I was thinking a lot about how to steel and gird myself against the world, to eke out some kind of living on my own and dealing with the ramifications from that choice. A change occurred and soon that single-minded craze started to evolve into something a little warmer and more encompassing, and now I daresay that my perspectives and targets have changed again. I was never really ambitious to begin with, preferring to do live a life akin to the older days where work was just something to do to pay the bills and keep the roof over one's head, and the new choices that were made are further reinforcing this when the limited resource of time is taken into consideration. New things to think about, more worldly things, but not necessarily a bad thing.
I'm being deliberately obtuse because things aren't fully ripe for the telling just yet. Patience.
In a couple of weeks or so I'll be heading off to the US once again for my annual long break, a necessity to ensure that I don't go completely insane given the work load that I have. I'm looking forward to it, but probably with less enthusiasm than what I had started with nearly a year ago when I was mooting the idea.
As I said, a new phase of life.
And now, I should stop, because I'm rambling again. I'm not sure if I want to do that and provide material for people to over-analyse. Till the next update then.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
4k
So some time back while I was waiting for the time to pass before I meet up with Ivan and consort, I walked into one of the electronics store and checked out one of those new-fangled 4k displays that are on the laptop. I must say that I'm... impressed in one way and completely baffled in another.
See, at 4k resolutions (I think it just means that one of the dimensions is within delta of 4000 as opposed to having only 4000 pixels), there is only one way to use it---scaled mode. Running the screen at the ``smallest'' text setting a la Windows 8.1 scaling yields a text size so small that even I cannot read, which is ridiculous considering that I actually can read the teeny tiny fonts on Edythe-II, which are at a more modest 2.5k (over 13.3 inches diagonal).
I don't think that I'm going to consider getting a 4k resolution laptop in the future---what Edythe-II has currently is fantastic. However, if I'm intending to use that machine as a dumb client to some servers to run command-line programs only, then perhaps the ridiculous resolution will work much better with the GNU Unifont with its fixed 8×16 character cell size. Already on Edythe-II I can have 4 vertical screens of text/code---maybe on a larger screen I can eke out 8? As far as I know though, what Edythe-II has at the moment is sufficient, even with the GUI heavy stuff.
I... don't really have anything else to say. Work is still ongoing, life is getting better, and I'm... missing someone. That's about it I suppose.
See, at 4k resolutions (I think it just means that one of the dimensions is within delta of 4000 as opposed to having only 4000 pixels), there is only one way to use it---scaled mode. Running the screen at the ``smallest'' text setting a la Windows 8.1 scaling yields a text size so small that even I cannot read, which is ridiculous considering that I actually can read the teeny tiny fonts on Edythe-II, which are at a more modest 2.5k (over 13.3 inches diagonal).
I don't think that I'm going to consider getting a 4k resolution laptop in the future---what Edythe-II has currently is fantastic. However, if I'm intending to use that machine as a dumb client to some servers to run command-line programs only, then perhaps the ridiculous resolution will work much better with the GNU Unifont with its fixed 8×16 character cell size. Already on Edythe-II I can have 4 vertical screens of text/code---maybe on a larger screen I can eke out 8? As far as I know though, what Edythe-II has at the moment is sufficient, even with the GUI heavy stuff.
I... don't really have anything else to say. Work is still ongoing, life is getting better, and I'm... missing someone. That's about it I suppose.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Three Decades Man
Whelp. Three decades have passed. Funny how things go, right?
Just ten years ago, I said I wouldn't live past twenty. And today, I sit and look back at that old me and smile.
I started to write my autobiography then, and ten years on, I'm still stuck trying to write down the stuff from when I was fourteen. Of course, there was procrastination involved---I started with a MSWord document, and then progressed to using LaTeX. All in all, roughly ten thousand words. Maybe I will write it till the chronological time reaches this very day, since from this point on, life is going to be different once more.
As always, something for myself as a reward for surviving yet another year: the GUO Grenaditte Piccolo. This is how mine looks like:
Ain't it a looker? But looks aside, the sound of the instrument is definitely more ``wooden'' than the Prelude PC711 hybrid piccolo that I was playing, and the keywork is quicker and sensitive. There's no need for very large movements, and the intonation is generally sturdy from pp to fff. The only thing that requires a little adjustment on my end is the embouchure positioning---the Grenaditte's lip plate is both lower and flatter than that of the Prelude, yet it's not quite like the way the dizi's embouchure hole is cut.
This means that I'm not quite precise in intonation on the Grenaditte yet, but I will get there.
Va bgure arjf, creuncf V znl unir sbhaq zl pbafbeg-pnaqvqngr. Guvatf ner zbivat fjvzzvatyl jryy, naq jr'yy unir gb frr ubj vg gheaf bhg. Gung vf nf zhpu nf V nz jvyyvat gb fnl ng guvf cbvag sbe gubfr jub ner unatvat bhg naq ner cynlvat nybat gb frr jung vf tbvat ba va zl yvsr.
And that's all for now. Till the next write-up.
Just ten years ago, I said I wouldn't live past twenty. And today, I sit and look back at that old me and smile.
I started to write my autobiography then, and ten years on, I'm still stuck trying to write down the stuff from when I was fourteen. Of course, there was procrastination involved---I started with a MSWord document, and then progressed to using LaTeX. All in all, roughly ten thousand words. Maybe I will write it till the chronological time reaches this very day, since from this point on, life is going to be different once more.
As always, something for myself as a reward for surviving yet another year: the GUO Grenaditte Piccolo. This is how mine looks like:
This means that I'm not quite precise in intonation on the Grenaditte yet, but I will get there.
Va bgure arjf, creuncf V znl unir sbhaq zl pbafbeg-pnaqvqngr. Guvatf ner zbivat fjvzzvatyl jryy, naq jr'yy unir gb frr ubj vg gheaf bhg. Gung vf nf zhpu nf V nz jvyyvat gb fnl ng guvf cbvag sbe gubfr jub ner unatvat bhg naq ner cynlvat nybat gb frr jung vf tbvat ba va zl yvsr.
And that's all for now. Till the next write-up.
Thursday, January 01, 2015
Quick Summary
So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2014:
That’s an average of 0.77 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.074 last year. That isn't too bad, all things considered---at least it is a way of showing that I have picked up a bit of my writing. It's not a lot, for sure, and I broke my promise to write a story item a day at the beginning of the year just past. It turns out that trying to write a small piece a day isn't as easy as it sounds, and I will bear that in mind for the upcoming year.
The past year itself seemed to pass rather uneventfully, for the most part. Things that ought to remain buried have been buried, and new things and experiences that have come about, I have embraced. There are interesting signs coming in the horizon as I am about to complete the third decade of revolving around the sun. I am more comfortable in the skin I'm in, and are slowly finding the strength to face some of the demons that had caught up with me just a year-and-a-half ago. I am more than two-thirds through the KJV, and am nearly three-quarters through the 1001 Nights. I have read many books, experienced many different lives, and in many ways, have changed much more than before. Perhaps I am an improved person, but it is hard to tell.
2015 will be an interesting year. Changes are afoot, I can smell it in the air. In many ways, it is the time of consolidating the juvenile lessons that I have learnt over the past three decades and to make myself into the image of the man that I want to become. As the poet saith, 三十而立, and therefore this new-found sense of direction is not altogether unwelcome nor unexpected. Work is taking on a new character, and I cannot wait to tackle the new challenges that have been sent my way. My physical injuries have mend themselves most remarkably, and therefore it is time to retool my body once again to chisel out the man within. My psychological injuries have taken the time to heal, and the psyche itself is feeling much stronger than before. Where there was once bleakness and blight, I see small rays of light signifying hope.
With the good that come, there will be the limits that surface. As I progress through my current trajectory, old opportunities will slowly fade away as I walk farther down the path I am on, with new ones lurking on the sides if I choose to slow down to have a look. Some rays of hope may turn out to be illusive delusions; that is an eventuality that I will need to take into account. I look not at the path that I had gone---there is no sense in dwelling on the past---and look eagerly instead at the paths that lie before me.
The world's my oyster, and I will reap my pearls.
- 9 poems posted here
- 36 essays/rants posted here
- 234 prose/story posted here
- 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
That’s an average of 0.77 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.074 last year. That isn't too bad, all things considered---at least it is a way of showing that I have picked up a bit of my writing. It's not a lot, for sure, and I broke my promise to write a story item a day at the beginning of the year just past. It turns out that trying to write a small piece a day isn't as easy as it sounds, and I will bear that in mind for the upcoming year.
The past year itself seemed to pass rather uneventfully, for the most part. Things that ought to remain buried have been buried, and new things and experiences that have come about, I have embraced. There are interesting signs coming in the horizon as I am about to complete the third decade of revolving around the sun. I am more comfortable in the skin I'm in, and are slowly finding the strength to face some of the demons that had caught up with me just a year-and-a-half ago. I am more than two-thirds through the KJV, and am nearly three-quarters through the 1001 Nights. I have read many books, experienced many different lives, and in many ways, have changed much more than before. Perhaps I am an improved person, but it is hard to tell.
2015 will be an interesting year. Changes are afoot, I can smell it in the air. In many ways, it is the time of consolidating the juvenile lessons that I have learnt over the past three decades and to make myself into the image of the man that I want to become. As the poet saith, 三十而立, and therefore this new-found sense of direction is not altogether unwelcome nor unexpected. Work is taking on a new character, and I cannot wait to tackle the new challenges that have been sent my way. My physical injuries have mend themselves most remarkably, and therefore it is time to retool my body once again to chisel out the man within. My psychological injuries have taken the time to heal, and the psyche itself is feeling much stronger than before. Where there was once bleakness and blight, I see small rays of light signifying hope.
With the good that come, there will be the limits that surface. As I progress through my current trajectory, old opportunities will slowly fade away as I walk farther down the path I am on, with new ones lurking on the sides if I choose to slow down to have a look. Some rays of hope may turn out to be illusive delusions; that is an eventuality that I will need to take into account. I look not at the path that I had gone---there is no sense in dwelling on the past---and look eagerly instead at the paths that lie before me.
The world's my oyster, and I will reap my pearls.
Thursday, December 25, 2014
Because I felt like ranting
I'm this close to calling this week a wipe out. Not that I didn't get anything done (I actually got a lot done), but that it feels as though I didn't get anything done due to the relatively serene behaviours of all those around me who are taking good advantage of the usual end-of-year lull and just chill out.
Of course this is a bad segue. It's me ranting; what were you expecting?
I'm a little bit pissed off with the way e-books are currently being handled. The popular formats of ePub and/or the Amazon Kindle format are no better than a highly restricted version of HTML, which of course means that the typography is completely at the mercy of the rendering device. Given the variety of screen real estates co-mingling with the varying visual acuities of people using devices with the said screen pixel real estates, it seems to make a lot of sense to surrender the typographic rendering to that of the program that is running on the specific device.
It makes it all very accessible, particularly when the document can be reflowed and the fonts be adjusted to reach a certain level of viewing comfort.
But it pisses me off big time. I try to write, and now for the sake of pseudo compatibility isues I need to blast myself back to the stone age and forsake lovely laid out text just to support all these... things. In other words, if I choose to want to write using the ePub format (for example), I need to redo everything as though I were writing in Word or even (shudders) HTML, therefore leaving behind all the loveliness of what LaTeX brings.
That's just stupid. I refuse to do so.
Also, by virtue of design, these so-called e-book formats stink for presenting mathematical statements, since there isn't really a ``math-rendering'' mode. I doubt they even support MathML, the XML/HTML equivalent of what LaTeX does for rendering the mathematical statements. This means that to publish a work with more than mere paragraphs requires wrangling with generated images of the relevant symbols and statements, which of course defeats the whole purpose of hte format in terms of reflow and readability.
Anyway, not sure why I wanted to rant on that. It's not like I use the ePub format for my writing, yes? I still generate PDF files from LaTeX input, and it works well enough for me. Screw market forces, particularly when one isn't an active participant within it.
Of course this is a bad segue. It's me ranting; what were you expecting?
I'm a little bit pissed off with the way e-books are currently being handled. The popular formats of ePub and/or the Amazon Kindle format are no better than a highly restricted version of HTML, which of course means that the typography is completely at the mercy of the rendering device. Given the variety of screen real estates co-mingling with the varying visual acuities of people using devices with the said screen pixel real estates, it seems to make a lot of sense to surrender the typographic rendering to that of the program that is running on the specific device.
It makes it all very accessible, particularly when the document can be reflowed and the fonts be adjusted to reach a certain level of viewing comfort.
But it pisses me off big time. I try to write, and now for the sake of pseudo compatibility isues I need to blast myself back to the stone age and forsake lovely laid out text just to support all these... things. In other words, if I choose to want to write using the ePub format (for example), I need to redo everything as though I were writing in Word or even (shudders) HTML, therefore leaving behind all the loveliness of what LaTeX brings.
That's just stupid. I refuse to do so.
Also, by virtue of design, these so-called e-book formats stink for presenting mathematical statements, since there isn't really a ``math-rendering'' mode. I doubt they even support MathML, the XML/HTML equivalent of what LaTeX does for rendering the mathematical statements. This means that to publish a work with more than mere paragraphs requires wrangling with generated images of the relevant symbols and statements, which of course defeats the whole purpose of hte format in terms of reflow and readability.
Anyway, not sure why I wanted to rant on that. It's not like I use the ePub format for my writing, yes? I still generate PDF files from LaTeX input, and it works well enough for me. Screw market forces, particularly when one isn't an active participant within it.
Friday, December 19, 2014
``Holiday Meals''
Funny how I have not written much here for most of the year and suddenly, I end up writing so much over the past few days. Let's just say it's just something that came out of pure serendipity and leave it as that.
I feel bloated and fat. For the past three days, I have been binge eating. Wednesday was some steak from Jack's Place, Thursday was an a la carte buffet at Supreme Tastes Jiang Nan Cuisine, and today was sushi nigiri at my favourite sushi place [that I will not reveal here]. If not for the department event yesterday, I would probably have spent upwards of nearly two hundred dollars for all the food that had been eaten.
And so, from tomorrow onwards, I'm going back to something more sane. I'm writing off these meals as ``holiday meals'', something to the effect of eating Hannukah/Christmas/Yuletide/New Year's meals, and leaving them as that.
My progress is still steady with the 5BX. Currently at level B- on chart 1, it won't take long before I progress to chart 2 where the scaling will go up even more. I'm currently using the progression of the 30--43 years old age bracket, which meant upping the progression levels no faster than once every four days. Let's face it, claiming 30 now and one month later is not really different. Considering the constant performance of the exercises (daily), it is also safer to err on the side of conservatism and go at the slowest maximal rate that I can live with.
That said, I feel very hypocritical. The actual words I will reserve for the one who is to hear them, but let's just say that I should also buck up in terms of making myself more presentable and healthy. It is unfair to wish for my companion to be healthy and strong when I'm not even putting any significant effort into the betterment of myself.
Hmmm... what else is there to say, actually? No idea. I'm just rambling now.
Maybe I'll stop here. Till the next update.
I feel bloated and fat. For the past three days, I have been binge eating. Wednesday was some steak from Jack's Place, Thursday was an a la carte buffet at Supreme Tastes Jiang Nan Cuisine, and today was sushi nigiri at my favourite sushi place [that I will not reveal here]. If not for the department event yesterday, I would probably have spent upwards of nearly two hundred dollars for all the food that had been eaten.
And so, from tomorrow onwards, I'm going back to something more sane. I'm writing off these meals as ``holiday meals'', something to the effect of eating Hannukah/Christmas/Yuletide/New Year's meals, and leaving them as that.
My progress is still steady with the 5BX. Currently at level B- on chart 1, it won't take long before I progress to chart 2 where the scaling will go up even more. I'm currently using the progression of the 30--43 years old age bracket, which meant upping the progression levels no faster than once every four days. Let's face it, claiming 30 now and one month later is not really different. Considering the constant performance of the exercises (daily), it is also safer to err on the side of conservatism and go at the slowest maximal rate that I can live with.
That said, I feel very hypocritical. The actual words I will reserve for the one who is to hear them, but let's just say that I should also buck up in terms of making myself more presentable and healthy. It is unfair to wish for my companion to be healthy and strong when I'm not even putting any significant effort into the betterment of myself.
Hmmm... what else is there to say, actually? No idea. I'm just rambling now.
Maybe I'll stop here. Till the next update.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
``I am emotionally and electrically drained.''
I feel so drained. I feel like I need to curl up into a ball and just silently go to sleep, after downing a few shots of hard liquor.
I hate being referred to as a ``scholar''. I don't care who says it---fact is, I no longer see myself as a ``scholar''. He-who-shalt-not-be-named pointed out to me clearly that I did not fulfil the basic requirements of being a scholar, because I was ``intellectually lazy'' and that I didn't have the perseverance to bull-headedly push my way through the hard parts of the thought process. So to me, being called a ``scholar'' is taken as an insult, since I have to expend that effort to explain why I am not a scholar, assuming I give a damn in the first place. Inasmuch as I like not giving a damn, sometimes it's hard to dodge out due to point-blankness. Maybe my curtness will hint what I am really thinking about. If ever there is a push factor to leave the organisation after my bond is done, it would be that stigma associated with the word that I never seemed to have identified strongly with in the first place, because it is fucking hard to lead a normal life when one is surrounded by PhD holders.
Why can't people see me for who I am instead of who I was supposed to be?
Anyway, I'm drained, socially. Some kind of year-end function of the department at work; didn't feel right if I dodged out of it. So, I just showed up and made do with what I could. Whatever social capital I had left lying around was pretty much used up by the end of the afternoon, where I just didn't want to talk or even listen to anyone.
The things we do to appear normal...
It's funny to be in Singapore during the end-of-year. I was so used to spending new year's eve on my own in the winter that having to face it again this year in tropical Singapore just feels odd. Maybe I'll do what I should have done---go minimal and not give a damn. Just sleep regularly the night before and wake up on new year's itself feeling more or less like usual.
All these holiday things become more and more meaningless as one gets older. Until of course when one brings forth younglings---then the holidays take on a different kind of character where the focus is not on the self but on the said younglings.
I think I'm done here. Till the next update.
I hate being referred to as a ``scholar''. I don't care who says it---fact is, I no longer see myself as a ``scholar''. He-who-shalt-not-be-named pointed out to me clearly that I did not fulfil the basic requirements of being a scholar, because I was ``intellectually lazy'' and that I didn't have the perseverance to bull-headedly push my way through the hard parts of the thought process. So to me, being called a ``scholar'' is taken as an insult, since I have to expend that effort to explain why I am not a scholar, assuming I give a damn in the first place. Inasmuch as I like not giving a damn, sometimes it's hard to dodge out due to point-blankness. Maybe my curtness will hint what I am really thinking about. If ever there is a push factor to leave the organisation after my bond is done, it would be that stigma associated with the word that I never seemed to have identified strongly with in the first place, because it is fucking hard to lead a normal life when one is surrounded by PhD holders.
Why can't people see me for who I am instead of who I was supposed to be?
Anyway, I'm drained, socially. Some kind of year-end function of the department at work; didn't feel right if I dodged out of it. So, I just showed up and made do with what I could. Whatever social capital I had left lying around was pretty much used up by the end of the afternoon, where I just didn't want to talk or even listen to anyone.
The things we do to appear normal...
It's funny to be in Singapore during the end-of-year. I was so used to spending new year's eve on my own in the winter that having to face it again this year in tropical Singapore just feels odd. Maybe I'll do what I should have done---go minimal and not give a damn. Just sleep regularly the night before and wake up on new year's itself feeling more or less like usual.
All these holiday things become more and more meaningless as one gets older. Until of course when one brings forth younglings---then the holidays take on a different kind of character where the focus is not on the self but on the said younglings.
I think I'm done here. Till the next update.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Baggage
There are some days where you wake up and wonder to yourself, `why am I still alive?'. Unfortunately for me, today is such a day.
Before anyone panics, no I'm not contemplating suicide. Suicide only works on two occasions: getting attention through the attempt, or when there is literally no one who cares for you left for you to give a damn about so that the most logical outcome is to just end it all instead of prolonging suffering.
I will, of course, go back to the old standby and blame it on the season. But it feels a little frivolous, considering that I am no longer located at a latitude where the amount of sunlight hours is sufficiently low to warrant the appeal towards Seasonal Affective Disorder as the culprit. I could always blame it on the annual panic from realising that yet another physical year has passed while I will soon feel that I have aged by three years over three months again.
Or I can do the right thing and admit that the reason for my own dissatisfaction with life at this point is that I still have not gotten over the emotional baggage that I had been lugging around since a decade ago wheen the world started to make almost no sense to me, the day when I was released from the regimented confines of the education system into the more free-form world where the only real rule to obey is to not get caught breaking any rules.
If you were wondering, yes, that previous paragraph was a single sentence. Loopy huh.
Okay, while I'm on a roll, let me just put it out there. I'm dissatisfied with the way my emotional life is going. It has gotten to the point where it is starting to become somewhat affective of my daily life in a detrimental sort of way. The first large outbreak of this whole nonsense was back during the first couple of years of NS, from the Lunar Princess. Then it got steadily stupid as I clammed up. Then stuff happened in college, stuff happened outside of college, stuff happened during my PhD-to-Masters, and now, stuff happening while I'm working.
I'm self-censoring to protect... I don't know... people who were involved with me during those times, perhaps. I don't want some Google search to lead them here. No need to draw unnecessary attention. Considering that the visitors to this blog are largely people trying to look for malloc()-lab solutions and the Google web spider, one cannot be too careful.
So... stuff. What to make of it, really? Two words: slow [the hell] down. That's what I need to do. My biggest failing as a human (I can sort of pass as a demented AI, but don't tell anyone that of course) is that when it comes to dealing with other humans, I tend to run hot. And by ``run hot'' I mean ``with great enthusiasm''. Except humans being humans, they cannot appreciate nor care to understand that kind of tendencies. Machines don't give a damn---their perception of time, should there be such a thing, is simple. None of that creepiness or weirdness factor. If they need your attention, they need your attention. If you give your utmost attention, they don't balk and get all creeped out; if anything, they are probably happier with it since it means someone who cares is looking out for them.
You do that to a human, you get a ``gee maybe you're coming on too strong and are creeping me out''. Machines run at the time scale of minutes, hours tops per job, while humans run at the time scale of years, with a whole bunch of emotional baggage that comes along with them to boot.
Machines also have the tendency to not associate much meaning to any particular string of characters until they are told how to interpret it, while humans just jump to stupid conclusions on the get go. Here's an example: ``I eat human foetuses.''. To a machine, it's merely a string, but you, a human reading this [hopefully], you are treated to the unsavoury image of an unborn human foetus being macerated by a mouthful of teeth, possibly with the face of a Hannibal Lector adorning it. Naturally, you'd feel disgusted.
But I don't feel such things. Words are words until I choose an interpretation for them. That's why it's easy to pun, and that's why it's easy to introduce innuendo.
That's why after a while, people just... cannot take it. Because I think more machine-like than human-like, despite having a human-ish avatar with the usual biological needs.
Oh don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't have emotions. I feel sadness, I feel happiness. I know how it feels like to be loved, I know how it feels to be rejected or unloved. I know how to feel hate as well, and how to deliver the vitriol necessary to keep some ignorant assholes in line.
I need to have all those to be an effective musician after all. Musicians gotta feel to play music. Otherwise they'd just be a human version of a MIDI controller.
But I've never felt the need to show them strongly in one way or another. It's weakening. It shows a chink in the armour, the hole in the wall that has been built up from too many past trauma of the emotional sort.
I don't like feeling weak. I like to be in control. That's why I design algorithms and write computer programs---to control the machine.
But I can't control other humans. I'm not a dictator, and I'm not rich enough to buy control. I'm too poor. Even cooperative multi-tasking doesn't work when the clock circuit timings ``don't click''.
I don't know why I'm writing all these now. Perhaps it's a way of expunging stupid data in my head so I can forget about all these and get back to my usual low energy state to carry on living.
Or maybe it's a silent cry for help.
You choose.
Before anyone panics, no I'm not contemplating suicide. Suicide only works on two occasions: getting attention through the attempt, or when there is literally no one who cares for you left for you to give a damn about so that the most logical outcome is to just end it all instead of prolonging suffering.
I will, of course, go back to the old standby and blame it on the season. But it feels a little frivolous, considering that I am no longer located at a latitude where the amount of sunlight hours is sufficiently low to warrant the appeal towards Seasonal Affective Disorder as the culprit. I could always blame it on the annual panic from realising that yet another physical year has passed while I will soon feel that I have aged by three years over three months again.
Or I can do the right thing and admit that the reason for my own dissatisfaction with life at this point is that I still have not gotten over the emotional baggage that I had been lugging around since a decade ago wheen the world started to make almost no sense to me, the day when I was released from the regimented confines of the education system into the more free-form world where the only real rule to obey is to not get caught breaking any rules.
If you were wondering, yes, that previous paragraph was a single sentence. Loopy huh.
Okay, while I'm on a roll, let me just put it out there. I'm dissatisfied with the way my emotional life is going. It has gotten to the point where it is starting to become somewhat affective of my daily life in a detrimental sort of way. The first large outbreak of this whole nonsense was back during the first couple of years of NS, from the Lunar Princess. Then it got steadily stupid as I clammed up. Then stuff happened in college, stuff happened outside of college, stuff happened during my PhD-to-Masters, and now, stuff happening while I'm working.
I'm self-censoring to protect... I don't know... people who were involved with me during those times, perhaps. I don't want some Google search to lead them here. No need to draw unnecessary attention. Considering that the visitors to this blog are largely people trying to look for malloc()-lab solutions and the Google web spider, one cannot be too careful.
So... stuff. What to make of it, really? Two words: slow [the hell] down. That's what I need to do. My biggest failing as a human (I can sort of pass as a demented AI, but don't tell anyone that of course) is that when it comes to dealing with other humans, I tend to run hot. And by ``run hot'' I mean ``with great enthusiasm''. Except humans being humans, they cannot appreciate nor care to understand that kind of tendencies. Machines don't give a damn---their perception of time, should there be such a thing, is simple. None of that creepiness or weirdness factor. If they need your attention, they need your attention. If you give your utmost attention, they don't balk and get all creeped out; if anything, they are probably happier with it since it means someone who cares is looking out for them.
You do that to a human, you get a ``gee maybe you're coming on too strong and are creeping me out''. Machines run at the time scale of minutes, hours tops per job, while humans run at the time scale of years, with a whole bunch of emotional baggage that comes along with them to boot.
Machines also have the tendency to not associate much meaning to any particular string of characters until they are told how to interpret it, while humans just jump to stupid conclusions on the get go. Here's an example: ``I eat human foetuses.''. To a machine, it's merely a string, but you, a human reading this [hopefully], you are treated to the unsavoury image of an unborn human foetus being macerated by a mouthful of teeth, possibly with the face of a Hannibal Lector adorning it. Naturally, you'd feel disgusted.
But I don't feel such things. Words are words until I choose an interpretation for them. That's why it's easy to pun, and that's why it's easy to introduce innuendo.
That's why after a while, people just... cannot take it. Because I think more machine-like than human-like, despite having a human-ish avatar with the usual biological needs.
Oh don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't have emotions. I feel sadness, I feel happiness. I know how it feels like to be loved, I know how it feels to be rejected or unloved. I know how to feel hate as well, and how to deliver the vitriol necessary to keep some ignorant assholes in line.
I need to have all those to be an effective musician after all. Musicians gotta feel to play music. Otherwise they'd just be a human version of a MIDI controller.
But I've never felt the need to show them strongly in one way or another. It's weakening. It shows a chink in the armour, the hole in the wall that has been built up from too many past trauma of the emotional sort.
I don't like feeling weak. I like to be in control. That's why I design algorithms and write computer programs---to control the machine.
But I can't control other humans. I'm not a dictator, and I'm not rich enough to buy control. I'm too poor. Even cooperative multi-tasking doesn't work when the clock circuit timings ``don't click''.
I don't know why I'm writing all these now. Perhaps it's a way of expunging stupid data in my head so I can forget about all these and get back to my usual low energy state to carry on living.
Or maybe it's a silent cry for help.
You choose.
Monday, December 01, 2014
December
As November ends and December begins, so ends my leave-clearing exercise for this year's excess leave that I cannot carry over to the next. Today was an anomaly---I had a free off-in-lieu that needed clearing from having spent the equivalent of standing around for a whole day during office hours at an exhibition. Go figure on that one.
At this point, almost everyone is in the holiday mood, but for me, the fun is just about to start. It's past NaNoWriMo, which means that the month-long writing extravaganza is finally over, and it's time to get back to the regular schedule. And in my case, it means to get back to cranking out code before the year's end to catch up with the time lost from all those ``management'' related things.
I don't really like working in management. It feels as though it is demanding me of a set of skills that I really don't wish to deploy. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm wholly incompetent in the whole ``leadership'' mess---throughout the near three decades of my existence, I had undergone almost every leadership workshop/seminar/programme thing that was foisted upon me, and have gotten good feedback from it all too. It's just that the whole resource management, planning, and meeting games detract from what my real love is---building things with my brains and hands. There are enough of those MBA holders out there who need a job to exercise their management skills, and since I'm much happier working on systems, I ought to be allowed to work on those as much as I can.
Maybe when I'm old enough and sick enough of technology that I will choose to manage humans. But somehow I don't see that day coming up any time soon.
December. Traditionally a loathed month due to... issues, but this time round, I have a good feeling about it. Okay, so I don't have wonderful snow to play with, but the need to plan for my travels, and crank out code and presentations for the work I have been working on (with a deadline too), at least they are comfortable distractions.
And the reading. Never forget about the reading.
As for the writing... it has been a lost cause for quite a while now. That story-a-day is effectively dead, but it had done it's job. I'll probably try it again next year, or at least, try to write a story a week just to keep things going. A story a day was just too intense, and after a while, it became too much of a chore and less fun.
Alright, enough yapping. Maybe I'll write more stuff soon... before the month's end that is.
At this point, almost everyone is in the holiday mood, but for me, the fun is just about to start. It's past NaNoWriMo, which means that the month-long writing extravaganza is finally over, and it's time to get back to the regular schedule. And in my case, it means to get back to cranking out code before the year's end to catch up with the time lost from all those ``management'' related things.
I don't really like working in management. It feels as though it is demanding me of a set of skills that I really don't wish to deploy. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm wholly incompetent in the whole ``leadership'' mess---throughout the near three decades of my existence, I had undergone almost every leadership workshop/seminar/programme thing that was foisted upon me, and have gotten good feedback from it all too. It's just that the whole resource management, planning, and meeting games detract from what my real love is---building things with my brains and hands. There are enough of those MBA holders out there who need a job to exercise their management skills, and since I'm much happier working on systems, I ought to be allowed to work on those as much as I can.
Maybe when I'm old enough and sick enough of technology that I will choose to manage humans. But somehow I don't see that day coming up any time soon.
December. Traditionally a loathed month due to... issues, but this time round, I have a good feeling about it. Okay, so I don't have wonderful snow to play with, but the need to plan for my travels, and crank out code and presentations for the work I have been working on (with a deadline too), at least they are comfortable distractions.
And the reading. Never forget about the reading.
As for the writing... it has been a lost cause for quite a while now. That story-a-day is effectively dead, but it had done it's job. I'll probably try it again next year, or at least, try to write a story a week just to keep things going. A story a day was just too intense, and after a while, it became too much of a chore and less fun.
Alright, enough yapping. Maybe I'll write more stuff soon... before the month's end that is.
Monday, November 24, 2014
Relationships Are Hard
A lovely night isn't it? Apart from Eirian-II, all my other regular devices for reading are currently drained of their power, leaving me with some time to kill, and nothing to read. Couple that with the cool night time air from the just-fallen rain, it feels like one of those days where a little blog entry is in order.
Relationships are hard. I've finally gotten enough courage to read Suzuka, something that I have had my hands on for quite a long time but could never really ``man up'' to read it. I watched the anime for it that spanned the first ten volumes of the tankōbon volumes, but obviously it was only an adaptation and was therefore less complete as compared to the original manga. The choice of ``man up'' is deliberate---the story is in some ways sad because the failings of the protagonist are just so plain to see from the third party perspective, but in-universe, it is easy to see just why he can't see his own failings himself.
It hits a little close to home, actually.
Anyway, in the grander scheme of things, there's a reason why I don't watch much anime now as compared to the times when I was in college. I can't take it any more. No, not because of the ``animation'' aspect, but the emotional aspect that comes with each of the series that I watch. They feature human qualities like friendship, comradeship, romance, and somehow they all feel as though they hit a little close to home.
What I mean is, I feel lonely. Each time I watch these anime or read such manga, I feel a little lonely inside. It's not that I don't have any human connections whatsoever that is causing such a feeling of loneliness---it is that kind of semi-hollow feeling one gets when the connections are not that deep. It's a side effect of building all these protective walls around me, always presenting the fantastic façade against the world, always working to exhaustion to avoid having to introspect to find the lonely person within.
In many ways, I am extremely content, verging on being passive even. Sometimes, under the right triggers, I am reminded of how life can be like, and those times, I wish I were dead since that's how I end up feeling inside. Dead. Like there was nothing left to do for my emotional self.
I don't anger much. I don't cry much. I don't actually feel much in general. I share some mirth with friends over a joke, and maybe have that impish slant towards the ridiculous, but that's about it. It's quite contrary to be a musician while having such monotonous emotions---it seems that I have been good enough at fake-projecting all the needed emotions out whenever I have to play a piece. A cool gift, I would think, but ultimately it is just hollow. When I sit alone and stare out into space and happen to look back into myself, I see shadows. It seems that I can never look into myself---if there's something I would fear, it is to look into myself and finding nothing of value there. I only look outwards of myself, observing the world, thinking about what goes on out there, reasoning about everything else. I am too scared to look into myself because I know that I can find nothing there.
Sadly though, despite trying my hardest to not look into myself, I have done so more often than I care to over the past few years. I think I lost a part of me the day Ida dumped me. It has been five years, and you know what's funny, every now and then, out of the blue, I will think of her still, even though I know she cares not about me any more. It's not that strong of an emotion, granted, since it has the luxury of time to space it out---what I remember are the good things that happened, the kind of closeness that I'd never gotten ever since. But there was still the distance---we're talking about a girl who probably got the closest to me before it all fell through, and at the end of the day, even that wasn't close enough. I'm not really sure what to make of that though.
It's a funny sort of feeling to have. On the one hand, we find that people are relying on me increasingly for guidance and leadership, as a pillar to support our small little sub-section of society, all of which suggest some level of maturity and ken. On the other hand, I feel that deep within myself, I am still emotionally insecure and possibly immature. As I near my thirtieth birthday, I cannot help but wonder if my karmic lesson for this life time is to learn the true meaning of love and understanding.
Relationships are hard. I've finally gotten enough courage to read Suzuka, something that I have had my hands on for quite a long time but could never really ``man up'' to read it. I watched the anime for it that spanned the first ten volumes of the tankōbon volumes, but obviously it was only an adaptation and was therefore less complete as compared to the original manga. The choice of ``man up'' is deliberate---the story is in some ways sad because the failings of the protagonist are just so plain to see from the third party perspective, but in-universe, it is easy to see just why he can't see his own failings himself.
It hits a little close to home, actually.
Anyway, in the grander scheme of things, there's a reason why I don't watch much anime now as compared to the times when I was in college. I can't take it any more. No, not because of the ``animation'' aspect, but the emotional aspect that comes with each of the series that I watch. They feature human qualities like friendship, comradeship, romance, and somehow they all feel as though they hit a little close to home.
What I mean is, I feel lonely. Each time I watch these anime or read such manga, I feel a little lonely inside. It's not that I don't have any human connections whatsoever that is causing such a feeling of loneliness---it is that kind of semi-hollow feeling one gets when the connections are not that deep. It's a side effect of building all these protective walls around me, always presenting the fantastic façade against the world, always working to exhaustion to avoid having to introspect to find the lonely person within.
In many ways, I am extremely content, verging on being passive even. Sometimes, under the right triggers, I am reminded of how life can be like, and those times, I wish I were dead since that's how I end up feeling inside. Dead. Like there was nothing left to do for my emotional self.
I don't anger much. I don't cry much. I don't actually feel much in general. I share some mirth with friends over a joke, and maybe have that impish slant towards the ridiculous, but that's about it. It's quite contrary to be a musician while having such monotonous emotions---it seems that I have been good enough at fake-projecting all the needed emotions out whenever I have to play a piece. A cool gift, I would think, but ultimately it is just hollow. When I sit alone and stare out into space and happen to look back into myself, I see shadows. It seems that I can never look into myself---if there's something I would fear, it is to look into myself and finding nothing of value there. I only look outwards of myself, observing the world, thinking about what goes on out there, reasoning about everything else. I am too scared to look into myself because I know that I can find nothing there.
Sadly though, despite trying my hardest to not look into myself, I have done so more often than I care to over the past few years. I think I lost a part of me the day Ida dumped me. It has been five years, and you know what's funny, every now and then, out of the blue, I will think of her still, even though I know she cares not about me any more. It's not that strong of an emotion, granted, since it has the luxury of time to space it out---what I remember are the good things that happened, the kind of closeness that I'd never gotten ever since. But there was still the distance---we're talking about a girl who probably got the closest to me before it all fell through, and at the end of the day, even that wasn't close enough. I'm not really sure what to make of that though.
It's a funny sort of feeling to have. On the one hand, we find that people are relying on me increasingly for guidance and leadership, as a pillar to support our small little sub-section of society, all of which suggest some level of maturity and ken. On the other hand, I feel that deep within myself, I am still emotionally insecure and possibly immature. As I near my thirtieth birthday, I cannot help but wonder if my karmic lesson for this life time is to learn the true meaning of love and understanding.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Night Time Introspection
The hard part about living isn't about intellectual stimulation, but emotional stability and assuredness. That is something that I am fast starting to learn as I trudge through yet another year.
Technically, we are now approaching the traditionally disliked portions of the year. And this year, strangely enough, is turning out to be no different from previous years.
I like being alone, most of the time. It's quite relaxing to just be oneself, to read, to figure things out, to not over-stress about the social pressures of the world. But then, there are times where even the alone person starts to feel a little lonely, to actually crave for some kind of human contact, to talk about the things that were read, to discuss things that were experienced, to just share a yarn or two. Then, there are the times where physical contact is craved, to hold someone dear in one's arms, to cuddle, to hug, to snuggle, to just feel the kind of warmth that comes with being with a loved one.
Those are, as far as I can tell, the key ingredients to actually staying mentally sane.
I get my talk on with people every now and then. Granted, there are not that many people whom I actually talk ``serious stuff'' (or at least things that are of direct interest without necessarily providing a ``productivity increase'' in the monetary sense), but I do get to talk with them at least once every quarter. It's not enough, but it's not as shabby as it sounds. Such talk takes time to gather information and analysis, and is probably best spent at the rate of a symposium.
But the physical contact, I don't get it much, if at all. Not since 2009. It's a side effect of being withdrawn, in many senses, from the wider world. It sucks to live in a repressed country where even a hug is suspicious, let alone getting close. And in a place where repressed love is the norm, people like me who like physical contact just get no air time, especially since I'm not that gregarious or rich enough to sally through the repression.
And that's the chief reason behind my general low affect, if there's any reason to be found.
I don't lack money. Okay, I, like everyone else, wish to get more of it, but it's not something that is actively hampering me. I am pretty stable in terms of employment and my intellectual curiousity---I've not reached the point where I feel like I'm not doing anything useful or interesting just yet. But I miss being close and secretive with that special someone, and sometimes that drives me nuts.
My usual remedy is to just go run or do hard physical exercise to burn it all out of the system. It works, until I sustain injuries of some sort, or if the weather gives me a big fuck you in the form of the Sumatran haze or unrelenting rain. So it's not exactly a permanent solution.
I'm fast reaching the start of the fourth decade of my existence (do the math: if I reach thirty next year, that's three decades that had come and gone, with the fourth one beginning). Maybe this innate sense of ``missing something'' will dominate this upcoming decade, the way the innate sense of ``where do I fit in the world'' dominating the decade that just passed me by.
Hell, maybe I don't even get to live that long, dying from a broken heart or suiciding from an overload of despair that is not easily removed through the physical exercises that I attempt. Who knows?
Technically, we are now approaching the traditionally disliked portions of the year. And this year, strangely enough, is turning out to be no different from previous years.
I like being alone, most of the time. It's quite relaxing to just be oneself, to read, to figure things out, to not over-stress about the social pressures of the world. But then, there are times where even the alone person starts to feel a little lonely, to actually crave for some kind of human contact, to talk about the things that were read, to discuss things that were experienced, to just share a yarn or two. Then, there are the times where physical contact is craved, to hold someone dear in one's arms, to cuddle, to hug, to snuggle, to just feel the kind of warmth that comes with being with a loved one.
Those are, as far as I can tell, the key ingredients to actually staying mentally sane.
I get my talk on with people every now and then. Granted, there are not that many people whom I actually talk ``serious stuff'' (or at least things that are of direct interest without necessarily providing a ``productivity increase'' in the monetary sense), but I do get to talk with them at least once every quarter. It's not enough, but it's not as shabby as it sounds. Such talk takes time to gather information and analysis, and is probably best spent at the rate of a symposium.
But the physical contact, I don't get it much, if at all. Not since 2009. It's a side effect of being withdrawn, in many senses, from the wider world. It sucks to live in a repressed country where even a hug is suspicious, let alone getting close. And in a place where repressed love is the norm, people like me who like physical contact just get no air time, especially since I'm not that gregarious or rich enough to sally through the repression.
And that's the chief reason behind my general low affect, if there's any reason to be found.
I don't lack money. Okay, I, like everyone else, wish to get more of it, but it's not something that is actively hampering me. I am pretty stable in terms of employment and my intellectual curiousity---I've not reached the point where I feel like I'm not doing anything useful or interesting just yet. But I miss being close and secretive with that special someone, and sometimes that drives me nuts.
My usual remedy is to just go run or do hard physical exercise to burn it all out of the system. It works, until I sustain injuries of some sort, or if the weather gives me a big fuck you in the form of the Sumatran haze or unrelenting rain. So it's not exactly a permanent solution.
I'm fast reaching the start of the fourth decade of my existence (do the math: if I reach thirty next year, that's three decades that had come and gone, with the fourth one beginning). Maybe this innate sense of ``missing something'' will dominate this upcoming decade, the way the innate sense of ``where do I fit in the world'' dominating the decade that just passed me by.
Hell, maybe I don't even get to live that long, dying from a broken heart or suiciding from an overload of despair that is not easily removed through the physical exercises that I attempt. Who knows?
Sunday, November 16, 2014
The Post 50k Rant
Alright, now that I am safely past the goal post for NaNoWriMo with only a story to finish as opposed to 50k words to write, I can sit back a little and write a little something here.
Let's start from the benign shall we?
This year's story is a social commentary of sorts from the small and large scale social turmoil that we see in the world today. Inspired by happenings in Singapore, Hong Kong and even Ukraine, I put together a fictional ``neo city-state'' that is the setting for the three different viewpoints that I explore in the city. The framing device is that of the protagonist doing a history project, and having to interview three people who had lived through a particular era that involved something that was known as the Restoration Conflict. Since that said event happened roughly forty or so years earlier in the time line of the framing device, we run into the obvious issue of the Unreliable Narrator, and in this case, three of them, which is also a subtle hand waving mechanism for me to pay a little less attention to continuity among the three different perspectives as compared to the other stuff that I hard written before the involved parallel perspectives in the writing. In its current state as at now, I have completed two of the interviews, and am in the middle of a segue to bring out the third and final interview before writing a conclusion of the whole affair. I estimate that it will take at least another fifteen thousand words or so before I can claim that the story is done.
But for now I will give myself a break for today (it's Sunday!) and instead focus on validating the 500 generated datasets from work. Yes, it's mind numbing and is a doozy, but like I said before many times, if something is worth doing, it's worth doing right. I'd rather take the pain now to verify the stuff instead of waiting till much later when we need it that I start to panic and patch things together.
Work-wise, there are still a couple of server programs that I need to write, some calculus I need to sort out (logic system, not the stuff Newton/Leibniz invented), and some inane but annoying bugs I need to fix in the existing server program. Some of the stuff can be delayed, but there are a couple that needs to be in ship-shape by Wednesday, which is a tough but not completely impossible call.
And now, for some brain-hurting stuff.
I was reading articles online recently, and came across these two rather interesting stories. I'm linking them below with my own titles:So what was it that I found interesting about them?
The concept of death versus immortality.
I'm pretty sure I had talked something about how one dies twice before, if not here then at some random Facebook post. But in case it is one of those delusions I have, here's the concept again.
Funny enough, this concept isn't invalidated by a future archaeological discovery. True, the bodily remains may be found, but a body does not make a person. The words said may capture some aspect of the abstract essence of a person, but it's a snapshot view, not as integrative as the whole interaction that had occurred with the person, and if the attribution is lost, the abstract essence loses its identity and just becomes wisdom of the ages, i.e. you're still pretty much forgotten.
The two stories thus highlighted have provided a new dimension to the notion of ``abstract essence'' of the person. Instead of a snapshot of a single instance, or being locked in the mind as a memory, we have an interactive recording of what the person did. In a way, it's a projection of the person's abstract essence into the space spanned by the interactions permitted in the digital medium. So in the first story, it's the boy's father's driving being captured, and in the second, a symbol that was drawn up by a now deceased grandmother.
There's a certain amount of immortality behind these two stories. They are sort of like memories, but they are also stronger than that, since they capture something that can be shared with other people losslessly. The same ghost driver in the driving game can be experienced by other players of the game in the same way, and the grandmother's Mii can still be involved in in-game interactions. So in that sense, they haven't died the second death.
At this point, I will stop and admit that stupid o'clock cometh, and will end what I'm writing because really, I have no clue what I was getting at. Blame it on the NaNoWriMo-ing I have done.
Till the next update.
Let's start from the benign shall we?
This year's story is a social commentary of sorts from the small and large scale social turmoil that we see in the world today. Inspired by happenings in Singapore, Hong Kong and even Ukraine, I put together a fictional ``neo city-state'' that is the setting for the three different viewpoints that I explore in the city. The framing device is that of the protagonist doing a history project, and having to interview three people who had lived through a particular era that involved something that was known as the Restoration Conflict. Since that said event happened roughly forty or so years earlier in the time line of the framing device, we run into the obvious issue of the Unreliable Narrator, and in this case, three of them, which is also a subtle hand waving mechanism for me to pay a little less attention to continuity among the three different perspectives as compared to the other stuff that I hard written before the involved parallel perspectives in the writing. In its current state as at now, I have completed two of the interviews, and am in the middle of a segue to bring out the third and final interview before writing a conclusion of the whole affair. I estimate that it will take at least another fifteen thousand words or so before I can claim that the story is done.
But for now I will give myself a break for today (it's Sunday!) and instead focus on validating the 500 generated datasets from work. Yes, it's mind numbing and is a doozy, but like I said before many times, if something is worth doing, it's worth doing right. I'd rather take the pain now to verify the stuff instead of waiting till much later when we need it that I start to panic and patch things together.
Work-wise, there are still a couple of server programs that I need to write, some calculus I need to sort out (logic system, not the stuff Newton/Leibniz invented), and some inane but annoying bugs I need to fix in the existing server program. Some of the stuff can be delayed, but there are a couple that needs to be in ship-shape by Wednesday, which is a tough but not completely impossible call.
And now, for some brain-hurting stuff.
I was reading articles online recently, and came across these two rather interesting stories. I'm linking them below with my own titles:So what was it that I found interesting about them?
The concept of death versus immortality.
I'm pretty sure I had talked something about how one dies twice before, if not here then at some random Facebook post. But in case it is one of those delusions I have, here's the concept again.
One does not die once in reality, one actually dies twice. The first time one dies, one loses one's overt consciousness over one's body. The second time that one dies is when no one can remember what the essence of one is, i.e. one gets forgotten by everyone.I'm not talking about planar travel and transcendence the way most people might choose to tackle this, I'm merely pointing out that the existence of any person is validated by his/her physical manifestation, and his/her abstract essence of his/her nature. If both are lost, then they have effectively died twice, with little to no chance of recovery.
Funny enough, this concept isn't invalidated by a future archaeological discovery. True, the bodily remains may be found, but a body does not make a person. The words said may capture some aspect of the abstract essence of a person, but it's a snapshot view, not as integrative as the whole interaction that had occurred with the person, and if the attribution is lost, the abstract essence loses its identity and just becomes wisdom of the ages, i.e. you're still pretty much forgotten.
The two stories thus highlighted have provided a new dimension to the notion of ``abstract essence'' of the person. Instead of a snapshot of a single instance, or being locked in the mind as a memory, we have an interactive recording of what the person did. In a way, it's a projection of the person's abstract essence into the space spanned by the interactions permitted in the digital medium. So in the first story, it's the boy's father's driving being captured, and in the second, a symbol that was drawn up by a now deceased grandmother.
There's a certain amount of immortality behind these two stories. They are sort of like memories, but they are also stronger than that, since they capture something that can be shared with other people losslessly. The same ghost driver in the driving game can be experienced by other players of the game in the same way, and the grandmother's Mii can still be involved in in-game interactions. So in that sense, they haven't died the second death.
At this point, I will stop and admit that stupid o'clock cometh, and will end what I'm writing because really, I have no clue what I was getting at. Blame it on the NaNoWriMo-ing I have done.
Till the next update.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)