Well well well... what can I say? It's that time of the year again, where the confluence of all the natural (and semi-natural) markings of the passing of an integer increment of years has come.
It is right smack in the middle of Chinese New Year now. The situation this year is more dire than usual, because there is a new spread of a new viral disease that found itself starting from within Wuhan, China. While not directly affecting me personally, it has, in many ways, dampened down the over festivities by the Chinese nationals who are making their way back home for the holidays. Locally, while the scare isn't as strong as that of SARS back in 2003, it still casts a certain background dampener on things. I guess it also does not help that the Chinese New Year this year is happening so damn early, having shown up in the middle of the last third of January. Folks were barely recovering from the massive commercial festivities that is Christmas, and now they are scampering to mark time for the Chinese Lunar New Year.
But the main purpose of this post isn't to talk about the Chinese Lunar New Year---it is more to reference my own personal anniversary of living on this planet.
At this point in my life, I think I have officially transitioned from ``young adult'' to ``early middle age''. Seems like it was only yesterday that I was just happily graduating from Carnegie Mellon University with a sinking feeling in my stomach because my QPA did not meet the 3.8 quota that was demanded of by my funding organisation (it was slightly more than a decade ago). It's also nearly fifteen years since my first existential crisis in my early twenties, where I was wondering if I could even live past thirty given the odds that were stacked against me (I had bad skin, I was socially under-developed, and I always felt that I was never quite good enough at whatever I was doing). Naturally I had lived past all that by now, and oh boy, what a crazy ride it was over the last decade!
So many things came and went. Each time when I was confronted with something that seemed impossible, I somehow managed to make my way out of it, not damageless, but often with enough luck to get away with damage that I can [eventually] recover from. Each step of the way, I fell, I got up, I got bruised, I healed, and I tried again.
I think that's just how life works, and I am thankful that past me never did fall into the dangerous spiral where the only way onwards was just tapping out of life completely.
Now that I am in ``early middle age'', priorities have altered again. I am no longer filled with the wild abandon of positivity that youth has, and am instead armed with that kind of suspicious eye on overly-optimistic view on things in general. I can also feel that my mind is ``slowing down'' more in some sense, more so than the first detection of the ``slowing down'' back when I was around twenty-two or so. I cannot tell if this is part of the aging process, or is it part of the fact that the past decade has seen the air quality of Singapore going down woefully, from an old average of less than 30 PPM (PM-10/2.5) to less than 50 PPM (PM-10/2.5), for every friggin' day. Some scientific studies have shown that starving the brain of good air has a tendency of fouling up its processes, but to what extent that is a real effect on me versus my own nocebo effect is something that I do not know.
Anyway, I'm ranting again.
Well, for this year, I think that it is time to do a little regroup to plan for the future, more so than any of the other years that I have lived for. My living situation is starting to go on a different path than the ``happy-go-lucky single'', and with that comes more responsibilities, financial and otherwise. That I had to leave my old job with the old organisation due to the ever-increasing impossibility of being allowed to actually do my work is not helpful in the least, since it takes away a good anchor point in my life. The world, as a whole, is also getting more bonkers, and there are just so many things that could have gone wrong that have gone wrong. To what extent I can survive through that is something that I need to consider carefully. Of course this time, I am no longer travelling alone for the most part---I have an ally, a friend, a partner-in-crime, a fellow conspirator with which we can co-support each other through. This will definitely make things different in a good way, and is something that will make us stronger in the years to come.
That's about all the ranting I care to do here for now. There are other things that I could be writing about, but with my real-life dead-tree diary in existence, those things are relegated to the one physical copy that is kept in close possession.
After all, what's on the Internet stays there forever. With the type of media climate we have now, why should we keep things that are that ephemeral in a place that is basically a forever-archive?
Till the next update.
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Saturday, January 04, 2020
Quick Summary
So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2019:
That's an average of 0.038 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.033 last year. It's horrifically low, but it is, as I mentioned before, a natural progression as life starts to fall into a discernible pattern.
2019 was a mixed bag. On the one hand, I think I've hit a new high with what I can do on my 笛子 and concert flute, and Chara and I have never been closer than where we were at in 2019 when she has finally rebased herself in Singapore. On the other hand, anti-work management at my old work place forced me to make the hard decision to leave it and head out to the great unknown, where I am now working for a medium enterprise, in the middle of a project that was started on a wrong foot and that we are trying to salvage as best as we can. It is a difficult position, to say the least, because I'm used to starting on a good foot, winning the initiative and then just running ahead with it, and never allowing myself to fall behind. This project is the very anti-thesis of how I would normally be running it, and there are many times where I feel that perhaps I am not doing good enough.
An emergent issue came up in my health that can hopefully be resolved with a minor surgery, and that has finally moved along, after getting stalled at the Polyclinic referral stage due to weirdness in their processes in reaching out to patients.
2020 is going to be a tough year. Geo-politically, things are likely to get even weirder with all the big players starting to flex their muscles really hard. Apart from that, at a personal level, there are many other things that are happening that I do not necessarily have control over. I cannot even see past the March 2020 horizon for some reason---that is how myopic I feel at times.
Ah well. As I keep saying to myself, life goes on.
- 2 poems posted here
- 8 essays/rants posted here
- 0 prose/stories posted here
- 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
- 3 pieces of compositions/rearrangements posted here
That's an average of 0.038 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.033 last year. It's horrifically low, but it is, as I mentioned before, a natural progression as life starts to fall into a discernible pattern.
2019 was a mixed bag. On the one hand, I think I've hit a new high with what I can do on my 笛子 and concert flute, and Chara and I have never been closer than where we were at in 2019 when she has finally rebased herself in Singapore. On the other hand, anti-work management at my old work place forced me to make the hard decision to leave it and head out to the great unknown, where I am now working for a medium enterprise, in the middle of a project that was started on a wrong foot and that we are trying to salvage as best as we can. It is a difficult position, to say the least, because I'm used to starting on a good foot, winning the initiative and then just running ahead with it, and never allowing myself to fall behind. This project is the very anti-thesis of how I would normally be running it, and there are many times where I feel that perhaps I am not doing good enough.
An emergent issue came up in my health that can hopefully be resolved with a minor surgery, and that has finally moved along, after getting stalled at the Polyclinic referral stage due to weirdness in their processes in reaching out to patients.
2020 is going to be a tough year. Geo-politically, things are likely to get even weirder with all the big players starting to flex their muscles really hard. Apart from that, at a personal level, there are many other things that are happening that I do not necessarily have control over. I cannot even see past the March 2020 horizon for some reason---that is how myopic I feel at times.
Ah well. As I keep saying to myself, life goes on.
Saturday, December 28, 2019
Life
Life is both hard and weird.
Life, in a reductionist sense, is the accumulation of billions of years of chemical processes that manage to interact with each other in a way that allows a package to be created that contains them. Life can be as small as a single cell, to as large as a multi-cellular organism, or it can be extrapolated into the larger view of the ecosystem as a whole.
Life is not guaranteed. If we let life be defined as the set of sets of chemical processes that create a package that is in some ways self-propagating and capable of having a well-defined border of what is itself and the outside, then we find that there are many viable such sets of chemical processes, which explains the diversity of life as a whole. But as I said, life is not guaranteed---some form of life can arise eventually, but a specific instance of a specific life has an infinitesimal chance of appearing.
Why all the verbiage? It is the end of the year, and like always, I get a little more introspective and in some senses, retrospective as well. The contemplation of what I had done over the past ten years to get to where I am now has made me mull over what it means to be ``alive''. I used to believe that I would die at the end of twenty-one years old, and in many ways, I did die then. The cells that make up by current body are not likely to be the same cells some fourteen or so years ago, and the experiences that I had undergone since then have also changed the harder-to-pinpoint parts of me as well.
But to make it more to the point, the verbiage on life is the start of my beginning understanding of the world, in that each of the specific people that we meet in our lives are themselves specific forms of life that, short of a better word, underwent a miracle or two (or more) just to be where they are. And it is because of that type of infinitesimal existential probability of that specific person existing at this specific time and interacting rather specifically with me makes me start to appreciate people (as a whole) much more than I ever did.
I am not turning into a saint or a buddha by any degree, but at some fundamental level, I am starting to ``feel in my bones'' some of the truths that some of the sages have been trying to tell us over the ages, no matter their creed or belief. Existentially, there is no reason for any one of us to be here, not because of fatalism or nihilism, but because if we were to attempt to ascribe a reason for existence, we start running into the attribution problem of to whom this reason is meant for. That is an unanswerable question. It is more of the case that we are here, therefore we exist, and from there, we try to discover our own reason and meaning of existence for ourselves.
I used to have dreams. I liked codes, inventing, and thinking, and was drawn rather deeply into the whole sneaky aspect of espionage. I used to have a solid core of morals (I still do, but things were more black and white to me then, as compared to now), and I used to be someone who was willing to sacrifice myself for the sake of the society.
Then somewhere in between, reality hit me hard and I started to lose those vagueish qualitative dreams. I went with the flow, riding out the probability waves as best as I could, each time trying to position myself in ways that would minimise the type of damage that could be inflicted upon myself. I was never truly ambitious, but I was definitely competitive. If I could see a reason as to why I needed to be competitive, I would go in whole heartedly.
Today, I look back at myself and am a little concerned. I don't have much dreams any more.
It is not that I do not have any dreams---that would be a patent lie---but I do not have those ``big'' dreams any more. Come to think of it, I never really had ``big'' dreams ever, just really small qualitative ones involving a state of being than being in a state. Wordplay aside, I mean that my dreams involved me positioning myself in life such that I would not suffer at the very least, and have a type of contentedness at the very most, where ``not suffer'' and ``have contentedness'' were the extent of my dreams, as opposed to the quantitative ones some folks might have (e.g. ``be married with children by thirty two'', ``reach my first million by thirty'', ``own my company by twenty-five'').
Each day was a blessing if I could wake up, move about, do paid honest work, hang out with people I like, partake in my hobbies, before finally going back to sleep. That's about it for me. It feels as though I have reached the peak of the modern day peasant.
I am bringing this up because I realised that over the past year, I had more overtly started to care more about the people around me. These people aren't necessarily friends nor family, they are just people I meet often when I walk about. I don't know who they are other than how they look and what they are doing when I see them, I don't know anything else about them. But I take the effort to at least acknowledge their existence, to assure them that yes, they had won the infinitesimal probability of existing as a life form, and that they are.
I think it is because of two things. The first is the positive influence of Chara, who does these things by a second-nature that is likely forever alien to me. The second is that I know how it feels to be treated like one does not exist. It is a nasty feeling; while it is often important that one knows how to self-substantiate one's existence before seeking external validation (i.e. ``love thyself before asking others to love thee''), sometimes one is just so angry at oneself that one does not readily see that one's existence is miraculous and should be cherished instead of wallowing down the path of eventual self-destruction. It is in those circumstances that having an external validation can make the difference between gritting one's teeth to soldier on out of the pit, or to go down the path of no return.
It isn't much, but we are all we have for each other. If we don't look out for the people around us, who will?
Life is already hard and weird enough, why do we want to make it even harder for ourselves then?
Life, in a reductionist sense, is the accumulation of billions of years of chemical processes that manage to interact with each other in a way that allows a package to be created that contains them. Life can be as small as a single cell, to as large as a multi-cellular organism, or it can be extrapolated into the larger view of the ecosystem as a whole.
Life is not guaranteed. If we let life be defined as the set of sets of chemical processes that create a package that is in some ways self-propagating and capable of having a well-defined border of what is itself and the outside, then we find that there are many viable such sets of chemical processes, which explains the diversity of life as a whole. But as I said, life is not guaranteed---some form of life can arise eventually, but a specific instance of a specific life has an infinitesimal chance of appearing.
Why all the verbiage? It is the end of the year, and like always, I get a little more introspective and in some senses, retrospective as well. The contemplation of what I had done over the past ten years to get to where I am now has made me mull over what it means to be ``alive''. I used to believe that I would die at the end of twenty-one years old, and in many ways, I did die then. The cells that make up by current body are not likely to be the same cells some fourteen or so years ago, and the experiences that I had undergone since then have also changed the harder-to-pinpoint parts of me as well.
But to make it more to the point, the verbiage on life is the start of my beginning understanding of the world, in that each of the specific people that we meet in our lives are themselves specific forms of life that, short of a better word, underwent a miracle or two (or more) just to be where they are. And it is because of that type of infinitesimal existential probability of that specific person existing at this specific time and interacting rather specifically with me makes me start to appreciate people (as a whole) much more than I ever did.
I am not turning into a saint or a buddha by any degree, but at some fundamental level, I am starting to ``feel in my bones'' some of the truths that some of the sages have been trying to tell us over the ages, no matter their creed or belief. Existentially, there is no reason for any one of us to be here, not because of fatalism or nihilism, but because if we were to attempt to ascribe a reason for existence, we start running into the attribution problem of to whom this reason is meant for. That is an unanswerable question. It is more of the case that we are here, therefore we exist, and from there, we try to discover our own reason and meaning of existence for ourselves.
I used to have dreams. I liked codes, inventing, and thinking, and was drawn rather deeply into the whole sneaky aspect of espionage. I used to have a solid core of morals (I still do, but things were more black and white to me then, as compared to now), and I used to be someone who was willing to sacrifice myself for the sake of the society.
Then somewhere in between, reality hit me hard and I started to lose those vagueish qualitative dreams. I went with the flow, riding out the probability waves as best as I could, each time trying to position myself in ways that would minimise the type of damage that could be inflicted upon myself. I was never truly ambitious, but I was definitely competitive. If I could see a reason as to why I needed to be competitive, I would go in whole heartedly.
Today, I look back at myself and am a little concerned. I don't have much dreams any more.
It is not that I do not have any dreams---that would be a patent lie---but I do not have those ``big'' dreams any more. Come to think of it, I never really had ``big'' dreams ever, just really small qualitative ones involving a state of being than being in a state. Wordplay aside, I mean that my dreams involved me positioning myself in life such that I would not suffer at the very least, and have a type of contentedness at the very most, where ``not suffer'' and ``have contentedness'' were the extent of my dreams, as opposed to the quantitative ones some folks might have (e.g. ``be married with children by thirty two'', ``reach my first million by thirty'', ``own my company by twenty-five'').
Each day was a blessing if I could wake up, move about, do paid honest work, hang out with people I like, partake in my hobbies, before finally going back to sleep. That's about it for me. It feels as though I have reached the peak of the modern day peasant.
I am bringing this up because I realised that over the past year, I had more overtly started to care more about the people around me. These people aren't necessarily friends nor family, they are just people I meet often when I walk about. I don't know who they are other than how they look and what they are doing when I see them, I don't know anything else about them. But I take the effort to at least acknowledge their existence, to assure them that yes, they had won the infinitesimal probability of existing as a life form, and that they are.
I think it is because of two things. The first is the positive influence of Chara, who does these things by a second-nature that is likely forever alien to me. The second is that I know how it feels to be treated like one does not exist. It is a nasty feeling; while it is often important that one knows how to self-substantiate one's existence before seeking external validation (i.e. ``love thyself before asking others to love thee''), sometimes one is just so angry at oneself that one does not readily see that one's existence is miraculous and should be cherished instead of wallowing down the path of eventual self-destruction. It is in those circumstances that having an external validation can make the difference between gritting one's teeth to soldier on out of the pit, or to go down the path of no return.
It isn't much, but we are all we have for each other. If we don't look out for the people around us, who will?
Life is already hard and weird enough, why do we want to make it even harder for ourselves then?
Monday, December 23, 2019
Existential
Existential.
That's the general type of feeling I get at the end of the year.
In the past, I would often end up wallowing a little in the kind of self-pity thanks to the triple whammy of aging thrice---once through the end of the Gregorian year, once more through my birthday, and yet a third time through that of the Chinese lunar new year.
I don't self-pity any more. There is nothing to pity myself about---my bad skin has significantly become less bad over the years, my old issues of wanting to love and being loved are no longer an issue now, and my usual refrain about how friends often ended up being further apart is no longer that big a deal.
But ever so often, I still get bouts of what I might politely call an existential dread.
This year, it is heightened by a few things that can at best be called coincidental.
Work has gotten to the point where I vacillate between feeling in control of the situation and being completely overwhelmed. It's simultaneously bad and not that bad, and I really cannot decide which of the two states it is in. Regardless of how I feel, the proverbial show must still go on, and things need to be done and delivered, and so that is that; everything else is mostly an academic exercise of wielding and parrying off of power/authority with different types of power/authority.
My hobby time has gone a little weird---I feel a little weary from having been played for a chum every now and then, and the gradual realisation that if I want to go even farther, I may need to take a different tack on things.
My reading time has gotten even weirder still; having finally finished reading 《厚黑学》 recently, I had started on Little Women, which I am now regretting a little, because it has such strong emotive content that it is doing nothing towards resolving my innate existential confuddlement. It also did not help that I had finished the manga Battle Angel Alita, which itself is a type of existential exploration of what it means to seek meaning of oneself.
Vg vf ng gvzrf yvxr gurfr gung V rail gubfr jub unir n fgebat snvgu va gur oryvrs gung fbzrbar be fbzrguvat bs gerzraqbhf cbjre bhg bs gurve xra vf ybbxvat bhg sbe gurz. Juvyr gur rkcynangvba bs cbffvoyr pnhfr naq rssrpg pna or dhvgr uneq gb whfgvsl jvgubhg oryvrivat va gur fnzr nkvbzf, gung gurfr crbcyr pna frrx fgeratgu sebz n fbhepr gung vf fvzhygnarbhfyl sebz jvgubhg naq sebz jvguva vf n fvtug gb orubyq, rfcrpvnyyl jura gur bhgpbzrf ner, sbe ynpx bs n orggre grez, zvenphybhf. Va znal jnlf, jurgure be abg fbzrguvat unf qverpg pnhfr naq rssrpg vf vzzngrevny gb gurz; gurve fgebat oryvrs unf perngrq gur ernyvgl gung gurl jrer ybbxvat sbe. Nz V raivbhf bs gurz? N yvggyr, ohg vg vf gur xvaq bs ``yrnc bs snvgu'' gung bar zhfg xabj ``va bar'f obarf'' orsber vg znxrf nal frafr.
Existential.
It all goes back to that word. This year had been quite awkward, and I am not quite sure what to expect for the year to come. But one can always hope, and perhaps as the days of 2020 make their way known, the existential dread that I feel will ebb away temporarily, only to make itself known once more nearer the end of the next year.
That's the general type of feeling I get at the end of the year.
In the past, I would often end up wallowing a little in the kind of self-pity thanks to the triple whammy of aging thrice---once through the end of the Gregorian year, once more through my birthday, and yet a third time through that of the Chinese lunar new year.
I don't self-pity any more. There is nothing to pity myself about---my bad skin has significantly become less bad over the years, my old issues of wanting to love and being loved are no longer an issue now, and my usual refrain about how friends often ended up being further apart is no longer that big a deal.
But ever so often, I still get bouts of what I might politely call an existential dread.
This year, it is heightened by a few things that can at best be called coincidental.
Work has gotten to the point where I vacillate between feeling in control of the situation and being completely overwhelmed. It's simultaneously bad and not that bad, and I really cannot decide which of the two states it is in. Regardless of how I feel, the proverbial show must still go on, and things need to be done and delivered, and so that is that; everything else is mostly an academic exercise of wielding and parrying off of power/authority with different types of power/authority.
My hobby time has gone a little weird---I feel a little weary from having been played for a chum every now and then, and the gradual realisation that if I want to go even farther, I may need to take a different tack on things.
My reading time has gotten even weirder still; having finally finished reading 《厚黑学》 recently, I had started on Little Women, which I am now regretting a little, because it has such strong emotive content that it is doing nothing towards resolving my innate existential confuddlement. It also did not help that I had finished the manga Battle Angel Alita, which itself is a type of existential exploration of what it means to seek meaning of oneself.
Vg vf ng gvzrf yvxr gurfr gung V rail gubfr jub unir n fgebat snvgu va gur oryvrs gung fbzrbar be fbzrguvat bs gerzraqbhf cbjre bhg bs gurve xra vf ybbxvat bhg sbe gurz. Juvyr gur rkcynangvba bs cbffvoyr pnhfr naq rssrpg pna or dhvgr uneq gb whfgvsl jvgubhg oryvrivat va gur fnzr nkvbzf, gung gurfr crbcyr pna frrx fgeratgu sebz n fbhepr gung vf fvzhygnarbhfyl sebz jvgubhg naq sebz jvguva vf n fvtug gb orubyq, rfcrpvnyyl jura gur bhgpbzrf ner, sbe ynpx bs n orggre grez, zvenphybhf. Va znal jnlf, jurgure be abg fbzrguvat unf qverpg pnhfr naq rssrpg vf vzzngrevny gb gurz; gurve fgebat oryvrs unf perngrq gur ernyvgl gung gurl jrer ybbxvat sbe. Nz V raivbhf bs gurz? N yvggyr, ohg vg vf gur xvaq bs ``yrnc bs snvgu'' gung bar zhfg xabj ``va bar'f obarf'' orsber vg znxrf nal frafr.
Existential.
It all goes back to that word. This year had been quite awkward, and I am not quite sure what to expect for the year to come. But one can always hope, and perhaps as the days of 2020 make their way known, the existential dread that I feel will ebb away temporarily, only to make itself known once more nearer the end of the next year.
Saturday, December 07, 2019
Marching Onwards...
Heh. I didn't write for most of the year, and suddenly as the year draws to a close, you see me have entries in here.
Naturally, life is getting more exciting. Not necessarily good of course---I'm pretty sure that I had mentioned more than once in this blog that when things go smooth, there is almost no reason to be writing blog entries.
So clearly, things aren't going smooth. But how badly are they going then?
------
It's funny how often the phrase ``be careful what you wish for'' gets thrown about. To those who never really understood what this truly meant, better to learn it soon. To those who know what this truly meant, you will know what I mean. In my previous organisation, the management issues were to the point where us engineers were basically sitting around waiting for things to be assigned so that we can do them---the projects were drying up because of management issues, and that our time was fast being co-opted towards fulfilling more and more useless management ``memos'' and ``reports'' for unknown reasons. I was essentially paid to sit around and do things that had little to do with what my skills were, and I was getting antsy.
Obviously the thing I wanted the most was to get my hands dirty to actually like make something.
And I got my wish. More than my wish, actually. So I'm now working around 72 hours a week on a 45-hour week pay, losing sleep, hair, and my sanity. I don't think my brain is getting enough down time to regenerate, and it is not a fun thought, because it means that over time, I would get sloppier, and productivity would take a hit. To be fair, it is exercising the ``making'' part of me, but more of the ``run till you fall, then continue to crawl'' sort than the ``think about things and come up with something innovative and impactful'' sort.
But as they say, it is in times of trials and tribulations that one builds character and learns of who one's friends are. So I'm taking it all in stride. It's not a complaint, just an observation and a note here that when I look back from the future, I would be able to decide if I should be laughing at my naivity, or to nod at the sagacity of past me.
My friends around me aren't having that great a time too---they have their own trials to grit through. 2019 hasn't exactly been a great year for many of us, but that's just how things go I suppose.
Whelp. Enough of belly-aching. Time to grit on.
Till the next update.
Naturally, life is getting more exciting. Not necessarily good of course---I'm pretty sure that I had mentioned more than once in this blog that when things go smooth, there is almost no reason to be writing blog entries.
So clearly, things aren't going smooth. But how badly are they going then?
------
It's funny how often the phrase ``be careful what you wish for'' gets thrown about. To those who never really understood what this truly meant, better to learn it soon. To those who know what this truly meant, you will know what I mean. In my previous organisation, the management issues were to the point where us engineers were basically sitting around waiting for things to be assigned so that we can do them---the projects were drying up because of management issues, and that our time was fast being co-opted towards fulfilling more and more useless management ``memos'' and ``reports'' for unknown reasons. I was essentially paid to sit around and do things that had little to do with what my skills were, and I was getting antsy.
Obviously the thing I wanted the most was to get my hands dirty to actually like make something.
And I got my wish. More than my wish, actually. So I'm now working around 72 hours a week on a 45-hour week pay, losing sleep, hair, and my sanity. I don't think my brain is getting enough down time to regenerate, and it is not a fun thought, because it means that over time, I would get sloppier, and productivity would take a hit. To be fair, it is exercising the ``making'' part of me, but more of the ``run till you fall, then continue to crawl'' sort than the ``think about things and come up with something innovative and impactful'' sort.
But as they say, it is in times of trials and tribulations that one builds character and learns of who one's friends are. So I'm taking it all in stride. It's not a complaint, just an observation and a note here that when I look back from the future, I would be able to decide if I should be laughing at my naivity, or to nod at the sagacity of past me.
My friends around me aren't having that great a time too---they have their own trials to grit through. 2019 hasn't exactly been a great year for many of us, but that's just how things go I suppose.
Whelp. Enough of belly-aching. Time to grit on.
Till the next update.
Saturday, November 23, 2019
NaNoWriMo 2019 & Concert Aftermath
This year's NaNoWriMo is finally done, and even then, it feels like a bust.
I originally had the idea of having several (haha) storylines of characters interacting with each other, but ended up with what I wrote because of two big reasons:
I am not really super pleased with the result, but a win is a win, and I will take it. This is probably the slowest and most boring NaNoWriMo that I have done in all my eleven years for the following reasons:
But enough of NaNoWriMo for now -- let's hope next year is better.
------
The concert last Saturday was a smashing success, given all the weirdness that we had found ourselves in from an administrative and logistics perspective. Ding, GY + father, and YT came down to support, and from the various feedback from both they and other friends of friends, the overall sound effect from the Chinese Orchestra was well received. It was the first time we were bringing in some heavy bass line support from brasswind friends with trombone, bass trombone, and saxophone, boosting our usually bass-poor section.
No need to talk about bringing in the alto and bass flutes because that was something that I had been doing forever anyway; but that said, it was a good thing that Chara and her friends came by to help. It made the sound all that much richer, and when coupled with the rearrangements of slightly more modern folk/pop music, gave a very lovely mixture that would be hard to beat with a more traditional line up.
Next year is an exciting year for the Chinese Orchestra -- we would be preparing for our 30th anniversary concert. Planning should begin now, and the brasswind folks have said that they were happy to come back and play with us for this one, provided we gave them enough time to work on the scores. That part was a little messy this time round, because I could not directly support due to all the other things I have been working on, both for and not for the concert -- much of the transposition work was undertaken by Chara, who was also undergoing lots of stress at work herself. I am appreciative of her help, and acknowledge that if she had not helped take care of this aspect, I think the concert would not go as well as it did, and the brasswind friends would probably have a less fun experience than they had this time round.
Okay, enough of writing. I am so sick of writing now, especially having just completed this year's 'orrific installment NaNoWriMo. Till the next update then!
I originally had the idea of having several (haha) storylines of characters interacting with each other, but ended up with what I wrote because of two big reasons:
- That required sufficient planning and time;
- I didn't have enough planning and time due to project from work and preparing for the concert.
I am not really super pleased with the result, but a win is a win, and I will take it. This is probably the slowest and most boring NaNoWriMo that I have done in all my eleven years for the following reasons:
- The new web site is atrociously designed -- it was appealing to the ``modern'' aesthetic of quirky in the moment conversations as compared to the thread-based forums of old;
- Write-ins were minimal because of scheduling issues, and even if they were held, I'd have to miss most of them due to my Saturdays being burnt from all the other different things I have going this month;
- All my writing buddies from the old days are basically non-existent due to incomplete data migration from the web site, removing one source of inspiration to write more and write harder;
- There is no official word count validator this year due to oversight in the redesign process of the web site(!)
But enough of NaNoWriMo for now -- let's hope next year is better.
------
The concert last Saturday was a smashing success, given all the weirdness that we had found ourselves in from an administrative and logistics perspective. Ding, GY + father, and YT came down to support, and from the various feedback from both they and other friends of friends, the overall sound effect from the Chinese Orchestra was well received. It was the first time we were bringing in some heavy bass line support from brasswind friends with trombone, bass trombone, and saxophone, boosting our usually bass-poor section.
No need to talk about bringing in the alto and bass flutes because that was something that I had been doing forever anyway; but that said, it was a good thing that Chara and her friends came by to help. It made the sound all that much richer, and when coupled with the rearrangements of slightly more modern folk/pop music, gave a very lovely mixture that would be hard to beat with a more traditional line up.
Next year is an exciting year for the Chinese Orchestra -- we would be preparing for our 30th anniversary concert. Planning should begin now, and the brasswind folks have said that they were happy to come back and play with us for this one, provided we gave them enough time to work on the scores. That part was a little messy this time round, because I could not directly support due to all the other things I have been working on, both for and not for the concert -- much of the transposition work was undertaken by Chara, who was also undergoing lots of stress at work herself. I am appreciative of her help, and acknowledge that if she had not helped take care of this aspect, I think the concert would not go as well as it did, and the brasswind friends would probably have a less fun experience than they had this time round.
Okay, enough of writing. I am so sick of writing now, especially having just completed this year's 'orrific installment NaNoWriMo. Till the next update then!
Monday, October 28, 2019
TGCO Performance 2019!
This year's NaNoWriMo promises to be a drama-fest, and that's not because of what I am intending to write.
The web site itself, the lifeblood for the whole NaNoWriMo movement, underwent a series of rather drastic changes for whatever reason that I cannot immediately comprehend. The interface is much slower than before, and is very clunky, with an extremely steep learning curve. It tries to be more social media-esque, but did not migrate the associated ``writing buddies'' data from the old system, leaving one's profile completely devoid of any connection with anyone whatsoever.
I honestly don't know what they were thinking.
Web site weirdness aside, this period of this year, I am stuck in the middle of two other major events that will suck out the life of me. One's work related, and the other is related to my hobby. That which is work related, we will not talk about it. That which is hobby related, I will mention it.
For those old friends who are still reading my blogs, it's that time again where I am performing with my Chinese Orchestra from Teck Ghee Community Club. We are performing on Nov 16 this year, from 1930hrs to 2100hrs, at the newly reopened and renovated Teck Ghee Community Club hall.
The OnePA web site has an entry for our performance, including ticket price.
It's a different type of concert for various reasons, but the most obvious one is that it features some low brass and low woodwinds of the western concert band tradition for some our pieces, thanks to a few of our friends who were interested in playing something different. While we aren't really fielding super massive pieces that night, we hope that the selection we have provides a more cosy and community feel, a sort of ``welcome home'' vibe as we inaugurate our return to the community club's building after those two years of renovations.
------
Colds have a way of knocking me off my feet that defies common explanation. While the nasal blockage/discharge cycle is something that I can get used to, the feverish and somewhat delirious state is something that I can never work with, almost literally. It makes the mind foggy and very lethargic, limiting the storage capacity to the point that after reading through one part of a system, I would find myself forgetting it almost immediately. Then there's that dull throbbing headache that permeates through---unshakeable except perhaps with a few extra hours of solid sleep that is not drug-induced.
Nasty nasty stuff.
I know it's a cold and not the flu mostly because I did not go completely delirious with an unstoppable fever. Nevertheless, it sucked a good deal out of me, and during this rather trying period, it becomes even more important that I keep my health in a good state.
Too many people are relying critically on me. I cannot afford to fall right now.
But already I think I've said too much. Till the next update then.
The web site itself, the lifeblood for the whole NaNoWriMo movement, underwent a series of rather drastic changes for whatever reason that I cannot immediately comprehend. The interface is much slower than before, and is very clunky, with an extremely steep learning curve. It tries to be more social media-esque, but did not migrate the associated ``writing buddies'' data from the old system, leaving one's profile completely devoid of any connection with anyone whatsoever.
I honestly don't know what they were thinking.
Web site weirdness aside, this period of this year, I am stuck in the middle of two other major events that will suck out the life of me. One's work related, and the other is related to my hobby. That which is work related, we will not talk about it. That which is hobby related, I will mention it.
For those old friends who are still reading my blogs, it's that time again where I am performing with my Chinese Orchestra from Teck Ghee Community Club. We are performing on Nov 16 this year, from 1930hrs to 2100hrs, at the newly reopened and renovated Teck Ghee Community Club hall.
The OnePA web site has an entry for our performance, including ticket price.
It's a different type of concert for various reasons, but the most obvious one is that it features some low brass and low woodwinds of the western concert band tradition for some our pieces, thanks to a few of our friends who were interested in playing something different. While we aren't really fielding super massive pieces that night, we hope that the selection we have provides a more cosy and community feel, a sort of ``welcome home'' vibe as we inaugurate our return to the community club's building after those two years of renovations.
------
Colds have a way of knocking me off my feet that defies common explanation. While the nasal blockage/discharge cycle is something that I can get used to, the feverish and somewhat delirious state is something that I can never work with, almost literally. It makes the mind foggy and very lethargic, limiting the storage capacity to the point that after reading through one part of a system, I would find myself forgetting it almost immediately. Then there's that dull throbbing headache that permeates through---unshakeable except perhaps with a few extra hours of solid sleep that is not drug-induced.
Nasty nasty stuff.
I know it's a cold and not the flu mostly because I did not go completely delirious with an unstoppable fever. Nevertheless, it sucked a good deal out of me, and during this rather trying period, it becomes even more important that I keep my health in a good state.
Too many people are relying critically on me. I cannot afford to fall right now.
But already I think I've said too much. Till the next update then.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Fun Employed
I'm working elsewhere now.
After two or so months of being funemployed, I am finally fun employed, though I am technically still within the period of my probation. Unless something utterly catastrophic happens, I am likely to pass my probation and be a permanent addition to the company.
I look back upon the path that got me to where I am, and I am amazed at the number of happy coincidences that have occurred just so that I am here where I am. Happy coincidences---that's the phrase I have chosen to describe what I had observed. I am sure that had things turned out differently, I would say the same about the path that had taken me there---after all, when one's expectations are generalised to maximise an overall mean metric, the number of states that fall in the ``good'' outcome category is significantly larger than having a very specific expectation.
I could have gone elsewhere should I choose to pursue it, but I have chosen not to. Many might think me mad for not choosing the ``obviously'' better route that guarantees a larger compensation package. But a fat pay cheque is not my primary objective after all. Inasmuch as I had said many times in the past that I was basically a loner, the reality of it all is that I still crave company among my people. Going elsewhere would make me a transplant, a leaf in the wind with no roots, a culture mendicant who is forced to re-enculturate oneself with the new place, losing a substantial amount of one's cultural character all in the name of assimilation.
I don't think I can do that. I have inadvertently sunk my roots deep without my realising. That which I derive the most pleasure and happiness from are the things that I cannot find elsewhere.
Maybe this closes some doors. That's fine---I'm past the age where I expect a boundless future. I'm old enough that next year the government has to acknowledge that I am an old geezer who ought to qualify on his own merits a subsidy and a chance at bidding for his own tiny apartment without necessarily having to find a spouse. But even with an infinite number of doors, the length of my personal path and choices have always been finite; so with the closing of some doors, maybe it isn't that bad after all.
------
In different news, I'm finally fed up enough with having to lug 90kg of ass around to want to do something about it. Considering that my physical ``training'' is basically nil at this point, it seems the right time to use a strong caloric deficit to drag that 90kg down to something more in tune with an ``acceptable'' mass of sub-65kg (using a value of <23 kg/m² as the guide), with a waist measurement of sub-35in (<90cm). The manner I am pulling this off is to run off only one meal a day, currently chosen to be dinner, and chug water at a rate of no more than 1 litre/hr. The last time I tried this was a failure because the calorie deficit was too steep for my body to keep up---I was doing aikijujutsu twice a week, which burnt a lot more energy than my sedentary lifestyle now. It ended me blacking out in the middle of training.
To prevent death through steady loss of essential micronutrients through such a poor diet schema, I am also taking a multivitamin daily.
So far, so good. But we'll really see the effects of such change in a few months' time. After all, it took me thirty over years to become a 90kg lardass.
Till the next update then.
After two or so months of being funemployed, I am finally fun employed, though I am technically still within the period of my probation. Unless something utterly catastrophic happens, I am likely to pass my probation and be a permanent addition to the company.
I look back upon the path that got me to where I am, and I am amazed at the number of happy coincidences that have occurred just so that I am here where I am. Happy coincidences---that's the phrase I have chosen to describe what I had observed. I am sure that had things turned out differently, I would say the same about the path that had taken me there---after all, when one's expectations are generalised to maximise an overall mean metric, the number of states that fall in the ``good'' outcome category is significantly larger than having a very specific expectation.
I could have gone elsewhere should I choose to pursue it, but I have chosen not to. Many might think me mad for not choosing the ``obviously'' better route that guarantees a larger compensation package. But a fat pay cheque is not my primary objective after all. Inasmuch as I had said many times in the past that I was basically a loner, the reality of it all is that I still crave company among my people. Going elsewhere would make me a transplant, a leaf in the wind with no roots, a culture mendicant who is forced to re-enculturate oneself with the new place, losing a substantial amount of one's cultural character all in the name of assimilation.
I don't think I can do that. I have inadvertently sunk my roots deep without my realising. That which I derive the most pleasure and happiness from are the things that I cannot find elsewhere.
Maybe this closes some doors. That's fine---I'm past the age where I expect a boundless future. I'm old enough that next year the government has to acknowledge that I am an old geezer who ought to qualify on his own merits a subsidy and a chance at bidding for his own tiny apartment without necessarily having to find a spouse. But even with an infinite number of doors, the length of my personal path and choices have always been finite; so with the closing of some doors, maybe it isn't that bad after all.
------
In different news, I'm finally fed up enough with having to lug 90kg of ass around to want to do something about it. Considering that my physical ``training'' is basically nil at this point, it seems the right time to use a strong caloric deficit to drag that 90kg down to something more in tune with an ``acceptable'' mass of sub-65kg (using a value of <23 kg/m² as the guide), with a waist measurement of sub-35in (<90cm). The manner I am pulling this off is to run off only one meal a day, currently chosen to be dinner, and chug water at a rate of no more than 1 litre/hr. The last time I tried this was a failure because the calorie deficit was too steep for my body to keep up---I was doing aikijujutsu twice a week, which burnt a lot more energy than my sedentary lifestyle now. It ended me blacking out in the middle of training.
To prevent death through steady loss of essential micronutrients through such a poor diet schema, I am also taking a multivitamin daily.
So far, so good. But we'll really see the effects of such change in a few months' time. After all, it took me thirty over years to become a 90kg lardass.
Till the next update then.
Sunday, May 19, 2019
I Quit My Job
It has been quite a while since I last wrote anything here. But this refrain has been rather clichéd of late.
After nearly 14 years of association with I2R, I have finally resigned, and am serving out my month of notice of termination with them till the beginning of June.
It is a bittersweet moment. Much of my early adult working life was spent with the Institute, and the people I met there were smart and very technology oriented, the kind of things that I was very interested in (I still am). But things have progressed to the point where it was no longer tenable to be working there. My bond being done at least eighteen months ago meant that if there was ever a good time to leave, it was now.
I leave behind whatever is left of a team that I had spent a productive six or so years with. I made new friends among peers who were much closer to my age group than the last few times I was at the Institute. We bonded over an increasingly difficult environment that did not seem like it was going to get better any time soon.
I am not intending to write all that I want to say about the whole situation here---if you can meet me in meat space and want to talk about it, I would be happy to discuss it with you. Probably. HR already had a stab at it with me, and I gave the poor HR representative a whole bag of stories that will likely to be filed away under the ``delinquent employee---do not bother'' pile.
The main purpose of this post is to mark another milestone in my life.
Some of the people who know about this have asked the same question: ``Where are you headed next?'' My answer to them is a single ``nowhere''. I think I need a little break from it all so as to rethink and recalibrate my perspectives, especially since I am no longer contract bound to continue working or pay a hefty penalty. Part of the time off is to seriously think about where I am heading, ``career''-wise. In this time and age of pervasive slicing and dicing as practised by HR management, the ``career'' as a coherent track of work skill/ability development is no longer in vogue; the coherence is deconstructed to work with what is effectively a so-called gig-based economy where individuals whore out their individual abilities for paltry pay as companies claim yet another successful way of saving training costs while still maintaining their base line.
I have a few side projects that need completing. Despite talking about it potentially being done more than a year and a half ago, this time I am actually much closer to completion, prose-wise with respect to content. What is left is the sourcing and creating of necessary diagrams, illustrations, and photographs to fill in the existing placeholders. I have a concert coming up with my Chinese orchestra in November, and will need to practise a little more on refining my solo. I also have new impetus to improve upon my concert flute playing skills, and have a couple of pieces that I need to finally complete the writing of.
Oh, and I need to finally sort out my belongings in preparation for the inevitable move to a new place once we have figured out where and what exactly we are going to live in.
And I think that is roughly it for this update. Till the next time I suppose.
After nearly 14 years of association with I2R, I have finally resigned, and am serving out my month of notice of termination with them till the beginning of June.
It is a bittersweet moment. Much of my early adult working life was spent with the Institute, and the people I met there were smart and very technology oriented, the kind of things that I was very interested in (I still am). But things have progressed to the point where it was no longer tenable to be working there. My bond being done at least eighteen months ago meant that if there was ever a good time to leave, it was now.
I leave behind whatever is left of a team that I had spent a productive six or so years with. I made new friends among peers who were much closer to my age group than the last few times I was at the Institute. We bonded over an increasingly difficult environment that did not seem like it was going to get better any time soon.
I am not intending to write all that I want to say about the whole situation here---if you can meet me in meat space and want to talk about it, I would be happy to discuss it with you. Probably. HR already had a stab at it with me, and I gave the poor HR representative a whole bag of stories that will likely to be filed away under the ``delinquent employee---do not bother'' pile.
The main purpose of this post is to mark another milestone in my life.
Some of the people who know about this have asked the same question: ``Where are you headed next?'' My answer to them is a single ``nowhere''. I think I need a little break from it all so as to rethink and recalibrate my perspectives, especially since I am no longer contract bound to continue working or pay a hefty penalty. Part of the time off is to seriously think about where I am heading, ``career''-wise. In this time and age of pervasive slicing and dicing as practised by HR management, the ``career'' as a coherent track of work skill/ability development is no longer in vogue; the coherence is deconstructed to work with what is effectively a so-called gig-based economy where individuals whore out their individual abilities for paltry pay as companies claim yet another successful way of saving training costs while still maintaining their base line.
I have a few side projects that need completing. Despite talking about it potentially being done more than a year and a half ago, this time I am actually much closer to completion, prose-wise with respect to content. What is left is the sourcing and creating of necessary diagrams, illustrations, and photographs to fill in the existing placeholders. I have a concert coming up with my Chinese orchestra in November, and will need to practise a little more on refining my solo. I also have new impetus to improve upon my concert flute playing skills, and have a couple of pieces that I need to finally complete the writing of.
Oh, and I need to finally sort out my belongings in preparation for the inevitable move to a new place once we have figured out where and what exactly we are going to live in.
And I think that is roughly it for this update. Till the next time I suppose.
Monday, January 14, 2019
Quick Summary
So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2018:
That's an average of 0.033 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.044 last year. It's horrifically low, but it is, as I mentioned before, a natural progression as life starts to fall into a discernible pattern.
2018 was more of an amplified version of 2017 in many ways. But among it came a few bright rays of sunshine that made the year a bearable one. I think that I have levelled up on my concert flute playing at a much greater rate than before, and that my general 笛子 playing skills have also improved quite a bit from the cross-training that came about from playing on the concert flute. I spent less time working on writing new music, mostly because the situation at my Chinese Orchestra isn't as dire as before due to having a ``full-time'' conductor being present, but used that time that was released to understand more on musical acoustics of instruments, particularly of the flute/笛子 family.
This post is likely to be the latest quick summary type post that I have put up, and I feel a little bad. The truth here really is that it is no longer as fun to write on Blogger than before, with the mostly unalterable width of the text area of the post body itself, and the massive number of hoops to leap through just to write something on it. My meat-space diary has seen more action than here, and I have little doubts that it will continue to be the case in time to come.
2019 is a year that is likely to see big changes in my life, so here's to dealing with it all and emerging at the end of it a more improved version of myself.
This blog is by no means an abandoned one!
Edit: True to form, when I hit ``publish'', Blogger fucked up the paragraphing of this post, thus necessitating an edit to unfuck it. Good grief!
- 1 poem posted here
- 6 essays/rants posted here
- 0 prose/stories posted here
- 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
- 4 pieces of compositions/rearrangements posted here
That's an average of 0.033 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.044 last year. It's horrifically low, but it is, as I mentioned before, a natural progression as life starts to fall into a discernible pattern.
2018 was more of an amplified version of 2017 in many ways. But among it came a few bright rays of sunshine that made the year a bearable one. I think that I have levelled up on my concert flute playing at a much greater rate than before, and that my general 笛子 playing skills have also improved quite a bit from the cross-training that came about from playing on the concert flute. I spent less time working on writing new music, mostly because the situation at my Chinese Orchestra isn't as dire as before due to having a ``full-time'' conductor being present, but used that time that was released to understand more on musical acoustics of instruments, particularly of the flute/笛子 family.
This post is likely to be the latest quick summary type post that I have put up, and I feel a little bad. The truth here really is that it is no longer as fun to write on Blogger than before, with the mostly unalterable width of the text area of the post body itself, and the massive number of hoops to leap through just to write something on it. My meat-space diary has seen more action than here, and I have little doubts that it will continue to be the case in time to come.
2019 is a year that is likely to see big changes in my life, so here's to dealing with it all and emerging at the end of it a more improved version of myself.
This blog is by no means an abandoned one!
Edit: True to form, when I hit ``publish'', Blogger fucked up the paragraphing of this post, thus necessitating an edit to unfuck it. Good grief!
Saturday, December 01, 2018
My Anger
I've been quietly festering over the past couple of years over how the world has been changing, and at this point, I can no longer stay silent.
First though, a caveat: I design and build computer systems to achieve specific data management/business processes to inject intelligence into the data and actuation that can be controlled by such systems. That particular perspective is the source of my inherent bias in what I am going to say next.
The chief problem with the world today is that everyone seems to be too damn focused with the outcome that they do not stop to think carefully about how they are achieving the outcome. It is a problem because human institutions and systems are largely evolved through trial and error (i.e. mostly reactive) instead of being ``well designed'' on the get-go, mostly because of nearly a century of devolving power to more democratic (or in some cases, socialistic) processes.
This means that precedent plays an outsized role in governing how the systems evolved. Each time something happens, and is successful, it becomes a new precedent that the vox populi use as evidence of its legitimacy. This means that if some ethically/morally sketchy steps are taken just to reach a desired outcome, those ethically/morally sketchy steps are now part of the herd memory as precedents to be trotted out in the eventual uprising demanding a change of the system, no matter who next is in power.
That last emphasis is of utmost importance. The means in which an outcome is achieved is the demonstration of a tool, and while who is in power can change at the whim of an election or revolution, tools tend to outlast everyone. This means that if one is happy with a law that bans discussion of topics that the Other Side loves, that same law, should the Other Side come to power, can also be used against the original side who become the minority.
Thus, in trying to right a wrong, one ends up with a future where the same manner in which the wrong was righted can be used against one.
This is why I get angry at how the world has changed. We are supposedly more knowledgeable than the past, we are supposedly more developed than the past, and we are supposedly more integrated as a whole than the past, ergo we ought to be cognisant of the ramifications should we choose one particular course of action over another. Instead, we are seeing all the tribal loyalties playing themselves out the way feudal systems had been doing for the few hundred years before capitalism and globalisation swept those antiquated systems away, and more importantly, we are seeing each tribe yelling out ethically indefensible actions to be taken against the Other Side. And this is not even a case of the well-educated versus the less educated---such problems cut across the entire education strata, which makes it all the more likely that the primary cause is the type of underlying primal tribal instinct that we would have thought that we had out-evolved by now.
Apparently, we were wrong. All the ``enlightenment'' we had thus far seems to be part of a passing fad, of a glorious golden age that has since passed. I really fear for the future.
First though, a caveat: I design and build computer systems to achieve specific data management/business processes to inject intelligence into the data and actuation that can be controlled by such systems. That particular perspective is the source of my inherent bias in what I am going to say next.
The chief problem with the world today is that everyone seems to be too damn focused with the outcome that they do not stop to think carefully about how they are achieving the outcome. It is a problem because human institutions and systems are largely evolved through trial and error (i.e. mostly reactive) instead of being ``well designed'' on the get-go, mostly because of nearly a century of devolving power to more democratic (or in some cases, socialistic) processes.
This means that precedent plays an outsized role in governing how the systems evolved. Each time something happens, and is successful, it becomes a new precedent that the vox populi use as evidence of its legitimacy. This means that if some ethically/morally sketchy steps are taken just to reach a desired outcome, those ethically/morally sketchy steps are now part of the herd memory as precedents to be trotted out in the eventual uprising demanding a change of the system, no matter who next is in power.
That last emphasis is of utmost importance. The means in which an outcome is achieved is the demonstration of a tool, and while who is in power can change at the whim of an election or revolution, tools tend to outlast everyone. This means that if one is happy with a law that bans discussion of topics that the Other Side loves, that same law, should the Other Side come to power, can also be used against the original side who become the minority.
Thus, in trying to right a wrong, one ends up with a future where the same manner in which the wrong was righted can be used against one.
This is why I get angry at how the world has changed. We are supposedly more knowledgeable than the past, we are supposedly more developed than the past, and we are supposedly more integrated as a whole than the past, ergo we ought to be cognisant of the ramifications should we choose one particular course of action over another. Instead, we are seeing all the tribal loyalties playing themselves out the way feudal systems had been doing for the few hundred years before capitalism and globalisation swept those antiquated systems away, and more importantly, we are seeing each tribe yelling out ethically indefensible actions to be taken against the Other Side. And this is not even a case of the well-educated versus the less educated---such problems cut across the entire education strata, which makes it all the more likely that the primary cause is the type of underlying primal tribal instinct that we would have thought that we had out-evolved by now.
Apparently, we were wrong. All the ``enlightenment'' we had thus far seems to be part of a passing fad, of a glorious golden age that has since passed. I really fear for the future.
Thursday, November 01, 2018
NaNoWriMo 2018
Yes, it's time for NaNoWriMo once again. I'm sorry that I didn't say anything earlier---just too many things to think about and work on to the point that it was not easy to just bring myself around to writing anything about writing anything.
This is year 10 for me, and may this novel be a fun one! As always, my progress can be tracked in the widget on the side.
This is year 10 for me, and may this novel be a fun one! As always, my progress can be tracked in the widget on the side.
Monday, June 04, 2018
June?
It is June once again. There is usually nothing fantastic about June other than the increased amount of ``summer rain'' and perhaps the start of the natural hotter season in SIN city.
The keyword here is of course, ``usually''.
It's hardly usual around here these days. More changes are afoot, and I cannot tell if they are for the better or for the worse. The metaphorical ground I'm standing on is anything but firm---though it is definitely a little more firm than just a couple of months ago when the rules of the game changed and I, in my somewhat desperate bid to not get thrown out of it, decided that enough was enough, and planted my foot down and declared that it was my new anchor point. That has been working relatively well, I might add, and it has become yet another useful life principle that I am adding to my list.
But back to changes. The team at work has shrunk---two folks have left for greener pastures, their reasons being their own since I did not want to pry. From the larger perspective, the general dynamics of the entire working environment has changed quite drastically compared to two years ago, and it is increasingly hard to see how the changes are aiding in increasing productivity; mind you, I am referring to the overall work culture and not anything that is highly localised. That is as much as I would want to talk about for work.
I'd like to write more music, but am currently in a type of funk, partly because work has been sapping much of my energy, leaving me with little left to do anything else that is creative in nature. Or it could be me trying to do something different---instead of developing my own melody, I am trying to adapt an existing one, giving it just enough changes that it is obviously not just a rearrangement.
The books I have been reading have been too technical in nature for too long---reading up on Ada 2012, the Quran, and an in-depth musicology look at traditional Chinese music all at once is just too much, especially since work got into a higher drive for the past couple of months. That's why I ended up with many other diversive reading, the latest of which is the Cult Trilogy (more commonly known as the ``Metro'' trilogy) by Dmitry Glukhovsky, a post-nuclear war story of survival within the metro system in Moscow.
And strangely enough, that series has a lot in common with Adventure Time, being that it is also about a post-nuclear war story of survival of a world so mutated and evolved that almost nothing of the old life is left. I would say that was when Adventure Time turn from a fun romp into a somewhat deeper and darker story that reminds me of Happy Tree Friends, though the darkness isn't as crass.
I think that's all I intend to talk about for now. Till the next update then.
The keyword here is of course, ``usually''.
It's hardly usual around here these days. More changes are afoot, and I cannot tell if they are for the better or for the worse. The metaphorical ground I'm standing on is anything but firm---though it is definitely a little more firm than just a couple of months ago when the rules of the game changed and I, in my somewhat desperate bid to not get thrown out of it, decided that enough was enough, and planted my foot down and declared that it was my new anchor point. That has been working relatively well, I might add, and it has become yet another useful life principle that I am adding to my list.
But back to changes. The team at work has shrunk---two folks have left for greener pastures, their reasons being their own since I did not want to pry. From the larger perspective, the general dynamics of the entire working environment has changed quite drastically compared to two years ago, and it is increasingly hard to see how the changes are aiding in increasing productivity; mind you, I am referring to the overall work culture and not anything that is highly localised. That is as much as I would want to talk about for work.
I'd like to write more music, but am currently in a type of funk, partly because work has been sapping much of my energy, leaving me with little left to do anything else that is creative in nature. Or it could be me trying to do something different---instead of developing my own melody, I am trying to adapt an existing one, giving it just enough changes that it is obviously not just a rearrangement.
The books I have been reading have been too technical in nature for too long---reading up on Ada 2012, the Quran, and an in-depth musicology look at traditional Chinese music all at once is just too much, especially since work got into a higher drive for the past couple of months. That's why I ended up with many other diversive reading, the latest of which is the Cult Trilogy (more commonly known as the ``Metro'' trilogy) by Dmitry Glukhovsky, a post-nuclear war story of survival within the metro system in Moscow.
And strangely enough, that series has a lot in common with Adventure Time, being that it is also about a post-nuclear war story of survival of a world so mutated and evolved that almost nothing of the old life is left. I would say that was when Adventure Time turn from a fun romp into a somewhat deeper and darker story that reminds me of Happy Tree Friends, though the darkness isn't as crass.
I think that's all I intend to talk about for now. Till the next update then.
Tuesday, May 08, 2018
La Loca, 傻女, and 傻女的爱
Remember La Loca and 《傻女》? I've finally found the Chinese version of 《傻女》 (it is called 《傻女的爱》).
But wait, there's more!
Someone actually took the time to splice them all together to make it more obvious that they are related:
There's another song that I am currently obsessing, but I will leave it for another post for another time. Back to work I go!
《傻女的爱》——陈慧娴Lyrics courtesy baidu.com
今夜再度想起那被遗忘的故事
去年此时的相遇 为何依然清晰
仿佛一种神秘的气息 带我走回那过去
你我曾共舞的那一夜 已消失在爱的边缘
把脸颊轻轻贴在你温暖的心上
让长发像夜温柔 覆盖你的胸堂
炬火在眼中荡漾 泪水无意中滑落
爱上你是痴狂 爱过像梦一场
啊 阳光不要叫我起床 冰凉的枕上
我不断回想你曾经怎么讲
缠绵一生只是荒谬的幻想
独自一人才是人生的真相
何不把爱当作是游戏一场
我不断回想那段爱的时光
笑里掩住多少心碎和感伤
美丽的故事已是褪色模样
我踩着孤独的脚步直到天亮
But wait, there's more!
Someone actually took the time to splice them all together to make it more obvious that they are related:
There's another song that I am currently obsessing, but I will leave it for another post for another time. Back to work I go!
Sunday, April 15, 2018
Meandering Start
Let me be honest---I'd be lying if I said that I felt a compelling need to write an entry here today. But that said, I looked at the pathetic state of this blog and have decided that today is the day that I write something in it, mostly as a way of keeping whoever is still reading this up to date on the goings on in my life.
We're basically in the middle of April now. Normally, this would be the time for my annual long vacation away from work so that I can get away from everything and just reset, having spent most of the year giving the best that I can. I like my work, but even then there is that need to just take a break from it all, mostly to avoid burn out.
That is not happening this year because of a few reasons, but is likely to be happening in September/October this year instead. Among other more pragmatic reasons that I will not elaborate here, I think that it is time to change things up a little by visiting my friends in the US over Autumn instead of Late Winter/Early Spring (Late Winter mostly because of the generally abnormal climate issues). More on that when the time is coming soon I suppose.
But back to the topic: I don't really feel a compelling need to write an entry in this blog. It's not that I don't have much to say, but more of the things that I'd like to say are no longer things that can be put on this public platform. The recent trends of governance over the use of words in public does not bode well for anyone who doesn't toe the official party line, no matter where they are or where they are from. It is actually very chilling if one thinks about it beyond a cursory one. The steady rise of populism and increased regulation/control over words on the 'net means that even if one were utterly capable of providing the necessary evidence and argument to explain and prove a point, it doesn't matter. Because reason is thrown aside in favour of either pandering to the majority, or that of pandering to whoever is enforcing the current set of rules and regulations that are at play.
Self-censorship is singularly the most terrible thing to be inflicted with. When self-censorship becomes the norm, it seems to suggest that the environment is no longer conducive to the [relatively] free exchange of ideas, where ideas can stand on their own arguments/evidence in competition with other ideas. While ``freedom of speech'' never truly meant ``freedom from consequences'', self-censorship just makes it that much harder to talk about controversial topics that can affect people's lives in a profound way.
I find that over time, I am starting to veer away from hard-core computer science and moving towards this ``new-media'' centric evaluation of how technology and life works with/against each other. To me, it almost seems like the increasing proliferation of technology is acting more as a reflection on the behaviour of society than it is as an enabler for [say] the weakest members of the same society.
And sadly, the image in the reflection is plain terrible.
Maybe one day we'll be sufficiently enlightened: governments will strive to build a civic society capable of honestly debating policy regardless of political affiliation; citizens being more proactive at attempting to learn as many sides of the problems/policies that they face instead of latching on to the official/loudest mouthpiece; those who have benefitted from the system being more aware of their privileged situation and actually coming up with better policies that help people break the poverty/ignorance cycle if they are hardworking enough in the right areas; corporations and other wealthy interests will not have a superlatively greater influence on public policy compared to that of the citizens; politicians finally representing the interests of their constituents who voted them into power, and not be completely based on party loyalty.
But of that wish list, there is no way to know if we are anywhere near the goals, or are we actually extremely far from them.
Till the next time, I suppose.
We're basically in the middle of April now. Normally, this would be the time for my annual long vacation away from work so that I can get away from everything and just reset, having spent most of the year giving the best that I can. I like my work, but even then there is that need to just take a break from it all, mostly to avoid burn out.
That is not happening this year because of a few reasons, but is likely to be happening in September/October this year instead. Among other more pragmatic reasons that I will not elaborate here, I think that it is time to change things up a little by visiting my friends in the US over Autumn instead of Late Winter/Early Spring (Late Winter mostly because of the generally abnormal climate issues). More on that when the time is coming soon I suppose.
But back to the topic: I don't really feel a compelling need to write an entry in this blog. It's not that I don't have much to say, but more of the things that I'd like to say are no longer things that can be put on this public platform. The recent trends of governance over the use of words in public does not bode well for anyone who doesn't toe the official party line, no matter where they are or where they are from. It is actually very chilling if one thinks about it beyond a cursory one. The steady rise of populism and increased regulation/control over words on the 'net means that even if one were utterly capable of providing the necessary evidence and argument to explain and prove a point, it doesn't matter. Because reason is thrown aside in favour of either pandering to the majority, or that of pandering to whoever is enforcing the current set of rules and regulations that are at play.
Self-censorship is singularly the most terrible thing to be inflicted with. When self-censorship becomes the norm, it seems to suggest that the environment is no longer conducive to the [relatively] free exchange of ideas, where ideas can stand on their own arguments/evidence in competition with other ideas. While ``freedom of speech'' never truly meant ``freedom from consequences'', self-censorship just makes it that much harder to talk about controversial topics that can affect people's lives in a profound way.
I find that over time, I am starting to veer away from hard-core computer science and moving towards this ``new-media'' centric evaluation of how technology and life works with/against each other. To me, it almost seems like the increasing proliferation of technology is acting more as a reflection on the behaviour of society than it is as an enabler for [say] the weakest members of the same society.
And sadly, the image in the reflection is plain terrible.
Maybe one day we'll be sufficiently enlightened: governments will strive to build a civic society capable of honestly debating policy regardless of political affiliation; citizens being more proactive at attempting to learn as many sides of the problems/policies that they face instead of latching on to the official/loudest mouthpiece; those who have benefitted from the system being more aware of their privileged situation and actually coming up with better policies that help people break the poverty/ignorance cycle if they are hardworking enough in the right areas; corporations and other wealthy interests will not have a superlatively greater influence on public policy compared to that of the citizens; politicians finally representing the interests of their constituents who voted them into power, and not be completely based on party loyalty.
But of that wish list, there is no way to know if we are anywhere near the goals, or are we actually extremely far from them.
Till the next time, I suppose.
Friday, January 05, 2018
Quick Summary
So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2017:
Other than that, nothing much to report really. It's just another year at this point.
Onward to the next one...
- 1 poem posted here
- 8 essays/rants posted here
- 0 prose/story posted here
- 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
- 6 pieces of compositions/rearrangements posted here
- There is a large chunk of writing that I am working on that isn't ready for release yet---it is a rewrite of the existing 笛箫 Materials (if link is dead use this one when it is live).
- There's a substantial chunk of phone-written literature put together when I was in Seattle that I had not gotten around to putting it onto my prose/story blog.
Other than that, nothing much to report really. It's just another year at this point.
Onward to the next one...
Saturday, December 09, 2017
A NaNoWriMo-esque Update
This post should have gone out earlier, but well, things happen, so what's to be expected?
I did not write anything about last year's NaNoWriMo entry. It's been a year since then, and the situation that inspired its genesis has become the new norm. So I think there's no point trying to avoid the topic any more.
Gur fvghngvba ng jbex unq qrgrevbengrq bire gur cnfg gjb lrnef (bar lrne ng gur cbvag bs gur AnAbJevZb ragel). Guvatf jrer punatrq engure noehcgyl, naq znal crbcyr jrer fhssvpvragyl zvssrq gung gurl jnyxrq njnl. Vg fgnegrq uvtu ng gur gbc, jvgu zbfg bs gur yvrhgranagf yrnivat. Vg gura fybjyl znqr vgf jnl qbja gur uvrenepul gvyy vg ernpurq fbzrjurer arne gur crba yriry, jurer V nz ng. Nybat gur jnl, znal orpnzr qvfvyyhfvbarq, be sryg gung gurve cebsrffvbanyvfz jnf abg orvat erfcrpgrq, be sryg gung va gur ovq gb ``qb zber jvgu yrff'', gurl jrer orvat fhowrpgrq gb qenfgvp nygrengvbaf bs gurve wbo fpbcr gung gurl jbhyq engure jnyx njnl sebz vg qrfcvgr abg univat nalguvat ryfr yvarq hc. Vg jnf, va fubeg, qrcerffvat, naq vf fgvyy fbzrjung fb.
As for this year' NaNoWriMo entry, it was largely influenced by a cross between Das Kapital and the story arcs in The Venture Brothers, with influences from the rather sorry state in which the world is in now. It's probably more of a precursor to a new world in which other stories can be written about than any specific social commentary-type writing.
I think that's all I care to write about now. I had planned for a longer piece earlier, but thanks to various interruptions, I've lost track of what I wanted to say.
Till the next update.
I did not write anything about last year's NaNoWriMo entry. It's been a year since then, and the situation that inspired its genesis has become the new norm. So I think there's no point trying to avoid the topic any more.
Gur fvghngvba ng jbex unq qrgrevbengrq bire gur cnfg gjb lrnef (bar lrne ng gur cbvag bs gur AnAbJevZb ragel). Guvatf jrer punatrq engure noehcgyl, naq znal crbcyr jrer fhssvpvragyl zvssrq gung gurl jnyxrq njnl. Vg fgnegrq uvtu ng gur gbc, jvgu zbfg bs gur yvrhgranagf yrnivat. Vg gura fybjyl znqr vgf jnl qbja gur uvrenepul gvyy vg ernpurq fbzrjurer arne gur crba yriry, jurer V nz ng. Nybat gur jnl, znal orpnzr qvfvyyhfvbarq, be sryg gung gurve cebsrffvbanyvfz jnf abg orvat erfcrpgrq, be sryg gung va gur ovq gb ``qb zber jvgu yrff'', gurl jrer orvat fhowrpgrq gb qenfgvp nygrengvbaf bs gurve wbo fpbcr gung gurl jbhyq engure jnyx njnl sebz vg qrfcvgr abg univat nalguvat ryfr yvarq hc. Vg jnf, va fubeg, qrcerffvat, naq vf fgvyy fbzrjung fb.
As for this year' NaNoWriMo entry, it was largely influenced by a cross between Das Kapital and the story arcs in The Venture Brothers, with influences from the rather sorry state in which the world is in now. It's probably more of a precursor to a new world in which other stories can be written about than any specific social commentary-type writing.
I think that's all I care to write about now. I had planned for a longer piece earlier, but thanks to various interruptions, I've lost track of what I wanted to say.
Till the next update.
Monday, October 02, 2017
Belly-aching Against Ah Q
Recently, I read 鲁迅's 《阿Q正传》 (``The True Stories of Ah Q'' by Lu Xun). It put me in yet another miasma of doubt over the weekend. Allow me to explain why.
I hate Ah Q's guts. His way of thinking, the so-called ``Ah Q 精神'' is so escapist and Pyrrhic in nature that makes me want to just reach in, grab him, attempt to shake some sense into him, only to realise that not only will he not get any sense shaken into him, he'd even turn around and realise some twisted sense of Pyrrhic victory which requires the sort of contortionist thinking that would make any one else cringe in pain. He does not seek to improve, preferring to compare himself only to the downtrodden---those who are his superiors, he grovels and willingly accepts all the bullshit they toss in his direction. He lives life day to day, without any form of real aim, only following things at a very superficial level, never really mastering any sort of skill.
Does that sound familiar?
I may be projecting a little, but the main reason for the miasma of doubt over the weekend is the realisation that ``Ah Q'' might as well be me at times. I've long been a proponent of ``high quality amateurism'' on things that matter but are unrelated to that of one's livelihood---there's a sense of interestingness in mastery of something at one's own leisure as opposed to the need for the ever-strife of improvement necessary just to remain relevant in the professional circle. But what hit me was that ``high quality'' was itself a fast changing goal, and when compared to the professionals, I start seeing the vast discrepancy in effort put in. In more specifics, I was thinking about my music making and dizi playing.
A professional, when not performing, often spends the better part of the 8-hour day practising. He/she spends about an hour or two on technical exercises (e.g. long notes, scales in various interval progressions, ``random'' sight-reading pieces), then maybe up to three hours on deeply practising a piece or two, and whatever time is left is reserved for theory and other reading.
If I'm lucky, I get like one hour per week day to actually practise, with maybe eight hours per weekend if I really push myself, but it's more likely to be four hours on average over the weekend.
Thus, by the time the professional is done with five years of training, he/she has 10k+ hours of time-effort under his/her belt, at a higher intensity too.
What do I have for my 25 years (till now)?
Around 6.5k+ hours of time-effort, as it turns out, or around three years of professional training over a 5-day week with 8-hour days. Bear in mind also that I'm being generous by assuming that I do get my 1 hour per week day; usually I don't train like that.
Yeah, I'm never catching up with them. And in a way, I've gone a little ``Ah Q'' on that, and this realisation just hit me in sort of the wrong way over the wrong period of time.
On most days, not catching up to the professionals does not bug me that much. But on some days, when things in general don't seem to be going right for some reason, the thought hits me rather hard. I think it's the nature of the field and my latent ego. In my regular professional field, individual glories are rare---you try to build a whole system on your own within the time-frame and budget. Naturally, when we succeed, the ego gets a feed, but sometimes the ego is a beast and demands a different form of satiation. In the music field, ego is fed directly through the ``worship'' of individual personalities, since in many cases, it is individual skill that shines above all. Even in the orchestra setting, the individuals contained there-in also have sideline work that allows them to shine on their own---it is just the nature of the field itself.
Perhaps when things aren't going too swimmingly in my regular work (group glories), my ego turns naturally towards the individual sort of glory of music, and then realising that I cannot catch up with the professionals to get the level of glory my ego seeks, falls into the abyss of doubt.
*shrugs*
Yeah, I think that's enough belly-aching for now.
I hate Ah Q's guts. His way of thinking, the so-called ``Ah Q 精神'' is so escapist and Pyrrhic in nature that makes me want to just reach in, grab him, attempt to shake some sense into him, only to realise that not only will he not get any sense shaken into him, he'd even turn around and realise some twisted sense of Pyrrhic victory which requires the sort of contortionist thinking that would make any one else cringe in pain. He does not seek to improve, preferring to compare himself only to the downtrodden---those who are his superiors, he grovels and willingly accepts all the bullshit they toss in his direction. He lives life day to day, without any form of real aim, only following things at a very superficial level, never really mastering any sort of skill.
Does that sound familiar?
I may be projecting a little, but the main reason for the miasma of doubt over the weekend is the realisation that ``Ah Q'' might as well be me at times. I've long been a proponent of ``high quality amateurism'' on things that matter but are unrelated to that of one's livelihood---there's a sense of interestingness in mastery of something at one's own leisure as opposed to the need for the ever-strife of improvement necessary just to remain relevant in the professional circle. But what hit me was that ``high quality'' was itself a fast changing goal, and when compared to the professionals, I start seeing the vast discrepancy in effort put in. In more specifics, I was thinking about my music making and dizi playing.
A professional, when not performing, often spends the better part of the 8-hour day practising. He/she spends about an hour or two on technical exercises (e.g. long notes, scales in various interval progressions, ``random'' sight-reading pieces), then maybe up to three hours on deeply practising a piece or two, and whatever time is left is reserved for theory and other reading.
If I'm lucky, I get like one hour per week day to actually practise, with maybe eight hours per weekend if I really push myself, but it's more likely to be four hours on average over the weekend.
Thus, by the time the professional is done with five years of training, he/she has 10k+ hours of time-effort under his/her belt, at a higher intensity too.
What do I have for my 25 years (till now)?
Around 6.5k+ hours of time-effort, as it turns out, or around three years of professional training over a 5-day week with 8-hour days. Bear in mind also that I'm being generous by assuming that I do get my 1 hour per week day; usually I don't train like that.
Yeah, I'm never catching up with them. And in a way, I've gone a little ``Ah Q'' on that, and this realisation just hit me in sort of the wrong way over the wrong period of time.
On most days, not catching up to the professionals does not bug me that much. But on some days, when things in general don't seem to be going right for some reason, the thought hits me rather hard. I think it's the nature of the field and my latent ego. In my regular professional field, individual glories are rare---you try to build a whole system on your own within the time-frame and budget. Naturally, when we succeed, the ego gets a feed, but sometimes the ego is a beast and demands a different form of satiation. In the music field, ego is fed directly through the ``worship'' of individual personalities, since in many cases, it is individual skill that shines above all. Even in the orchestra setting, the individuals contained there-in also have sideline work that allows them to shine on their own---it is just the nature of the field itself.
Perhaps when things aren't going too swimmingly in my regular work (group glories), my ego turns naturally towards the individual sort of glory of music, and then realising that I cannot catch up with the professionals to get the level of glory my ego seeks, falls into the abyss of doubt.
*shrugs*
Yeah, I think that's enough belly-aching for now.
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Goodbye Edythe-II
The inevitable has happened. Edythe-II decided to give up the ghost about a fortnight ago, and I was stuck in a strange position of not having a portable machine to get [some] things done.
I was, by no means, completely machine-less, since there's always Elysie-II to fall back on. But it is different---Elysie-II was built to be a gaming machine, and as a result, had much of the set up favouring that of playing games than actual working. Explained simply, it meant that the set up was more amenable to having wonderful visuals and large-ish text over the tiny text that I would use for ``work''-related manipulations.
The failure of Edythe-II came very suddenly. The night before, I suspended her and went to sleep, and by the next morning, it was no longer possible to wake her up. I tried various combinations of power/power button manipulations, but none of them were working. In the end, I had to go back to technical support because it is fast becoming apparent that there was a hardware issue that I had no chance of resolving on my own.
Later tests confirmed that it was a motherboard issue, and the price in replacing it was high enough that it didn't make any sense for me to do so when I can triple the amount and get a brand-new replacement with three more years of warranty (Edythe-II's warranty was just expired by 2 months, which led to the really crazy high price for the replacement).
So, what is Edythe-III?
She's a Fujitsu S937, Intel Core i7-7500U, 8GiB RAM (8GiB soldered, going to get a 16GiB RAM stick to max it up to 24GiB) with Intel HD Graphics 620. Her form factor is almost identical as that of Edythe-II, but with ``worse'' display (instead of 2560×1440, we're looking at 1920×1080), and ``better'' storage (Crucial 525GB SSD as primary storage as opposed to the original 1TB HDD---it was an upgrade that I decided to get because I realise that many things that I was doing had a lot of disk I/O, and so having an SSD is likely to improve the performance). Writing and compiling are the primary tasks that I do on the Edythes, so an SSD would make everything run much better. The original HDD is not tossed into the bin---it is going to live its life in the modular bay HDD kit to act as secondary storage for when I intend to sit down somewhere and stay plugged in (i.e. less need for the modular bay battery).
Thus, after three years of glorious Unifont use for the console, I'm back to using the Proggy series or even the Tom Thumb-esque font. I haven't actually managed to successfully convert that into a form that Windows can use, so I'm likely to be using Proggy (8×8) or some 5×7 font instead.
My biggest pet peeve is that I am literally stuck with Windows 10 with no reprieve. I did my best to reduce the amount of suck it could generate, but I have no idea just how much of it I managed to avoid through careful reading and adjusting of the underlying configuration settings. Classic Shell is a definite must, but even then it seems to act a little buggy with regard to the start menu.
Only time will tell.
And that's all I have to write about for now. It's really says something when the only times I have a ``proper'' blog entry is when something bad happens.
I was, by no means, completely machine-less, since there's always Elysie-II to fall back on. But it is different---Elysie-II was built to be a gaming machine, and as a result, had much of the set up favouring that of playing games than actual working. Explained simply, it meant that the set up was more amenable to having wonderful visuals and large-ish text over the tiny text that I would use for ``work''-related manipulations.
The failure of Edythe-II came very suddenly. The night before, I suspended her and went to sleep, and by the next morning, it was no longer possible to wake her up. I tried various combinations of power/power button manipulations, but none of them were working. In the end, I had to go back to technical support because it is fast becoming apparent that there was a hardware issue that I had no chance of resolving on my own.
Later tests confirmed that it was a motherboard issue, and the price in replacing it was high enough that it didn't make any sense for me to do so when I can triple the amount and get a brand-new replacement with three more years of warranty (Edythe-II's warranty was just expired by 2 months, which led to the really crazy high price for the replacement).
So, what is Edythe-III?
She's a Fujitsu S937, Intel Core i7-7500U, 8GiB RAM (8GiB soldered, going to get a 16GiB RAM stick to max it up to 24GiB) with Intel HD Graphics 620. Her form factor is almost identical as that of Edythe-II, but with ``worse'' display (instead of 2560×1440, we're looking at 1920×1080), and ``better'' storage (Crucial 525GB SSD as primary storage as opposed to the original 1TB HDD---it was an upgrade that I decided to get because I realise that many things that I was doing had a lot of disk I/O, and so having an SSD is likely to improve the performance). Writing and compiling are the primary tasks that I do on the Edythes, so an SSD would make everything run much better. The original HDD is not tossed into the bin---it is going to live its life in the modular bay HDD kit to act as secondary storage for when I intend to sit down somewhere and stay plugged in (i.e. less need for the modular bay battery).
Thus, after three years of glorious Unifont use for the console, I'm back to using the Proggy series or even the Tom Thumb-esque font. I haven't actually managed to successfully convert that into a form that Windows can use, so I'm likely to be using Proggy (8×8) or some 5×7 font instead.
My biggest pet peeve is that I am literally stuck with Windows 10 with no reprieve. I did my best to reduce the amount of suck it could generate, but I have no idea just how much of it I managed to avoid through careful reading and adjusting of the underlying configuration settings. Classic Shell is a definite must, but even then it seems to act a little buggy with regard to the start menu.
Only time will tell.
And that's all I have to write about for now. It's really says something when the only times I have a ``proper'' blog entry is when something bad happens.
Monday, May 22, 2017
A Theory of Time Use
Time is a very interesting resource to think about.
There are, as at this point of writing, 86.4k seconds in a day, give or take a second or two due to how the ``second'' is no longer related to the rotational period of the Earth.
One third of that, on average, is not consciously usable because one needs to sleep, leaving behind 57.6k seconds.
One third of which (half of the remainder) is meant for work/employment as defined by society, leaving behind 28.8k seconds.
That's 28.8k seconds of ``your own time'', around 8 hours per day, on average.
In reality, that number can be a little higher, since most people do not work all seven days of the week. Assuming a 44-hour work week, we get something like (168−44−(8×7))/7≈9.7 hours or around 35.0k seconds on average of ``your own time'' in a day.
That's time for yourself to spend that the companies are legally disallowed from using without suitable compensation, and even then, only up to certain limits.
I'll use 28.8k seconds as the average since it rounds nicely to 8 hours and can be scaled up accordingly for the off days that do not involve work.
These 28.8k seconds per day are a very precious and interesting resource. They are non-renewable---once those 28.8k seconds are gone, they are gone. One will only get another 28.8k seconds the next day, and it will be a brand-new one. Nothing that was unused ever gets banked for future use; it's either one uses it now or loses it forever.
And the 28.8k seconds are relentless. They have an upkeep of 1 second per second, so if one doesn't use it, it still goes away steadily, whether one is cognizant or not.
How best ought the 28.8k seconds be used then?
Personally, the actual numbers allocated are less important compared to the general categories of things that will be assigned to. I mean, it's ``your own time''---there is really no need for the kind of hard and highly optimised assignment, because at that point, the whole meaning behind living is lost and one might as well be an automaton.
The three main categories I see that are important are (in no order of merit): short-term happiness stuff, middle-term happiness stuff, long-term happiness stuff.
``Short-term happiness stuff'' means things that lead to nearly instant gratification. For example, playing a computer game, or having a good meal. These things help improve one's mood and morale for the short-term and are quick reflections on why life is worth living.
``Middle-term happiness stuff'' means things that have at least a few months of horizon ahead. For instance, hanging out with friends, spending time with some not-so-close relatives and the like. They are middle term because there's that instant gratification aspect, but there's also a long-ish relationship building part that makes this kind of happiness recurring. They are also middle term because at some point, people's life trajectories change, and what was once a great friend may just end up as a lukewarm one in the future.
``Long-term happiness stuff'' means things that are for the ever-elusive ``in future''. These things don't necessarily generate any form of gratification now, but can be seen as an investment towards future happiness. Some examples include hanging out with close family, learning a skill/language, having a hobby and the like.
Most people can easily understand the ``short-term happiness stuff'' and the ``middle-term happiness stuff'', mostly because of the instant gratification that comes naturally from such interactions. But when it comes to ``long-term happiness stuff'', one starts hearing all sorts of excuses about how there's never enough time to read, or to learn, or to hang out with close family. It's an easy mistake to make. Remember, there are 28.8k seconds of ``your own time'' to spend---even if we allocate the time equally among the three categories, we're still talking about 9.6k seconds per day per category.
That translates to around 160 minutes, or around 2.67 hours. Just 2.67 hours to spend on things that can only show a return ``in future''---is that really too much to ask for?
Many these days like to think that they are some kind of warrior of sorts, a warmonger always fighting for whatever cause they have, be it for ``social justice'', poverty, or rights and privileges. But I'm starting to come to the conclusion that much of our daily lives these days are more farmer than warrior, mostly because much of the good things in life need to start from a small, inconsequential thing (plant some seeds), followed by daily minute ministrations (watering the plants, clearing some weeds), and waiting for the time to kick in (wait for the plants to grow according to the season) before finally reaping the benefits (harvest time).
As urbanites, we sort of lose that focus that our farmer-ancestors had. Everything needs to be awesome and happen now, or else it is not useful and/or value-less.
Such behaviour can even be seen in the way some of us manage our finances, whether it be by living from pay cheque to pay cheque, or by speculating in the stock market, or even by gambling.
No wonder the proverb ``patience is a virtue'' comes to play.
------
So after so much [unnecessary] exposition, what is it I'm trying to get at?
It's simple, really. To understand that while there are needs that need to be handled now, it is always prudent to take a little time to prepare and take actions that help our future. Our future selves will be pleased at our foresight if we had taken that time to do things that would only benefit us in the future.
After all, no farmer ever had crops he/she did not sow before, and no one got wealthy just from spending money without saving and/or investing. Why would it be any different for the development of the self?
There are, as at this point of writing, 86.4k seconds in a day, give or take a second or two due to how the ``second'' is no longer related to the rotational period of the Earth.
One third of that, on average, is not consciously usable because one needs to sleep, leaving behind 57.6k seconds.
One third of which (half of the remainder) is meant for work/employment as defined by society, leaving behind 28.8k seconds.
That's 28.8k seconds of ``your own time'', around 8 hours per day, on average.
In reality, that number can be a little higher, since most people do not work all seven days of the week. Assuming a 44-hour work week, we get something like (168−44−(8×7))/7≈9.7 hours or around 35.0k seconds on average of ``your own time'' in a day.
That's time for yourself to spend that the companies are legally disallowed from using without suitable compensation, and even then, only up to certain limits.
I'll use 28.8k seconds as the average since it rounds nicely to 8 hours and can be scaled up accordingly for the off days that do not involve work.
These 28.8k seconds per day are a very precious and interesting resource. They are non-renewable---once those 28.8k seconds are gone, they are gone. One will only get another 28.8k seconds the next day, and it will be a brand-new one. Nothing that was unused ever gets banked for future use; it's either one uses it now or loses it forever.
And the 28.8k seconds are relentless. They have an upkeep of 1 second per second, so if one doesn't use it, it still goes away steadily, whether one is cognizant or not.
How best ought the 28.8k seconds be used then?
Personally, the actual numbers allocated are less important compared to the general categories of things that will be assigned to. I mean, it's ``your own time''---there is really no need for the kind of hard and highly optimised assignment, because at that point, the whole meaning behind living is lost and one might as well be an automaton.
The three main categories I see that are important are (in no order of merit): short-term happiness stuff, middle-term happiness stuff, long-term happiness stuff.
``Short-term happiness stuff'' means things that lead to nearly instant gratification. For example, playing a computer game, or having a good meal. These things help improve one's mood and morale for the short-term and are quick reflections on why life is worth living.
``Middle-term happiness stuff'' means things that have at least a few months of horizon ahead. For instance, hanging out with friends, spending time with some not-so-close relatives and the like. They are middle term because there's that instant gratification aspect, but there's also a long-ish relationship building part that makes this kind of happiness recurring. They are also middle term because at some point, people's life trajectories change, and what was once a great friend may just end up as a lukewarm one in the future.
``Long-term happiness stuff'' means things that are for the ever-elusive ``in future''. These things don't necessarily generate any form of gratification now, but can be seen as an investment towards future happiness. Some examples include hanging out with close family, learning a skill/language, having a hobby and the like.
Most people can easily understand the ``short-term happiness stuff'' and the ``middle-term happiness stuff'', mostly because of the instant gratification that comes naturally from such interactions. But when it comes to ``long-term happiness stuff'', one starts hearing all sorts of excuses about how there's never enough time to read, or to learn, or to hang out with close family. It's an easy mistake to make. Remember, there are 28.8k seconds of ``your own time'' to spend---even if we allocate the time equally among the three categories, we're still talking about 9.6k seconds per day per category.
That translates to around 160 minutes, or around 2.67 hours. Just 2.67 hours to spend on things that can only show a return ``in future''---is that really too much to ask for?
Many these days like to think that they are some kind of warrior of sorts, a warmonger always fighting for whatever cause they have, be it for ``social justice'', poverty, or rights and privileges. But I'm starting to come to the conclusion that much of our daily lives these days are more farmer than warrior, mostly because much of the good things in life need to start from a small, inconsequential thing (plant some seeds), followed by daily minute ministrations (watering the plants, clearing some weeds), and waiting for the time to kick in (wait for the plants to grow according to the season) before finally reaping the benefits (harvest time).
As urbanites, we sort of lose that focus that our farmer-ancestors had. Everything needs to be awesome and happen now, or else it is not useful and/or value-less.
Such behaviour can even be seen in the way some of us manage our finances, whether it be by living from pay cheque to pay cheque, or by speculating in the stock market, or even by gambling.
No wonder the proverb ``patience is a virtue'' comes to play.
------
So after so much [unnecessary] exposition, what is it I'm trying to get at?
It's simple, really. To understand that while there are needs that need to be handled now, it is always prudent to take a little time to prepare and take actions that help our future. Our future selves will be pleased at our foresight if we had taken that time to do things that would only benefit us in the future.
After all, no farmer ever had crops he/she did not sow before, and no one got wealthy just from spending money without saving and/or investing. Why would it be any different for the development of the self?
Monday, April 10, 2017
Information and the Line
Information (and by extension knowledge) is a funny thing. The more one tries to suppress information, the more it tries to fight back and bounce out into the open. This has been true ever since humans came together to form collectives and eventually the societies that become the cosmopolitan world that is today.
But as information grew in its self-propagation, there has been a parallel track of growth on its nemesis---censorship.
To call the nemesis of information ``censorship'' feels a little too blunt. In an ideal world, all information should be made freely available, with the merits of the reality uncovered by each bit of information debated in public by educated citizens to come to some common form of understanding of what is in the best interests of everyone. In an ideal world, everyone makes their own decisions based on their rational understanding of the information presented before them.
However, we do not live in an ideal world. People are, through ignorance, laziness or sheer lack of time, unable to process all the information that is necessary to make an informed decision. Much of their knowledge is by proxy through synthesis by other people who have chosen to narrow their specialisation to generate the most value out of a small partition of the information present. These proxies have an innate sense of authority that is vested by the people.
Many of these proxies take their role in society seriously, maintaining excellence without compromising on ethics. But there are enough of these proxies who seek to confound, confuddle and conspire for their own benefit given the same information.
We do not easily know at times which category each particular proxy belongs to.
It is always a struggle between being completely open, and being conscientious. Favour openness over conscientiousness, and one runs the risk of erroneous conclusions drawn by the lay public who do not understand the sometimes intricate logical and statistical arguments needed to make sense of the information. Favour contrarily, and the lay public raises suspicions on some form of grand conspiracy by those-who-are-not-them against them.
Where do we draw the line then?
But as information grew in its self-propagation, there has been a parallel track of growth on its nemesis---censorship.
To call the nemesis of information ``censorship'' feels a little too blunt. In an ideal world, all information should be made freely available, with the merits of the reality uncovered by each bit of information debated in public by educated citizens to come to some common form of understanding of what is in the best interests of everyone. In an ideal world, everyone makes their own decisions based on their rational understanding of the information presented before them.
However, we do not live in an ideal world. People are, through ignorance, laziness or sheer lack of time, unable to process all the information that is necessary to make an informed decision. Much of their knowledge is by proxy through synthesis by other people who have chosen to narrow their specialisation to generate the most value out of a small partition of the information present. These proxies have an innate sense of authority that is vested by the people.
Many of these proxies take their role in society seriously, maintaining excellence without compromising on ethics. But there are enough of these proxies who seek to confound, confuddle and conspire for their own benefit given the same information.
We do not easily know at times which category each particular proxy belongs to.
It is always a struggle between being completely open, and being conscientious. Favour openness over conscientiousness, and one runs the risk of erroneous conclusions drawn by the lay public who do not understand the sometimes intricate logical and statistical arguments needed to make sense of the information. Favour contrarily, and the lay public raises suspicions on some form of grand conspiracy by those-who-are-not-them against them.
Where do we draw the line then?
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Marching On
It is, for better or worse, almost the half-way mark for the month of March. I felt this compulsion to write something in this lightly neglected blog, maybe from a sense of nostalgia, or a sense of defiance, depending on how one wants to look at things.
There really isn't much to write out here these days.
Actually, that is a blatant lie.
Actually, that last sentence was the blatant lie.
The fact of the matter is, there are lots to write about---life is starting to get interesting in ways that I don't claim to be completely happiness-inducing. But much of those things cannot be written out here.
Such is the caveat that comes with a semi-public blog such as this one.
2017 had began in a most farcical way, and it's systematically getting worse. I don't write all that I want to write here because it's starting to get dangerous enough in the world to write things that are dissenting of the public opinion, evidence-backed or not.
Populism is on the rise, and with it, the general sense of privilege that comes from the tyranny of the majority. Couple this with the concept of an echo chamber, and one would basically come to the same conclusion that I have made.
It's no longer safe to say anything online.
Not that it was safe to begin with---it just got less safe over time.
Because this time, words can and will be taken out of context against one, and in places where such out-of-context word-taking can lead to real-world ramifications.
If you cannot read between the lines of what I'm saying here, congratulations. You're either very safe, or very stupid---I cannot tell which it is, nor do I want to venture a guess.
I just want to add that, in general, I have a sense of frustration that isn't really abating. Part of me wants to scream out in the middle of an empty field just to release all the pent up annoyance, while another part of me just wants to silently suppress it all and pretend to the obedient automaton that everyone is looking for.
As I'm wending my way through my fourth decade of existence, the costs of open-minded thinking have gone past my threshold of comfort. I don't believe that I'm an opinionated person, but the level of silliness (unintentional or otherwise) exhibited by some people have made me seriously want to stamp my foot and scream at them that they are horrifically wrong about the situation, their assumptions, and worst still, the assumptions that they believe that other people have.
Urgh. So angsty.
Anyway, back to less annoying things in life. Lots of things are afoot for this year, and I am still looking forward to them despite all the other negativity that I'm seeing. As the old adage goes, ``would it really matter five years from now?'' Indeed, no point letting bad things get under my skin---in the long run, we'd all be dead anyway.
At least I've made peace with the Universe---very few regrets are left in me, and I intend fully to keep things that way.
I've been working on some new music recently, and have been revamping my online notes for the dizi. The current form (not linking because the URL will be rendered obsolete anyway) is one overly long HTML page that takes forever to load, takes even longer to read, and is almost impossible to comprehend unless the reader is me. I am breaking it up into more readable chunks of articles, and are in the process of adding more diagrams to illustrate the points. The writing is also being revised to make it easier to comprehend.
The system I'm using is a bespoke one that facilitates it being hosted on a static HTTP server (i.e. the one that I'm currently using for my domain). It's more akin to a blog mechanism, except with statically generated pages instead of the dynamic ones that are prevalent now.
I'm still thinking whether it is time to actually migrate all my current blogs on Blogger to my own self-hosted system, and have not really come to any conclusion yet. Blogger is undergoing small but increasingly annoying amount of changes over time, and it is starting to bug the heck out of me.
Well, what else is there to add before I sign off for this post?
There really isn't much to write out here these days.
Actually, that is a blatant lie.
Actually, that last sentence was the blatant lie.
The fact of the matter is, there are lots to write about---life is starting to get interesting in ways that I don't claim to be completely happiness-inducing. But much of those things cannot be written out here.
Such is the caveat that comes with a semi-public blog such as this one.
2017 had began in a most farcical way, and it's systematically getting worse. I don't write all that I want to write here because it's starting to get dangerous enough in the world to write things that are dissenting of the public opinion, evidence-backed or not.
Populism is on the rise, and with it, the general sense of privilege that comes from the tyranny of the majority. Couple this with the concept of an echo chamber, and one would basically come to the same conclusion that I have made.
It's no longer safe to say anything online.
Not that it was safe to begin with---it just got less safe over time.
Because this time, words can and will be taken out of context against one, and in places where such out-of-context word-taking can lead to real-world ramifications.
If you cannot read between the lines of what I'm saying here, congratulations. You're either very safe, or very stupid---I cannot tell which it is, nor do I want to venture a guess.
I just want to add that, in general, I have a sense of frustration that isn't really abating. Part of me wants to scream out in the middle of an empty field just to release all the pent up annoyance, while another part of me just wants to silently suppress it all and pretend to the obedient automaton that everyone is looking for.
As I'm wending my way through my fourth decade of existence, the costs of open-minded thinking have gone past my threshold of comfort. I don't believe that I'm an opinionated person, but the level of silliness (unintentional or otherwise) exhibited by some people have made me seriously want to stamp my foot and scream at them that they are horrifically wrong about the situation, their assumptions, and worst still, the assumptions that they believe that other people have.
Urgh. So angsty.
Anyway, back to less annoying things in life. Lots of things are afoot for this year, and I am still looking forward to them despite all the other negativity that I'm seeing. As the old adage goes, ``would it really matter five years from now?'' Indeed, no point letting bad things get under my skin---in the long run, we'd all be dead anyway.
At least I've made peace with the Universe---very few regrets are left in me, and I intend fully to keep things that way.
I've been working on some new music recently, and have been revamping my online notes for the dizi. The current form (not linking because the URL will be rendered obsolete anyway) is one overly long HTML page that takes forever to load, takes even longer to read, and is almost impossible to comprehend unless the reader is me. I am breaking it up into more readable chunks of articles, and are in the process of adding more diagrams to illustrate the points. The writing is also being revised to make it easier to comprehend.
The system I'm using is a bespoke one that facilitates it being hosted on a static HTTP server (i.e. the one that I'm currently using for my domain). It's more akin to a blog mechanism, except with statically generated pages instead of the dynamic ones that are prevalent now.
I'm still thinking whether it is time to actually migrate all my current blogs on Blogger to my own self-hosted system, and have not really come to any conclusion yet. Blogger is undergoing small but increasingly annoying amount of changes over time, and it is starting to bug the heck out of me.
Well, what else is there to add before I sign off for this post?
Thursday, February 02, 2017
Goodbye Eirian-III
I've had Eirian-III for quite a while now, and it is with great sadness that I'll have to retire this tablet.
I've had Eirian-III since January 2013, and she had always been my go-to for any of the coloured stuff and comics. Each time I travelled, it was Eirian-III that I lugged along instead of Edythe, Elyse or Eileen. Much good times were had.
But today, it was deemed the day where Eirian-III has to be retired. Her battery wouldn't charge, and upon closer examination, was already swelling up, a sign that things weren't going well.
And so, retired she shall be.
I'll always remember the times that Eirian-III had provided me with much needed entertainment that cannot be gleaned from the ``pure'' e-ink readers that her sisters were (Eirian, Eirian-II and Eirian-IV). Much fun was had watching Twitch streams on her as well. And geocaching with tools running on her, including oversized maps that make it easy to look ahead.
It will all be consigned to the past now.
Will I get a replacement for Eirian-III? I don't know, and I don't really think so. While great, Eirian-III has never been my standard workhorse---she ran stock Google Android with all its... flaws. Her coloured LCD was great for comics, but I'm no rabid comic devourer. She did follow me through great works like Neil Gaiman's Sandman, One Thousand Nights and A Night, Watchmen and V for Vendetta, not to mention my own compendium of web comics for easy reading. But are those enough reasons to consider getting a replacement? I don't think so.
So to my faithful device, thank you for your service, and thank you for your patience with a fool like me. Your absence will be felt in time to come.
I've had Eirian-III since January 2013, and she had always been my go-to for any of the coloured stuff and comics. Each time I travelled, it was Eirian-III that I lugged along instead of Edythe, Elyse or Eileen. Much good times were had.
But today, it was deemed the day where Eirian-III has to be retired. Her battery wouldn't charge, and upon closer examination, was already swelling up, a sign that things weren't going well.
And so, retired she shall be.
I'll always remember the times that Eirian-III had provided me with much needed entertainment that cannot be gleaned from the ``pure'' e-ink readers that her sisters were (Eirian, Eirian-II and Eirian-IV). Much fun was had watching Twitch streams on her as well. And geocaching with tools running on her, including oversized maps that make it easy to look ahead.
It will all be consigned to the past now.
Will I get a replacement for Eirian-III? I don't know, and I don't really think so. While great, Eirian-III has never been my standard workhorse---she ran stock Google Android with all its... flaws. Her coloured LCD was great for comics, but I'm no rabid comic devourer. She did follow me through great works like Neil Gaiman's Sandman, One Thousand Nights and A Night, Watchmen and V for Vendetta, not to mention my own compendium of web comics for easy reading. But are those enough reasons to consider getting a replacement? I don't think so.
So to my faithful device, thank you for your service, and thank you for your patience with a fool like me. Your absence will be felt in time to come.
Monday, January 09, 2017
Quick Summary
So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2016:
That's an average of 0.079 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.18 last year. It's horrifically low, but it is, as I mentioned before, a natural progression as life starts to fall into a discernible pattern.
2016 is, in some sense, the year that I start my pivot towards emphasising more on my musical development. Music writing is no different from regular writing, in many ways it can be seen as a more intense version of a regular piece of writing. It takes time---lots of it at times---and so that's why I've started tracking it from now on.
On other aspects of life, let's just say that personally, things are really looking up, and I am eager to see what 2017 brings to me personally.
On a more public note, 2016 was a crapshoot. The very worst of what ignorance has to offer has basically thrown the existing world order back to the era of World Wars, where strongmen ruled and people were too afraid to think for themselves and stand up against the injustices until it is too late. Lots of well-loved celebrities have seemed to choose the same general period to pass away, and there were just so much random upheavals that there are other folks who took the time to sit down and write them all out .
But it's over now.
2017 is already here, and change, more than ever, is afoot. Uncertainty is always present, but I am confident and eager to see what's coming.
To the future!
- 6 poems posted here
- 18 essays/rants posted here
- 0 prose/stories posted here
- 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
- 4 pieces of compositions/rearrangements posted here
That's an average of 0.079 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.18 last year. It's horrifically low, but it is, as I mentioned before, a natural progression as life starts to fall into a discernible pattern.
2016 is, in some sense, the year that I start my pivot towards emphasising more on my musical development. Music writing is no different from regular writing, in many ways it can be seen as a more intense version of a regular piece of writing. It takes time---lots of it at times---and so that's why I've started tracking it from now on.
On other aspects of life, let's just say that personally, things are really looking up, and I am eager to see what 2017 brings to me personally.
On a more public note, 2016 was a crapshoot. The very worst of what ignorance has to offer has basically thrown the existing world order back to the era of World Wars, where strongmen ruled and people were too afraid to think for themselves and stand up against the injustices until it is too late. Lots of well-loved celebrities have seemed to choose the same general period to pass away, and there were just so much random upheavals that there are other folks who took the time to sit down and write them all out .
But it's over now.
2017 is already here, and change, more than ever, is afoot. Uncertainty is always present, but I am confident and eager to see what's coming.
To the future!
Monday, December 12, 2016
December begins...but soon will end?
Oh December! Where to begin?
We're almost on the home stretch towards the end of the roller-coaster ride we call 2016, and as far as the world is concerned, things seem to be settling down a bit. An apparent demagogue got voted into power in the Land of Opportunity, an old Colonial Power decided to leave the club of former colonial powers, lots of celebrities died, and much more nonsense abound.
But the year is almost done.
Some things that had been part of the plan have to be changed due to circumstances---I am, of course, no longer talking about the world but about my own slice of the world at large---but the extension of the deadline for things that need to be settled doesn't throw too big a wrench into the works, as far as I can tell.
Jump cutting a little, the latest instalment of the TGIO party for NaNoWriMo was a cosy affair like always. Cake was had, conversations turned weird (as always!) and much rejoicing ensued. Some of the old faces showed up again, and there were a couple of new faces who got over their initial shyness and helped to drive the conversations into the weird dimensions where they ought to belong. I couldn't stay for long because of my CO rehearsals, but it was still a good party. I'm a little miffed that the years I was part of the Overseas Word Wars team, we managed to lose, while the years where I was not a part of the Overseas team, they get to win. Man, the fellow word warriors of my time sure sucked. Heheheh...
Jump cutting yet again, more meet ups occurred during the past week or so, and it was an interesting experience. It's getting clear that those of us in my age group are really starting to transit into adult-hood, willingly or not. Even what constitutes as ``fun'' has changed throughout the years.
All in all, a relatively good start for December. I wonder what 2017 holds.
We're almost on the home stretch towards the end of the roller-coaster ride we call 2016, and as far as the world is concerned, things seem to be settling down a bit. An apparent demagogue got voted into power in the Land of Opportunity, an old Colonial Power decided to leave the club of former colonial powers, lots of celebrities died, and much more nonsense abound.
But the year is almost done.
Some things that had been part of the plan have to be changed due to circumstances---I am, of course, no longer talking about the world but about my own slice of the world at large---but the extension of the deadline for things that need to be settled doesn't throw too big a wrench into the works, as far as I can tell.
Jump cutting a little, the latest instalment of the TGIO party for NaNoWriMo was a cosy affair like always. Cake was had, conversations turned weird (as always!) and much rejoicing ensued. Some of the old faces showed up again, and there were a couple of new faces who got over their initial shyness and helped to drive the conversations into the weird dimensions where they ought to belong. I couldn't stay for long because of my CO rehearsals, but it was still a good party. I'm a little miffed that the years I was part of the Overseas Word Wars team, we managed to lose, while the years where I was not a part of the Overseas team, they get to win. Man, the fellow word warriors of my time sure sucked. Heheheh...
Jump cutting yet again, more meet ups occurred during the past week or so, and it was an interesting experience. It's getting clear that those of us in my age group are really starting to transit into adult-hood, willingly or not. Even what constitutes as ``fun'' has changed throughout the years.
All in all, a relatively good start for December. I wonder what 2017 holds.
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Here We Go Again...
It's slightly more than a month since I had written anything here, and I assure you that all and any rumours of my demise have been exaggerated.
November is almost done, and with it, this year's installment of NaNoWriMo. This year's entry is a little more angsty than the one's before, and is basically an accumulation of all the odd things that have occurred to me, heavily fictionised of course. As always, grab manuscript from my personal domain. It is merely reflective of the first draft as was done on or around November 20, with no attempts at editing for clarity or conciseness.
I am uncertain if NaNoWriMo is going to continue to be appealling to me in the future. It feels as though that I have told most of the stories that I wanted to tell, and it was getting increasingly hard to come up with newer original concepts without devolving into the realm of fan-fiction. I suppose I can always go back to the fantasy settings like my 2012 entry, but I've been living in the real world for so long that I'm more grounded in reality than before---writing fantasy that does not have some inkling of plausibility has lost its allure, which isn't much considering that I never really had the aptitude for it in the first place. I can't do world-building any more, again because I'm too grounded in this reality to keep living in a reality that I built in my head.
But I have a whole year to think about things, so we shall wait till around this time next year before we decide if we are still continuing. For the sake of a streak, I may just soldier on. It is a good way of having of venting out all the words that I had been keeping inside me for the rest of the year.
In other news, I'm turning into a dizi pedagogue, what with all the new young'uns who are now turning up at my CO. Teaching is hard, and what makes it harder is teaching something that requires fine motor control to a bunch of children who aren't exactly having good fine motor control to begin with. I'm not frustrated yet, but it does leave me with little time to refine the skills of my juniors in the orchestra, something that I think may be more important in the short and middle term. It's sometimes hard to attempt to think carefully about the pedagogy because I'm attempting to use highly scientific/abstract principles to describe things in a field that is traditionally less so---I've got to control for the different levels of understanding, as well as the difference between narrow specialisation and generalised knowledge of the field. All these factors contribute towards the need to sacrifice conciseness of presentation and abstraction with something that is more verbose and specialised without ever drawing the big things together into a refined and refactored form.
If that paragraph made no sense, don't worry about it. It's just complicated.
December is fast approaching, and like the rest of this year so far, it is getting more hectic instead of less. It is almost as though everyone had decided without actually deciding a priori to line everything that needs doing all at one go and demand outcomes all before the year number rolls over to the next. Ah well, such is the nature of life/work.
I don't think there's anything else I'd like to write here. Just thought it a nice gesture to have some update on my blog, even though maybe no more than five actual people I know are actively reading it.
Till the next update I suppose.
November is almost done, and with it, this year's installment of NaNoWriMo. This year's entry is a little more angsty than the one's before, and is basically an accumulation of all the odd things that have occurred to me, heavily fictionised of course. As always, grab manuscript from my personal domain. It is merely reflective of the first draft as was done on or around November 20, with no attempts at editing for clarity or conciseness.
I am uncertain if NaNoWriMo is going to continue to be appealling to me in the future. It feels as though that I have told most of the stories that I wanted to tell, and it was getting increasingly hard to come up with newer original concepts without devolving into the realm of fan-fiction. I suppose I can always go back to the fantasy settings like my 2012 entry, but I've been living in the real world for so long that I'm more grounded in reality than before---writing fantasy that does not have some inkling of plausibility has lost its allure, which isn't much considering that I never really had the aptitude for it in the first place. I can't do world-building any more, again because I'm too grounded in this reality to keep living in a reality that I built in my head.
But I have a whole year to think about things, so we shall wait till around this time next year before we decide if we are still continuing. For the sake of a streak, I may just soldier on. It is a good way of having of venting out all the words that I had been keeping inside me for the rest of the year.
In other news, I'm turning into a dizi pedagogue, what with all the new young'uns who are now turning up at my CO. Teaching is hard, and what makes it harder is teaching something that requires fine motor control to a bunch of children who aren't exactly having good fine motor control to begin with. I'm not frustrated yet, but it does leave me with little time to refine the skills of my juniors in the orchestra, something that I think may be more important in the short and middle term. It's sometimes hard to attempt to think carefully about the pedagogy because I'm attempting to use highly scientific/abstract principles to describe things in a field that is traditionally less so---I've got to control for the different levels of understanding, as well as the difference between narrow specialisation and generalised knowledge of the field. All these factors contribute towards the need to sacrifice conciseness of presentation and abstraction with something that is more verbose and specialised without ever drawing the big things together into a refined and refactored form.
If that paragraph made no sense, don't worry about it. It's just complicated.
December is fast approaching, and like the rest of this year so far, it is getting more hectic instead of less. It is almost as though everyone had decided without actually deciding a priori to line everything that needs doing all at one go and demand outcomes all before the year number rolls over to the next. Ah well, such is the nature of life/work.
I don't think there's anything else I'd like to write here. Just thought it a nice gesture to have some update on my blog, even though maybe no more than five actual people I know are actively reading it.
Till the next update I suppose.
Thursday, October 13, 2016
In Between Worlds
I've said this before, I'll say it again: it is hard to live in between worlds.
In general, I have not found myself to be a party to the mainstream group as a rule of thumb. Back in the day, it has everything to do with how I look---I had bad skin then and less bad skin now---but now, it has more to with how I think about things. On that regard, I have not found myself to be a party to any of the fringe groups that may share similar interests with me either; I think their clique-ish ways are what really turns me off.
As a result, I tend to live in between worlds.
Living between worlds is hard for the simple reason that it takes considerable effort to appear somewhat compliant with each of the worlds that one is in between of without completely allowing the self to be subjugated into that world's rules. A price to pay for ``neutrality'' or rather, the preservation of the sovereignty of one's mind.
Sometimes I feel that the price is a tad too much. After all, by choosing to live between worlds, I have also made the choice to be wholly responsible for what I think and how I think, with little room to relax about it. While it is great when I'm at my peak mental abilities, it also means that any downs tend to be way deeper than one might expect, because there aren't any standardised reaction patterns that I can rely on from the mainstream culture or the fringe sub-culture.
I think that's why I'm half mad.
Living in between worlds has also the side effect of nullifying almost any talent that one may possess. ``Talent'' in the Real World outside of say the education system (think K-12 and not the university) is relative and is dominated by the opinions of the majority, ergo, one has ``talent'' only if there exists a substantial number of influential people who admit that one has that particular talent. So, a great singer is only great because enough influential people have given their stamp of approval, and a scientist's work is great only because enough influential researchers have cited that scientist's work as a fundamental reference from which new work is built upon.
The old stories of the solitary genius are mostly myths and are popular because they help to promote the thought that hard work is sufficient to achieve something great in life.
Unfortunately, hard work is merely necessary but not sufficient. To achieve something great requires a legion of co-conspirators---people who think and believe in the same things that one thinks and believes in. Then and only then do we have sufficient grounds to achieve something great. Luck and timing exist only in the form of careful choice of when one puts in the final big push for the thing that one is interested in; they aren't completely unmanageable.
But back to talent. One word: relativity. Living in between worlds means that there is no easily discernible reference point in which one's particular ability can be measured against, which means that the same ability can be completely talentless under the context of one world and be superlatively talented in another. This is the kind of ennui one must face when living in between worlds, something that I thought I could handle.
Well, I'm having second thoughts, but not enough to abandon my original set up. All it means is that I need to learn more about my own ego, and to learn how to not be proud for no good reason, and to derive strength and satisfaction elsewhere.
I don't really have anything else to say; just felt like venting a little bit to get rid of some of the miasma that had been clouding my mind for a while.
In general, I have not found myself to be a party to the mainstream group as a rule of thumb. Back in the day, it has everything to do with how I look---I had bad skin then and less bad skin now---but now, it has more to with how I think about things. On that regard, I have not found myself to be a party to any of the fringe groups that may share similar interests with me either; I think their clique-ish ways are what really turns me off.
As a result, I tend to live in between worlds.
Living between worlds is hard for the simple reason that it takes considerable effort to appear somewhat compliant with each of the worlds that one is in between of without completely allowing the self to be subjugated into that world's rules. A price to pay for ``neutrality'' or rather, the preservation of the sovereignty of one's mind.
Sometimes I feel that the price is a tad too much. After all, by choosing to live between worlds, I have also made the choice to be wholly responsible for what I think and how I think, with little room to relax about it. While it is great when I'm at my peak mental abilities, it also means that any downs tend to be way deeper than one might expect, because there aren't any standardised reaction patterns that I can rely on from the mainstream culture or the fringe sub-culture.
I think that's why I'm half mad.
Living in between worlds has also the side effect of nullifying almost any talent that one may possess. ``Talent'' in the Real World outside of say the education system (think K-12 and not the university) is relative and is dominated by the opinions of the majority, ergo, one has ``talent'' only if there exists a substantial number of influential people who admit that one has that particular talent. So, a great singer is only great because enough influential people have given their stamp of approval, and a scientist's work is great only because enough influential researchers have cited that scientist's work as a fundamental reference from which new work is built upon.
The old stories of the solitary genius are mostly myths and are popular because they help to promote the thought that hard work is sufficient to achieve something great in life.
Unfortunately, hard work is merely necessary but not sufficient. To achieve something great requires a legion of co-conspirators---people who think and believe in the same things that one thinks and believes in. Then and only then do we have sufficient grounds to achieve something great. Luck and timing exist only in the form of careful choice of when one puts in the final big push for the thing that one is interested in; they aren't completely unmanageable.
But back to talent. One word: relativity. Living in between worlds means that there is no easily discernible reference point in which one's particular ability can be measured against, which means that the same ability can be completely talentless under the context of one world and be superlatively talented in another. This is the kind of ennui one must face when living in between worlds, something that I thought I could handle.
Well, I'm having second thoughts, but not enough to abandon my original set up. All it means is that I need to learn more about my own ego, and to learn how to not be proud for no good reason, and to derive strength and satisfaction elsewhere.
I don't really have anything else to say; just felt like venting a little bit to get rid of some of the miasma that had been clouding my mind for a while.
Wednesday, October 05, 2016
Intermezzo
In case people were wondering, well, I'm still around.
Nearly a month has passed since the last time I wrote anything here, and much of the same is still... the same. The changes are still coming, and the jury is still out on the ramifications of it all.
I'm still in the eye of the storm as the chaos surrounds me. I'm not feeling too great, but I don't think I'm in too shabby a state either. I've taken up running again as my anti-depressant in these stressful times, especially since I've more or less given up on Aikido for now because of my erratic work schedule---evening time is so much harder to plan for as compared to waking up stupid early to run around the neighbourhood.
We've finally moved to our temporary holding place for CO, and we're starting to get a sense of the place all over again. Everyone's lives have started to turn hectic, what with the end of the year examinations and other developments. Maybe things will settle down in a week or two when some form of routine emerges.
Work wise, same old same old---nothing more to add.
I've already decided on this year's entry for NaNoWriMo---The Goodbyes. The entire fubar quality of 2016 is starting to hit me and I feel inspired to write about all these negativity into a novel of some sort as a way of purging it from my system. And of course, like a true Wrimoer, I'm going to wing this when the timer starts come November first.
In between the last post and this, I have finally debuted with Mio. It was pretty rough, trying to play the bass flute with little to no amplification, but I think that gentle buzzing helped to bolster the rather weak low range of our tiny CO. Such luxury can only be had because for those couple of performances we have two other dizi players already, and having a third one (i.e. me) was just a recipe to be overly loud.
Hmm... what else is there to write?
I honestly don't know. There are a few nebulous things floating about in my head, generating the occasional headache, but that's about it.
Maybe till the next time.
Nearly a month has passed since the last time I wrote anything here, and much of the same is still... the same. The changes are still coming, and the jury is still out on the ramifications of it all.
I'm still in the eye of the storm as the chaos surrounds me. I'm not feeling too great, but I don't think I'm in too shabby a state either. I've taken up running again as my anti-depressant in these stressful times, especially since I've more or less given up on Aikido for now because of my erratic work schedule---evening time is so much harder to plan for as compared to waking up stupid early to run around the neighbourhood.
We've finally moved to our temporary holding place for CO, and we're starting to get a sense of the place all over again. Everyone's lives have started to turn hectic, what with the end of the year examinations and other developments. Maybe things will settle down in a week or two when some form of routine emerges.
Work wise, same old same old---nothing more to add.
I've already decided on this year's entry for NaNoWriMo---The Goodbyes. The entire fubar quality of 2016 is starting to hit me and I feel inspired to write about all these negativity into a novel of some sort as a way of purging it from my system. And of course, like a true Wrimoer, I'm going to wing this when the timer starts come November first.
In between the last post and this, I have finally debuted with Mio. It was pretty rough, trying to play the bass flute with little to no amplification, but I think that gentle buzzing helped to bolster the rather weak low range of our tiny CO. Such luxury can only be had because for those couple of performances we have two other dizi players already, and having a third one (i.e. me) was just a recipe to be overly loud.
Hmm... what else is there to write?
I honestly don't know. There are a few nebulous things floating about in my head, generating the occasional headache, but that's about it.
Maybe till the next time.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Just a Tad Depressed
I'm a tad depressed.
I think that I'm one of those people who really prefer stability over change, but am willing to take in the change and adjust accordingly if the change comes over smoothly enough.
Sadly though change hardly ever comes smoothly---it comes amidst a quadrillion other changes all at once.
I'm in the middle of a four-week series of changes, and living through it all has been quite straining on my psyche, to say the least. The few anchor points of my life are now moving their positions about, and as such, I feel like a kite with its tether slackened severely, to be tossed about by whichever way the winds decide to blow.
I can handle change in work or in my hobbies singly, but to have both happen at once is very draining.
I've not reached the point where I just mentally say ``fuck it'' and dive head-first into the maelstrom, mostly because I've not had enough mental reserves to do that plunge just yet.
As the old saying goes, ``this too, shall pass''.
And that's my rant for the day. Amen.
I think that I'm one of those people who really prefer stability over change, but am willing to take in the change and adjust accordingly if the change comes over smoothly enough.
Sadly though change hardly ever comes smoothly---it comes amidst a quadrillion other changes all at once.
I'm in the middle of a four-week series of changes, and living through it all has been quite straining on my psyche, to say the least. The few anchor points of my life are now moving their positions about, and as such, I feel like a kite with its tether slackened severely, to be tossed about by whichever way the winds decide to blow.
I can handle change in work or in my hobbies singly, but to have both happen at once is very draining.
I've not reached the point where I just mentally say ``fuck it'' and dive head-first into the maelstrom, mostly because I've not had enough mental reserves to do that plunge just yet.
As the old saying goes, ``this too, shall pass''.
And that's my rant for the day. Amen.
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
An August Post
This wasn't planned. Well, the others weren't really planned either.
I just felt the urge, nay the need to write something just to vent.
The last time I wrote, I was talking about how things were going swimmingly well. Things still are, but there are some rather significant changes since roughly a month ago.
I stopped to do a stock take on myself, my life, my aspirations, and everything else about me that I hadn't looked at in a while. What I've found was that I was running myself ragged with all the things that I want to do. Then the reality of me being not super duper crazy efficient hit me and I realised that I have to scale down everything that I do.
The question is, what ought I to scale down?
When I was single and somewhat depressed, all the activities that I did had the overall effect of giving me enough things to do that I didn't have to stop to think about how life was sucking and such. Now, things have changed. My hobbies are suddenly taking on a much stronger slant towards responsibilities that cannot be easily taken care of with the paltry two to three hours per week on a single Saturday evening. I simply couldn't do all the things that I had did before, if I wanted to actually be well-rested and contented with life.
This time, I reluctantly chose to let go Aikido, perhaps to pick it up again some time in the future. It's not because that I no longer like the martial art, but really, under the current circumstances, I cannot bring myself to do it. I found myself either being physically unable to due to sickness or injury, or mentally unable to acknowledge that I was going to do something very physically rigorous for two hours after a 10-hour work day.
It does not help that I've been stagnating at my current belt level for nearly five years now.
In short, I found myself burnt out in a different sort of way. So it is with great sadness that I am letting go of Aikido for now. I will need to figure out ways to ensure that I don't lose too much of the conditioning and reflexes that I had learnt from Aikido and Aikijujutsu.
Work-wise, nothing much has changed---I'm still in the business of building large systems. It seems that the [new] management is starting to see the relevance of what we have been working on, which in itself is a great burden removed, though pending another deployment, we'll just be building up the system at a rather relaxing pace.
In other news, I've been copying music for the new dizi solo that I intend to showcase at our next major concert. It was, to say the least, tiring. It is at times like this that I wished there were some less shady-looking, less regionally oriented jianpu software to use instead of the pencil job I'm doing. I think I do a pretty good pencil job, but it's still rather tedious and sometimes the entire piece looks a little natty, especially when I'm not paying too much attention.
It is when I'm copying out the music and the parts that I'm slowly having the realisation that there will be a point where my CO is going to find it extremely difficult to accompany me, especially when I start to pick harder and harder pieces to work on. But that problem will only come in the future, so it is still pointless to think about it now. The CO has surprised me before---I'm sure it can surprise me again; all I need to do is give them a little chance and a nudge in the right direction.
On a less musical front, I had to part ways with the company that has been hosting my personal Subversion repository. They were having a new price increase that was more than 40× what I am currently paying a month, an amount that is unacceptable to me. So I did the next best thing and got a virtual machine instance and set up my own Subversion repository instead. Since I didn't have access to the file system in the original repository, I had to transfer the information out somehow.
Enter
And no, personal experimental code is not something I want published on an open and world-readable repository. I like and support open source, but there's a limit to what one open sources---incomplete personal work is something that falls squarely in the ``not ready for open source'' list.
I think that's about all I care to write for now. Till the next update I suppose.
I just felt the urge, nay the need to write something just to vent.
The last time I wrote, I was talking about how things were going swimmingly well. Things still are, but there are some rather significant changes since roughly a month ago.
I stopped to do a stock take on myself, my life, my aspirations, and everything else about me that I hadn't looked at in a while. What I've found was that I was running myself ragged with all the things that I want to do. Then the reality of me being not super duper crazy efficient hit me and I realised that I have to scale down everything that I do.
The question is, what ought I to scale down?
When I was single and somewhat depressed, all the activities that I did had the overall effect of giving me enough things to do that I didn't have to stop to think about how life was sucking and such. Now, things have changed. My hobbies are suddenly taking on a much stronger slant towards responsibilities that cannot be easily taken care of with the paltry two to three hours per week on a single Saturday evening. I simply couldn't do all the things that I had did before, if I wanted to actually be well-rested and contented with life.
This time, I reluctantly chose to let go Aikido, perhaps to pick it up again some time in the future. It's not because that I no longer like the martial art, but really, under the current circumstances, I cannot bring myself to do it. I found myself either being physically unable to due to sickness or injury, or mentally unable to acknowledge that I was going to do something very physically rigorous for two hours after a 10-hour work day.
It does not help that I've been stagnating at my current belt level for nearly five years now.
In short, I found myself burnt out in a different sort of way. So it is with great sadness that I am letting go of Aikido for now. I will need to figure out ways to ensure that I don't lose too much of the conditioning and reflexes that I had learnt from Aikido and Aikijujutsu.
Work-wise, nothing much has changed---I'm still in the business of building large systems. It seems that the [new] management is starting to see the relevance of what we have been working on, which in itself is a great burden removed, though pending another deployment, we'll just be building up the system at a rather relaxing pace.
In other news, I've been copying music for the new dizi solo that I intend to showcase at our next major concert. It was, to say the least, tiring. It is at times like this that I wished there were some less shady-looking, less regionally oriented jianpu software to use instead of the pencil job I'm doing. I think I do a pretty good pencil job, but it's still rather tedious and sometimes the entire piece looks a little natty, especially when I'm not paying too much attention.
It is when I'm copying out the music and the parts that I'm slowly having the realisation that there will be a point where my CO is going to find it extremely difficult to accompany me, especially when I start to pick harder and harder pieces to work on. But that problem will only come in the future, so it is still pointless to think about it now. The CO has surprised me before---I'm sure it can surprise me again; all I need to do is give them a little chance and a nudge in the right direction.
On a less musical front, I had to part ways with the company that has been hosting my personal Subversion repository. They were having a new price increase that was more than 40× what I am currently paying a month, an amount that is unacceptable to me. So I did the next best thing and got a virtual machine instance and set up my own Subversion repository instead. Since I didn't have access to the file system in the original repository, I had to transfer the information out somehow.
Enter
rsvndump. It's a tool that dumps the Subversion repository from a remote server armed with only regular svn access, into a form where svnadmin can easily use to dump into a new location. Once the dump is completed, all I had to do was to issue svn switch --relocate $oldURL $newURL and I was done, all without having to redownload the entire repository.And no, personal experimental code is not something I want published on an open and world-readable repository. I like and support open source, but there's a limit to what one open sources---incomplete personal work is something that falls squarely in the ``not ready for open source'' list.
I think that's about all I care to write for now. Till the next update I suppose.
Saturday, July 02, 2016
Beginning of the Second Half of the Year
In the blink of an eye, we are now at the start of July, the clear demarcation of when the second half of the year begins.
I'm not sure if this is a side effect of age, or a side effect of apparent bliss. I seem to feel as though time had passed much slower, that more than a year has passed in the time it took for only half of it.
Work is steady but a tad uncertain---we're in the middle of a transition phase after all. I've just completed my first original composition and the first draft of its arrangement and am working on my next original composition for music. I am running a little low on novel ideas but there's still four months more before I have to commit to some plot for this year's NaNoWriMo. Aikido training is restarting albeit slowly, and with a little luck and discipline, I should go for my next grading for it---it's been nearly 5 years since my last grading and it's definitely time to move on from that.
I started on the Witcher series of games earlier in the year, and now, am on the third one in the series. I am liking the lore of the Witcher itself, even reading the books right about now as I am playing The Witcher 3. There's a certain sense of depth and beauty amongst the complexities that lie behind Geralt, the titular Witcher in the video games series and book series. His on-again off-again relationship with Yennefer and his morality are an interesting insight perhaps towards how the Poles look at themselves and at the world.
The latest reboot of DOOM isn't too shabby. It feels like what Duke Nukem Forever could have been instead of the lamed out version of the game that we were presented some five or six years ago. ``Glory kills'' are just another name of the ``Mighty Foot'' attack, and the run-and-gun mechanics are just the same. The main difference is that in DOOM, there aren't any wisecracks from ye olde Doom Guy.
But ah, nostalgia. T'is a weird lens to look back into the past.
The future is getting a little brighter. Soon, I'll find myself settling down more than before, running a household, raising a family, rearing children, and then I'll be waxing about how life was not like what I had expected when I was nearing twenty.
At that point, I don't know if Blogspot is still going to be running. If it is, I should still be updating this blog, or an analogue like it.
That is perhaps the lasting ``legacy'' I can leave behind before I go.
Till the next update.
I'm not sure if this is a side effect of age, or a side effect of apparent bliss. I seem to feel as though time had passed much slower, that more than a year has passed in the time it took for only half of it.
Work is steady but a tad uncertain---we're in the middle of a transition phase after all. I've just completed my first original composition and the first draft of its arrangement and am working on my next original composition for music. I am running a little low on novel ideas but there's still four months more before I have to commit to some plot for this year's NaNoWriMo. Aikido training is restarting albeit slowly, and with a little luck and discipline, I should go for my next grading for it---it's been nearly 5 years since my last grading and it's definitely time to move on from that.
I started on the Witcher series of games earlier in the year, and now, am on the third one in the series. I am liking the lore of the Witcher itself, even reading the books right about now as I am playing The Witcher 3. There's a certain sense of depth and beauty amongst the complexities that lie behind Geralt, the titular Witcher in the video games series and book series. His on-again off-again relationship with Yennefer and his morality are an interesting insight perhaps towards how the Poles look at themselves and at the world.
The latest reboot of DOOM isn't too shabby. It feels like what Duke Nukem Forever could have been instead of the lamed out version of the game that we were presented some five or six years ago. ``Glory kills'' are just another name of the ``Mighty Foot'' attack, and the run-and-gun mechanics are just the same. The main difference is that in DOOM, there aren't any wisecracks from ye olde Doom Guy.
But ah, nostalgia. T'is a weird lens to look back into the past.
The future is getting a little brighter. Soon, I'll find myself settling down more than before, running a household, raising a family, rearing children, and then I'll be waxing about how life was not like what I had expected when I was nearing twenty.
At that point, I don't know if Blogspot is still going to be running. If it is, I should still be updating this blog, or an analogue like it.
That is perhaps the lasting ``legacy'' I can leave behind before I go.
Till the next update.
Monday, June 13, 2016
Graphics Card Upgrade and 10-holed dizi
Some time back, I picked up the news that the NVidia GTX 1080 was released. That got me thinking---was it time to update the GTX 680 currently in Elysie-II? I scoured the info-sheets to get more information on the performance characteristics of the GTX 1080, and compared it to that of the GTX 680.
There was definitely a significant improvement by the numbers. Almost 3× in fact.
So I ended up getting the ASUS GTX 1080-8G Founder's Edition. That it was a ``founder's edition'' was more fluke than planning. So far I am liking the kind of throughput I am seeing from the card. Of course, I probably should replace my aging monitor (it's one of the oldest components that have been around since I first built Elysie) especially since the LCDs along its edges are starting to fade away into white. But it's not like I'm using Elysie-II to do anything important whilst sitting in front of it---I do most of the coding and what-not through SSH-ing into the Xubuntu partition of the machine.
Speaking of Xubuntu partition, I need to install the custom drivers from NVidia on it soon. The existing drivers, possibly from the ``noveau'' package are not working at all with such a new card.
Performance-wise, the GTX 1080 seems to run much cooler than the GTX 680, even at a more punishing setting. That was one the big reasons why I chose to get it now instead of waiting for later. Running cooler in the hot and humid weather is a definite advantage.
Another big push towards getting the GTX 1080 has been because of the games on the list that I'd like to play. I had completed The Witcher and The Witcher 2, and am about to start on The Witcher 3. That last Witcher game is a demanding beast. From what I had read, my GTX 680 was going to have a hard time playing it even at low settings. I am also waiting for the price for the new DOOM game to drop so that I can get it too.
So that's at least two AAA games that require the kind of horsepower that the GTX 1080 can deliver.
I know that the GTX 1080 is supposed to be VR-ready as well, but I don't really care about it since I'm not into the whole VR nonsense. 4k gaming is also touted to be a strong point of the GTX 1080, but again, with a 1080p screen, I'd rather much prefer 1080p@60Hz smoothness than 4k whatever.
All in all, a good use of money for my own entertainment.
------
The other day, my 10-hole dizi finally made its way through the world and on to my door-step. I had asked sifu about his opinions of that instrument before, and he said that it was in general, not really worth it due to too awkward fingering and a general lack of actual pieces that demand its exclusive use. Nevertheless, I got one mostly to mess around with, and to test the particular e-commerce chain that I had not tried before.
He wasn't kidding about the awkward fingering. I found that the fingers on the left-hand suffered quite a bit of strain from trying to keep them bunched up the way one might do while holding a concert flute with a shelf, while trying to simultaneously cover all the wholes that each of them had. It also took me quite a while to figure out how to set up the correct balancing point positions so that the dizi can be held up while the fingers are racing up and down to play the various notes.
But other than that, that dizi actually has a decent tone. It is probably wise to treat it like another instrument in the dizi family as opposed to unifying it under the same ``style'' as the 6-hole dizi.
And that's all I have for now. Till the next update.
There was definitely a significant improvement by the numbers. Almost 3× in fact.
So I ended up getting the ASUS GTX 1080-8G Founder's Edition. That it was a ``founder's edition'' was more fluke than planning. So far I am liking the kind of throughput I am seeing from the card. Of course, I probably should replace my aging monitor (it's one of the oldest components that have been around since I first built Elysie) especially since the LCDs along its edges are starting to fade away into white. But it's not like I'm using Elysie-II to do anything important whilst sitting in front of it---I do most of the coding and what-not through SSH-ing into the Xubuntu partition of the machine.
Speaking of Xubuntu partition, I need to install the custom drivers from NVidia on it soon. The existing drivers, possibly from the ``noveau'' package are not working at all with such a new card.
Performance-wise, the GTX 1080 seems to run much cooler than the GTX 680, even at a more punishing setting. That was one the big reasons why I chose to get it now instead of waiting for later. Running cooler in the hot and humid weather is a definite advantage.
Another big push towards getting the GTX 1080 has been because of the games on the list that I'd like to play. I had completed The Witcher and The Witcher 2, and am about to start on The Witcher 3. That last Witcher game is a demanding beast. From what I had read, my GTX 680 was going to have a hard time playing it even at low settings. I am also waiting for the price for the new DOOM game to drop so that I can get it too.
So that's at least two AAA games that require the kind of horsepower that the GTX 1080 can deliver.
I know that the GTX 1080 is supposed to be VR-ready as well, but I don't really care about it since I'm not into the whole VR nonsense. 4k gaming is also touted to be a strong point of the GTX 1080, but again, with a 1080p screen, I'd rather much prefer 1080p@60Hz smoothness than 4k whatever.
All in all, a good use of money for my own entertainment.
------
The other day, my 10-hole dizi finally made its way through the world and on to my door-step. I had asked sifu about his opinions of that instrument before, and he said that it was in general, not really worth it due to too awkward fingering and a general lack of actual pieces that demand its exclusive use. Nevertheless, I got one mostly to mess around with, and to test the particular e-commerce chain that I had not tried before.
He wasn't kidding about the awkward fingering. I found that the fingers on the left-hand suffered quite a bit of strain from trying to keep them bunched up the way one might do while holding a concert flute with a shelf, while trying to simultaneously cover all the wholes that each of them had. It also took me quite a while to figure out how to set up the correct balancing point positions so that the dizi can be held up while the fingers are racing up and down to play the various notes.
But other than that, that dizi actually has a decent tone. It is probably wise to treat it like another instrument in the dizi family as opposed to unifying it under the same ``style'' as the 6-hole dizi.
And that's all I have for now. Till the next update.
Saturday, June 04, 2016
Sixth Month
A glass of whiskey in hand at the end of a rehearsal as the night grows deeper as I savour and ponder about things that have passed or have yet to come---I have been doing less of that lately.
Now that is definitely a good thing. It means that I am engaged enough in real life that I don't have the spare time to sit around and mope about or wax lyrical about issues imaginary and real.
It is now June. Nearly half the year gone, just like that. Things have been moving along relatively swimmingly, and well, there's really little to complain about.
Here and there, I've been doing some retrospection. I note that my predictions from the past came through somewhat, that I had indeed died when I was twenty-one. While obviously it wasn't a literal sort of death, it was a death nonetheless. What died was my perspective that the world was orderly in nature, that it altruism was a goal to strive for, that friends were forever, and that I was the most matured for my age.
Heh.
In the ten years since, I've learnt that the world was only orderly in the sort of macroscopic way that makes it easy to argue philosophically, that in reality, ``orderliness'' was among the last properties that the world has. I've also learnt that altruism, while a worthy virtue in its own right, is most definitely not the end goal that one should strive for, mostly because people in general aren't necessarily appreciative of one's altruism---better to be altruistic only within the context of close people of one's choice.
I've also learnt that friends aren't really forever---they are bound by the context (both spatial and temporal) in which they occur. Once their life trajectories start to diverge, they are at best acquaintances that one ought to keep in touch with ever so often, but the relationship between they and one will never be the same as it was. And the best part is that when (not if) that happens, it's okay---it's no one's fault. Sometimes life just happens.
And I sure as hell am not the most matured for my age.
A decade is a hell lot of time, nearly an eighth of a person's life based on modern actuary tables. I think I can guess what this decade will bring to me as I make my way towards middle age and establishing my role in society in a more concrete way. But this time, I think the journey will be slightly less harrowing since I have a boon companion now.
=)
Different, but definitely less harrowing.
Alright, enough rambling for now. Till the next update I suppose.
Now that is definitely a good thing. It means that I am engaged enough in real life that I don't have the spare time to sit around and mope about or wax lyrical about issues imaginary and real.
It is now June. Nearly half the year gone, just like that. Things have been moving along relatively swimmingly, and well, there's really little to complain about.
Here and there, I've been doing some retrospection. I note that my predictions from the past came through somewhat, that I had indeed died when I was twenty-one. While obviously it wasn't a literal sort of death, it was a death nonetheless. What died was my perspective that the world was orderly in nature, that it altruism was a goal to strive for, that friends were forever, and that I was the most matured for my age.
Heh.
In the ten years since, I've learnt that the world was only orderly in the sort of macroscopic way that makes it easy to argue philosophically, that in reality, ``orderliness'' was among the last properties that the world has. I've also learnt that altruism, while a worthy virtue in its own right, is most definitely not the end goal that one should strive for, mostly because people in general aren't necessarily appreciative of one's altruism---better to be altruistic only within the context of close people of one's choice.
I've also learnt that friends aren't really forever---they are bound by the context (both spatial and temporal) in which they occur. Once their life trajectories start to diverge, they are at best acquaintances that one ought to keep in touch with ever so often, but the relationship between they and one will never be the same as it was. And the best part is that when (not if) that happens, it's okay---it's no one's fault. Sometimes life just happens.
And I sure as hell am not the most matured for my age.
A decade is a hell lot of time, nearly an eighth of a person's life based on modern actuary tables. I think I can guess what this decade will bring to me as I make my way towards middle age and establishing my role in society in a more concrete way. But this time, I think the journey will be slightly less harrowing since I have a boon companion now.
=)
Different, but definitely less harrowing.
Alright, enough rambling for now. Till the next update I suppose.
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