Totally Failing Rate

So, about that total fertility rate (TFR) thing...

I won't degrade into some kind of misogynistic/misandristic argument, because that's both pointless and wrong.

I will stand by my thesis that if something matters enough to someone (where ``one'' can be a person, a corporation, a government), then plans will be made to get that thing done right.

For instance, if I value a friendship enough, I will make time to nurture said friendship. And lest anyone goes ``hur hur time isn't the same as other resources'', that's where they are wrong.

Recall that time is a very interesting non-renewable resource that all other resources take their indexing from. We try our best to bank time through the conversion [via a convoluted process of reasoning] into some form of money. We then use the said money to trade (or buy, same thing) for other things that we could not have easily/directly gotten through the expenditure of our own time.

So far, so good.

But the problem comes in when we start talking about priorities. In the bid to amass enough money, we sort of forget what basis it stems from. And so, at a personal level, people complain about children being costly to raise, and therefore aren't interested.

They get villified, and castigated---``You dishonour your family!'' levels too, were we to live in an age where [geographical] mobility were not as great as now.

However, all the complaints of the people at their own personal levels are but a highlight of the symptoms.

You see, there is a much larger influence cycle that is happening beyond the individual level. Roughly, the individual's choices bubble up, with the majority setting the social-level trend, and then the representative government takes heed on what the trends are like, put in their own ``big picture'' planning elements, before percolating the final trend down to the individuals, which affect their choices, ad infinitum.

Of the two, it is without doubt that the government's choices weigh the heavier, for the sole reason that they have a monopoly on the most powerful arbiter of ``truth''---force, or more bluntly, violence.

So, as clichéd as it sounds, TFR issues are government policy issues, and the blame should not be pushed back down to the individual citizens. We can argue about how improved access to education has liberated women to pursue a life beyond ``being stuck as a homemaker'', or how that improved education for women led to a greater imbalance between the number of highly educated women against that of highly educated men that led to less marriages in general (hypothesis that women are hypergamous while men are generally adverse to hypogamy), but those are just deflecting the blame around.

If the TFR were really a problem that is large enough for concern, then the government policies should reflect that. Instead, we see that a vast majority of the policies address more of the short-term economic issues, as opposed to the slow but steady re-architecture of the social fabric to support a better TFR.

``But MT, TFR is just the capitalistic idea of a Ponzi scheme, where societies rely more on the next generation to pay for the living for the previous one!''

If that were the case, then shouldn't it be motivating enough to adjust policies to address the TFR? After all, it does contribute to the economy, right?

And no, consistent immigration isn't a permanent solution. It's a bit like trying to write plug-ins for various third party software for a piece of core software that one uses (say a text editor). No matter how good the plug-ins are written, there will be incompatibility issues, since we are literally trying to create an interpretation of the third party's framework that ``makes sense'' within the framework of the core. And as long as the third party software remains as a plug-in, it is never truly a part of the core; and as long as migrants keep within the confines of their self-created enclave and never truly venture out to integrate with the country that they migrated to, their mentality will forever be that of a migrant, and not a citizen, no matter what their official immigration status is with the government.

Crucially though, consistent immigration is a zero-sum game that trades off on comparative advantage. To ensure that it can continue to work, is to assume that the places where they have more people who want to leave will continue to do so, and in the worst case scenario, steps may even be considered/taken to ensure that they remain so (i.e. removing/stunting any of the social advances that we know that leads to decreased TFR).

We like to talk about ``whole-of-government'' approaches. I think that TFR itself is an excellent problem to tackle with that. Moreover, it also involves a time horizon much longer than that of a single election cycle.

Perhaps it is truly time for the government to show that long-term planning of doing what is right that it has boldly claim before.

Blasphemous---Done!

I have not looked forward to the end of the week as much as this one.

It's not because there's something special planned for this weekend (that's like a maybe for next week's über-long weekend), but that I'm glad that I can drop whatever was happening over the work week to just... chill out.

Work week wasn't bad per se, but it sure had quite a few things that threw in some spanners that gummed up the [routineness] of work. I know that being a ``manager'' meant that work was expected to be anything but routine, I'm still an engineer at heart. Needless to say, I just ran out of spoons near Thursday after a whole bunch of meetings with new people, and sometimes in new locations.

But no one wants to hear about the work week---it's just what we all do to ensure that bills are paid, and hobbies can be fed.

------

I completed Blasphemous last night, getting all three endings following the plan laid out in this Reddit post. There was a bug where the ``Wound of Abnegation'' was obtained from Crisanta in the Mea Culpa Chapel, but was not properly reflected in the inventory of quest items.

Actually, there were quite a few bugs in Blasphemous. They weren't really game-breaking, but it was still annoying.

All in all, I enjoyed Blasphemous. It was exactly as I had mentioned earlier---not as punishing as Hollow Knight, nor as clunky as Feudal Alloy. Blasphemous had some interesting boss fights (that second phase of the Cristanta fight was full on impossible had I not mastered the timing of the parry after the very gruelling Isidora fight that took me a few days of trying to fight it straight before cheesing it with ``Romance to the Crimson Mist'' prayer, and even that took me several tries to get right), and cool-ish traversal options that did not include an air dash nor a double jump.

The currency (Tears of Atonement) was not exactly easy to farm nearer the beginning where their impact was greatest (but I still did, 50+ at a time, near Albero, just so to get the first tier of Mea Culpa upgrades, which cost about 5k with buffer), but towards the end-game I found myself simply rolling with them, especially as I was attempting and re-attempting the Crisanta fight. Of the entire skill tree, I found myself using the Lunge attacks the most, after of course the Combo attacks. Charged strikes are too costly in time to pull off, but I suppose a more skilled player can get better mileage out of it than I.

The key thing that I learnt from completing Blasphemous was how much I preferred to do major actions with the ABXY buttons over that of the R1/RT/L1/LT set up (I'm staring at you, Elden Ring that I gave up trying to complete). The thumbs just work much faster than the index fingers, and this is true even for Blasphemous, where I face-tanked any an attack that I failed to dodge simply because the eye-brain-index-finger axis had a slow reaction.

Pressing A to jump and then X multiple times to smack some idiot with a sword? Yes please. R1, R1, L1 to do a weapon combo? Yeah, fuck off.

And so, that's that for Blasphemous for now. I didn't bother with the other [free] DLC, except for the ``Wounds of Eventide'' one that allowed me to obtain the final ``true'' ending of the game. The ``Strife & Run'' DLC with Bloodstained cross-over content was basically a series of timed challenge platform puzzles, which I didn't like because precision movement in Blasphemous is a bear. As mentioned earlier, there is no air dash, and double jump---verticality is largely obtained either through a wall jump technique that required using the attack action to ``stab'' into the wall instead of just wall-kicking a la Megaman X, or using an arcane dash-attack aerial combo (fixed from direction-attack aerial) on a strikable object to do an ``Air Impulse'' instead of an unconstrained double jump. The 8-bit area was Nintendo-hard for no good reason, and the rest of the DLC was for NG+ which I was uninterested in.

``But MT, what about the `movement progression' items like `Blood Perpetuated in Sand', `Linen of Golden Thread', `Nail Uprooted from Dirt', `Silvered Lung of Dolphos', and `Three Gnarled Tongues'?''

Those act more like keys to areas than actual movement progression, since they affect the stage itself rather than grant new abilities for the player character.

Okay, maaaaybe the ``Nail Uprooted from Dirt'' can count since it makes the marsh that was previously unjumpable suddenly operate as though it isn't there, jumping-wise.

Maybe I'll get back to Shovel Knight, trying to at least complete the base game.

Maybe.

I'm more likely to start getting into Cassette Beasts though...

------

I've gotten No Man's Sky recently due to it being half-off. I started with the controller, and found that I hated it (aiming with the right stick is annoying). So it's back to the venerable keyboard+mouse combo.

First impressions so far are fine. It's a bit like Minecraft, but with less free-form building. I'm still quite early into the game (no where near the 50 h mark yet), so it's hard to say. I don't think it expands into something as crazy as Satisfactory or Factorio, but as at now, I'm not completely bored about it yet, which is a good thing.

I'm kinda procrastinating a little on fixing up my Nether rail system in Minecraft, and a recent Reine Minecraft adventure video showed an interesting in-place rail switching mechanism has given me some ideas on how I might want to set up the nether rail. But I'm lazy and don't want to think... for now.

------

I spent this morning checking out a stand-up comedy special by Russell Peters. This guy was hot years ago, with this show that made its rounds on the 'net.

It's alright. He's similar to he was back then, though he does lay it on thick with the F-bombs, which is fine by me.

That's about it for this update I suppose. Till the next time.

``I'm Alive!''

Today, when I saw an acquaintance that I hadn't met in a while, and when said acquaintance greeted me with ``How are you?'', I replied unhesitatingly with ``I'm alive!''.

I never said that before. My usual reply was ``I'm not dead yet!'', so I suppose this can be seen as a breakthrough?

Maybe things are turning for the better. Who knows?

Only God, for sure.

Orcish ACM Behaviours In Re ORCID Demandment

What a week.

Work side had lots of drama, most of which was external. It was unfortunate, but in many ways, not exactly out of my estimation. I suppose it just comes with the territory of doing non-trivial projects.

Still on work, but at a personal level, I felt sad that I had to volunteer to remove my name from a paper that was to be published under a journal/conference hosted by the ACM, due to the organisation's hard-headed enforcement of every contributing author to provide their ORCID. According to the submission process, anyone who does not have an ORCID cannot be an author to the paper.

ORCID is a supranational entity that maintains a list of unique identifiers for people who self-register/identify in their system, a process that is free as in no payment [from these people] is required. It is, however, acceptance of money from [research] funding organisations, publications, and other such groups of people who are involved in the research process but are not the researchers themselves.

I volunteered to remove my name from the paper to prevent its non-publication---my co-authors relied on publications to get their key performance indicators necessary for their work, while as an engineer, any and all papers published with my name on it are, at best, a good to have in terms of bragging rights only.

``But MT, ORCID is free to use! Why don't you just create an account [with your work email] and run with it?''

It's not [just] about the ``freeness'' of the service; it's the fact that ACM decided to prioritise perfection in their metadata over having proper attribution through not making ORCID optional.

The whole idea of ORCID also turns my stomach. I lived through the age when Facebook and LinkedIn were nascent, before they turned into the current cesspools. Thus, I am well aware of the usual life cycle of such identity-centric systems that aren't state-run/legally mandated and enforced.

They always begin with good intentions; the idea of a centrally managed identity broker to ensure that the MT you are speaking with is the ``real'' MT. And the usual modus operandi is to have as many people sign on as possible.

But real money is needed to run the infrastructure for these information systems. Some funds are usually available in the beginning to get things off the ground and into the ``people'' acquisition phase, but eventually these systems will need to find some revenue streams.

Partnerships of all sorts will be forged with those who have money, who won't give money without getting something of value [to them] in return. Network efforts increasing the popularity of a particular network happen, with the biggest ones getting even bigger, requiring more resources to keep going, while simultaneously becoming a natural monopoly.

Then a critical size is hit, the business people start swarming and taking over governance subtly or otherwise, enshittificating the experience with increasingly intrusive business-friendly behaviours that do not benefit the original group of people who were promised a centrally managed identity broker.

Meanwhile, the monopolising effect from sheer size gives so much clout to the identity broker that there is effectively no more choices, and anyone who wants to play/work in the mainstream are coerced into giving up more and more of their choices just to stay within the said mainstream, lest they be pariahs and lose their work-related social networks.

I do not like that.

I am not a researcher by trade, so I do not need to play the game.

I can give a big middle finger to the game and make my stand.

And that I did.

Do I feel good about it? Frankly, I am a little disappointed that I cannot put my name on the paper even though I had contributed ideas here and there to make things work out, not to mention the final round of reviewing/suggestions to make the paper flow better. But it is rare that one gets to make a stand for their principles unhindered, and I think that it is important for me to do so. Law and justice are not the same---the Bible teaches us to follow the law, but to leave God to deal justice by not seeking vengeance on our own. In this case, ACM's requirement is technically not a law a la backed by the state, but is an arbitrary rule by an arbitrary organisation.

That makes resistance to it so much simpler.

To be fair, ORCID does provide a solution for the ``Wang Wei'' problem---disambiguating researchers who share the same name for whatever purposes. It is a workable solution, even if I do not agree with how it will eventually become the gatekeeper of who is considered a researcher (must have ORCID) and who isn't. Because that gives ORCID a tremendous amount of power over who lives or dies (metaphorically) while keeping these people disenfranchised.

But I do not need to play that game.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got me some Blasphemous to play a bit, before having to practise some pieces needed for music ministry tomorrow.

Cleaning dizi

Damn that was tiring, but fulfilling.

Today's a public holiday, and I spent a few hours in the morning till the early afternoon cleaning my dizi. I used a damp microfibre cloth to clean the exterior, then used damped cotton buds to clean the embouchure, tone, and vent holes. For those dizi that had joints, I took them apart at their joints, and cleaned out the old cork grease that I had put on before, rotated the connecting point repeatedly enough for the joints to grind out their non-round parts, cleaned that out, before replacing with a new thin layer of cork grease [from Yamaha].

``But MT, why did you purposefully made the joint grind itself smooth when we don't even do that for any other joints for concert flutes and the like?''

See, the problem with the dizi is that unlike the concert flute, the tolerances of the joints are not as tight. There is also an innate eccentricity due to these joints being attached completely separately from the boring through of the bamboo. These joints are also well-known for seizing up partly due to the eccentricity, and partly due to the corrosion. So, what I just did was to use the joint against itself to attain a more smooth/rounded outcome.

Of course, the proper way is to have a mandrel and shape things up carefully, but considering how many different sized dizi I was working with (around 27), that would be impractical.

As for the [Yamaha] cork grease, I found that it had the right balance of tack (i.e. stickiness), and lubrication that allowed the metallic parts of the joints to smoothly slide past each other. A smooth joint movement is important because it allows ease of performing fine-tuning at the 0.5 mm resolution.

If the joint sticks, tuning is hard, and there may also be leaks, which is bad.

My older dizi had much cleaner joints, since I had done the first deep clean before, while the newer ones had to undergo quite a bit of that grind-clean-repeat process. But the results are often so much worth it, especially that whole ``joints not seizing and are butter smooth for tuning purposes'' aspect.

After I had packed them away, I realised that I didn't do the same for the two or three xiao that I have lying around. Ah well.

The last thing to add about this is that I found that my latex glove size is apparently an S (85±10 mm). In-teresting. The context for the latex glove was for me to protect the broken skin that my fingers have from the occasions where I needed to use 70% Isopropyl Alcohol while doing the joint cleaning.

------

In other news, I got my head shaved again. It was nice.

I restarted Blasphemous from the beginning again, and was doing much better with the rough guide on the sequence of areas to go through, as opposed to the breadth-first search method that I was using earlier, where I did not commit enough to an area to actually clear it completely and gain the necessary benefits.

Cannot remember what I last talked about for my Minecraft adventures, but I have built up a larger platform for my nether hub. I've figured out where the general places of interest in the overworld should be, and need to lay out the new starting points for the rails to follow that. The walls have been built up, but I haven't capped it with a proper roof, which resulted in many zombie pigmen piglins falling in and causing havoc.

I think that's about it for now. I'll probably play a bit more of Blasphemous before turning in for the night.

After all, tomorrow's a work day.

...and Before OP Trashes The [Troll] Post

In re a post on Flute Forum about the difference between the concert flute and the Chinese flute (笛子):

Okay, assuming you are not trolling, both concert flutes and the dizi are from the same general family of edge-blown aerophones.

I won't talk about the concert flute because we're in the [Concert] Flute Forum.

The dizi is a member of the simple system flute, where pitch is controlled through tone holes that are covered by the fingers. Unlike most simple system flutes, the dizi stands out with the addition of a membrane hole that is affixed with a membrane derived from the interior of the reed using a water soluble adhesive.

This membrane, when affixed with the right tension, adds a characteristic buzz to the tone that gives the dizi its robust character as compared to other flutes of comparable size.

The dizi's relative tuning with itself by the tone holes have two main families, one being the diatonic scale, and the other being the traditional one, which is differentiated by the position and size of the fifth tone hole as counted from embouchure hole end first (diatonic has it shifted slightly closer embouchure hole-ward, while traditional has a more even spacing).

Dizi are often made of bamboo, and can come in a wide variety of sizes/pitch ranges, from around alto flute range all the way to garklein recorder range.

No matter the size, the dizi's effective range is usually 2 octaves and a second, and sometimes hitting 2 octaves and a sixth.

The most commonly seen dizi are usually nearer the piccolo range, or the alto recorder range. More modern [Chinese orchestral] pieces may use additional dizi nearer the concert flute range.

The function of the dizi is usually quite different from that of the concert flute -- its strident but sweet tone usually means that it is often one of the leading melody lines in musical pieces.

All flute techniques are applicable to the dizi, with chromatic runs being among the harder things to pull off on the dizi.

Some advanced techniques on the dizi are impossible to play on the concert flute -- like 飞指 (rapid sliding of the the fingers up and down along the tone holes), and using the closest tone hole as an embouchure hole for a haunting effect while using the rest of the tone holes for pitching.

Even though the dizi is usually cheaper than a concert flute by monetary value, finding a high quality concert flute is ironically much eaiser than finding a high quality dizi.

That's because a high quality dizi requires bamboo of high density, and that material is getting increasingly harder to get due to increased global temperatures.

Bamboo is a fast-growing grass, and the higher the overall ambient temperature, the faster it grows, leading to decreased density.

Hope this helps!

...and Then The Body Says ``No''

What a fustercluck.

I fixed my mental wellness issue with an urgent leave on Friday, only to be slammed with an acute upper respiratory tract infection from Sunday to Tuesday, necessitating the visiting of a GP to get some meds and an appropriate amount of sick leave to sleep it off.

And of course, today's Hack Day is nullified, since I need to catch up on the stuff that had occurred between the previous two days.

But then again, I am belly-aching a little. Things are tight in terms of timing, but as usual, some preparation on my end, and the Providence of God meant that things will all turn out right in the end.

Frankly, there isn't much to write today, except for that little bit of complaining about how I basically lost some time due to the failure of my meat body.

Till the next update.

P.S.: You. The one running the bots that are based on AWS scraping my blog. I see you there. Don't be a dick.

Urgent Leave---Mental Wellness Day

Urgent one-day leave taken today---a ``mental well-ness day'' if you will. Work has been rather insufferable to the point where my ``brain no worky'' (official reason submitted to my reporting manager, by the way). It was insufferable not because it was tough (it was tough), but that there were just too many things going on that I was context switching way too much, and way too hard.

Couple that with an abysmal sleep cycle, and you have ``brain no worky'' syndrome.

And so, a day of rest was taken.

``But MT, tomorrow is Saturday! Couldn't you have waited till then to have a rest?''

Eh, not really---we have a performance in the evening, so it is less of the usual ``rest day'' (it's never a rest day) and more ``go-time!'' instead.

Anyway, what I then did with the day was just something that I was thinking of doing for quite a while: do a cycling trip to East Coast Park.

And so, I did. Going down Still Road, then East Coast Park towards the City, then backtracking up the entire park towards the Tanah Merah Coast Road, through Changi Beach, before finally ending in Changi Village for ``dinner''. It worked out to something like 27 mi, which brought my Eddington Number up to E17.

It's been a while since I went up the Tanah Merah Coast Road towards Changi Village. It has changed a whole lot---there was heavy fencing everywhere with major constructions. The trees that grew next to the road/path were allowed to overgrow into the cycle path itself, which made it fairly dangerous to stick with the ``keep left unless overtaking'' rule.

The other major change was the forced switching over to the Changi Bay Park Connector at the end of Tanah Merah Coast Road which connects over to Aviation Park Road. Aviation Park Road itself had a whole lot of construction going on, which made it impossible to pass through (this is going to be a common theme today). Changi Bay Park Connector was within a stone's throw from the coast line, and it was gorgeous as it was quiet [at about one o'clock on a Friday].

The rest of the route up to Changi Village was scenic. Quite a few old trees were chopped down for some reason, with bits of their trunks left lying about.

I severely underestimated just how fast I could go without any other people blocking my way, and as a result, ended up having ``dinner'' at around 1500hrs at Changi Village itself.

Heading home from Changi Village via bus... was an experience. Loyang was a fucking mess from all the construction, as was Pasir Ris. I'm just glad that I had already planned ahead to just take the bus home as opposed to attempting to ride back---there were simply no viable cycling routes through those two neighbourhoods at all.

And so, now as I write this up, I feel my legs be tired, and my brain yearning for sleep. I suppose this is the best outcome for dealing with mental wellness day.

Till the next update then.

It's May

It's May.

April was one helluva month, for sure. Many things were moving, fast, and the weather was downright atrocious, leading to many a time where I was just left physically out of it.

And this month, May, is likely to be just as hectic, if not more so.

(sigh)

Damn I'm tired.

I did manage to finish up my LEGO Bugatti Chiron build, which was exciting. The detailing part of the build (second booklet) was just a smidgen more interesting than the base frame build (differential gearing, simulated gear box, and simulated W16 engine). I would take pictures, but just not today---am just tired.

After nearly four whole months, The Great Negotiator finally arrived. It's the BAHCO 87, a rather large adjustable wrench, 30 in long, and coming in at a mass of 5.7 kg.

``MT, why the hell do you need a large wrench like that?''

Well... it's ludicrous. It's the embodiment of ``speak softly but carry a big stick'', but put into a slightly more plausible context of being a Crazy Old Man Engineer. No one expects the satisfying ``thunk'' of a 5.7 kg single-piece high performance alloyed steel on a table over a rather mundane discussion; hence the epithet of The Great Negotiator. It is also a rather visceral demonstration of an engineer, and is thus why I got it, despite it costing quite a fair bit of money, and taking so long to make its way over.

I will attest to the quality of the build though---the tolerances are pretty tight for the size, with a full clamp of 0.0 mm on the span-scale having no room to slip a thin sheet of 80 gsm paper through.

------

My reading has taken me back to the era of the old WOWIO---an online storefront for digital graphic novels/comics, just at about the time the first Amazon Kindle was released. They released lots of free digital graphic novels/comics then, and it was only up till now that I have a chance to really read them. Many of the graphic novels stopped at issue #1, with their stories never completed, their artists being lost in the mist of time. But there were still some gems among them that I wished could have continued, like the Lullaby series.

Unfortunately, to get them working on Eirian-V required me using Ghostscript to remove the ``sponsored by'' pages---they were full page sized URLs that made turning pages on Eirian-V impossible due to Eirian-V relying completely on touch screen for all interactions as opposed to the external buttons from all the other Eirians before.

Ah well.

I'm abandoning Elden Ring even though I didn't complete the game---I think I've derived all the fun that I want out of it. That's probably the first and last Fromsoft game that I'll play this lifetime, mostly because I'm really getting to the point in life where I can't just sit there for hours on end just to ``git gud'' on a game.

I watched Kronii's playthrough of Blasphemous, and got interested in the game. It's yet another metroidvania, but it did not appear as punishing as [say] Hollow Knight nor as clunky as Feudal Alloy. I think it scratches that metroidvania itch adequately.

And then there's The Talos Principle II that I uh... need to complete. It's a puzzle solving game, so I think I was just puzzled out for a bit. I'll get back to it.

------

I think that's all I care to talk about for now. Till the next update, I suppose.

Who Owes Whom?

As a rule of thumb, no one owes anyone anything, short of what is promised within the confines of a contract, either explicit or implicit.

In terms of an explicit contract, I am referring to stuff that is usually backed by legal means, or at least, backed with enough ``force'' behind it that everyone agrees with when the construct and content of the contract is being explicitly delineated.

In terms of an implicit contract, I am referring to the more wooly concepts of ``social contracts'', or the use of a legal term to explain the kinds of implied expectations that people have when they exist within the society.

Most of the time, the explicit contracts are ``easy'' to define, and fairly straightforward to enforce---just follow the terms that have been spelt out within the body of the contract itself.

It is the implicit contracts that make things rather... divisive at times.

See, because the contracts are implicit, there is never an artefact that properly spells out all the rights, privileges, mores, and norms that are expected. Instead, these implicit contracts rely on a sufficiently vocal majority to educate, and to enforce.

There are four terms there that need explanation.

``Sufficiently vocal'' means that the people who follow the implicit contract must be willing to stand their ground and hold the righteousness of the implicit contract in a manner that makes their stance unambiguous and understandable.

``Majority'' refers to a large enough number of people that fulfil the level of a quorum, i.e. they are representative of the intent of the implicit contract through numbers alone.

``Educate'' refers to the promulgation and teaching of the intent of the implicit contract to those who are unfamiliar with it, either because of a lack of experience due to age, or a lack of experience due to being a transplant from a different cultural norm.

``Enforce'' refers to the actions that need to be taken to demonstrate the consequences of a violation of the terms of the implicit contract. Enforcement differs from education in that it refers purely to the demonstration of the consequences of violation---to properly rehabilitate the offender, education of the intent of the implicit contract to which the offender has violated needs to be made.

Part of the reason why people these days start having that entitled behaviour with respect to the implicit contract (and therefore coming to the conclusion that society somehow ``owes'' them various things) is due to the violation of one or more of the four terms set out.

The lack of the ``sufficiently vocal'' has resulted in the intent of the implicit contract being increasingly wooly and subjected to unjustifiable interpretations, not all of them necessarily following the proper intent.

The lack of the ``majority'' has resulted in smaller numbers of people dictating the terms of the implicit contract over the quiet voices of the larger quorum, with the additional side effect of acting as though these minority are indeed the majority, which further increases the fuzziness of the boundaries of the implicit contract.

The lack of ``education'' means that there is no consensus on what the intent of the implicit contract, which again feeds back into each person deciding to interpret things their own way regardless of the original intent.

The lack of ``enforcement'' further emboldens the offenders to continue on their path of heresy, further destabilising the social fabric that was based on the implicit contract.

Combine these with the increased isolation that many are practising from living in an increasingly urbanised landscape with more interesting broadcast-level virtual connections than a highly localised and personal connection just increases the level of entitlement to the level of angst of ``the world owes me!''.

``MT, what's the point here?''

Since when did my rants ever have a point? 🤷‍♂️

Till the next update.

Marching On...

Urgh. This is probably the fourth time I opened up Q10 with the intention of writing a blog post. The first three times, I wrote like three paragraphs, before closing the editor in frustration.

I just couldn't put together what it was that I wanted to say without sounding like a twat.

So instead, let's try to talk about something else.

My Eddington Number was recently raised to E16. This means that I had at least 16 days where I cycled at least 16 mi. My usual North-East Riverine Loop averaged to nearly 12 mi, so I just did the obvious-but-dumb-thing of just cycling in both directions, leading to a nice 24 mi, with some sketchy actions to actually bring it up to the 24 mi. I had to do it twice just so that I could reach E16, and it was all done over the past week.

In short, I destroyed my legs in a fun way cycling about 79+ km just to reach a new milestone. Of course, the real secret is that I am just one ride away from reaching E17, but I won't be doing that soon because my left calf is already showing signs of being overworked---it was starting to cramp up during my return leg of ride number two today.

In other news, I have started on the LEGO Bugatti Chiron. I know that the web-site says ``Retired Product'', but they can still be found in the LEGO shops in SIN city. I am also well aware that there are Amazon.com versions that are cheaper than the retail price of nearly SGD600, some by nearly SGD150+. But there's always something magical about holding the box in one's hand as directly purchased from the brick-and-mortar shop, and considering my recent trauma from a lost Amazon.sg parcel (allegedly ``delivered'' by Ninjavan), I was not about to tempt fate again, especially with something this pricey.

I had known of the Bugatti Veyron for years---it was always that wonderful feat of German engineering that just made me go ``oooo''. The Top Gear episode was also the first time that I saw the Veyron go vroom:
And James May's response from his experience just sealed the idea that the Veyron was the best car in my book.

``But MT, the Chiron isn't the Veyron?''

Yes, and no. It's a refresh of the Veyron, but for the purposes of the LEGO model, it's basically the same. The LEGO Bugatti Chiron is a large build, probably the largest in the LEGO Technic series (but not necessarily the largest physical build). I have no idea where to put the finished assembly, but that will be a problem for future MT to handle. I am definitely taking my time to put it together, partly because in any LEGO assembly, the journey is usually more fun than the outcome. Moreover, I had to go slower---all these stupid heat is making it hard to exist, let alone think or manipulate all these tiny LEGO.

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Minecraft. I had been spending time after work in my solo world digging out the strip-mines that I had started way back in 1.17+, just as a way to decompress.

Then a thought came to me. How about ``Digging Straight Down''? The idea was to find some interesting location off my hill-top base, figure out the chunk boundaries, and dig out the entire column, while encasing the dug out chunk with glass. I knew from my early recce for a deep ocean biome to build my mob farm that there was a nice patch of ocean off the main desert that I had not explored before. So I went out that way via my overland minecart line, and promptly found what I was looking for.

And then I felt that one chunk was kinda small, so I expanded it to a 3×3 chunk grid in the middle of the ocean. I had some sponges that I had bought from some wandering traveller from long ago, and coupled that with the ``gravity blocks'' strategy of creating dikes to form the ```Dig Straight Down'' polder. Now I'm in the process of doing the actual digging, and replacing the walls with glass just for containment.

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I think that's about all I want to write about for now. Looks like I managed to avoid talking about anything involving pain, discomfort of being vulnerable with another, the realisation that people are just generally terrible, and other stuff that made me rage-close the Q10 editor three times before.

Till the next update, I suppose.

Never Reach Your [Hobby] Goals

Never reach your goals, especially if they are for your hobbies.

Before you go thinking that I'm nuts, hear me out. Goals are often things that we set out to achieve, and they serve as the inspiration to keep on striving through the path that we had set towards getting to them. With a goal in mind, one has the beacon to walk towards, a thing to focus on.

Now, what if you've reached your goal? What happens next?

In a work/career setting, the answer is usually quite straightforward---go lateral. Put in a different way, it means branching out into a related domain, or develop ``soft skills'' into the so-called T-shaped person. As a career option, it makes sense, since there really isn't a peak with respect to the means of making a living---having more tools in one's arsenal is almost always an asset with respect to the work environment, though there is usually a hidden cost of having too many useful tools; but that's a problem for a different day.

Most people will not have any issues about developing laterally once they have reached their goals at work, especially if they have run out of ``vertical'' goals to achieve. At some point, the challenge will be too great, and one will eventually revert to a level where one is more comfortable and competent, while still earning enough to pay the bills and power any other side stuff.

Hobbies are things that we do ``for fun''. It's what we do to pass the time when we aren't doing things to enhance survival and/or reproduction. If the hobby is no longer ``fun'', it becomes highly likely that we drop it in favour of something else.

Since hobbies are ``for fun'', we tend to not take it as ``seriously'' the way we do for what we do for work (I'm discounting anyone who uses their hobbies as a ``side hustle''---I think of that as going semi-professional). So, when one reaches the goals of one's hobbies, especially the ultimate-type of goal, what happens next?

Going lateral means that we are taking the hobbies seriously, which defeats the whole idea of a hobby. Not going lateral and leaving it goalless is akin to acknowledging that there is no longer anything else that one wants to achieve within the hobby, which can lead to stagnation and eventual disinterest.

Hence, it probably is better to never reach one's goals, especially if they are for one's hobbies, particularly if one wants to keep doing the hobby for a very long time without killing off the fun.

Instead of interpreting what I'm saying as The Truth, think of it as a cautionary tale from personal experience. I love Geocaching; I've been doing it from way back in 2009(?) when Jason first introduced me to my first geocache in Singapore, as well as my first trackable.

Fast forward to today, in 2024. I've not gone out to find a geocache in years, with much of the momentum killed after I've taken part in a Mega-Event, visited Geocaching headquarters in Seattle, and completed a D5/T5 geocache. These were ``ultimate''-type goals, and once they were met, my interest in the hobby of Geocaching just started dying out.

On a more scary note, my dizi playing. I recently completed my set of all 27 possible dizi, and having played a Grade 9 piece (《山村迎亲人》) in concert, I find myself staring out into the void going ``What's next?''. I have been expanding myself laterally with trying to do composition, and even playing in the Music Ministry on the concert flute, but at times some of these things just feel like I'm really taking things too seriously. I still derive fun, but the marginal amount of fun per effort is seemingly getting smaller. My first love here is still the dizi, and I'm at the level where unless I go semi-professional, I think I'm dooming myself to some kind of stagnation, which scares me.

``MT, you could like, go fusion music, or jazz?''

Sure, true. But that's going lateral, see? And it involves me making the decision of actually wanting to go down that path, which I have already asserted as ``being serious''. I do wonder though... part of me probably knows that it'll be something that I must do (or give up dizi playing), but how to do this is something that I will need to come to grips with.

After all, we only evolve as effectively as the environment allows us to. If the environment is stagnating, then there is no incentive to evolve; conversely, if the environment is too competitive, then one needs to be sufficiently serious in order to evolve fast enough to not die. In either case, ``fun'' seems to be reduced.

Tough calls for me for now.

As a side project, I am working on shakuhachi now. I've the Bell Shakuhachi from Jon Krypos (he renamed himself to Josen), and recently got some Kinko-ryu study material (the most obvious is the use of ロツレチリ for the notation of the notes DFGAC). It's a much tougher instrument than even the 洞箫 because of the way the embouchure cut is made---the angle required is very precise, and there is very little lipping involved as compared to the other edge-blown flutes. Only time will tell what will become of this.

Anyway, this is starting to get a bit long, so I'll stop here. Till the next update then.

I Have Nothing Left to Give

I have nothing left to give in a relationship. I think I should really accept this reality. It's not even about sour grapes or anything like that... it's just the realisation that I've lost whatever it was that made me look forward to being with someone exclusively.

It died the day she dumped me like a sack of Hell-going crap.

And it took me a few more years to learn that I am really a husk of who I was before.

I have no zest for life, I have little faith of the future, I have no interest in knowing anyone else deeper, and I am actually looking forward to just dying.

That is all.

Maintenance...?

And so, this weekend is about to end.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slept for 12 Hours...

Ah Monday. Public holiday in lieu of the second Chinese New Year public holiday falling on a Sunday.

A break day. A possibly ``true'' break day.

The special item that was presented yesterday at both the Chinese worship session in the early morning and the English worship session in the late morning was a hit. I listened through the playback for both renditions, and it does sound much better than I thought it would. The G 梆笛 soared without sounding like a dick, and I honestly cannot tell if it's because of my skill (what skill?), or the fact that I'm using some top-grade 笛膜 that keeps the sound clean. Feedback has been pretty positive to me, from those who actually knew me in church, and apparently even those who didn't know me had positive things to say to the music coordinator, who played with me in the item on the piano.

A win perhaps. Glory to God.

Now that that is done and dusted, I'll need to listen carefully to the various recordings to write it down. I'll probably publish it at my compositions page.

One item down, another two or three more to go. 😬

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Special item aside, I just crashed out for twelve hours straight once eight o'clock came, waking up every three hours just to use the toilet. Woke up at around eight o'clock this morning, give or take an hour, and just chilled out for a bit, pondering about nothing even as I am catching up on stuff on YouTube that I have missed out from the past week.

I discovered a new tool: KLOGG. It's a log explorer, designed apparently to load and search through extremely large files the way computer logs tend to be. I've not really deployed it anywhere yet, but it is definitely something to try. My only complaint is that it runs a GUI, and there's no TUI for it, but that's really minor, considering that I use Beyond Compare from Scooter Software, which is also GUI-centric with no TUI.

I have tried my best to make vim play nice with extremely large files, but it's still a crapshoot after all these years. There are other tricks that allow one to work with extremely large files, but they often involve messing around with less, grep, tail, and head.

Apart from that, I've been roaming about from one game to another on Steam, switching between Boltgun, trying out the Turbo Overkill demo, a bit of Vampire Survivors, and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles.

I'm also half-tempted to finish up the last bits of math to complete the really really simple LED-1 remake in PICO-8. But... urgh... math when I'm trying to chill the fuck out. Eww... (hahaha)

Aaaaaaaaanyway, I suppose that's all for today. I'll go... do something... I think. Maybe game more...

Till the next update.

T's The Eve of The Lunar New Year

Okay, this is take three.

I had wanted to write an entry today, but the start always revolved around the sentient of ``yeah yeah it's the lunar new year, which supposedly represents some kind of togetherness, but that's the last thing I feel''.

Naturally I couldn't continue the entries, because it was just too negative, even by my ``standards''.

So in this take, after finishing one can of Sapporo, and well in my second one, after having some Suntory Whisky, I shall avoid all that depression-talk crap, but do bear in mind the unspoken background of that.

I finally finished watching the final AGDQ'2024 speedrun of Final Fantasy V, and the part when Garulf died hit me in ways I did not quite understand. I played Final Fantasy V before, and it is probably the only Final Fantasy game I actually completed. So Garulf's death was not unknown to me, but I was surprised to be affected enough to just cry for a little when I was watching the speedrun.

A side news that was hitting up the VTuber world was the termination of Selen Tatsuki from Nijisanji, the other large corpo-VTuber agency that is not Hololive (actual company is ANYCOLOR, kind of how COVER Corp is the company for Hololive Productions). It was a fustercluck, with implied bullying, gaslighting, suicide attempts, and the associated consequences that are still unfolding now.

I don't really follow much of Nijisanji, and even less of Selen. I only know of her from the genesis of the name TSB (Team Snakebite). But to be terminated like that, and under those circumstances, it's bad.

I'm no corpo-sympathiser. I'm no liberal leftist anarchist either. I'm more of a pragmatist---if a corporation is meant to be a money-making machine, then it is important for the corporation to invest in their money-making methods well. In the case of an entertainment company then, it is their talents that they should be investing/supporting well, since the talents' labour are what helps to bring in the initial revenue and generate the kind of intangible accounting ``goodwill'' that generates powerful virtuous cycles for recurring income and what-not.

Dropping the ball like that on their own talent like that is not just uncool, it probably is bad for business as well, no matter how much denial they put up.

And that's about all I want to say about that.

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The past week was rough for the team and I. Thanks to red tape, our access to the production-like environment was delayed for about a month, and we were just cramming as much as we could done to reach the deadline in as functional a way as possible. It's a pretty public system meant for an international audience, so we are naturally striving to do a good enough job.

I think we pulled through despite the nonsense, but it's hard to tell till the upcoming Tuesday after the long weekend. But even before that, I just feel very drained. I took leave for today, refusing even to work the usual half-day that I would normally do. Part of the reason was also because a policy change that was revealed in month three of my first year where I am at now stipulated that one only needed to use a half-day leave for certain eves of public holidays instead of the more traditional whole day.

And thus I ended up taking today off, just to sleep in, and upon waking up, just chill about with booze and in a ``head empty; no thoughts'' sort of way.

I suppose that's all I want to write for now---I probably cannot practice the set list for this Sunday's worship service tomorrow, so I probably should do that now. This is, of course, in addition to checking up on my special item that I'm presenting with the music coordinator for both the early morning Chinese worship service, and the regular English one later on.

Till the next time then.

It's February Now!

Oh hey, would you look at that? It's February now!

What a mess this month is going to be... so many major milestones coming up for work, TGCO, and even for music ministry in PPCC. If we do pull it off, it will be quite satisfying.

On the subject of music, I realise that after playing in the music ministry for nearly a year, I've improved upon my ability to read the grand staff, but my ability to read the ``regular'' flute upper ledger lines is getting iffy---I can handle up to high-F, but the ledger lines start to merge when we reach the high-G all the way to the C.

It's literally a skill issue, and it will take me some time to sort it out. I'd love to get that fixed, just so that I can do the Marcel Moyse Exercises Journaliers, which unironically has very good interval patterns to properly master and raise my flute technical handling to a higher level.

In other news, I've started on the throne room for my castle build in Minecraft, though the more I think I about it, the more it should be thought of as the keep within the castle build (the castle includes the surrounding wall, while the keep is the inner building). The main building material is diorite and polished diorite, with the use of iron blocks for accents. The throne itself is made of cherry planks, and now I'm building the second floor.

I think that I'm building at least four storeys for the throne room. The ground floor is the throne room proper, the second floor is the conference room, the third floor is probably the armoury (with enchanting?), then the bed room.

Next to the throne room, I'll build a red brick tavern/inn combo.

And... I think that's about it for now. Sorry for the short entry---it's been a hell of a week.

Till the next update.

What I Did Yesterday-ish

Today marks the last day of the leave that I took to celebrate my birthday. I spent a large part of yesterday (birthday proper) just... walking about under air-conditioned settings. I had a wonderful lunch of fancy sushi at my favourite place, before heading down to Plaza Singapura to check out the Yamaha there (ended up buying a super long flute swab), before walking about Plaza Singapura itself where I found GameMartz which sold the Steam Deck (I didn't buy because I really don't play games on the move---I tend to read a hell lot more, hence the Eirian series, with the latest being Eirian-V).

I made my way to Esplanade after that, wondering on a whim to see if Kelvin was there in The Band World (he wasn't---Liyan was there, and I just went in and kaypoh-ed around the merchandise). I had tea-time Guinness with nachos out at Harry's@Esplanade Mall. The old library@esplanade was completely boarded off (as expected) due to its closure; near it was 《印映》, a visual arts exhibition by Hong Shu-ying that reflected upon 阿炳, the blind erhu player whose most famous piece was 《二泉映月》. Apparently he was also among the earliest to introduce 简谱 notation for writing down Chinese music, but this part is a little sketchy to me.

Before I started heading home, I caught Night Drives with ANNÉ running through their sound checks. The lead singer was Nicole ``Nikki'' Ann Chan, and while her stage dress was definitely eye-catching (white body-con Bardot-style with a really low back and high hemline, matched with white ankle boots), it was her voice that was the more captivating. Her lows had that smokey feel that is always wonderful to hear, and when she was singing high to the rapper (not a fan of, but that guy was decent for sure!), it was clear.

Very lovely. Too bad I didn't actually want to stay for their set at 1900hrs---I wanted to get my ass home before the home-going crowd started to flood the public transport.

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SimplyGo---a name that will forever be tainted with the infamy that came from a forced adoption that got hastily retracted roughly two weeks after it was first pushed through as the only way forward for public transport.

I won't go into the details of the whole debacle, except to raise the obvious question: what is the end-game here? Will EZ-link cards be phased out after all, but in a much quieter fashion by stopping any new supply and force-converting each and every expired EZ-link card over to SimplyGo? Will SimplyGo be updated to not suck (actually show the balance on the fare card with a similar performance profile as EZ-link)?

The announcement is bereft of all that, which makes me wonder deeply about the possibilities...

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In other news, I've finally made my way up the Altus Plateau, and have fought my way up to Mt. Gelmir in Elden Ring. It's definitely a much different feel from Limgrave, and damn the Death Blight status effect is horrible; the Scarlet Rot is nothing in comparison. Urgh.

Back in Minecraft, I finally added the top layer of the four round towers that are on the perimeter of my castle-build. I've also added the ``rammed earth walls'' to connect these towers. Soon I will start working on the habitable parts of the castle or something.

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

Another Trip Round Ol'Sol

Woah, stupid o'clock! Also, damn I'm officially yet another year older! Frankly, apart from having some fancy sushi for lunch, I don't really have any other things planned for the rest of the day. The old standby is, of course, to find some bar/pub to sit at, and read some book.

Maybe I'd just put on a face mask and go for a walk out on Orchard Road. But thanks to the fifth COVID-19 vaccination (Spikevax this time), I'm on a strict ``no physical exertion for two weeks'' edict, which probably includes this walk as part of the prohibition.

I suppose an explanation is [sort of] in order. I had planned to take leave from 2024-01-19 till 2024-01-23 (inclusive) just to chill out and do whatever the hell I wanted as part of my birthday thingamajig. Then MOH was like ``dude, you're due for your fifth vaccination''. I don't know about you, but there has been some spikes of COVID-19 cases here and there over the past few months, and the last time I was hit with COVID-19 was back in September, which was more than three months away from well today. So I was definitely interested in taking the booster shot just as an insurance for both me and my two aged parents, especially since it was ``free''. The only problem was, when?

A long story made short meant that 2024-01-19 was the best available time. I'd do earlier, but there were no free slots on Saturdays (not taking any more ``unnecessary'' leave if I can help it), and doing it later will run into some seriously hard-to-deal with issues (special item in church, Chinese New Year proper, and quite a few work-related events that need my presence).

And so, my Friday morning was burnt.

My Friday afternoon went away as well when the music coordinator in church had to reschedule a work-together session for the special item that was supposed to happen on 2024-01-14. Again, Friday was the only free time, and so went the rest of the day. To be fair, not all of the afternoon was spent on working out the special item---due to the big rain, I ended up staying for another few more hours to chat.

Come Saturday, I was starting to nurse the usual lethargy from the booster jab, while having to consume brain power doing transcription of the recording of the work-together session that happened the previous day. Then there was rehearsals for TGCO in the evening.

Sunday, I was just dead. I had taken paracetamol for Friday and Saturday to sort of control the side effects, and I had been running on pure spite (a.k.a. ``too angry to be sick'') for the two days' worth of events. That led to the crash with me feeling both feverish and too drained of willpower to drag my carcass to do anything. I slept for nearly twelve hours, and felt much better after that.

And that's three out of my five days of break that was spent just pulling through the side effects of the vaccination, while still doing my best to keep up with the obligations and responsibilities. What a fucking mess...

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Previously, I talked about how I fixed up the tables in my personal website to have ``sticky'' headers. I also mentioned about how I had to sacrifice the borders for the header due to rendering bugs in the browsers (I'm too lazy to find and link to it: I hereby invoke ``trust me bro'').

Well, one of my subordinates found a workable solution for this (we needed to do something similar for a work item). The gist of the solution was to eschew the automatic border rendering and border-collapse: collapse;, and to manually handle the borders, specially drawing only the left and top borders for all cells, except for the bottom-most and the right-most, where they will also draw the bottom border and the right borders respectively.

It worked, in a way. It created the new caveat of not allowing any other border-related CSS styling for tables, to avoid fucking up the manually designated set up.

In my case, I had to change the orientation, drawing only the right and bottom borders instead.

``MT, why so contrary?''

Because my tables have togglable hidden columns. This means that the detection algorithm for the right most column (i.e. the last-child of the <tr> tag) will fail should that column be hidden. I had tried to use some other types of CSS-selectors to pick the last visible column through class exclusion and what-not, but nothing beat the simplicity of just changing the orientation.

And so, now the tables in my personal website have the full border treatment, be it the header cells, or the regular body cells.

Huzzah!

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AGDQ 2024 came and went. I watched nothing live, but that is to be expected. The VOD list on Reddit was always cool, and with it was a great way to catch up on the coolest speedruns that made it to the Big Stage.

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Anyway, it's late. I'm going to crash out. Till the next update.

Soreness

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, that's that.

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

First Grab Bag of 2024

(No, I did not write this at the time that this was published. I deliberately delayed the publication to ensure that the quick summary stood alone.)

So the first thing that was on my mind was the realisation and general thankfulness that space is as big as it was. I know that there's a common Internet saying that goes something like:

Born too late for the age of discovery; born too early for the age of space travel.

And to be fair, I used to think like that as well.

Until I actually took the time to sit down and contemplate about the underlying reality.

Space is stupendously large. It's stupendously large to the point that the fastest known object, the photon, still takes a fucking long-ass time to get places. Space is also expanding.

But space has some terrifying as fuck objects that can, as best as we can understand it, obliterate us in as instant as it gets. The only way in which we are safe enough to observe these objects, let alone have the time and wherewithal contemplate about them, is from the sole fact that we are also magnificently far away from them.

Yeah, I'll just be thankful that space is stupid big, and that we don't have a good way of travelling all that distance within a life-time. Considering the amount of stupidity that the average person has given access to technology (see the car, the aeroplane, the computer, the Internet, and the peace engineered from strong international collaboration to actually preserving said peace), I shudder to think what will happen should we ever have such a capability.

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In other news, Elden Ring was as frustrating as I thought it was, but paradoxically, it was also fairly fun. I suppose the ability to run through most dangers just to do sight-seeing is one of the plus points.

That, and the mindless grinding that one can do to farm enough runes other standard upgrade materials to ensure overwhelming power when going for boss fights. It's a FromSoftware game---I feel no guilt in being over-levelled to take on various big mobs and boss mobs. The world is gorgeous even though it is often quite twisted---there's that sense of forlorness without invoking the weird biomechanical style that is the speciality of H.R. Giger.

I think I have sunk quite a few hours in Elden Ring at this point, and I may switch over to something else just for variety. Maybe a bit of the new DLC for Vampire Survivors, which is still a damn fun game even after so long. HoloCure might be the best in breed, but that is technically a twin-stick auto-shooter, while Vampire Survivors is a single-stick auto-shooter, which means a different kind of fun.

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I binged-watch the second season of SPY×FAMILY. I liked it. Unlike in the first season, this time the focus is more on Yor's alter-ego than that of Loid's. There was little to no emphasis on Anya's antics in school, which is fine from a pacing perspective. I wonder how the third season (should it come, but let's be real---SPY×FAMILY is too popular to not have a third season, especially when the source materials isn't exhausted yet) will go, and more importantly, I wonder if SPY×FAMILY has an actual ending instead of going on f-o-r-e-v-e-r the way One Piece or DragonBall does.

On another tangent, after delaying for so long, I finally started on Parks and Recreation. I'm still somewhere in the middle of season 2, and while Amy Poehler's character of Leslie Knope can be quite cringeworthy at times, the series sort of started to grow on me. No idea why.

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In yet another tangent, I spent a couple of hours during stupid o'clock a couple of days ago updating all my Lilypond composition source files to 2.24.3. The astute would realise that Lilypond 2.24.3 has been out since 2023-11-19, so the natural question would be, why the delay?

Well, because the Cygwin version was only available rather recently. While the actual conversion was ``just'' an exercise of loading the relevant files into Frescobaldi and then running the conversion there, I needed the Cygwin version to make it scalable.

It's just much faster to go

find -type f -iname '*.ly' -print0 | xargs -0 convert-ly -e

followed by any manual adjustments needed (like fixing the format function to have #f as the second parameter) than to manually traverse the entire compositions directory and load each file by hand. It is also less error-prone.

Besides, I also have another Python script that allows me to auto-rebuild the output PDF just so that I can update the files available at my compositions page.

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And I think I'm done with what I want to say for now. Till the next update, and oh, have a happy and blessed 2024.

Quick Summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🤷‍♂️

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

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

Amen.

Getting High in Church, and Elden Ring

Whew... that was something.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A lot.

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

Am Getting Drinks

Another [work] day has ended. And this year, this 2023 CE, is now in its penultimate week.

I finally left last.fm after being there for nearly twenty years. The reason was simple: they were withholding interesting information based on my submitted data... yeah, fuck'em. My only regret was that it took me this many years to finally pull the trigger and leave.

Moving on, I've recently been introduced to the solo hotpot & BBQ concept by YT. The hotpot part, I am used to, while that BBQ bit was something new. I think that calling it a BBQ is a bit of a misnomer---it was much closer to having a hot plate as opposed to a barbeque grill in terms of execution. But that aside, the concept was interesting, and it awakened that latent caveman that had been hiding within me all these while; there was just something that was so satisfying about watching (and smelling) what was originally red raw meat turning into a delicious brown cooked form.

Magnifique.

Recently, I have finally achieved something cool---I have managed to obtain good quality playable representatives for all usable keys of the 笛子. Was that always my intention? Not really... but ever since I discovered a contact who had makers willing to be commissioned to build the so-called odd key 笛子, it was something that did not stray too far from my mind.

``But MT, why do you need so many 笛子 in the first place?''

It's about extending the possibilities of expression. Each and every 笛子 has its own specific timbre, and armed with all the 27 possible representatives as at now, it is possible to tackle anything, including the possibility of ``going rogue'' in the sense of moving away from traditional Chinese music and into band (concert/marching/five-man) and beyond.

And that 倍大 C♯笛子 is a special one too. I won't brag about it (not worth it), but if you know, you know. It also plays beautifully.

So a while back, Peace Centre was sold. The twist was that after the original tenants had moved out, the entire place was given a year of partial anarchy, where graffiti was allowed, and various pop-up stalls appeared. I checked it out with YT that day, and I found it pretty cool. It reminded me a little of the old New Year events in Pittsburgh City back in the day for some reason, even though I might not share the same kind of jive as the much younger folk were.

Hmmm. What else is there to say for today's entry?

Ah, perhaps a little Minecraft news. I continued clearing out the forests nearest to my hill-top base, and replaced the haphazardly placed torches on the ground with the four-iron-bar-one-lantern ``lamp-post'' that I came up with. It looks so much neater. I cleaned up my mob farm a little, removing the original chunk-delimiter ring of blocks, replaced the ground blocks for the sea-level entry-way while adding detailing in the form of cobblestone wall ``pillars'' that drove down to some kind of hard-rock on the sea floor. I also patched up some of the ravine/rifts that were in the land around my hill-top base, using smooth stone as a shovel-resistant stop-block, before laying on stacks of dirt to make the patch look like it was part of the original landscape.

This weekend will see me get involved in quite a few pieces as part of the music ministry. I'll have to practise the pieces beforehand (as always), and am looking forward to it.

I am also waiting for 2023-12-22T02:00+08 to see if Elden Ring would be on sale. Something about the SGD80.00 price point just did not sit right with me, even though I would hardly blink spending that amount at a single meal of just having myself. I suppose if there was no sale, I'd probably just buy it at full price---I had finally convinced myself that it was time to try it.

Ah. What else to say, what else to say?

I suppose that's about it for now. I think I have a rant or two, but I have been drinking like a fish over the weekend for two weekends now, hanging out with different friends. There's one more session coming up this weekend, and I suppose that I can get all my ranting going, thus leaving almost nothing for here.

But then again, why would that ever be a problem?

Damn I Need a Drink

I would have said ``damn I need a drink'', but I actually had like six of those babies on Friday, and that doesn't count the two I had the day before. But the sentiment still holds though.

Damn I need a drink.

Or perhaps a heavy blow to the head---who knows?

I have been feeling under the weather for the past couple of days, lapsing into multi-hour long naps in the day time, and waking up feeling better than before I slept, but still in the kind of ennui that often accompanies me during this time of the year.

Am I really depressed? If I were in the US, I would not have hesitated to go look for professional help, but as I am still in SIN city, it is just not worth the trouble.

Yes, trouble. I chose the word ``trouble'', not ``effort''. This place is downright toxic when it comes to mental health, and I don't mean the legion of lay people who know fuck all about what mental health entails. I am also referring to the over-worked and under-paid workers in the industry, that is regulated by a ministry that is, shall we say nicely, a representative of the type of public it serves.

I would rather kill myself than to go through the trouble to seek help here, should that need ever arise.

The irony of course is that I live within striking distance of the Institute of Mental Health, which means that it barely takes any actual logistical effort to haul my ass there. And yet I still refuse to.

But then again in the grand scheme of things, I've more or less subscribed to the philosophy of ``if I die, I die'', i.e. I really cannot be bothered to take any more corrective action in my life just to prolong it for no good reason. I have been thinking semi-seriously about drafting a ``do not resuscitate'' legal order, but am a little hung up on how to specify the conditions within it. Questions like ``will the [fucking] doctors actually respect my legal orders, or will they ignore it for whatever damned reason?''.

And no, I don't want to talk about this with anyone. The last time I raised this with anyone, I was rudely told to go fuck myself for being an ingrate for not cherishing the life that was given to me by God (not the exact words for sure, but the sentiments are accurate). And people in my age group don't understand nor care, since their lives are going nicely with their own families and other objects of anchoring them into this reality. And forget about the younger ones---their minds are too blasted by instant gratification to think beyond anything, really.

``But MT, if you don't open yourself up, how are you going to find help or understanding?''

Yeah, fuck off. I opened myself up to people whom I trusted, and what happened each time? I get stabbed. If you want an example of emotional abuse, there's your Exhibit A---it doesn't need some domestic altercation or anything of that sort. Insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting different outcomes. Hell, I'd happily accept that God wants me to suffer for His purposes than to trust another person that deeply again.

``MT, that's not very Christian of you.''

And you'd be right. It's not very Christian of me. I'm too world weary to be that trusting. I have trust issues at a personal level---I just don't trust people much any more. I cannot trust people who have no attention span---please explain how I can trust a person who, when I am talking with them, is consistently looking at their smartphones, not necessarily doomscrolling, but having another conversation with someone else.

Tell me, if I were to continue trusting this person, am I not just a fool? Did God not give me a damn brain and a mind with wisdom to make my own judgement?

Trust issues.

It gets worse as one ages, as I am starting to discover. That naive trusting nature when one was younger gets burnt out of the system over time, and even among my age group, no one gets involved with anyone without any ulterior motives.

So it's all an act. A mask. The friendly nature of MT that goes out there is all of those, and then some. It's not a fake act, nor a fake mask---it is what I would have been had I not lose the spark to keep it real. So it's no longer my default state, but just something that I retrieve to keep people from thinking that I am some of psychopath/sociopath, just so that things can get moving along in a way that does not devolve to violence.

Some might call it ``adulting''. I have no proper names for it, nor do I care enough to come up with one.

Not gonna lie, just kinda waiting for society to give me some pretty good reasons to off myself at this point, but God has been kind enough to have me play some useful roles in this society for now, thus allowing me to put these thoughts away.

But they are always there, always lurking. And these trust issues are what will prevent me from seeking a mate to ``settle down''.

Damn I need a drink.

End of Another Week... Yay...

Ah... another week is over. And we're now officially in December. Last twelfth of the year to go before the pseudo-cycle begins anew.

Am I officially ``done'' with 2023? That's an interesting question... what does it mean to be ``done'' with a year? Does it mean that when the pseudo-cycle begins anew, it somehow is a reset of some sorts, that some of the old problems go away in the sense of the reset, while new opportunities show themselves?

If that's what it means to be ``done'' with any particular year... then I suppose not. Just because an arbitrary time-centric odometer increases by one integer step does not mean that it is truly ``anew''---that's just something we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better. The truth is, the problems we had are still around, the issues we wanted to resolve still await us, and the future is still as far away as before, unless we have some specific quantifiable goal in mind.

That said, I've been living on borrowed time anyway. I move projects forward, hoping that these projects benefit their target audiences, while I sort of reached the point in life where if I suddenly were to die now, I'd go quietly with no regrets.

I mean, what's there to regret? All in all, I think I've lived a pretty full life. So what if I'm not married with children... being single doesn't mean that one cannot live a full life. So what if I'm not some wealthy fellow, or a business owner, or famed anyone---why would anyone need to be in any of those states to be considered living a life without regrets? I mean, sure, money is useful, but it's still mostly a means to an end, and shouldn't be an end to itself, for therein lies madness and great evil.

``MT, why're you getting all maudlin again?''

It's the end of the year; it is a confluence of Christmas, New Year's, My birthday, and Chinese New Year. Naturally, it's when I just age hard like a mofo.

Aaaaaaanyway, end of the week. I'm down with something again, and I'm just plain angry. I'm still chalking it to just some kind of cold, and am going to run with that. My strategy of getting through this is to literally be too angry to be sick, so that's that.

I think that's all I feel like writing now. Till the next update I suppose.