Why hello there. It has been a while since I had written anything here and with good reason too.
You see, I'm on vacation. Still am. I wouldn't have written this entry if not for the generosity of my friend who loaned me the use of his computer via the guest account.
I could, in theory, wait till I was back in SIN before I wrote anything here. But I think that it is a little late then, since I've not really written much for a long time. Nearly a month in fact.
So here I am again, pointing out that I am still around. It's really a rather bland and tasteless blurb, a placeholder until I can get my butt back into SIN and thus be more comfortable in articulating a little more on the things that I have been mulling over while I am across the Pacific ocean.
Till the next update, which shouldn't be too long, jet lag notwithstanding.
Friday, April 08, 2016
Friday, March 18, 2016
Internet Argument
I didn't want to write this entry for a couple of reasons. First, it is stupid o'clock now and I have another day of work to put in in a few short hours. Second, the things I'm about to talk about in this entry are seriously bugging me in a bad way, and I really do not like to write about bad things.
For the past few days, I made a series of mistakes. The entire series of mistakes can be reduced to this one common theme: I got involved in an Internet Argument.
An Internet Argument, for those of you who aren't that familiar with the neologism, is like the Myth of Sisyphus, in which an argument ad nauseum produces exactly zero (or even negative) results, no matter how much effort was put in to craft as good an argument as it is possible in the first place.
So I got trapped in one recently in a rather public way. Geocaching was supposed to be a relatively fun game where one went out to go find the myriad of geocaches armed with a trusty GPS receiver and a set of listings of geocaches that were hidden by other geocachers. In short, it's a game made and maintained by players for the players. I didn't get involve in any regional geocaching group till around two or three years since I first started, and since then, it has been a blast meeting up with other fellow geocachers and doing some of the tougher caches together.
New friendships were made and what-not.
I said `was' for good reason.
Ever so often, some rather... talented people take it on themselves to crown themselves as the local feudal lord equivalent of the community. Some example behavior include disregarding existing guidelines from the geocaching website, spam-bombing the entire island with low interesting-level caches, and in general, acting in a holier-than-thou-art attitude.
I was stuck in an Internet Argument with the most recent iteration.
This recent iteration basically came in on the scene, declared that geocaching in Singapore was ``not in high gear'', and proceeded to initially market themselves as the official regional representative. I didn't really care about anything other than the last bit, because I thought that it was rather deceitful.
And that was how a massive series of vitriol from this one person came about.
Needless to say, I was quite tired from that Internet Argument. I'm just angry now that we are allowing such... talented people to come in and thwack away at things that we like, with the sad part that we are powerless over it. If it is true talent, I feel less discontented.
It's the kind of weaselly snide-filled self-proclaimed elitism that annoys me the most. I don't usually wish harm on anyone, but for this entity, may the flames of eternal damnation smother ye for eternity for thy deplorable behaviour.
I was nearly involved in another Internet Argument.
Again without naming names, suffice to say, I don't think I can talk with this person any more. Said person has crossed into SJW territory---there is never a way to meaningfully respond to that.
Let me repeat myself: there is never a meaningful way to respond to a person who crosses into SJW territory.
I don't exist on ``social media'' to change people's thoughts, inspire people, or to do anything serious. I exist on ``social media'' because sometimes it is fun to discuss things, because the mundane can be incongruous at times, because using humour to poke fun at things demonstrates that we are comfortable enough with the topic at hand to not have to declare it as out of bounds for one reason or another to censor it.
Because declaring something as out of bounds doesn't really make it go away---it's just a way of pretending that it doesn't exist. Pretending that it doesn't exist doesn't really do anything except feed into a form of self-delusion.
I realised that it wasn't so much as the overly positives in other's lives that made me annoyed with ``social media'', it was the rather toxic environment from all the SJW-esque posts that were showing up. Sad to say, much of the SJW-esque posts came from a large portion of #cslounge, the nefarious echoing chamber of a self-selected group of... entities.
Excising them had been a good thing in my life. It went both ways actually---on IRC, they booted me off permanently; I cared earlier only because it was an addiction. Now that I'm away, I feel much better about myself. #cslounge and their infamous ilk scratched an itch I had a long time ago, but it's time to move on.
Everyone is so easily offended. Why should their offense stop me from talking about what I think is hilarious?
I think that the mark of true intelligence is the ability to hold all sides of a perspective in the head and be able to understand the merits of each side before drawing any conclusion, and that conclusions drawn must come logically from the consideration of all sides, no matter how ugly the conclusion may be. I think that was the intent behind the First Amendment made in the Bill of Rights back in the day in the US.
But I am obviously veering off on yet another tangent.
I don't think anything useful can be concluded from these observations, other than that people are easily offended, and easily offended people will be offended over the smallest of inscrutable of things, and when clear arguments are presented for one's case they will be summarily ignored or twisted out of shape just to suit the hidden agenda, ergo there's almost no need to engage with anyone who is easily offended in the context in which I use ``social media''.
Alright, it's stupid late, and I will retire to sleep.
For the past few days, I made a series of mistakes. The entire series of mistakes can be reduced to this one common theme: I got involved in an Internet Argument.
An Internet Argument, for those of you who aren't that familiar with the neologism, is like the Myth of Sisyphus, in which an argument ad nauseum produces exactly zero (or even negative) results, no matter how much effort was put in to craft as good an argument as it is possible in the first place.
So I got trapped in one recently in a rather public way. Geocaching was supposed to be a relatively fun game where one went out to go find the myriad of geocaches armed with a trusty GPS receiver and a set of listings of geocaches that were hidden by other geocachers. In short, it's a game made and maintained by players for the players. I didn't get involve in any regional geocaching group till around two or three years since I first started, and since then, it has been a blast meeting up with other fellow geocachers and doing some of the tougher caches together.
New friendships were made and what-not.
I said `was' for good reason.
Ever so often, some rather... talented people take it on themselves to crown themselves as the local feudal lord equivalent of the community. Some example behavior include disregarding existing guidelines from the geocaching website, spam-bombing the entire island with low interesting-level caches, and in general, acting in a holier-than-thou-art attitude.
I was stuck in an Internet Argument with the most recent iteration.
This recent iteration basically came in on the scene, declared that geocaching in Singapore was ``not in high gear'', and proceeded to initially market themselves as the official regional representative. I didn't really care about anything other than the last bit, because I thought that it was rather deceitful.
And that was how a massive series of vitriol from this one person came about.
Needless to say, I was quite tired from that Internet Argument. I'm just angry now that we are allowing such... talented people to come in and thwack away at things that we like, with the sad part that we are powerless over it. If it is true talent, I feel less discontented.
It's the kind of weaselly snide-filled self-proclaimed elitism that annoys me the most. I don't usually wish harm on anyone, but for this entity, may the flames of eternal damnation smother ye for eternity for thy deplorable behaviour.
I was nearly involved in another Internet Argument.
Again without naming names, suffice to say, I don't think I can talk with this person any more. Said person has crossed into SJW territory---there is never a way to meaningfully respond to that.
Let me repeat myself: there is never a meaningful way to respond to a person who crosses into SJW territory.
I don't exist on ``social media'' to change people's thoughts, inspire people, or to do anything serious. I exist on ``social media'' because sometimes it is fun to discuss things, because the mundane can be incongruous at times, because using humour to poke fun at things demonstrates that we are comfortable enough with the topic at hand to not have to declare it as out of bounds for one reason or another to censor it.
Because declaring something as out of bounds doesn't really make it go away---it's just a way of pretending that it doesn't exist. Pretending that it doesn't exist doesn't really do anything except feed into a form of self-delusion.
I realised that it wasn't so much as the overly positives in other's lives that made me annoyed with ``social media'', it was the rather toxic environment from all the SJW-esque posts that were showing up. Sad to say, much of the SJW-esque posts came from a large portion of #cslounge, the nefarious echoing chamber of a self-selected group of... entities.
Excising them had been a good thing in my life. It went both ways actually---on IRC, they booted me off permanently; I cared earlier only because it was an addiction. Now that I'm away, I feel much better about myself. #cslounge and their infamous ilk scratched an itch I had a long time ago, but it's time to move on.
Everyone is so easily offended. Why should their offense stop me from talking about what I think is hilarious?
I think that the mark of true intelligence is the ability to hold all sides of a perspective in the head and be able to understand the merits of each side before drawing any conclusion, and that conclusions drawn must come logically from the consideration of all sides, no matter how ugly the conclusion may be. I think that was the intent behind the First Amendment made in the Bill of Rights back in the day in the US.
But I am obviously veering off on yet another tangent.
I don't think anything useful can be concluded from these observations, other than that people are easily offended, and easily offended people will be offended over the smallest of inscrutable of things, and when clear arguments are presented for one's case they will be summarily ignored or twisted out of shape just to suit the hidden agenda, ergo there's almost no need to engage with anyone who is easily offended in the context in which I use ``social media''.
Alright, it's stupid late, and I will retire to sleep.
Wednesday, March 02, 2016
Contentless Blurb
I haven't written anything here in a while. There isn't anything much to bitch about recently, so I've that going for me, which is always nice.
Sometimes life is just that simple. I wake up, I get to work, I do some work, I go home, I relax, I rest. No fuss.
Sometimes of course life will through you a curve ball and you'd be fighting for your life, living from one adrenaline moment to the next. It would be nice if those moments were far and few, and thankfully for most people, that is the case.
Man, I'm already rambling before I am done with saying what I...
...well I have nothing much to say.
I should really be adding more content to my personal domain. There's at least some of the old run-on-computer projects that I still have to put up, and then there's the code rewrite for a few more tools that were in the experimental phase before I did the redesign.
Alright, I think I'm done here. This post is more to show that I'm still alive and relatively alright than anything else.
Sometimes life is just that simple. I wake up, I get to work, I do some work, I go home, I relax, I rest. No fuss.
Sometimes of course life will through you a curve ball and you'd be fighting for your life, living from one adrenaline moment to the next. It would be nice if those moments were far and few, and thankfully for most people, that is the case.
Man, I'm already rambling before I am done with saying what I...
...well I have nothing much to say.
I should really be adding more content to my personal domain. There's at least some of the old run-on-computer projects that I still have to put up, and then there's the code rewrite for a few more tools that were in the experimental phase before I did the redesign.
Alright, I think I'm done here. This post is more to show that I'm still alive and relatively alright than anything else.
Sunday, February 07, 2016
Cryptogram Tools, 6-hole dizi Fingering Charts, Earworm
I have seen many people that I know get married over the past few years. Of which, only one invited me to join in their joyous occasion, an invitation that I was, unfortunately, unable to reply favourably because I was in the middle of fighting for my sanity. It made me wonder a little in terms of just how people perceive me, friend or acquaintance: I am either such a serious person in their eyes that I am seemingly unable to share in their joy, or that I'm such a volatile person that they'd rather I not be there to make everyone think that they are not ``normal'' for having known a person like me.
Meh. I don't really think it matters. Some might even say that it is a blessing in disguise, since I am ``blessed'' in avoiding the dreaded ``red bomb''. If marriages are to be celebrated, and as a friend I'm not there, how do you think I feel?
Or do you really think that I do not feel at all?
------
In other news, I have managed to port enough of the cute-sy cryptogram tools from my old web site to my new one. Their landing page can be found here. Instead of a thousand-and-one different scripts implementing the various cipher systems, I had just one minified and compacted file instead. It also gave me an opportunity to experiment with JavaScript's notion of objects, particularly how inheritance is implemented (hint: it is not the same as in C++ or Java). So that's that.
Another rather hidden change is the re-release of my 6-hole dizi fingering charts. The basic one can be obtained from this URL while the complete one can be obtained from this other URL. The biggest difference of these new fingering charts from the the old is the removal of our dependence on MSWord to provide the layout. Both files are constructed from UTF-8 text files with little to no trickery, using this little tool that I had featured before to produce the PostScript file that gets converted into a PDF via ps2pdf. That little tool has been updated to include the glyphs from the SMP (plane 1 of the Unicode; plane 0 is regular BMP), but I had refrained from using those in the documents because there was no easy way to read the entire document at once since there is no font in the world now that can have more than 65535 glyphs at once.
But no matter. The stuff from the SMP are more useful for generating jianpu documents than fingering charts.
The more complete chart of the two has a whole bunch of new fingerings for notes that are higher than the E'-fingering using Boehm fingering notation. I have tested them on my NTS G-bangdi and have certified them as reachable, albeit stupidly. It remains for me to test those out on a qudi for additional verification, and then there's of course the translation of that to the dadi, which, having one more hole in between F♯ and E, meant that it has the chance to achieve a more precise hold on the various harmonics necessary to hit the super high notes.
What I was most proud of for the lists was discovering the G'♯ fingering that works. It works, but is excessively breathy on the bangdi---I will need to refine that a bit more, as well as confirm it on a qudi of some sort where the higher harmonics tend to be easier to reach.
All these and more will be described in fuller detail when I get about towards writing the dizi pedagogy pages.
------
Finally, I have finally found the bloody ear worm that was stuck since 2012. Here it is:And in case that video gets taken down, ``The Way Back Into Love''. And this:Maybe neither will get tossed out.
And that's all for today.
Meh. I don't really think it matters. Some might even say that it is a blessing in disguise, since I am ``blessed'' in avoiding the dreaded ``red bomb''. If marriages are to be celebrated, and as a friend I'm not there, how do you think I feel?
Or do you really think that I do not feel at all?
------
In other news, I have managed to port enough of the cute-sy cryptogram tools from my old web site to my new one. Their landing page can be found here. Instead of a thousand-and-one different scripts implementing the various cipher systems, I had just one minified and compacted file instead. It also gave me an opportunity to experiment with JavaScript's notion of objects, particularly how inheritance is implemented (hint: it is not the same as in C++ or Java). So that's that.
Another rather hidden change is the re-release of my 6-hole dizi fingering charts. The basic one can be obtained from this URL while the complete one can be obtained from this other URL. The biggest difference of these new fingering charts from the the old is the removal of our dependence on MSWord to provide the layout. Both files are constructed from UTF-8 text files with little to no trickery, using this little tool that I had featured before to produce the PostScript file that gets converted into a PDF via ps2pdf. That little tool has been updated to include the glyphs from the SMP (plane 1 of the Unicode; plane 0 is regular BMP), but I had refrained from using those in the documents because there was no easy way to read the entire document at once since there is no font in the world now that can have more than 65535 glyphs at once.
But no matter. The stuff from the SMP are more useful for generating jianpu documents than fingering charts.
The more complete chart of the two has a whole bunch of new fingerings for notes that are higher than the E'-fingering using Boehm fingering notation. I have tested them on my NTS G-bangdi and have certified them as reachable, albeit stupidly. It remains for me to test those out on a qudi for additional verification, and then there's of course the translation of that to the dadi, which, having one more hole in between F♯ and E, meant that it has the chance to achieve a more precise hold on the various harmonics necessary to hit the super high notes.
What I was most proud of for the lists was discovering the G'♯ fingering that works. It works, but is excessively breathy on the bangdi---I will need to refine that a bit more, as well as confirm it on a qudi of some sort where the higher harmonics tend to be easier to reach.
All these and more will be described in fuller detail when I get about towards writing the dizi pedagogy pages.
------
Finally, I have finally found the bloody ear worm that was stuck since 2012. Here it is:And in case that video gets taken down, ``The Way Back Into Love''. And this:Maybe neither will get tossed out.
And that's all for today.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
``The_Laptop's Domain'' Re-Design
I've had my personal domain for the upwards of five-ish years now, and it felt like it was high time for a re-design. There were a few reasons why this was so:
When I first started on my own website back in late 2009/early 2010, I did not have much of a structure to begin with. It was simplistic to say the least. But as time went by, I added more and more unrelated content items, some of them necessary, some of them merely for padding (remember the White Noise and Pink Noise under Digital Music?). This made the flat structure that I was using untenable.
And then there was the whole shebang I did to make things mobile friendly. I won't go into the details here (See here for the gory details), but suffice to say, the script I wrote was not scalable to a richer set up. Thus it was the first thing I rewrote.
Then I looked into the design itself. I didn't like the fact that navigation was particularly frumpy, and that there were many horizontal lines breaking things up. I found it unnecessary especially since I am already relying on variations in size of the text to segregate information. Speaking of fonts, I was also getting appalled at the rather unreadableness of Candara (ironic since this blog is using Candara now), and so had to do something.
The result is what you now see at http://thelaptop.info/. I have retained the colour scheme from the past, tweaked the layout, updated the font to use Open Sans (self-hosted because I know some folks don't really like the fact that Google can track their web access patterns through the resource pull), and overhauled much of the words used. Here are some sample screen shots comparing the old and the new design:
Here we see the much more compact yet loose layout on the home page. When JavaScript is enabled, additional left and right arrows to jump backward and forward in history are provided.
Now we look at samples of really long prose in both the old and new designs. The text is slightly larger but is definitely more readable.
I have removed as much of the ``toggle the list'' tags by conflating them into the ellipsis metaphor that I use everywhere to collapse away objects.
Tables also see a light adjustment to sit more comfortably in the middle.
The single most fun thing about using HTML5: reverse numbered lists to better represent the reverse chronological order.
At this point I can say that the basic skeleton of the new website is in place. Professional credentials, writing, reading and shopping lists are already ported, as well as the grandfathered in tuning layer I wrote for Nyquist---I did not attempt to convert that one to the new format, and it is the only part of the old site that is retained wholesale. Stubs for the new categories are put in place, and I will slowly port over the old material over as and when they are relevant.
I had also done quite a bit of magic in .htaccess to reduce the amount of changes I need to effect outside of the domain, so for the most part everything ought to be transparent.
I can go on, but I think that's as much as I want to really convey.
Go forth and enjoy the new website design!
- The content is getting increasingly haphazard and hard to manage---I hand-code every page without the use of any CMS to make the loading speed as fast as possible and the hosting costs as low as possible.
- XHTML 1.0 Strict was starting to feel very limiting when I tried to write up some online tools/games.
- I was using enough of the ``reverse chronologically ordered list'' to demand the use of reversed in the list tags, but that was not supported in XHTML 1.0.
- Did I mention that maintenance was a nightmare?
When I first started on my own website back in late 2009/early 2010, I did not have much of a structure to begin with. It was simplistic to say the least. But as time went by, I added more and more unrelated content items, some of them necessary, some of them merely for padding (remember the White Noise and Pink Noise under Digital Music?). This made the flat structure that I was using untenable.
And then there was the whole shebang I did to make things mobile friendly. I won't go into the details here (See here for the gory details), but suffice to say, the script I wrote was not scalable to a richer set up. Thus it was the first thing I rewrote.
Then I looked into the design itself. I didn't like the fact that navigation was particularly frumpy, and that there were many horizontal lines breaking things up. I found it unnecessary especially since I am already relying on variations in size of the text to segregate information. Speaking of fonts, I was also getting appalled at the rather unreadableness of Candara (ironic since this blog is using Candara now), and so had to do something.
The result is what you now see at http://thelaptop.info/. I have retained the colour scheme from the past, tweaked the layout, updated the font to use Open Sans (self-hosted because I know some folks don't really like the fact that Google can track their web access patterns through the resource pull), and overhauled much of the words used. Here are some sample screen shots comparing the old and the new design:
At this point I can say that the basic skeleton of the new website is in place. Professional credentials, writing, reading and shopping lists are already ported, as well as the grandfathered in tuning layer I wrote for Nyquist---I did not attempt to convert that one to the new format, and it is the only part of the old site that is retained wholesale. Stubs for the new categories are put in place, and I will slowly port over the old material over as and when they are relevant.
I had also done quite a bit of magic in .htaccess to reduce the amount of changes I need to effect outside of the domain, so for the most part everything ought to be transparent.
I can go on, but I think that's as much as I want to really convey.
Go forth and enjoy the new website design!
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
An Observation
This has been a long coming entry.
Recently there were a couple of comments made with respect to... various social observations. Comments that one can easily finger as being out of touch with reality at best and frivolous lip service at worst.
It made me start to think about the unsteady balance between criticisms/comments from an ``expert'' and the same from ``common sense''.
On the one hand, the ``expert'' is a person who has spent lots of time and effort studying the particular social observation. He/she has probably formulated various formal hypotheses and done some testing on them to confirm/deny the cause of the said observation. He/she has staked his/her entire career into looking deeply into such matters under his/her domain of expertise, and therefore whatever he/she says regarding their domain of expertise should not be taken lightly, since it is generally well considered.
On the other hand, the ``expert'' may be systematically biased due to the prevailing dogma present in their domain, causing tunnel vision that is compatible with said dogma. Such tunnel vision can lead to the ``expert'' missing the entire point of the true causes of the social observation since the systematic biases disallow any alternative explanations for the observation. Under such circumstances, the ``common sense'' perspective is likely to provide a better intuition of what is going on, and can be a good source for further research follow up in the way the Ig Nobel Prizes try to reward.
But proving ``common sense'' is not as glamorous as advancing a dogmatic theory, or if the ``expert'' is lucky, a completely new perspective that no one has seen. Thus much of the ``expert'' population ends up ignoring ``common sense'' as much as possible, which leads to... interesting pronouncements that are simultaneously prognostic and vague.
All in all, if the purpose is merely to explain, I think we can stop right here and be done. The problem arises when actual public policies are to be crafted based on such social observations and their causes to address a particular concern. At what point should ``common sense'' be a strong enough voice to demonstrate that the prevailing ``expert'' opinion is completely inapplicable?
I think that is one of the fundamental problems that affect the way modern democracies and republics are run.
Recently there were a couple of comments made with respect to... various social observations. Comments that one can easily finger as being out of touch with reality at best and frivolous lip service at worst.
It made me start to think about the unsteady balance between criticisms/comments from an ``expert'' and the same from ``common sense''.
On the one hand, the ``expert'' is a person who has spent lots of time and effort studying the particular social observation. He/she has probably formulated various formal hypotheses and done some testing on them to confirm/deny the cause of the said observation. He/she has staked his/her entire career into looking deeply into such matters under his/her domain of expertise, and therefore whatever he/she says regarding their domain of expertise should not be taken lightly, since it is generally well considered.
On the other hand, the ``expert'' may be systematically biased due to the prevailing dogma present in their domain, causing tunnel vision that is compatible with said dogma. Such tunnel vision can lead to the ``expert'' missing the entire point of the true causes of the social observation since the systematic biases disallow any alternative explanations for the observation. Under such circumstances, the ``common sense'' perspective is likely to provide a better intuition of what is going on, and can be a good source for further research follow up in the way the Ig Nobel Prizes try to reward.
But proving ``common sense'' is not as glamorous as advancing a dogmatic theory, or if the ``expert'' is lucky, a completely new perspective that no one has seen. Thus much of the ``expert'' population ends up ignoring ``common sense'' as much as possible, which leads to... interesting pronouncements that are simultaneously prognostic and vague.
All in all, if the purpose is merely to explain, I think we can stop right here and be done. The problem arises when actual public policies are to be crafted based on such social observations and their causes to address a particular concern. At what point should ``common sense'' be a strong enough voice to demonstrate that the prevailing ``expert'' opinion is completely inapplicable?
I think that is one of the fundamental problems that affect the way modern democracies and republics are run.
Friday, January 01, 2016
Quick Summary
So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2015:
That's an average of 0.18 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.77 last year. It's a little low, but I think that it is representative of the new normal for me, where I no longer have the steady supply of stimulating events (both good and bad) that come from intensive social interactions that come from being in a pure academic environment.
The past year itself passed by with very little lows, much to my satisfaction. I now have a steady companion who will be transferring her base of operations back into Singapore, and she has reminded me of a life that I had once denied myself of because I had been hurt quite badly due to my naïveté in thinking that people can and will change, not to mention the whole loss of trust in people due to... let's not talk about it here since it is already in the past.
Last year saw the whole marketing hubbub that was ``SG50'', the year-long government-supported marketing blitz to celebrate Singapore's 50 years of independence. Despite my interpretation of just how tacky that sounded, I was probably involved in more events relating to SG50 than I would care to admit. My interest in my music has heightened and levelled up, partly because of the co-influence of my companion and partner, partly from an exposure to the ``real'' world of professional music through a collaboration or two, and partly from a candid realisation of the trials and tribulations to pursue an ideal. I reaffirmed my love of music not as a means of bragging about my prowess, but as a means of expression, which goes as far as standing up for my own thoughts and views against the establishment.
No regrets there.
I am starting to enjoy the new-found feeling of assertion. Unlike the past where I was subjugated in one form or another and always having to play toady to ensure survival, being older now and a working adult has given me more leeway and conviction to assert myself, that I can think and am willing to think, and am unwilling to let anyone cow me to follow their own perspective of rightness and wrongness without having a convincing argument. I find that I am clearer in my values, and am more willing to assert my values in the face of opposition, mostly because I am now less beholden to many external parties.
In short, I am fast learning how to be my own man.
The value of a good mentor is often understated, and my interaction with an elder is the reason why there is sudden clarity in many things. There is no shame to ask for help and advice when one needs it---it is when one has doubts and yet refuse to seek advice despite spending time thinking through that one is the fool.
Much of my free time not spent on practising on my 笛子 or piccolo/flute was spent on reading. My martial arts training had been slackening from the haze and general laziness, and I will be bringing them back on track this year. Like my companion says, there will be some big and wonderful things happening in the year ahead, and like her, I am looking forward to them as well.
To the future and beyond!
- 22 poems posted here
- 39 essays/rants posted here
- 3 prose/stories posted here
- 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
That's an average of 0.18 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.77 last year. It's a little low, but I think that it is representative of the new normal for me, where I no longer have the steady supply of stimulating events (both good and bad) that come from intensive social interactions that come from being in a pure academic environment.
The past year itself passed by with very little lows, much to my satisfaction. I now have a steady companion who will be transferring her base of operations back into Singapore, and she has reminded me of a life that I had once denied myself of because I had been hurt quite badly due to my naïveté in thinking that people can and will change, not to mention the whole loss of trust in people due to... let's not talk about it here since it is already in the past.
Last year saw the whole marketing hubbub that was ``SG50'', the year-long government-supported marketing blitz to celebrate Singapore's 50 years of independence. Despite my interpretation of just how tacky that sounded, I was probably involved in more events relating to SG50 than I would care to admit. My interest in my music has heightened and levelled up, partly because of the co-influence of my companion and partner, partly from an exposure to the ``real'' world of professional music through a collaboration or two, and partly from a candid realisation of the trials and tribulations to pursue an ideal. I reaffirmed my love of music not as a means of bragging about my prowess, but as a means of expression, which goes as far as standing up for my own thoughts and views against the establishment.
No regrets there.
I am starting to enjoy the new-found feeling of assertion. Unlike the past where I was subjugated in one form or another and always having to play toady to ensure survival, being older now and a working adult has given me more leeway and conviction to assert myself, that I can think and am willing to think, and am unwilling to let anyone cow me to follow their own perspective of rightness and wrongness without having a convincing argument. I find that I am clearer in my values, and am more willing to assert my values in the face of opposition, mostly because I am now less beholden to many external parties.
In short, I am fast learning how to be my own man.
The value of a good mentor is often understated, and my interaction with an elder is the reason why there is sudden clarity in many things. There is no shame to ask for help and advice when one needs it---it is when one has doubts and yet refuse to seek advice despite spending time thinking through that one is the fool.
Much of my free time not spent on practising on my 笛子 or piccolo/flute was spent on reading. My martial arts training had been slackening from the haze and general laziness, and I will be bringing them back on track this year. Like my companion says, there will be some big and wonderful things happening in the year ahead, and like her, I am looking forward to them as well.
To the future and beyond!
Friday, December 25, 2015
Two Failed Rants, So Something Positive
Blech. Today is Christmas Day. Merry Christmas!
Already I had trashed two possible blog entries because I couldn't put together a coherent argument for something that I felt like talking about. So let's just forget about those things for the moment and enjoy the holiday that it is today.
And soon, 2016 will arrive, a new year begins, and another revolution around the sun would be complete.
Till the next update.
Already I had trashed two possible blog entries because I couldn't put together a coherent argument for something that I felt like talking about. So let's just forget about those things for the moment and enjoy the holiday that it is today.
And soon, 2016 will arrive, a new year begins, and another revolution around the sun would be complete.
Till the next update.
Sunday, December 13, 2015
A Rant of Music
Here we are again, at the end of yet another week and the start of the next. Sometimes I wonder to myself how many people actually are still reading this; of the lot that I know, there is at least two whom I think are still reading what I write, but even then, I am only sure of at most one of them being a somewhat avid reader of what I have to say.
Anyway, enough of digressions, let's talk about what transpired throughout the week.
My mind had been in a fog for the past couple of months regarding the way I handle myself with regard to my music, and specifically my dizi. I had been blissfully unaware of the developments outside of the cosy little Chinese orchestra I am now a co-leader of until the increased activities associated with the year-long marketing scheme known as the ``SG50''. I started to hear stories about how other orchestras were becoming much larger in numbers, how their pieces follow the Western tradition of only showing the parts that the instrument is supposed to play (complete with numbered rest bars with no melody written in them), how music is now annotated using staff notation (and especially for dizi, having at least two different ways of annotating the same thing due to lack of reification of the concert pitch and the dizi pitch)), how the pieces were becoming technically challenging the way Western music has been for the past century, how people were trying to play more ``pop'' sounding pieces (originally written for a 5-man band but rescored to be played with traditional Chinese instruments), and lastly, how everyone was going about with their ``Grade 8'' certifications of their particular [Chinese] instrument.
I think that saying that my mind had been in a fog is probably a vast understatement. I was positively depressed.
Music wasn't supposed to be like that, leastways not us amateurs who play them for fun. It's supposed to be a means of expression, a way of socialising through the use of a common love of how sound interacts with each other in consonant ways, a blending of spirits and natures if one deviates into abstract mumbo-jumbo explanations. Why did it all come to yet another race to zero where everyone was more interested in showing how good they are and what certificates they have and in some cases bragging about who they know/work with?
Why can't a music piece be played because it sounds beautiful and not because it is technically demanding?
I had a sort of identity crisis. I knew that I was definitely not the best in dizi by any regard, but I've always felt that my skill in my instrument has always been sufficient in handling whatever [fun] music thrown into my lap. I've felt that way since a while back, when sifu sort of went into semi-retirement from the orchestra so that he can look after his kids. But the SG50 activities threw a wrench into my sort of blissful state of being. Left and right, I suddenly started noticing that people were all showing off their graded certifications, and there was talk about measuring people's musicianship by the grade they got in these standardised examinations, or that how people who never played the instrument and was suddenly thrust into the limelight are termed ``talented'' and heaped tons of praise.
Maybe I'm just a sourpuss. If so, I am angry at myself for feeling that way, for not being true to myself that music is to be enjoyed in the making of and the receiving of. Instead of feeling inadequate, perhaps I should've felt happy that there are more people who are interested in picking up a folk music instrument that is not any of the mainstream classical western ones to make music, any sort of music, knowing that even if they had the equivalent of a Grade 8 technical handling, they still don't have the twenty-two years of experiencing music from the performer's perspective.
Superiority complex much huh?
It's a very human emotion. After all, I had enjoyed a rather interesting childhood on the stage, having done pretty much the whole gamut of what can be done on the stage. And after that, I had told myself that I would avoid that kind of glamorous lifestyle---it was easy to get sucked into it and ``enjoy'' the fruits of labour [together with whatever side perks there were] but it was definitely not sustainable. And sustainability is a big value for me. Doing something for a long period of time that is unsustainable just does not make any sort of economic sense, especially since the object we are budgeting here is time, which is irreplaceable, and not money, which is.
Digressions aside, I went to Mr Lee's art exhibition recently and had a good chat with him about things. He's doing much better now ever since he stepped down from being the leader of our little Chinese orchestra out in the community club. By ``much better'', I mean his overall happiness and outlook on life. We talked about many things, and after the talk, I feel much better. Turns out, what I had observed was not wrong, and that there was a deeper reason why it was happening. However, for what I am doing (i.e. amateur musicianship as opposed to trying to do this professionally for pay and what-not), it shouldn't matter much to me at all. His advice boiled down to the line of ``stay the course and fear not the external changes'', of course with a lot of explanations on why that was the case.
In short, I shouldn't have second-guessed my own thoughts and feelings about this.
I feel so much better after that talk. Actually, I feel different in a good sort of way. That weird stress and depression from feeling inadequate sort of passed over me. I think that it came about in the first place because I allowed myself to be swayed by the whole need of certification among those who have decided for one reason or another to follow music as a profession. It is also possible that some of those who went for the certifications in the first place are unsure of their own standing and want to have some kind of assurance that their short foray into the music world is producing some kind of measurable outcome. After all, they didn't just twenty-two plus years of their lives learning music the old-fashioned way.
Sustainability. I have made that the cornerstone of my philosophy---now it is time to live it. And I shouldn't waver---my instincts are good, and I often act upon them only after I had thought through them.
Anyway, enough of digressions, let's talk about what transpired throughout the week.
My mind had been in a fog for the past couple of months regarding the way I handle myself with regard to my music, and specifically my dizi. I had been blissfully unaware of the developments outside of the cosy little Chinese orchestra I am now a co-leader of until the increased activities associated with the year-long marketing scheme known as the ``SG50''. I started to hear stories about how other orchestras were becoming much larger in numbers, how their pieces follow the Western tradition of only showing the parts that the instrument is supposed to play (complete with numbered rest bars with no melody written in them), how music is now annotated using staff notation (and especially for dizi, having at least two different ways of annotating the same thing due to lack of reification of the concert pitch and the dizi pitch)), how the pieces were becoming technically challenging the way Western music has been for the past century, how people were trying to play more ``pop'' sounding pieces (originally written for a 5-man band but rescored to be played with traditional Chinese instruments), and lastly, how everyone was going about with their ``Grade 8'' certifications of their particular [Chinese] instrument.
I think that saying that my mind had been in a fog is probably a vast understatement. I was positively depressed.
Music wasn't supposed to be like that, leastways not us amateurs who play them for fun. It's supposed to be a means of expression, a way of socialising through the use of a common love of how sound interacts with each other in consonant ways, a blending of spirits and natures if one deviates into abstract mumbo-jumbo explanations. Why did it all come to yet another race to zero where everyone was more interested in showing how good they are and what certificates they have and in some cases bragging about who they know/work with?
Why can't a music piece be played because it sounds beautiful and not because it is technically demanding?
I had a sort of identity crisis. I knew that I was definitely not the best in dizi by any regard, but I've always felt that my skill in my instrument has always been sufficient in handling whatever [fun] music thrown into my lap. I've felt that way since a while back, when sifu sort of went into semi-retirement from the orchestra so that he can look after his kids. But the SG50 activities threw a wrench into my sort of blissful state of being. Left and right, I suddenly started noticing that people were all showing off their graded certifications, and there was talk about measuring people's musicianship by the grade they got in these standardised examinations, or that how people who never played the instrument and was suddenly thrust into the limelight are termed ``talented'' and heaped tons of praise.
Maybe I'm just a sourpuss. If so, I am angry at myself for feeling that way, for not being true to myself that music is to be enjoyed in the making of and the receiving of. Instead of feeling inadequate, perhaps I should've felt happy that there are more people who are interested in picking up a folk music instrument that is not any of the mainstream classical western ones to make music, any sort of music, knowing that even if they had the equivalent of a Grade 8 technical handling, they still don't have the twenty-two years of experiencing music from the performer's perspective.
Superiority complex much huh?
It's a very human emotion. After all, I had enjoyed a rather interesting childhood on the stage, having done pretty much the whole gamut of what can be done on the stage. And after that, I had told myself that I would avoid that kind of glamorous lifestyle---it was easy to get sucked into it and ``enjoy'' the fruits of labour [together with whatever side perks there were] but it was definitely not sustainable. And sustainability is a big value for me. Doing something for a long period of time that is unsustainable just does not make any sort of economic sense, especially since the object we are budgeting here is time, which is irreplaceable, and not money, which is.
Digressions aside, I went to Mr Lee's art exhibition recently and had a good chat with him about things. He's doing much better now ever since he stepped down from being the leader of our little Chinese orchestra out in the community club. By ``much better'', I mean his overall happiness and outlook on life. We talked about many things, and after the talk, I feel much better. Turns out, what I had observed was not wrong, and that there was a deeper reason why it was happening. However, for what I am doing (i.e. amateur musicianship as opposed to trying to do this professionally for pay and what-not), it shouldn't matter much to me at all. His advice boiled down to the line of ``stay the course and fear not the external changes'', of course with a lot of explanations on why that was the case.
In short, I shouldn't have second-guessed my own thoughts and feelings about this.
I feel so much better after that talk. Actually, I feel different in a good sort of way. That weird stress and depression from feeling inadequate sort of passed over me. I think that it came about in the first place because I allowed myself to be swayed by the whole need of certification among those who have decided for one reason or another to follow music as a profession. It is also possible that some of those who went for the certifications in the first place are unsure of their own standing and want to have some kind of assurance that their short foray into the music world is producing some kind of measurable outcome. After all, they didn't just twenty-two plus years of their lives learning music the old-fashioned way.
Sustainability. I have made that the cornerstone of my philosophy---now it is time to live it. And I shouldn't waver---my instincts are good, and I often act upon them only after I had thought through them.
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Ping and Observations
Ah. The end of November is upon us again, and soon December will arise. Already there are noticeably fewer people on the roads, which of course grants me the opportunity to sleep in just a little bit more since the incidence of slowing traffic jams is just that much reduced.
It's very early a week since I've returned to the usual apartment, having bivouacked at my sister's place for nearly three weeks while they were doing some government mandated/subsidised block-level renovation programme. Things have finally started to become more normal, and as such, my mood has been steadily improving. Elysie-II has been hooked up again, and is currently undergoing various software updates as I am writing here. I had to borrow a power cable because I left the original one in the office when I was moving her there to be out of the dusts' way.
Of course, I've brought my dizi back as well. Cannot do without them, especially since I really need to practise more because I have stupidly decided to take part in a dizi choir. The dizi choir isn't stupid---I am the stupid one here because it is obvious that they are operating at a much higher level than I care to be. Most of them have performance degrees or related certification/awards for dizi playing, while I'm just that guy who plays in a neighbourhood (literally!) Chinese orchestra who hasn't had a proper lesson for a very very long time.
Come to think of it, I think I haven't had a proper lesson from sifu for nearly a decade. A very sobering thought.
But we'll see how it goes. If they want me, hooray! If not, well, no loss. I can still make music no matter where I am.
It's kind of funny. Here I am, at the near perfect witching hour for writing a blog entry and what do I have to gripe about in my mind? Almost nothing. Perhaps it is a sign of good things to come.
Or I'm just too damn tired to do any more writing. Work throughout the week has been quite interesting but draining. I'm not complaining though, just observing---in this economy, finding a job can be considered much harder than it was before (was it ever easy?), and in some ways it is nice that I have a job doing what I like that pays me so I can pay the bills.
Of course the pay isn't fantastic---that's what one gets from a quasi-government outfit. Quasi-government statuses generally imply that we get the worst of the possible pool of accessible private/public traits. Like many things, it's a trade-off---quasi-government status usually implies company longevity, and potentially enough research in the pipeline that they are a little more willing than the government proper to take calculated risks. In that sense, there is some job security.
Alright, till the next reply then.
It's very early a week since I've returned to the usual apartment, having bivouacked at my sister's place for nearly three weeks while they were doing some government mandated/subsidised block-level renovation programme. Things have finally started to become more normal, and as such, my mood has been steadily improving. Elysie-II has been hooked up again, and is currently undergoing various software updates as I am writing here. I had to borrow a power cable because I left the original one in the office when I was moving her there to be out of the dusts' way.
Of course, I've brought my dizi back as well. Cannot do without them, especially since I really need to practise more because I have stupidly decided to take part in a dizi choir. The dizi choir isn't stupid---I am the stupid one here because it is obvious that they are operating at a much higher level than I care to be. Most of them have performance degrees or related certification/awards for dizi playing, while I'm just that guy who plays in a neighbourhood (literally!) Chinese orchestra who hasn't had a proper lesson for a very very long time.
Come to think of it, I think I haven't had a proper lesson from sifu for nearly a decade. A very sobering thought.
But we'll see how it goes. If they want me, hooray! If not, well, no loss. I can still make music no matter where I am.
It's kind of funny. Here I am, at the near perfect witching hour for writing a blog entry and what do I have to gripe about in my mind? Almost nothing. Perhaps it is a sign of good things to come.
Or I'm just too damn tired to do any more writing. Work throughout the week has been quite interesting but draining. I'm not complaining though, just observing---in this economy, finding a job can be considered much harder than it was before (was it ever easy?), and in some ways it is nice that I have a job doing what I like that pays me so I can pay the bills.
Of course the pay isn't fantastic---that's what one gets from a quasi-government outfit. Quasi-government statuses generally imply that we get the worst of the possible pool of accessible private/public traits. Like many things, it's a trade-off---quasi-government status usually implies company longevity, and potentially enough research in the pipeline that they are a little more willing than the government proper to take calculated risks. In that sense, there is some job security.
Alright, till the next reply then.
Select→Move Idiom in GIMP
GIMP is extremely powerful for a cross-platform free image manipulation software, but it has some... oddities. The most fundamental oddity is the lack of the select→move image in selected region idiom that comes from most primitive raster tools.
The best way to do this (i.e. least of all hacky ways) is to do the following:
I find myself needing this more when I start to adjust scores by scanning them as high quality (600 dpi) grayscale images before manipulating them, often to generate a more compact copy (e.g. from 3 pages to 2).
The best way to do this (i.e. least of all hacky ways) is to do the following:
- Press r and select a rectangular region.
- Then, apply C-S-l. This causes the selection to be a floating layer.
- Move at will. Ensure that your mouse cursor is actually on a part of the image that is in the floating layer, i.e. don't click on the transparent ``no pixels'' part.
- Click anywhere outside the image to stop moving that layer
I find myself needing this more when I start to adjust scores by scanning them as high quality (600 dpi) grayscale images before manipulating them, often to generate a more compact copy (e.g. from 3 pages to 2).
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Post Oblivion Rant
Double post much? There's of course a good reason for that: this is the traditional post-NaNoWriMo rant. And I don't really want to have it conflated with that other thing that I was talking about earlier.
This year's NaNoWriMo concept had been vague. I was reading H. P. Lovecraft's works earlier in the year, and his eldritch happenings gave me the idea to rethink of them as some kind of five-dimensional creatures. The Illuminatus! trilogy did little to turn me away from that idea, and so that was how the concept was born.
Initially, it was supposed to be a series of short stories based on a five-dimensional prankster---let's just call him F for short. F was supposed to be the unseen protagonist, and each short story would involve some poor soul (different across stories) who was afflicted by a particular five-dimensional nonsense from F and how that fella lived through his life.
Naturally, that's not what happened in the final execution.
``A series of short stories'' requires more planning than I care to, and the number of five-dimensional gimmicks I could come up with was insufficient to carry through the 50k words needed. So I switched it a bit, and made it into some kind of α versus β story. You can of course view the result from here.
That last bit shall remain a mystery for now. Kudos to those who can read and understand it.
I'm not as proud of this as some of the older entries I have, but I'm not complaining. A win is a win---50k words were reached in around 14 days(!) and I am satisfied with the story. And that marks my seventh NaNoWriMo win. I'm not sure about the eighth NaNoWriMo, but I'm sure whatever I'm reading in between should give me inspiration on what to write next.
------
I'm not really a fan of using fan fiction as a source for NaNoWriMo; it feels a little... cheap. The taking of characters that had more than twenty thousand prior words to characterise them and clobbering them together to compose a series of hijinks feels hackish. Of course I do not disparage the use of fan fiction for NaNoWriMo; it's just that I will try my best to avoid doing that myself. Part of the fun of writing up new characters is to allow the said characters to grow, to become what circumstances have made them to become. In some ways, fan fiction limits the character's growth because such work often emphasizes the ``canonical'' traits and behaviours of the character, unless there is an actual attempt to revisit the character's traits and behaviours from a completely new environment and do an interpretation there. That latter is excellent for writers because it forces one to make evaluations and decisions on directions that can be exciting, instead of the long drawn out bore that an in-universe styled fan fiction tends to end up becoming.
Anyway, rant over. Head over and download that first draft of Oblivion.
This year's NaNoWriMo concept had been vague. I was reading H. P. Lovecraft's works earlier in the year, and his eldritch happenings gave me the idea to rethink of them as some kind of five-dimensional creatures. The Illuminatus! trilogy did little to turn me away from that idea, and so that was how the concept was born.
Initially, it was supposed to be a series of short stories based on a five-dimensional prankster---let's just call him F for short. F was supposed to be the unseen protagonist, and each short story would involve some poor soul (different across stories) who was afflicted by a particular five-dimensional nonsense from F and how that fella lived through his life.
Naturally, that's not what happened in the final execution.
``A series of short stories'' requires more planning than I care to, and the number of five-dimensional gimmicks I could come up with was insufficient to carry through the 50k words needed. So I switched it a bit, and made it into some kind of α versus β story. You can of course view the result from here.
That last bit shall remain a mystery for now. Kudos to those who can read and understand it.
I'm not as proud of this as some of the older entries I have, but I'm not complaining. A win is a win---50k words were reached in around 14 days(!) and I am satisfied with the story. And that marks my seventh NaNoWriMo win. I'm not sure about the eighth NaNoWriMo, but I'm sure whatever I'm reading in between should give me inspiration on what to write next.
------
I'm not really a fan of using fan fiction as a source for NaNoWriMo; it feels a little... cheap. The taking of characters that had more than twenty thousand prior words to characterise them and clobbering them together to compose a series of hijinks feels hackish. Of course I do not disparage the use of fan fiction for NaNoWriMo; it's just that I will try my best to avoid doing that myself. Part of the fun of writing up new characters is to allow the said characters to grow, to become what circumstances have made them to become. In some ways, fan fiction limits the character's growth because such work often emphasizes the ``canonical'' traits and behaviours of the character, unless there is an actual attempt to revisit the character's traits and behaviours from a completely new environment and do an interpretation there. That latter is excellent for writers because it forces one to make evaluations and decisions on directions that can be exciting, instead of the long drawn out bore that an in-universe styled fan fiction tends to end up becoming.
Anyway, rant over. Head over and download that first draft of Oblivion.
Past Is Past
I don't usually like to talk about or even think about the past, not because there are things from there that have hurt me before that I do not wish to remember, but that the past is there for a reason.
It has passed.
People and places from the past tend to remain there for me because they rarely have any relevance to the present and the future. Those who are still relevant and are meaningful and dear have followed me from the past and into the present, while those who were merely contextual friends would remain as they were within that context, until and unless attempts are made to update their relevance to where things are now.
I bring this up because I have learnt recently that my old secondary school is about to celebrate its sixtieth anniversary of founding. And I'm not even apologetic in not wanting to go back there to visit them.
They have become irrelevant to my present and future.
When I went back about a year or so after graduating from it, all they could remember of me was the fact that I had bad skin. None of what I had done mattered---they could not identify me as anything else other than ``the kid with the bad skin'' despite all the crazy [awesome] things I had done.
That was when I threw my hands up metaphorically and gave up attempting to keep in contact with them.
Now, as the days pass on by and the number of people I meet up as a part of my job increases, some of these people from the past are slowly catching up to me. But they don't bother me much, a quick but vague acknowledgement with sufficient delay is enough to dissuade anyone from pursuing the past any more than it is necessary.
After all, shouldn't it be more important to understand what a person is now than what the person was before?
It has passed.
People and places from the past tend to remain there for me because they rarely have any relevance to the present and the future. Those who are still relevant and are meaningful and dear have followed me from the past and into the present, while those who were merely contextual friends would remain as they were within that context, until and unless attempts are made to update their relevance to where things are now.
I bring this up because I have learnt recently that my old secondary school is about to celebrate its sixtieth anniversary of founding. And I'm not even apologetic in not wanting to go back there to visit them.
They have become irrelevant to my present and future.
When I went back about a year or so after graduating from it, all they could remember of me was the fact that I had bad skin. None of what I had done mattered---they could not identify me as anything else other than ``the kid with the bad skin'' despite all the crazy [awesome] things I had done.
That was when I threw my hands up metaphorically and gave up attempting to keep in contact with them.
Now, as the days pass on by and the number of people I meet up as a part of my job increases, some of these people from the past are slowly catching up to me. But they don't bother me much, a quick but vague acknowledgement with sufficient delay is enough to dissuade anyone from pursuing the past any more than it is necessary.
After all, shouldn't it be more important to understand what a person is now than what the person was before?
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Les Novembre Bleues
I shouldn't be writing this now. No, really, I mean it.
I'm at work. I have around 14k+ words left to go for NaNoWriMo.
And I have a letter to reply to.
I really shouldn't be writing this now, but I already am. What can I do about it?
This month is passing by quickly. My sister has kindly lent her spare room for mother and I to stay in while the apartment toilets are undergoing some government-funded renovation project to upgrade after nearly thirty years. It is a kind gesture from her.
But I feel trapped, like a bird in a gilded cage.
I'm used to crashing out on folk's couches, or in many cases, floors with my trusty sleeping back from 1998. But on those occasions, I'm not on a schedule --- it's mostly for fun stuff, like vacations or visiting conferences.
This time, I need to keep to my work schedule. Waking up early to get to work, work, then going to my surrogate home to rest.
Harrowing.
I do get my sleep for sure --- I am too used to sleeping in a thin sleeping back on a hard-ish ground. But I'm missing lots of other amenities in life, mostly ways to vent and relax.
Elysie-II is not available because it is not nice to lug her all the way to the apartment to be set up. I left my dizis in the CC because it's much more convenient. I do have my concert flute and piccolo, but I dare not play them for fear of annoying my temporary neighbours and incurring bad karma for not me.
And NaNoWriMo demands every word I have for it each day as a sacrifice to appease its greedy nature.
To be had, it isn't all as bad as I make it sound, but I do miss the things I get to do back at home. Particularly the access to better laundry facilities. I was raring to return to Aikido training after having to miss two months of it thanks to the haze/smog.
Now I have to miss another month more because there is no way to wash my gi and have it dried in time. I'm not going to go to an out-of-the-way laundromat and spend an hour sitting there watching my gi wash and dry just so I can train.
And now I've made myself sad.
I'm at work. I have around 14k+ words left to go for NaNoWriMo.
And I have a letter to reply to.
I really shouldn't be writing this now, but I already am. What can I do about it?
This month is passing by quickly. My sister has kindly lent her spare room for mother and I to stay in while the apartment toilets are undergoing some government-funded renovation project to upgrade after nearly thirty years. It is a kind gesture from her.
But I feel trapped, like a bird in a gilded cage.
I'm used to crashing out on folk's couches, or in many cases, floors with my trusty sleeping back from 1998. But on those occasions, I'm not on a schedule --- it's mostly for fun stuff, like vacations or visiting conferences.
This time, I need to keep to my work schedule. Waking up early to get to work, work, then going to my surrogate home to rest.
Harrowing.
I do get my sleep for sure --- I am too used to sleeping in a thin sleeping back on a hard-ish ground. But I'm missing lots of other amenities in life, mostly ways to vent and relax.
Elysie-II is not available because it is not nice to lug her all the way to the apartment to be set up. I left my dizis in the CC because it's much more convenient. I do have my concert flute and piccolo, but I dare not play them for fear of annoying my temporary neighbours and incurring bad karma for not me.
And NaNoWriMo demands every word I have for it each day as a sacrifice to appease its greedy nature.
To be had, it isn't all as bad as I make it sound, but I do miss the things I get to do back at home. Particularly the access to better laundry facilities. I was raring to return to Aikido training after having to miss two months of it thanks to the haze/smog.
Now I have to miss another month more because there is no way to wash my gi and have it dried in time. I'm not going to go to an out-of-the-way laundromat and spend an hour sitting there watching my gi wash and dry just so I can train.
And now I've made myself sad.
Thursday, October 22, 2015
October-End
So one of my younger sisters got married recently. I'm happy for her, and wish her all the best.
The day itself had been rather tiring for me, and I am still feeling its effects today. A long day was spent with my relatives. I had expected the worst of it, but everyone turned out to behave rather well, which was a relief. A cousin-in-law of mine termed my role being there as a ``bouncer'', and I think it suits what I was doing to a tee and will use that term from there on instead of ``enforcer'', the term I had been using whenever I had to be present at a family event. The reasons for that will be left unsaid here -- send me a message or something to find out more, if you care to.
I wish I could write more, but I'm really out of material for now. Maybe next update.
Also, did I mention that NaNoWriMo is coming soon?
The day itself had been rather tiring for me, and I am still feeling its effects today. A long day was spent with my relatives. I had expected the worst of it, but everyone turned out to behave rather well, which was a relief. A cousin-in-law of mine termed my role being there as a ``bouncer'', and I think it suits what I was doing to a tee and will use that term from there on instead of ``enforcer'', the term I had been using whenever I had to be present at a family event. The reasons for that will be left unsaid here -- send me a message or something to find out more, if you care to.
I wish I could write more, but I'm really out of material for now. Maybe next update.
Also, did I mention that NaNoWriMo is coming soon?
Friday, October 09, 2015
The Blind Owl
It's a Friday again, and I'm glad for a variety of reasons. The primary of which is the coming of a hard-earned rest over the weekend.
Anyway, mundane issues of light joy aside, there are other more interesting things to talk about first. I have recently completed the reading of the famous Feynman lecture series. They are a very interesting bunch of text---apart from helping me refresh my physics knowledge (`A'-Levels and then some), it also provided more interesting insights to some of the mathematical concepts that I had seen but hadn't got a good intuition for. Like the interpretation of the divergence, the curl, the notion of flux and circulation, as well as the [basic] quantum mechanical calculus in the form of amplitudes and bra-ket notations. Feynman writes in a relatively easy to understand manner, and I am still kicking myself for not having read his works any earlier than today. It also gives me an interesting perspective towards the modern trends in optimisation of objective functions (think argmax or argmin) often seen in machine learning algorithms: that quantum mechanics with the associated amplitude functions are an equivalence with the goal of obtaining some optimised set of parameters for a particular learning system.
Theoretical physics aside, I have also recently completed Sadeq Hedayat's ``The Blind Owl'' as translated by Iraj Bashiri. On the surface, the story is macabre, even to the point of pandering to what one would normally call a ``psychological thriller''. Scratching that surface, one reveals the transcendental nature in which the story (in two parts) takes on, appealling heavily to the death customs of Tibetans. Scratching that surface reveals a frustrated exhortation against the people in the repressed society of his time to stand up for their individual freedoms and to seek them out on their own, free of distraction, as a means of ultimately liberating their entire society through sheer numbers. The story and the deep analyses by Bashiri really made me stop to think about things that I had once thought of for a period of time, that is, the notion of mortality and the concept of attachment/desire. Thinking about it in perspective, I realised that it was probably easier to not fear mortality when one was truly alone---being along means roughly that one was only as attached to the material world as one is attached to one's corporeal body. But when one starts to have relationships with various people, be it friends or family, then the notion of attachment comes into play and it becomes increasingly hard to face mortality as the strength of one's relationships grow.
In my case, I suspect there will come a day where my innate stoicism and pragmatism will give way to something less intense as my relationships with a select group of people get stronger over time.
But karmic relief hasn't really been my goal in life. Of course, this is under the assumption that this life is all that I am getting. It's hard to believe in something that cannot be falsified and thus be subjected to the rigours of the scientific method. But this is merely my own observations---since I have no evidence to the contrary, I cannot make a meaningful answer.
For is it not the case that there are questions whose very nature make them unanswerable?
Anyway, mundane issues of light joy aside, there are other more interesting things to talk about first. I have recently completed the reading of the famous Feynman lecture series. They are a very interesting bunch of text---apart from helping me refresh my physics knowledge (`A'-Levels and then some), it also provided more interesting insights to some of the mathematical concepts that I had seen but hadn't got a good intuition for. Like the interpretation of the divergence, the curl, the notion of flux and circulation, as well as the [basic] quantum mechanical calculus in the form of amplitudes and bra-ket notations. Feynman writes in a relatively easy to understand manner, and I am still kicking myself for not having read his works any earlier than today. It also gives me an interesting perspective towards the modern trends in optimisation of objective functions (think argmax or argmin) often seen in machine learning algorithms: that quantum mechanics with the associated amplitude functions are an equivalence with the goal of obtaining some optimised set of parameters for a particular learning system.
Theoretical physics aside, I have also recently completed Sadeq Hedayat's ``The Blind Owl'' as translated by Iraj Bashiri. On the surface, the story is macabre, even to the point of pandering to what one would normally call a ``psychological thriller''. Scratching that surface, one reveals the transcendental nature in which the story (in two parts) takes on, appealling heavily to the death customs of Tibetans. Scratching that surface reveals a frustrated exhortation against the people in the repressed society of his time to stand up for their individual freedoms and to seek them out on their own, free of distraction, as a means of ultimately liberating their entire society through sheer numbers. The story and the deep analyses by Bashiri really made me stop to think about things that I had once thought of for a period of time, that is, the notion of mortality and the concept of attachment/desire. Thinking about it in perspective, I realised that it was probably easier to not fear mortality when one was truly alone---being along means roughly that one was only as attached to the material world as one is attached to one's corporeal body. But when one starts to have relationships with various people, be it friends or family, then the notion of attachment comes into play and it becomes increasingly hard to face mortality as the strength of one's relationships grow.
In my case, I suspect there will come a day where my innate stoicism and pragmatism will give way to something less intense as my relationships with a select group of people get stronger over time.
But karmic relief hasn't really been my goal in life. Of course, this is under the assumption that this life is all that I am getting. It's hard to believe in something that cannot be falsified and thus be subjected to the rigours of the scientific method. But this is merely my own observations---since I have no evidence to the contrary, I cannot make a meaningful answer.
For is it not the case that there are questions whose very nature make them unanswerable?
Monday, September 28, 2015
Unintentional Snobbery
It is of no news that I have cut back on my use of Facebook. Part of the reason was that I found it dull from the many reposts, as well as the falsely positive projections that people provide regarding their way of life.
What I didn't mention was also the annoyance I had from people bragging about their various achievements, like their first solo performance, their first car, their first child and what-not.
For a long while, I found such posts banal at best and distasteful at worst, especially those with regards to some kind of talent-based performance. Actually that's a lie, what I really found lacking in originality are the replies to it. Superlative posts of ``You are so talented!'' or ``Wow!'' or ``You look gorgeous!'' make me cringe a lot. I mean, okay, so someone managed to get their first solo performance. Whoop-de-do. What's the big deal about that?
Then I stepped back and looked deeper into my own thought process and realised that I was projecting my own experiences upon them and immediately learnt of my error. Thing is, most people lead very mundane lives. Specifically, many people in SIN city are happy to follow the herd and do what the majority/mainstream is doing, without ever stepping out of their comfort zones. I'm lucky because I was different, and had been different for a loooong time. So things like performing on stage (singing, dancing, acting, playing musical instruments, story-telling, poetry reading) are novel to most people but are ``normal'' for me, having done them myself already, vastly predating any of the other things that I am more well-known for.
In short, I was being a snob without intentionally trying to be one.
That realisation made me feel bad. Not bad enough to apologise to the people whose replies/posts I found banal/annoying (no harm was done since I didn't actually take any action from my own feelings), but bad enough to force a rethink on my views of the world with respect to its other denizens.
And that concludes today's lesson of the day: one's experiences are no excuse for disdaining another's achievements.
What I didn't mention was also the annoyance I had from people bragging about their various achievements, like their first solo performance, their first car, their first child and what-not.
For a long while, I found such posts banal at best and distasteful at worst, especially those with regards to some kind of talent-based performance. Actually that's a lie, what I really found lacking in originality are the replies to it. Superlative posts of ``You are so talented!'' or ``Wow!'' or ``You look gorgeous!'' make me cringe a lot. I mean, okay, so someone managed to get their first solo performance. Whoop-de-do. What's the big deal about that?
Then I stepped back and looked deeper into my own thought process and realised that I was projecting my own experiences upon them and immediately learnt of my error. Thing is, most people lead very mundane lives. Specifically, many people in SIN city are happy to follow the herd and do what the majority/mainstream is doing, without ever stepping out of their comfort zones. I'm lucky because I was different, and had been different for a loooong time. So things like performing on stage (singing, dancing, acting, playing musical instruments, story-telling, poetry reading) are novel to most people but are ``normal'' for me, having done them myself already, vastly predating any of the other things that I am more well-known for.
In short, I was being a snob without intentionally trying to be one.
That realisation made me feel bad. Not bad enough to apologise to the people whose replies/posts I found banal/annoying (no harm was done since I didn't actually take any action from my own feelings), but bad enough to force a rethink on my views of the world with respect to its other denizens.
And that concludes today's lesson of the day: one's experiences are no excuse for disdaining another's achievements.
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Beat, But Alive.
*flops down onto the imaginary couch*
The past 9 days were rather hectic, to say the least. There was a medium-scale performance (for us at least) with the orchestra in a musical item last Saturday, then a whole bunch of work-related document wrangling for the week up to Hari Raya Haji, then today's Di-capella Goes 50-50 event.
In short, I'm beat. Tired, but contented. Still one more bed of coals to go over for this month before we segue into October, where different types of hectic things will be coming in.
I think for now, I will put down my dizi and play some flute repertoire stuff.
Actually, knowing me, I'd just play even more dizi in addition to playing more flute repertoire stuff. I'm masochistic that way, I suppose.
Not much to write here. Well, I started with the intention of writing a lot, but then I got distracted and the ennui is starting to set in again. It's like that, not a problem per se.
Till the next update. Perhaps.
The past 9 days were rather hectic, to say the least. There was a medium-scale performance (for us at least) with the orchestra in a musical item last Saturday, then a whole bunch of work-related document wrangling for the week up to Hari Raya Haji, then today's Di-capella Goes 50-50 event.
In short, I'm beat. Tired, but contented. Still one more bed of coals to go over for this month before we segue into October, where different types of hectic things will be coming in.
I think for now, I will put down my dizi and play some flute repertoire stuff.
Actually, knowing me, I'd just play even more dizi in addition to playing more flute repertoire stuff. I'm masochistic that way, I suppose.
Not much to write here. Well, I started with the intention of writing a lot, but then I got distracted and the ennui is starting to set in again. It's like that, not a problem per se.
Till the next update. Perhaps.
Saturday, September 12, 2015
September
It's a Saturday once again, and we are now nearing the midpoint of September.
There were at least two other occasions where I felt the urge to write an update of some kind, but didn't, as you can plainly see. It wasn't for a lack of updates -- there are plenty to talk about, really -- but that I was feeling a little under the weather.
You see, the haze is back. Not as vengeful as two years ago, but enough to cause an annoyance. I feel generally lethargic, with little to no incentive to actually get up and do anything physical. And that's why I just stay at home, but that is not anything particularly abnormal, to be had.
What's abnormal[ish] is that I haven't actually gamed in a while.
For some reason, I don't feel a strong need to muck around with the pretend worlds that the games provide. Not something as immersive as Skyrim/Minecraft, or something as abstract as DoomRL. Just didn't feel that urge... at all.
Perhaps it's because my attentions are currently occupied elsewhere, like the two upcoming SG50-related performances in this month. They have a way of diverting my attention from playing games to thinking about my handling of my dizi.
I think I spent most of the past month or so thinking really hard about things that I never really bothered before, things like proper intonation on my dizi and other woodwind instruments that I was messing around with (like the fife and piccolo), articulation (when to tongue each note and when to slur -- jianpu doesn't usually make a difference between ties and phrasing ties), and ornamentation (when vibrato is needed, when notes ought to be ``clean'', when leading notes should be applied). I think it is a sign that I'm starting to level-up again, having more or less stayed at a mild plateau of sorts. Stimulation has a way of really aiding in the rewiring of one's perspective on even the familiar, and I think that the exposure to a new group (Di-Capella) with new folks has given me the jolt necessary for me to do all these thinking.
In terms of music, I think I've reached the age where few will say that I'm a neophyte, even when I'm working on an instrument that isn't my main. Seeing and hearing how other folks (professionals and certified amateurs) handle their instruments provides a kind of external benchmark for me to determine how the outside world has evolved, and helped me determine just what I was missing in my own education of the process.
And yes, despite what folks may say about how I play, I know that I'm missing some stuff in the completeness of my skill set. I am sufficiently inspired to actually work on that, though I will still refuse to subject myself to the formal certification process -- I'm happy to be who I am with regards to music.
That said though, it is hard to want to learn more/express while still keeping a low profile. We'll see what I can do there...
------
Software architecting is a very interesting topic, and I find myself working increasingly in that regard instead of just bashing code to get things to work. I have found that over the years, as I work on more and more systems, I tend to write less and less actual code, even to the point that I'm not actually designing new algorithms from scratch the way I used to do maybe some fifteen years ago.
Software architects are the prototypal ``master programmers'' -- they provide the abstract framework of a system, defining the types of component partitioning discipline required to get a system going. There is a strong business aspect to it, as I am starting to learn, because the most efficacious architecture isn't necessarily the one that gets deployed simply because the business resources and decisions do not support it -- cost (time and money) are very important factors towards architecting that the hacker-class programmer will not care too much about.
In some sense, understanding the process behind good software architecting has made me moderate my hacker-sense into something that is more realistic -- I don't feel the kind of invincibility and immortality that I had back when I was fourteen and trouncing my seniors in competitive programming. It's a good thing, since sustainability (maintainability) is a very important aspect of system design that isn't really thought of much by the self-thought hacker-programmer.
Anyway, I think that's all I care to write for now. Here's something mildly related:
There were at least two other occasions where I felt the urge to write an update of some kind, but didn't, as you can plainly see. It wasn't for a lack of updates -- there are plenty to talk about, really -- but that I was feeling a little under the weather.
You see, the haze is back. Not as vengeful as two years ago, but enough to cause an annoyance. I feel generally lethargic, with little to no incentive to actually get up and do anything physical. And that's why I just stay at home, but that is not anything particularly abnormal, to be had.
What's abnormal[ish] is that I haven't actually gamed in a while.
For some reason, I don't feel a strong need to muck around with the pretend worlds that the games provide. Not something as immersive as Skyrim/Minecraft, or something as abstract as DoomRL. Just didn't feel that urge... at all.
Perhaps it's because my attentions are currently occupied elsewhere, like the two upcoming SG50-related performances in this month. They have a way of diverting my attention from playing games to thinking about my handling of my dizi.
I think I spent most of the past month or so thinking really hard about things that I never really bothered before, things like proper intonation on my dizi and other woodwind instruments that I was messing around with (like the fife and piccolo), articulation (when to tongue each note and when to slur -- jianpu doesn't usually make a difference between ties and phrasing ties), and ornamentation (when vibrato is needed, when notes ought to be ``clean'', when leading notes should be applied). I think it is a sign that I'm starting to level-up again, having more or less stayed at a mild plateau of sorts. Stimulation has a way of really aiding in the rewiring of one's perspective on even the familiar, and I think that the exposure to a new group (Di-Capella) with new folks has given me the jolt necessary for me to do all these thinking.
In terms of music, I think I've reached the age where few will say that I'm a neophyte, even when I'm working on an instrument that isn't my main. Seeing and hearing how other folks (professionals and certified amateurs) handle their instruments provides a kind of external benchmark for me to determine how the outside world has evolved, and helped me determine just what I was missing in my own education of the process.
And yes, despite what folks may say about how I play, I know that I'm missing some stuff in the completeness of my skill set. I am sufficiently inspired to actually work on that, though I will still refuse to subject myself to the formal certification process -- I'm happy to be who I am with regards to music.
That said though, it is hard to want to learn more/express while still keeping a low profile. We'll see what I can do there...
------
Software architecting is a very interesting topic, and I find myself working increasingly in that regard instead of just bashing code to get things to work. I have found that over the years, as I work on more and more systems, I tend to write less and less actual code, even to the point that I'm not actually designing new algorithms from scratch the way I used to do maybe some fifteen years ago.
Software architects are the prototypal ``master programmers'' -- they provide the abstract framework of a system, defining the types of component partitioning discipline required to get a system going. There is a strong business aspect to it, as I am starting to learn, because the most efficacious architecture isn't necessarily the one that gets deployed simply because the business resources and decisions do not support it -- cost (time and money) are very important factors towards architecting that the hacker-class programmer will not care too much about.
In some sense, understanding the process behind good software architecting has made me moderate my hacker-sense into something that is more realistic -- I don't feel the kind of invincibility and immortality that I had back when I was fourteen and trouncing my seniors in competitive programming. It's a good thing, since sustainability (maintainability) is a very important aspect of system design that isn't really thought of much by the self-thought hacker-programmer.
Anyway, I think that's all I care to write for now. Here's something mildly related:
Monday, August 31, 2015
Long Overdue Update [Perhaps]
To say that an update is long overdue is to understate it by a whole order of magnitude or so. The past two weeks have been quite... hectic to say the least and is the main reason why I couldn't bring myself to write anything despite having the strong urge to do so.
And so, throughout this day itself, I will take whatever small nuggets of free time in between to compose this entry. It will be fragmentary at best and incoherent at worst, but hey, at least there's an entry here, right?
So, let's begin.
------
To start with, I started out with a false premise, that is, I made the claim that I would have pockets of free time throughout the day. It is clearly a false premise considering that I am typing this up at the not-so-early time of 1845hrs (or so). Work is moving along slowly, due to the rather different types of work load that I am facing now, but I am not complaining.
Chara came for a visit over the weekend, and we spent some time roaming about and just checking things out. Awesome food was had, and an even more awesome time was spent. All in all, it was a good but tiring weekend.
The various rehearsals for the two SG50-related projects are in full-swing. The last sectional rehearsal for the dizi choir occurred the previous weekend, and the latest rehearsal for my regular CO stuff just completed last Saturday, with another one coming up on Thursday. This means that I will need to forfeit yet another Aikido training lesson, but I think that it is a decent trade-off, considering that I'm not going for the latest grading exam for Aikido, while having two performances to deal with. T'is good.
I've started on a mini project of sorts to document the ranges and the notation of various Chinese orchestra instruments, and have started with the western orchestra ones for now as a form of infrastructure test. It is also an exercise in messing around with Javascript for the web browser, something that I have been eschewing for a long time. Why now then? It is always good to keep up-to-date on what is going on in the UI/UX land, even if I disagree with the overall trends (like using Javascript to write server applications).
What else is there to write at this point? Hmmm...
Maybe the bit of successfully completing the Bard's works? If you drop by my reading list, you will find that the entire ``Shakespeare Project'' section is gone. That's because I had finished reading all the works of Shakespeare. At this point, I'm focusing on Larry Niven's Ringworld series, though I am eschewing the Fleet of Worlds series (of which Niven is a co-author of) for now. Ringworld (and Ringworld's Engineers at this point) provide yet another style of ``hard'' sci-fi that is vastly different from say Dune or even the Ender series. Dune read too heavily as a philosophical piece, while Ender ended up being that way also. Perhaps Ringworld might end up that way, since it is actually hard to dissociate science from its effects, of which philosophy on the application of science plays a primary role in the definition.
Okay, I'm officially out of materials to write. Except maybe the observation that this entire entry was written on Eiko, of whom I've not really made much use of. I should really be writing more.
Till the next update then.
And so, throughout this day itself, I will take whatever small nuggets of free time in between to compose this entry. It will be fragmentary at best and incoherent at worst, but hey, at least there's an entry here, right?
So, let's begin.
------
To start with, I started out with a false premise, that is, I made the claim that I would have pockets of free time throughout the day. It is clearly a false premise considering that I am typing this up at the not-so-early time of 1845hrs (or so). Work is moving along slowly, due to the rather different types of work load that I am facing now, but I am not complaining.
Chara came for a visit over the weekend, and we spent some time roaming about and just checking things out. Awesome food was had, and an even more awesome time was spent. All in all, it was a good but tiring weekend.
The various rehearsals for the two SG50-related projects are in full-swing. The last sectional rehearsal for the dizi choir occurred the previous weekend, and the latest rehearsal for my regular CO stuff just completed last Saturday, with another one coming up on Thursday. This means that I will need to forfeit yet another Aikido training lesson, but I think that it is a decent trade-off, considering that I'm not going for the latest grading exam for Aikido, while having two performances to deal with. T'is good.
I've started on a mini project of sorts to document the ranges and the notation of various Chinese orchestra instruments, and have started with the western orchestra ones for now as a form of infrastructure test. It is also an exercise in messing around with Javascript for the web browser, something that I have been eschewing for a long time. Why now then? It is always good to keep up-to-date on what is going on in the UI/UX land, even if I disagree with the overall trends (like using Javascript to write server applications).
What else is there to write at this point? Hmmm...
Maybe the bit of successfully completing the Bard's works? If you drop by my reading list, you will find that the entire ``Shakespeare Project'' section is gone. That's because I had finished reading all the works of Shakespeare. At this point, I'm focusing on Larry Niven's Ringworld series, though I am eschewing the Fleet of Worlds series (of which Niven is a co-author of) for now. Ringworld (and Ringworld's Engineers at this point) provide yet another style of ``hard'' sci-fi that is vastly different from say Dune or even the Ender series. Dune read too heavily as a philosophical piece, while Ender ended up being that way also. Perhaps Ringworld might end up that way, since it is actually hard to dissociate science from its effects, of which philosophy on the application of science plays a primary role in the definition.
Okay, I'm officially out of materials to write. Except maybe the observation that this entire entry was written on Eiko, of whom I've not really made much use of. I should really be writing more.
Till the next update then.
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