The last weekend before March 2022 goes away into history. What shall I talk about today then?
Let's start with some good news. We are finally starting rehearsals proper---we have actually started meeting up as a group at the beginning of the month, but having not rehearsed together for two years or so, we spent the first three weeks just sorting out our instruments. The cupboards housing them were opened up and aired, the cobwebs were metaphorically (and sometimes literally!) dusted, the mould on some of the old wooden instrument cases were treated with anti-mould and left to air, strings were checked on and replaced/retuned, and the works.
Sifu is now at a stage of his life where he can come back to play with us again, and I am really happy about it.
Of the ``core pillar'' players, we got back about 60% of them or so, the remaining 40% being less able to commit their time due to the changes in their life that have occurred during the past two years of pandemic nonsense. Naturally, the more transient members who were students have attritted away, hopefully just for now, but given the entire drought of actual extra-curricular activities (calling it ``co-curricular activities'' is what I now see as yet another fig-leaf manoeuvre to pretend that the school system in SIN city truly raises people who know how to both play and work hard) involving group activities, I really am not expecting these numbers to return any time soon.
TGCO isn't flashy, it isn't large, and it isn't some award-winning and highly visible organisation compared to some of the other community orchestras (Chinese instruments or otherwise) out there. None of us are true professional musicians, and we definitely lack the resources and the connections that those who do it professionally have, mostly due to our ethos of keeping the orchestra as a place for those who are interested in playing to gather and play to their abilities, without demanding superlative qualifications.
Only time will tell what will happen. For now, we're just putting the band back together so to speak. That thirty-year anniversary concert isn't likely to be happening, and maybe we'll see if we can live up to our fortieth instead.
It's always good to be playing the dizi again in an orchestral setting. Playing alone has its perks, but ultimately music is meant to be played together as a group---no single instrument can sound better alone as compared to being with others in a well-composed piece. And a performance group is not really one if it doesn't perform---that's the immediate goal that I think we are striving for. Maybe once we get our first performance post-pandemic out, we can start to bring in some more members, for however long they choose to play with us.
------
In other news, I had to finally retire my music backpack, the one that I have used since 2015(?) to move the flute/piccolo stands, flute (Azumi and then later on, Aurelia), piccolo (usually Picc, sometimes S.O.S.), and scores. After more than 6 years, the main zipper have finally given way completely. The bag was used extensively over the years, being taken out weekly on rehearsal/performance excursions. A side zipper's slider had failed and was replaced, the pleather handle flaked off and had a new fabric cover sewn on it, one of the two sliders in the main zipper failed the interlocking and was left unused while the other did the rest of the tour, and the elastic that held the flute box had loosened and was recently replaced. And now, finally, even that last slider failed to hold create the interlocks properly, with the only fix left being a complete replacement of the entire zipper, which was... just not going to happen.
The gig bag lasted as long as it did for the price I paid for. It did its job well and faithfully, and it was truly time to retire it.
o7
Some might find it dumb that I can get sentimental over things, but well, in a world where no one really knows what each person is thinking (even with letters that were supposed to share what one was thinking), the only things we have left are the things that we exchange and hold on to. And for the things that served as our tools of the trade, for whatever trade it is, there's a certain part of it that has become an extension of ourselves to the point that we unconsciously grow an attachment to it. I can't say that I take the greatest of care for my stuff, but I do generally try to do so. It isn't the fact that I spent my own money on them that makes me treasure what I have, but that having these things working means that I could do what I wanted to do with them more effectively and painlessly that makes me want to treasure them more.
The new music backpack is also from ROI MUSIC, as brought in by MusicGear. It definitely has seen some improvements over the years, with the most obvious being the `X'-stitching pattern on the interior that holds the padding together (compared to the original vertical-only stitches). The material does feel a little stiffer, but it's not clear if it's only because it is new or if there was something that was changed.
I suppose only time will tell.
------
The Great Aquarium has its water filled in, and the kelp has all been harvested. I tweaked the deepslate smelter into a kelp smelter by replacing the furnace with a smoker---I didn't realise that the kelp could be treated as a food item and therefore the smoker would smelt it faster (by time) as compared to the furnace. From that tweak, and leaving things to run throughout the day, I have completely smelted all the kelp.
I took part of today searching for a Ocean Monument. I needed to find it to get the materials needed to make that conduit in my Great Aquarium. Well, I found it---it was a ways away from the frozen river where I had dug up my ice to fill the Great Aquarium with. After building a nether-portal in the overworld, I cleared a path towards the nearest minecart station (the frozen river exit) and built a cover over it in the nether to prevent the Magma Cube spawns from clogging up the place.
And that's about it for this post. Till the next one.
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Sunday, March 20, 2022
Yet Another Grab Bag
Hmm.
The past week was something of a different nature. It wasn't a hard week, but it was definitely a trying one at some level. For some unknown reason, I ended up sleeping no more than five hours aweek day for the whole week---I think the sleep debt accumulated was starting to drive me a little nuts in the head. It was bad enough that I could feel that weird existential dread since Thursday/Friday.
It was rough. Intrusive thoughts were coming in here and there, and it was through active mental effort that I managed to counteract them. This was, of course, not counting the additional irritation from other inconsiderate actions by other people.
It was bad enough that I spent much of Saturday in a brain fog, just mechanically dragging myself to the Saturday service, and then continuing on to rehearsal. It was still bad enough that I slept in late on Sunday, and ended spending much of the afternoon just napping away.
I'm not dreading heading back to the office tomorroww though---there're things that need to be done, and I know how to do them, and have most of what needs to be done in control.
Situations like that are fine for me---it's when I have no control of things under my domain (like when someone decides to eschew planning make it my emergency) that I get irritated enough to lash back, hard.
But you, the reader, didn't just come here to listen to me talk about vague discomforts in my life, right?
------
I've been working on the Great Aquarium in Minecraft. The glass walls have been put up, and I have been mining me some ice from the frozen river, and have laid out half of the top surface of the aquarium with the ice. The second half had been filled in since the last time I wrote, and I have started putting in the kelp needed to convert the downward flowing water from the top-level source blocks into water source blocks.
Kelp takes time to grow, and even then, they have a maximal height that is randomly pre-determined and cannot be known without some kind of mod. Here is where I decided that I would just use the fact that I'm playing on a semi-survival single player server and just upped the random ticks game rule to allow the kelp to grow much faster after having plopped the kelp down.
The end result surprised me greatly. The idea I had was to slowly clear the kelp row by row, after having stacked on more kelp on whatever was already fully grown to fill up the entire water column with it to ensure that all of it was source blocks. I had done this for five rows when I suddenly realised that throughout the entire 3D space of the Great Aquarium, all the water blocks were source blocks, even when they were above the fully grown (but stunted height) of some of the kelp plants.
That... was way better than I had expected. It meant that I didn't have to go through the painful process I had in mind---I could basically harvest all the kelp and have the filling of the Great Aquarium declared done. The only problem that I had was how to dispose of all the kelp.
Minecraft kelp is a very versatile entity---it can be used as a food source (after smelting in a furnace), and as a fuel source (after combining into a dried kelp block made up of nine smelted kelp). It does require smelting though, and I had a spare semi-automatic smelter available. I had originally used that smelter to create deepslate from cobbled deepslate, but already I had way more than I had ever used, and thus it had been lying defunct. I quickly rejigged it to smelt kelp instead, and adjusted the input to it to allow direct loading from a shulker box. The idea there was to use shulker boxes to assist in moving a larger amount of kelp at once as I move through the Great Aquarium---it saves the amount of round trips with the [much farther] smelting set up from where I was getting the ``raw'' resources.
And with that, I now have yet another bit of industry set up.
I'll probably spend the next few days/weeks clearing out the kelp. Considering that I have only set up a single furnace to handle smelting, it will indeed take a while (unless I use my ``ad hoc smelting'' auto-feeder to increase the smelting rate by 100%). But that just gives me a good reason to have Minecraft running in the background while I am doing something else that isn't related to actively playing any game, a propensity that I am currently in.
------
In other news, I just want to point out that the PDF file format is... quite something. Despite having PyPDF2, there are still some manipulations that I wanted to do on PDF files that made me scratch my head still.
Context: I have a certain large PDF file that, when the ``zoom to content'' option is activated, does almost nothing, despite there being a nice thick border of nothingness separating from the text viewable text and the edge of the page. Almost all other PDF files that I have do not possess this singular problem.
At first blush, it seems minor, but considering single screen left/right split set up, having a working ``zoom to content'' means making much better use of the 960×1080 pixel real estate---it's the difference between readable text and ``oh no I can't see anything properly''.
I've managed to narrow the issue down to a much larger sized /CropBox compared to the /TrimBox. So fixing the PDF to do what I wanted was easy, at least on this front.
But doing that alone with pyPDF2 missed the important step of copying the bookmarks over to the new PDF file. That was where it started to get very hairy in a jiffy.
The long story short was that it was important to make use of the source PDF's ``outline'' object to learn of the bookmark's mapping to the system-level definition of the page (considered as an offset from the first page's binary segment), and translate it to work well in the new [adjusted] PDF.
Doing that alone was enough to copy the bookmarks, but they would still be unusuable since it means all nested bookmarks are fully expanded. For the large piece of work with sections and sub-sections, that was a no-go. The fix for that was arcane---the /Count key had to be set to the value of 0 to not expand that bookmark's child links.
After fixing those two, I realised that I was still missing one thing: the correct copying off the ``logical'' page numbers to the physical ones [as represented in the binary]. The technical term was /PageLabels, and to know it was to have to dig through the PDF specifications.
It was as arcane as it got... for now.
pyPDF2 made accessing all these weird objects very easy to do, and was definitely a massive time-saver. Of course, it not having a properly working copy data structure of the source PDF into the data struacture of the destination PDF was a great hindrance in the ease of programming---it was, however not likely that the original author might updateee things and do a new release. After writing up all the other customised code to do what I wanted while using pyPDF2 as the data access framework, I finally got the results I wanted.
Anyway, that's all I want to yammer about. The upcoming week is a little more controlled (hopefully), and there are some errands that I need to run.
Here's to hoping that the brain fog I had would be dispelled. Till the next update then.
The past week was something of a different nature. It wasn't a hard week, but it was definitely a trying one at some level. For some unknown reason, I ended up sleeping no more than five hours a
It was rough. Intrusive thoughts were coming in here and there, and it was through active mental effort that I managed to counteract them. This was, of course, not counting the additional irritation from other inconsiderate actions by other people.
It was bad enough that I spent much of Saturday in a brain fog, just mechanically dragging myself to the Saturday service, and then continuing on to rehearsal. It was still bad enough that I slept in late on Sunday, and ended spending much of the afternoon just napping away.
I'm not dreading heading back to the office tomorroww though---there're things that need to be done, and I know how to do them, and have most of what needs to be done in control.
Situations like that are fine for me---it's when I have no control of things under my domain (like when someone decides to eschew planning make it my emergency) that I get irritated enough to lash back, hard.
But you, the reader, didn't just come here to listen to me talk about vague discomforts in my life, right?
------
I've been working on the Great Aquarium in Minecraft. The glass walls have been put up, and I have been mining me some ice from the frozen river, and have laid out half of the top surface of the aquarium with the ice. The second half had been filled in since the last time I wrote, and I have started putting in the kelp needed to convert the downward flowing water from the top-level source blocks into water source blocks.
Kelp takes time to grow, and even then, they have a maximal height that is randomly pre-determined and cannot be known without some kind of mod. Here is where I decided that I would just use the fact that I'm playing on a semi-survival single player server and just upped the random ticks game rule to allow the kelp to grow much faster after having plopped the kelp down.
The end result surprised me greatly. The idea I had was to slowly clear the kelp row by row, after having stacked on more kelp on whatever was already fully grown to fill up the entire water column with it to ensure that all of it was source blocks. I had done this for five rows when I suddenly realised that throughout the entire 3D space of the Great Aquarium, all the water blocks were source blocks, even when they were above the fully grown (but stunted height) of some of the kelp plants.
That... was way better than I had expected. It meant that I didn't have to go through the painful process I had in mind---I could basically harvest all the kelp and have the filling of the Great Aquarium declared done. The only problem that I had was how to dispose of all the kelp.
Minecraft kelp is a very versatile entity---it can be used as a food source (after smelting in a furnace), and as a fuel source (after combining into a dried kelp block made up of nine smelted kelp). It does require smelting though, and I had a spare semi-automatic smelter available. I had originally used that smelter to create deepslate from cobbled deepslate, but already I had way more than I had ever used, and thus it had been lying defunct. I quickly rejigged it to smelt kelp instead, and adjusted the input to it to allow direct loading from a shulker box. The idea there was to use shulker boxes to assist in moving a larger amount of kelp at once as I move through the Great Aquarium---it saves the amount of round trips with the [much farther] smelting set up from where I was getting the ``raw'' resources.
And with that, I now have yet another bit of industry set up.
I'll probably spend the next few days/weeks clearing out the kelp. Considering that I have only set up a single furnace to handle smelting, it will indeed take a while (unless I use my ``ad hoc smelting'' auto-feeder to increase the smelting rate by 100%). But that just gives me a good reason to have Minecraft running in the background while I am doing something else that isn't related to actively playing any game, a propensity that I am currently in.
------
In other news, I just want to point out that the PDF file format is... quite something. Despite having PyPDF2, there are still some manipulations that I wanted to do on PDF files that made me scratch my head still.
Context: I have a certain large PDF file that, when the ``zoom to content'' option is activated, does almost nothing, despite there being a nice thick border of nothingness separating from the text viewable text and the edge of the page. Almost all other PDF files that I have do not possess this singular problem.
At first blush, it seems minor, but considering single screen left/right split set up, having a working ``zoom to content'' means making much better use of the 960×1080 pixel real estate---it's the difference between readable text and ``oh no I can't see anything properly''.
I've managed to narrow the issue down to a much larger sized /CropBox compared to the /TrimBox. So fixing the PDF to do what I wanted was easy, at least on this front.
But doing that alone with pyPDF2 missed the important step of copying the bookmarks over to the new PDF file. That was where it started to get very hairy in a jiffy.
The long story short was that it was important to make use of the source PDF's ``outline'' object to learn of the bookmark's mapping to the system-level definition of the page (considered as an offset from the first page's binary segment), and translate it to work well in the new [adjusted] PDF.
Doing that alone was enough to copy the bookmarks, but they would still be unusuable since it means all nested bookmarks are fully expanded. For the large piece of work with sections and sub-sections, that was a no-go. The fix for that was arcane---the /Count key had to be set to the value of 0 to not expand that bookmark's child links.
After fixing those two, I realised that I was still missing one thing: the correct copying off the ``logical'' page numbers to the physical ones [as represented in the binary]. The technical term was /PageLabels, and to know it was to have to dig through the PDF specifications.
It was as arcane as it got... for now.
pyPDF2 made accessing all these weird objects very easy to do, and was definitely a massive time-saver. Of course, it not having a properly working copy data structure of the source PDF into the data struacture of the destination PDF was a great hindrance in the ease of programming---it was, however not likely that the original author might updateee things and do a new release. After writing up all the other customised code to do what I wanted while using pyPDF2 as the data access framework, I finally got the results I wanted.
Anyway, that's all I want to yammer about. The upcoming week is a little more controlled (hopefully), and there are some errands that I need to run.
Here's to hoping that the brain fog I had would be dispelled. Till the next update then.
Monday, March 14, 2022
π-day!
Today was π-day.
Normally on π-day, I would grab a bunch of pies (usually dessert), round up some of the office folks that I am close to, and call a π-day celebration of eating pies during an afternoon tea break.
Last year I was on a sabbatical, and so I spent π-day pretty much alone.
This year... even though I'm at work at the office, thanks to the general trend of the workplace in SIN city from pandemic measures, there is no one else that is there.
And so, it's yet another π-day spent alone.
I had two pies---a classic chicken pot pie during my lunch break, and then a butter chicken pie in the evening. They were savoury pies---dessert pies are a little more difficult to find these days, with my general location being far from dessert bakeries as compared to last time when I could easily get a pecan pie to share.
------
I've started on the great aquarium in Minecraft. The glass walls have been put up, and I've been digging up the ice from a frozen river ``near'' to my hill-top base as part of a two-step process to fill the aquarium up with source blocks. So far, I have filled in about half the upper surface of the aquarium with the ice blocks (which melt under the light from the industrial platform, leaving behind an `X'-pattern that I had to melt away with torches) that created the flowing water. I've started on laying out the kelp, but I do not have enough of it to do all of them at one go---I had enough to set up maybe four full 25+ blocks of water columns. So I laid out what I have so far to grow enough of them to use it that way.
That takes a while.
The other thing that I need to do is to find an ocean monument to find the right blocks necessary to power the conduit in the middle of the great aquarium.
That takes a while too.
Subsequently, I'd like to populate the floor of the great aquarium with corals, and maybe fill it with some uparupa... I mean axolotls, tropical fish, salmon, cod, and if possible, dolphins.
That will also take a while.
All in all, the great aquarium will be a massive undertaking. That hill clearance and subsequent glass-walling is literally just the easy part.
Hahahaha... that's Minecraft for you. But at least there's persistence and a sense of achievement.
Alright, that's all I have to write for now. Till the next update then.
Normally on π-day, I would grab a bunch of pies (usually dessert), round up some of the office folks that I am close to, and call a π-day celebration of eating pies during an afternoon tea break.
Last year I was on a sabbatical, and so I spent π-day pretty much alone.
This year... even though I'm at work at the office, thanks to the general trend of the workplace in SIN city from pandemic measures, there is no one else that is there.
And so, it's yet another π-day spent alone.
I had two pies---a classic chicken pot pie during my lunch break, and then a butter chicken pie in the evening. They were savoury pies---dessert pies are a little more difficult to find these days, with my general location being far from dessert bakeries as compared to last time when I could easily get a pecan pie to share.
------
I've started on the great aquarium in Minecraft. The glass walls have been put up, and I've been digging up the ice from a frozen river ``near'' to my hill-top base as part of a two-step process to fill the aquarium up with source blocks. So far, I have filled in about half the upper surface of the aquarium with the ice blocks (which melt under the light from the industrial platform, leaving behind an `X'-pattern that I had to melt away with torches) that created the flowing water. I've started on laying out the kelp, but I do not have enough of it to do all of them at one go---I had enough to set up maybe four full 25+ blocks of water columns. So I laid out what I have so far to grow enough of them to use it that way.
That takes a while.
The other thing that I need to do is to find an ocean monument to find the right blocks necessary to power the conduit in the middle of the great aquarium.
That takes a while too.
Subsequently, I'd like to populate the floor of the great aquarium with corals, and maybe fill it with some uparupa... I mean axolotls, tropical fish, salmon, cod, and if possible, dolphins.
That will also take a while.
All in all, the great aquarium will be a massive undertaking. That hill clearance and subsequent glass-walling is literally just the easy part.
Hahahaha... that's Minecraft for you. But at least there's persistence and a sense of achievement.
Alright, that's all I have to write for now. Till the next update then.
Saturday, March 12, 2022
Haw Par Villa... Was Pretty Small
Ah.
I went on leave yesterday to account for the fact that there isn't any public holiday for March.
I spent much of the morning walking about the southwest side of SIN city, starting with Haw Par Villa. It had been about 20+ years since the last time that I was there, and the last time that it had come into my consciousness was a year and change ago. However, I couldn't satisfy want to visit then due to the closure and restoration. The eventual re-opening was without fanfare, and after a few months, I finally had the opportunity to go visit.
Frankly, it was underwhelming.
I remembered Haw Par Villa as being pretty large, and with many exhibits; lots of things to see and do, colourful to a fault.
What I ended up seeing (together with Harish) was a kitschy three-quarter scale diorama of models of fading paint jobs, with semi-logical arrangement, and an entire walk space that was completed in less than two hours, even with us being fairly casual and actively doing a multi-cache attempt. It was way smaller than I had remembered, and it felt like a big... disappointment.
The Hell's Museum was the revamped version of the infamous ``18-levels of hell'' diorama exhibit that was converted into a water ride through a dragon during the ``Haw Par Villa Dragon World'' era, before being re-converted back to a walking exhibit after that. It required an admission fee which on its own was not a big deal, but they had required a priori online booking of the admission ticket, with no way of buying them ``on the spot''. That was either a misunderstanding of what I heard from an officious attendant, or was actually the case. Harish and I didn't know about that, and didn't go in.
We went off to West Coast Park later on to find a couple more geocaches, my first finds in a few years. They were simple traditional finds, and were nice. The walk was invigorating, and lots of nice conversations were had with Harish too.
We eventually made our way to VivoCity for lunch, where we used up the complimentary voucher that I had for tcc. I managed to run my quarterly medicine run after that as well, and ran into the weird situation where the Visa Paywave system was rejecting my card, and also Harish's when I asked him for help. It was eventually resolved through a hard reset of the device... through the advice of the customer that came after me while I was standing ``guard'' to look out for my meds while Harish went to grab some cash from the ATM. Though resolved, I just paid it off in cash---didn't want to waste more time while waiting for them to sort out their internal database contents.
And that was that. Not much else to report. Just felt like writing something down about the little break. I need to figure out how to get me a pie to celebrate π-day on Monday---it's probably going to be a solo thing, I suppose.
Till the next update.
I went on leave yesterday to account for the fact that there isn't any public holiday for March.
I spent much of the morning walking about the southwest side of SIN city, starting with Haw Par Villa. It had been about 20+ years since the last time that I was there, and the last time that it had come into my consciousness was a year and change ago. However, I couldn't satisfy want to visit then due to the closure and restoration. The eventual re-opening was without fanfare, and after a few months, I finally had the opportunity to go visit.
Frankly, it was underwhelming.
I remembered Haw Par Villa as being pretty large, and with many exhibits; lots of things to see and do, colourful to a fault.
What I ended up seeing (together with Harish) was a kitschy three-quarter scale diorama of models of fading paint jobs, with semi-logical arrangement, and an entire walk space that was completed in less than two hours, even with us being fairly casual and actively doing a multi-cache attempt. It was way smaller than I had remembered, and it felt like a big... disappointment.
The Hell's Museum was the revamped version of the infamous ``18-levels of hell'' diorama exhibit that was converted into a water ride through a dragon during the ``Haw Par Villa Dragon World'' era, before being re-converted back to a walking exhibit after that. It required an admission fee which on its own was not a big deal, but they had required a priori online booking of the admission ticket, with no way of buying them ``on the spot''. That was either a misunderstanding of what I heard from an officious attendant, or was actually the case. Harish and I didn't know about that, and didn't go in.
We went off to West Coast Park later on to find a couple more geocaches, my first finds in a few years. They were simple traditional finds, and were nice. The walk was invigorating, and lots of nice conversations were had with Harish too.
We eventually made our way to VivoCity for lunch, where we used up the complimentary voucher that I had for tcc. I managed to run my quarterly medicine run after that as well, and ran into the weird situation where the Visa Paywave system was rejecting my card, and also Harish's when I asked him for help. It was eventually resolved through a hard reset of the device... through the advice of the customer that came after me while I was standing ``guard'' to look out for my meds while Harish went to grab some cash from the ATM. Though resolved, I just paid it off in cash---didn't want to waste more time while waiting for them to sort out their internal database contents.
And that was that. Not much else to report. Just felt like writing something down about the little break. I need to figure out how to get me a pie to celebrate π-day on Monday---it's probably going to be a solo thing, I suppose.
Till the next update.
Sunday, March 06, 2022
Vampire Survivors---Go Get It
It does feel like it has been a while, doesn't it?
March is upon us, and already the first week is over. We're nearing the end of the first third of the month, and work-wise I do have a couple of things that need to be done before the end of the second-third to solicit the necessary feedback and necessary adjustments.
But let's not talk about work.
March has no public holidays gazetted in it. A pity. In fact, the distribution of public holidays for this year is quite clumpy, with at least four months that do not have any public holidays in it (off the top of my head---I'm too lazy to confirm that). Since I am not intending to travel outside of SIN city for the foreseeable future (think in the next couple of years), all those leave days that I'm slowly accruing are better off being consumed throughout the year to bring back sanity, you know, like the way it was. And with that in mind, I have decided to take leave on Mar 11, just to do something different.
The whole idea of storing a lump of paid leave days to go travelling was probably something that gained some kind of relevance in the past fifteen or so years in SIN city, during which travel of any sort was preferable to getting stuck in an increasingly packed city. With the pandemic though, travel has been nerfed, but the population density situation has seen a bit of amelioration through the exodus of foreign workers who choose to return to their home countries due to either homesickness, or general genuine discontentment with the seemingly draconian and mercurial policies of the SIN city government with respect to the management of the pandemic.
I cannot blame them. It is still a double-edged outcome---on the one hand, the losing of [large] quantities of foreign workers can do a real number on SIN city's economic output. On the other hand, their exodus brings back a certain sense of sanity, a feeling that somehow the city is returning to those who have sunk their roots [deep] into it. I'm no public policy wonk, having never been trained in any of its allied fields, but as a citizen of SIN city, I both feel and think that the ruling powers of the city owe its citizens fealty and care. Citizens, by choice or by birth, have called SIN city home, and have elected their representatives into parliament to represent their interests. Thus, it behooves the elected representatives to do their elected role of representing the citizens' interests. It is, by no means, an encouragement of xenophobic tendencies, but a declaration that care for the citizen should be among the priority of the usual multi-factor analysis of the pros and cons of various public policies. We always joke about SIN City, Inc, but the sad thing is that the joke, after nearly sixty years, have turned into some kind of twisted dogma, where many of the elected representatives see themselves not as champions of the citizens' needs and wants, but as some kind of ``entrepreneurial business guru running a multi-billion-dollar company''.
It's sad that it has come to this point.
------
In other news, I've discovered a cool new game: Vampire Survivors (I got the Steam version for like SGD3.25---best 3-bucks I've spent). It's like an action RPG, but with automatic auto-attacks (i.e. the player doesn't have to press a key or click a button to ``fire'' their weapon). The player's main control is just the movement of the character in the play field to avoid the ever-increasing horde of mobs while picking up the experience gems that drop from the destroyed mobs, and choosing from a [short] list of abilities (both new and to upgrade) each time the character gains a character level.
I won't claim that it has ``surprising amount of depth'', but it definitely has its charm. Each run is short---no more than 30 min, less if one's character build doesn't do enough damage to fight out of the many encircling-type attacks---with very little down-time within. Watching the mobs go boom is very satisfying, as is the tricky parkour-esque movement to collect experience gems and setting up positions where the attack patterns of the auto-attacks can inflict their damage/effects most effectively. There are also some interesting strategic concerns, particularly in choosing the load out of auto-attack weapons (maximum of six) to provide the type of coverage that would allow the character to go the whole 30 min, though due to the random nature in which the abilities lists are offered, some form of adaptation is always needed.
It reminds me of another pair of games that I enjoyed playing, One Finger Death Punch and its sequel, One Finger Death Punch 2. Basic mechanics, but surprising amount of tactical knowledge that is needed. Above all, bite-sized durations that don't require the great sinking of time, time that I don't seem to have these days.
Which brings me to another point. I know that Elden Ring is out. I've always wanted to try a Souls-like game. But then there was Hollow Knight that, despite being a darling, was a game that I eventually had to put down and walk away. I mean, I like such games, but I find that I just don't have that kind of time/stamina to spend grinding out and ``gitting gud'', just because there are so many other things competing for my attention. So I have found myself gravitating towards much shorter duration games. The high price tag of SGD79.90 (at the time of writing) is also a little bit of a put-off, though it isn't the primary concern.
Time. Time and the need to use a controller for the best outcome. Time, and patience to learn the mechanics to a level of detail that I don't feel compelled to do just to obtain a good enough outcome.
I can appreciate it as a great game. But it's just not something that I am feeling compelled to play now, especially since I am already putting in hours for work. Even on my sabbatical, I never did see myself spending enough time to get through similar ``simpler'' versions of the genre: see when I first started on Bayonetta, and then my subsequent abandonment from frustration. Could I have continued to muscle my way through until I could tame the input lag statistically? Sure... I mean, I am a musician, and part of being one is to work our way through until we fix our timing issues. But unlike music-making, being good at Bayonetta doesn't really ``buy'' me anything useful, and so the associated expenditure of effort is just... too much, especially for a game.
And there we go. Almost effortlessly, a post to start March is here. Now I need to wonder about what I would like to do for π-day this year. The office is practically empty, and as always, it is not that easy to find pies.
Ah well. Till the next update then.
March is upon us, and already the first week is over. We're nearing the end of the first third of the month, and work-wise I do have a couple of things that need to be done before the end of the second-third to solicit the necessary feedback and necessary adjustments.
But let's not talk about work.
March has no public holidays gazetted in it. A pity. In fact, the distribution of public holidays for this year is quite clumpy, with at least four months that do not have any public holidays in it (off the top of my head---I'm too lazy to confirm that). Since I am not intending to travel outside of SIN city for the foreseeable future (think in the next couple of years), all those leave days that I'm slowly accruing are better off being consumed throughout the year to bring back sanity, you know, like the way it was. And with that in mind, I have decided to take leave on Mar 11, just to do something different.
The whole idea of storing a lump of paid leave days to go travelling was probably something that gained some kind of relevance in the past fifteen or so years in SIN city, during which travel of any sort was preferable to getting stuck in an increasingly packed city. With the pandemic though, travel has been nerfed, but the population density situation has seen a bit of amelioration through the exodus of foreign workers who choose to return to their home countries due to either homesickness, or general genuine discontentment with the seemingly draconian and mercurial policies of the SIN city government with respect to the management of the pandemic.
I cannot blame them. It is still a double-edged outcome---on the one hand, the losing of [large] quantities of foreign workers can do a real number on SIN city's economic output. On the other hand, their exodus brings back a certain sense of sanity, a feeling that somehow the city is returning to those who have sunk their roots [deep] into it. I'm no public policy wonk, having never been trained in any of its allied fields, but as a citizen of SIN city, I both feel and think that the ruling powers of the city owe its citizens fealty and care. Citizens, by choice or by birth, have called SIN city home, and have elected their representatives into parliament to represent their interests. Thus, it behooves the elected representatives to do their elected role of representing the citizens' interests. It is, by no means, an encouragement of xenophobic tendencies, but a declaration that care for the citizen should be among the priority of the usual multi-factor analysis of the pros and cons of various public policies. We always joke about SIN City, Inc, but the sad thing is that the joke, after nearly sixty years, have turned into some kind of twisted dogma, where many of the elected representatives see themselves not as champions of the citizens' needs and wants, but as some kind of ``entrepreneurial business guru running a multi-billion-dollar company''.
It's sad that it has come to this point.
------
In other news, I've discovered a cool new game: Vampire Survivors (I got the Steam version for like SGD3.25---best 3-bucks I've spent). It's like an action RPG, but with automatic auto-attacks (i.e. the player doesn't have to press a key or click a button to ``fire'' their weapon). The player's main control is just the movement of the character in the play field to avoid the ever-increasing horde of mobs while picking up the experience gems that drop from the destroyed mobs, and choosing from a [short] list of abilities (both new and to upgrade) each time the character gains a character level.
I won't claim that it has ``surprising amount of depth'', but it definitely has its charm. Each run is short---no more than 30 min, less if one's character build doesn't do enough damage to fight out of the many encircling-type attacks---with very little down-time within. Watching the mobs go boom is very satisfying, as is the tricky parkour-esque movement to collect experience gems and setting up positions where the attack patterns of the auto-attacks can inflict their damage/effects most effectively. There are also some interesting strategic concerns, particularly in choosing the load out of auto-attack weapons (maximum of six) to provide the type of coverage that would allow the character to go the whole 30 min, though due to the random nature in which the abilities lists are offered, some form of adaptation is always needed.
It reminds me of another pair of games that I enjoyed playing, One Finger Death Punch and its sequel, One Finger Death Punch 2. Basic mechanics, but surprising amount of tactical knowledge that is needed. Above all, bite-sized durations that don't require the great sinking of time, time that I don't seem to have these days.
Which brings me to another point. I know that Elden Ring is out. I've always wanted to try a Souls-like game. But then there was Hollow Knight that, despite being a darling, was a game that I eventually had to put down and walk away. I mean, I like such games, but I find that I just don't have that kind of time/stamina to spend grinding out and ``gitting gud'', just because there are so many other things competing for my attention. So I have found myself gravitating towards much shorter duration games. The high price tag of SGD79.90 (at the time of writing) is also a little bit of a put-off, though it isn't the primary concern.
Time. Time and the need to use a controller for the best outcome. Time, and patience to learn the mechanics to a level of detail that I don't feel compelled to do just to obtain a good enough outcome.
I can appreciate it as a great game. But it's just not something that I am feeling compelled to play now, especially since I am already putting in hours for work. Even on my sabbatical, I never did see myself spending enough time to get through similar ``simpler'' versions of the genre: see when I first started on Bayonetta, and then my subsequent abandonment from frustration. Could I have continued to muscle my way through until I could tame the input lag statistically? Sure... I mean, I am a musician, and part of being one is to work our way through until we fix our timing issues. But unlike music-making, being good at Bayonetta doesn't really ``buy'' me anything useful, and so the associated expenditure of effort is just... too much, especially for a game.
And there we go. Almost effortlessly, a post to start March is here. Now I need to wonder about what I would like to do for π-day this year. The office is practically empty, and as always, it is not that easy to find pies.
Ah well. Till the next update then.
Sunday, February 27, 2022
Fine-tuning Timestamps, and The Great Aquarium
Ah. Night time. Not quite stupid o'clock, but I feel like writing something here.
I spent some time working on a little bit of code between yesterday and today to fine-tune my publishing process for my personal domain. For the uninitiated, I have a customised Python3 script that does minification of the hand-written static HTML/CSS pages, and generates a GZip version to be served faster. I had added a sitemap XML file that is autogenerated as part of the build+deploy process. The final step is to make use of rsync to update the actual files on the server, but without incurring the complete cost of copying all 38M+ bytes.
The bit that requires fine-tuning was something to do with timestamps. Practically speaking, there are three different timestamps associated with the HTML/CSS files. They are:
The timestamp business affects how many bytes get sent via rsync to the HTTP server. This is because rsync transfers the differences among the files over, and I was frankly getting annoyed with seeing a long list of files that were changed even though I did not change them. Another side problem occurs when I checkout the Subversion repository into a new machine---the physical file times of the same file from that new machine will be different from the ones of my other machines. This means that rsync-ing from one machine to the HTTP server and rsync-ing from the other machine to the HTTP server will guarantee more unnecessary bytes being sent due to the different timestamps.
Thus, I decided to just force set all the local files' timestamps to match what the commit timestamp was for it in the Subversion repository. With the help of this Python3 svn library, I could access the Subversion information for any given file (assuming it's in the repository in the first place). Using that, I managed to update all the timestamps of my files to match those exactly in the Subversion repository yesterday.
But that was insufficient in the long run, because the moment I edit any file, save and then commit, the timestamps [of the physical files] are no longer in sync. And using the simple script that I put together yesterday (till late) meant waiting for 2+ min just to update all the timestamps of the files, even though I only touched like... 2 files. Thus, I spent this morning working on a smaller delta-version that, instead of crawling through the Subversion repository (slow), crawled through the local file system (fast-er), and only triggering the Subversion repository look up if the file in question is ``sufficiently recent''. This strategy only added about 1.0+ s to the overall run-time, but kept the timestamps in sync.
That was a fun little exercise to update my process.
-----
I spent much of my afternoon clearing the other half of the hill in Minecraft. I had this thought of creating a large aquarium using the space beneath my large ``industrial complex'' platform. It was much easier to clear out the space because I didn't have to be as careful as clearing the mountain beneath my brick apartment---I didn't have to worry about accidentally puncturing the dedicated ``floor space''. Being near to my large beacons with the Haste II and Jump II enchantments made my mining speed superlatively high. So by the time I took a break and start writing this, I have already cleared something like three quarters of the hill.
After clearing out the space, I will lay out some sand to form the base. There's a ravine cutting through though, and I need to decide how I want to deal with it. One way could be to set up a glass ceiling in the ravine and lay the sand on top---the other is to set up a network of signs and lay the sand on top of that. The second is much trickier to do, but consumes more wood than glass.
Sand aside, the walls of the space above the sea-level will be made of glass blocks that I have. The hard part after is how to populate the space thus walled up with water---I have an idea, but I need to try it out to see if really works.
Anyway, it's late. I'm tired. I think I'll go take a shower, and then turn in for the night. Till the next update.
I spent some time working on a little bit of code between yesterday and today to fine-tune my publishing process for my personal domain. For the uninitiated, I have a customised Python3 script that does minification of the hand-written static HTML/CSS pages, and generates a GZip version to be served faster. I had added a sitemap XML file that is autogenerated as part of the build+deploy process. The final step is to make use of rsync to update the actual files on the server, but without incurring the complete cost of copying all 38M+ bytes.
The bit that requires fine-tuning was something to do with timestamps. Practically speaking, there are three different timestamps associated with the HTML/CSS files. They are:
- Logical timestamp as seen by the ``Updated at 2022-02-26T23:44:31+0800'' lines in the pages;
- The physical file's timestamp as reported by the operating system through the stat(), more practically observed through output of ls -ltra or whatever the modified date is under Windows Explorer;
- And the timestamp of last commit as stored in the Subversion database.
The timestamp business affects how many bytes get sent via rsync to the HTTP server. This is because rsync transfers the differences among the files over, and I was frankly getting annoyed with seeing a long list of files that were changed even though I did not change them. Another side problem occurs when I checkout the Subversion repository into a new machine---the physical file times of the same file from that new machine will be different from the ones of my other machines. This means that rsync-ing from one machine to the HTTP server and rsync-ing from the other machine to the HTTP server will guarantee more unnecessary bytes being sent due to the different timestamps.
Thus, I decided to just force set all the local files' timestamps to match what the commit timestamp was for it in the Subversion repository. With the help of this Python3 svn library, I could access the Subversion information for any given file (assuming it's in the repository in the first place). Using that, I managed to update all the timestamps of my files to match those exactly in the Subversion repository yesterday.
But that was insufficient in the long run, because the moment I edit any file, save and then commit, the timestamps [of the physical files] are no longer in sync. And using the simple script that I put together yesterday (till late) meant waiting for 2+ min just to update all the timestamps of the files, even though I only touched like... 2 files. Thus, I spent this morning working on a smaller delta-version that, instead of crawling through the Subversion repository (slow), crawled through the local file system (fast-er), and only triggering the Subversion repository look up if the file in question is ``sufficiently recent''. This strategy only added about 1.0+ s to the overall run-time, but kept the timestamps in sync.
That was a fun little exercise to update my process.
-----
I spent much of my afternoon clearing the other half of the hill in Minecraft. I had this thought of creating a large aquarium using the space beneath my large ``industrial complex'' platform. It was much easier to clear out the space because I didn't have to be as careful as clearing the mountain beneath my brick apartment---I didn't have to worry about accidentally puncturing the dedicated ``floor space''. Being near to my large beacons with the Haste II and Jump II enchantments made my mining speed superlatively high. So by the time I took a break and start writing this, I have already cleared something like three quarters of the hill.
After clearing out the space, I will lay out some sand to form the base. There's a ravine cutting through though, and I need to decide how I want to deal with it. One way could be to set up a glass ceiling in the ravine and lay the sand on top---the other is to set up a network of signs and lay the sand on top of that. The second is much trickier to do, but consumes more wood than glass.
Sand aside, the walls of the space above the sea-level will be made of glass blocks that I have. The hard part after is how to populate the space thus walled up with water---I have an idea, but I need to try it out to see if really works.
Anyway, it's late. I'm tired. I think I'll go take a shower, and then turn in for the night. Till the next update.
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Jump Cuts
I just felt like I needed to say something on this date 2022-02-22.
First of all, it's no palindrome in ISO-8601. It's kinda like a palindrome in the UK traditional format of 22-02-2022, which I don't use any more because of ambiguity.
Second of all, it being Tuesday and coincidentally (is it, really?) the twenty-second day of the Chinese calendar is also somewhat noteworthy.
But it's one of the few lights over the past 2 years, so it's nice to live a little.
------
For those who visit my blog via mobile, I hate to point out that while there is a nice ``mobile-friendly'' version that Blogger automatically generates, it is woefully incomplete---I had to do some serious tweaking just to even get the disclaimer in place. Check out the non-mobile version. There is a nice collapsible history of all entries ever made here, as well as a tag collection of posts as well.
I sure as hell didn't ``only'' write fourteen entries a la the mobile friendly version. Fixing up the blog's template/formatting system to work well even in mobile mode is nasty,
------
That COVID-19 omicron variant is really ripping through SIN city. Previously the case numbers were just that, numbers, with no faces put to them. But now, I already personally know three people who have tested positive on an ART (Antigen Rapid Test) self-test kit. One I dodged completely, one was a passing interaction at a meeting, with all participants fully masked up and more than a metre apart, and the latest was with masks fully on unless we were eating.
It's harrowing. Somehow, I feel that it's just going to be a matter of when that I will eventually be tested COVID-19 positive at one of the weekly ART self-reports that my current work place requires us to do.
Or alternatively, I had already been hit with COVID-19 without realising it as the symptoms were mild enough that my threshold of tolerance was never breached, and that they were subsided long enough that the weekly ART did not pick it up.
One can hope, I suppose.
------
The demons I talked about yesterday, they're mostly in remission for today. Maybe it was the little bit of playing some familiar music on the S.O.S. (my Armstrong 204 piccolo) before I wrote the entry, or perhaps it was the sleep I got, or even the sense of purpose as I tackled a rather awkward enhancement/bug at work. In any case, I feel better.
I did stray in thought about how it would feel like standing at the epicentre of a nuclear bomb blast, a thought that came about only because I was reading Hiroshima by John Hersey. It was a different kind of bad compared to Grave of the Fireflies---there is emotion, but there is also a certain amount of journalistic detachment, a near omniscient view of the goings on to provide that perspective for one who did not live through that horror to learn what it was like.
Anyway, I'm tired. I'll probably turn in now. Sorry for all the incoherent vignettes---just felt like dumping what was on my mind. No big thoughts for today.
Till the next update.
First of all, it's no palindrome in ISO-8601. It's kinda like a palindrome in the UK traditional format of 22-02-2022, which I don't use any more because of ambiguity.
Second of all, it being Tuesday and coincidentally (is it, really?) the twenty-second day of the Chinese calendar is also somewhat noteworthy.
But it's one of the few lights over the past 2 years, so it's nice to live a little.
------
For those who visit my blog via mobile, I hate to point out that while there is a nice ``mobile-friendly'' version that Blogger automatically generates, it is woefully incomplete---I had to do some serious tweaking just to even get the disclaimer in place. Check out the non-mobile version. There is a nice collapsible history of all entries ever made here, as well as a tag collection of posts as well.
I sure as hell didn't ``only'' write fourteen entries a la the mobile friendly version. Fixing up the blog's template/formatting system to work well even in mobile mode is nasty,
------
That COVID-19 omicron variant is really ripping through SIN city. Previously the case numbers were just that, numbers, with no faces put to them. But now, I already personally know three people who have tested positive on an ART (Antigen Rapid Test) self-test kit. One I dodged completely, one was a passing interaction at a meeting, with all participants fully masked up and more than a metre apart, and the latest was with masks fully on unless we were eating.
It's harrowing. Somehow, I feel that it's just going to be a matter of when that I will eventually be tested COVID-19 positive at one of the weekly ART self-reports that my current work place requires us to do.
Or alternatively, I had already been hit with COVID-19 without realising it as the symptoms were mild enough that my threshold of tolerance was never breached, and that they were subsided long enough that the weekly ART did not pick it up.
One can hope, I suppose.
------
The demons I talked about yesterday, they're mostly in remission for today. Maybe it was the little bit of playing some familiar music on the S.O.S. (my Armstrong 204 piccolo) before I wrote the entry, or perhaps it was the sleep I got, or even the sense of purpose as I tackled a rather awkward enhancement/bug at work. In any case, I feel better.
I did stray in thought about how it would feel like standing at the epicentre of a nuclear bomb blast, a thought that came about only because I was reading Hiroshima by John Hersey. It was a different kind of bad compared to Grave of the Fireflies---there is emotion, but there is also a certain amount of journalistic detachment, a near omniscient view of the goings on to provide that perspective for one who did not live through that horror to learn what it was like.
Anyway, I'm tired. I'll probably turn in now. Sorry for all the incoherent vignettes---just felt like dumping what was on my mind. No big thoughts for today.
Till the next update.
Monday, February 21, 2022
Demons Came Out to Play Today
The demons came out to play today. But I managed to keep them at bay. For now.
I was walking home from the bus, and just thinking to myself, realising that at some point, I would simply forget about that particular moment. And I asked myself, how would I feel when I forgot that particular moment that just passed?
And I was sad to realise that since I had forgotten about that particular moment, there was nothing to feel about.
It was... surreal at the very least, and rather disturbing all in all. I don't know why the demons of nihilism chose today to show up, and in that form.
Apart from that little episode, I wafted through the whole day, quietly working on things in the mostly empty office.
The week that had ended yesterday was alright for the most part. I met up with some ex-colleagues who miraculously avoided getting hit with COVID-19 for dinner on Friday, and got a lot of stuff done throughout that week itself. The week that begins today is likely to be of a near opposite nature, with more introspection being necessary as compared to action. Such is the work life.
I have managed to successfully maintain my mass for the most part. It's good, except that I was trying to lose weight. I think I need to muster more self-discipline to stick to the one meal a day set up, and not get tempted by tasty lunch food made even more tempting through the massive amounts of body heat I lose each day from overly cold air conditioning in the office. I do muse every now and then on whether it was truly better to just work from home instead---it was allowed after all, and my presence in the office was mostly my own decision to head on back to ensure that my psychological separation of work time and me-time was backed by actual physical separation.
February is almost up, and March will be upon us. How quickly the days go on by.
I think I'll turn in earlier this night. Those demons have got to go, and the best way is to have my mind not in a state of exhaustion.
Till the next update.
I was walking home from the bus, and just thinking to myself, realising that at some point, I would simply forget about that particular moment. And I asked myself, how would I feel when I forgot that particular moment that just passed?
And I was sad to realise that since I had forgotten about that particular moment, there was nothing to feel about.
It was... surreal at the very least, and rather disturbing all in all. I don't know why the demons of nihilism chose today to show up, and in that form.
Apart from that little episode, I wafted through the whole day, quietly working on things in the mostly empty office.
The week that had ended yesterday was alright for the most part. I met up with some ex-colleagues who miraculously avoided getting hit with COVID-19 for dinner on Friday, and got a lot of stuff done throughout that week itself. The week that begins today is likely to be of a near opposite nature, with more introspection being necessary as compared to action. Such is the work life.
I have managed to successfully maintain my mass for the most part. It's good, except that I was trying to lose weight. I think I need to muster more self-discipline to stick to the one meal a day set up, and not get tempted by tasty lunch food made even more tempting through the massive amounts of body heat I lose each day from overly cold air conditioning in the office. I do muse every now and then on whether it was truly better to just work from home instead---it was allowed after all, and my presence in the office was mostly my own decision to head on back to ensure that my psychological separation of work time and me-time was backed by actual physical separation.
February is almost up, and March will be upon us. How quickly the days go on by.
I think I'll turn in earlier this night. Those demons have got to go, and the best way is to have my mind not in a state of exhaustion.
Till the next update.
Sunday, February 13, 2022
Metaverse?
Okay, let's talk about something a little different.
The ``metaverse''. An old concept that was recently made new all over again. For the lost, this is referring to the idea of having people interacting within a virtual world, with as many real-world equivalent concepts being brought into it as possible to literally be a space that people can live in.
I call it an old concept because virtual worlds have been the mainstay for much of the multi-player experience ever since computer networking was a thing. The key difference though is that the ``metaverse'' tries to have a stronger tie-in between the virtual world and this one that we live in, mostly in the form of linking what we would call ``valuable'' in this real world with what is in the virtual one. Another big difference is that unlike a multi-player game, the ``metaverse'' might not have game-like mechanics of goals and/or progression, both of which are replaced with metrics that are more closely aligned with how the real world operate, like real-world money.
Some might say that the ``metaverse'' is defined by the extensive use of virtual reality technologies, but I beg to differ. Virtual reality technology might be cool (well, cooler these days compared to before), but the technology companies involved in them aren't really looking at these technologies for the coolness---they are looking at them from the perspective of how much value capture they can exploit the way how old school industrial capitalism is always about exploiting the surplus labour of the workers to generate value. In the work by Zuboff (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism for the confused), it has been established that a large part of modern day capitalism is tied around the exploitation of behavioural surplus, an information-type resource that is used both directly and indirectly to manufacture real-world demands through [targetted] advertising. The ``metaverse'' can be seen as the extreme version of that surveillance capitalism, where the very physics of the world itself is controlled, observed, and milked by the companies that own the infrastructure to run and use them.
What separates the ``metaverse'' from the previous concepts of virtual worlds is the very strong tie-in with the real world, as I have stated earlier. Instead of role-playing a character in the virtual worlds like the old way, the ``metaverse'' demands that you appear in the system as yourself. This bit is important because it forces you to bring in everything that you do in the real world into the virtual world, and it also allows the owners of that ``metaverse'' to use the real-world clout of personalities/intellectual properties within their ``metaverse'' to create the strong false equivalence that whatever that happens in the ``metaverse'' is as valid as what is happening in the real world.
Suddenly no one can role-play their favourite celebrity any more---if Real World Celebrity So-and-So shows up within the ``metaverse'', it can be ascertained that it really is who it claims to be, and not one of their many fans who are role-playing as them. Similarly, if you are fed-up with being an office drone and want to go into the ``metaverse'' to role-play as a rock star, you probably can't do that because your real world identity is immediately shown to everyone---there's no way to hide that away.
Or maybe you could hide it away... for a price and a limited amount of time as dictated by the company who owns that ``metaverse''.
Real-world money that goes into the ``metaverse'' to pay for anything does not come out of the company that runs it---it is a means of capturing money. Throw in some equivalent of digital real estate and add the human value of prestige, and the most successful company running that particular ``metaverse'' will make bank.
I think that's too much power for any single company or even conglomerate of companies to hold. And I don't think that it takes a genius to realise that all that hype on ``metaverse'' is just the techno-gasm equivalent of Centrally Planned State Control. And that's not counting the obvious subscription fees that are needed just to keep one's place within the ``metaverse''. I mean, in real-life, we sort of have such ``subscription fees''---we call them taxes---and even then, the tax rules tend to be a little more progressive, with a general slant towards being used mostly for the social good.
Would a company do that? Especially for a company that is built around the modern day principles of ensuring that their quarterly reports show great progress?
Maybe this ``metaverse'' would be the equivalent of this duodecade's version of the dotcom bust in the early 2000s.
Maybe.
The ``metaverse''. An old concept that was recently made new all over again. For the lost, this is referring to the idea of having people interacting within a virtual world, with as many real-world equivalent concepts being brought into it as possible to literally be a space that people can live in.
I call it an old concept because virtual worlds have been the mainstay for much of the multi-player experience ever since computer networking was a thing. The key difference though is that the ``metaverse'' tries to have a stronger tie-in between the virtual world and this one that we live in, mostly in the form of linking what we would call ``valuable'' in this real world with what is in the virtual one. Another big difference is that unlike a multi-player game, the ``metaverse'' might not have game-like mechanics of goals and/or progression, both of which are replaced with metrics that are more closely aligned with how the real world operate, like real-world money.
Some might say that the ``metaverse'' is defined by the extensive use of virtual reality technologies, but I beg to differ. Virtual reality technology might be cool (well, cooler these days compared to before), but the technology companies involved in them aren't really looking at these technologies for the coolness---they are looking at them from the perspective of how much value capture they can exploit the way how old school industrial capitalism is always about exploiting the surplus labour of the workers to generate value. In the work by Zuboff (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism for the confused), it has been established that a large part of modern day capitalism is tied around the exploitation of behavioural surplus, an information-type resource that is used both directly and indirectly to manufacture real-world demands through [targetted] advertising. The ``metaverse'' can be seen as the extreme version of that surveillance capitalism, where the very physics of the world itself is controlled, observed, and milked by the companies that own the infrastructure to run and use them.
What separates the ``metaverse'' from the previous concepts of virtual worlds is the very strong tie-in with the real world, as I have stated earlier. Instead of role-playing a character in the virtual worlds like the old way, the ``metaverse'' demands that you appear in the system as yourself. This bit is important because it forces you to bring in everything that you do in the real world into the virtual world, and it also allows the owners of that ``metaverse'' to use the real-world clout of personalities/intellectual properties within their ``metaverse'' to create the strong false equivalence that whatever that happens in the ``metaverse'' is as valid as what is happening in the real world.
Suddenly no one can role-play their favourite celebrity any more---if Real World Celebrity So-and-So shows up within the ``metaverse'', it can be ascertained that it really is who it claims to be, and not one of their many fans who are role-playing as them. Similarly, if you are fed-up with being an office drone and want to go into the ``metaverse'' to role-play as a rock star, you probably can't do that because your real world identity is immediately shown to everyone---there's no way to hide that away.
Or maybe you could hide it away... for a price and a limited amount of time as dictated by the company who owns that ``metaverse''.
Real-world money that goes into the ``metaverse'' to pay for anything does not come out of the company that runs it---it is a means of capturing money. Throw in some equivalent of digital real estate and add the human value of prestige, and the most successful company running that particular ``metaverse'' will make bank.
I think that's too much power for any single company or even conglomerate of companies to hold. And I don't think that it takes a genius to realise that all that hype on ``metaverse'' is just the techno-gasm equivalent of Centrally Planned State Control. And that's not counting the obvious subscription fees that are needed just to keep one's place within the ``metaverse''. I mean, in real-life, we sort of have such ``subscription fees''---we call them taxes---and even then, the tax rules tend to be a little more progressive, with a general slant towards being used mostly for the social good.
Would a company do that? Especially for a company that is built around the modern day principles of ensuring that their quarterly reports show great progress?
Maybe this ``metaverse'' would be the equivalent of this duodecade's version of the dotcom bust in the early 2000s.
Maybe.
Saturday, February 12, 2022
An Early Will
In the event that I am dead, here is roughly what I would like done:
Naturally what is written here can and will change in the event that circumstances change. Now that I am well on my way through the middle age phase, I feel less invincible as compared to being in my teenage years, and it will progressively be worse as time goes on.
That's all I will write here for now, till the next update.
- Cremate and scatter my cremains into the waters off the Singapore coast---ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
- All physical objects I possess, burn in a great bonfire as they are no longer of any value to anyone.
- The money that I might have in my accounts, let them lie in oblivion in where they are stored in.
Naturally what is written here can and will change in the event that circumstances change. Now that I am well on my way through the middle age phase, I feel less invincible as compared to being in my teenage years, and it will progressively be worse as time goes on.
That's all I will write here for now, till the next update.
Sunday, February 06, 2022
Clearing Some More FPSes in My Steam Library
I feel much better today, with the much cooler weather and having a good night's rest.
I completed Serious Sam 3: BFE. Man, it was such a grind, with wave after wave of enemies. It made Doom Eternal and Doom 2016 feel like a relative walk in the part (except maybe in Nightmare! difficulty). As someone has said before, never before has a first person shooter game demonstrate extensive use of the `S'-key. For the uninitiated, the `S'-key is the backpedal key, a completely necessary movement just for survival purposes. It is one of the few first person shooter games where I relied more heavily on my rocket launcher for area damage to take out the large swarms of mobs as compared to using the most powerful shotgun that is available a la Doom. The final fight was gruelling, with a new mechanic of a jet pack and associated poles that needed to be thrown like javelins into the back of the Big Bad Final Boss to draw lightning to stun/slow down its regeneration just so that lasting damage can be done via the heavy weaponry that I had.
Very cathartic, to be had.
I also completed Bright Memory Infinite, an interesting one-developer first person shooter with mechanics that remind me of Shadow Warrior and Shadow Warrior 2. There is a mix of both gunplay, and a variety of powers-based melee attacks, sort of like the class-specific specials from say Borderlands, but without too much of the skill tree elements. It is the ``full game'' version of the original Bright Memory, a sort of tech demo of sorts. I completed this on ``easy'' though, because I really wasn't in the mood to be dealing with unnecessary difficulty.
It was still quite fun. My favourite combo was to alternate sword strikes with shotgun blasts while dealing with the ``ancient warrior'' enemies. It was also the combination that I used a lot when fighting the boss characters as well.
I tried to play a bit more Ion Fury, but was a little turned off by the rather weak weaponry. I suppose it might be time to start on Crysis---I seem to have it in my Steam library.
And with that, I'll probably turn in for the night or something. Till the next update.
I completed Serious Sam 3: BFE. Man, it was such a grind, with wave after wave of enemies. It made Doom Eternal and Doom 2016 feel like a relative walk in the part (except maybe in Nightmare! difficulty). As someone has said before, never before has a first person shooter game demonstrate extensive use of the `S'-key. For the uninitiated, the `S'-key is the backpedal key, a completely necessary movement just for survival purposes. It is one of the few first person shooter games where I relied more heavily on my rocket launcher for area damage to take out the large swarms of mobs as compared to using the most powerful shotgun that is available a la Doom. The final fight was gruelling, with a new mechanic of a jet pack and associated poles that needed to be thrown like javelins into the back of the Big Bad Final Boss to draw lightning to stun/slow down its regeneration just so that lasting damage can be done via the heavy weaponry that I had.
Very cathartic, to be had.
I also completed Bright Memory Infinite, an interesting one-developer first person shooter with mechanics that remind me of Shadow Warrior and Shadow Warrior 2. There is a mix of both gunplay, and a variety of powers-based melee attacks, sort of like the class-specific specials from say Borderlands, but without too much of the skill tree elements. It is the ``full game'' version of the original Bright Memory, a sort of tech demo of sorts. I completed this on ``easy'' though, because I really wasn't in the mood to be dealing with unnecessary difficulty.
It was still quite fun. My favourite combo was to alternate sword strikes with shotgun blasts while dealing with the ``ancient warrior'' enemies. It was also the combination that I used a lot when fighting the boss characters as well.
I tried to play a bit more Ion Fury, but was a little turned off by the rather weak weaponry. I suppose it might be time to start on Crysis---I seem to have it in my Steam library.
And with that, I'll probably turn in for the night or something. Till the next update.
Saturday, February 05, 2022
My First [Proper] Pyramid in Minecraft
This is a prepared entry; it wasn't written near the time in which it was posted.
This week... it has been a bust of sorts. I had been feeling a tad under the weather, partly due to annoyance from work, partly because my stupid finger tips are still having those cracked fissures in them (and I need to type on the keyboard for a living, so go figure), and partly because the weather has been erratic and causing me to feel awkward in the head due to poor quality sleep.
It wasn't a complete bust, because I managed to completely clear the peninsula sand-desert that I was referring to, and built my first pyramid in Minecraft. That's right, my first pyramid. I've never really built one of those properly before---the iron block pyramids needed to sustain the beacons don't quite count.
I wanted to build the largest orthogonal pyramid (i.e. with edges parallel to the natural grid structure in Minecraft) in the cleared space, and settled with a base that was 2×20+10=50 blocks by 2×20+9=49 blocks, and a height of 37 blocks arranged in a 1--2 step pattern from the base. I ended up with that 1--2 step pattern because a single-step height increase seemed to create a pyramid that felt a little too short relative to the base dimensions.
The main building block was the sandstone that I obtained from clearing the land. But I didn't stop there---I covered each top surface with smooth quartz slabs to deal with the mob-spawn problem (I didn't want to mar the pyramid with ugly torches, and mobs did not spawn on surfaces where the lower half was a slab), and to fit the aesthetic of the original limestone pyramids being covered with white ``casing stones'' for the smooth and flat finish. Considering it is Minecraft, there was a limit on what ``smooth'' meant in an angled structure like a pyramid.
Anyway, here's how the pyramid looks at night from some height (in spectator mode, obviously):
Here's the same pyramid, but at ground level:
And here's the interior, which houses the fully-powered up two-beacon set up (Jump II and Speed II were used to make navigation on the surface of the pyramid faster) with their own topping of smooth quartz slabs for the same reason why the exterior was topped the same way.
The observant might realise that the beams from the beacon in the interior are of a different colour as compared to the ones to the exterior. That's because I added a yellow glass and a white glass at the very top of the pyramid to further shade the beam colour.
Note that the base is completely hollowed out of all sandstone and sand, with glass replacing at sea level. Mobs don't spawn on top of glass, but they spawn on the non-glass blocks below it due to the darkness of the interior. They are completely contained by the glass though, so I can keep the hollow interior of the pyramid looking as mysterious as it is this way.
That's about it for this entry. Again, this is a prepared entry that was not written at the time when it was posted---I am in no condition to be writing anything today.
Till the next update.
This week... it has been a bust of sorts. I had been feeling a tad under the weather, partly due to annoyance from work, partly because my stupid finger tips are still having those cracked fissures in them (and I need to type on the keyboard for a living, so go figure), and partly because the weather has been erratic and causing me to feel awkward in the head due to poor quality sleep.
It wasn't a complete bust, because I managed to completely clear the peninsula sand-desert that I was referring to, and built my first pyramid in Minecraft. That's right, my first pyramid. I've never really built one of those properly before---the iron block pyramids needed to sustain the beacons don't quite count.
I wanted to build the largest orthogonal pyramid (i.e. with edges parallel to the natural grid structure in Minecraft) in the cleared space, and settled with a base that was 2×20+10=50 blocks by 2×20+9=49 blocks, and a height of 37 blocks arranged in a 1--2 step pattern from the base. I ended up with that 1--2 step pattern because a single-step height increase seemed to create a pyramid that felt a little too short relative to the base dimensions.
The main building block was the sandstone that I obtained from clearing the land. But I didn't stop there---I covered each top surface with smooth quartz slabs to deal with the mob-spawn problem (I didn't want to mar the pyramid with ugly torches, and mobs did not spawn on surfaces where the lower half was a slab), and to fit the aesthetic of the original limestone pyramids being covered with white ``casing stones'' for the smooth and flat finish. Considering it is Minecraft, there was a limit on what ``smooth'' meant in an angled structure like a pyramid.
Anyway, here's how the pyramid looks at night from some height (in spectator mode, obviously):
Note that the base is completely hollowed out of all sandstone and sand, with glass replacing at sea level. Mobs don't spawn on top of glass, but they spawn on the non-glass blocks below it due to the darkness of the interior. They are completely contained by the glass though, so I can keep the hollow interior of the pyramid looking as mysterious as it is this way.
That's about it for this entry. Again, this is a prepared entry that was not written at the time when it was posted---I am in no condition to be writing anything today.
Till the next update.
Monday, January 31, 2022
More Goodbyes
Well well well... yet another New Year's Eve, this time for ye olde Chinese Lunar New Year. To many it's a day of the fabled reunion dinner, the time of great festivities and feasting, a time to temporarily set aside any differences to bring out the courtesies to avoid befouling the symbolic start of a new year.
To me, it's just Monday. And it's not even a half-day Monday as it was stated in the employees' handbook, because of the great fallback of ``exigencies of the job''. That last bit though... despite me making it sound as terrible as it is, isn't too bad particularly when I do get good cooperation to actually get the stuff done, making that OT sort of worth it.
But let's not talk about work---what happens at work ought to stay at work, unless it starts to affect my not-work.
Now to be fair, I did manage to get home in time for a simple meal with my parents a la ``reunion dinner'' style, so it isn't that bad. I just wished that I could have gotten home at the designated time instead of forfeiting it.
Ah well.
Anyway, I've started to clear the peninsula sand-dessert near my mob-farm in Minecraft. No reason why other than it seemed like a relaxing thing to do each day just to unwind after spending the whole day figuring work stuff out. Maybe I might spend a bit of tomorrow playing more of Serious Sam 3 to actually complete the game, but knowing me, it's likely to end up being yet another Minecraft event.
In other news, after 12+ years of being a regular on the ChaosForge forums, I've finally realised that it was time to go. I was effectively a global moderator guarding a cemetery against spam bots trying to find a foothold to peddle their brand of nonsense as the community has moved on to other third party platforms that have more pull, like Reddit, Discord, or even Steam. Even KK himself doesn't make any appearances in the forum for the most part---it was definitely clear that the community has moved on.
But I don't like those places. And since I cannot follow, and am sick of being the night watchman of a cemetery, I just drop out/off. I did send a farewell message to the old fogeys who were fellow night watchmen (including KK), but only God knows if they will ever see it.
There were lots of great memories I had with ChaosForge. The old DoomRL times, the play by forum (PBF) role-playing, the 3D renders of space marines doing Doom-y things, all the amusing and amazing ways to die in DoomRL... But the times have changed... hell, I have changed. KK's no longer running a labour of love any more---it's a revenue generating company with its own capital contributing shareholders that he needs to answer to now. I've always been, at best, a ``whale'' scale donator, or at worst, a bleedin' heart sucker. But no whale scale donator can ever beat the raw mass of actual capital. I'm not angry nor disappointed with his choice; I'm just sad that I hit the realisation that I can no longer follow along where he is going. I wish him all the best still, and will enjoy whatever creations that may come out from ChaosForge after Jupiter Hell---as the outsider that I have been in the past five years.
Why does it feel like I'm preparing for my own death or something...?
My life is exceedingly boring in general. I think I will stop here. Till the next update then.
To me, it's just Monday. And it's not even a half-day Monday as it was stated in the employees' handbook, because of the great fallback of ``exigencies of the job''. That last bit though... despite me making it sound as terrible as it is, isn't too bad particularly when I do get good cooperation to actually get the stuff done, making that OT sort of worth it.
But let's not talk about work---what happens at work ought to stay at work, unless it starts to affect my not-work.
Now to be fair, I did manage to get home in time for a simple meal with my parents a la ``reunion dinner'' style, so it isn't that bad. I just wished that I could have gotten home at the designated time instead of forfeiting it.
Ah well.
Anyway, I've started to clear the peninsula sand-dessert near my mob-farm in Minecraft. No reason why other than it seemed like a relaxing thing to do each day just to unwind after spending the whole day figuring work stuff out. Maybe I might spend a bit of tomorrow playing more of Serious Sam 3 to actually complete the game, but knowing me, it's likely to end up being yet another Minecraft event.
In other news, after 12+ years of being a regular on the ChaosForge forums, I've finally realised that it was time to go. I was effectively a global moderator guarding a cemetery against spam bots trying to find a foothold to peddle their brand of nonsense as the community has moved on to other third party platforms that have more pull, like Reddit, Discord, or even Steam. Even KK himself doesn't make any appearances in the forum for the most part---it was definitely clear that the community has moved on.
But I don't like those places. And since I cannot follow, and am sick of being the night watchman of a cemetery, I just drop out/off. I did send a farewell message to the old fogeys who were fellow night watchmen (including KK), but only God knows if they will ever see it.
There were lots of great memories I had with ChaosForge. The old DoomRL times, the play by forum (PBF) role-playing, the 3D renders of space marines doing Doom-y things, all the amusing and amazing ways to die in DoomRL... But the times have changed... hell, I have changed. KK's no longer running a labour of love any more---it's a revenue generating company with its own capital contributing shareholders that he needs to answer to now. I've always been, at best, a ``whale'' scale donator, or at worst, a bleedin' heart sucker. But no whale scale donator can ever beat the raw mass of actual capital. I'm not angry nor disappointed with his choice; I'm just sad that I hit the realisation that I can no longer follow along where he is going. I wish him all the best still, and will enjoy whatever creations that may come out from ChaosForge after Jupiter Hell---as the outsider that I have been in the past five years.
Why does it feel like I'm preparing for my own death or something...?
My life is exceedingly boring in general. I think I will stop here. Till the next update then.
Sunday, January 30, 2022
The Most Valuable Thing That You Possess
What is the most valuable thing that you possess?
To me, it is you, the you who is willing to spend time with me. Goods perish, money/assets depreciate, skill levels wax and wane as our minds/bodies reach their peak and then fade away with time.
But you, the you who is willing to spend time with me, that is the most valuable thing that you possess that cannot be replaced with anything else.
Time is something that cannot be easily banked---once that second is gone, it is gone with no way of recouping it. Sure, I did mention before how money is an accounting measure in which humans have devised as a means of ``banking'' time, but it's just not the same for the same reason why money supplies always need to have some form of inflation built in---future time is always more valuable than past time because the past has already occurred, while the future is always hopeful, with so much potential and non-deterministic outcomes that make it a crime to ascribe less value to as compared to the past.
And that's why commitments are treated as being valuable---it's the staking of the most valuable asset that one possesses on something that makes the action so valuable.
Speaking from a position of relative privilege, money can always be made in other ways ``easily''. But time, the time that you choose to spend with me, that can never be made back. For you to choose to spend time with me means that you have chosen to prioritise our relationship (platonic or otherwise) over all else, and to share that precious unrenewable possession of yours with me. What we end up with spending time together is to create that unique gift that is indestructible---the memory of the moment.
No one can take away that precious memory short of destroying all that is objectively what makes us ``us''.
To me, it is you, the you who is willing to spend time with me. Goods perish, money/assets depreciate, skill levels wax and wane as our minds/bodies reach their peak and then fade away with time.
But you, the you who is willing to spend time with me, that is the most valuable thing that you possess that cannot be replaced with anything else.
Time is something that cannot be easily banked---once that second is gone, it is gone with no way of recouping it. Sure, I did mention before how money is an accounting measure in which humans have devised as a means of ``banking'' time, but it's just not the same for the same reason why money supplies always need to have some form of inflation built in---future time is always more valuable than past time because the past has already occurred, while the future is always hopeful, with so much potential and non-deterministic outcomes that make it a crime to ascribe less value to as compared to the past.
And that's why commitments are treated as being valuable---it's the staking of the most valuable asset that one possesses on something that makes the action so valuable.
Speaking from a position of relative privilege, money can always be made in other ways ``easily''. But time, the time that you choose to spend with me, that can never be made back. For you to choose to spend time with me means that you have chosen to prioritise our relationship (platonic or otherwise) over all else, and to share that precious unrenewable possession of yours with me. What we end up with spending time together is to create that unique gift that is indestructible---the memory of the moment.
No one can take away that precious memory short of destroying all that is objectively what makes us ``us''.
Saturday, January 29, 2022
On Flute Stands...
In reference to a post on Flute Forum by someone who was seeking advice on making their own wooden flute stand for piccolo, concert flute, alto flute, and bass flute:
I'm in no position to dictate specifics that way, but here're my thoughts:
1. Ensure your dowel lengths extend past the foot joint tenon to relieve stress, especially for your alto and bass flutes. The longer the dowel lengths, the more stable you can hold your flute, but the more annoying it is to "load" the flutes on.
2. The diameter of your dowels should be close to the ID of the flute that it needs to hold to keep the flute's centre of mass centred over the axis of the dowel as possible to use the longitudinal strength of the tube to hold its weight as much as possible while vertical. In other words, don't have too much wiggle room built in -- just enough to slip the flute body on and off with some (but not complete) focus.
2. Whatever material is in contact with the inner tube of the flute should be softer than the material of the flute itself to avoid scratching the finish of the inner walls. You might need to consult some surface hardness scales for details on this. Geometry can help a little (i.e. tapering of the end that points upwards), but you need to take the whole centre of mass aspect (points 1 and 2) into account when you do that. From my observation, the main points of contact that you need to worry about are the upper edge of the dowel, and perhaps the lower edge. The rest of the body of the dowel does not really contact any point of the flute body at rest, and to really affect that would require a particular effort by the user to "scrape" the dowel.
3. The base of the dowel (where the end edge of the foot joint is supported) should dampen the inevitable drop when one releases the flute upon the dowel, i.e. make sure it is thick enough.
4. I don't think that moisture control is that big a deal, mostly because I don't think that the amount of moisture (from condensation) within the flutes is sufficient to swell your unsealed wood enough to get past the wiggle room. The metal flutes do not change their ID from humidity, while the wooden ones might. The range of the ambient humidity of where you use the pegs are probably the bigger issue for this.
5. This probably goes without saying, but do ensure that your base is sufficiently massive (either in absolute mass or in the amount of moments generated relative to the centre of masses of the mounted flutes) to support the protuding tubes of flutes to keep things in stable equilibrium. Since it sounds like you are intending to do a combination stand, this might not be as straightforward as it seems.
I'm sure someone else will have much more specific information, but I hope what I have here can help you.
Wednesday, January 26, 2022
The Demons Are Strong Tonight
The demons are strong tonight. I wonder if it is because of just my draining my brain juice from work, a lack of sleep, or listening to some pre 1980s English pop music that is of the melancholic/nostalgic sort.
Well, whatever it is, the demons are strong tonight. Let's hope I get through it safely.
Till the next update.
Well, whatever it is, the demons are strong tonight. Let's hope I get through it safely.
Till the next update.
Saturday, January 22, 2022
The Day That Isn't Really Mine
On this day some thirty nearly forty years ago, the grace of God and my mother's hardship allowed me to appear in this world.
I did not choose to be born. There are many things that I can make choices in subsequently, but being born just isn't one of them.
But that does not mean that I am not grateful for having been brought into this world.
Being born into the world is a great direct risk to the mother, and is, in general, a risk to my parents.
Because there is no way of knowing anything about the child. Only God knows what He has planned; the rest of us just hope for the best.
This day that people call MT's birthday, is not really dedicated to me---I think it inappropriate, for all I did was merely start to exist. The ones where this day should be dedicated to isn't me, but God and my mother, the former for His inscrutable plans, and the latter for well having me through her labour.
I think it took me more than three decades to realise this. And I am glad that I have realised this before my ability to be thankful to those who contributed to my creation is forever nerfed due to the mortal coil.
That is all. Till the next update.
I did not choose to be born. There are many things that I can make choices in subsequently, but being born just isn't one of them.
But that does not mean that I am not grateful for having been brought into this world.
Being born into the world is a great direct risk to the mother, and is, in general, a risk to my parents.
Because there is no way of knowing anything about the child. Only God knows what He has planned; the rest of us just hope for the best.
This day that people call MT's birthday, is not really dedicated to me---I think it inappropriate, for all I did was merely start to exist. The ones where this day should be dedicated to isn't me, but God and my mother, the former for His inscrutable plans, and the latter for well having me through her labour.
I think it took me more than three decades to realise this. And I am glad that I have realised this before my ability to be thankful to those who contributed to my creation is forever nerfed due to the mortal coil.
That is all. Till the next update.
Sunday, January 16, 2022
The First Stupid O'Clock of the Year
Well well well... it's stupid o'clock. Whatever should I do?
Ideally, I should go sleep. But as the season for feeling old rolls about, I cannot help but think about feeling old.
This year is special though. The time duration between regular New Year's, ulang tahunku, and 春节 is probably at its shortest of about a month between the earliest event and the latest event (citation needed). That makes the profound aging effect hit me a little harder than expected.
I'm not in anyway depressed, as far as I know. A little melancholous perhaps, but definitely not to the level where I am actively sulking. I mean, I am already considered a middle-aged man for all purposes and intents---give me another few years and I would soon be in the age demographic of the neither here nor there, the so-called 不惑之年.
Melancholy strikes me because I realise that in many ways, I'm kind of a failure for not accepting/following society's expectations. I was supposed to head on to get a PhD and return as some kind of research hero for SIN city, but at best I was just some weird software engineer who helped build a system that could never reach the full potential of scale and use because of where it was designed and built in---the constant posturing for ``strategic reasons'' was never fully backed by the resources and management oversight needed to truly bring the system up to fulfill its namesake.
Peers of my age group have already gotten married, with some of them having their second or even their third child. Yet here I am, having spent five years in a long term relationship with nothing left to show of it, and my heart numb enough from the experience that the phrase ``我心已打烊'' makes perfect sense, even though I truly haven't committed myself to the single life just yet.
For the confused, that video (assuming it remains up) is the earworm that has been stuck for nearly thirty years that I only managed to find today---《我心已打烊》 by 叶瑷菱. The lyrics, as obtained from MyMusic, is as follows:
A while ago, I had put away Twinkletoes, my emperor penguin plushie. I was at home, not on-site at the customer's place, and most definitely not under all kinds of unreasonable pressures both implicit and explicit that I needed Twinkletoes for that reassuring hug.
I found myself retrieving him from my wardrobe two days ago, and giving him a tight squeeze for a short while, before carefully putting him back.
Watching the first serious original song from the HololiveEN -Myth- crew also brought out more of those melancholous thoughts due to the heartfelt lyrics that encompassed the hopes of Myth through their ups and downs being the pioneer gamble of a Japanese technology-turned-entertainment company to break out of the typecast and head into the wider world.
I also found myself just thinking about various futures like the way the Myth crew did, but those thoughts never truly got far because of the fog of uncertainty partly due to the management-by-committee approach of handling the pandemic, and partly because the already present ills of society have finally showed up in their true form when the usual fig leaves are blown askew due to the very same pandemic itself.
I turned to my God, and He gave me some comfort. He is close, yet there is still a distance between He and I. I have comfort knowing that my far future is certain with the salvation that came about through Jesus, but my near future is less so. Each day is just a careful movement from one state to another, until I am exhausted and turn in for the night, just to repeat it all again the next day, if God is willing.
And that is why I merely have that melancholous feel, as opposed to an outright depressive episode. I have no expectations on what can/will happen on ulang tuhanku---like the New Year's, it's just another day that needs to be gone through. Is there anything in particular that I am looking forward to?
Sadly, not really---none of the things that used to spark joy are present any more.
Anyway, that's all I have for this instalment of stupid o'clock. Before I finally get some sleep, I'll just leave Jude 17-22 as my parting thought.
Peace.
Ideally, I should go sleep. But as the season for feeling old rolls about, I cannot help but think about feeling old.
This year is special though. The time duration between regular New Year's, ulang tahunku, and 春节 is probably at its shortest of about a month between the earliest event and the latest event (citation needed). That makes the profound aging effect hit me a little harder than expected.
I'm not in anyway depressed, as far as I know. A little melancholous perhaps, but definitely not to the level where I am actively sulking. I mean, I am already considered a middle-aged man for all purposes and intents---give me another few years and I would soon be in the age demographic of the neither here nor there, the so-called 不惑之年.
Melancholy strikes me because I realise that in many ways, I'm kind of a failure for not accepting/following society's expectations. I was supposed to head on to get a PhD and return as some kind of research hero for SIN city, but at best I was just some weird software engineer who helped build a system that could never reach the full potential of scale and use because of where it was designed and built in---the constant posturing for ``strategic reasons'' was never fully backed by the resources and management oversight needed to truly bring the system up to fulfill its namesake.
Peers of my age group have already gotten married, with some of them having their second or even their third child. Yet here I am, having spent five years in a long term relationship with nothing left to show of it, and my heart numb enough from the experience that the phrase ``我心已打烊'' makes perfect sense, even though I truly haven't committed myself to the single life just yet.
For the confused, that video (assuming it remains up) is the earworm that has been stuck for nearly thirty years that I only managed to find today---《我心已打烊》 by 叶瑷菱. The lyrics, as obtained from MyMusic, is as follows:
我曾有过那么一段It's by no means a comforting piece of music, but it does seem to capture that melancholous feel that I have.
背着阳光横过沙漠
只为了找寻爱神的梦幻
爱神的模样
我曾有过那么一段
踏着星河奔向穹苍
只为了逃避死神的追寻
死神的挑战
岁月带着微笑
又将春天吹干
而我只有茫茫然
无奈的回头望
挥别了梦幻挥别了忧伤
我心已打烊我心已打烊
我心已打烊
我心已打烊我心已打烊
我心已打烊
A while ago, I had put away Twinkletoes, my emperor penguin plushie. I was at home, not on-site at the customer's place, and most definitely not under all kinds of unreasonable pressures both implicit and explicit that I needed Twinkletoes for that reassuring hug.
I found myself retrieving him from my wardrobe two days ago, and giving him a tight squeeze for a short while, before carefully putting him back.
Watching the first serious original song from the HololiveEN -Myth- crew also brought out more of those melancholous thoughts due to the heartfelt lyrics that encompassed the hopes of Myth through their ups and downs being the pioneer gamble of a Japanese technology-turned-entertainment company to break out of the typecast and head into the wider world.
I also found myself just thinking about various futures like the way the Myth crew did, but those thoughts never truly got far because of the fog of uncertainty partly due to the management-by-committee approach of handling the pandemic, and partly because the already present ills of society have finally showed up in their true form when the usual fig leaves are blown askew due to the very same pandemic itself.
I turned to my God, and He gave me some comfort. He is close, yet there is still a distance between He and I. I have comfort knowing that my far future is certain with the salvation that came about through Jesus, but my near future is less so. Each day is just a careful movement from one state to another, until I am exhausted and turn in for the night, just to repeat it all again the next day, if God is willing.
And that is why I merely have that melancholous feel, as opposed to an outright depressive episode. I have no expectations on what can/will happen on ulang tuhanku---like the New Year's, it's just another day that needs to be gone through. Is there anything in particular that I am looking forward to?
Sadly, not really---none of the things that used to spark joy are present any more.
Anyway, that's all I have for this instalment of stupid o'clock. Before I finally get some sleep, I'll just leave Jude 17-22 as my parting thought.
Peace.
Saturday, January 15, 2022
Well... A Fortnight Has Passed...
With the blink of an eye, the work week is over.
And that was the second week.
Working in a mostly empty office is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, silence except for the humming of the blowers whenever the air-conditioning decides to kick it up a notch means lots of concentration time. On the other hand, it kinda sucks that I am mostly just talking to myself, even during the ``down'' time in between handling units of work. It's a new team that I am working with, and it's nice to observe them and make small talk to learn more about each other's idiosyncracies, obviously not in a destructive sort of way.
My working title is finally confirmed after the many different versions that I had seen; that's also a good thing.
Reading is kicking back into gear, with my old plan of handling The Economist first going well. Considering that I now have about 2 hours of reading time from all the commutes (and perhaps another 30 min during the lunch break), that's ample to get through an issue---I take roughly 3--4 hours to handle one issue of The Economist.
One thing I've noted is just how fit most people seem to look even during my short walk to and fro from the office to the bus stop. Perhaps it is a case of them being nearly twenty years younger than me, or perhaps it is just their choice of attire---everyone was wearing either some kind of ``active wear'' sports clothes (think yoga gear, then think running gear; both sexes), or some kind of mid-riff baring barely there body-con clothes (for the females), you know, symbols of being youthful and by extension, fit. I'm glad that I am no longer at 80+ kg though, but that said, I still have another 10 kg to go to get to the regulation mass.
Ah well. I'll get there eventually.
I'm rediscovering eating places in Harbourfront Centre. They tend not to be as crowded as the ones in VivoCity nearby, and have a certain ``home-y'' kind of feel, like an old friend from a more quaint old time. So far I've eaten at Yoshinoya, Pastamania (for the pizza), Hitoyoshi Sushi, and Dunkin' Donuts. There is a ramen place that I would like to try, as well as a couple of other chain casual restaurants (including Pizza Hut, Elemen, and Crave).
Closer by at Seah Im, I'm pending the trying of some char kway teow, after having sampled quite a few of whatever's available in the evening spread across the fraction of stalls that were open.
------
I spent a little bit of time yesterday just building yet another rail extension in the nether, this time connecting my end portal station to my mob farm station. In many ways, my mob farm station is fast turning into a mini-hub, being the stop-over point for the second farthest station (the jungle biome, while the farthest station is the one waaaaaaay out in the quarantine zone for fighting the wither). A day or two ago, I ended up digging out yet another floor of my hill top base, effectively creating some kind of underground building complex. I just wonder how far I want to take it though... while the materials obtained is always welcome, I really should start thinking what I would like to do with all that space.
Maybe forcing an artificial village for trading purposes? It doesn't have to be 100% legit by bribing/dragging/kidnapping villages from the ``nearby'' village---that's where the semi-survival nature of this map comes into play; I will do enough of the grind work as long as it is fun, and when that stops getting fun while I still need to use that resource, I don't mind just conjuring something out of thin air using creative mode.
It's literally my own world that I play just for fun---no need to deliberately make my own life difficult here.
I guess that's about it for now. Till the next update, whenever it might be.
And that was the second week.
Working in a mostly empty office is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, silence except for the humming of the blowers whenever the air-conditioning decides to kick it up a notch means lots of concentration time. On the other hand, it kinda sucks that I am mostly just talking to myself, even during the ``down'' time in between handling units of work. It's a new team that I am working with, and it's nice to observe them and make small talk to learn more about each other's idiosyncracies, obviously not in a destructive sort of way.
My working title is finally confirmed after the many different versions that I had seen; that's also a good thing.
Reading is kicking back into gear, with my old plan of handling The Economist first going well. Considering that I now have about 2 hours of reading time from all the commutes (and perhaps another 30 min during the lunch break), that's ample to get through an issue---I take roughly 3--4 hours to handle one issue of The Economist.
One thing I've noted is just how fit most people seem to look even during my short walk to and fro from the office to the bus stop. Perhaps it is a case of them being nearly twenty years younger than me, or perhaps it is just their choice of attire---everyone was wearing either some kind of ``active wear'' sports clothes (think yoga gear, then think running gear; both sexes), or some kind of mid-riff baring barely there body-con clothes (for the females), you know, symbols of being youthful and by extension, fit. I'm glad that I am no longer at 80+ kg though, but that said, I still have another 10 kg to go to get to the regulation mass.
Ah well. I'll get there eventually.
I'm rediscovering eating places in Harbourfront Centre. They tend not to be as crowded as the ones in VivoCity nearby, and have a certain ``home-y'' kind of feel, like an old friend from a more quaint old time. So far I've eaten at Yoshinoya, Pastamania (for the pizza), Hitoyoshi Sushi, and Dunkin' Donuts. There is a ramen place that I would like to try, as well as a couple of other chain casual restaurants (including Pizza Hut, Elemen, and Crave).
Closer by at Seah Im, I'm pending the trying of some char kway teow, after having sampled quite a few of whatever's available in the evening spread across the fraction of stalls that were open.
------
I spent a little bit of time yesterday just building yet another rail extension in the nether, this time connecting my end portal station to my mob farm station. In many ways, my mob farm station is fast turning into a mini-hub, being the stop-over point for the second farthest station (the jungle biome, while the farthest station is the one waaaaaaay out in the quarantine zone for fighting the wither). A day or two ago, I ended up digging out yet another floor of my hill top base, effectively creating some kind of underground building complex. I just wonder how far I want to take it though... while the materials obtained is always welcome, I really should start thinking what I would like to do with all that space.
Maybe forcing an artificial village for trading purposes? It doesn't have to be 100% legit by bribing/dragging/kidnapping villages from the ``nearby'' village---that's where the semi-survival nature of this map comes into play; I will do enough of the grind work as long as it is fun, and when that stops getting fun while I still need to use that resource, I don't mind just conjuring something out of thin air using creative mode.
It's literally my own world that I play just for fun---no need to deliberately make my own life difficult here.
I guess that's about it for now. Till the next update, whenever it might be.
Sunday, January 09, 2022
And There Goes The First Week
I had originally wanted to write something about how the focus on stopping the objectification of women is misplaced because the reality of the matter has moved on to actually objectifying all human beings through the consistent slicing and dicing of the human experience in the form of various clustering/categorisation in a bid to attach attributes to the person in order to ``make sense'' of where this person ``stands'' on a variety of issues that relate to either politics or commerce, and that this particular denigration of human dignity is wide spread, under-reported, and seemingly tacitly accepted as part of the ``new'' social contract for existing these days.
But it felt like too much effort, because there was just so much that I need to deconstruct and explain just to ensure that I don't sound as though I am trivialising the also real issue of objectification of women through whataboutism.
So instead, let's just talk a little about the week that just passed.
It was an interesting start of my new tenure. Reporting to an office with a less-than-skeleton crew is a new-ish experience. The last place I worked at had a similar initial day, though for completely different reasons---instead of staff working from home due to a pandemic, it was due to how most people were stuck on-site to work in a tiny room due to contractual obligations.
While most people/places have a ``honeymoon period'' of a few days to get used to the new environment, I did not have much of that luxury. Lots of things were happening very quickly, and I had to start running as hard as I can just to keep up. Even at today, I'm not sure if I have actually caught up with everything that is needed for me to start working meaningfully at my responsibilities---but I'll just try to do what I can.
Mainly though, I'm doing my best to avoid unnecessary anxiety-causing situations. I am sincerely going to enforce the ``your lack of planning is not my emergency'' policy just to keep my sanity in check. Is this a case of insubordination then? I argue that it is not---seriously, if boundaries are not drawn clearly from the get-go, trying to set them again in the future is going to prove rather tough.
Talking about boundaries, I really dislike the mandatory installation of some app on my phone together with the installation of the TraceForever app when there is a perfectly working and acceptable alternative from the government involving the use of a token. The only good thing from it is that I have an alternate phone number that I can use with an associated ``burner'' phone for such intrusive requirements without compromising on the integrity/privacy of my own personal data on my personal phone.
For the confused, the reason for this is that depending on the policies of the IT department, devices that are linked in some way to the ``bring your own device'' policies may be subjected to destructive processes by the said IT department. The details of these policies are usually hidden deep within the security/use policies from the IT department, and even if the policies do not prescribe such remote destruction, all it takes is an incompetent operator from the IT department to nuke one's device from orbit. And the best part is that they can often take on indemnity using the guise of corporate data protection as their aegis. Sure one can always find some way to fight back, but it really is too late---one's personal stuff on one's personal phone is nuked already.
Thus, it's better to have a ``burner'' phone for such gray areas. Yes it set me back by nearly one hundred and fifty dollars, but I sleep well knowing that if they decide to nuke it, they can not overstep their authority.
Speaking of the ``burner'' phone, it's a Redmi 9A, not the A9 as initially indicated. I've managed to tune it to the point that it runs as well as the old Android One based Mi A2-lite that I was using before as the prior ``burner'' phone.
Also, for future reference, this is an important formula (from this documentation page):
I'll spend the rest of the day reading, I suppose.
Till the next update, the date of which I don't know. Ciao.
But it felt like too much effort, because there was just so much that I need to deconstruct and explain just to ensure that I don't sound as though I am trivialising the also real issue of objectification of women through whataboutism.
So instead, let's just talk a little about the week that just passed.
It was an interesting start of my new tenure. Reporting to an office with a less-than-skeleton crew is a new-ish experience. The last place I worked at had a similar initial day, though for completely different reasons---instead of staff working from home due to a pandemic, it was due to how most people were stuck on-site to work in a tiny room due to contractual obligations.
While most people/places have a ``honeymoon period'' of a few days to get used to the new environment, I did not have much of that luxury. Lots of things were happening very quickly, and I had to start running as hard as I can just to keep up. Even at today, I'm not sure if I have actually caught up with everything that is needed for me to start working meaningfully at my responsibilities---but I'll just try to do what I can.
Mainly though, I'm doing my best to avoid unnecessary anxiety-causing situations. I am sincerely going to enforce the ``your lack of planning is not my emergency'' policy just to keep my sanity in check. Is this a case of insubordination then? I argue that it is not---seriously, if boundaries are not drawn clearly from the get-go, trying to set them again in the future is going to prove rather tough.
Talking about boundaries, I really dislike the mandatory installation of some app on my phone together with the installation of the TraceForever app when there is a perfectly working and acceptable alternative from the government involving the use of a token. The only good thing from it is that I have an alternate phone number that I can use with an associated ``burner'' phone for such intrusive requirements without compromising on the integrity/privacy of my own personal data on my personal phone.
For the confused, the reason for this is that depending on the policies of the IT department, devices that are linked in some way to the ``bring your own device'' policies may be subjected to destructive processes by the said IT department. The details of these policies are usually hidden deep within the security/use policies from the IT department, and even if the policies do not prescribe such remote destruction, all it takes is an incompetent operator from the IT department to nuke one's device from orbit. And the best part is that they can often take on indemnity using the guise of corporate data protection as their aegis. Sure one can always find some way to fight back, but it really is too late---one's personal stuff on one's personal phone is nuked already.
Thus, it's better to have a ``burner'' phone for such gray areas. Yes it set me back by nearly one hundred and fifty dollars, but I sleep well knowing that if they decide to nuke it, they can not overstep their authority.
Speaking of the ``burner'' phone, it's a Redmi 9A, not the A9 as initially indicated. I've managed to tune it to the point that it runs as well as the old Android One based Mi A2-lite that I was using before as the prior ``burner'' phone.
Also, for future reference, this is an important formula (from this documentation page):
px = dp * (dpi / 160) ⇒ smallest_width = (160 * screen_width) / screen_dpiThat's all I think.
I'll spend the rest of the day reading, I suppose.
Till the next update, the date of which I don't know. Ciao.
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