The ``mental wellness'' long weekend came, and went, and for a glorious 12 hours, I felt mentally well.
Then everything of course spiralled back to the usual tired comment of being tired as I watch myself having to return to the office to deal with... whatever it is I have to deal with.
But by now, you must be tired reading about how tired I am, so I'm not going to belabour the point.
------
Friday was a replay of a similar 48-mi cycling route that I took on 2024-06-14. Still Road --> East Coast Park --> Tanah Merah Coast Road --> Changi Beach Park, and then a backtrack. I somehow managed to be a bit faster (06:18 min/mi vs 06:23 min/mi) despite the weather being way hotter (the rain came much later, and only in a short burst).
I claim that it was due to the introduction of a homemade quasi-isotonic drink that I was using this time around. 1 tsp of table salt, 1 flat tsp of citric acid, and 2 tbsp of sugar, mixed in 1 dm3 of tap water, and I quaffed the equivalent of 4 L throughout the entire ride, compared to just about 4 L of water previously.
I was significantly less delirious towards the two-thirds mark of the ride, and there was no cramping in my muscles, though I was damn sure that one of the stabiliser muscles on my lower left lateral part of my leg was hurting due to overcompensation, but that began fairly early into the ride.
I think I will just continue with this concept for the next long ride. I doubt it will be over the National Day weekend in August, mostly because that's when Cat Quest III is in full release, and I would like to play it.
I mean, who wouldn't? It's a nice game, staring cartoon cats, and is made by a Singapore game studio.
------
Speaking of games, I got my first freighter in No Man's Sky. At around 88.5 h of play time (wait, it has been nearly 90 hours?!), I'm fast approaching the point where the grind will prove to be annoying. Since I only play solo, it was time to bring out the ``play it my way to make it fun'' mode, and I suspect that I would have exhausted all my patience to play this in a few sessions, from which I might just drop it and go back to my regular programming (as in, gaming programme, not computer programming).
No Man's Sky has been fun. But the Anomaly and the base-building side quest roughly run into each other with their overlap of quest rewards. Not sure what to expect though.
I may get back to The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles once I'm ``sick'' of No Man's Sky, just to complete that series. Or maybe start on Disco Elysium, or maybe even the long-ignored Pillars of Eternity (before all the Divinity: Origin Sin and Baldur's Gate 3 hype).
My problem with these games is that they are narrative focused, which funny enough, is something that I have a slight aversion to as I watch my favourite VTubers at 2.5× speed in the background as I game.
First world problems, huh?
I think that's about it for today. Nothing really much to say, except for random belly-aching about heading back into the fray.
Till the next update.
Monday, July 22, 2024
Saturday, July 13, 2024
Pathological Liar
Ah... that was rough.
``Hey MT, we're sick of you complaining in a cryptic way that `that was rough'. Move on damnit!''
Sure voice-in-my-head.
So I was doing some thinking on and off the past couple of weeks. The question on my mind was, how does one deal with a pathologic liar?
Take the latest ah... US presidential election fiasco. Two geriatric men slugging it out. One's gaffe-prone but is generally a tad more gentlemanly, and the other is a pathologically lying cad.
Frankly, neither are good choices, but due to the way the US's politics is structured, it is now the race of ``the lesser of two evils''.
That's not my problem though---I cannot vote in the US by virtue of the fact that I'm not a US citizen.
The part that nerdsniped me is the observation that despite the pathological lying, somehow that person is still ``in the race''.
How?
The usual way to get someone to drop out of a political race is to demonstrate that the said person has some major [character] flaw that impinges on their ability to serve in said political office, and that often involves either fact-checking, or mud-slinging.
Fact-checking has been applied consistently at the pathological liar, and yet he bounces back from each one, stronger than before. And this includes both the regular ``inconsequential'' fact-checking to the stuff that the court of law rules---somehow that has done nothing to knock that person off his feet.
How?
Mud-slinging has been attempted, amateurishly in many ways since the other major political party that isn't supporting the pathologically lying person hasn't decided to stoop that low to play gutter politics just yet. Insinuations on character, on actual illegal and immoral behaviour have done nothing to dampen the zealous support of that person, even among those whose religious teachings were supposed to tell them that those illegal and immoral behaviours were wrong.
How?
Just how does one defeat a pathological liar? The orthodox ways that I just described don't seem to work. Maybe it is time to bring in the playground tactics, like out-louding the pathological liar, or resort to the age-old solution to all problems in life---extreme violence.
But either technique seems rather... inelegant. Perhaps there really isn't any other way that can achieve the outcome through elegance---elegance on its own suggests a certain level of self-awareness, and the willingness to cooperate, neither of which the pathological liar has.
So maybe the more primeval approach is the best. But are people willing to stoop that low?
Edit: Unfortunately, yes. There are some who are willing to stoop that low. That news article first came on 2024-07-14T06:48+08, and as at the time of this edit, was updated at 2024-07-14T14:45+08.
``Hey MT, we're sick of you complaining in a cryptic way that `that was rough'. Move on damnit!''
Sure voice-in-my-head.
So I was doing some thinking on and off the past couple of weeks. The question on my mind was, how does one deal with a pathologic liar?
Take the latest ah... US presidential election fiasco. Two geriatric men slugging it out. One's gaffe-prone but is generally a tad more gentlemanly, and the other is a pathologically lying cad.
Frankly, neither are good choices, but due to the way the US's politics is structured, it is now the race of ``the lesser of two evils''.
That's not my problem though---I cannot vote in the US by virtue of the fact that I'm not a US citizen.
The part that nerdsniped me is the observation that despite the pathological lying, somehow that person is still ``in the race''.
How?
The usual way to get someone to drop out of a political race is to demonstrate that the said person has some major [character] flaw that impinges on their ability to serve in said political office, and that often involves either fact-checking, or mud-slinging.
Fact-checking has been applied consistently at the pathological liar, and yet he bounces back from each one, stronger than before. And this includes both the regular ``inconsequential'' fact-checking to the stuff that the court of law rules---somehow that has done nothing to knock that person off his feet.
How?
Mud-slinging has been attempted, amateurishly in many ways since the other major political party that isn't supporting the pathologically lying person hasn't decided to stoop that low to play gutter politics just yet. Insinuations on character, on actual illegal and immoral behaviour have done nothing to dampen the zealous support of that person, even among those whose religious teachings were supposed to tell them that those illegal and immoral behaviours were wrong.
How?
Just how does one defeat a pathological liar? The orthodox ways that I just described don't seem to work. Maybe it is time to bring in the playground tactics, like out-louding the pathological liar, or resort to the age-old solution to all problems in life---extreme violence.
But either technique seems rather... inelegant. Perhaps there really isn't any other way that can achieve the outcome through elegance---elegance on its own suggests a certain level of self-awareness, and the willingness to cooperate, neither of which the pathological liar has.
So maybe the more primeval approach is the best. But are people willing to stoop that low?
Edit: Unfortunately, yes. There are some who are willing to stoop that low. That news article first came on 2024-07-14T06:48+08, and as at the time of this edit, was updated at 2024-07-14T14:45+08.
Saturday, July 06, 2024
Argh...
Aaaaarghhhh...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
------
What a week. Or was it a fortnight? Or three weeks?
I don't know---time's starting to merge with each other to the point that I no longer have a good sense of what is going on, except for the obvious dichotomies of work-time versus off-time, day versus night, and that's about it.
Things are moving along, slowly, with the kind of ``three steps forward, two steps back'' type of progression that I am starting to accept as the new norm.
I am not exactly a patient fellow, but I am doing my best to keep whatever patience I left about me.
------
I recently read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. It's a non-fiction book talking about the 1996 disaster from the climb up Mount Everest. It's a short read, but gripping and carrying the air of the old adventure story that had not been the genre in vogue for quite a while.
Is it worth reading? Sure. Not many high-mountain climbing books out there.
------
In other news, I've started on No Man's Sky, a game that had its redemption arc after a disastrous launch. So far I'm having fun with it, treating it largely as a souped up version of Minecraft that prioritises exploration & trade over infrastructure/monument building.
SGDQ 2024 is live too, so that's a treat.
And that's about it. I think I'm going to go lie down and catch up on rest.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
------
What a week. Or was it a fortnight? Or three weeks?
I don't know---time's starting to merge with each other to the point that I no longer have a good sense of what is going on, except for the obvious dichotomies of work-time versus off-time, day versus night, and that's about it.
Things are moving along, slowly, with the kind of ``three steps forward, two steps back'' type of progression that I am starting to accept as the new norm.
I am not exactly a patient fellow, but I am doing my best to keep whatever patience I left about me.
------
I recently read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. It's a non-fiction book talking about the 1996 disaster from the climb up Mount Everest. It's a short read, but gripping and carrying the air of the old adventure story that had not been the genre in vogue for quite a while.
Is it worth reading? Sure. Not many high-mountain climbing books out there.
------
In other news, I've started on No Man's Sky, a game that had its redemption arc after a disastrous launch. So far I'm having fun with it, treating it largely as a souped up version of Minecraft that prioritises exploration & trade over infrastructure/monument building.
SGDQ 2024 is live too, so that's a treat.
And that's about it. I think I'm going to go lie down and catch up on rest.
Friday, June 21, 2024
It Be Rough
This past week... was rough.
The receipts are being called in, and I find myself drifting in and out of mania and a sense of depression.
No, I'm not manic-depressive; it's just the natural shifts of energy states as I burn energy in times of need, and then space out in ennui while waiting for the batteries to recharge.
Is there anything else I want to add to this narrative?
Probably nothing else other than: June is two thirds of the way through, and more ``fun'' is incoming.
The receipts are being called in, and I find myself drifting in and out of mania and a sense of depression.
No, I'm not manic-depressive; it's just the natural shifts of energy states as I burn energy in times of need, and then space out in ennui while waiting for the batteries to recharge.
Is there anything else I want to add to this narrative?
Probably nothing else other than: June is two thirds of the way through, and more ``fun'' is incoming.
Sunday, June 09, 2024
Totally Failing Rate
So, about that total fertility rate (TFR) thing...
I won't degrade into some kind of misogynistic/misandristic argument, because that's both pointless and wrong.
I will stand by my thesis that if something matters enough to someone (where ``one'' can be a person, a corporation, a government), then plans will be made to get that thing done right.
For instance, if I value a friendship enough, I will make time to nurture said friendship. And lest anyone goes ``hur hur time isn't the same as other resources'', that's where they are wrong.
Recall that time is a very interesting non-renewable resource that all other resources take their indexing from. We try our best to bank time through the conversion [via a convoluted process of reasoning] into some form of money. We then use the said money to trade (or buy, same thing) for other things that we could not have easily/directly gotten through the expenditure of our own time.
So far, so good.
But the problem comes in when we start talking about priorities. In the bid to amass enough money, we sort of forget what basis it stems from. And so, at a personal level, people complain about children being costly to raise, and therefore aren't interested.
They get villified, and castigated---``You dishonour your family!'' levels too, were we to live in an age where [geographical] mobility were not as great as now.
However, all the complaints of the people at their own personal levels are but a highlight of the symptoms.
You see, there is a much larger influence cycle that is happening beyond the individual level. Roughly, the individual's choices bubble up, with the majority setting the social-level trend, and then the representative government takes heed on what the trends are like, put in their own ``big picture'' planning elements, before percolating the final trend down to the individuals, which affect their choices, ad infinitum.
Of the two, it is without doubt that the government's choices weigh the heavier, for the sole reason that they have a monopoly on the most powerful arbiter of ``truth''---force, or more bluntly, violence.
So, as clichéd as it sounds, TFR issues are government policy issues, and the blame should not be pushed back down to the individual citizens. We can argue about how improved access to education has liberated women to pursue a life beyond ``being stuck as a homemaker'', or how that improved education for women led to a greater imbalance between the number of highly educated women against that of highly educated men that led to less marriages in general (hypothesis that women are hypergamous while men are generally adverse to hypogamy), but those are just deflecting the blame around.
If the TFR were really a problem that is large enough for concern, then the government policies should reflect that. Instead, we see that a vast majority of the policies address more of the short-term economic issues, as opposed to the slow but steady re-architecture of the social fabric to support a better TFR.
``But MT, TFR is just the capitalistic idea of a Ponzi scheme, where societies rely more on the next generation to pay for the living for the previous one!''
If that were the case, then shouldn't it be motivating enough to adjust policies to address the TFR? After all, it does contribute to the economy, right?
And no, consistent immigration isn't a permanent solution. It's a bit like trying to write plug-ins for various third party software for a piece of core software that one uses (say a text editor). No matter how good the plug-ins are written, there will be incompatibility issues, since we are literally trying to create an interpretation of the third party's framework that ``makes sense'' within the framework of the core. And as long as the third party software remains as a plug-in, it is never truly a part of the core; and as long as migrants keep within the confines of their self-created enclave and never truly venture out to integrate with the country that they migrated to, their mentality will forever be that of a migrant, and not a citizen, no matter what their official immigration status is with the government.
Crucially though, consistent immigration is a zero-sum game that trades off on comparative advantage. To ensure that it can continue to work, is to assume that the places where they have more people who want to leave will continue to do so, and in the worst case scenario, steps may even be considered/taken to ensure that they remain so (i.e. removing/stunting any of the social advances that we know that leads to decreased TFR).
We like to talk about ``whole-of-government'' approaches. I think that TFR itself is an excellent problem to tackle with that. Moreover, it also involves a time horizon much longer than that of a single election cycle.
Perhaps it is truly time for the government to show that long-term planning of doing what is right that it has boldly claim before.
I won't degrade into some kind of misogynistic/misandristic argument, because that's both pointless and wrong.
I will stand by my thesis that if something matters enough to someone (where ``one'' can be a person, a corporation, a government), then plans will be made to get that thing done right.
For instance, if I value a friendship enough, I will make time to nurture said friendship. And lest anyone goes ``hur hur time isn't the same as other resources'', that's where they are wrong.
Recall that time is a very interesting non-renewable resource that all other resources take their indexing from. We try our best to bank time through the conversion [via a convoluted process of reasoning] into some form of money. We then use the said money to trade (or buy, same thing) for other things that we could not have easily/directly gotten through the expenditure of our own time.
So far, so good.
But the problem comes in when we start talking about priorities. In the bid to amass enough money, we sort of forget what basis it stems from. And so, at a personal level, people complain about children being costly to raise, and therefore aren't interested.
They get villified, and castigated---``You dishonour your family!'' levels too, were we to live in an age where [geographical] mobility were not as great as now.
However, all the complaints of the people at their own personal levels are but a highlight of the symptoms.
You see, there is a much larger influence cycle that is happening beyond the individual level. Roughly, the individual's choices bubble up, with the majority setting the social-level trend, and then the representative government takes heed on what the trends are like, put in their own ``big picture'' planning elements, before percolating the final trend down to the individuals, which affect their choices, ad infinitum.
Of the two, it is without doubt that the government's choices weigh the heavier, for the sole reason that they have a monopoly on the most powerful arbiter of ``truth''---force, or more bluntly, violence.
So, as clichéd as it sounds, TFR issues are government policy issues, and the blame should not be pushed back down to the individual citizens. We can argue about how improved access to education has liberated women to pursue a life beyond ``being stuck as a homemaker'', or how that improved education for women led to a greater imbalance between the number of highly educated women against that of highly educated men that led to less marriages in general (hypothesis that women are hypergamous while men are generally adverse to hypogamy), but those are just deflecting the blame around.
If the TFR were really a problem that is large enough for concern, then the government policies should reflect that. Instead, we see that a vast majority of the policies address more of the short-term economic issues, as opposed to the slow but steady re-architecture of the social fabric to support a better TFR.
``But MT, TFR is just the capitalistic idea of a Ponzi scheme, where societies rely more on the next generation to pay for the living for the previous one!''
If that were the case, then shouldn't it be motivating enough to adjust policies to address the TFR? After all, it does contribute to the economy, right?
And no, consistent immigration isn't a permanent solution. It's a bit like trying to write plug-ins for various third party software for a piece of core software that one uses (say a text editor). No matter how good the plug-ins are written, there will be incompatibility issues, since we are literally trying to create an interpretation of the third party's framework that ``makes sense'' within the framework of the core. And as long as the third party software remains as a plug-in, it is never truly a part of the core; and as long as migrants keep within the confines of their self-created enclave and never truly venture out to integrate with the country that they migrated to, their mentality will forever be that of a migrant, and not a citizen, no matter what their official immigration status is with the government.
Crucially though, consistent immigration is a zero-sum game that trades off on comparative advantage. To ensure that it can continue to work, is to assume that the places where they have more people who want to leave will continue to do so, and in the worst case scenario, steps may even be considered/taken to ensure that they remain so (i.e. removing/stunting any of the social advances that we know that leads to decreased TFR).
We like to talk about ``whole-of-government'' approaches. I think that TFR itself is an excellent problem to tackle with that. Moreover, it also involves a time horizon much longer than that of a single election cycle.
Perhaps it is truly time for the government to show that long-term planning of doing what is right that it has boldly claim before.
Saturday, June 08, 2024
Blasphemous---Done!
I have not looked forward to the end of the week as much as this one.
It's not because there's something special planned for this weekend (that's like a maybe for next week's über-long weekend), but that I'm glad that I can drop whatever was happening over the work week to just... chill out.
Work week wasn't bad per se, but it sure had quite a few things that threw in some spanners that gummed up the [routineness] of work. I know that being a ``manager'' meant that work was expected to be anything but routine, I'm still an engineer at heart. Needless to say, I just ran out of spoons near Thursday after a whole bunch of meetings with new people, and sometimes in new locations.
But no one wants to hear about the work week---it's just what we all do to ensure that bills are paid, and hobbies can be fed.
------
I completed Blasphemous last night, getting all three endings following the plan laid out in this Reddit post. There was a bug where the ``Wound of Abnegation'' was obtained from Crisanta in the Mea Culpa Chapel, but was not properly reflected in the inventory of quest items.
Actually, there were quite a few bugs in Blasphemous. They weren't really game-breaking, but it was still annoying.
All in all, I enjoyed Blasphemous. It was exactly as I had mentioned earlier---not as punishing as Hollow Knight, nor as clunky as Feudal Alloy. Blasphemous had some interesting boss fights (that second phase of the Cristanta fight was full on impossible had I not mastered the timing of the parry after the very gruelling Isidora fight that took me a few days of trying to fight it straight before cheesing it with ``Romance to the Crimson Mist'' prayer, and even that took me several tries to get right), and cool-ish traversal options that did not include an air dash nor a double jump.
The currency (Tears of Atonement) was not exactly easy to farm nearer the beginning where their impact was greatest (but I still did, 50+ at a time, near Albero, just so to get the first tier of Mea Culpa upgrades, which cost about 5k with buffer), but towards the end-game I found myself simply rolling with them, especially as I was attempting and re-attempting the Crisanta fight. Of the entire skill tree, I found myself using the Lunge attacks the most, after of course the Combo attacks. Charged strikes are too costly in time to pull off, but I suppose a more skilled player can get better mileage out of it than I.
The key thing that I learnt from completing Blasphemous was how much I preferred to do major actions with the ABXY buttons over that of the R1/RT/L1/LT set up (I'm staring at you, Elden Ring that I gave up trying to complete). The thumbs just work much faster than the index fingers, and this is true even for Blasphemous, where I face-tanked any an attack that I failed to dodge simply because the eye-brain-index-finger axis had a slow reaction.
Pressing A to jump and then X multiple times to smack some idiot with a sword? Yes please. R1, R1, L1 to do a weapon combo? Yeah, fuck off.
And so, that's that for Blasphemous for now. I didn't bother with the other [free] DLC, except for the ``Wounds of Eventide'' one that allowed me to obtain the final ``true'' ending of the game. The ``Strife & Run'' DLC with Bloodstained cross-over content was basically a series of timed challenge platform puzzles, which I didn't like because precision movement in Blasphemous is a bear. As mentioned earlier, there is no air dash, and double jump---verticality is largely obtained either through a wall jump technique that required using the attack action to ``stab'' into the wall instead of just wall-kicking a la Megaman X, or using an arcane dash-attack aerial combo (fixed from direction-attack aerial) on a strikable object to do an ``Air Impulse'' instead of an unconstrained double jump. The 8-bit area was Nintendo-hard for no good reason, and the rest of the DLC was for NG+ which I was uninterested in.
``But MT, what about the `movement progression' items like `Blood Perpetuated in Sand', `Linen of Golden Thread', `Nail Uprooted from Dirt', `Silvered Lung of Dolphos', and `Three Gnarled Tongues'?''
Those act more like keys to areas than actual movement progression, since they affect the stage itself rather than grant new abilities for the player character.
Okay, maaaaybe the ``Nail Uprooted from Dirt'' can count since it makes the marsh that was previously unjumpable suddenly operate as though it isn't there, jumping-wise.
Maybe I'll get back to Shovel Knight, trying to at least complete the base game.
Maybe.
I'm more likely to start getting into Cassette Beasts though...
------
I've gotten No Man's Sky recently due to it being half-off. I started with the controller, and found that I hated it (aiming with the right stick is annoying). So it's back to the venerable keyboard+mouse combo.
First impressions so far are fine. It's a bit like Minecraft, but with less free-form building. I'm still quite early into the game (no where near the 50 h mark yet), so it's hard to say. I don't think it expands into something as crazy as Satisfactory or Factorio, but as at now, I'm not completely bored about it yet, which is a good thing.
I'm kinda procrastinating a little on fixing up my Nether rail system in Minecraft, and a recent Reine Minecraft adventure video showed an interesting in-place rail switching mechanism has given me some ideas on how I might want to set up the nether rail. But I'm lazy and don't want to think... for now.
------
I spent this morning checking out a stand-up comedy special by Russell Peters. This guy was hot years ago, with this show that made its rounds on the 'net.
It's alright. He's similar to he was back then, though he does lay it on thick with the F-bombs, which is fine by me.
That's about it for this update I suppose. Till the next time.
It's not because there's something special planned for this weekend (that's like a maybe for next week's über-long weekend), but that I'm glad that I can drop whatever was happening over the work week to just... chill out.
Work week wasn't bad per se, but it sure had quite a few things that threw in some spanners that gummed up the [routineness] of work. I know that being a ``manager'' meant that work was expected to be anything but routine, I'm still an engineer at heart. Needless to say, I just ran out of spoons near Thursday after a whole bunch of meetings with new people, and sometimes in new locations.
But no one wants to hear about the work week---it's just what we all do to ensure that bills are paid, and hobbies can be fed.
------
I completed Blasphemous last night, getting all three endings following the plan laid out in this Reddit post. There was a bug where the ``Wound of Abnegation'' was obtained from Crisanta in the Mea Culpa Chapel, but was not properly reflected in the inventory of quest items.
Actually, there were quite a few bugs in Blasphemous. They weren't really game-breaking, but it was still annoying.
All in all, I enjoyed Blasphemous. It was exactly as I had mentioned earlier---not as punishing as Hollow Knight, nor as clunky as Feudal Alloy. Blasphemous had some interesting boss fights (that second phase of the Cristanta fight was full on impossible had I not mastered the timing of the parry after the very gruelling Isidora fight that took me a few days of trying to fight it straight before cheesing it with ``Romance to the Crimson Mist'' prayer, and even that took me several tries to get right), and cool-ish traversal options that did not include an air dash nor a double jump.
The currency (Tears of Atonement) was not exactly easy to farm nearer the beginning where their impact was greatest (but I still did, 50+ at a time, near Albero, just so to get the first tier of Mea Culpa upgrades, which cost about 5k with buffer), but towards the end-game I found myself simply rolling with them, especially as I was attempting and re-attempting the Crisanta fight. Of the entire skill tree, I found myself using the Lunge attacks the most, after of course the Combo attacks. Charged strikes are too costly in time to pull off, but I suppose a more skilled player can get better mileage out of it than I.
The key thing that I learnt from completing Blasphemous was how much I preferred to do major actions with the ABXY buttons over that of the R1/RT/L1/LT set up (I'm staring at you, Elden Ring that I gave up trying to complete). The thumbs just work much faster than the index fingers, and this is true even for Blasphemous, where I face-tanked any an attack that I failed to dodge simply because the eye-brain-index-finger axis had a slow reaction.
Pressing A to jump and then X multiple times to smack some idiot with a sword? Yes please. R1, R1, L1 to do a weapon combo? Yeah, fuck off.
And so, that's that for Blasphemous for now. I didn't bother with the other [free] DLC, except for the ``Wounds of Eventide'' one that allowed me to obtain the final ``true'' ending of the game. The ``Strife & Run'' DLC with Bloodstained cross-over content was basically a series of timed challenge platform puzzles, which I didn't like because precision movement in Blasphemous is a bear. As mentioned earlier, there is no air dash, and double jump---verticality is largely obtained either through a wall jump technique that required using the attack action to ``stab'' into the wall instead of just wall-kicking a la Megaman X, or using an arcane dash-attack aerial combo (fixed from direction-attack aerial) on a strikable object to do an ``Air Impulse'' instead of an unconstrained double jump. The 8-bit area was Nintendo-hard for no good reason, and the rest of the DLC was for NG+ which I was uninterested in.
``But MT, what about the `movement progression' items like `Blood Perpetuated in Sand', `Linen of Golden Thread', `Nail Uprooted from Dirt', `Silvered Lung of Dolphos', and `Three Gnarled Tongues'?''
Those act more like keys to areas than actual movement progression, since they affect the stage itself rather than grant new abilities for the player character.
Okay, maaaaybe the ``Nail Uprooted from Dirt'' can count since it makes the marsh that was previously unjumpable suddenly operate as though it isn't there, jumping-wise.
Maybe I'll get back to Shovel Knight, trying to at least complete the base game.
Maybe.
I'm more likely to start getting into Cassette Beasts though...
------
I've gotten No Man's Sky recently due to it being half-off. I started with the controller, and found that I hated it (aiming with the right stick is annoying). So it's back to the venerable keyboard+mouse combo.
First impressions so far are fine. It's a bit like Minecraft, but with less free-form building. I'm still quite early into the game (no where near the 50 h mark yet), so it's hard to say. I don't think it expands into something as crazy as Satisfactory or Factorio, but as at now, I'm not completely bored about it yet, which is a good thing.
I'm kinda procrastinating a little on fixing up my Nether rail system in Minecraft, and a recent Reine Minecraft adventure video showed an interesting in-place rail switching mechanism has given me some ideas on how I might want to set up the nether rail. But I'm lazy and don't want to think... for now.
------
I spent this morning checking out a stand-up comedy special by Russell Peters. This guy was hot years ago, with this show that made its rounds on the 'net.
It's alright. He's similar to he was back then, though he does lay it on thick with the F-bombs, which is fine by me.
That's about it for this update I suppose. Till the next time.
Wednesday, June 05, 2024
``I'm Alive!''
Today, when I saw an acquaintance that I hadn't met in a while, and when said acquaintance greeted me with ``How are you?'', I replied unhesitatingly with ``I'm alive!''.
I never said that before. My usual reply was ``I'm not dead yet!'', so I suppose this can be seen as a breakthrough?
Maybe things are turning for the better. Who knows?
Only God, for sure.
I never said that before. My usual reply was ``I'm not dead yet!'', so I suppose this can be seen as a breakthrough?
Maybe things are turning for the better. Who knows?
Only God, for sure.
Saturday, June 01, 2024
Orcish ACM Behaviours In Re ORCID Demandment
What a week.
Work side had lots of drama, most of which was external. It was unfortunate, but in many ways, not exactly out of my estimation. I suppose it just comes with the territory of doing non-trivial projects.
Still on work, but at a personal level, I felt sad that I had to volunteer to remove my name from a paper that was to be published under a journal/conference hosted by the ACM, due to the organisation's hard-headed enforcement of every contributing author to provide their ORCID. According to the submission process, anyone who does not have an ORCID cannot be an author to the paper.
ORCID is a supranational entity that maintains a list of unique identifiers for people who self-register/identify in their system, a process that is free as in no payment [from these people] is required. It is, however, acceptance of money from [research] funding organisations, publications, and other such groups of people who are involved in the research process but are not the researchers themselves.
I volunteered to remove my name from the paper to prevent its non-publication---my co-authors relied on publications to get their key performance indicators necessary for their work, while as an engineer, any and all papers published with my name on it are, at best, a good to have in terms of bragging rights only.
``But MT, ORCID is free to use! Why don't you just create an account [with your work email] and run with it?''
It's not [just] about the ``freeness'' of the service; it's the fact that ACM decided to prioritise perfection in their metadata over having proper attribution through not making ORCID optional.
The whole idea of ORCID also turns my stomach. I lived through the age when Facebook and LinkedIn were nascent, before they turned into the current cesspools. Thus, I am well aware of the usual life cycle of such identity-centric systems that aren't state-run/legally mandated and enforced.
They always begin with good intentions; the idea of a centrally managed identity broker to ensure that the MT you are speaking with is the ``real'' MT. And the usual modus operandi is to have as many people sign on as possible.
But real money is needed to run the infrastructure for these information systems. Some funds are usually available in the beginning to get things off the ground and into the ``people'' acquisition phase, but eventually these systems will need to find some revenue streams.
Partnerships of all sorts will be forged with those who have money, who won't give money without getting something of value [to them] in return. Network efforts increasing the popularity of a particular network happen, with the biggest ones getting even bigger, requiring more resources to keep going, while simultaneously becoming a natural monopoly.
Then a critical size is hit, the business people start swarming and taking over governance subtly or otherwise, enshittificating the experience with increasingly intrusive business-friendly behaviours that do not benefit the original group of people who were promised a centrally managed identity broker.
Meanwhile, the monopolising effect from sheer size gives so much clout to the identity broker that there is effectively no more choices, and anyone who wants to play/work in the mainstream are coerced into giving up more and more of their choices just to stay within the said mainstream, lest they be pariahs and lose their work-related social networks.
I do not like that.
I am not a researcher by trade, so I do not need to play the game.
I can give a big middle finger to the game and make my stand.
And that I did.
Do I feel good about it? Frankly, I am a little disappointed that I cannot put my name on the paper even though I had contributed ideas here and there to make things work out, not to mention the final round of reviewing/suggestions to make the paper flow better. But it is rare that one gets to make a stand for their principles unhindered, and I think that it is important for me to do so. Law and justice are not the same---the Bible teaches us to follow the law, but to leave God to deal justice by not seeking vengeance on our own. In this case, ACM's requirement is technically not a law a la backed by the state, but is an arbitrary rule by an arbitrary organisation.
That makes resistance to it so much simpler.
To be fair, ORCID does provide a solution for the ``Wang Wei'' problem---disambiguating researchers who share the same name for whatever purposes. It is a workable solution, even if I do not agree with how it will eventually become the gatekeeper of who is considered a researcher (must have ORCID) and who isn't. Because that gives ORCID a tremendous amount of power over who lives or dies (metaphorically) while keeping these people disenfranchised.
But I do not need to play that game.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got me some Blasphemous to play a bit, before having to practise some pieces needed for music ministry tomorrow.
Work side had lots of drama, most of which was external. It was unfortunate, but in many ways, not exactly out of my estimation. I suppose it just comes with the territory of doing non-trivial projects.
Still on work, but at a personal level, I felt sad that I had to volunteer to remove my name from a paper that was to be published under a journal/conference hosted by the ACM, due to the organisation's hard-headed enforcement of every contributing author to provide their ORCID. According to the submission process, anyone who does not have an ORCID cannot be an author to the paper.
ORCID is a supranational entity that maintains a list of unique identifiers for people who self-register/identify in their system, a process that is free as in no payment [from these people] is required. It is, however, acceptance of money from [research] funding organisations, publications, and other such groups of people who are involved in the research process but are not the researchers themselves.
I volunteered to remove my name from the paper to prevent its non-publication---my co-authors relied on publications to get their key performance indicators necessary for their work, while as an engineer, any and all papers published with my name on it are, at best, a good to have in terms of bragging rights only.
``But MT, ORCID is free to use! Why don't you just create an account [with your work email] and run with it?''
It's not [just] about the ``freeness'' of the service; it's the fact that ACM decided to prioritise perfection in their metadata over having proper attribution through not making ORCID optional.
The whole idea of ORCID also turns my stomach. I lived through the age when Facebook and LinkedIn were nascent, before they turned into the current cesspools. Thus, I am well aware of the usual life cycle of such identity-centric systems that aren't state-run/legally mandated and enforced.
They always begin with good intentions; the idea of a centrally managed identity broker to ensure that the MT you are speaking with is the ``real'' MT. And the usual modus operandi is to have as many people sign on as possible.
But real money is needed to run the infrastructure for these information systems. Some funds are usually available in the beginning to get things off the ground and into the ``people'' acquisition phase, but eventually these systems will need to find some revenue streams.
Partnerships of all sorts will be forged with those who have money, who won't give money without getting something of value [to them] in return. Network efforts increasing the popularity of a particular network happen, with the biggest ones getting even bigger, requiring more resources to keep going, while simultaneously becoming a natural monopoly.
Then a critical size is hit, the business people start swarming and taking over governance subtly or otherwise, enshittificating the experience with increasingly intrusive business-friendly behaviours that do not benefit the original group of people who were promised a centrally managed identity broker.
Meanwhile, the monopolising effect from sheer size gives so much clout to the identity broker that there is effectively no more choices, and anyone who wants to play/work in the mainstream are coerced into giving up more and more of their choices just to stay within the said mainstream, lest they be pariahs and lose their work-related social networks.
I do not like that.
I am not a researcher by trade, so I do not need to play the game.
I can give a big middle finger to the game and make my stand.
And that I did.
Do I feel good about it? Frankly, I am a little disappointed that I cannot put my name on the paper even though I had contributed ideas here and there to make things work out, not to mention the final round of reviewing/suggestions to make the paper flow better. But it is rare that one gets to make a stand for their principles unhindered, and I think that it is important for me to do so. Law and justice are not the same---the Bible teaches us to follow the law, but to leave God to deal justice by not seeking vengeance on our own. In this case, ACM's requirement is technically not a law a la backed by the state, but is an arbitrary rule by an arbitrary organisation.
That makes resistance to it so much simpler.
To be fair, ORCID does provide a solution for the ``Wang Wei'' problem---disambiguating researchers who share the same name for whatever purposes. It is a workable solution, even if I do not agree with how it will eventually become the gatekeeper of who is considered a researcher (must have ORCID) and who isn't. Because that gives ORCID a tremendous amount of power over who lives or dies (metaphorically) while keeping these people disenfranchised.
But I do not need to play that game.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got me some Blasphemous to play a bit, before having to practise some pieces needed for music ministry tomorrow.
Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Cleaning dizi
Damn that was tiring, but fulfilling.
Today's a public holiday, and I spent a few hours in the morning till the early afternoon cleaning my dizi. I used a damp microfibre cloth to clean the exterior, then used damped cotton buds to clean the embouchure, tone, and vent holes. For those dizi that had joints, I took them apart at their joints, and cleaned out the old cork grease that I had put on before, rotated the connecting point repeatedly enough for the joints to grind out their non-round parts, cleaned that out, before replacing with a new thin layer of cork grease [from Yamaha].
``But MT, why did you purposefully made the joint grind itself smooth when we don't even do that for any other joints for concert flutes and the like?''
See, the problem with the dizi is that unlike the concert flute, the tolerances of the joints are not as tight. There is also an innate eccentricity due to these joints being attached completely separately from the boring through of the bamboo. These joints are also well-known for seizing up partly due to the eccentricity, and partly due to the corrosion. So, what I just did was to use the joint against itself to attain a more smooth/rounded outcome.
Of course, the proper way is to have a mandrel and shape things up carefully, but considering how many different sized dizi I was working with (around 27), that would be impractical.
As for the [Yamaha] cork grease, I found that it had the right balance of tack (i.e. stickiness), and lubrication that allowed the metallic parts of the joints to smoothly slide past each other. A smooth joint movement is important because it allows ease of performing fine-tuning at the 0.5 mm resolution.
If the joint sticks, tuning is hard, and there may also be leaks, which is bad.
My older dizi had much cleaner joints, since I had done the first deep clean before, while the newer ones had to undergo quite a bit of that grind-clean-repeat process. But the results are often so much worth it, especially that whole ``joints not seizing and are butter smooth for tuning purposes'' aspect.
After I had packed them away, I realised that I didn't do the same for the two or three xiao that I have lying around. Ah well.
The last thing to add about this is that I found that my latex glove size is apparently an S (85±10 mm). In-teresting. The context for the latex glove was for me to protect the broken skin that my fingers have from the occasions where I needed to use 70% Isopropyl Alcohol while doing the joint cleaning.
------
In other news, I got my head shaved again. It was nice.
I restarted Blasphemous from the beginning again, and was doing much better with the rough guide on the sequence of areas to go through, as opposed to the breadth-first search method that I was using earlier, where I did not commit enough to an area to actually clear it completely and gain the necessary benefits.
Cannot remember what I last talked about for my Minecraft adventures, but I have built up a larger platform for my nether hub. I've figured out where the general places of interest in the overworld should be, and need to lay out the new starting points for the rails to follow that. The walls have been built up, but I haven't capped it with a proper roof, which resulted in many zombiepigmen piglins falling in and causing havoc.
I think that's about it for now. I'll probably play a bit more of Blasphemous before turning in for the night.
After all, tomorrow's a work day.
Today's a public holiday, and I spent a few hours in the morning till the early afternoon cleaning my dizi. I used a damp microfibre cloth to clean the exterior, then used damped cotton buds to clean the embouchure, tone, and vent holes. For those dizi that had joints, I took them apart at their joints, and cleaned out the old cork grease that I had put on before, rotated the connecting point repeatedly enough for the joints to grind out their non-round parts, cleaned that out, before replacing with a new thin layer of cork grease [from Yamaha].
``But MT, why did you purposefully made the joint grind itself smooth when we don't even do that for any other joints for concert flutes and the like?''
See, the problem with the dizi is that unlike the concert flute, the tolerances of the joints are not as tight. There is also an innate eccentricity due to these joints being attached completely separately from the boring through of the bamboo. These joints are also well-known for seizing up partly due to the eccentricity, and partly due to the corrosion. So, what I just did was to use the joint against itself to attain a more smooth/rounded outcome.
Of course, the proper way is to have a mandrel and shape things up carefully, but considering how many different sized dizi I was working with (around 27), that would be impractical.
As for the [Yamaha] cork grease, I found that it had the right balance of tack (i.e. stickiness), and lubrication that allowed the metallic parts of the joints to smoothly slide past each other. A smooth joint movement is important because it allows ease of performing fine-tuning at the 0.5 mm resolution.
If the joint sticks, tuning is hard, and there may also be leaks, which is bad.
My older dizi had much cleaner joints, since I had done the first deep clean before, while the newer ones had to undergo quite a bit of that grind-clean-repeat process. But the results are often so much worth it, especially that whole ``joints not seizing and are butter smooth for tuning purposes'' aspect.
After I had packed them away, I realised that I didn't do the same for the two or three xiao that I have lying around. Ah well.
The last thing to add about this is that I found that my latex glove size is apparently an S (85±10 mm). In-teresting. The context for the latex glove was for me to protect the broken skin that my fingers have from the occasions where I needed to use 70% Isopropyl Alcohol while doing the joint cleaning.
------
In other news, I got my head shaved again. It was nice.
I restarted Blasphemous from the beginning again, and was doing much better with the rough guide on the sequence of areas to go through, as opposed to the breadth-first search method that I was using earlier, where I did not commit enough to an area to actually clear it completely and gain the necessary benefits.
Cannot remember what I last talked about for my Minecraft adventures, but I have built up a larger platform for my nether hub. I've figured out where the general places of interest in the overworld should be, and need to lay out the new starting points for the rails to follow that. The walls have been built up, but I haven't capped it with a proper roof, which resulted in many zombie
I think that's about it for now. I'll probably play a bit more of Blasphemous before turning in for the night.
After all, tomorrow's a work day.
Thursday, May 16, 2024
...and Before OP Trashes The [Troll] Post
In re a post on Flute Forum about the difference between the concert flute and the Chinese flute (笛子):
Okay, assuming you are not trolling, both concert flutes and the dizi are from the same general family of edge-blown aerophones.
I won't talk about the concert flute because we're in the [Concert] Flute Forum.
The dizi is a member of the simple system flute, where pitch is controlled through tone holes that are covered by the fingers. Unlike most simple system flutes, the dizi stands out with the addition of a membrane hole that is affixed with a membrane derived from the interior of the reed using a water soluble adhesive.
This membrane, when affixed with the right tension, adds a characteristic buzz to the tone that gives the dizi its robust character as compared to other flutes of comparable size.
The dizi's relative tuning with itself by the tone holes have two main families, one being the diatonic scale, and the other being the traditional one, which is differentiated by the position and size of the fifth tone hole as counted from embouchure hole end first (diatonic has it shifted slightly closer embouchure hole-ward, while traditional has a more even spacing).
Dizi are often made of bamboo, and can come in a wide variety of sizes/pitch ranges, from around alto flute range all the way to garklein recorder range.
No matter the size, the dizi's effective range is usually 2 octaves and a second, and sometimes hitting 2 octaves and a sixth.
The most commonly seen dizi are usually nearer the piccolo range, or the alto recorder range. More modern [Chinese orchestral] pieces may use additional dizi nearer the concert flute range.
The function of the dizi is usually quite different from that of the concert flute -- its strident but sweet tone usually means that it is often one of the leading melody lines in musical pieces.
All flute techniques are applicable to the dizi, with chromatic runs being among the harder things to pull off on the dizi.
Some advanced techniques on the dizi are impossible to play on the concert flute -- like 飞指 (rapid sliding of the the fingers up and down along the tone holes), and using the closest tone hole as an embouchure hole for a haunting effect while using the rest of the tone holes for pitching.
Even though the dizi is usually cheaper than a concert flute by monetary value, finding a high quality concert flute is ironically much eaiser than finding a high quality dizi.
That's because a high quality dizi requires bamboo of high density, and that material is getting increasingly harder to get due to increased global temperatures.
Bamboo is a fast-growing grass, and the higher the overall ambient temperature, the faster it grows, leading to decreased density.
Hope this helps!
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
...and Then The Body Says ``No''
What a fustercluck.
I fixed my mental wellness issue with an urgent leave on Friday, only to be slammed with an acute upper respiratory tract infection from Sunday to Tuesday, necessitating the visiting of a GP to get some meds and an appropriate amount of sick leave to sleep it off.
And of course, today's Hack Day is nullified, since I need to catch up on the stuff that had occurred between the previous two days.
But then again, I am belly-aching a little. Things are tight in terms of timing, but as usual, some preparation on my end, and the Providence of God meant that things will all turn out right in the end.
Frankly, there isn't much to write today, except for that little bit of complaining about how I basically lost some time due to the failure of my meat body.
Till the next update.
P.S.: You. The one running the bots that are based on AWS scraping my blog. I see you there. Don't be a dick.
I fixed my mental wellness issue with an urgent leave on Friday, only to be slammed with an acute upper respiratory tract infection from Sunday to Tuesday, necessitating the visiting of a GP to get some meds and an appropriate amount of sick leave to sleep it off.
And of course, today's Hack Day is nullified, since I need to catch up on the stuff that had occurred between the previous two days.
But then again, I am belly-aching a little. Things are tight in terms of timing, but as usual, some preparation on my end, and the Providence of God meant that things will all turn out right in the end.
Frankly, there isn't much to write today, except for that little bit of complaining about how I basically lost some time due to the failure of my meat body.
Till the next update.
P.S.: You. The one running the bots that are based on AWS scraping my blog. I see you there. Don't be a dick.
Friday, May 10, 2024
Urgent Leave---Mental Wellness Day
Urgent one-day leave taken today---a ``mental well-ness day'' if you will. Work has been rather insufferable to the point where my ``brain no worky'' (official reason submitted to my reporting manager, by the way). It was insufferable not because it was tough (it was tough), but that there were just too many things going on that I was context switching way too much, and way too hard.
Couple that with an abysmal sleep cycle, and you have ``brain no worky'' syndrome.
And so, a day of rest was taken.
``But MT, tomorrow is Saturday! Couldn't you have waited till then to have a rest?''
Eh, not really---we have a performance in the evening, so it is less of the usual ``rest day'' (it's never a rest day) and more ``go-time!'' instead.
Anyway, what I then did with the day was just something that I was thinking of doing for quite a while: do a cycling trip to East Coast Park.
And so, I did. Going down Still Road, then East Coast Park towards the City, then backtracking up the entire park towards the Tanah Merah Coast Road, through Changi Beach, before finally ending in Changi Village for ``dinner''. It worked out to something like 27 mi, which brought my Eddington Number up to E17.
It's been a while since I went up the Tanah Merah Coast Road towards Changi Village. It has changed a whole lot---there was heavy fencing everywhere with major constructions. The trees that grew next to the road/path were allowed to overgrow into the cycle path itself, which made it fairly dangerous to stick with the ``keep left unless overtaking'' rule.
The other major change was the forced switching over to the Changi Bay Park Connector at the end of Tanah Merah Coast Road which connects over to Aviation Park Road. Aviation Park Road itself had a whole lot of construction going on, which made it impossible to pass through (this is going to be a common theme today). Changi Bay Park Connector was within a stone's throw from the coast line, and it was gorgeous as it was quiet [at about one o'clock on a Friday].
The rest of the route up to Changi Village was scenic. Quite a few old trees were chopped down for some reason, with bits of their trunks left lying about.
I severely underestimated just how fast I could go without any other people blocking my way, and as a result, ended up having ``dinner'' at around 1500hrs at Changi Village itself.
Heading home from Changi Village via bus... was an experience. Loyang was a fucking mess from all the construction, as was Pasir Ris. I'm just glad that I had already planned ahead to just take the bus home as opposed to attempting to ride back---there were simply no viable cycling routes through those two neighbourhoods at all.
And so, now as I write this up, I feel my legs be tired, and my brain yearning for sleep. I suppose this is the best outcome for dealing with mental wellness day.
Till the next update then.
Couple that with an abysmal sleep cycle, and you have ``brain no worky'' syndrome.
And so, a day of rest was taken.
``But MT, tomorrow is Saturday! Couldn't you have waited till then to have a rest?''
Eh, not really---we have a performance in the evening, so it is less of the usual ``rest day'' (it's never a rest day) and more ``go-time!'' instead.
Anyway, what I then did with the day was just something that I was thinking of doing for quite a while: do a cycling trip to East Coast Park.
And so, I did. Going down Still Road, then East Coast Park towards the City, then backtracking up the entire park towards the Tanah Merah Coast Road, through Changi Beach, before finally ending in Changi Village for ``dinner''. It worked out to something like 27 mi, which brought my Eddington Number up to E17.
It's been a while since I went up the Tanah Merah Coast Road towards Changi Village. It has changed a whole lot---there was heavy fencing everywhere with major constructions. The trees that grew next to the road/path were allowed to overgrow into the cycle path itself, which made it fairly dangerous to stick with the ``keep left unless overtaking'' rule.
The other major change was the forced switching over to the Changi Bay Park Connector at the end of Tanah Merah Coast Road which connects over to Aviation Park Road. Aviation Park Road itself had a whole lot of construction going on, which made it impossible to pass through (this is going to be a common theme today). Changi Bay Park Connector was within a stone's throw from the coast line, and it was gorgeous as it was quiet [at about one o'clock on a Friday].
The rest of the route up to Changi Village was scenic. Quite a few old trees were chopped down for some reason, with bits of their trunks left lying about.
I severely underestimated just how fast I could go without any other people blocking my way, and as a result, ended up having ``dinner'' at around 1500hrs at Changi Village itself.
Heading home from Changi Village via bus... was an experience. Loyang was a fucking mess from all the construction, as was Pasir Ris. I'm just glad that I had already planned ahead to just take the bus home as opposed to attempting to ride back---there were simply no viable cycling routes through those two neighbourhoods at all.
And so, now as I write this up, I feel my legs be tired, and my brain yearning for sleep. I suppose this is the best outcome for dealing with mental wellness day.
Till the next update then.
Wednesday, May 01, 2024
It's May
It's May.
April was one helluva month, for sure. Many things were moving, fast, and the weather was downright atrocious, leading to many a time where I was just left physically out of it.
And this month, May, is likely to be just as hectic, if not more so.
(sigh)
Damn I'm tired.
I did manage to finish up my LEGO Bugatti Chiron build, which was exciting. The detailing part of the build (second booklet) was just a smidgen more interesting than the base frame build (differential gearing, simulated gear box, and simulated W16 engine). I would take pictures, but just not today---am just tired.
After nearly four whole months, The Great Negotiator finally arrived. It's the BAHCO 87, a rather large adjustable wrench, 30 in long, and coming in at a mass of 5.7 kg.
``MT, why the hell do you need a large wrench like that?''
Well... it's ludicrous. It's the embodiment of ``speak softly but carry a big stick'', but put into a slightly more plausible context of being a Crazy Old Man Engineer. No one expects the satisfying ``thunk'' of a 5.7 kg single-piece high performance alloyed steel on a table over a rather mundane discussion; hence the epithet of The Great Negotiator. It is also a rather visceral demonstration of an engineer, and is thus why I got it, despite it costing quite a fair bit of money, and taking so long to make its way over.
I will attest to the quality of the build though---the tolerances are pretty tight for the size, with a full clamp of 0.0 mm on the span-scale having no room to slip a thin sheet of 80 gsm paper through.
------
My reading has taken me back to the era of the old WOWIO---an online storefront for digital graphic novels/comics, just at about the time the first Amazon Kindle was released. They released lots of free digital graphic novels/comics then, and it was only up till now that I have a chance to really read them. Many of the graphic novels stopped at issue #1, with their stories never completed, their artists being lost in the mist of time. But there were still some gems among them that I wished could have continued, like the Lullaby series.
Unfortunately, to get them working on Eirian-V required me using Ghostscript to remove the ``sponsored by'' pages---they were full page sized URLs that made turning pages on Eirian-V impossible due to Eirian-V relying completely on touch screen for all interactions as opposed to the external buttons from all the other Eirians before.
Ah well.
I'm abandoning Elden Ring even though I didn't complete the game---I think I've derived all the fun that I want out of it. That's probably the first and last Fromsoft game that I'll play this lifetime, mostly because I'm really getting to the point in life where I can't just sit there for hours on end just to ``git gud'' on a game.
I watched Kronii's playthrough of Blasphemous, and got interested in the game. It's yet another metroidvania, but it did not appear as punishing as [say] Hollow Knight nor as clunky as Feudal Alloy. I think it scratches that metroidvania itch adequately.
And then there's The Talos Principle II that I uh... need to complete. It's a puzzle solving game, so I think I was just puzzled out for a bit. I'll get back to it.
------
I think that's all I care to talk about for now. Till the next update, I suppose.
April was one helluva month, for sure. Many things were moving, fast, and the weather was downright atrocious, leading to many a time where I was just left physically out of it.
And this month, May, is likely to be just as hectic, if not more so.
(sigh)
Damn I'm tired.
I did manage to finish up my LEGO Bugatti Chiron build, which was exciting. The detailing part of the build (second booklet) was just a smidgen more interesting than the base frame build (differential gearing, simulated gear box, and simulated W16 engine). I would take pictures, but just not today---am just tired.
After nearly four whole months, The Great Negotiator finally arrived. It's the BAHCO 87, a rather large adjustable wrench, 30 in long, and coming in at a mass of 5.7 kg.
``MT, why the hell do you need a large wrench like that?''
Well... it's ludicrous. It's the embodiment of ``speak softly but carry a big stick'', but put into a slightly more plausible context of being a Crazy Old Man Engineer. No one expects the satisfying ``thunk'' of a 5.7 kg single-piece high performance alloyed steel on a table over a rather mundane discussion; hence the epithet of The Great Negotiator. It is also a rather visceral demonstration of an engineer, and is thus why I got it, despite it costing quite a fair bit of money, and taking so long to make its way over.
I will attest to the quality of the build though---the tolerances are pretty tight for the size, with a full clamp of 0.0 mm on the span-scale having no room to slip a thin sheet of 80 gsm paper through.
------
My reading has taken me back to the era of the old WOWIO---an online storefront for digital graphic novels/comics, just at about the time the first Amazon Kindle was released. They released lots of free digital graphic novels/comics then, and it was only up till now that I have a chance to really read them. Many of the graphic novels stopped at issue #1, with their stories never completed, their artists being lost in the mist of time. But there were still some gems among them that I wished could have continued, like the Lullaby series.
Unfortunately, to get them working on Eirian-V required me using Ghostscript to remove the ``sponsored by'' pages---they were full page sized URLs that made turning pages on Eirian-V impossible due to Eirian-V relying completely on touch screen for all interactions as opposed to the external buttons from all the other Eirians before.
Ah well.
I'm abandoning Elden Ring even though I didn't complete the game---I think I've derived all the fun that I want out of it. That's probably the first and last Fromsoft game that I'll play this lifetime, mostly because I'm really getting to the point in life where I can't just sit there for hours on end just to ``git gud'' on a game.
I watched Kronii's playthrough of Blasphemous, and got interested in the game. It's yet another metroidvania, but it did not appear as punishing as [say] Hollow Knight nor as clunky as Feudal Alloy. I think it scratches that metroidvania itch adequately.
And then there's The Talos Principle II that I uh... need to complete. It's a puzzle solving game, so I think I was just puzzled out for a bit. I'll get back to it.
------
I think that's all I care to talk about for now. Till the next update, I suppose.
Sunday, April 07, 2024
Who Owes Whom?
As a rule of thumb, no one owes anyone anything, short of what is promised within the confines of a contract, either explicit or implicit.
In terms of an explicit contract, I am referring to stuff that is usually backed by legal means, or at least, backed with enough ``force'' behind it that everyone agrees with when the construct and content of the contract is being explicitly delineated.
In terms of an implicit contract, I am referring to the more wooly concepts of ``social contracts'', or the use of a legal term to explain the kinds of implied expectations that people have when they exist within the society.
Most of the time, the explicit contracts are ``easy'' to define, and fairly straightforward to enforce---just follow the terms that have been spelt out within the body of the contract itself.
It is the implicit contracts that make things rather... divisive at times.
See, because the contracts are implicit, there is never an artefact that properly spells out all the rights, privileges, mores, and norms that are expected. Instead, these implicit contracts rely on a sufficiently vocal majority to educate, and to enforce.
There are four terms there that need explanation.
``Sufficiently vocal'' means that the people who follow the implicit contract must be willing to stand their ground and hold the righteousness of the implicit contract in a manner that makes their stance unambiguous and understandable.
``Majority'' refers to a large enough number of people that fulfil the level of a quorum, i.e. they are representative of the intent of the implicit contract through numbers alone.
``Educate'' refers to the promulgation and teaching of the intent of the implicit contract to those who are unfamiliar with it, either because of a lack of experience due to age, or a lack of experience due to being a transplant from a different cultural norm.
``Enforce'' refers to the actions that need to be taken to demonstrate the consequences of a violation of the terms of the implicit contract. Enforcement differs from education in that it refers purely to the demonstration of the consequences of violation---to properly rehabilitate the offender, education of the intent of the implicit contract to which the offender has violated needs to be made.
Part of the reason why people these days start having that entitled behaviour with respect to the implicit contract (and therefore coming to the conclusion that society somehow ``owes'' them various things) is due to the violation of one or more of the four terms set out.
The lack of the ``sufficiently vocal'' has resulted in the intent of the implicit contract being increasingly wooly and subjected to unjustifiable interpretations, not all of them necessarily following the proper intent.
The lack of the ``majority'' has resulted in smaller numbers of people dictating the terms of the implicit contract over the quiet voices of the larger quorum, with the additional side effect of acting as though these minority are indeed the majority, which further increases the fuzziness of the boundaries of the implicit contract.
The lack of ``education'' means that there is no consensus on what the intent of the implicit contract, which again feeds back into each person deciding to interpret things their own way regardless of the original intent.
The lack of ``enforcement'' further emboldens the offenders to continue on their path of heresy, further destabilising the social fabric that was based on the implicit contract.
Combine these with the increased isolation that many are practising from living in an increasingly urbanised landscape with more interesting broadcast-level virtual connections than a highly localised and personal connection just increases the level of entitlement to the level of angst of ``the world owes me!''.
``MT, what's the point here?''
Since when did my rants ever have a point? 🤷♂️
Till the next update.
In terms of an explicit contract, I am referring to stuff that is usually backed by legal means, or at least, backed with enough ``force'' behind it that everyone agrees with when the construct and content of the contract is being explicitly delineated.
In terms of an implicit contract, I am referring to the more wooly concepts of ``social contracts'', or the use of a legal term to explain the kinds of implied expectations that people have when they exist within the society.
Most of the time, the explicit contracts are ``easy'' to define, and fairly straightforward to enforce---just follow the terms that have been spelt out within the body of the contract itself.
It is the implicit contracts that make things rather... divisive at times.
See, because the contracts are implicit, there is never an artefact that properly spells out all the rights, privileges, mores, and norms that are expected. Instead, these implicit contracts rely on a sufficiently vocal majority to educate, and to enforce.
There are four terms there that need explanation.
``Sufficiently vocal'' means that the people who follow the implicit contract must be willing to stand their ground and hold the righteousness of the implicit contract in a manner that makes their stance unambiguous and understandable.
``Majority'' refers to a large enough number of people that fulfil the level of a quorum, i.e. they are representative of the intent of the implicit contract through numbers alone.
``Educate'' refers to the promulgation and teaching of the intent of the implicit contract to those who are unfamiliar with it, either because of a lack of experience due to age, or a lack of experience due to being a transplant from a different cultural norm.
``Enforce'' refers to the actions that need to be taken to demonstrate the consequences of a violation of the terms of the implicit contract. Enforcement differs from education in that it refers purely to the demonstration of the consequences of violation---to properly rehabilitate the offender, education of the intent of the implicit contract to which the offender has violated needs to be made.
Part of the reason why people these days start having that entitled behaviour with respect to the implicit contract (and therefore coming to the conclusion that society somehow ``owes'' them various things) is due to the violation of one or more of the four terms set out.
The lack of the ``sufficiently vocal'' has resulted in the intent of the implicit contract being increasingly wooly and subjected to unjustifiable interpretations, not all of them necessarily following the proper intent.
The lack of the ``majority'' has resulted in smaller numbers of people dictating the terms of the implicit contract over the quiet voices of the larger quorum, with the additional side effect of acting as though these minority are indeed the majority, which further increases the fuzziness of the boundaries of the implicit contract.
The lack of ``education'' means that there is no consensus on what the intent of the implicit contract, which again feeds back into each person deciding to interpret things their own way regardless of the original intent.
The lack of ``enforcement'' further emboldens the offenders to continue on their path of heresy, further destabilising the social fabric that was based on the implicit contract.
Combine these with the increased isolation that many are practising from living in an increasingly urbanised landscape with more interesting broadcast-level virtual connections than a highly localised and personal connection just increases the level of entitlement to the level of angst of ``the world owes me!''.
``MT, what's the point here?''
Since when did my rants ever have a point? 🤷♂️
Till the next update.
Saturday, March 30, 2024
Marching On...
Urgh. This is probably the fourth time I opened up Q10 with the intention of writing a blog post. The first three times, I wrote like three paragraphs, before closing the editor in frustration.
I just couldn't put together what it was that I wanted to say without sounding like a twat.
So instead, let's try to talk about something else.
My Eddington Number was recently raised to E16. This means that I had at least 16 days where I cycled at least 16 mi. My usual North-East Riverine Loop averaged to nearly 12 mi, so I just did the obvious-but-dumb-thing of just cycling in both directions, leading to a nice 24 mi, with some sketchy actions to actually bring it up to the 24 mi. I had to do it twice just so that I could reach E16, and it was all done over the past week.
In short, I destroyed my legs in a fun way cycling about 79+ km just to reach a new milestone. Of course, the real secret is that I am just one ride away from reaching E17, but I won't be doing that soon because my left calf is already showing signs of being overworked---it was starting to cramp up during my return leg of ride number two today.
In other news, I have started on the LEGO Bugatti Chiron. I know that the web-site says ``Retired Product'', but they can still be found in the LEGO shops in SIN city. I am also well aware that there are Amazon.com versions that are cheaper than the retail price of nearly SGD600, some by nearly SGD150+. But there's always something magical about holding the box in one's hand as directly purchased from the brick-and-mortar shop, and considering my recent trauma from a lost Amazon.sg parcel (allegedly ``delivered'' by Ninjavan), I was not about to tempt fate again, especially with something this pricey.
I had known of the Bugatti Veyron for years---it was always that wonderful feat of German engineering that just made me go ``oooo''. The Top Gear episode was also the first time that I saw the Veyron go vroom:
And James May's response from his experience just sealed the idea that the Veyron was the best car in my book.
``But MT, the Chiron isn't the Veyron?''
Yes, and no. It's a refresh of the Veyron, but for the purposes of the LEGO model, it's basically the same. The LEGO Bugatti Chiron is a large build, probably the largest in the LEGO Technic series (but not necessarily the largest physical build). I have no idea where to put the finished assembly, but that will be a problem for future MT to handle. I am definitely taking my time to put it together, partly because in any LEGO assembly, the journey is usually more fun than the outcome. Moreover, I had to go slower---all these stupid heat is making it hard to exist, let alone think or manipulate all these tiny LEGO.
------
Minecraft. I had been spending time after work in my solo world digging out the strip-mines that I had started way back in 1.17+, just as a way to decompress.
Then a thought came to me. How about ``Digging Straight Down''? The idea was to find some interesting location off my hill-top base, figure out the chunk boundaries, and dig out the entire column, while encasing the dug out chunk with glass. I knew from my early recce for a deep ocean biome to build my mob farm that there was a nice patch of ocean off the main desert that I had not explored before. So I went out that way via my overland minecart line, and promptly found what I was looking for.
And then I felt that one chunk was kinda small, so I expanded it to a 3×3 chunk grid in the middle of the ocean. I had some sponges that I had bought from some wandering traveller from long ago, and coupled that with the ``gravity blocks'' strategy of creating dikes to form the ```Dig Straight Down'' polder. Now I'm in the process of doing the actual digging, and replacing the walls with glass just for containment.
------
I think that's about all I want to write about for now. Looks like I managed to avoid talking about anything involving pain, discomfort of being vulnerable with another, the realisation that people are just generally terrible, and other stuff that made me rage-close the Q10 editor three times before.
Till the next update, I suppose.
I just couldn't put together what it was that I wanted to say without sounding like a twat.
So instead, let's try to talk about something else.
My Eddington Number was recently raised to E16. This means that I had at least 16 days where I cycled at least 16 mi. My usual North-East Riverine Loop averaged to nearly 12 mi, so I just did the obvious-but-dumb-thing of just cycling in both directions, leading to a nice 24 mi, with some sketchy actions to actually bring it up to the 24 mi. I had to do it twice just so that I could reach E16, and it was all done over the past week.
In short, I destroyed my legs in a fun way cycling about 79+ km just to reach a new milestone. Of course, the real secret is that I am just one ride away from reaching E17, but I won't be doing that soon because my left calf is already showing signs of being overworked---it was starting to cramp up during my return leg of ride number two today.
In other news, I have started on the LEGO Bugatti Chiron. I know that the web-site says ``Retired Product'', but they can still be found in the LEGO shops in SIN city. I am also well aware that there are Amazon.com versions that are cheaper than the retail price of nearly SGD600, some by nearly SGD150+. But there's always something magical about holding the box in one's hand as directly purchased from the brick-and-mortar shop, and considering my recent trauma from a lost Amazon.sg parcel (allegedly ``delivered'' by Ninjavan), I was not about to tempt fate again, especially with something this pricey.
I had known of the Bugatti Veyron for years---it was always that wonderful feat of German engineering that just made me go ``oooo''. The Top Gear episode was also the first time that I saw the Veyron go vroom:
And James May's response from his experience just sealed the idea that the Veyron was the best car in my book.
``But MT, the Chiron isn't the Veyron?''
Yes, and no. It's a refresh of the Veyron, but for the purposes of the LEGO model, it's basically the same. The LEGO Bugatti Chiron is a large build, probably the largest in the LEGO Technic series (but not necessarily the largest physical build). I have no idea where to put the finished assembly, but that will be a problem for future MT to handle. I am definitely taking my time to put it together, partly because in any LEGO assembly, the journey is usually more fun than the outcome. Moreover, I had to go slower---all these stupid heat is making it hard to exist, let alone think or manipulate all these tiny LEGO.
------
Minecraft. I had been spending time after work in my solo world digging out the strip-mines that I had started way back in 1.17+, just as a way to decompress.
Then a thought came to me. How about ``Digging Straight Down''? The idea was to find some interesting location off my hill-top base, figure out the chunk boundaries, and dig out the entire column, while encasing the dug out chunk with glass. I knew from my early recce for a deep ocean biome to build my mob farm that there was a nice patch of ocean off the main desert that I had not explored before. So I went out that way via my overland minecart line, and promptly found what I was looking for.
And then I felt that one chunk was kinda small, so I expanded it to a 3×3 chunk grid in the middle of the ocean. I had some sponges that I had bought from some wandering traveller from long ago, and coupled that with the ``gravity blocks'' strategy of creating dikes to form the ```Dig Straight Down'' polder. Now I'm in the process of doing the actual digging, and replacing the walls with glass just for containment.
------
I think that's about all I want to write about for now. Looks like I managed to avoid talking about anything involving pain, discomfort of being vulnerable with another, the realisation that people are just generally terrible, and other stuff that made me rage-close the Q10 editor three times before.
Till the next update, I suppose.
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Never Reach Your [Hobby] Goals
Never reach your goals, especially if they are for your hobbies.
Before you go thinking that I'm nuts, hear me out. Goals are often things that we set out to achieve, and they serve as the inspiration to keep on striving through the path that we had set towards getting to them. With a goal in mind, one has the beacon to walk towards, a thing to focus on.
Now, what if you've reached your goal? What happens next?
In a work/career setting, the answer is usually quite straightforward---go lateral. Put in a different way, it means branching out into a related domain, or develop ``soft skills'' into the so-called T-shaped person. As a career option, it makes sense, since there really isn't a peak with respect to the means of making a living---having more tools in one's arsenal is almost always an asset with respect to the work environment, though there is usually a hidden cost of having too many useful tools; but that's a problem for a different day.
Most people will not have any issues about developing laterally once they have reached their goals at work, especially if they have run out of ``vertical'' goals to achieve. At some point, the challenge will be too great, and one will eventually revert to a level where one is more comfortable and competent, while still earning enough to pay the bills and power any other side stuff.
Hobbies are things that we do ``for fun''. It's what we do to pass the time when we aren't doing things to enhance survival and/or reproduction. If the hobby is no longer ``fun'', it becomes highly likely that we drop it in favour of something else.
Since hobbies are ``for fun'', we tend to not take it as ``seriously'' the way we do for what we do for work (I'm discounting anyone who uses their hobbies as a ``side hustle''---I think of that as going semi-professional). So, when one reaches the goals of one's hobbies, especially the ultimate-type of goal, what happens next?
Going lateral means that we are taking the hobbies seriously, which defeats the whole idea of a hobby. Not going lateral and leaving it goalless is akin to acknowledging that there is no longer anything else that one wants to achieve within the hobby, which can lead to stagnation and eventual disinterest.
Hence, it probably is better to never reach one's goals, especially if they are for one's hobbies, particularly if one wants to keep doing the hobby for a very long time without killing off the fun.
Instead of interpreting what I'm saying as The Truth, think of it as a cautionary tale from personal experience. I love Geocaching; I've been doing it from way back in 2009(?) when Jason first introduced me to my first geocache in Singapore, as well as my first trackable.
Fast forward to today, in 2024. I've not gone out to find a geocache in years, with much of the momentum killed after I've taken part in a Mega-Event, visited Geocaching headquarters in Seattle, and completed a D5/T5 geocache. These were ``ultimate''-type goals, and once they were met, my interest in the hobby of Geocaching just started dying out.
On a more scary note, my dizi playing. I recently completed my set of all 27 possible dizi, and having played a Grade 9 piece (《山村迎亲人》) in concert, I find myself staring out into the void going ``What's next?''. I have been expanding myself laterally with trying to do composition, and even playing in the Music Ministry on the concert flute, but at times some of these things just feel like I'm really taking things too seriously. I still derive fun, but the marginal amount of fun per effort is seemingly getting smaller. My first love here is still the dizi, and I'm at the level where unless I go semi-professional, I think I'm dooming myself to some kind of stagnation, which scares me.
``MT, you could like, go fusion music, or jazz?''
Sure, true. But that's going lateral, see? And it involves me making the decision of actually wanting to go down that path, which I have already asserted as ``being serious''. I do wonder though... part of me probably knows that it'll be something that I must do (or give up dizi playing), but how to do this is something that I will need to come to grips with.
After all, we only evolve as effectively as the environment allows us to. If the environment is stagnating, then there is no incentive to evolve; conversely, if the environment is too competitive, then one needs to be sufficiently serious in order to evolve fast enough to not die. In either case, ``fun'' seems to be reduced.
Tough calls for me for now.
As a side project, I am working on shakuhachi now. I've the Bell Shakuhachi from Jon Krypos (he renamed himself to Josen), and recently got some Kinko-ryu study material (the most obvious is the use of ロツレチリ for the notation of the notes DFGAC). It's a much tougher instrument than even the 洞箫 because of the way the embouchure cut is made---the angle required is very precise, and there is very little lipping involved as compared to the other edge-blown flutes. Only time will tell what will become of this.
Anyway, this is starting to get a bit long, so I'll stop here. Till the next update then.
Before you go thinking that I'm nuts, hear me out. Goals are often things that we set out to achieve, and they serve as the inspiration to keep on striving through the path that we had set towards getting to them. With a goal in mind, one has the beacon to walk towards, a thing to focus on.
Now, what if you've reached your goal? What happens next?
In a work/career setting, the answer is usually quite straightforward---go lateral. Put in a different way, it means branching out into a related domain, or develop ``soft skills'' into the so-called T-shaped person. As a career option, it makes sense, since there really isn't a peak with respect to the means of making a living---having more tools in one's arsenal is almost always an asset with respect to the work environment, though there is usually a hidden cost of having too many useful tools; but that's a problem for a different day.
Most people will not have any issues about developing laterally once they have reached their goals at work, especially if they have run out of ``vertical'' goals to achieve. At some point, the challenge will be too great, and one will eventually revert to a level where one is more comfortable and competent, while still earning enough to pay the bills and power any other side stuff.
Hobbies are things that we do ``for fun''. It's what we do to pass the time when we aren't doing things to enhance survival and/or reproduction. If the hobby is no longer ``fun'', it becomes highly likely that we drop it in favour of something else.
Since hobbies are ``for fun'', we tend to not take it as ``seriously'' the way we do for what we do for work (I'm discounting anyone who uses their hobbies as a ``side hustle''---I think of that as going semi-professional). So, when one reaches the goals of one's hobbies, especially the ultimate-type of goal, what happens next?
Going lateral means that we are taking the hobbies seriously, which defeats the whole idea of a hobby. Not going lateral and leaving it goalless is akin to acknowledging that there is no longer anything else that one wants to achieve within the hobby, which can lead to stagnation and eventual disinterest.
Hence, it probably is better to never reach one's goals, especially if they are for one's hobbies, particularly if one wants to keep doing the hobby for a very long time without killing off the fun.
Instead of interpreting what I'm saying as The Truth, think of it as a cautionary tale from personal experience. I love Geocaching; I've been doing it from way back in 2009(?) when Jason first introduced me to my first geocache in Singapore, as well as my first trackable.
Fast forward to today, in 2024. I've not gone out to find a geocache in years, with much of the momentum killed after I've taken part in a Mega-Event, visited Geocaching headquarters in Seattle, and completed a D5/T5 geocache. These were ``ultimate''-type goals, and once they were met, my interest in the hobby of Geocaching just started dying out.
On a more scary note, my dizi playing. I recently completed my set of all 27 possible dizi, and having played a Grade 9 piece (《山村迎亲人》) in concert, I find myself staring out into the void going ``What's next?''. I have been expanding myself laterally with trying to do composition, and even playing in the Music Ministry on the concert flute, but at times some of these things just feel like I'm really taking things too seriously. I still derive fun, but the marginal amount of fun per effort is seemingly getting smaller. My first love here is still the dizi, and I'm at the level where unless I go semi-professional, I think I'm dooming myself to some kind of stagnation, which scares me.
``MT, you could like, go fusion music, or jazz?''
Sure, true. But that's going lateral, see? And it involves me making the decision of actually wanting to go down that path, which I have already asserted as ``being serious''. I do wonder though... part of me probably knows that it'll be something that I must do (or give up dizi playing), but how to do this is something that I will need to come to grips with.
After all, we only evolve as effectively as the environment allows us to. If the environment is stagnating, then there is no incentive to evolve; conversely, if the environment is too competitive, then one needs to be sufficiently serious in order to evolve fast enough to not die. In either case, ``fun'' seems to be reduced.
Tough calls for me for now.
As a side project, I am working on shakuhachi now. I've the Bell Shakuhachi from Jon Krypos (he renamed himself to Josen), and recently got some Kinko-ryu study material (the most obvious is the use of ロツレチリ for the notation of the notes DFGAC). It's a much tougher instrument than even the 洞箫 because of the way the embouchure cut is made---the angle required is very precise, and there is very little lipping involved as compared to the other edge-blown flutes. Only time will tell what will become of this.
Anyway, this is starting to get a bit long, so I'll stop here. Till the next update then.
Tuesday, March 05, 2024
I Have Nothing Left to Give
I have nothing left to give in a relationship. I think I should really accept this reality. It's not even about sour grapes or anything like that... it's just the realisation that I've lost whatever it was that made me look forward to being with someone exclusively.
It died the day she dumped me like a sack of Hell-going crap.
And it took me a few more years to learn that I am really a husk of who I was before.
I have no zest for life, I have little faith of the future, I have no interest in knowing anyone else deeper, and I am actually looking forward to just dying.
That is all.
It died the day she dumped me like a sack of Hell-going crap.
And it took me a few more years to learn that I am really a husk of who I was before.
I have no zest for life, I have little faith of the future, I have no interest in knowing anyone else deeper, and I am actually looking forward to just dying.
That is all.
Sunday, February 25, 2024
Maintenance...?
And so, this weekend is about to end.
It's the weekend of maintenance. Aurelia, Stella, and Picc are off to Windworks for COA; my bicycle went to B-Spokes for maintenance, and one of my longest run geocache needed some maintenance [from me] as well.
In theory, things would have been peachy by Saturday, but there was something innately wrong with the rear-shifter for my bicycle that necessitated my bringing it back today for rectification, which resulted in me having to skip out on church today.
``But MT, why must it be today? Couldn't it wait?''
No, not really. It was just after a major maintenance---had I waited for longer, it would have been a bigger mess than it really is now.
Sadly though, a new line of dead pixels have started showing up on Eirian-V. Why and how that happened, I have no idea. But as at now, it isn't completely annoying just yet, so I might just live with it; sort of like my Brother laser printer showing random low-toner density (I think the drum is kaput, but haven't had enough wherewithal to pull up the money to buy a replacement to test the hypothesis).
I also took the chance to use my air-blower to clear out the dust on Eileen-III, as well as my work laptop, something that I had been neglecting to do for about five months now.
Then of course, there is some self-maintenance. I finally chopped my hair down to the right length [of stupid short] with the hair clippers, and am relying on occlusive treatment to force the weepy and inflamed skin on my fingers and palms to calm down. I also replaced my toothbrush, which was at least two months overdue.
Mentally though... I think I might not have done well there. Feeling a little overwhelmed with the barrage of new ``fun'' that came in from the work side. It's not bad, it's just... a lot to take in at once. Not to mention the whole set of loss of spoons from being involved in two large gatherings of people.
I probably should just turn in earlier tonight, after re-packing my backpack to set it up for work, as opposed to errand-running mode.
Sorry this is a short entry---till the next time.
It's the weekend of maintenance. Aurelia, Stella, and Picc are off to Windworks for COA; my bicycle went to B-Spokes for maintenance, and one of my longest run geocache needed some maintenance [from me] as well.
In theory, things would have been peachy by Saturday, but there was something innately wrong with the rear-shifter for my bicycle that necessitated my bringing it back today for rectification, which resulted in me having to skip out on church today.
``But MT, why must it be today? Couldn't it wait?''
No, not really. It was just after a major maintenance---had I waited for longer, it would have been a bigger mess than it really is now.
Sadly though, a new line of dead pixels have started showing up on Eirian-V. Why and how that happened, I have no idea. But as at now, it isn't completely annoying just yet, so I might just live with it; sort of like my Brother laser printer showing random low-toner density (I think the drum is kaput, but haven't had enough wherewithal to pull up the money to buy a replacement to test the hypothesis).
I also took the chance to use my air-blower to clear out the dust on Eileen-III, as well as my work laptop, something that I had been neglecting to do for about five months now.
Then of course, there is some self-maintenance. I finally chopped my hair down to the right length [of stupid short] with the hair clippers, and am relying on occlusive treatment to force the weepy and inflamed skin on my fingers and palms to calm down. I also replaced my toothbrush, which was at least two months overdue.
Mentally though... I think I might not have done well there. Feeling a little overwhelmed with the barrage of new ``fun'' that came in from the work side. It's not bad, it's just... a lot to take in at once. Not to mention the whole set of loss of spoons from being involved in two large gatherings of people.
I probably should just turn in earlier tonight, after re-packing my backpack to set it up for work, as opposed to errand-running mode.
Sorry this is a short entry---till the next time.
Monday, February 12, 2024
Slept for 12 Hours...
Ah Monday. Public holiday in lieu of the second Chinese New Year public holiday falling on a Sunday.
A break day. A possibly ``true'' break day.
The special item that was presented yesterday at both the Chinese worship session in the early morning and the English worship session in the late morning was a hit. I listened through the playback for both renditions, and it does sound much better than I thought it would. The G 梆笛 soared without sounding like a dick, and I honestly cannot tell if it's because of my skill (what skill?), or the fact that I'm using some top-grade 笛膜 that keeps the sound clean. Feedback has been pretty positive to me, from those who actually knew me in church, and apparently even those who didn't know me had positive things to say to the music coordinator, who played with me in the item on the piano.
A win perhaps. Glory to God.
Now that that is done and dusted, I'll need to listen carefully to the various recordings to write it down. I'll probably publish it at my compositions page.
One item down, another two or three more to go. 😬
------
Special item aside, I just crashed out for twelve hours straight once eight o'clock came, waking up every three hours just to use the toilet. Woke up at around eight o'clock this morning, give or take an hour, and just chilled out for a bit, pondering about nothing even as I am catching up on stuff on YouTube that I have missed out from the past week.
I discovered a new tool: KLOGG. It's a log explorer, designed apparently to load and search through extremely large files the way computer logs tend to be. I've not really deployed it anywhere yet, but it is definitely something to try. My only complaint is that it runs a GUI, and there's no TUI for it, but that's really minor, considering that I use Beyond Compare from Scooter Software, which is also GUI-centric with no TUI.
I have tried my best to make
Apart from that, I've been roaming about from one game to another on Steam, switching between Boltgun, trying out the Turbo Overkill demo, a bit of Vampire Survivors, and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles.
I'm also half-tempted to finish up the last bits of math to complete the really really simple LED-1 remake in PICO-8. But... urgh... math when I'm trying to chill the fuck out. Eww... (hahaha)
Aaaaaaaaanyway, I suppose that's all for today. I'll go... do something... I think. Maybe game more...
Till the next update.
A break day. A possibly ``true'' break day.
The special item that was presented yesterday at both the Chinese worship session in the early morning and the English worship session in the late morning was a hit. I listened through the playback for both renditions, and it does sound much better than I thought it would. The G 梆笛 soared without sounding like a dick, and I honestly cannot tell if it's because of my skill (what skill?), or the fact that I'm using some top-grade 笛膜 that keeps the sound clean. Feedback has been pretty positive to me, from those who actually knew me in church, and apparently even those who didn't know me had positive things to say to the music coordinator, who played with me in the item on the piano.
A win perhaps. Glory to God.
Now that that is done and dusted, I'll need to listen carefully to the various recordings to write it down. I'll probably publish it at my compositions page.
One item down, another two or three more to go. 😬
------
Special item aside, I just crashed out for twelve hours straight once eight o'clock came, waking up every three hours just to use the toilet. Woke up at around eight o'clock this morning, give or take an hour, and just chilled out for a bit, pondering about nothing even as I am catching up on stuff on YouTube that I have missed out from the past week.
I discovered a new tool: KLOGG. It's a log explorer, designed apparently to load and search through extremely large files the way computer logs tend to be. I've not really deployed it anywhere yet, but it is definitely something to try. My only complaint is that it runs a GUI, and there's no TUI for it, but that's really minor, considering that I use Beyond Compare from Scooter Software, which is also GUI-centric with no TUI.
I have tried my best to make
vim play nice with extremely large files, but it's still a crapshoot after all these years. There are other tricks that allow one to work with extremely large files, but they often involve messing around with less, grep, tail, and head.Apart from that, I've been roaming about from one game to another on Steam, switching between Boltgun, trying out the Turbo Overkill demo, a bit of Vampire Survivors, and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles.
I'm also half-tempted to finish up the last bits of math to complete the really really simple LED-1 remake in PICO-8. But... urgh... math when I'm trying to chill the fuck out. Eww... (hahaha)
Aaaaaaaaanyway, I suppose that's all for today. I'll go... do something... I think. Maybe game more...
Till the next update.
Friday, February 09, 2024
T's The Eve of The Lunar New Year
Okay, this is take three.
I had wanted to write an entry today, but the start always revolved around the sentient of ``yeah yeah it's the lunar new year, which supposedly represents some kind of togetherness, but that's the last thing I feel''.
Naturally I couldn't continue the entries, because it was just too negative, even by my ``standards''.
So in this take, after finishing one can of Sapporo, and well in my second one, after having some Suntory Whisky, I shall avoid all that depression-talk crap, but do bear in mind the unspoken background of that.
I finally finished watching the final AGDQ'2024 speedrun of Final Fantasy V, and the part when Garulf died hit me in ways I did not quite understand. I played Final Fantasy V before, and it is probably the only Final Fantasy game I actually completed. So Garulf's death was not unknown to me, but I was surprised to be affected enough to just cry for a little when I was watching the speedrun.
A side news that was hitting up the VTuber world was the termination of Selen Tatsuki from Nijisanji, the other large corpo-VTuber agency that is not Hololive (actual company is ANYCOLOR, kind of how COVER Corp is the company for Hololive Productions). It was a fustercluck, with implied bullying, gaslighting, suicide attempts, and the associated consequences that are still unfolding now.
I don't really follow much of Nijisanji, and even less of Selen. I only know of her from the genesis of the name TSB (Team Snakebite). But to be terminated like that, and under those circumstances, it's bad.
I'm no corpo-sympathiser. I'm no liberal leftist anarchist either. I'm more of a pragmatist---if a corporation is meant to be a money-making machine, then it is important for the corporation to invest in their money-making methods well. In the case of an entertainment company then, it is their talents that they should be investing/supporting well, since the talents' labour are what helps to bring in the initial revenue and generate the kind of intangible accounting ``goodwill'' that generates powerful virtuous cycles for recurring income and what-not.
Dropping the ball like that on their own talent like that is not just uncool, it probably is bad for business as well, no matter how much denial they put up.
And that's about all I want to say about that.
------
The past week was rough for the team and I. Thanks to red tape, our access to the production-like environment was delayed for about a month, and we were just cramming as much as we could done to reach the deadline in as functional a way as possible. It's a pretty public system meant for an international audience, so we are naturally striving to do a good enough job.
I think we pulled through despite the nonsense, but it's hard to tell till the upcoming Tuesday after the long weekend. But even before that, I just feel very drained. I took leave for today, refusing even to work the usual half-day that I would normally do. Part of the reason was also because a policy change that was revealed in month three of my first year where I am at now stipulated that one only needed to use a half-day leave for certain eves of public holidays instead of the more traditional whole day.
And thus I ended up taking today off, just to sleep in, and upon waking up, just chill about with booze and in a ``head empty; no thoughts'' sort of way.
I suppose that's all I want to write for now---I probably cannot practice the set list for this Sunday's worship service tomorrow, so I probably should do that now. This is, of course, in addition to checking up on my special item that I'm presenting with the music coordinator for both the early morning Chinese worship service, and the regular English one later on.
Till the next time then.
I had wanted to write an entry today, but the start always revolved around the sentient of ``yeah yeah it's the lunar new year, which supposedly represents some kind of togetherness, but that's the last thing I feel''.
Naturally I couldn't continue the entries, because it was just too negative, even by my ``standards''.
So in this take, after finishing one can of Sapporo, and well in my second one, after having some Suntory Whisky, I shall avoid all that depression-talk crap, but do bear in mind the unspoken background of that.
I finally finished watching the final AGDQ'2024 speedrun of Final Fantasy V, and the part when Garulf died hit me in ways I did not quite understand. I played Final Fantasy V before, and it is probably the only Final Fantasy game I actually completed. So Garulf's death was not unknown to me, but I was surprised to be affected enough to just cry for a little when I was watching the speedrun.
A side news that was hitting up the VTuber world was the termination of Selen Tatsuki from Nijisanji, the other large corpo-VTuber agency that is not Hololive (actual company is ANYCOLOR, kind of how COVER Corp is the company for Hololive Productions). It was a fustercluck, with implied bullying, gaslighting, suicide attempts, and the associated consequences that are still unfolding now.
I don't really follow much of Nijisanji, and even less of Selen. I only know of her from the genesis of the name TSB (Team Snakebite). But to be terminated like that, and under those circumstances, it's bad.
I'm no corpo-sympathiser. I'm no liberal leftist anarchist either. I'm more of a pragmatist---if a corporation is meant to be a money-making machine, then it is important for the corporation to invest in their money-making methods well. In the case of an entertainment company then, it is their talents that they should be investing/supporting well, since the talents' labour are what helps to bring in the initial revenue and generate the kind of intangible accounting ``goodwill'' that generates powerful virtuous cycles for recurring income and what-not.
Dropping the ball like that on their own talent like that is not just uncool, it probably is bad for business as well, no matter how much denial they put up.
And that's about all I want to say about that.
------
The past week was rough for the team and I. Thanks to red tape, our access to the production-like environment was delayed for about a month, and we were just cramming as much as we could done to reach the deadline in as functional a way as possible. It's a pretty public system meant for an international audience, so we are naturally striving to do a good enough job.
I think we pulled through despite the nonsense, but it's hard to tell till the upcoming Tuesday after the long weekend. But even before that, I just feel very drained. I took leave for today, refusing even to work the usual half-day that I would normally do. Part of the reason was also because a policy change that was revealed in month three of my first year where I am at now stipulated that one only needed to use a half-day leave for certain eves of public holidays instead of the more traditional whole day.
And thus I ended up taking today off, just to sleep in, and upon waking up, just chill about with booze and in a ``head empty; no thoughts'' sort of way.
I suppose that's all I want to write for now---I probably cannot practice the set list for this Sunday's worship service tomorrow, so I probably should do that now. This is, of course, in addition to checking up on my special item that I'm presenting with the music coordinator for both the early morning Chinese worship service, and the regular English one later on.
Till the next time then.
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