Goodbye hololive's #1 Detective!

Ah...

So I spoke about hololive English -Myth-'s fourth anniversary recently, and said:

I'll miss this group of amazing ladies the day that they decide to retire from being HoloEN Myth.

Well, it happened.
Amelia Watson just announced that she was leaving in a ``not forever'' sort of way.

How do I feel?

Well, the usual sense of loss, which really shouldn't be anything new nowadays---God knows how many different times I have lost people. Not the dead, mind you, but the kind of loss where they were a big part of one's [daily] life for quite a while, and then suddenly they are no longer a part of one's life any more.

Like eulogies, praise of Ame's innovation and hard-headedness in hard-carrying HoloEN Myth (especially from the early years) have come out once more from all corners of the fandom. When that announcement was first made, many thought she she was transferring into a more managerial role, but within a few hours, Ame put rest to that and pointed out that she was indeed leaving her full-time streaming duties, and not becoming staff.

If anything, the official hololive Production announcement in Japanese makes it very clear (to the extent that it can be made clear) that Ame will remain as a talent, as compared to the vague-ass render in the English announcement, where the phrase ``an affiliate of hololive production'' raised more questions than answers.

The thing about getting older that no one will tell you, is that mortality and impermanence will forever dog you, intensifying themselves through ever increasing frequencies of appearance as one's experiences increases through the ever larger number of people we meet and interact with. And even though we always soothe ourselves by saying that ``we'll get used to it'', the truth is, we never do.

We just end up increasingly broken or numb at each loss.

If that is considered getting used to it, it is of little wonder why the older generations are almost always more jaded than the young.

But that is also the reason why as we age, we need to know how to temper our sharing of our life experiences to those who are coming after us. Yes, we know the world is heading to ruin, if it already hasn't, but amongst that narrow perspective that each of us has, there are unseeable alternatives that can either lead away from the current path of ruin, or even more optimistically take us towards something that is more wholesome and nurturing.

The young, who are fearless through freshness and a lack of enough setbacks, are the ones who take the charge to see these unseeable alternatives for us.

We, the old, ought to shield the young from the shit-fest that we can see, but we should also give them the room to explore a different path, let them learn through making mistakes, and providing them with a safety net to recover from.

It's not even about the old cliché about how a society is at its best when the old plant trees that they will never get to experience the shade of---it's about helping the young plant some new-fangled genetically modified heat-resistant AI-powered tree-hybrid that they come up with, despite us not knowing everything that goes into that, and knowing that there's a chance for them to fail, without discouraging them to try.

That is a much harder thing to pull off.

But back to Ame. She'll definitely make her mark in ways that will surprise us---I'm sure of it. After all, one of the reasons that she's leaving is to go do things that only she can do alone.

To use yet another cliché whose origins are murky as fuck, the way such things usually go:

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Amelia Watson is an explorer by nature, and after going far with what she has for now, there are new avenues to explore that she want to do, to fail/succeed fast so to speak.

Godspeed hololive's #1 detective! o7

QCUE Pairing Issues Resolved?

That was... harrowing.

tl;dr: If QCUE isn't willing to pair via Bluetooth, even after factory resetting, then the only way out is to drain the batteries of the two earbuds completely, shove them one by one into the case to check for connectivity, before trying to pair again through the ``normal process'' of holding the back button with the case open till the blue-light blinks.

Context: I bought me some Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (QCUE) a few months back on a whim to replace the now-broken third pair of the Bose QuietComfort 20 noise cancelling in-ear headphones (QC20). The key difference was that the new QCUE were wireless, as compared to the QC20.

The reason why I said ``on a whim'' was because I already lug around a QuietComfort 35 Wireless Headphones II (QC35II) to replace the QC20, which is wireless and does its job well. Except for the fact that in SIN city, the high humidity and high temperature meant that wearing these over-the-ears headphones for long periods of time was... uncomfortable at best. I still use these for all the various teleconferencing meetings due to the excellent sound isolation (we used to call 'em ``Skyping'' back in the day), but very rarely use them for casual music listening on the go.

And thus, the QCUE is a thing now.

I recently switched phones to the Xiaomi 14 from my Xiaomi 12. Had I a choice, I wouldn't even bother, but since the replacement of the non-working screen of my Xiaomi 12 back in late 2024-06 (was it only less than 3 months ago?!), I knew that the days of my Xiaomi 12 was numbered. Thanks to the myriad of 2FA and other ``app-fication'', the stupid ``smartphone'' has become a piece of critical equipment. As for my Xiaomi 12, the rear-backing was starting to show signs of the glue [from the repair] failing, and I did not want to repeat the same scramble for a fix, this time from potentially greater failure.

And so I went to get that replacement.

``MT, you're long-winded--get to the point!''

I'm getting there. I migrated the information and apps from Xiaomi 12 to Xiaomi 14 (bye bye Geocache Calculator and Barcode Scanner, no thanks to Android 14 and beyond auto-blocking apps targeting old-enough versions of Android).

And then I tried to reconnect my QCUE. Which was what prompted the first statement.

I tried everything---clearing all the Bluetooth lists, resetting the QCUE, resetting the phone's network connections, factory resetting the QCUE, re-do all the steps a few more times.

It didn't work.

That is, until I saw this innocuous comment:

I got the same issue and got to fix it by draining the whole battery of the earbuds, waiting about half an hour more and then charging them again

---Tyras25

Well, that's the one thing I hadn't tried, and so I left out my QCUE for a day and change. It took much longer due to not having any existing connection to tap into to drain the power faster.

And when I finally found that both earbuds are completely drained of power (can tell because the welcome ``vrroomsh'' sound was missing when the earbud was applied to the ear), I pencilled the three contact points per earbud, and put each earbud one at a time into the case, to ensure that it was in good contact before putting in the next.

Then I applied the pairing process with my Xiaomi 14.

Whaddaya know. The pairing was successful!

I did the same for Eileen-III, same.

Now, I still need to verify that the QCUE can actually receive the sound signals, but I cannot do that just yet due to the earbuds being completely drained of power.

But having the pairing working is already a great win.

As a side note, there was also an unknown BT 600 device ID that was emitted by my QCUE---I wonder if this is significant in any way about why the pairing was jank.

And apart from the nugget that saved me, here's the rest of the thread which has other useful information. For how long Reddit will be around for such things to be in existence, is something that only time will tell.

Till the next update.

HoloEN Myth: 4th Anniversary

HoloEN Myth. 4th Anniversary. Don't wait---check it out:
These ladies, though they operate behind an anime façade, helped me through some rough times.

I don't know if I had told the story of how I learnt about VTubers. It was this Trash Taste video; I cannot remember when I first saw it, but that was when I found out about VTubers. Reddit loved dumping hololive on the popular thread ever so often, so I had on-and-off heard of them, but not exactly the HoloEN Myth crew.

My usual content creators were having their own troubles, and so their content creation was on the down, my own relationship was shit, the global pandemic became a thing, and I was on a sabbatical (or a self-social isolation, to be precise) for a year.

HoloEN Myth was an escape from the nonsense that was there. Of course, there was also Pavolia Reine of holoro eventually with her Zero Escape playthroughs, and a slightly more relatable SEA culture references (in English), but the point that I wanted to make was that in the midst of hell on earth, a fairly wholesome entertainment started up, and became part of my media consumption habit ever since.

Three more generations have come since then (CouncilRyS/Promise, Advent, and then Justice), but Myth has been the OG. They were the least put together, the rawest, the pioneers, the most heartfelt, the ones who trail-blazed when few knew what they could be, just so that the later generations can soar from the get-go. Ina's comfy art streams, Ame's brute-force attempts at bringing some form of normalcy for the Myth ladies to match up what their JP senpais in hololive had, Gura for general entertainment, Kiara for being the heart, and Calli for music (that I didn't really got into, but it grew on me---check out End of A life, also the cover by Inamesame in the 4th Annivesary show), and of course the special magic that happens when the five got together each time for their anniversaries or for Halloween.

I can never watch their major collaborations without bawling---I was there when they were going through it all. Each group song they sang, each anniversary they went through... I was there.

We were there.

We all shared in their frustrations as the global pandemic fucked normalcy up, we all shared their triumph when things finally came to a head, and they could finally be what they were meant to be.

I'll miss this group of amazing ladies the day that they decide to retire from being HoloEN Myth.

But in the mean time, I will still watch them, and enjoy the time we have with them.

From a wiki on Hololive talents:

The core concept of this hololive English group is VTubers who hail from worlds of legend.

Legends indeed.

🐙🔎🔱💀🐔

Part Three of Pain: Done

Friday. I'm on leave, thanks to past-me for planning out various random long weekends to cover for the fact that 2024-09 has no public holidays in it. We cleared yet another demo/briefing yesterday, bruised, but succeeded on the whole. Next up is the shindig tomorrow morning that I have to go as a ``show face'' event despite being on leave, but it's more of a passive appearance than needing me to do anything.

Meanwhile, I have been spending time re-arranging Can't Help Falling In Love (Wedding Version) into a collaboration piece for flute and cello. It has been... interesting to do so, and I feel a little scammed because the flute part is obviously doing much of the heavy lifting in comparison with the cello (flute is largely playing an adjusted version of the treble clef, while the cello is playing an adjusted version of the bass clef). But such is the nature of the instruments---the higher one goes on the grand staff, the tighter the vertical grouping of the notes that are played, and the shorter they are to provide that sweet sweet melody.

It's a nice piece, but it does sound more Canon in D than Presley's Can't Help Falling In Love. Should be interesting though---I've done arrangements before (heh, mostly of my own compositions), but they were targeted at the full Chinese Orchestra, never for something a little more... sparse like a flute and cello. Once this is done, I might try to arrange another piece, but this time for the Chinese Orchestra itself---that itch is coming again.

Which means no shapez 2 this time. Actually, I've not touched a computer game for about a week now, spending much of my time doing reading, general thinking, and of course, the rearrangement.

In other news, my current phone, after fixing the cracked up screen just... uhhh... last month(?), is seeing the backing peeling off due to the glue seemingly giving way. I suspect it's because this phone has been undergoing some strong heating/cooling cycles when I activate the wireless hotspot feature---for some reason, that always makes the phone warm up more than usual. So it's back to phone shopping I go, possibly today. I am considering if I also want to update the potato that I use to run the ``official'' work number, but that will largely depend on how much I am intending to spend on my own phone to begin with.

``MT, why do you need a new phone? You can just hold the backing in place with rubber bands, right? Or at least, get it re-glued by the same people who glued it together in the first place!''

If there were nothing critical on it, I might have gone on that path. But sadly, there are so many 2FA nonsense that needs a working phone that I cannot run the risk of yet another catastrophic failure. That whole screen replacement was always a stop-gap---the end game had always been a total replacement at some point, and I suppose that today is just the right time for this to happen.

I think that's about it for now. The run of pain isn't over though...

Till the next update.

Midnight Stupid O'Clock?

It's stupid o'clock (sort of)---time to get all maudlin with a drink in hand.

I was doing fairly well for quite a while, all things considered. Yes, there were moments where I just wonder why the hell I'm still alive (and yes, even now), while intrusive thoughts appear fleetingly through my mind, before disappearing back into the abyss from whence they came.

Then of course all the things started to pile up as a matter of the normal course of operation---projects and what-not always start having their major checkpoints/milestones crammed together the closer we get towards the end of the current funding tranche.

I think I'm stressed out from that. There're also other things that I don't want to talk about specifically, but those things did not do me any favours either, in terms of piling it on.

I coped through playing games that took my mind away. shapez, shapez 2, No Man's Sky, The Talos Principle 2, and everything in between.

I tried to read more. And played more music, this time with a different group even, though the actual mechanics were more serendipitous than anything else. I tried to catch up on my sleep, and tried to get back on schedule on my weight loss programme (that 70 kg at the end of the year is starting to look dicey as hell now).

I went on long-ass cycling trips during the hottest time of the day to shock my body into exhaustion so that I didn't have to think so much.

Last evening, I even grabbed a friend to just hang out after work with some booze and food to chill out and vent a little.

Did all of that help?

In a way, yes. It did keep my mind together. I didn't make too many bad decisions on the whole, which I think is the singularly most important thing when it comes to crunch time.

But you know and I know that all these things that I do... are just temporary distractions at best.

``MT, but what about God?''

I would say that it is thanks to God that I can even hold it together enough to engage these temporary distractions.

In theory, I can just walk away from all the things that are stressing me out. But I cannot, and will not---I have literal lives under my charge, and when I am in charge of something (the team, in this case), I am determined to be the last damn person to leave, not the first.

Call it the curse of the duty-bound, but I think I'm severely sidetracked.

All the happenings aside, I'm not depressed. In reality, I'm just vexed over something else that started to bug me in no small way---my heart started aching for another soul to share my life with.

It crept up on me without my realising. I think it started back when I unhesitatingly replied that I was alive in response to a ``how're you doin?'' question. It was June, this year.

In between then and now, much [shit] has happened, and here we are today, feeling vexed.

I simply do not know if I am ready to pursue anyone, or if settling down with someone was something that I was to go for.

What was that life going to be? Will I still get to go on the path that I had started on ever since that fateful day I got dumped for the last time? Am I really over whatever happened from then, and am ready for the future?

Or is there even a future in the first place?

Annoyed. Irritated.

I think that in some way, it is actually hard for me to go on pursuing anyone. Mostly because I don't usually default into that mode to begin with---my hormones don't really rage hard and drive the horny in a way that makes me actively head out to look for that special someone. In many senses, attraction to me is a very confusing concept, even being a ``veteran'' of several [failed] relationships.

I don't see a conventionally pretty woman and go ``yowzers, she's hot---I simply have to speak with her!''. Hell, I don't even eye any woman whom I meet with the judgement of whether she's ``wife material'' or not---they are fellow humans first and foremost, and I treat them the way that I would treat anyone else, with courtesy and friendliness, without ulterior motives.

Perhaps this is why wherever I end up, most people trust me enough to help them, even at their most vulnerable.

For me to be attracted to someone, she's got to have that... thing about her that I have not managed to reduce into words. All the women whom I ended up in relationships with... they all had the same thing. It was a certain kind of personality, a certain way with which they go about doing things.

They did not stand out, not immediately. They are smart, but they don't usually make it a habit of showing it---speaking with them reveals that intelligence behind the façade that they put up for whatever reason. They are smart, but they aren't in the habit of being condescending with it. They have that wry sense of humour that ``whooshes'' past most people, and they don't usually draw such attention to themselves. They are never really conventionally sexy, but once I got to know them better (and when we became an item), they are incredibly sexy.

But I suppose there's also that other... thing that ensures that these women whom I had relationships with ended up all being exes at this stage---selfishness. It's not quite the same as being self-centred, but it's close enough.

Then again, can I really fault them?

Only a fool claims to be self-less, and even I have since learnt to not be a self-less fool in this world where the foolish are pointed out, made fun and taken advantage of.

I suppose part of the reason why my heart started aching for another soul to share my life with is that I missed the times where I had a safe space with a trusted person to share my thoughts with, to just hold on to physically to remind myself that life ain't all bad, and to have someone else to actually care about, to be a good reason to push on through despite how shitty life can get at times.

Friends can cover much of these, but as we age, even friends have their own lives and families to look out for, not me.

``But MT, you can always talk with ChatGPT! And if you're looking for someone to hold, embed ChatGPT into a gynoid!''

Firstly, eww. Secondly, eww. Thirdly, it's not the same... I have many things I can hold (Twinkletoes being one of them, now joined by a Takodachi in the office), but no matter how soft or cute they are, they aren't the same as another person whom one is spending one's life together with.

Anyway, I think I've lost the plot like ten paragraphs ago. I've vented enough for now, and it's time to turn in for the night---I need to play at the music ministry at PPCC tomorrow.

Till the next update then.

Part Two of Pain: Done

Ah... Monday. And tomorrow I have to be on course for two days to officially learn the ropes of proper goal setting and appraisal for my people (it's basically SMART).

But for today, or whatever is left of today, I get to chill due to being on leave.

Yesterday saw the successful staging of the concert with King's Flute Choir at Esplanade Recital Studio. That is actually the first time that I was playing at the Esplanade complex, and while I have explored much of the publicly accessible areas on my various ``annual pilgrimages'' to the place, I was simply not prepared for the warren of mazes that comprise the back stage.

Entry is naturally controlled---a performer's pass needed to be obtained from the security office (main from the B1 parking area, or the satellite one opposite from Marina Square). Once inside, it was just corridors upon corridors of rooms, equipment, and signage pointing to places. The first floor was largely towards the main concert hall, and since I entered through the main back stage door, I had to filter my way back towards Lift CH 3, where the Recital Studio can be reached on the second floor.

It was a real doozy in the beginning, but I soon got the hang of it.

The performers' rooms were spartan and utilitarian---dressing tables with mirrors that had strong lights that could be used to assist in make up, attached combination toilet/shower room, and even self-serviced combination lock lockers for any other things that one might want locked away. I spent much of the time outside of sound check and the actual performance in one of the rooms, just chilling, or working on some of the more difficult parts on Davie, sharing the room with fellow contrabass flautist, the double bassist, the harpist, and a few other low flute folks.

That is, until we started getting exiles from the other performers' room, mostly to escape the piccolos that were doing much of the same last-minute practices that I was doing. It's understandable, and in between their own practices and my general pre-performance ``any more work I am going to put in is going to do fuck-all'' attitude, I shot the breeze with some of my fellow performers.

The concert went through as well as it could, despite my own bumbling here and there (I'd like to think I cover it well enough that I was tolerated due to being one of only a few low flute players). GY and a few folks from TGCO were there to watch, and they all had a good time, with GY particularly impressed at the quality of the musicians (as it should be---the core players are actual professionals). I caught up with the TGCO folks after the concert for drinks at Harry's, while GY had to run off, while suggesting that we catch up again some time later.

Davie did well---I think that I definitely need to level up more as the player. I've had low flutes on hand for 8 years, ever since I first got hold of Mio, but I don't think that I had really put in a serious effort to develop my low flute techniques more strongly, mostly because I never had the need to play it ``big'' (like in a flute choir) before. Much of the time, it was mostly playing melody lines an octave lower, or that one time I was covering for the cello, which explains my rudimentary control over Davie and Mio.

But the key thing to note is that for bass (and later on, contrabass) flutes in the flute choir setting, that pesky low-C is used way more often than might be expected. And this is something that I haven't really been working on, which prompted my earlier comment of needing to put in serious effort to develop my low flute techniques more strongly. The use of the low-C was so often that I had to abandon the use of the Oval-8 splints on my right pinky, just to avoid the problem of numbness that I got the first time I was drilling through Ruslan and Ludmilla and William Tell. The Oval-8 splint did its job of holding back the hyperextension of the proximal interphalangeal joint of my right pinky, but due to the sheer amount of force I was pushing through holding the low-C due to poor technique (and a bit of imperfect maintenance of Davie due to no COA done since purchase), the splint was crushing my nerve in my finger, causing the finger tip to be tingly for days after.

So, no Oval-8 splints. But the irony of course is that with more strength in the pinky (through drilling on the difficult parts in the pieces), the less the hyperextension becomes a problem because of the increased tension forces of the muscle that pulls the finger closed.

I'll probably send Davie in for COA at Windworks when they have an open slot.

------

So that was yesterday. What about today?

Well, I paid good money for 120 min of getting beaten up in a controlled manner to remove the pain that has been plaguing me for the whole month (I went for a 2-hour massage).

My left shoulder was shot (my posterior deltoid was messed up), and my lumbar triangle was giving me random-ass pains (probable erector spinae strain, with possible strain in one of the deeper gluteus muscles). The masseuse beat the shit knots out of my muscles, with greater focus on the shoulders, but with good enough focus on the back muscles and lumbar triangle that after the session, I only had the ``good'' sore with no remnants of the original pain.

And anyone who claims that they can go through a massage sleeping... is probably lying or have told the masseuse to go easy on them.

For me, massages have always been an uncompromising assault on the knots in my muscles through skilled application of force and pressure. That kind of force application does not cause damage to me in any way, but it does trigger a sensory overload that is either ``sour'' or ``pain'', where the ``pain'' here isn't the kind you get from banging a body part on a hard object, but the kind of resistant pain a bundle of highly tensioned relaxed muscles pushes against the force that is meant to forcefully relax them. I am actively awake and completely aware of what is going on, controlling my breathing to go with whatever the masseuse is currently working on, to ensure that the misfiring sensation of ``sour'' and ``pain'' from my nerves do not weaken my resolve in allowing the tensed relaxed muscles to be treated.

And then I had a nap or two in between, with some diet-defying choice of food to reward myself for no good reason.

In the meanwhile though, I am totally not addicted to shapez 2. Definitely not. Here's a screenshot of the ``Operator Level'', a sort of long-term measurement of the staged cumulative production of various milestone shapes.

See? Totally not addicted. I absolutely did not set up my factories, and then kept the game running in the background to amass the numbers needed. I also did not rework some of the larger space-platform machines I designed to improve the production efficiency to ensure that I could fully stack up the space belts to deliver the full 180×12/min rate of shapes.

------

With all that, part two of pain is also done.

Part three is coming up soon, and hopefully I also have good news for that when the time comes.

Meanwhile, that's all I have for now. Till the next update.

Part One of Pain: Done

And that's part one of pain mostly done---there's still one more thing that technically happens right smack in the first of the next month, but the build up to it is close enough proximity to this month that it might as well be a part of it; hence the ``mostly done'' qualifier.

The thing about technology demonstrations, is that everyone expects things to run smooth. That is normally the case, especially when one controls all the inputs to the said technology demonstration.

But what happens if a critical component is dependent on a reluctant contributor whose technical chops are not completely under one's control?

Well, there are two ways to play it.

1. Be strict and demand code reviews before we even bother with integration; or
2. Be lenient and just integrate what is provided.

On hindsight, I should have played the bully card harder---I don't mind dying on my sword [proverbially] if it is my team that cocks up, but I mind a bit when I'm doing so because of a third party whose stuff we are integrating who cocked up network resource programmming 101.

The onus is still on me though---I take full responsibility for not instituting the first of the two options which led to the technology demonstration failures. Thankfully, that issue could be worked around with some tight timing of restarting the components and getting the crowd worked up to interact with the demo, so I didn't actually die completely (still lost some reputation, but at this point in my life, considering that I have no intention in climbing the corporate ladder, I don't give too much a shit).

All in all, the technology demonstration was a qualified success---the overall vibes was positive despite the initial failure.

Being a manager is hard---everything that one does and decides are exercises of balances. On the one hand, one wants to ensure absolute control in order to bring the variances down to improve quality, and on the other hand, there is a need to let people make mistakes to learn from to better build up their capabilities, be it team members [whom I'm more willing to ``tank damage'' for] or even third party contributors. The need to balance between these two is mostly the reason that I am driven crazy more than half the time.

The temptation to take everything into one's hands is always strong, but it is important to realise that by doing so, it defeats the purpose of building a team in the first place. The reason we put a team together, is to leverage on the extra brains & hands to achieve greater parallelism, thus allowing the total effort in work-days to be fitted into a much shorter effective calendar-day count. Pulling everything back to oneself does nothing to allow projects to be delivered faster, and in the worst case, can cause bigger issues in general due to the increased cognitive load required to deal with the nitty-gritty [that the team members should be able to handle] while still maintaining a view of the big picture [that only the manager/leader can do].

I think that is the biggest lesson to learn when transiting from being an individual contributor into a manager/leader.

------

shapez 2 has been my new diversion from the vagaries of pain. It all started with this video from one of my favourite YouTubers:

Now, Josh's a mad man who captures the same kind of energy as Zisteau (he's more a Twitch streamer these days than a YouTube video maker, while having his Twitch streams archived here). I love games like Factorio, but what I like about them aren't the survival aspects(!), but on the factory aspect. And shapez 2 scratches that itch.

Of course, the first thing I did was to look for the original shapez. I could have bought the Steam version as part of the pack, or I could buy from GoG.com which was at 90% discount. And so I was pushing through last week while spending some time here and there on shapez after hours to chill out, even as I was drilling the music that was for the upcoming performance with the King's Flute Choir on 2024-09-01 on Davie.

Now that I'm mostly done with the major upgrades in shapez, it was time to start on shapez 2, and start on it I did.

It is definitely as fun as Josh made it in his video---having come from shapez, there are quite a few quality of life improvements that I enjoyed. The 3D-render of the game space took a little getting used to (shapez was laid out on a 2D-grid similar to Factorio), but that was not a problem. The key difference between shapez and shapez 2 lies in a few new ``meta'' levels of building. All things in shapez are single units of machinery, be it extractor, or belt, or stacker. shapez 2 has all the stuff in shapez, but has space platforms, which are like their own self-contained modules that are made up of the shapez elements, as well as layers, which brings extra expressivity even at the shapez component level through effectively doubling and then tripling the original 2D grid space.

Oh, and it's really colourful and cool.

Pillars of Eternity is currently seeing my party in the city, which is a slow part of the game; I do go back to it every now and then. I've since completed The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures some time back, and am likely to start on its sequel, The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve soon.

And I suppose that's about it for now. Till the next update.

On ``Open Relationships''

Each time I read about an ``open relationship'', I just shake my head first in utter confusion, and then in disgust.

I simply cannot understand it.

It's worse when the proposer is the man in the heterosexual relationship. I mean, what was he thinking? That he was some kind of reproductive stud that could get lots of sex when he opens up his relationship?

That somehow the woman in that relationship is chopped liver?

Need I be Captain Obvious and point out that it is supremely easy for women to find sexual partners than men---in fact, they don't really need to look that far, for most men are horny to begin with, and a vagina is a vagina, especially if the owner of said vagina provides consent.

There's a good reason why prostitution is known as ``the oldest profession'', and most of the purveyors are women, while the consumers are largely men.

Even the ``fugly ones'' can get sexual partners relatively easily compared to the average man through the magic of make-up, a good enough dress sense, and just displaying the slightest interest in the man they might want to sleep with.

If a man in the heterosexual relationship chooses to open up the said relationship, the only outcome is just regret.

While I first cannot understand it, I also have a certain amount of disgust about such ``open relationships''.

I am a jealous lover. I do not like to share my partner with anyone, especially our most intimate moments, be it emotional or sexual. While I am jealous, I'm not possessive---she is still her, but ``us'' is us---we stand together as one unit against the world, together.

No sharing of that with anyone, emotionally or sexually. And that includes the hypothetical her (at this time) sharing with her girl-friends our most intimate moments.

In some sense, the idea of a ``work spouse'' also disgusts me at some level. We can have close working colleagues, but calling them (especially if they are of the opposite sex) a ``work spouse'' is a type of emotional cheating that I just do not want to be involved in.

I work well with them, I am not married to them at work. I do not have a codependency issue with said person to be considered as though we have some kind of ``platonic intimacy''.

Whoever came up with that term needs to be taken to task. Whoever decided to propagate that term, ought to be shot.

``MT, why are you so conservative? Get on with the times man... sexual freedom! Emotional freedom!''

Sorry, I never claimed to be a liberal---if anything, I'm at best a progressive. I believe that everyone has their freedom of choice, with the usual caveat of accepting all consequences of their choices.

Spousal relationships (and any relationships that lead to that) are special---it's the type of relationship where one literally is at one's most vulnerable with another, with the deepest of trust being placed in the other person's hand, in reciprocation reciprocity, just so that the spousal couple thus formed is stronger than each individual, hopefully making living the rest of this banal existence a little more meaningful, lively, and stimulating. Any one who cannot fulfil this role just isn't worth it, no matter how sexy that person is, or how good a listener that person is---if they do not build up, but instead tear down, or manipulate, then that person is not worth it, ever. And naturally, reciprocation reciprocity is key---to have someone like that as a spouse implies that you need to exemplify the same qualities as well---the relationship is then ``equally yoked''.

With all that I said, bear in mind that while I make a judgement in what I say, I do not believe that it is my place to enforce my values on others---they live how they want, and deal with the consequences, be they good or bad. It is, however, my place to enforce my own rules on myself, and the relationships that I may get involved in, with the word ``may'' doing a whole lot of heavy-lifting.

Because as at now, I remain unconvinced that I am going to start a new relationship, let alone get married.

I'd write more, but it's getting depressing. Time for some Suntory Whisky---I've not had a drink in a while, and the upcoming week is prime time for drinking [my pain away], if my bank account allows for it.

Till the next update.

P.S.: There's this someone from Singapore who is zealously loading the mobile version of the main page of this blog. Hi there, I see you, though I have no fucking clue who you are. Did you know that you can use the Atom feed available from the desktop version to have an RSS feed-based notification of when a new post comes up?

National Day Grab-bag

Okay, it's a public holiday today celebrating SIN city's independence. That's excellent.

Naturally, most denizens in SIN city that are able, have found ways to head out of country to enjoy the ``free'' long weekend. As for me, I have an even longer weekend due to the extra days of leave that I took for yesterday, and the upcoming Monday.

``But MT, aren't you in the middle of a high-key period? Why the sudden long leave?''

The leave... was planned before any of these things went bananas. And it was roughly when I first learnt that Cat Quest III is released on 2024-08-08. Naturally I had to take leave to play it!

So far, Cat Quest III hasn't been disappointing. True, it is no Elden Ring, but notice that I've given up on Elden Ring, whereas I am still having fun with Cat Quest III.

The primary purpose of a game is to be fun, so as to encourage the key reason for its existence---play. Any game that doesn't encourage play isn't really a game anymore, and should be called something else altogether. And what constitutes as fun is highly subjective, which is absolutely fine---everyone's life circumstances are different. Some things that one finds fun (like playing a musical instrument or programming a computer) might be a job/chore for another (think professional musician/music teacher, and software engineer), but that's diversity and freedom of choice right there.

Speaking of games, I finally completed the last two achievements of Faerie Solitaire, which involved:

1. Raising all 32 pets to adult forms; and
2. Completing all Challenges.

It only took me ten years to finish up those two, and after that is done, I promptly installed Faerie Solitaire (Remastered) to have this little game with the updated features (graphics and general quality-of-life updates) set up.

Talk about addictive.

And while we are talking about old games, Jupiter Hell Classic was recently announced to be available on Steam soon. It's really DoomRL v0.9.9.8 in disguise, reskinned heavily to avoid the ZeniMedia Doom IP. I stopped caring about ChaosForge after realising the KK was now beholden to his shareholders instead of the fans, and have not looked into the ChaosForge Forum ever since that day back in 2022.

And no, I haven't really gone back there. And I don't think I will head back there. I never wish KK ill, and sincerely hope that he will continue to succeed. It's just that I will no longer play an active part in his endeavours.

Will I get Jupiter Hell Classic when it is released? Maybe... for old time's sake. It'd be nice to see Nyarlaptoptep's Boots once more, as well as the Mother-In-Law, two items that I have had a hand in naming in one way or another.

And while we are on the old stuff, WordStar 7 has seen a release by science-fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, as noted in his blog entry. WordStar is among the OG of word processing---they came at a time just between the typewriter, and the advent of WYSIWYG word processing, roughly when people were looking for more out of their text processing beyond full-screen text editors.

I sadly never had the need to work with WordStar, but I do enjoy me a good text-mode word processor as a concept. I'm part of that ``weird'' group of people who prefer writing in as distraction free a manner as possible, which was why something as arcane as TeX or the much better successor LaTeX appeals more strongly to me than good ol' MSWord (or these days on Eileen-III, LibreOffice Writer). My writing tool of preference these days is either good old vim, or Q10 on Windows.

There's just something about the 80-character wide monospace font form factor that makes the writing feel more fluid than trying to bang something out in a GUI with proportional fonts, and twiddling with formatting every which way, even though almost all word processors actually have semantic styling defined from the get-go.

But back to WordStar. The modern user may be put off by the need to run this old DOS program in one of several DOS emulators (Sawyer's 680MB package has all these sorted out, while I already have a DOSBox-X set up on Eileen-III), but I think they will be really put off by the entire keyboard interface. The semantics are quite foreign to the modern user as the interface was designed for a time where the keyboard standards weren't standard yet.

The ``WordStar Diamond`` is easy enough to get used to---it's like WASD, except it is ESXD, with control held. It is slightly less arcane than vi's hjkl movement, and thus more tolerable.

The problematic part is text selection (``marking blocks'' in WordStar lingo) is persistent. This means that the text can be marked [in a block], and other things can happen, while the marked block remains marked. So, if one wants to replace the selected text, it is important to execute a block-cut or block-delete before typing in the new text, otherwise the outcome is... not as expected.

I've had my fill of this back in the old days of working with the IDE of Turbo Pascal and Turbo C/C++ from Borland International. They followed the WordStar semantics, and it was usually a pain to turn that option off, mostly because of my scenarios of using them at programming competitions where the hardware and environment are provided for by the organiser.

It's not hard to get used to it, but it does get old pretty quickly.

Old software aside, Beyond Compare 5 has been out for about a month now. I love this file comparison tool---it's multiplatform, it's fast, it can compare stuff over the network, and the price is always reasonable for the functionality it has. The big thing for me to upgrade (for free in my case since I bought Beyond Compare 4 within the window for it) is the ability to have word-wrap enabled when doing text comparison. Oh, it can also handle table comparisons better than before---no more single-sheet preparation like before.

There's also the last bit of switching back to Mozilla Firefox from Google Chrome for my ``serious'' web applications (i.e. logged in stuff that companies would love to use tracking on) due to the shitstorm that is Manifest V3 and how it nerfs ad-blocking. The modern web is not usable without ad-blocking---everyone seems to want to load as many advertisements as they can on their puny web sites. On its own, it's not a problem per se, if these advertisements are tastefully done. But that has not been the case for the better part of a decade now. Apart from the technical problems of increasing the attack surface area, these advertisements (full-blown multimedia extravanganza too, for some of them!) consume precious network bandwidth, making that gigabit Internet connection trudge along slower than the bad old days of dial-up.

Do I recommend switching? Sure... it's pretty painless. But it's still up to individual choice whether to do so.

And anyway, I think that's about it for now. Back to Cat Quest III for me.

Till the next update.

Bus Ride Thought

It's stupid o'clock now.

As I was riding the bus to the office this morning, this thought came to mind:

The seeking of validation of oneself through another person is simultaneously the most romantic and the most depressing thing.

It came to mind as I was just daydreaming a little, wondering whether I am ever ready to even consider accepting another person into my life as a partner, or forever forfeit that opportunity through the rapidly closing window of whatever is left of my ``dating years''.

Look, in a few months, I'm forty. That's not young.

I'm never going to start a family with children, for sure.

But maybe, just maybe, I'd be with someone who is willing to be an equal partner with me, to be there so that we can support each other as we grow old.

And then I was thinking about how sometimes we all ``need'' to talk to someone as a way of sharing our thoughts, to have some kind of sanity checking, and you know, get validation.

And if that person is the closest person in one's life (i.e. partner/spouse), then it is probably one of those types of gestures that is considered ``romantic''.

But if that person is not some closest person, but it just happens to be whoever is within striking distance (think acquaintances), then it's pretty depressing. It is an indication of just how starved of human contact and empathy one is that they are trying to establish some kind of rapport, any kind of rapport, just to feel like a human.

It is a rather sad kind of existence.

I wonder if I'll just end up like that...

``Mental Wellness'' Came and Went

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.

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.

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.

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.

Totally Failing Rate

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

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

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

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

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

So far, so good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blasphemous---Done!

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

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

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

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

------

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe.

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

------

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

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

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

------

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

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

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

``I'm Alive!''

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

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

Maybe things are turning for the better. Who knows?

Only God, for sure.

Orcish ACM Behaviours In Re ORCID Demandment

What a week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I do not like that.

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

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

And that I did.

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

That makes resistance to it so much simpler.

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

But I do not need to play that game.

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

Cleaning dizi

Damn that was tiring, but fulfilling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

------

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

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

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

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

After all, tomorrow's a work day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hope this helps!