letdown

I just went to gramophone at cathay and got an Ella Fitzgerald / Louis Armstrong album (I think it's a compilation, there's too many good tracks on it to be true) among other things. That album was unpriced, so just before I handed my card and the stack of CDs over I asked how much it was. Got the answer - $44.95 - gulp - skinflint philistine in me screamed wtf! but I got it anyway. 

Then I got home and found out the last track on the first disc skips. My heart bleeds.

Damnit gotta go gramophone another time - and before that, test ALL the 6 other CDs just in case. Shit.

UPDATE: Somewhat happy ending - the guy at gramophone managed to get hold of another copy and exchanged it for me. (He also forgot to take off the anti-theft thing, resulting in 3 gramophone cathay staff running at me just moments after I set off the store's alarm unwittingly.) Unfortunately now disk 2 has 1 tiny tic (it skips a couple of seconds) on my favourite track, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off. But since I burnt the old (non-defective) disk 2 on my comp I don't really care any more heh.

can't be arsed

Ok I haven't updated for ages, but I really can't be bothered to do a proper post or rant or anything like that. I've been swamped with an overwhelming 'who gives a shit' feeling. I didn't have a spectacularly bad week or anything, just that I don't have any sense of purpose at all at my workplace. Every day I feel a renewed sense of the truth of Tennyson's words

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die

and that feeling kinda sucks.

I've discovered Phish and they are a level of awesome in themselves!

In other news I've been going regularly for some sunday rehearsals - Brahms' 1st Symphony, Wagner's Meistersingers Overture and the Lalo Thing - which is a welcome change from the mindless office tedium. I had some misgivings about leading the section; after all I'm new there, not exactly nice to parachute in. But then again Brahms is a nightmare, and even the Lalo Thing has rhythm issues to address. For instance: triplets are always slower than they seem, and it's quite difficult to get that across.

I like the sense of guiding them along through the piece, and bringing out the nuances and contrasts of articulation and all that. It's rather anal, but there are so many factors that make a good sound. Just consider the bowing technique: the particular angle that the bow strikes the string, the speed of the bow stroke - slow: heavy; fast: light - the length of bow used, even the finish - uplift gives it a nice crisp sound. And all that takes some experience. It is immodest, but I've played in orchestras for years and there are things you discover in that time. There're young players to guide and it's always rewarding when you cobble a section together.

There's also that SYFO business, playing the Brahms Violin Concerto, Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphoses and the Tchaik 1812 Overture. Different kettle of fish, many players who're much more inexperienced and lots more work to be done. I'm tempted to ask to take the sectionals, because the times when I was in their shoes are still fresh in my mind, and again there's a great opportunity to guide and shape their approach to the music. And Brahms again! Fascinating work, bursting with energy. And you can't play everything the same; there are notes, and then there are notes. Again, nuances and contrasts to emphasise. But first they need to practise!

Problem is I'm getting into a kind of rut; there's so much music in my life, to the exclusion of other things. I would like to do other stuff, maybe start a poetry or literature group (public readings!) and of course I need to get back up to speed on maths and economics. All that while making sure I still can pass IPPT gah.

There are some precious few insane people out there who can do all those things with ease; I'm really not one of them, although it might look like it sometimes. It's really taken me an awful lot of effort. But one thing I will not stand for is to accept mediocrity, the acceptance of the substandard. It will just take time and patience, but I've got to escape mediocrity.

combo no. 5

My God, this thing is 10 years old, and I still remember it as if it were yesterday.

Combo no. 5 (sadly I can't embed it - it'll autoplay)

heh

ouch this's gotta hurt.

sounds like a plan

where would we be without xkcd?

dumbass question

"Do you think I'm stupid?" is possibly the dumbest question ever - and it (or its variants, e.g. "Do you take me for a fool?") is asked pretty damn often.

• Anyone who asks that is obviously stupid to begin with
• That question clearly invites the answer "yes, dumbass"
• Even if you said "no" you'd be lying through your teeth. and bloody patronising

I hate stupidity. The only thing I hate more than stupidity is people who are content with being stupid. Because there's this perfidious breed of human that yes, is stupid, and no, doesn't try to change things.

It's easy to get smart. All you have to do is think. If you'd try to think up one thought a day that was worth remembering, you'd be on your way already. Even the judgement call, that of quality, (I mean deciding whether a thought was worth keeping or not) requires some productive thought.

It's not a slippery slope, being ignorant. And I hate people who simply wallow in it, who could catch up but just don't bother. It is the worst human sin, the lowest form of sloth, the purest degeneracy, and there're front-row seats in hell reserved for these people. How true it is, that life is very often wasted on the living.

Noobified!

This must be one of the more bizarre experiences of my life, which happened just half an hour or so ago.

I was on the train, getting back after a half day at work. Really vehemently angry because, yes true I'd screwed up a form (left out the address field in a visa application for my boss - multiple addresses after all, and do military camps have street names?), but no I didn't believe I deserved the earful I got from my superior at work. After all, it was her job, and if I wasn't around she'd be stuck doing it. So much for gratitude. Shucks I feel more and more like Marvin.

So anyway, I was on the east-bound train holding on to the handholds overhead and resting my head on my hand, sick of life, etc. At Bugis this old ah-ma type lady (~70s at least) asked me if I wanted to sit down, whether I was tired - in Hokkien. She looked really concerned and all that. I sheepishly refused (of course right, everyone staring at me in uniform), said it was ok (in Chinese).

And she started talking to me! Asked me if army was tiring ("zo peng jin cham ah?"), was it tekong, talking about all her sons' and grandsons' experiences - I think, because my Hokkien is horrible and she was talking kinda softly. It could have been the price of veg or her Malay neighbours, for all I know, but she was going on and on non-stop; I could barely figure out what she was going on about. It was damn tragic, but damn funny.

At first I tried to keep up but it was completely impossible to understand her. Round about Kallang I tried telling her I couldn't understand Hokkien (yeah, I memorised that one sentence in case it ever came in useful "wa bueh hiao tia hokkien weh") - but all she did was laugh and carry on! And there I was pathetically nodding at her saying "oh uh mm" at various strategic points in the conversation. There was this gal about my age (yes ZH, she was cute) sitting next to her who, by the looks of it, couldn't understand it either, laughing at me (the bitch), but got drawn into the convo round about Paya Lebar too.

So all the way from Bugis to Tanah Merah (the girl got off at Bedok) we were basically being talked at by this ah-ma, and faking comprehension, while more and more people were looking at us and wondering wtf was going on. It would've been hilarious if it wasn't me. As for the woman she really looked damn happy that she had someone to regale with stories and anecdotes. I contemplated getting off at Kallang or putting my earphones back in, but it would've been so rude, and so wrong. So just tahan lah.

And at the end of the train ride I wasn't pissed any more, somehow. Just even more convinced that life's a total mystery.

2 things about MRT commuters that piss me off

1. Those apparently able-bodied people who get ON at City Hall and OFF at Bugis - a mere 500m apart! I swear at least 20% of those who board the east-bound train at City Hall do that, them swine. I hope their toes fall off.
2. Those retards who stand up in a packed carriage the moment the train starts to move off (i.e. when everyone is most unbalanced), and inch towards the doorway in preparation for the NEXT stop, so everyone has to siam for them and fall all over each other. I especially hate it when old people do that, because I feel a tiny bit bad about falling ON them - which I do occasionally ON PURPOSE, when I feel particularly misanthropic. 

and breathe...

fun theory

I recently stumbled across this extremely interesting piece in Overcoming Bias, one of those rare blogs that actually make you think. It's about something which would not normally qualify as a fit subject for academic inquiry: fun. I've done a bit of Googling and here are a couple of links:

http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/fun-theory
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/fun-theory-sequence.html

And these are some of the questions the author poses:

• How much fun is there in the universe?
• What is the relation of available fun to intelligence?
• What kind of emotional architecture is necessary to have fun?
• Will eternal life be boring?
• Will we ever run out of fun?
  

I guess it's a work in progress, and it seems to be all one person's work right now. Rather inexplicably too, it seems to approach it from an AI (that's artificial intelligence) angle, which to me makes no sense. There isn't much point attempting to create a more rigorous "fun system" or "model" to explore normative questions of fun maximisation or optimisation if, for a start, we're not even entirely sure what fun is.

So what is fun? Wikipedia is disgustingly unhelpful; searching for fun produces a redirect to recreation, and the two are far from being identically equal. The American Heritage Dictionary (from dictionary.reference.com) tells us that fun (n.) is

1. A source of enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure.
2. Enjoyment; amusement: have fun at the beach.
3. Playful, often noisy, activity

Semantically, too, the phrasal verb have fun is telling: fun is incidental to an activity, it does not exist in and of itself, but is created by people through various actions. In this, fun closely parallels the economic concept of utility: consumption generates utility; doing fun stuff generates fun. However this is circular - what stuff is considered fun? And we're back where we started.

So some questions of my own, to get myself started:

• What is fun?
• Is fun measurable? Not in the sense that length or mass is measurable, but in the sense that there are degrees of fun: more fun, less fun, no fun.
• Is fun universal? Do people broadly find the same activities fun? Excluding, of course, psychopaths and fetishists. (A more refined fun theory might incorporate them, but I don't want to get started)
• What is the relationship of fun to happiness? Are they dependent? Related? Does one generate the other?
• What is the relationship of fun to utility/satisfaction? How similar/parallel are they? Are they identically equal? Is an economic understanding of utility applicable to fun?
• Are humans fun optimisers or maximisers? Is the optimum level of fun also the maximum level of fun? Is fun finite in a finite universe? (Although the universe is finite, wants are infinite, for instance.)

I'm sure there're lots more questions to be answered. And even more crucially, to be asked. A dialogue from Plato and some other readings would be good.