Feel free to take back your precious time before reading this, as this is rather somewhat of a random, non-educational post (always refreshing to hop back on the train of hashmaps and hexdumps, but leaving Comp. Sci. related content out of the way for once) - one containing a bit of the personal diaries to kick off the year with.
Vie/生活
Life indeed turned out to be a strange RPG (as abstract as the sense of realism can get), much different from and yet akin to the rollercoaster of a ride as people phrase it to be. I no longer, and as a matter of fact, never really considered short-term events like celebrating my ‘X years of playtime’ (birthdays), or enduring ones, such as a certain end-goal to grind for and pursue upon. As a bad example, cryogenics is one area I thought I’d invest some skill points on, but the ambition (liquid nitrification of gelato) seemed childish. While materialistic desires and the thirst for knowledge appears to be inevitable, it slowly fades away. ‘course it doesn’t! Humans, that’s what we are! is something that could perhaps be said to chime in on disapproval of this in a conversation, to which I’ll agree as well, but then, I tend to be lazy enough to fortify my statements.
Fiction
Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting Schrödinger’s cat (Sc) in a strange scenario, as to which I am inclined to confer the ‘best lucid dream of the year’ award. An eccentric creature that despises Heisenberg’s apostle (alarmingly similar to Fushi, albeit mortal), one that took six lives before he devoted the remainder (trust me, numbers in the ratio are just a mere coincidence) of them to learning the hidden art of vectors (manipulating ground vectors has never been easy, but knowing that someone can do this at a tectonic level might have raised his motivation bar)
I must admit though, teaching the fluffy creature was far from the idealistic picture I had in mind, contrary to my experience of teaching undergrads this fall.
(unnecessary elaboration)
Thing that remains to be the same in both cases is a genuine interest to share the knowledge I acquired (apart from the entitled teaching role given by profession in this case), but what made it better for the latter was the fact that they were a curious bunch. (well, for most of the part) Now that I've mentioned the teacher part of me, I must say that I like to teach within a small cluster as opposed to teaching masses, since although the outreach is limited for the former, the students get the most of what I have to offer, and I can reach out to them personally (1:1), helping them out optimally. I believe this tends to be more effective in practice than teaching or rather lecturing to a large group, with a portion of the students being left out from active engagement often.Mutual exchange of ideas and knowledge via discussion was never expected to be easy between species, but what if retention of past-life memories was possible, especially for this being who strangely seems to know anything and everything about us homo sapiens. Years of distinguished research down the line on topics ranging from renaissance to statistics uncovered the fathomable veracity that people who dislike cats were actually mice in their previous lives. Thus, by elimination, one conclusion that can be derived is that for his ‘hooman’ past, he must have liked cats. And physics. (deciphering his modus operandi was far from easy)
A fun experience with Sc was that of keenly observing the washing machine do its job for two-third of an hour straight, wherein we beat our personal staring contest records. Maybe the centripetal force seemed to strike a chord in him, given that he knew the Gen II version of HM-06 since birth. Nevertheless, better than watching paint dry.
On another occasion, a collective attempt at creativity in early preparation for the summer (with much forethought) resulted in the invention of ‘JK-69’ (still deciding on the nomenclature) - a promising H2O-based rifle (water dispenser, if that sounds too American) to blow the sanity out of the insanely sane, while being able to snipe out Macbooks with highly purified mineral-rich sparkling water from a distance of 420 subway footlongs. (novice-friendly, doesn’t need a Stanley Synder/Deadshot)
Advice
Patience is a superpower I recognized early on, and with efficacy, that still holds more value than a bogosort which works every time. Relying on others is crucial in an interconnected world, as much as independence is attractive. Furthermore, impracticality builds upon, as we distance ourselves from logic and trust. Indeed, to escape being predictable is necessary to avoid checkmates, but to garner some degree of expectedness for the close ones (while being erratic in general) is something I prefer to stick with.
Consider reconstructing bridges and rewinding bits and pieces, if your time of existence happens to be (or eventually becomes) inversely proportional to the amount of donateable fucks you give. ‘Have you become the change you wished to see in others?’ is still the best question for introspection, before you become a reflection of the way treated. Although I must admit, the failure of people to look into situations in others’ shoes is disappointing. Ambivalence is expected, and duly subjective in such cases as well.
To play the safe card is to avoid escalating matters that have unknown consequences, even if on the other side, the people you’re up against are the worst of the lot, and the odds are all against thou. Being straightforward, or rather brutally honest, is something I rely on to filter out the unwanted (mindset and behaviour-wise) types. Then there are categories I completely avoid, for instance, the dramatic ones (any different from flat earthers?). To risk chances of surviving the wrong influence can be in fact, fatal. On the bright side, there are plenty of good fish in the sea - just give it time and of course, adequate efforts (as generally expected, ambitions and good places are one way of discovering more of them).
And to those disenchanted beings with the profession of finding faults, I offer my complete ignorance. Some experiences may have had an impact as life-changing as could be, but still, only you yourself can convince what is right from wrong, where the subject of ‘explaining to others’ is nothing more than a futile attempt that instigates mockery, or disillusion (meaningless artifice) at best. To those who have been in the same boat (where ‘challenging’ is but a mere understatement to what life has been for them), I wish them good luck in achieving a fair trade-off between ignorance being a blessing, and on the flip side, a sin, for the people they deal with.
Resolutions?
Nothing new in particular, but cutting off distractions to boost productivity is something I intend to stick to. ‘Starve distractions, feed focus’ remains the motto, but as to how much of it I can really fulfill, will be seen.
On the ordinary, I’ll maintain an eco-friendly version of minesweeper (towards a promising GitHub garden) through projects and work, while finalizing my refurbished model for my new website (with the possible inclusion of sections such as ‘Notes’ for thought-penning and write-ups like this, and a ‘Gallery’ for Me et. al pictorial representations).
As I at some point mentioned before, like things that are limitless, such as freedom and creativity (with no bounds as to where one can get), but I believe practicality is equally important if not more. Perhaps a bit of luck, but our fate or ‘destiny’ as some may prefer, is mostly our contributions. There is only a portion that luck can favour, and that would be applicable more for the ones who keep the grind on track, resulting in better takes. The more I work towards creating a better version of myself, the better the stakes (opportunities, quality of life, people, we get it Raven).
Getting a few cross marks over points in my bucket list is another thing I intend to attend to, for accomplishing a few unique short-term objectives and trying new stuff holds more priority than envisaging completion of long-term goals. You never know your expiration date. While a certain specific ‘reaper’ doesn’t exist, certified death dealers (multiple factors) are not as rare as you think, although far from being omnipresent. But should this be a cause of concern for you to move ahead? For as we know, the statement of ‘If you don’t, someone else will’ persists, with weightage gathered from day-to-day examples. This stage of uncertainty is thus, always best left at bay.
Music
My playlist did see a huge spike of entries in ‘21, with a ton of new tracks to jam like a mad lad, or ones to soothe thyself while I apply a face mask. If I were to pick one artist, then it has to be Adam (Owl City), as for more than a decade now, his songs have never felt monotonous (with repeat counts of over a thousand). Interpretability is another factor. To see the worst of times as a beautiful time is far from easy, but that’s what it means to be insanely sane, and to live life to the fullest. (also this is the closest I have been to like the concept of the creator, but being an atheist, I prefer to have simple rules such as for the event of a good occurrence, I’ll try to get the best out of the ones who were the reason for it)
Aimer, Laura Brehm, Alec Benjamin, Kirara Magic, Haliene, Porter Robinson, Charlie Puth and Danyka Nadeau are among the top ones on my list (would definitely recommend nearly all of their tracks), and are undoubtedly some of the best vocal artists out there.
Current state
Winter is at large, however ‘summer in December’ feels exist. Not because of the heat that radiates from the GPU-churning (career-oriented HPTC exists, but overclocked versions of games and compute-intensive work for verifying pointless transactions ranks higher on the contribution chart), but because of the warmth of liberty and occasional spooning.
With the momentary mention of ‘games’ (aka my forte) above, I would like to give a complimentary mention to DMC5 being an entertaining sport for ‘21. Truly, one of the best (flashiest, style-intensive, mind-mapping) combat mechanisms I’ve come across this far, along with the much famed DLC which introduces, well, a character (whose greed-requisite isn’t satiable by an infinite supply of nuclear reactors, much to the sounds of being in a never-ending quest to satisfy the thirst for power, at least as per the dialogue) with whom I had fun void slashing through space and time.
To be updated. Of one half that has been written, a small segment of it is portrayed here, available for one to read (yes, such generosity) (:
Kidding! Should be done soon. Ideally. Maybe. Perhaps before ‘22 ends. Oh and yes
Happy new year, reader.
| Anirban | 01/01/2022 |