Then: watching a concert at Esplanade.

Now: performing in a concert at Esplanade.

Thank you to Mus’Art Youth Wind Orchestra for giving me this opportunity to make wonderful music with them for the audience of all ages.

Also much thanks to Desmond, one of the clarinet players, for gifting the percussion section such lovely boxes of chocolate in celebration of Halloween!

2025-10-17 update: The recordings of the concert performance are out on YouTube! Do have a listen here!

現今的社群媒體就像是吵雜的市集¹，而上面的使用者與創作者就像是顧客或攤主（也可能兩者都是），大家都在爭先恐後地想透過花俏、聳動的發文來吸引別人的注意力與流量，以從中獲取不同形式的利益，但也造成整個環境令人心煩意亂、不宜久留。

而經營自己的 blog 網站就像是在自家後庭造一個花圃，而上面的文章就像是花圃中一朵朵的花卉，若有其他人看到並表示稱讚，這不失爲一種加分，但有沒有其他人注意到這個花圃根本不重要，因爲這些花種來最主要的目的本來就是給自己觀賞並品味的。不僅如此，我們也可以招來親朋好友探訪自己親手打造的花圃，一同感受其中的心意，並且無需煩惱來自外部的無預警干擾。

移植自兩篇以前寫的極短文。

貼文一（2024-07-17）

聽到這首歌的主歌部分時總覺得從哪裡聽過類似的結構……

然後才想起……「啊～是那首 sasakure 的歌啊！」

貼文二（2022-06-24）

這首歌的初音歌聲的調校風格有點像十多年前某首 V 家曲欸……是哪一首去了？

想起來了啦！聽起來很像八王子 P 以前的歌的初音聲線！

After installing the hugo-bearblog theme, I overwrote the index.html file in the theme layout by creating a new index.html file in the layouts folder of my main Hugo site directory that contains the following code, which is adapted from single.html from the layouts/_default folder from the original theme repository.

{{ define "main" }}
{{ $posts := where .Site.RegularPages "Section" "blog" }}
{{ range $posts }}
{{ if eq .Type "blog" }}{{ if not .Params.menu }}
<h1><a href="{{ .RelPermalink }}">{{ .LinkTitle }}</a></h1>
<p>
  <i>
    <time datetime='{{ .Date.Format "2006-01-02" }}'>
      {{ .Date.Format (default "02 Jan, 2006" .Site.Params.dateFormat) }}
    </time>
  </i>
</p>
{{ end }}{{ end }}
<content>
  {{ .Content }}
</content>
<p>
  {{ range (.GetTerms "tags") }}
  <a href="{{ .Permalink }}">#{{ .LinkTitle }}</a>
  {{ end }}
</p>
 <br>
 <hr class="solid">
 <br>
{{ end }}
{{ end }}

Some modifications on the CSS were also made to create the solid divider lines.

A side effect of this implementation is that all post images must be placed in the static folder¹, which may increase site loading time. To mitigate this, I may need to paginate this feed. Will update on this in a future post, if possible.

2025-10-15 update: I have done the pagination. See this update post for more info.

老爸之前分享給我的一張列有一些有趣廣東話歇後語的圖文。

這是他在 Facebook 一時撿到的轉載圖，而原始圖片¹也無法從網上搜尋到了（所以說不要把一切都鎖在 Facebook 裡）。此外，該圖片似乎是一系列圖文中的其中一張，但目前我也無法在網上找到其餘的圖文……

不過這個不是重點，重點是我覺得廣東話歇後語背後的梗某種程度上比華語歇後語還有趣，例如「墳墓前彈琴——嘈²死人」的梗在於後半段可以被雙重解讀：「嘈死人」和「嘈死人」，而這種走歧義路線的梗在華語歇後語似乎不常見。

說到廣東話歇後語，「粵典」網站上的一篇文也有收錄多達 140 個的相關例子。

在這個推薦演算法當道的時代必看的影片。

演算法破壞人類思考能力的程度可能比我們想像的還嚴重……更可怕的是許多人甚至可能沒有意識到，甚至是不願意承認這一點。

就拿最基本的來說好了，你能很有信心地說你能夠看完並順利消化這部長影片的所有資訊嗎（不設快轉、不跳段落，從頭到尾不間斷看完）？當然不是預設正在讀著這篇的你一定不行，不過我懷疑有一些人真的已經注意力退化到連這簡單的事都做不到，甚至是嫌麻煩而不肯做……

不過這影片的主軸不在注意力，而在「主動探求知識的能力」。主動地對某件事產生疑問，主動地尋找答案，主動地判斷資訊的可信程度。這些本應理所當然的能力，在現今時代會不會已然成為了一種奢侈？

影片底下有一個留言推薦了一本相關書籍 The Unaccountability Machine，裡頭以經濟學的角度解釋大公司、政府等機構如何製造出讓自身能避開問責的系統。

https://hugo.md/post/freedom-of-the-last-minute/

這位 Hugo 先生（和那個生成靜態網頁的 Hugo 沒有關聯 😂）的這篇有關 last minute 做東西的文章令我感到很有共鳴欸！當然不是在重要的事情上臨時抱佛腳啦，而是特指計劃旅行的時候。

我自己也是很喜歡 last minute 才規劃旅行的人，尤其是我一個人從吉隆坡下到新加坡的時候。出發前一天才上網隨便訂個便宜的旅館、出發當天才訂巴士票、出發前幾個鐘才在找從馬新關卡去到旅館的路線。有時候，就這樣 last minute 做東西，雖然可能會多花錢，但真的不止能讓自己可以少煩惱很多東西，也能讓旅程充滿意想不到的收穫呢（例如撿到寶地訂到一間一晚不到 100 令吉且有獨立衛浴的雙人房，或是偶然找到一家沒去過的大型商場並「享受」在裡頭迷路的過程之類的）！

The ending theme of (the pilot episode of) the indie animation series The Art of Murder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBaNOjORAWs&t=1154s

The lyrics of this entire chorus, right until the last sentence, does not have any substantial meaning at all, which is a great way of building anticipation and crafting the character’s personality.

The meme potential of replacing the last sentence with literally anything else is just so funny to me. Not to mention this song is so catchy that even literally months after watching this pilot episode, I can still sing the chorus out of nowhere sometimes XD.

By the way, The Art of Murder is yet another brilliant addition to the indie animation scene, do watch and support the show!

https://www.chocchipanimation.com/artofmurder

Reminded myself of the flexibility of adverb placement in English sentences by this Reddit comment I saw.

For many cases the placement of adverbs does not change the meaning of a sentence (as demonstrated by these two pages of Taggart & Wine’s My Grammar and I).

However, what’s intriguing here is that that sentence seems to be an exception of that, in which case we are focusing on the part “The position isn’t just great.”

Let’s see how the meaning changes when the adverb “just” is placed in each of the grammatical positions in the sentence:

1. Just, the position is not great. - 只是，那擺位不行啊。
2. The position just is not great. - 那擺位真是不行啊。
3. The position is just not great. - 那擺位是真不行啊。
4. The position is not just great. - 那擺位不只是不錯呢。
5. The position is not great, just. - 那擺位不行，剛好不行。

Interestingly, 2. and 3. mean the same in the sense that the badness of the position is emphasised the word “just”, but for 1., 4. and 5., the meaning changes:

• 1. seems to suggest a contrasting idea, …
• 5. suggests that the degree of badness is right at the border of the standard, whereas, perhaps surprisingly, …
• 4. which is exactly the form that the original comment is in, actually gives the exact opposite meaning (i.e. the position is more than good) to perhaps what the commenter really intends to (i.e. the position is bad).

An example of the importance of word order in the English language, I guess.

踢毽子的司！！！還有 sepak takraw（藤球）、batu seremban（抓石子/五石子）、gasing（陀螺）和「太空氣球」！等等，還有玻璃彈珠欸！

都是那些童年遊戲啊……好愛這個週年賀圖的東南亞元素結合！