fkfd

Summer 2024 Wrapup — fkfd.me

2024-08-25T19:31:48+00:00Z

Summer 2024 Wrapup

2024-08-25

I flew home. To spend the summer in Shanghai.

Reasons:

Reunion with family
Everything cheaper
I need to order a bunch of PCBs and parts which are also cheaper

By "summer" I mean 2024-05-07 thru 2024-08-25 inclusive.

Projects I Did

Reflow Workshop 2

In 2023, me and my buddies at TechJI did Reflow Workshop and it was a huge success. Which begs the question:

If Reflow Workshop is so good, why is there no Reflow Workshop 2?

There is.

▲ I designed this to be as different as possible from last year's poster. Color scheme yoinked from Clancy (2024).

Based on last year's overwhelming demand (I bought for 20 but more than 20 people signed up), I decided to buy enough for 30. However, this time I did not see enthusiasm as high, probably because it was scheduled on the weekend leading to the midterms. Only 17 people signed up. However, I did get sweet extracurricular credits out of this.

Linux Install Party

My buddies at TechJI hosted a Linux Install Party, so naturally I showed up (to help). Not many people were with us, as it was raining. One person had an old ThinkPad, and when I looked closer it was an E220s, which was 32 bit and ran Windows 7. Hardly any distros support x86-32 now. Fascinating that it still boots. Also, the plastic was all sticky.

Bookmarkotchi

Bookmarkotchi is an ongoing project. It's a PCB bookmark that helps you form a reading habit. The irony is that I broke my reading habit once I flew home. whatever

Places I Went

Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Xuhui campus
- Had a meetup with my friend and gifted him a copy of Scaled And Icy (2021)
Xi'an with my parents
- Terracotta warriors
- Hua Mountain: With considerable help from a cable car, we climbed two peaks, including the tallest in central China. There was an orange cat on our way down
- A "musical" titled 驼铃传奇 (Tuo Ling Legend, literally the Legend of the Camel's Bell): see below
- Shaanxi History Museum, where a gallery was playing a NileRed video
- Two jade jewelry stores that the tour guide forced us in (she later threw a fit when basically nobody bought anything)
Sichuan with my father and ten friends of his
- Mostly 甘孜 (Garzê, a Tibetan autonomous prefecture), including a bunch of mountains atop the Tibetan Plateau which got me panting
- 映秀 (Yingxiu), where an earthquake struck in 2008
  - There's a public square with pillars commemorating soldiers who sacrificed themselves in the Sino-Japanese war or the civil war (forgot which). I find it absolutely unnecessary. It's like, "oh yeah, your father died in an earthquake? well check this out, this guy died in a war!" They're both tragic, ok?
- 资阳 (Ziyang), a suburb east of Chengdu, where I busted a tire while pulling out of a parking lot
- A friend's hometown (village) in 内江 (Neijiang)
- 罗泉 (Luoquan), also in Neijiang, where we bought hundreds of yuan's worth of assorted tofu
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Minhang campus
- Volunteered at the graduation ceremony
- I failed to mention in the Winter 2024 wrapup that I volunteered at a UMich grad ceremony as well, for JI students in the CoE
Drove our family car to a dealership to sell it, because we're getting a new PHEV (wise move)
Cycled to the bank with my grandpa to withdraw 300,000 CNY in cash for a completely legal transaction. I felt like a drug cartel
A record store in Xuhui with my friend because I heard they had a bunch of Radiohead. Couldn't afford any, so I just picked up three stickers and dipped
- There was a restaurant called "Normal Canteen" which totes sounds not suspicious
My childhood apartment where I lived from 3 to 10. Unfortunately, there's a mouse infestation.
Flew back to Ann Arbor
- Flight was delayed on tarmac for three hours. Captain quoted "electronic" and "hydraulic issues"

Tuo Ling Legend

It's a show, a musical of some kind, about the folks walking the Silk Road (the real one). The tour guide recommended it, and I find it disappointing. I mean, the dancing and the props were good, but the story seems to be the product of a junior high project that was done over recess in three days. Not to mention the cheesy lines, which were, of course, dubbed.

The show tries to be touching, but the playwright and/or director failed to consider that, just having the actors (voice actors, in this case) speak the lines operatically does not automatically make it sentimental. It comes off to me as cringe.

I did not get the point of the play either. It could be one or both of:

Look how much our ancestors did for us on the brave new road
Look what superpower we were back in the good ol' days. We're gonna do it again haha am i right guys

Our tour guide claimed that the show was what foreign guest officials would watch, and I don't believe it. If I were an official in a foreign country and they showed me a musical hinting that they once dominated the world and had a luxurious palace, I would leave.

Notable features, among this failure:

They have real wolves (who I hope weren't mistreated) running down the aisle
The audience sat on a rotating platform to view six stages clockwise
There was a scene where they poured a literal tonne of water in a waterfall and it splashed all over us

Sichuan

Much more enjoyable experience than in Xi'an (if you don't count the flat tire night) overall. Never was pushed to a store to buy anything. Only time I was persuaded to buy anything was a street vendor selling ready-to-eat walnuts in a bag for only ten bucks. It was good. Everything was voluntary. The people were nice. Lots of dogs. I learned a new card game called 干瞪眼 (staredown). Food was hot and greasy but that's how Sichuan cuisine works. Once one of my dad's friends got drunk and told me about the time he and his team reverse engineered the .doc and .xls formats in the 90s. Only complaint (other than the tire) was the hours of being in a car every day.

Ann Arbor

Things I did after landing:

Abused my privilege and requested a SafeRide™ home (I can only do this six times per year)
Volunteered to pick up new arrivals from SJTU twice at DTW
Volunteered on an IKEA ride and bought a Livlig husky plush
Installed a cargo rack + basket for my bike, didn't apply enough torque, lost two bolts on a bumpy road
Got a replacement from Fabrication Underground; also pumped my tires
Got a flat while riding around Bursley
Fixed my flat (and a couple other problems) at Common Cycle with help from Matthew. Basically got a new tube for free. Donated 5 dollars.
Visited the phallic dumpster exhibit at UMMA. Five stars
Saw the furry club poster at Duderstadt and almost had a heart attack 💀

IA application

I applied for IA back in April, and despite HR saying the "goal" was to have the "majority" assigned by "July 21", I didn't hear from the professor until 2024-08-05. But hey, progress.

We had an interview, then I waited. On 2024-08-19, I got news that I was hired. Now all that's left is training and paperwork, which should not be hard.

It turns out I was literally the last hire; I was really lucky. Also, my former roommate is also an IA now, which is cool.

They gave me a sheet to indicate which hours I'm free so they could schedule lab sessions. And that's where I fucked up. I forgot I had a lecture on Friday afternoon, and by the time I discovered that it was too late. I've emailed and texted but to no avail.

Shit.

Movies and Shows I Watched

"Barbie": Watched it for the second time on the flight to Shanghai. Someone in front of me was watching Oppenheimer at the same time, and there was a brief moment where Ryan Gosling danced to the detonation of the first atomic bomb. Also realized Billie Eilish sang in the movie. (Barbie, not Oppenheimer)
"The Garfield Movie": Saw the negative comments, wonder why. They're right. Plot was unoriginal.
抓娃娃 ("The Successor"): Comedy film on helicopter parents. Seems biased toward the parent side, but the actual message requires critical thinking and speculation, which will takes another five pages, so no. Open to interpretations.
Stand-up comedy night with 严值高 (Yan Zhigao, homophonic to "good-looking"): Lots of sexual humor.
逆行者 ("Upstream"), which is about a former software engineer who becomes a delivery driver (rider to be more specific) to pay mortgage. The ending where everything worked out is dystopian. The riders compete against each other without even once questioning capitalism, or the authority who exploit them. Imagine showing Mao this movie.
"The Lion King", on the flight to Detroit. Can see why it's one of the classics.
"Everything Everywhere All At Once": I have suspicions that it's just an elaborate pun on the everything bagel

Music I Made

This was a musically prolific summer. I wrote two songs, covered one, and forced a computer to cover two and a half. In chronological order:

Diag: Original. Entered Fedivision 2024 and won 56th place. Also on air in Berlin thanks to Herr Irrtum (Sendung 2024-06, timestamp 53:20)
At The Risk Of Feeling Dumb: twenty one pilots cover from scratch. Somewhat overproduced.
A Flat Tire Is Nothing To Worry About: Inspired by the Ziyang flat tire incident and my father getting drunk. Decided against overproduction. Features minimal instrumentation and effort.
OK Computer but sung by a Computer: featuring the Festival Speech Synthesis System, invented the same year OKC came out.

Music I Listened To

Fedivision 2024 songs (all 72 of them) (I even kept a spreadsheet to rate them so I can vote)
twenty one pilots
- Clancy
Radiohead
- Amnesiac
- In Rainbows
- The King Of Limbs
- the other albums as well, but mainly these three

Things I Bought or Otherwise Acquired

These were bought online in China:

A fume extractor for soldering which I should've ordered in 2021
A CO detector in my grandpa's kitchen
A pair of earbuds
A logic analyzer
A ten-port USB hub because apparently four isn't enough
Some accessories for my bicycle, like a cargo rack
Some stickers including this one:

Also I made a few badges with the badge press in the hackerspace I worked in last year, including this one:

These were bought in the US:

A Livlig husky plush

Things I Am Going To Do

Notable event happening in the coming month:

August 26: First 370 staff meeting, Festifall North
August 28: Festifall Central
September 1: Pride Outside
September 4: Green Day Saviors Tour
September 9: Practice teaching as part of IA training
September 29: twenty øne piløts Clancy Tour

Review of Radiohead Discography — fkfd.me

2024-08-25T19:31:36+00:00Z

Review of Radiohead Discography

I got into Radiohead, a band with three decades of history, this January, due to a shitpost youtube video, as discussed in How I Discover a Band.

In this post I will review every Radiohead album I listened to, in the order of discovery.

The Bends

Guitar album, excellent dynamics. The energy pulses up and down throughout the album to keep you from boredom or fatigue.

Compared to other guitar acts I listen to such as MCR or Linkin Park, Radiohead wins in music theory, most notably in the use of unconventional chords, while still being accessible to the average music enjoyer.

Fav tracks: Planet Telex, Fake Plastic Trees, Just, My Iron Lung, Street Spirit

Trivia: the opening tracks remind me of that one afternoon I put on The Bends and took a nap on the couch on 2F of Duderstadt until the 482 lecture.

Misheard lyrics: "Ah — this is killing me" sounds to me like "Cool — she's gay"

Kid A

So electronic you wouldn't believe it's the same Radiohead. Hardly any guitar. Known as the "greatest left turn in music history". The opener has got an entrancing vibe (and is also in 10/4), and everything after that is just so esoteric.

Kid A: vocoded vocals
The National Anthem: J A Z Z
How to Disappear Completely: polyrhythm bassline, is about dissociation
Treefingers: instrumental, sounds synth-ish but is actually guitar
Optimistic: the least esoteric song on the record, but still
In Limbo: listening to the song makes me in limbo
Idioteque: samples early computer music "Mild und Leise"
Morning Bell: 5/4
Motion Picture Soundtrack: harp
Hidden track: whatever it is

It's an album best listened to alone on headphones.

Fav tracks: Everything, Anthem, Disappear, Idioteque

Least fav: In Limbo

OK Computer

Middle ground between The Bends and Kid A. Guitar and electronic. Definitely great, but I didn't like it (as an album) as much as either. First off, the album cover is whack. Iconic but not something I want to decorate my room with.

Also, personally, the second half of the album (Fitter Happer — The Tourist) is not exciting. It's just sad. But "No Surprises" is good.

Tracks worth attention:

Airbag: fat bass
Paranoid Android: Three keys, two time signatures. Magnum opus of music theory.
Let Down: underrated. Happens to be my fav song to sing in showers when I was let down by life and logistics in the US.

Fav: Paranoid Android, Let Down

Trivia: whenever Thom sings "interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe", this image pops into my head for some reason:

OKNOTOK

Kind of a B side compilation reissued in 2017.

Fav: Lift

Amnesiac

Sequel to Kid A, somehow being more and less accessible at the same time.

Fav: Pyramid Song, Life In a Glasshouse

In Rainbows

Really mature in terms of everything. My only complaint is "House Of Cards" is too long. It's not even the best song on the album.

Remarkable things:

15 Step: 5/4
Bodysnatchers: clipping guitar at the beginning, but it's satire on the loudness war
Nude: one-octave-apart style bassline, angelic singing
Weird Fishes: just chill in general
Jigsaw Falling Into Place: probably Radiohead's happiest song to date
Videotape: nvm, we sad again

Overall it's solid as a rock. Not a single bad song made it in here. I don't even need to skip the "meh" songs.

Fav: 15 Step, Nude, Weird Fishes, Videotape

Hail To The Thief

Political album. Personally not a fan, because nothing's changed in 20 years. Musically, I'll be brutal: it's just a bunch of noise. Except a select few tracks: 2+2=5, Sail To The Moon, "There, There", Scatterbrain, A Wolf At The Door.

In other words, HTTT is still growing on me.

Thom seems to be doing the thing where he repeatedly sings a line along the chords, using his voice as an instrument. Examples:

2+2=5: "Paying attention"
Sit Down. Stand up: "The raindrops"
Where I End And You Begin: "I will eat you alive"
The Gloaming: "They should be ringing"

First time it's novel, second time it's acceptable, third time it's boring. Not a fan. It also drags the album slow (56 minutes). Radiohead learned the mistake and shortened their followup (In Rainbows).

Fav: 2+2=5, Scatterbrain, Wolf

A Moon Shaped Pool

The heartbreak album. I listen to it when I want to feel miserable.

Still growing on me.

Fav: Daydreaming

The King Of Limbs

Growing.

The instrumentation and chord progression on "Codex" sound like twenty one pilots on MTV Unplugged. They should cover it.

Fav: Codex

Pablo Honey

Notorious for "Creep" and the MTV Beach House incident. Still good. Opener surprised me with a 6+6+6+5/8 time signature.

Growing.

Fedi Shitpost Compilation — fkfd.me

2024-08-25T19:31:24+00:00Z

Fedi Shitpost Compilation

As you may know, I occasionally engage in a recreational activity known as Shitposting, on the Federated Universe (Fedi). Here are some notable cases:

(Typesetting notes: if the first line is bold, then it is a mastodon feature called "content warning"; clicking it expands the rest of the post.)

2022-10-29

predict the stock market
???
prophet!

2022-11-03

evil polya be like

how not to solve it

2023-01-25

panic! at the disbanding

2023-03-23

funnels imply the existence of painnels

2023-04-08

being an electronic engineer be like

BOM:

LEDs, 0603, white, $0.096
Resistor pack, 4x1k, 0603, $0.024
ObscureSemi® OutOfStockMega™ 52M40L0PX181D, QFN32, $62
Capacitor, 22uF, 0805, $0.003

2023-05-19

satire

kde is for furries. real MEN use xmonad

2023-05-23

SI be like:

6*10^27 grams is so confusing let's give it a name. an intuitive name. one that is easily distinguishable. how about

6 ronnagrams

oh also 6*10^-27 is 6 rontograms because fuck you

2023-05-24

yeah im into hi-fi

highly
intelligent
furry
individuals

2023-06-15

watching board of ceos talk about ai regulation be like

🤡 🤡 🤡 ☝️🤓 🤡 🤡

2023-06-17

it's ok to ask for quotes from infinite companies to install a well in your farm, because there will always be a cheapest one. this is known as the well ordering principle

2023-07-24

your are intj. i am fsck. we are not the same

2023-07-24

> buy expensive mountain bicycle

> park with all the other bikes

> kickstand keeps bike upright at 89.999 degrees

> tips over at slightest push

> damaged

"why would people do this?!!?1?"

2023-07-26

web integriteez nuts

2023-07-26

my fav moment of the wandering earth is when earth said "its wanderin time" then yeeted itself out of the galaxy

2023-07-30

gonna treat myself and buy a Gibson Les Bian

2023-07-31

there's no such thing as Dijkstra's algorithm. he just looks at your graph real fast and says "yeah this one's shortest take it or leave it"

2023-07-31

everyone agrees sugar is the soul of any dessert, but my german friend thinks i should add a little weniger.

2023-08-08

emo embedded engineers be like

my qemucal romance

2023-08-16

chatgpt bullshit

[on a forum]
person 1: hey how can i do XYZ
person 2: idk shit about this topic but here's an answer by chatgpt
person 1: thanks

narrator: the answer is, of course, wrong.

2023-08-22

dream, birdsite

i had a dream that Unicode made a feature that you can combine any two characters into a single glyph ligature, but turns out it's recursive and that's how a random dude uploaded the entire Bible to Twitter in two characters (not one due to some artificial limit) and it crashed half of the clients

2023-09-06

why don't German people call it Ümläut

2023-09-15

misinfo

trans people have colorful hair because electron orbital transitions emit photons of certain frequencies

2023-09-17

shop clerk: hey could you push your cart back with all the other carts

me: why

shop clerk: because std::vector<ShoppingCart> is stored in contiguous memory and if you don't put them back you're breaking the ADT's representational invariant

2023-09-21

explaining a math proof in sign language is challenging. it involves a lot of hand-waving.

2023-09-21

typical piazza® experience

me: *posts a question over discrepancy in instructor materials, with exact sources*

56 views, 0 answers

9 consecutive posts literally titled "AG" or "autograder" about the autograder being unreachable: each gets answered in minutes

2023-09-26

german was invented in 1858 when the printing press ran out of space characters

2023-09-30

fedizens when a piece of software is c++ (it #includes \<algorithm> without the user's consent)

2023-10-01

bad

proctober (proctology october)

2023-10-11

not screen reader friendly

listening to prog rock until they do a time change

00:00 ▫️------------ 00:08 📶🔁

2023-10-15

medieval programmers be like "sure let me open my cmyk movable type box and wear my programming leggings"

2023-10-18

iupac: but it lasted only one femtosecond
me: i don't care, if it exists it exists. now name my element with 588 protons
iupac: Pentoctoctium
me: make it shorter
iupac: (*sigh*) Poo

2023-10-20

girls install debian
to become more lesbian
boys run void
to kiss more boys

2023-10-23

germans when they have pizza for dinner

Gluten Abend

2023-10-28

ancient Chinese stories about someone doing something stupid often begin with their initial followed by their country of origin like "Liang, from the Qi kingdom" and i think that's a rudimentary form of "Florida man"

2023-10-29

not screen reader friendly

german wordle be like

🟥🟥🟨🟥🟨🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟨🟥🟥
🟥🟥🟥🟩🟨🟥🟥🟨🟥🟥🟥🟩🟥🟥🟥
🟥🟥🟥🟩🟥🟥🟩🟩🟥🟨🟥🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟥🟥🟩🟨🟥🟩🟩🟥🟥🟥🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟥🟩🟩🟩🟥🟥🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

2023-10-30

if unix was invented in europe

cd ,,
echo €PATH

2023-10-31

furries have an unfair advantage at halloween costumes. fursuits should not count unless its a bat

2023-10-31

why did they name it "Michigan pride"and not Michigay

2023-11-03

long

americans stop normalizing state codes

especially on the internet when the context is unclear

"I love Tulsa, OK" ← kthx but no need to be passive aggressive about it

ask a non american what "IA" means. IowA? IndianA? group 1 alkali metal?

"everyone should know this, it's common knowledge!"

lmao literally no one outside of the states are responsible for knowing that

how about we go in reverse? which province is gàn (赣)? which one is qián (黔)? this is what non-americans feel when we see shit like MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, and MT

2023-11-05

why isnt uc berkeley's furry club called uc barkley ugh i wanna screem

2023-11-11

very important sentence from book i am reading

"Cats are equivalent in that they are to be petted, but gently, so that they do not claw. (Brown 1965, pp. 318-19)"

2023-11-12

football, the successor to the less popular variant, inchball

2023-11-15

Thus, if the child thinks a leopard says "meow", he or she may classify leopards as 𝘬𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴.

2023-11-24

💬 linguistic knowledge of the day 🔤

the chinese word 祭司 (priest, not necessarily christian) can be taken apart as:

祭 (jì) ceremony of sacrifice
司 (sī) person in control

therefore we can conclude that, at some point in ancient chinese folk religion, an emcee dropped a sick beat

2023-11-23

why was the 40W light bulb arrested?

public incandescency

2023-11-28

book quote out of context

Let us take a situation […] in which there are […] no priests, no gays, no Moslems with only three wives, no Tarzans.

2023-12-06

when machine gun kelly dropped rap devil would you call that an ad eminem attack

2023-12-11

the three types of piazza posts the evening before exam:

need help for question 9.3 from fall '21
what's the difference between [pair of obscure concepts that are just up to experience really]
hi can someone explain to me [the entirety of lecture 12-25] if it's not [assumption that shows they haven't been to a single lecture in the past two months]

2023-12-19

zeichne mit TikZ, um Till Tantau anzupissen

2023-12-20

book quote out of context

a bike should no more have a carburetor than the pope should have a wife.

2023-12-24

zufällig einen Mann küsst entschwuldigung

2023-12-24

transcoders? yes I've seen a few

2023-12-30

rust is just a cargo cult

this explains everything

2024-01-18

groceries imply the existence of shrinkceries

2024-01-22

me: so how does this "downtime-proof" power supply work?

salesperson: it comes with serj protection

2024-01-23

me: i have a computer engineering debris.
interviewer: don't you mean degree?
me: no.
[four kilograms of leftover pcbs fall from the ceiling vent, killing interviewer instantly]

2024-01-24

paranoid android
despotess iOS
lydian symbian
sucrose windows
voodoo ubuntu
comparted postmarket

2024-01-26

when the drummer misses a beat they're fired but when the whole band miss a beat it's called "progressive rock"

2024-01-31

me: I have deicided to become an atheist.
angel: don't you mean decided?
me: [throws bloodstained shovel over the cloud] no

2024-02-05

misinfo

donald knuth invented computer modern to replace the badly kerned font on his computer modem

2024-02-16

[ in a cleanroom ]
tsmc employee: hey you can't just take these MOSFETs!
me: you said they were complimentary

2024-02-19

move at a medium pace and preserve current state of things

2024-02-24

department chair: sorry professor jones, publish or parish

jones: that's - wait, don't you mean perish?

chair: no. the campus chapel is now yours

2024-02-26

Kinderkennzeichnungs- und Kindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

Erratum: Blyfh pointed out that the correct spelling for "child meat" is "Kinderfleisch", not "Kindfleisch".

2024-02-27

if POSIX was so good how come there's no POSEVEN

2024-03-02

if i had a nickel every time my program integer overflowed i would have -2147483648 nickels

2024-03-04

why does it take longer to bury a tarantula than a human?

the grave is eight feet underground

2024-03-04

page table base register was invented by a computer architect with a correct horse battery staple password generator

2024-03-05

what do you call a touhou-themed german spa town?

Bad Apfel

2024-03-06

what did the principal tell the student who was plagiarizing from chatgpt?

detention is all you need

2024-03-08

what do you call switzerland in a war between diamond and graphite

carbon neutral

2024-03-09

[lunchbreak at popl]
me: I'm a rutaceae
unsuspecting person: oh cool have you checked out their new trait system- wait, what did you say again?
me: [takes off trenchcoat, revealing tree branches bearing grapefruit]

2024-03-09

what killed the dragon electrician?

scale current

2024-03-22

why are vinyl records not RoHS compliant?

there's a lead single on them

2024-03-25

brain noise

oo wee oo i look just like bloody mary
oh oh and you're mirror on the wall

2024-04-02

interviewer: what's your name?
me: my name is Sirius Wright Não.
interviewer: *inspects closer upon my resume* you cannot be serious right now

2024-04-19

do you think the first person to invent music was rejected for being "too experimental" and "bird-esque"

2024-04-24

Ten Costliest Bugs Caused By Dangling Pointers - #48216913015 will surprise you

2024-04-25

electric engineers be like

the capacitor is 0.000047 farads

this is close enough to infinity

2024-04-27

what do you call it when you contemplate the meaning of life for 15 minutes?

a quarter ponder

2024-06-13

why do ao3 writers make great HVAC mechanics?

they're good at fan fix

2024-06-22

Portugal. The Idea

2024-06-24

graduate texts in mathematics? no idea where you heard that bro, i know three of them and they all text in english

2024-07-05

the most difficult German word is "Apfel".

once you've learned that, the rest is Apfel grabs.

2024-07-10

kernel "developers" who only ever comment on other people's code and never write any be like

SIGVIRTUE

2024-07-10

midwest emo? i find it

missourable

2024-07-11

buenos aires if argentina was colonized by zoomers

chill vibes

If Academia Worked Like Music — fkfd.me

2024-08-25T19:31:14+00:00Z

If Academia Worked Like Music

2024-07-06

You are an associate professor at the Fakeland University of Common Knowledge (FUCK). After years of hard work with your best friends Ethan and Albert (they go by Et and Al), you have 12 manuscripts you call "demos".

You rent a lab space, larger and more professional than the one in your basement. The staff help you with cameras and stuff.

After a two-week-long lab session, you take everything to your producer Oliver Leaf, who has every tool imaginable for LaTeX typesetting. He has the ability to get Nature to accept a CVS receipt.

Over the duration of three months you sit together with Et, Al and Oliver to discuss what looks best in print. Sometimes it feels like torture. You commission artist Tik Zeichner to create a striking book cover.

At the printing press, the .tex files are compiled to .pdf, printed out, and bound into a hardcover. You and your friends each take a copy and shoot some promotional photos.

For the paper videos, you and Et Al do experiments in the most random places: on a frozen lake, in bed, on top of a skyscraper, etc. Contrary to what the video shows, the blowtorch doesn't actually melt quartz glass. At the end you smash a few Erlenmeyer flasks in slomo just cause you can.

The opening paper is released along with its paper video. It's a smash hit (pun intended), although you had to cut the discussion entirely for the radio mix. One month later, you drop a more opinionated paper. It sparks controversy among your fanbase, which is needed for hype.

The marketing team is working hard to plaster every billboard in every city with your abstract. Soon it becomes impossible to end a conversation without mentioning your name.

On the day the book drops, you announce a world tour, which would be quite accurate if North America and Europe were the only two continents. But hey, Mexico technically counts as "Latin America" right?

You show up at a surprise book signing party at a parking lot, before the police show up and cancel it. Your 20,000 fans are disappointed and soon riot. You narrowly escape.

After a dozen interviews and promotional photoshoots, you read on the news that your book is "generally favorable". It's only been ten days but there's at least a hundred videos reproducing your reactions (called "reaction videos"), or cover a part thereof ("covers"). Most are cringe.

Like everything else, ticket prices skyrocketed over the pandemic. A general admission ticket that used to cost 50 now costs 187. Your fans are complaining how TicketPastor® monopolizes live research.

Opening for you on the tour are undergrads who work in the lab next door. But they specialize in wireless communication, a topic you doubt your audience is interested in. Their antenna had grounding issues and there was a constant hum.

The crew help the undergrads clean up their workbench and leave. Then you enter the stage. Thunderous cheering. Et and Al walk on stage. More cheering. Neon signs that read "Your Research Saved My Life". You know that isn't true; they saved themselves.

Your setlist opens with the opening chapter in the book, which segues into chapter 2. You then perform experiments from your previous books. The sixth paper requires a pot of beewax, so you move through the crowd to the Bee stage. The crowd cheers as you pass, trying to touch you without consent.

The crew shove a portable table into the mosh pit for them to hold up. Al leaps off and surfs to the table, where he dilutes stock solutions into 0.001M phosphate buffered saline. At the end, he throws one empty test tube into the pit. That's gotta sell for a hundred bucks on ebay.

The show is over and you are exhausted. Some diehard fans, who you recall seeing just the night before, have waited two hours at the crew exit. Sure, instagram, tiktok, whatever. You crawl back into your touring van and basically just sleep there.

Eleven months later, just as the tour is over, the RIAA (Research Industry Association of Anywhere) informs you that your book has been certified gold, which means it has sold 500k copies, where 150 library checkouts counts as one copy. It would have been way sooner if there wasn't so many Sci-Hubbers out there, but then you remember Sci-Hub saving your ass as an undergrad, so you can't really blame them.

Time for more manuscripts.

At The Risk Of Feeling Dumb — fkfd.me

2024-08-25T19:30:58+00:00Z

At The Risk Of Feeling Dumb

"At The Risk Of Feeling Dumb" (ATR hereafter) is the second-to-last track on twenty one pilots' 2024 record, Clancy. I've discussed it in Review of Clancy (2024) that it

Starts off like circus music, but I feel it's the most serious song on the record. It tells you to check on your friends' mental health, no matter what they say — even at the risk of feeling dumb.

It's also the track that "sounds like them" and "feels like them". They spread a message, like "Neon Gravestones". The strongest track, and energetic as well.

So naturally given the comically long summer break, I am gonna cover it. From scratch.

The goal of this cover is not to reproduce the original; instead, I opted to be more creative with sounds and arrangement.

While you read, you can open my Faircamp in a new tab and hit play.

What's in the song?

Oh boy.

Since it's from scratch, I could not reuse stems or sample the original. This endeavor ended up being my most complicated audio project ever. There are 52 tracks. Fifty-two. Ardour lags as I scroll up and down.

A synopsis:

Synths: lead, 4 pads, vibraphone, harp, high-pitched hum
Drums: 808, Black Pearl (plugin), and a real snare drum
Vocals: main, falsetto, lofi, tenor, and rap
Autotune for each pitched vocal track
Ukulele: some with fuzz effects
Bass, where one track is shifted one octave up to emulate guitar
Samples: see below

Samples

I had to be creative with household items.

0:00 - Cassette player
0:21 - Vernier calipers
0:22 - Spray bottle
0:55 - 2.54mm pin headers sliding against edge of table
0:56 - Ziploc of CR2032 battery holders (sounds like sleighbells)
2:12 - Two pencils
2:24 - Nitrile glove

Timeline

I recorded ATR over 13 studio sessions (in my bedroom) in total. Eleven were in the first half of June. Then I procrastinated two weeks. Then I picked up where I left in early July.

Rather unconventionally, I recorded the track one part at a time, rather than laying out a complete backing track before vocals. When I was recording Chorus 2, for example, everything following that was blank. Thus, I had no idea where I was going. I came up with most of the creative ideas halfway.

Notable inspirations:

The intro is sung along to tøp's "Friend, Please" (which carries the same message as ATR)
"Nude" by Radiohead inspired the slap-like, one-octave-up bassline you hear in Chorus 2 thru 4
Original Verse is a commentary on Clancy's track listing
I yanked the last bar of drums from "Levitate"

Technical details

Chord progression

Really simple song in terms of chord progression. Everything is G-Em-Bm-D except the post-chorus where it's G-Em-Bm-A-D. Turned out challenging as I had to improvise rhythmically to make the same chords interesting over and over again.

Mic rig

Mom bought a phone tripod with a swing arm. The threaded hole on the phone clip is identical to that on the mic holder, so naturally, up it went. No more stacking boxes under the short-ass mic stand.

I had no windshield so I improvised with a napkin wrapped around the wire mesh tied with a rubber band. Can't keep out the hard P's though, so I had to automate the fader.

Balanced cable

I bought a balanced XLR cable to replace the XLR-quarter inch cable my mic came with. The noise disappeared like the money in my wallet. 5/5 would buy again.

Drums

I used three drum kits in a single song.

OK, one of them is a single snare drum I practiced on when I was 12. Played with Trench-era Josh Dun drumsticks. You can hear it in Chorus 2 and Post-Chorus 1. I did not record the rest on the drum, because my neighbor might complain.

One day I was cleaning out some junk at my late great-grandparents' house when I found my old electronic drumkit. I brought home the console, the snare drum, and all the cables. With some hackery involving a MIDI-to-USB adaptor I was able to record drums with real drumsticks. But I did not because the drum pads worked just fine.

The Black Pearl kit was a late addition. Before that, I used a built-in kit, but the snare lacked punch, and the crash is just not wet enough. Luckily, I have a few drumkits installed for unknown reasons, and this Black Pearl kit blew my mind.

Pedal

There's a pair of pedal switches (cost like 10 CNY each) I bought back in 2019 for a kinetic game I made (which didn't work, btw). So I soldered the wires to a cable with a quarter inch tip-ring plug so that the contacts short when I stomp it. It functions as a sustain pedal for my keyboard and hihat open-close control for the drum kit. Neither turned out useful but they sound cool.

Ukulele

Didn't have the money to buy a condenser mic so it is what it is.

EQ & compressor

I recorded the kick, snare, hihat and other cymbals on separate tracks so they have different EQs. I used "Calf Equalizer 5 Band". The kick is lowpassed and sidechained to many other tracks (such as bass) to compress them so they don't muddle the 60 Hz range.

Autotune

Yes, my vocals are autotuned. The plugin is "x42-Autotune". To avoid sounding like an unnamed rap star, I had to keep the correction ratio below 0.6. For each group of pitched vocal tracks singing the same melody, I have a MIDI track for the autotune plugin to refer to.

Sometimes I sing off-key so bad I have to do another take. And sometimes the autotune overreacts so I have an automation track to taper down the correction ratio temporarily.

Cassette player

The click and whirr you hear at the beginning are a real AKAI cassette player. I wish it worked. If it worked, I could have run my vocals through an aux cable on tape and played it back to achieve physical lo-fi.

Album cover

I reused assets from the recent reflow workshop 2. The color scheme is inspired by Clancy itself, and the title typesetting is inspired by Radiohead's In Rainbows (2007). The smoke is a photo by Tigerzeng on Wikimedia Commons.

Tools used

Software

Ardour: arrangement, recording, production
Helm: synths
Calf: plugins
Black Pearl Drumkit: plugin
Guitarix: plugins
x42: plugins
Krita: album cover
Inkscape: album cover

Hardware

Interface: Behringer UMC22
Headphones: Audio-Technica ATH-M20x
Keyboard: AKAI MPK mini play
Mic: Shure PGA48
Bass: Ibanez GSR200
Ukulele: second-hand "Nalu", model unknown
Drumsticks: Zildjian Josh Dun "Trench" artist series
Snare drum: Majestic AK14D

Lyrics

Yanked from Genius. Differences:

Added Intro
I keep saying "on my lowest" instead of "at my lowest"
Added Original Verse
Numbered Choruses and Post-Choruses
Minute changes in backing vocals

[Intro]
I don't want anyone to drop anything for me

[Chorus 1]
I don't want anyone, know me or not
See me [on] my lowest, you don't have to drop, drop, drop Don't have to
drop by Nothin' you can do this time I don't want anyone, know me or not
See me [on] my lowest, you don't have to drop Drop, drop, drop anything
for me Just keep your plans, I hope that you never have to drop

[Verse 1]
Used to be you and me, matching Kawasaki Zs
Ride around 270 in Kawasaki tees
Two fighter jets matching energy
Trying to forget that we're in ejection seats

[Pre‐Chorus]
So please, keep it in mind
Check on your friends
Every once in a while
Even if they say

[Chorus 2]
I don't want anyone, know me or not
See mе [on] my lowest, you don't have to drop, drop, drop
Don't have to drop by
Nothin' you can do this timе
I don't want anyone, know me or not
See me [on] my lowest, you don't have to drop
Drop, drop, drop anything for me
Just keep your plans, I hope that you never have to drop
(Drop, drop, drop)

[Post-Chorus 1]
At the risk of feelin' dumb, check in
It's not worth the risk of losin' a friend
Even if they say
"Just keep your plans, I hope that you never have to drop"

[Original Verse]
I can read your mind man, where is Tyler's verse man?
Chill, let me have some words of my own man
The new record, it's called Clancy
On a scale of Trench, I'd say that it's a ninety
Can't forgive The Craving so close to Lavish
Your eyes are steamin' up? Here comes a colonoscopy
Upbeat (yeah), down thoughts (nah), guess it's called tradition
Thank you for your patience, program resumes shortly

[Verse 2]
If I'm bein' real, man, don't know how I feel, man
'Bout you sleepin' so close to a weapon you conceal, man
Those night terrors are not somethin' to take lightly
I know that it's a risk sayin' this, don't fight me
(Stoppin' me, fight me)
(Stoppin' me, fight me)
(Stoppin' me, fight me)

[Chorus 3]
I don't want anyone, know me or not
See me [on] my lowest, you don't have to drop, drop, drop
Don't have to drop by
Nothin' you can do this time
I don't want anyone, know me or not
See me [on] my lowest, you don't have to drop
(Drop, drop, drop) Anything for me
(Stopping me, stopping me, stopping me)
Just keep your plans, I hope that you never have to drop

[Post-Chorus 2]
At the risk of feelin' dumb, check in
It's not worth the risk of losin' a friend
Even if they say
"Just keep your plans, I hope that you never have to drop"

[Chorus 4]
I don't want anyone, know me or not
See me [on] my lowest, you don't have to drop
Drop, drop, drop anything
For me

[Outro]