0xc1's Crew Logs

If only I could become the night, but I am the light!
If only I were darkness, so I could throw myself into the arms of light.
— Night Song, Nietzsche

• 🌕Midnight Poet

#What I’ve Listened to These Seven Years

I discovered that Apple Music keeps a record of my favorite music from each year, which probably reflects how my music taste has evolved over the years, haha.

In 2017, I was still into a lot of pop music, mainly Mr.A-Z, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Mika, mixed with a few other good songs.

In 2018, around the time I graduated, I got hooked on musicals. I started listening to Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera obsessively, and the more I listened, the more I loved them. I even went to see them live several times. Interspersed were some Cats and a few stragglers from my 2017 music preferences. Les Misérables has a stronger humanistic touch compared to The Phantom of the Opera. Javert’s tragedy is the most heartbreaking; every time I hear him roar as he throws himself into the Seine, I can’t help but cry. As for The Phantom of the Opera, it took me years to realize that Christine never loved the Phantom, and never really did, at least not in the musical.

In 2019, things got purer. I’d say it’s a case of: less is more. I had “Bohemian Rhapsody” on a one-month loop. I listened to every version of Les Misérables I could find (the 10th-anniversary edition is the best in my opinion), as well as the original Phantom of the Opera and its 25th-anniversary edition. In the second half of the year, I got addicted to Hamilton. I even finished reading Hamilton’s autobiography. That book, along with Frank Lloyd Wright’s autobiography, formed the most important cornerstones of my spiritual home during those years. That year was still before the pandemic, so I had the chance to go to the theater a few more times. From the live performances I attended, the rotating stage and the cast of Les Misérables were a bit better than those of Phantom of the Opera. Hamilton tickets were too expensive, so I didn’t go out of reluctance (I regret it now). The rest of the time, I listened to a bit of Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 5–8. Among them, I love the fourth movement of Symphony No. 6 the most. You can almost see the originally calm fields gradually clouding over, then thunder crashing as a storm suddenly hits. The fierce wind and rain don’t last too long, and eventually, the sky clears, revealing a rainbow.

In the fall of 2020, I changed jobs. After going through some upheavals, I realized I wasn’t very good at resisting workplace manipulation (PUA). I started having insomnia, and when I couldn’t sleep, I would listen to “Weightless,” so I played it a lot. When I felt tense or anxious, listening to Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto would calm me down. It felt like walking on a forest path at night, unable to see the ground, with moonlight shining on the branches and nightingales singing in the distance. My heart would wander through the mottled space and time, accompanied by the nightingale’s song. The rest of the time, I listened exclusively to Hamilton. Not just listening—the filmed recording of the musical was released that year. “I wanna build something that’s gonna outlive me.” After Hamilton’s death came three consecutive presidents from the Democratic-Republican Party (six terms, lasting 24 years), but together they failed to dismantle the system that the founding Treasury Secretary had designed for his ideal nation.

In 2021, it was still mostly Hamilton, but I started listening to Bach, mainly some violin pieces—they can be described as neat and abundant. The remaining time was given to some songs by Aurora and Lorde.

In 2022, it was still mostly Hamilton. The rest of the time was split equally between Aurora’s new album, two albums by YOASOBI, and Bach.

Up to this point in 2023, I’m still trapped in the Mili universe. About 5% of the remaining time has been spent listening to other things. I still really want to listen to Hamilton.

(I don’t know if it’s a new iOS issue or the Gcores app’s problem, but if I type too much, it keeps freezing. The good thing is that drafts are saved, so I had to keep the later years short. Even with that, it froze three times just writing this sentence. 😡)

• 🎵 What I Listened to This Week

How to keep the community running smoothly when AI moderation fails at midnight and human moderators are off duty?

Moderators might not be around, but users are. If users see something unpleasant, they’re likely to report or block.

From a technical perspective, you could create a metric based on user report volume.

Assume Gcores uses Prometheus and Alertmanager for metric monitoring and alerting. Then this metric would be called:

jibo_user_spam_report_total

Alright, first you have a dashboard showing the number of user reports per hour. You can write a PromQL to measure this:

rate(jibo_user_spam_report_total[5m]) * 60 * 60

Once measured, you can set up an alert. The alert threshold should be based on the measurement result. Let’s say 100:

rate(jibo_user_spam_report_total[5m]) * 60 * 60 > 100

This means if 100 users click “report” within an hour, it indicates something annoying might have appeared in the community.

Then configure Alertmanager with a bunch of notify hooks so that when the alert triggers, it frantically calls, say, Simon. This way Simon can handle it quickly. After dealing with the on-call, Simon can work from home the next day, sleep in a little more—ah, sleep in a little more. Anyway, you must grant some privileges to the heroes who respond to alerts.

• ✨ Life Hacks for a Daily Human

Thanks, bro (where did that involve politics?)

• 🆚 Memorable Esports Events

Teasing everyone, wishing you all a joyful holiday 😋

• 🧩 A Slice of Life

I went to the Jade Buddha Temple with my homies a while ago. Inside, there were these intimidating golden statues.

I stared straight into their golden eyes, thinking that inside they were just clay – people are actually worshiping their own hearts: “Offer some incense to you, and in return, grant me peace of mind for the coming year.”

When I was a kid, I had a copy of Tsai Chih-chung’s comic Zen Speaks at home (later I found and read all the others). So whenever I see the solemn Buddha statues, I recall the saying: “A special transmission outside the scriptures; no reliance on words or letters; directly pointing to the mind; seeing one’s nature and attaining Buddhahood.”

Buddha is an awakened human. No worship is needed. In fact, an awakened person fears worship the most. Because worship implies admitting the existence of a higher order above oneself. But humans – we are all orphans of the universe born on this Earth. Where could there be an order higher than humanity?

As a child, I despised these false idols.

Only later did I realize that many forms of offering are actually transactions: “Offer some incense to you, and in return, please bless me with riches next year.”

It’s just buying a clear conscience through supposed heavenly justice.

Humans are creatures that feed on information. Insufficient information drives us crazy. And most things in this world are like that old saying: “Seeking with a way, obtaining with fate – seeking does not help the obtaining, because what we seek is external.” People make decisions based on incomplete information, often with a touch of gambling. So they feel doubtful. Sometimes, working hard all the way is just to construct a sense of order to calm oneself down.

But alas, the moon remains the moon. The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. In the end, I can’t fool myself into believing this.

I recall going with my grandma to the Jade Spring Temple at the foot of Mount Hua when I was little. She said, “Go bow! Go watch them tap the wooden fish!”

Inside the temple, it was actually the non-idol things that caught my attention, like these beautiful lotus-shaped rain spouts on a rainy day. Rainwater dripped from the eaves, passed through the hole in the center, and was caught and released by one lotus after another with a pitter-patter.

Finally found the exit. Time to go home and sleep!

• 🧩 A Fragment of Life

The ultimate upgrade for any online game is friends!

Back in July, my high school buddy Xiaolong came over to my place. I fired up my PS4 (which I’d been using as a set-top box) and launched Monster Hunter World, a game I hadn’t touched in over three years. After just two hours, I rediscovered the joy of this game and got completely hooked.

I was using the “folded longsword” – commonly known as the bow. Ranged weapons are naturally much squishier than melee, and on top of that, I was awful and hadn’t played in three years. I didn’t even know how to make monsters hit walls, so I’d often triple-cart and fail quests.

I struggled through Royal Ludroth, Tigrex, and the rest – no decent gear, no decorations – but I still managed to clear them eventually.

Later, when I was getting absolutely wrecked by Velkhana, I fired an SOS flare and got two HR 999 players joining my quest. Because I tend to play at odd hours lately, we threw a bunch of English at each other before suddenly realizing we both spoke Chinese. From that day on, we added each other as friends and started hunting together happily.

My new teammates are true Sapphire Stars! They can use all 14 weapon types – which, for me, feels like playing a completely different game every time I switch weapons. They’d smoothly carry me through every quest, using different weapons in flashy ways.

On their coattails, I blazed through the story, even somehow stumbling through Alatreon.

Then we ran into Fatalis. Fatalis is a monster that gives you 5 carts on the first encounter but can’t be fought co-op during the first phase. I braced myself, equipped my Safi’jiiva armor, and prepared to see what Fatalis was capable of.

Fatalis 5-carted me in 5 minutes, instantly failing the quest.

Two days later, I finally cleared the first phase and started hunting with my teammates. But then we spent the whole evening in a losing streak… because I kept dying like snowflakes. No matter how hard my teammates tried to heal me, I’d get one-shot by 80% of Fatalis’ attacks.

Too embarrassed to keep dragging them down, I suggested we hunt other monsters. When my teammates weren’t around, I practiced Fatalis on my own.

In stark contrast to my teammates, the SOS lobbies for Fatalis were basically dead for a low-rank player like me (under HR 200). And the few people who did join would often just quit as soon as they saw me die in the first phase, leaving me to get pummeled alone. 😭

Gradually, I picked up some life-improving tricks: crafting Mega Potions and Life Powders mid-combat with materials, equipping the slinger to ram monster heads into walls on sight, slotting Evade Window 5 and Divine Blessing 5, trading Steam Tickets from the Steamworks for hundreds of Dash Juices, and collecting all the bows from Kulve Taroth and Safi’jiiva.

Eventually, I realized I could comfortably beat every monster except Fatalis. I knew I was probably ready.

And finally, yesterday, my teammates and I cleared Fatalis several times, collecting all the materials. The sense of accomplishment was indescribable. More than that, though, having a good friend to game with – even more than a great game or great hardware – is probably one of the happiest things for a gamer.

(The images are chat logs of me streaming my entire emotional journey to lxyl.)

• 🍡Monster Hunter Rise

I thought I’d go for a ride during a break in the rain, but ended up crashing straight into a 30 cm drop at about 30 km/h on a construction site midway through the ride. If someone had filmed it, it would be a scene of a fast-cycling guy shouting “what the hell!” before separating from his bike and tumbling onto the road—easily material for the first chapter of a motorcycle accident documentary.

Luckily, I was pretty fortunate and know how to fall. I was fine, and the bike was fine. But you’ve still got to be careful when it’s dark. When I got back, I found that the bike lock had been thrown off my bike. 🖕🏿

• 🚴 Yowamushi Pedal