Prosody

The Study of: stress and intonation patterns and rhythm in a language.

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Journal of the Week

2/13/2025 12 kills to look into as a designer.

Graham Stephan did a video on Home Affordability:

Quote from Tupac: "Your rent is the MOST you'll pay every month; Your mortgage is the LEAST you'll ay every month."

This got me looking at property tax maps in the USA:

2018, by states:

2021, by counties.

Came across interesting Youtube video by 阿冉, on the theory of how incest was a norm in Latin America world due to the disruption of colonial rape, in spite of the heavy Catholic influence. This is interesting because due to racial distinction today, incest is culturally frown upon, to a point one would wonder why the Bible would even care to put a bar against it. However, the further back we go in history, the lesser racial distinction there is (my theory), thus, the more it was the situation that is similar to the incest due to colonial rape, 阿冉's theory: Father seeing mixed blood daughter or white brother seeing the mixed blood sister not as the same family. The fact that Catholicism was accepted widely in Latin America was due to the hatred against the European "preachers" [colonizers], while the Gospel message was reached (the locals compared their sufferings to the Cross), but it was ironically convenient for them to see their conquerors as the forces of Satan. This video can be controversial between left & right wings, so to properly understand this, obviously, I would need the best source from both sides of the aisle.

阿冉's incest theory breaks into 3 categories:

  1. The rape of own daughters resulted from the rape of local women by the colonizers - The yellow suffered as Christ against the white devil.
  2. The separation of different kinds of mixed blood (more white vs. more yellow) due to colonial resource (Cuban sugar, etc.) management (more white looking siblings are looked higher upon, given higher social status), resulting in more white looking brothers sleeping with more yellow looking sisters - White vs. Yellow Catholics.
  3. This point really doesn't have much ground as he's trying to metaphorically equate St. Mary with their motherland after taking back their land from the colonizers, rebelling against St. Mary's virtue and changing the ways of colonial use of their local resources to something more devastating for immoral gain, thus, as if raping their "mother"-land.

2/12/2025 To build one's own AI LLM. A brief overview from someone's own experience.

WebAssembly (WASM) vs. Virtual Machine & Containers.

2/11/2025 Came across this Presbycast Podcast episode "Pastoring in DC, Planting Differently w/Rev. Brian Lee", at @45:20, when prompted the question how a pastor should respond who he voted for, the host, Brad, I presume, said "Jesus, I voted for Jesus". Though it may have come out as a tongue in cheek, this response is so wrong in so many levels. I'll sum it in two main points:

  1. Jesus does not need our vote: All Christians obviously should know this already. Even a fake Christian would know this. So this is very bad as a testimony to non-Christians. A mar in the distinction between creator-creature relation, a shallowness in the Kingdom of Heaven understanding, a failed understanding of the cultural mandate, leaning towards the false doctrine of Christomonism, if not SOLO (not SOLA) scriptura also, etc.
  2. You're not answering the question. To a Christian, this is a sort of avoidance of the truth out of low IQ (foolishness, not seeking understanding), or fear of men. Hence, no difference from the Chief Hinderer of the truth himself, Satan.

Stroop Test - Psychological test using different font colors that are not matching to the words of the colors. Studies show that bilinguals are better at this test than single language native speakers. I'm doing this LinkedIn Learning course just to get a certification for NYGC's PD training.

UX Designers Salaries for 2025 by countries, states, taxes, etc. A good direction to look for jobs in the field. Perhaps with the right combination, I can get it from a high salary paying state while hacking the taxes from somewhere else.

China's at it again with AI - ByteDance's OmniHuman-1 turns photos into videos with audio, such as this Einstein video. To compete with China, I think America really need to get rid of this nonsense about intellectual property and find a new direction:

2/10/2025 "This form is not secure. Autofill has been turned off" this recent (past few weeks) warning message pops up in my custom page search fields in Chrome. Upon search submission, I had to go through an intermission page telling me about the insecurity of the search again. Strangely my Surface Laptop does not show this problem. The fix is as easy as changing http to https in the Form Action.

Aquariums dilemma: We will so be gone for three weeks in Malaysia in April, and though I successfully set autofeeders for both the 55 gal marine aquarium as well as the fresh water mini tank (Betta fish) for the last 2 week Eurotrip, I now have more than just one betta fish in the freshwater tank and some concern with water flow (with constant algae bloom and blockade) for the salt water tank. I believe I just turned off the filter circulation for the salt water tank for two weeks to prevent any unforeseen spilling. Hopefully, I can get the algae down by then and still able to maintain some circulation of the filtration/sump tank. I saw the marine tank low on water today so I added two buckets of water from the dehumidifier, so let's see how long this actually will last before critical dehydration. I should be getting the 4 Stage RO/DI system by next week from BRS.

2/9/2025 I asked the pastor if he watches the Super Bowl, he said yes. I was wrong about him. I guess the Super Bowl really is the norm of Americans. I just told everyone the only thing I like about SB is their commercials.

I think I looked it up before, Basile means King. In Revelation 19:16, King of Kings - βασιλευς βασιλεων tells me that our pastor's full name could be translated as The bearer of Christ the King.

To my surprise, Bob asked me what I do with the laptop during service. Not many people ask and I sometimes would think the worst, that they imagined I was browsing something completely unrelated. Rudy also interrupted by asking me to show him, since I told him before, the drawing-notation I took during the sermon. Revelation is a fun book to make drawings for, Bob called mine "shorthand notation". But I was happy to show Bob the German origin hymn (by Samuel Rodigast in 1675: Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan) I was looking up that was mentioned in the sermon: Whatever My God Ordains Is Right. It's in our hymnal #108 and I tried playing it at home later. As long as the church allows, this laptop thing is very precious for me to really get more relevant matters out of God's providence. I no longer feel sleepy in church services. I wish I know how to influence Nadia in attention.

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Definition of Israel

From my Facebook Archive downloaded from Facebook (nice download tool they have in settings) May 18, 2024 9:29:00 pm @[100038736394235:2048:David Walker] Here's what we can understand "Israel" [or being a Jew] to be, and they can sometimes be mutually exclusive, sometimes not, but do note "sometimes MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE":

1. God's people, God's children, God's elect.

2. The Church (Deu 9:10, etc.)

3. Jesus (and the foreshadow of...Exo 4:22, Hos 11:1, etc.)

4. The 1948 geographical land of Israel and her citizens.

5. Folks around the world who think they are of Jewish descents either with concrete PROOF or WITHOUT, matrilineally or patrilineally.

6. Folks who were gentiles ( = not Jewish) converted to Judaism, and maybe the descendents of those non-Jews who converted to Judaism.

7. The "colony" called Israel under the rule of the Roman Empire

8. The Babylonian exiles who were largely from Judah, Southern Israel kingdom, but not really the Northern Israel kingdom, returning to the land of Israel.

9. The Northern Israel kingdom, after the split of North and South after King Solomon, so not really the Southern Israel Kingdom/Judah.

10. The land of Israel and her people after the Canaanites in OT, both northern and southern tribes.

11. Jacob's descendants

12. Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham

13. Hebrews (more than be talked/debated about on the origin or etymology of the word "Hebrews, so I'll stop here, to avoid getting off track) You can probably list more, but this is the gist of it. So it's not as simple as you think in the definition of "Israel".

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Journal of the Week

2/6/2025 How to make $1 in 5 years of web making. Funny but interesting. I haven't read it, just put it here for fun.

Came across this Christian (Red Pen Logic) response to The West Wing clip where Martin Sheen's character, the U.S. president giving Bible (or rather anti-Bible) lecturing an allegedly Christian woman for being to conservative on OT topics like selling one's daughter, working on sabbath, touching the unclean, planting different crops together, going linsey-woolsey. And I commented:

This 5 min video was painfully boring to listen to. Let me try, don't even need to be a Christian to solve these, like it's hard.
"I don't say homosexual is an abomination...the Bible does."
Me: Stop blaming the Bible.

"...what would a good price for her be?"
Me: Is this country really that poor?

"...obligated to put him to death for working on sabbath?"
Me: Who's sabbath?

"...can wearing gloves play footballs made of unclean dead pig skin?"
Me: Who's doing the laundry?

"...stone my brother for planting different crops side by side?"
Me: Maybe teach him about crops instead of stoning?

"..burn grandma for wearing two different threads garment"
Me: Maybe show her some compassion for poor fashion?

And about standing, there're tons of viral videos about asking a handicap to spare seat for pregnant ladies, you'll figure that one out, I'm sure you're clever enough.

2/5/2025 Into Ruby? Be a fan of someone like Victor Shepelev could be a good direction. 25 years as a developer had 20 years experience in Ruby. He also shares his experience in a video:

Beej's Guide to Git. I had another link to GIT/GitHub tutorial on my 4/4/2024 Journal entry, so this is a plus.

2/4/2025 Apparently I downloaded this from youtube two years ago (5/23/2023), watched it briefly, intended to re-watch it comprehensively, but didn't until now: Heated Debate on Pornography w/ Dennis Prager @PragerU, by Matt Fradd:

And here's my summary of it:

This is a critique on Dennis Prager on Jordan Peterson's Exodus series, when Prager disagreed with Jesus' statement: if one looks at a woman with lust he's already committed adultery in the heart. That is, Prager doesn't think adultery is a matter of the heart but of an actual organ that has nothing to do with the heart @3:00. [Here lies the Jewish problem, that they believe, like all other religion, that deed is greater than intention. This lack of distinguishing unwilling deed from true deed by accusing lack of deed from true intention is their downfall. True intention will always create true deed, it should be a given, otherwise the intention is problematic, not the deed. Christianity is the only one that speaks of the theology of motives, and not running away from motives with excuses.]

@5:30 Fradd tried to respond to that with Aristotle's 4 level of virtuous to vicious man in Nicomachean Ethics. Summarized from Google AI below:

  • Virtuous: The highest level, representing someone who consistently acts with moral virtue and finds doing good to be natural. 
  • Continent: Someone who knows the right thing to do but must struggle against their desires to do it. 
  • Incontinent: Someone who knows the right thing to do but gives in to their desires and acts immorally. 
  • Vicious: The lowest level, representing someone who has developed bad habits and finds it easy to act immorally. 

@7:00 the distinguishing of lust and sexual desire is mentioned. I think it's semantics here, ἐπιθυμέω epithumeō can be good desire and also bad coveting. For Fradd, lust = porn, desiring the perversion, not just desire. Not what Jesus meant anyway. I think Prager gets points here for not playing that kind of word game between desire and lust. I believe Jesus was referring to sexual desire with ἐπιθυμέω or lust. Only the Lordship focus can cure this. The Catholics find the cure in will power instead.

@19:00 The real elephant in the room that they seemed to miss was is how is the aesthetic of human body porn or not porn. Fradd doesn't seem to understand aesthetic of God, he needs a causality to explain everything. A Catholic thinking.

@25:50 They both erroneously labeled Protestantism as no understanding of gradation of sin. Of course, there are some faction of Christians who fail on this, but this is not Protestantism.

@31:17 Prager's definition of objectification is simply grammatic, while Fradd's is inferiorization. Hence, their confusion with each other.

@32:30 This is interesting when Prager brought up the Jewish philosophy of "It is more virtuous for a person to be tempted and not sin, than a person to not be tempted and thus not sin". This shows the Jewish mind on behavior is better than motive. Christianity turns this around. Thus a mere contract is not enough, because the heart behind the contract matters. If it's just by smart contracts without motives, then no wonder why the Jews are such a popularity in law firms. Fradd definitely touched on motives, as a Christian that he is, unlike Prager the Jew, in calling out a thought as evil or not: @34:00 "You didn't do evil if you thought evil...I won't call a fantasy evil". However, I think Fradd, as a Catholic, would struggle with a form of legalism in judging what is indicated as sinful motives, i.e. a person reading Playboy for lust or for aesthetic, not that I'm saying Playboy is good, just that when it comes to motive of someone dabbling in the nudes, it is complicated from Michelangelo to Hugh Hefner.

In this debate, I think it's a win for Prager, though I disagree with him. The winner I judged here upon the level of understanding and IQ in the matter. Fradd couldn't respond to Prager's challenges on multiple occasions and had to somehow switch topics to get away from the defeat (i.e. @36:00 when challenged with Prager's case of a man masturbating (a no no for Catholics apparently) because of his handicapped wife, Fradd would switch topic to women being sexually abused in the world - probably intending to show that had the industry of porn be abolished, that man wouldn't need to masturbate - if that is what Fradd was doing, then it's a very bad logical train of thought. Another example @39:18 Is a lingerie model losing her dignity? Fradd obvious just answered yes but instead of debating why yes and Prager obviously would object, Fradd quickly side tracked again to let's talk about gradations of sin, which again Prager had to play along and say he had no issues on those off topic subjects Fradd kept wasting time on).

@37:30 I think Fradd also confuses evil with curse. i.e. "A man born blind is natural evil", I would call it curse. Evil is something actively against God's glory. Curse is the condition of the victim from the sovereignty of the agent.

Fradd cut the last part to get viewer subscription when he asked "Why isn't the Rabbi who said a husband and wife can do absolutely anything sexually in a bedroom, oppose to pornography?" I think I could answer for Prager easily: Because porn is not made/done in a marriage much less in a marriage bed. This shows that Fradd couldn't really follow the genius of Prager well enough, so he kept diverging. While Prager was able to pin things down with Fradd better. In the end, it's a win for Prager in the debate, but I obviously lean closer to Fradd's camp rather than Prager's, because everyone would essentially agree that motive matters, but Prager just doesn't want to really care about it.

2/3/2025 A good way to look into how GPS location is collected from apps.

2/1/2025 Flat tire again. This time right after I picked up Nadia from work at 12:26AM. I believe the metal shrapnel (rather huge) was located at the traffic light junction of Bordentown Ave. & S. Pine Ave. as that's when I started hearing rocking sound from the tire. It's the back tire behind the driver (Rear Left tire). I'll have to either do a spare tire replacement tomorrow morning or perhaps I could even attempt replacing it with used tire on the rim. I think we have at least one used tire stored in the shed. I'll find out in the morning.

I noticed that pastor Chris has a remarkable resemblance to American actor Charlie Day.

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) Myth and Legend

Certainly a great Russian Romantic Period composer with piano (3 Piano Concertos), violin (1 Violin Concerto), 6 symphonies, 4 orchestral suites and ballets (1. Nutcracker, 2. Swan Lake, 3. Sleeping Beauty). His famous operas were: Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin and Queen of Spades.

Also one whom many like to label as homosexual without much concrete evidence: All they have were his depression, failed marriage (with Antonina Miliukova, his student, threatening suicide for his love) and how Russian was against LGBTQ+. His letters to his brother, Modest, about how beautiful (angelic, tempting delightful young creature, attractive bait, stunning beauty, etc.) some men were. None of these are enough to prove anything. They would probably call King David gay for his relationship with Jonathan, son of King Saul.

Starting piano lessons at 5. Went into law school (Imperial School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg) because of parents. Peter studied under Anton Rubinstein in St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Married Antonina Miliukova in 1877, who was 9 years younger than he. Never divorced but lots of drama. 14 years financed by wealthy, older widow, Nadezhda von Meck whom he never met in person as she insisted to keep relationship strictly through letters.

Died Nov 6 1893 in St. Petersburg.

Source of this summary from Classical Archives.

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NVIDIA Programming in CUDA

Here's a start: Free Tutorial from NVIDIA

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South Amboy Home Water Pressure Test in P.S.I.

Months ago I did this with the Roastove Water pressure measuring device. But I guess I failed to record it.

Here it is, for outdoor faucet water pressure:

Driveway side (South Side): 45 PSI

Backyard Garden side (North side): 40 PSI

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Accent Reduction

On this topic, it is not enough to recognize the accent one wishes to imitate/learn, but also recognize the obstacle in learning it from one's own native tongue. Thus, the teacher of accent reduction must also recognize the characteristics of both languages, that are the target language as well as the student's native language.

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Journal of the Week

1/24/2025 So it came a time for me to need to do a mailmerge again using MS Word. This time, I really had to try finding a means to do dynamic subject line in the emails. Adding a variable field in the subject line with each recipient's name respectively. Apparently, to have field(s) in mail merge subject line, along with other features such as adding respective attachments, CC, BCC, are not native to Microsoft Word MailMerge. For that, one needs to install some sort of addin and they aren't usually free. I follow this youtuber's suggestion and downloaded MergeTools:

This Merge Tools Add-in is not really free. It gives a 20 use trial. It's basically a dotm file to be saved to MS Word's startup folder, which allow you to have a new addon tool in the Word ribbon. Then one must make sure to save the Mailmerge (Important: Start MailMerge as Letters, not as Email Messages) by going to FILE>Save As, as a docx file before going to his Merge Tool addin.

I tried looking into its Macro VBA code but it's password protected. There are ways to hack it, which I'll have another private entry "How to Hack dotm VBA Password Protection" on (Why is he-author Doug Robbins, using Indonesian terms in his coding?!). He's certainly put a lot of work in it, but I think $30 is a bit steep for me. I would gladly pay no more than $5 :). The programmer also suggested an alternative way (using Power Automate) of doing this on his FAQ page with folks on Mac:

1/23/2025 7 well known papers in Computer Science history.

For the first time, I went to the city hall townhall meeting of South Amboy, because we received a letter notifying us for a chance to object to the construction of a 2-story house on 407 Prospect Street. It's interesting that they are open to the change of the house address to Hillcrest instead of Prospect. There's about 10 members of the committee and 15 in the audience.

01/22/2025 Javascript terminologies to be familiarized with in 2025

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Classic Debates on my Watch List

Michael Horton vs. Crystal Cathedral's Robert Schuller on Schuller: "The first Reformation erred in that it was God-centered, rather than man-centered"

Charles Hodge vs. James Thornwell on Thornwell: Mission Boards not to be prioritized.

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