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Monthly Log: 2025-01

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Original language: Chinese . AI translations: English , Japanese .

Monthly Log Season 2 is officially underway.

Post Structure

  1. Input
    Learning: books/novels/good articles, videos/podcasts, any format, anything that feels rewarding after finishing
    Anime: new shows / old shows, TV season / movies, notes on what I watched
    Others: movies, TV series, etc., put here

  2. Random Thoughts
    Maybe I will write down whatever I’m thinking

  3. Output
    Maybe a blog, but I’m not good enough, so maybe I have no output for a whole month (lol)

  4. Travel
    If I went somewhere, I’ll jot it down. If not, then whatever

  5. Misc
    Small things that don’t fit in the categories above

Input

Learning

Elixir Documents

I’ve basically finished the docs, but only in the sense of having made one quick pass through them. I still need to type out the sample code myself, especially the concurrency parts in Mix & OTP.

Now that I think about it, I also haven’t typed out the later examples in Learn Functional Programming with Elixir. Might as well practice those together.

Eloquent JavaScript

I occasionally revisit some chapters in the book, but mostly I’m reading the MDN JavaScript docs below.

MDN - JavaScript reference

While reading Mozilla docs, I found that JavaScript can use reduce to achieve something similar to Elixir’s pipe operator |>. That’s really interesting.
The method is in Array.prototype.reduce() - Function sequential piping.

In the docs, pipe takes functions first and initialValue second, so the call style becomes pipe(increment, double)(4).
That felt a little awkward to me. pipe(4)(increment, double) reads more naturally.
From left to right, it becomes: take 4, then pass it through +1, then *2…

Here’s my modified code:

let pipeItem =
  (initialValue) =>
  (...functions) => {
    return functions.reduce((acc, fn) => fn(acc), initialValue);
  };


let increment = (x) => x + 1;
let double = (x) => x * 2;

Usage:

>> pipeItem(4)(increment, double)
10
>> pipeItem(4)(double, increment)
9
>> pipeItem(4)(double, increment, double)
18

You can stretch the same idea to Arrays too:

let pipeArray =
  (list) =>
  (...functions) => {
    return list.map((item) => pipeItem(item)(...functions));
  };

Which gives you:

>> pipeArray([1, 2, 4])(increment, double)
Array(3) [ 4, 6, 10 ]


>> pipeArray([1, 2, 4])(double, increment)
Array(3) [ 3, 5, 9 ]

Elegant~

Architecture of a Database System

I want to understand databases a bit. Teach Yourself Computer Science recommends this paper and says it can help build an overall understanding of relational database management systems (RDBMS).
I read 20-30 pages. It seems a bit hard for me.

Anime

New

  • 花は咲く、修羅の如く
    Beautiful production, and both recitation scenes absolutely nail the atmosphere. It’s the show I’m looking forward to most this season.
  • 日本へようこそ、エルフさん
    I’m so jealous of the male lead’s skill: not needing sleep and still staying energetic. That’s basically double the life experience.
    Also, white-haired elves are great.
  • Magic Maker
    Actual blood-related romance? Making lifelong promises at that age feels a little dubious.
    A few episodes in, though, it does seem genuinely interested in building a story, especially the part about inventing a magic system from scratch.
    I also liked the parents. They go along with the kid’s absurd experiments instead of smothering that curiosity with a dismissive “what does a child know?”
  • 残業受付嬢
    Basically a Rie Takahashi solo act. The heroine looks good, but the story itself is very ordinary. My expectations are low.
  • 天鹰推理事件
    Watched two or three episodes. Pretty fun.
  • S 级怪兽被当作小猫
    Boring. Dropped after 1 episode.
  • 和班级里最讨厌的女生结婚
    So cliché. Dropped after 1 episode.

Sequels

  • 薬屋のひとりごと
    I still haven’t watched the second half of season 1 yet, so I need to catch up before jumping in. I will get to it. Probably.
  • アオのハコ
    I swear I’ll watch it. Really. (nervous)

Others

Recent TV/movies. I try not to spoil.

リズと青い鳥

Beautifully made, delicate emotions. An excellent film.
I’m glad my first time watching it was in a theater. The immersion was very strong.

The final ensemble segment uses wordless music in place of dialogue to convey the choice to the other person. A very romantic scene.
At the end, 鎧塚霙(よろいづか みぞれ) (such a hard name to remember) no longer needs to follow in someone else’s footsteps. She climbs the stairs alone, opens the door, with firm steps, and walks toward her own goal. So good.

機動戦士Gundam GQuuuuuuX

Opening-day attendance was terrifying. Hideaki Anno + Sunrise + Gundam is a frightening combination.

The first half is basically a Gundam history speedrun. I genuinely thought I had walked into the wrong theater because it looked nothing like the PV.
Unfortunately, I’ve only watched Seed and The Witch from Mercury, so I know nothing about the mainline lore. I couldn’t get any of the references.

I only found out later from comments on Bangumi that the first half is basically an Anno-written “what if the Zaku side won” route. The strongest fanfic

The second half is finally what the PV promised. One-sentence summary: welcome to the age of big AI. Never piloted a Gundam before? No problem. For only 998 a month, unlock our latest AI driving assist package, the Copilot Pro-Max-Ultra-Plus Model, and style on the poor free-to-play pilots across from you with zero experience.

Random Thoughts

The New Year’s holiday vanished in a blink. It ended before I had done anything worth mentioning.

I wanted to try skiing, but after planning the whole winter, I still never went. I guess it’s “next year” again (

Output

2024 Year-End Review dragged on from January into February and nearly turned into a difficult labor.
Maybe it was because there was no real deadline. It always felt like “tomorrow is fine,” and then before I knew it, almost two months had gone by.
Writing a blog is fun, but this much time and energy, plus the steady psychological pressure of unfinished posts piling up in the background, doesn’t feel sustainable.
I need to figure out some kind of fix for that, whether it’s a stricter time limit or some other way to force myself to ship things sooner.

Travel

Hatsumode

We went to Kawasaki Daishi for hatsumode. I didn’t get up on the 1st, so we went on the 2nd instead (a perfect reenactment of last year’s script).
The weather was great. The sun felt pleasantly warm, and after walking for a bit, I started sweating.
The outdoor light was so strong that I couldn’t see the camera’s LCD screen. It took a friend’s reminder for me to realize I could just use the viewfinder (so that’s what it’s for).

So I walked around with the camera and kept snapping away.


謹賀新年


There were tons of people coming to pray, but the temple is big and the crowd moved quickly. I tossed in 5 yen and wished for world peace.


Caught the exact moment a flock of pigeons swept past the spire.


The Shenyang Garden next to Kawasaki Daishi. Center stage: a friend from the group chat in the wild.


The shrine had lots of interesting ema. This one was adorable.


Train or Shinkansen? Very creative.


This one was even better: a little ceramic snake, and it even made a heart ♥️

Carrying a camera around all day is exhausting (I’m buying a GR3

Misc

Nothing special to say here, so I’ll skip it.

Closing

So the first Monthly Log of the year still ended up dragging all the way to late February.
The writing itself had already been done by mid-month. All that remained was some light photo cleanup and pasting them in, but I just kept not doing it.
With February almost over, I finally dug a few pictures out of the gallery and pushed the January log out first.

reasonably productive JS & Elixir study + soul-draining work content gave birth to this rough, scrappy Monthly Log.
Farewell, first month of 2025.

No time to feel happy about publishing this one. Next onto the battlefield is February’s Monthly Log

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