The problem I’ve been working on for three months has been solved by OpenAI: see Combinatorial invariance of Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials.

I’ll stop studying Combinatorial Invariance Conjecture and focus on algebraic geometry. But before that, I have to review for mathematical analysis and functional analysis for midterm exam…

I probably won’t forget this night, Oct 16 2026.

First time performing on stage, in a temporary support band playing Black Metal. The wish of screaming on stage finally came true…

Detail: Band club at our university was holding Band Night, i.e. public live, where I found nearly all of our band members, except for drummer who was stuck at his English homework ddl, at the audience seats.

Then I said: “You know what? Fuck it, let’s find a drummer and jump into the jam session!”

We managed to spot a metal drummer in the crowd wearing a Slipknot T-shirt and holding drum sticks – it literally took us 0 seconds to figure it out his role. Also, I managed to borrowed a guitar from a R&B performer, whereas our bassist talked someone into lending him a 40,000 RMB (holy shit, insane) 5-string bass.

3 guitar, 1 bass, 1 drum, 1 vocal(screaming). Fuck it, let’s go on stage an blow the roof of this fucking livehouse! (It’s pretty amusing to notice that, performers except for us are all play some light pop music, jazz, r&b, blues lol).

I was riding on so much adrenaline that my hands were shaking – I could barely hold the mic firmly , and I even forgot to turn on the volume knob on my guitar in the middle… As the show was on a whim and the drummer is new, obviously we hadn’t rehearse at all. The section transitions had to be cued by me (vocals & rhythm guitar) live on stage. But we managed to coordinate, and the live DID blow the roof off. There was even someone asking me how to do Black metal screaming after the live.

The drummer we found was a beast: he was randomly blasting through Painkiller by Judas Priest during the drum soundcheck, which shocked me out as I was connecting cables for guitars. We ultimately played Jesus’ Tod by Burzum and Freezing Moon by Mayhem.

Biggest regret: The adrenaline rush made me throw the wrong hand sign: ILY instead of Devil horns… VERY embarrassing…

I find myself always writing posts at midnight after 00:00. This post is written at 01:43 AM, for instance. So you can think of me writing those posts at the time right after the marked date begins.

Stopped watching Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works – because it’s too interesting. I want to obtain a deeper experience in the story of Fate/stay night, hence I decided to play the galgame Fate/stay night first before continue to watch the anime. Maybe I’ll start the game once the midterm week ends.

Started watching 生徒会にも穴はある！. As an amateur illustrator in ACGN, I’ll say this anime has a very unique art style (Cel-style) – which is also the method on coloring I like and used often. I think it’s actually benificial in my illustration skill to watch this anime.

P.S. This video really explains what we (as illustrators) are thinking when drawing characters. Even a simple line or color block can embody the creator’s ingenuity.

Started watching パリピ孔明 – 生徒会にも穴はある！ is still updating weekly, and I have to find something else to watch. This anime went viral when it aired in 2022, and it just occured to me to pick it up.

New discovery:

• A functor that preserves limit always commutes with $\text{Lim}$.
• A functor that preservers colimit always mmutes with $\text{Colim}$.

I wish I could learn algebraic topology, algebraic geometry, commutative algebra, homological algebra, Lie theory and Coxeter group theory simultaneously. It has been really hard to give a satisfying seminar report on some of those topics while doing well in other topics during classes or seminars.

It’s really tiring to do all the graduate-level work and undergraduate work at the same time. I have to take four seminars, give two reports every week, resulting in solving homework about undergraduate courses in AI. I should be a graduate student instead of being treated as a sophomore.

I noticed that the airplane ticket from HKG to NRT can be as low as 850 CNY – much cheaper than I thought. Hence I’ve been thinking about taking a trip to Tokyo during Christmas. It’s really attractive for me to feel the Christmas atmosphere there.

I want to take a walk in Yoyogi Park, look out over Tokyo at the top of Roppongi Hills, cross the Shibuya Scramble Crossing and buy some CDs at Tower Records…

Finished watching ヤニねこ. Great anime, recommended.

Personally, I like 字書きねこ the most, followed by カンサイねこ, 妹ねこ and ハメねこ. Looking forward to ヤニねこ S02.

Contrary to the overwhelmingly positive reviews on the internet, I found 上伊那ぼたん、酔へる姿は百合の花 is not my cup of tea – frequent and unreasonable boundary-crossing behaivours from 上伊那ぼたん makes me feel weird (and unconfortable to some extent).

Despite saying that, the easter eggs about rock albums got my attention. It’s really rare to have albums such as Kid A from Radiohead and Wish You Were Here from Pink Floyd shown in an anime.

Finished watching Fate/Zero S02. I forgot to update the status though… I’ll continue to watch Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works S01.

Finished watching ぐらんぶる S03.

Despite the low production budget, the quality is still satisfying, and I like it very much. I heard that ぐらんぶる S04 will be broadcast no sooner than Jul 2027, so I suppose I’ll read the manga instead – literally can’t wait.

First time encountering system breaking down after updating. Maybe it’s a challenge which every daily GNU/Linux user will face.

After a system update, WiFi on my ThinkPad X14 stopped working. I first noticed the WiFi list was empty in dms, then confirmed it with nmcli device wifi list – still nothing.

I vaguely remembered the same thing happening when I set up Fedora Everything 44 on this machine from scratch, back then I suspected a kernel problem and ended up downloading the driver files on another machine and copying them over with a hard drive. That was too much hassle this time, so I tried tethering my iPhone over USB instead – it worked. With network access restored, I fired up opencode to debug it, and here’s what Deepseek V4 Pro diagnosed:

• nmcli radio reported WIFI-HW: missing, and rfkill had no WiFi device at all, so this was not a NetworkManager problem.
• journalctl -k revealed the real story: iwlwifi detected the Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE213 card fine, but then “no suitable firmware found”. The updated kernel (7.2.4) requires iwlwifi-sc-a0-wh-b0-c102 through c106, while only c101 was present in /usr/lib/firmware/.
• Root cause: Fedora shipped a new kernel whose firmware requirements outpace the linux-firmware package.

The first fix attempt was to download the missing .ucode files manually from kernel.org. That failed twice – git.kernel.org is behind an Anubis anti-bot challenge, and the URL returned not found in the browser. Then came the actual insight: on Fedora, iwlwifi firmware does not live in the main linux-firmware package. It is split into subpackages (iwlwifi-mld-firmware and friends), and I had none of them installed. In fact, even the c101 file I already had was “not owned by any package” – probably a leftover from the manual copy last time.

The real fix turned out to be one command:

sudo dnf install iwlwifi-mld-firmware

It ships iwlwifi-sc-a0-wh-b0-c106.ucode.xz, the kernel supports compressed firmware (CONFIG_FW_LOADER_COMPRESS_XZ=y), and after a modprobe -r iwlwifi && modprobe iwlwifi the WiFi list was back.

Nice feeling, solving a problem that once required a hard-drive round trip with a single dnf command.

Finished reading 今さらですが、幼なじみを好きになってしまいました. Such a melodramatic love story… I like it, though – those stories with twisted interpersonal relationships have always been my favourite.

Started watching 響け！ユーフォニアム. I tried to watch it during my senior year in high school, but I was too impetuous, overwhelmed with exams and exercises at that time, and therefore stopped halfway through. I’ll try to finish it this time, as it’s remarkablly well-made high quality anime from Kyoto Animation, and I’m a music enthusiast.

You see, there’re these kinds of anime:

• Rock
  • けいおん!
  • Girls Band Cry
  • ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！
  • BanG Dream series (at least people say they’re “rock”…)
  • Nana
• Jazz
  • Blue Giant
• Classical
  • 響け！ユーフォニアム
  • 四月は君の嘘
• Pop/Idol
  • 推しの子
  • Love Live! series
  • The Idolmaster series

But as a metalhead, it’s pathetic that there’s no metal-themed anime – at least I haven’t found any. What a pity…

Watched Man of Steel (2013 film). I like it very much. Superman in the film is portrayed with a sense of divinity, and I like the feeling of it, very cool! BGM from Hans Zimmer is incredible, as it always is.

Also, since I have a hobby of body-building and go to gym everyday, it’s inevitable for me to admire the physique that Superman owns – I wish I could train my body into that shape…

Finished watching BanG Dream! YUME∞MITA. I take back my words in my Aug 2, 2026 post. Truth is: it’s awful. Don’t watch this unless you’re a huge fan of girls band anime and have absolutely nothing else to watch. Proceed at your own risk.

My review here (no spoiler).

I am looking for an anime to watch in between Fridays (as that’s when I watch the new weekly anime episodes ヤニねこ, BanG Dream! YUME∞MITA and ぐらんぶる S03.) I think 上伊那ぼたん、酔へる姿は百合の花 is a good idea, as it has been recommended by many of my classmates.

Finished watching たまこラブストーリー. Great love story.

For me, it’s always easier to be fully absorbed into music and truly “understand” or “enjoy” an album late at night.

I am working on F.O.A.G. at midnight today. In order to concentrate on my work and prevent me from getting sleepy or distracted, I decided to listen to some Post Rock – Godspeed You! Black Emperor to be more specific, as it’s practically the only Post Rock band that I’ve dug and truly enjoy.

(Extracted from Dead Flag Blues – F♯ A♯ ∞ [Godspeed You! Black Emperor]):

The car’s on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel

And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides

And a dark wind blows

…

The government is corrupt

And we’re on so many drugs

With the radio on and the curtains drawn

…

We’re trapped in the belly of this horrible machine

And the machine is bleeding to death

…

The sun has fallen down

And the billboards are all leering

And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

How poignant – both literally and musically. The violins and trumpets nearly make me cry.

P.S. F# A# ∞ (Expanded Version) is my favourite album from GY!BE. My second and third favorites are Yanqui U.X.O. and ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend Ascend. I haven’t fully gotten into their most well-know album Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! though.

Finished playing 魔法使いの夜. I like it very much: Top-level animation effects, fascinating plot and interesting world setting. The downside is: it’s too short…I thought I had only covered covered 40% of the story when the game ended.

I found that there’re tons of available games on Steam that used to be only available on Windows platform.

There’s even no need for configuration before playing it: all I did was install Steam from Flathub, download the games in my library and just launch it. I’ve tested Persona 5, Lies of P, To Heart and Dark Soul III – only the last one crashed while the others ran smoothly.

Maybe it’s time to pick up my hobby in gaming – I’ve gave it up for quite a long time (in years) because I’m physically repulsed by Windows.

Decided to start with ToHeart first, since I’m already halfway through the others and don’t have time to replay the parts I’ve forgotten (or lost saves for…).

Finished watching たまこまーけっと. Remarkable Nichijou anime, as I had expected! I’m planning to watch たまこラブストーリー, ASAP.

Started watching たまこまーけっと.

I’ve always loved watching Nichijou Anime from Kyoto Animation: らき☆すた, 日常, K-ON!, 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 – including this time: たまこまーけっと. awesome animes! Highly recommended if you don’t have much spare time and can only watch animes in between those working hours.

Wrote a blog here. Finally, I can play galgames on my Thinkpad. I’ve been wishing to play galgame for quite a long time – approximately a year – and I ultimately managed to find some time and get up steam to tinker with those Wine-setups.

Started a new textbook solution project here. Let’s see how much exercises in the book will be covered before I turn to read something else.

Wasted a whole day and got nothing done. Feeling shit as hell.

First, I continued looking for a personal email hosting service, as I’ve always wanted to have my own email address named in @flandre.red. Last time, at my friend’s suggestion as he is personaly using, I tried resend, but my account ended up being permanently suspended:

From: <[email protected]>
To: `text omitted`
Subject: Your submission is being reviewed

Hi there,

Generally speaking, Resend is not a tool designed for personal email - it's
more suited to email automation and newsletters.

Can you please provide more information about the nature of your sending and
how you plan to use Resend?

Slater Smith, Customer Success Engineer @ Resend

So this time I turned to mailbox. After a ton of registration, I ultimately failed to use my VISA from BOC to purchase the service in EUR – that card only seemed to support USD. So f BOC. Maybe I’ll try other services like Zoho mail or Purelymail.

Second, I was planning to use Kdenlive and RVC to glue multiple webm files recorded during a seminar together, turn the discussion audio into characters voices such as 豊川祥子, align multiple sound tracks toghether with the lecture recording. In the alignment step, Kdenlive has to transform the .webm files into .mp4 format in order to edit. However, some bugs in Kdenlive’s native file transformation makes the transformed video unidentified by itself. And I tried

ffmpeg -i "file:2026-08-16T05:11:11.486-flandre.webm" \
  -map 0:v:0 -map "0:a:0?" \
  -c:v libx264 -preset veryfast -crf 18 -pix_fmt yuv420p \
  -r 30 \
  -c:a aac -b:a 192k \
  -movflags +faststart \
  -copyts -avoid_negative_ts make_zero \
  "file:2026-08-16T05:11:11.486-flandre.mp4"

which the timestamp ended up corrupted, and I gave up. F it.