## Setting up Arch Linux with KDE Plasma in Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

Yup, you read that right. Sounds crazy, I know. But entirely possible, and surprisingly usable. Pretty easy too. 

### Enabling Windows Subsystem for Linux

Follow this official guide - [Windows Subsystem for Linux Installation Guide for Windows 10](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10) - to enable WSL on Windows. Make sure you follow till step 5 of the manual method to have WSL2 as default. Everything is explained in great detail in the guide. 

Now, there are two ways to install Arch - the first one is extremely easy and preferable, and the second is for those who like to have more fine-grain control over stuff.

### Installing Arch Linux - Method I

Arch Linux used to be an official app on the Windows Store some time ago, but the Arch community isn't onboard with the concept of WSL, or they aren't exactly comfortable with how easy WSL makes Linux installations for Windows users. Not to worry though, since both Arch Linux and the WSL kernel are open source, you can just easily install it manually too. Follow the steps given in this short guide [How to Setup | ArchWSL Documentation](https://wsldl-pg.github.io/ArchW-docs/How-to-Setup/).

### Installing Arch Linux - Method II

We will use a tool called [LxRunOffline](https://github.com/DDoSolitary/LxRunOffline) to install and manage WSLs on our system. Open up Administrator CMD and run the following commands:

```batch
cd %USERPROFILE%\Downloads
curl -LO https://github.com/DDoSolitary/LxRunOffline/releases/download/v3.5.0/LxRunOffline-v3.5.0-msvc.zip
powershell -c Expand-Archive LxRunOffline-v3.5.0-msvc.zip
cd LxRunOffline-v3.5.0-msvc
copy LxRunOffline.exe C:\Windows
```

The last line copies the `LxRunOffline.exe` file to a location which is included in **PATH** environment variable, so that we can call this from anywhere. Here, for example, it copies this to 'C:\Windows' (this is why elevated access is required).

Now, we have to download Arch rootfs. In CMD, run:

```batch
cd %USERPROFILE%\Downloads
curl -LO https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/archlinux/iso/2020.12.01/archlinux-bootstrap-2020.12.01-x86_64.tar.gz
```

Once the download is complete, we can instruct LxRunOffline to start the extraction:

```batch
mkdir D:\WSL\Arch
LxRunOffline i -n Arch -d D:\WSL\Arch\ -f %USERPROFILE%\Downloads\archlinux-bootstrap-2020.12.01-x86_64.tar.gz -r root.x86_64
```

Instead of 'D:\WSL\Arch\', you can specify any location path. Also, make sure the path doesn't have any spaces (Linux doesn't like spaces). This can take a bit of time.

After that, run:

```batch
wsl --set-version Arch 2
wsl ~ -d Arch
```

By default, Arch is installed as an instance of WSL1. We don't want that, so the first line fixes that. The second line runs the Arch distribution (the '~' tells it to open in the default home directory).

Now the rootfs we downloaded was an absolute minimal install, and includes nothing by default. To add to the problem, the package manager `pacman` wouldn't run because all the mirrors in '/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist' are commented by default, and we don't even have a text editor to uncomment them! To fix this, we just open it in notepad (life hack!):

```bash
notepad.exe /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
```

Uncomment the three worldwide mirrors (or the ones based on your location). After that, we will install the basic utilities and a terminal text editor:

```bash
pacman-key --init
pacman-key --populate archlinux
pacman -Syu base base-devel nano
```

Next we'd want to add a non-root user. Run the following to create a user *username* and give it a password:

```bash
useradd -m -G wheel username
passwd username
EDITOR=nano visudo
```

Here, uncomment the line that says `%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL`, save and exit the editor.

Exit Arch. To make this new user the default user of Arch, run this in CMD:

```batch
LxRunOffline su -n Arch -v 1000
```

The next time you start Arch, it'll start as *username*.

### Installing KDE Plasma

After you've created a non-root user, run the following commands in Arch's bash shell to update existing packages and install the KDE Plasma desktop environment: 

```bash
sudo pacman -Syu plasma
```

Now there are multiple ways of enabling displays in WSL2 - X display forwarding, Virtual Network Computing and Remote Desktop Protocol. We'll cover two of them, first X and second VNC. While I was able to set up RDP connections in Debian-based WSLs, I couldn't get it to work in Arch. 

The first method is extremely easy - just a few clicks - and doesn't involve inputting commands. However, it might not be as responsive and reliable (when you might have multiple WSL distros) as the second. The second method requires heavy use of the commandline - for installing packages and editing configs. 

### Enabling GUI display - Method I

Configuring a proper X-server for WSL was always a pain, until now. Enter [GWSL](https://opticos.github.io/gwsl/), a preconfigured X-server that uses [VcXsrv](https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/) under the hood. Since it is a general purpose X-server, it can be used for making graphical SSH connections, launching individual Linux apps and other cool stuff. Here we'll just press a couple of buttons to start KDE in Arch. 

#### First run

Go to the Store [page](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/gwsl/9nl6kd1h33v3) or pull down the latest release from its releases [page](https://github.com/Opticos/GWSL-Source/releases/) and install it. Upon first launch, it'll ask for Firewall permissions; give it both Public and Private access. Once that's done, right click on the icon on the taskbar and set the Default Window Mode to 'Single Window Mode'. This is done because we want to launch the DE as a whole; this can be skipped if you just want to run Linux app GUIs in their own separate windows, through the Linux apps option in GWSL dashboard (after exporting the display variable).

#### Export environment variable

Once that's done, left-click on the same icon to pull up the GWSL Dashboard. From there, select GWSL Distro Tools (and select Arch from there if you have multiple distros). Click on 'Auto-Export Display'. It'll automatically restart Arch for the changes to take effect. 

#### Command shortcut

Now we need to tell GWSL how to launch KDE. Open up the dashboard again and select Shortcut Creator. In this window: 
- Put a name of your choice in the 'Shortcut Label' field, for example `KDE-Plasma`.
- The 'Shortcut Command' is `dbus-launch startplasma-x11`.
- For the 'Run In' field, select `Arch`.

Click on 'Add this to Start menu' to finish. 

Now launch this shortcut from the Start menu, and focus on the VcXsrv window. Viola, we're in Plasma! 

![GWSL method](https://api.rashil2000.me/images/blogs/kde-arch-wsl/Screenshot_20201211_140037.png)

### Enabling GUI display - Method II

VNC allows us to send input and receive graphical output over a network, and we'll use TigerVNC server on our Arch subsystem  and TigerVNC client on our Windows host system. 

#### Configuring systemd

Arch Linux allows running VNC servers only as a system service, so we'll have to make sure we have a usable systemd. This is also mentioned as an optional step in the [How to Setup | ArchWSL Documentation](https://wsldl-pg.github.io/ArchW-docs/How-to-Setup/#install-systemctl-alternative-optional/) page. We'll use [genie](https://github.com/arkane-systems/genie) in this tutorial. 

Installing genie would have been a lot easier, but unfortunately, because of reasons aforementioned, genie was pulled down from AUR. We can download and install the PKGBUILD ([source](https://gist.github.com/arlllk/7001c521de601f01735af5ca440f03ae)) manually. The original PKGBUILD file has some license file issue, so I've modified the file and we'll use that. Run the following in bash:

```bash
sudo pacman -S base-devel
curl -Lo PKGBUILD https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/plain/PKGBUILD?h=daemonize
makepkg -si
rm PKGBUILD
curl -Lo PKGBUILD https://gist.githubusercontent.com/rashil2000/f148d5fd207eb30c43f269dcd4f7c6fb/raw/73db1b0a14634c23b35a01168b5068aee877b74c/PKGBUILD-release
makepkg -si
rm PKGBUILD
```

The first command installs the packages needed to build other packages manually (you might get a warning regarding fakeroot, press 'n' for that). The next three commands install [daemonize](http://software.clapper.org/daemonize/), a dependency for genie. The last three install genie itself, from my modified PKGBUILD. 

#### Installing VNC server

pacman can be used to install TigerVNC server, while we can directly download and run the Windows client binary. 

```bash
sudo pacman -S tigervnc
curl -Lo ~/.local/bin/vncviewer.exe --create-dirs https://bintray.com/tigervnc/stable/download_file?file_path=vncviewer64-1.11.0.exe
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/vncviewer.exe
vncpasswd
sudo nano /etc/tigervnc/vncserver.users
```

You should immediately set a password for your VNC server using `vncpasswd` (you can skip view-only password). The last command opens up a config. file where you need to put a new line saying `:1={username}`, where username is the name of the non-root user you set earlier (remove the braces). See the examples given in that file if you're confused.

#### Running VNC client

```bash
genie -i
genie -c sudo systemctl start vncserver@:1
~/.local/bin/vncviewer.exe -passwd ~/.vnc/passwd 127.0.0.1:1
```

The first command enables systemd. The second one starts up the VNC server as a service at the first VNC port. The third connects the Windows client to that server.

Viola, again! You'll have to run these three commands every time you'd like to spin up the GUI.

![VNC method](https://api.rashil2000.me/images/blogs/kde-arch-wsl/Screenshot%20(47).png)

### Enabling audio forwarding

*coming soon*

Again this is something that I was able to do only in Debian-based distros, through [PulseAudio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio) server. No luck in Arch yet... 

---

###### This tutorial has been tested (somewhat) widely - on a 10-year-old PC, a modern gaming laptop and a current-gen Macbook (through Bootcamp).

Setting up Arch Linux with KDE Plasma in Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

## Implementing a dead-simple dark mode

Make your webpage respect the user's **system-wide theme** preference with this approach.

The code below gets highlighted. Isn't that neat?

> This was supposed to be easy.

_- Me, after spending an entire day on 'this'_

Okay, so here's how the dark mode works:

- Since this page uses SSG, we need to make sure that the following snippet of code runs only on the client side. This is simpy done by checking if the `window` object is defined.
- We put in a simple color-inverting CSS property to change the theme, defining the variables for each. This would only work if your webpage is as simple and minimal as this.
- `useState` hook is used to initialize the state. The initial (default) value is taken to be the system-preferred theme, or *light* if the media query isn't available.
- An event listener is added which listens to changes done (exernally) to the system theme. Based on this, the `setValue` function gets fired.
- All other React functions are wrapped under this block so that they inherit these styles.

### The Code

In words that _Node_ understands...

```jsx
export default function StyleBlock(props) {
  if (typeof window !== 'undefined') {
    const lightValue = 'none';
    const darkValue = 'invert(1) hue-rotate(180deg)';

    const [value, setValue] = React.useState((window.matchMedia('(prefers-color-scheme)').media !== 'not all' && window.matchMedia('(prefers-color-scheme: dark)').matches) ? darkValue : lightValue);

    window.matchMedia('(prefers-color-scheme: light)').addEventListener('change', e => setValue(e.matches ? lightValue : darkValue));

    return (
      <>
        <style jsx global>{`
          html {
            transition: color 300ms, background-color 300ms;
            filter: ${value};
          }
          html img:not(#social-icon){
            filter: ${value};
          }
          #social-icon {
            margin: 0 auto;
            width: 15px;
          }
          #no-border {
            border: 0;
            text-align: center;
          }
        `}</style>
        {props.children}
      </>
    );
  } else
    return <>{props.children}</>;
}
```

That's it!

Implementing a dead-simple dark mode

## Existence

The greatest gift that humanity has as a species is sentience; the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. The greatest bane that humanity has is also sentience. It is this very ability that allows us to think about such stupid questions as "Who am I?", "What is existence?" or "What is my purpose?"

That escalated pretty quickly. For the article, yes, for me, not exactly. One of the very few things that I feel strongly about, philosophy is something that seems frequently brought up, most recently by my Sanskrit professor. Her course includes Heritage too, so these discussions are a part of the usual routine. In a discourse as simple as one of describing ourselves using first-person pronouns, came the thought-provoking question, "koham", literally meaning, "Who am I". It would seem that early philosophers had too much free time in their hands, but these questions have baffled people for centuries, with even the modern-day science offering no definitive answers.

Perhaps that is rightly so. Because there cannot be definitive answers. It is extremely difficult to remove personal opinions and judgments from any sort of theories or hypotheses. Scientific laws containing logical and mathematical formulations can be considered almost 'unbiased', because they undergo extensive peer reviewing and testing by the community.

Since philosophy is way too dependent on what a person opines or observes, formalizing the thinking processes is inherently tough. Scientists have tried laying down some rules and regulations, collections of if-then statements, sets of questions and answers to standardize stuff in philosophy, so that they can categorize these thought processes and arrive at conclusions. But I feel questions in itself are limiting in nature, because the human mind can have an entire spectrum of reactions to the stimuli subjected to it. Classifying it into predefined notions of expectations just doesn't seem... fair.

Then there are these conceptions about the notions of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’. We have made certain criteria of what is to be expected from a good person, and what differentiates him/her from a bad person. Of course are different perceptions about what's good and what's bad, because they're practically subjective terms. Still, there are some 'universal' goods and 'universal' bads. Philanthropy, dedicating one's life to the service of people
are the highest of what humans can achieve. On the flip side, terrorism, oppression are the lowest bars below which a person cannot fall. These were just a few of the examples.

This certainly begs the question: If death is the end of all stories no matter how glorious or ordinary then what is the purpose of all our strivings? If after all we're just a tiny insignificant speck in this infinite universe, do our deeds, whether good or bad, really make any difference? This is the essence of the existential crisis-ish questions that were stated in the beginning. To be blunt, life or human existence has no real meaning or purpose because human existence occurred out of a random chance in nature, and anything that exists by chance has no intended purpose. But we still try and make sense of the world around us. The idea is to leave the world as a better place than we found it, however temporary or short-lived our existence might be. The
idea is to leave a mark, to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that we lived at all. And I think this offers enough objective directionality in life in terms of good that needs to be achieved and bad avoided.

Existence

## My first (real) app

Here it is, finally - [Blogger](https://beach-blogger.web.app/). So a bit of background here first. I never actually intended to create a blogging website.

For a very long time, I’d been wanting to learn how to create a tangible piece of software. Computers intrigue me in the weirdest ways possible; seeing a piece of code materialize into physical and potentially revolutionizing product gives me a joy I can barely express in words. This infused a drive in me to create seemingly invisible stuff that can change people’s lives. That’s a lot of words, heh, and a blogging website isn’t going to change anything for anyone, at least now, though twenty years ago it might have. From the humble beginnings of QBasic and HTML began my journey. I came across a lot of stuff (I’m thankful to my school for having such a curriculum) - languages, databases, graphics, webpages, architectures, assembly level stuff - learning a tiny bit of everything. Although this might sound cliche, but video games caught my fancy quite early on. I tried learning how to develop games (learning C++ along the way), but I never quite got around that. Next came the web. Considered the easiest place to start developing, I hopped on the wagon too. Speaking of which, full stack web development is a highly sought-after skill today. My interest is in the creative side of things, how stuff looks and feels, how beautiful and pragmatic designs are envisioned and built. So naturally I’m inclined towards front-end development, catering to user interfaces and experiences. Knowing this much, the next thing to do was to create a roadmap. First, strengthen and master HTML. Not a difficult task. Then, solidify my knowledge of CSS. People think CSS is a breeze, but there’s a lot more to it - pure CSS animations, preprocessors like SASS and SCSS, frameworks like Bootstrap, Materialize - and all that is not so easy. Then there are animation libraries like anime.js, three.js, Velocity that can handle 3-D graphics right in the browser. Finally, I entered the world of JS frameworks. There are tons of frameworks out there and choosing one can be a daunting task. I chose React, because, well, it is extremely popular and robust. One thing that’s very important to know is that before studying any JS framework, you should have a substantial understanding of vanilla JavaScript and its standards. React isn’t complete without a set of enhancing modules like Redux, Thunk, Context, Hooks etc. and I’m currently in the process of familiarizing myself with these.

The website uses React, along with Redux and Thunk, styled with Materialize CSS, on the front, and Firebase API on the back. I created it whilst learning these. Now that it’s here, I thought why not just put it to some use. After all blogging is actually a good habit.

My first (real) app

## The Mission
 
*So I had this crazy dream today, and I decided to write it all down as soon as I woke up, because, well, it sounded just too realistic and logical to ignore it. Could be a plot of a sci-fi movie. Just kidding. The extract here is written in a bits & pieces style, since I don’t really remember the exact details of the events - just the outlines. Here X is a placeholder for a person who I don't recall from the dream.*

![lunarbase](https://api.rashil2000.me/images/blogs/the-mission/lunarbase.png)

Landed on moon — X and me — mission was to install survey instruments — shocked to see an abandoned train station — hear sounds of a train approaching — I say fuck the mission and let’s get out of here — he doesn’t listen — he’s hellbent on installing those instruments — I yank him away from the equipment — he initiates my launchback module, to get back to the orbiter — I strap myself in and ask him to initiate his too — he ignores again — starts my module without warning — I get hurled in the air — last I see is X being captured by the train guys — I black out.

I wake up — the sky’s completely black — I’m in the middle of some bushes — in a backyard — or front garden — can’t figure out — those flashes occur — the launchback module — the mission — X being captured — the module had malfunctioned — I was still on moon — gather my senses and get rid of my suit — see people — everything seems normal — just like a small town back on earth — people minding their own business — I don’t draw any attention, thankfully — there’s one very important difference — people here are somewhat taller than average — might have to do with moon’s gravity — the house’s owner notices me — I try to run — but then I see him — surprised to see it’s my uncle — he’s equally surprised — we share a good warm hug — he calls me in — I go, and stash away my equipment safely inside — before I ask anything — he starts explaining whatever the fuck is going on on the moon — it was terraformed secretly a few years ago — nobody on earth knows this — a network of satellites on the moon’s atmosphere interfere and scramble the imaging equipment on earth to keep them in the dark — he’s thankful that I got away and somehow landed straight in his backyard — the authorities were capturing and killing whoever landed on moon to keep the base a secret — I ask what he was doing here — he said he decided to be a part of this base with help from his previous employer as his financial situation wasn’t very good back on earth — I tell him about X, the mission, and the train — he says there’s nothing we can do about it — I meet up with my aunt and my cousins — it feels so good to be with them — uncle says I should live here now, blend in, since there’s no safe way to go back — I shudder at the thought of not being able to see my family again.

He takes me to a science exhibition the next day — to distract me — there I learn of an annual robotics competition — engineers craft and test new models and ideas to keep the scientific community’s interest thriving — this year’s theme was interplanetary travel — I convince him to let me participate — see this as my only means of escape to earth — would design my own craft and get the fuck out of here — he says there’s a course that needs to be completed as a prerequisite for the competition — I tell him I’m an aeronautical engineer, I don’t need a course — he says I should do it regardless, so as to not arouse any suspicion — so I enroll in it.

One day I come back from the class to my uncle’s home — see X standing in my room — messing with my mission equipment — I ask what happened and how’d he find me — he doesn’t answer — he initiates my relay module to re-establish contact with the orbiter — we get a ‘breach’ feedback — suggesting that the orbiter was purposefully destroyed by the authorities to prevent escape — he starts assembling the ground control relay — to contact earth — I ask him to stop — as this might reveal our position on the moon to the authorities — he doesn’t listen — my uncle comes in from behind — sees what’s going on — I yell at X, saying that my uncle has a family and kids and that their life might be in danger — X is again, hellbent on contacting earth and reporting what’s happening on the moon — I yank out one of the antennas of the relay module — the display stops responding after showing `Communication sequence initialization = 89%` — we stand there in utter silence, wondering whether the signal went out or not.

The Mission

## OnePlus 5 - Review

I’ve been using OnePlus 5 for the past two years. Having previously owned the OnePlus X, I was pretty excited about the OnePlus 5, so I bought it the day it was released. My main attraction towards OnePlus was the fact it started out as a small company selling quality smartphones at affordable prices. I’ll be honest, that ‘affordable’ moniker is slowly fading away now, but it’s quite understandable, given that developments in this field of technology come at a blinding pace, and that good things come at a price. Add to it the fact that OnePlus is really a community-driven smartphone brand, as it listens to the users as to what features they want and what they hate.

The biggest advantage of the 5 in my opinion is the ease-and-speed of use. The near stock feel of OxygenOS combined with a superfast processor makes you forget what loading times are and a huge amount of RAM ensures that apps stay running for longer, turning it into an overall snappy experience. I feel like I’m only limited by the dexterity (or lack thereof) of my fingers while using it, and not by the phone’s speed.

The 5’s tagline was “Dual Camera, Clearer Photos”, and I got really thrilled to try this setup as very few phones had it back then. But here’s the irony. The portrait mode works fine for simple geometries, but the edge detection is not that good. The phone also struggles in low light conditions, as the photos suffer from excessive grain and dull colours. The grain issue is evident in Slo-Mo videos too. There’s another thing that I’ve noticed in more recent OnePlus phones too, and that is the oil painting effect – the RAW photos come out all good, but something in OnePlus’s post-processing software makes photos look like oil paintings when zoomed in a bit, even in broad daylight conditions. OnePlus said it’s working on this, but I’m yet to see substantial improvements.

OnePlus 5 - Review

## Illumination

Illumination, or more popularly, illu, is supposed to be the most exciting celebration for a festival in the institute. The basic idea behind it is to light up the new moon night with thousands of earthen lamps, spread across a huge vertical mat suspended from bamboo supports, depicting scenes from the Hindu mythology outlined by their flames. The halls have a huge budget for it, and they start preparing well in advance, because it’s a sort of competition. The whole process is a great way to increase bonding with fellow hall mates, get to know the seniors, how things are done and managed in the hall, and other interesting stuff.

But there’s a catch. Almost all the work required to prepare the illu is menial and tiring. And the workhorses are the entire first and second year population. This work is supposed to be voluntary, but in practice, it clearly isn’t. The general secretaries (gsec for short), do the managing work, along with forcefully dragging all the students to the ground to complete what they call ‘duty’. At first, it was all fun, we used to enjoy it; everyone was together, doing all sorts of things, from making lamp loops from wires to holstering the mat onto the bamboo to placing in all the lamps. With time, the ‘duty’ hours became longer, the work seemed more and more redundant and repetitive, and it wasn’t exactly voluntary anymore. The hall council tried to give us good reasons that if we work hard and with dedication, we might win the competition, and they were right, but the whole division of labor and timing of work hours could’ve been better in my opinion.

Most of us found ways to avoid working till five in the morning, and many were skilled escapists. I tried my best too and avoided it to some extent. Here’s an incident that I’m not going to forget in my entire illu history.
It was a Saturday evening. Diwali was only a week away, and the illu ‘duty’ was in more than full swing. I was chilling in my room, and the ‘duty’ callers (gsecs) could come at any time now. We had devised this seemingly new tactic of hiding ourselves in our rooms and then locking the room from outside. I heard them coming from the end of the corridor, and hid in my room, and told my friend in a room besides mine, who was sick, to lock it from outside and give me the keys. The gsecs were banging the doors and coming towards my room, trying to flush out whoever was inside. They got to my door and banged it violently, hoping that I’d come out with fear. But I knew that if I made a sound, I’d give away my position. So I stayed put, and waited for them to go. Then one of them started peeling away the mosquito net on the window beside the door, to yank open the window and look inside with a torch. Now coincidentally, earlier in that very same evening, I had tied the window handles from inside with a rope, and the reason for doing that was very stupid – the rope was just lying around, and I had nothing better to do. Little did I know that that stupid move would be so immensely helpful. I was super relieved when I realized that they can’t open the window. I waited a bit more, and just when I thought they’d left, my phone rang, and it rang so loud in that silence it sounded like a concert speaker. I fiddled through my stuff and quickly grabbed it and saw that the number was that of my sick friend. In the lowest possible volume, I said, “Hello?”. “Where are you?”, said the voice on the other side, which, I immediately recognized, was not that of my friend, but that of one of the gsecs. At this moment I was thinking they might not have listened to him that he was sick and forcefully took him to the ground and the gsec was calling from there. “I am in some other hall”, I lied. He then told me to return to the hall to do my ‘duty’. I was left with no choice but to agree. Fifteen minutes later, I told my friend to open my room. I asked him where he was when the gsec had called, and he told me that the gsec was standing right outside my door. I was completely blown away. Somehow the sound of my phone ringing hadn’t reached him, and he was convinced with the fact that I was in some other hall. I went to the ground and met him, and he sent me back, saying he didn’t have any work for me. Again, baffled.
So that was me, during illu, desperately trying to avoid it. There’s another tiny incident of daringness, which earned me the unofficial title of ‘aggressive avoid-er’ among the council members, but I guess I’ll leave it for some other day.

Having said that, it doesn’t mean that the actual effort that was being put in the preparation went in vain. Our hall’s illu was one hell of a show, and although it didn’t win a position (due to some inexplicable political reasons), it was a great success, as it was the unofficial winner among viewers’ and critics’ discussions.

Illumination

## Electronic Music and Me

So, here I am, writing about one of those little skills that I acquired during my pre-JEE-prep time (ah, those days…), which, in its most self-appraising form, is called electronic music composition.

It all started with the EDM craze, which was hot at that time. Anyone who had listened to the likes of Martin Garrix or Hardwell or David Guetta, was super cool. Initially it didn’t catch my fancy, because, well, everyone was listening to it, but then, something about it made it interesting for me in a different way. Now, I don’t want to sound too boring here, but normally when I find something interesting, a natural how or why pops up in my head. So I looked up a bit to see how its done, and I got to know about this computer software called Fruity Loops Studio (marketed as FL Studio, and which the leading composers in the industry loathe for some reason). I liked the software and found it quite intuitive to use. I fiddled around with the controls for a few days, trying out new effects, synths, plugins and all. But then I didn’t have anything in my mind solid enough to be called a melody. So I left the software and went back to doing other things. A few days later I was whistling a random tune when I realized that why not build on this little sequence of somewhat coherent notes. I immediately got back to FL Studio and input all the notes in the sequence. Then again came the experimentation period, where I must have changed the scale at least a thousand times just to make it sound as natural as possible; added layers of drums, tried different instruments, different sound consistencies, different artificial effects; added volume, pitch and panning automations, and what not. Now I’m not sure how long the entire process from inputting the sequence to the rendering of the final four-minute song took, but it must have been a lot, like, almost twenty days; and given that I didn’t watch or learn from any tutorials as such, everything was pure experimentation as I mentioned.

Nonetheless, nothing can match the satisfaction of sitting down, putting on your headphones, closing your eyes, and listening to your own song, where you know what struggle is involved behind each beat. Somehow the news that I made a track of my own spread in my school, and I defined the ‘cool’ then, at least temporarily. I still get a bit nostalgic when I listen to it.

Sometime later I started working on another melody, although I couldn’t do the final touch-ups and rendering of the song at that time. I completed it, my second track, two years later, when I got into college. 

The source codes for both the tracks can be found on my GitHub - [Infinitio](https://github.com/rashil2000/infinitio) and [Ceaseless](https://github.com/rashil2000/ceaseless).

Electronic Music and Me

## The Amazing Soundtrack of the movie Dunkirk

Dunkirk is a 2017 movie directed by Christopher Nolan. The soundtrack it features is composed by Hans Zimmer. It is set during the time of Dunkirk evacuation of World War II.

The music, in my opinion is very grippy here. It keeps you clung to your seat, in anticipation of something very eventful to happen. You get to know about the imminent scenes beforehand because the soundtrack is composed in that way. However, if you listen closely, you’ll notice that as the scene approaches, the orchestra rises higher and higher, but never really reaches the crescendo. This creates a sense of tension, which complements the way the events unfold on the screen. Upon realising this, I found out that there’s something called a ‘Shepard Tone’, in which there’s a series of overlapping tones, that are one or two octaves apart, which rise, and the volume of each tone is set in such a way that when this series is played in a loop, it seems that the pitch is rising indefinitely, whereas in actuality, it isn’t. This creates an auditory illusion, and Nolan is quite fond of it, as the same effect can be found in most of his other movies too.

In conclusion, I’d like to say that the music almost creates a heavy and dark side to the characters and their actions. It does so exceedingly well and augments the entire film experience. Add the fact that it won two Academy Awards (Oscars) for Best Sound Editing and Mixing.

rashil2000

Random musings