sangsara.net

Month: May 2010

  • ➟ Your Day As A Freelance Writer

    Great humor piece from Connor O’Brien (that’s Connor) over at The Bygone Bureau. Runs from 7 AM to 6PM. Here’s a taste:
    7 A.M.
    Wake up. You’ve set your iPhone alarm clock early because this is going to be a big fucking day. You are going to write so many fucking words. So. Fucking. Many. Like, tens of thousands of words. Hundreds of thousands? How many words did Kerouac write all hopped up on Benzedrine? You’re gonna, like, double that shit.
    […]
    8 A.M.
    Wake up again.
    Link [bygonebureau.com]

  • ➟ iPad magic in Tokyo

    A Japanese magician performs a multimedia (and multi-prop) presentation with an iPad, out on the street by Ginza’s iconic Apple store. It’s a pretty impressive string of visual effects, one after another in under three minutes.

    Link [YouTube]

  • May 15 photos

    Here’s a selection of the photos I said I would post from my photo walk a couple of weeks back. The entire set is on Flickr. I’m quite happy that the iPhone photos hold up well against the LX3’s.

    Tabletop chessboard

    One dollar snacks

    Out to dry

    Playground

    Promenade MRT station

    Plastic flower

    Cat under trishaw

    Old Khong Guan Biscuit Factory

    Old Khong Guan Biscuit Factory

    Malaysian Dairy Industries warehouse

    Pallets

    Punch clock

  • ➟ Ploom: 21st Century Smoking

    Behold the Ploom, an amazing new device created by engineers, designers, and brilliant university people from San Francisco. It’s the cigarette, redesigned for a more elegant age. It’s the Nespresso of smoking.
    A slender gas-powered tube heats (not burns) prepackaged foil pods of custom-blended tobacco – six varieties available now, with two others purely herbal –releasing only rich flavor and a light vapor. No smoke, no ash, no acrid smells. Just look at the thing, it’s beautiful. Unfortunately I don’t think this is due for export anytime soon.

    Link

  • ➟ Dan The Man

    One of the best animated shorts I’ve seen on YouTube: Dan The Man by Studio Joho of Brisbane, Australia is about the life of a 16-bit videogame character after he saves the princess. I laughed out loud.

    Link [YouTube]

  • ➟ Anime Papercraft Figures

    Unbelievable work, with the appearance of real heft and presence. Some even have posable limbs.

    Link [DannyChoo.com]

  • ➟ The Lost World

    I stopped watching Lost over a year ago for many of the reasons articulated in the rant linked below. Far as I can tell, there are no spoilers for the finale; it’s more of a general look at how the show’s writers don’t respect their own internal rules and disown association with SF when convenient.
    I personally remember the time back in the first few seasons when they claimed all the island’s mysteries had logical, non-magical explanations. That was the hook. A few bizarre situations amidst the very real drama of being stranded on a desert island. The impossibility of reconciliation was an addictive drug, and like all drugs: a lie. Keeping an audience for six seasons demanded a ramping up of mysteries, each new one another obstacle between the current episode and a satisfying conclusion.

    Link [Rules for Anchorites]

  • MacBooks updated, but even consumers should go Pro

    Image: Apple.com

    Apple has just updated their entry-level MacBook models to match the recent 13″ MacBook Pros in terms of speed, battery life, and graphics performance, whilst maintaining a fair-sounding USD$999 (SGD$1488) price point.

    That money will get you a 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of memory, and a non-removable battery capacious enough to last 10 hours of typical use. That’s really the best feature here; five years ago you’d be happy to get three hours out of a low-end machine.

    But if you upgrade a MacBook to have 4GB of RAM ($1648) and compare that to a 13″ MacBook Pro (with 4GB of RAM as standard, $1788), it looks like a much poorer deal. $1648 vs $1788, for a difference of $140.

    Here’s what that $140 gets you:

    • A sturdier aluminium body that’s slimmer all around and just a bit lighter
    • The option of upgrading to a maximum of 8GB of RAM, instead of 4GB for the MacBook
    • An illuminated keyboard that dims in response to ambient lighting conditions
    • Firewire 800
    • An SD card slot
    • The appearance of not being a cheapskate/noob/student.
    Jokes aside, I can’t see why it would be in anyone’s interest to buy this model over a MacBook Pro. Sure, mainstream consumers will appreciate the SD card support when dealing with digital cameras, and the metal body probably handles heat better, but the ability to install RAM past 4GB is the closer for me. If you buy your computers with the intention of using them up to the three-year mark and beyond, you’ll want that upgrade path in your future. A little extra memory in the later years can go a long way towards rejuvenating an old computer and preparing it for the demands of more advanced operating systems.