sangsara.net

Month: October 2022

  • Week 44.22: No cat, no mood

    A cataclysmic catastrophe. Specifically, our new cat, who did not arrive on schedule. We were notified just the day before she was meant to come home that she’d developed a slight case of the sniffles. So she will stay a little longer where she is for observation and we’re hoping to get her next weekend instead. This means an additional week of fur-free living surrounded by our toxic plants, but made for quite a disappointing weekend.

    Also, slightly disappointing was episode three of The Peripheral, which sagged a little bit compared to the impressive introduction of the world and technologies in episodes one and two. It also looked as if the budget was significantly reduced for this episode, and several scenes had a small, green screen sound stage feel to them. I hope this is not indicative of the remaining episodes.

    Being impatient for the rest of it to be released, I intended to start reading the book again, but somehow picked up John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society instead. It’s a book that manages to meld a serious enough approach to its science and drama with a premise that just can’t be taken seriously. So far so pleased.

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    An update on my foray into publishing Darkroom presets: the company published a curated collection of creations from the community and featured a bunch of mine.

    Koji’s an original I shared this week. As the tweet above says, it’s inspired by characteristics of both Kodak and Fuji films, but not from comparing and copying any existing ones — just a vibe from the mental pictures I had of both brands at the time. I first made the Koji preset about four years ago, but it’s since been tweaked a hundred times probably and doesn’t resemble its original self anymore. Nevertheless, I find it an attractive analog look that suits both portraits and holiday snaps, leaning warm/red in the skin tones (Kodak?) while having subtly green-forward shadows and rolled-off highlights (Fuji?).

    ===

    Oh, we also saw Ticket To Paradise, a new rom-com starring Julia Roberts and George Clooney that goes for the feel of more successful genre pictures from the 2000s, but somehow only manages to achieve the hollow, plastic soul of a Netflix algorithm joint or one of those Chinese-financed vehicles for an aging Hollywood star that also has a minor role for some Chinese tycoon’s niece.

    But here we have two Hollywood stars who have aged really well, no Chinese money in sight, and it’s still a weird dud. It wants the 2000s energy so bad that it’s also kinda tone deaf about race and white privilege, purporting to be set in Bali while not looking the part, and having its Indonesian cast members play exotic, superstitious, speak-a-no-English Easterners who openly make out with foreign women they just met, and in front of their families too.

    In one scene, though, Clooney gets to tell a mediocre story with all his indelible charisma and likability turned on — that easy voice, low with emotion, taking you into its confidence; a precision tool calibrated for both paternal warmth and Nespresso/Omega endorsement — and afterwards it doesn’t really matter how the movie ends, you’re just glad to see them both on screen again, even if they allowed a hack director to momentarily make them look like two sad has-beens fighting over who can harvest the most seaweed.

  • Week 43.22

    I am quickly finding out that owning a cat can be expensive (and this is even before the cat has arrived). So far we have purchased a grooming brush, a more extreme grooming brush for shedding season, a pair of nail clippers, a litter box and accessories, a motorized drinking fountain (TIL cats have evolved to prefer fresh moving water instead of stale water, so a regular drinking bowl will not suffice), an assortment of toys, a cat carrier, a reusable lint roller for our couch and other surfaces, a scratching pad — with still more to come, e.g. an automated feeder, a bed, anti-parasite medication, probiotic supplements, and on and on.

    In the name of research I joined a couple of subreddits devoted to cats, and soon found myself sucked into a web of paranoia and anxiety. One poster said their “mental health plummeted after adopting a cat”, not because of any feline misbehavior, but their own neuroses — feeling chained to the cat and a routine of feeding it, playing with it, and cleaning up after it, afraid to leave it alone and feeling guilty whenever they stayed out late. While not feeling as unstable as them yet (there was a mention of crying all the way to the vet’s), I can definitely see myself having a miniature form of that reaction.

    Add to that the cornucopia of diseases and mishaps that could threaten the life of our cat, and I’ve just bought myself a whole new world of things to worry about. Many of our house plants are also toxic to cats, and getting rid of them is starting to be a point of domestic disagreement. Cats are cute and companionable, they say, but no one mentions the conflict and debilitating despair.

    ===

    We saw local band Sobs play live at the Esplanade on Friday, in an annex theater I didn’t even know existed on the premises, and this being Singapore of course it’s been named “The Annexe” — a word so vile my autocorrect tried twice to stop it happening. It was probably my first standing-only show since the pandemic began, and honestly plus a few more years on account of age.

    But oh yes, Sobs were great! They played their new album, Air Guitar, which comes out digitally next Wednesday. The sound was, unfortunately, poor as is usual for the Esplanade: muddy, vocals obscured, keyboards absent; amateur hour. These artists deserve better, and I don’t know when they’ll do something about it. It’s honestly crossed my mind to switch careers to sound engineering and give it a go myself.

    I tried taking some photos and video with my iPhone 14 Pro just to challenge it. The photos suffered from the same grainy artifacts around moving objects that I noticed before, where sharp but low-quality images are presumably getting stacked onto long exposure images of higher quality and lower noise. It’s an issue with the Photonic Engine process, probably, and maybe one that can be fixed in an update. I would rather have motion blur than such unevenness, but that’s subjective. The 4K video was surprisingly good: stable, clean, and bright even with the 3x lens.

    ===

    I got some nice Twitter feedback from the devs on my Darkroom presets, and shared two more.

    CPB: Short for Cross Process (Basic), a replica of the effect you get from the camera app Cross Process, a favorite of mine from the early days of the App Store by Nick Campbell. The app is still available for sale but is under new ownership now. This look is not subtle, with strong vignetting and center brightness, but a lovely blue/yellow bias that I suppose mimics cross-processed film (it’s been so long since I shot film I’ll take their word for it).

    Clean Plate: A recipe designed to brighten up food photos and make them look a tad warmer and more appetizing. I use this often, sometimes it’s good enough on its own and sometimes it’s an appetizer.

    ===

    There was a new Taylor Swift album this week in Midnights, and boy does it sound great. I’ve enjoyed only a single play through so far, but it struck me as having a very Jack Antonoff-y sound (or is it just the sound of American pop music today?) — if you close your eyes, you can mentally swap Taylor out and it becomes a new Bleachers record.

    We saw the first two episodes of The Peripheral on Amazon Prime Video and it’s just about everything I hoped it would be. If you haven’t read the book yet, you may as well just go straight in without knowing anything. One cool thing Amazon’s done here is have a QR code (at least on the TV app) that takes you to a microsite with more info on the show’s characters, key locations, and technologies. A DVD booklet for a streaming generation. I expect it’ll get updated as new episodes come out weekly as well. Don’t read it until you’ve seen it!

  • Week 42.22

    We got a cat! Well, pretty close to it, more accurate to say that we have reserved a kitten from the breeder we were previously speaking with. The next few weeks will be spent buying essential equipment, clearing up some of the mess around the house that she might destroy, and then she should be with us by the end of the month.

    Appearance wise, she is what’s known as a seal bicolor ragdoll, white with brown markings on her face and tail. I’ve discovered that this combination combines the most popular and most common traits in these cats, so in gachapon terms we’ve pulled a three-star kitten. Although you wouldn’t know she was a kitten from looking at her; several people who’ve seen photos have remarked “oh, so you’re not getting a kitten?” They grow up to become large cats, with females possibly reaching 6 kg and beyond.

    We’re still thinking of a name (her dead name is Dewey) but already have a strong contender. In branding terms, this phase is what’s known as “writing the rationale after having found a name that sounds great but isn’t especially meaningful”. Aside: is it a bad idea to name your cat after a Microsoft product?

    ===

    Darkroom (a photo editor I’ve used since it came out for iPhone — it now works as a universal app on iPad and Mac too) released their new update supporting the sharing of filters/presets. Early users of the app will remember that you could always share filters via a QR code, but this feature was removed a few years back when they switched to a new architecture. The way it works now is the preset’s details get uploaded to their server, generating a link that you can share. Anyone who clicks the link can see how your preset looks applied against four standard photos, and install the preset in their copy of Darkroom with a single click.

    As someone who enjoys making presets in Darkroom, I’ve got a few that I would like to share with other users. I went through a phase of copying film looks from other apps like VSCO and RNI Films, as a sort of pastime, as I found it quite a soothing and mindless activity to switch back-and-forth between two photos and gradually nudge them closer together by adjusting sliders. Someone should make a game around that mechanic!

    I’ve posted a few on Twitter already, but have quite a few more that I’ll put soon — “better” ones that I’ve done on my own without referencing existing film stocks or looks. I even wrote about wanting to share a new preset last October!

    Darkroom presets shared so far:

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    This week’s update was written via voice dictation on my Mac — with a few minor corrections. And that’s with a sore throat, stuffed nose, and raspy voice! As far as I can tell it’s not Covid, just this drawn-out flu that’s been getting quite a few people. On that note, Covid cases are once again rising here in Singapore due to the new XBB variant.

    I can’t wait to upgrade to Ventura, assuming that it will have the same voice dictation enhancements as iOS 16. I wonder if this post reads differently, stylistically, given that I am saying this out loud rather than typing it. Related to that, I am now reading the book Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch (oh my God I can’t believe dictating that name out loud worked — I await the day this happens for Asian names). It’s about how language has been changed by the Internet and Internet culture (one of the things that involves is not capitalizing the word Internet, but macOS has seemingly not been informed).

    What a good week it’s been for reading: I finished Adrian Tchaikovsky’s One Day All This Will Be Yours and went on to finish Blake Crouch’s Upgrade two days later. With this post-Seveneves sprint, I should be able to finish the year with a not-embarrassing 12 books or more.

    I recommend both books by the way, the former being an unusual and fun time travel/time war story, and the latter another one of Crouch’s written-for-film-rights thrillers (his earlier novel, Dark Matter, is in production for Apple TV+). It is better than the film Limitless, but nowhere as great as Ted Chiang’s (dictation failed here) short story Understand. As you may already have guessed, the story is about a man whose genetic make up gets altered, giving him new abilities.

  • Week 41.22

    My Seveneves journey on Goodreads

    After four long months of procrastination and avoidance, I finished Seveneves. I hope that’s the end of my 2022 reading slump. Someone said that Neal Stephenson books start well but fizzle out at the end, and one could say that about this, but it wouldn’t be fair. The first half is an incredibly detailed look at the mundanity that occurs inside a giant tragedy; the eye of an apocalyptic storm — the world is ending, okay, but how is a small team going to engineer their way to survival over two years? And then a lot of time passes, and the final third of the book is a sort of sci-fi action movie, but not at an epic scale. So, super meticulous world building, some powerful ideas about humanity’s purpose, and then an ending that doesn’t quite shoot for fireworks.

    I still loved it though! Coming after Daniel Suarez’s Delta-V, also involving survival in space, it was a lot of mental time spent banished in an orbitory purgatory. Back when I started in late May, I was reading it in a darkened bedroom, with live-streamed video from the ISS projected on a wall, feeling intensely alone and stranded. Perhaps that not so enjoyable experience made it hard to pick up again and continue? Anyway now that it’s over, I need to make up for lost Goodreads reading challenge time so I’m moving on to the (relatively slim) One Day This Will All Be Yours, by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

    ===

    Earlier this week I got exposed to Covid in the workplace via a client who tested positive later, but still haven’t developed any symptoms myself. I’m hoping to make it through the next few days without incident.

    ===

    We had an excellent dinner at Brasserie Gavroche one night to celebrate my brother-in-law’s birthday, where I declined to taste the bottle of wine in that little ritual they do. What are the odds, really? One bad bottle in a million? Is that worth the amount of sniffing and swirling time this steals from humanity in aggregate? All the interrupted conversations; the sheepish nods to say okay?

    ===

    I met Ci’en and Peishan for a Saturday afternoon coffee and chat for the first time in what feels like forever. Somewhere, an alien observer has a record showing that we used to do this more often, undoubtedly along Orchard Road in cafes long-since shut, and they’re probably writing in their little notebook that some things in human life do stay easy and stress free. If you’re reading this, I appreciate you both immeasurably.

    ===

    A few weeks ago, I read Michael’s complaints on his blog about not being able to get a pair of Uniqlo shorts that matched what he was used to, and I want to rant a little about Muji’s jeans in a similar vein. I’ve bought several pairs over the years — completely switching over in allegiance from other brands — solely because they had a dedicated smartphone pocket. It’s on the hip, just above and to the side of the regular right back pocket, high enough and to the side enough that you can sit down without sitting on your phone. It wouldn’t fit a Max iPhone, I think, but anything below. It was discreetly sewn into the lines of the jeans, enough to be hidden away that if someone robbed you and wanted your phone, they might not be able to find one.

    This obviously freed my front pockets for putting my hands and mask and maybe a single credit card in. It was wonderfully minimal. The phone had its own place, and it wasn’t in the way of anything at all. And for some reason, their new jeans do not have this pocket. I think some of the skinniest jeans may still have it, but I wouldn’t/couldn’t wear those. It suggests that Muji believes the pocket is only useful in scenarios where you can’t put your phone in the regular front or back pockets, but that’s a ridiculous conclusion to make. A dedicated phone pocket is always welcome!

    I discovered this a few weeks back while looking to renew my currently faded pairs, and have made several visits to confirm that none of the ones they sell, and that I fit in, have this pocket anymore. Liberated from my obligations, I may now be in the market for some nicer specialist denim, I don’t know. They’ve really done it to themselves.

  • Week 40.22

    We had a funeral ceremony at work to say goodbye to the brand we all joined, which has now been subsumed into a larger new corporate brand. Everyone who could physically make it turned up and we ate pizzas, drank beers, and told stories about the last five years. We didn’t exactly put the fun in funeral but it was a thoughtful and appropriately introspective end.

    I brought my new and underused Ricoh GR III along to document the moment. If I’d purchased the IIIx I originally wanted instead, I’m not sure it would have worked as well. 28mm and 24mp is a pretty good setup for capturing everything and then being able to crop in to interesting parts if needed. The only thing better would have been a 48mp Leica Q2.

    Why didn’t I just use my iPhone and its new 48mp sensor? Firstly, I wanted to be intentional about it, and having a dedicated tool in hand prompts you to keep looking out for pictures. So I did end up taking more photos than anyone. Secondly, the vibes are not comparable. Comparing them with colleagues’s photos, the ones from iPhones are clear, sharp, and clinical. The Ricoh alternately underexposes, blows out highlights, focuses on the wrong thing, and occasionally white balances like daylight film when you’re indoors. These “choices” and limitations are beautiful, as is the rich detail from its large APS-C sensor; no neural network is filling in the blanks here. iPhones document things the way they happened; dumber cameras still somehow capture the way we’ll actually remember them. Or I’m just old and like things to look old too.

    Edit: It seems vintage digital cameras are making a full-on comeback. I should never have thrown away those IXUSes and FinePixes.

    Ricoh on the left, iPhone on the right

    As I type this, we are watching Apple Music’s “live” stream of Billie Eilish performing at the O2 Arena. It’s been billed on the Browse page as a live performance (not inaccurate), but since it starts at 10am SGT (3am in the UK), this was clearly not going to be live in real time. So it turns out this is a pre-recorded concert film from the end of her tour, just now making its premiere on the service. It’s a good one though!

    I mentioned before that we’ve been thinking of getting a cat. I also posted a photo of a ragdoll that a friend owns, whose home we’d visited as a sort of allergy test. I never really knew about cat breeds before this, but ragdolls seem lovely and are reportedly as chill and affectionate as they come. Things are escalating quickly: we submitted an inquiry to a breeder about the possibility of adopting one of their “retiring” adults, and this week had a call with them about the details.

    But they don’t have any suitable retirees at the moment, only a kitten with a congenital physical anomaly — still in good health for the moment — which may develop into a problem requiring more care later in life. As people with no recent cat-owning experience, it’s not a decision we can make lightly.