sangsara.net

Category: Photos

Posts with photo galleries or an emphasis on photography

  • Week 41.23

    Week 41.23

    Trying to keep things short again.

    • First, a correction to last week: I believed that the Leica Sofort 2 will offer little functional advantages over the Fujifilm Instax mini Evo camera that it’s based on. But I missed that the Sofort 2’s design favors a landscape orientation; its camera strap connection points and tripod mount are placed with that in mind, whereas the mini Evo seems intended to be used in portrait. This is another point of annoyance because the Fujifilm’s design visually indicates it should be used in landscape. Well, it also visually indicates its a vintage analog camera, but we’ll ignore that.
    • Cameras are for capturing memories anyhow, so on Friday night when we had a team barbecue for the first time in years, I brought my Instax mini Evo out to get some lo-fi, low-res, flash-enabled snaps. A camera never gets as much use as it does in the days just before its replacement is due to arrive — if that isn’t a camera addict’s maxim, it ought to be. But I wonder if Leica is ready for the backlash when the photos from this low-grade 5mp sensor start being associated with their premium brand. It’ll be the worst digital camera they’ve ever made. At least with the fully analog Sofort 1, the results were just little Instax prints. But now some really questionable digital files are gonna come from a Leica camera and start circulating.
    These were the only ones without faces in them
    • Anyway, in a big coincidence, the last time I remember having a work barbecue was when Oya left in 2019 to return home, and I met her this week for the first time since as she passed through town for a day. A bunch of us who were around back then met up for Mexican food, margaritas, and refried memories.
    • I finally got access to ChatGPT’s new features (these couple of weeks felt like forever): image uploads for multimodal chats, a voice-driven mode, and DALL•E 3. I’ve yet to make proper use of the first feature, apart from a few tests. I gave it a photo I took at Toa Payoh Hub (what can you infer about my location from this photo? And it correctly guessed Singapore from some visible shop names); a receipt (split this bill, and would I be an asshole if I asked for this money back as a billionaire?); and a photo of a dying plant at home (how do I nurse this withered thing back to life?).
    • I wish the voice mode could listen out for your interruptions, which would make it much more conversational. Right now you have to tap the screen to stop it talking first. The synthesized voices are really good, and enhance the illusion of talking to a trustworthy intelligence. Using Siri Shortcuts, you can now just start talking to ChatGPT on your phone at any time, but I still hope Apple finds a way to design a more responsible, private version of this with a future Siri.
    • The ability to interface with an image generator with natural language is a big deal — in theory, ChatGPT can break down your detailed, context-laden instructions into the right prompts for DALL•E to work with — and affirms my belief that “prompt engineering” will be designed out of relevance for the majority of users. It can’t do photorealistic images as well as Midjourney, but it may be close for illustrations.

    I made a new playlist on Apple Music, mostly made up of recent releases I’ve been enjoying, with a few oldies thrown in there: BLixTape #2

    iOS 17 introduces crossfading, and I think it works great for mixtapes, making the intentional juxtapositions even clearer and jam-mier. Crossfading is when one song fades out just as the next one fades in. It’s like having a budget DJ. (Edit: AI suggested I explain it for those who might be unfamiliar, but Kim says this is mansplaining. I guess this is an explainer for the explainer.)

    I played with this cover art idea for awhile in Midjourney over the past few weeks, but wasn’t super happy with any of it. I gave the same brief to ChatGPT + DALL•E 3 and decided to use its version. It came up with a more interesting composition than all the other centered, literally middle-of-the-road shots, and it was able to follow my instructions that the headphones should be Beats Studios.

    Some unused Midjourney versions
  • Week 38.23

    Week 38.23

    After 71.5 hours of dungeon crawling, coffee brewing, curry cooking, high schooling, part-time jobbing, and maid cafe patronizing, I finally finished the incredible game that is Persona 5 Royal. If you count the 30 or so hours I put into the original non-Royal version on my PS4 back in 2016, this has been a long time in the making. There’s a remake of Persona 3 coming next year, so I’m looking forward to that.

    For the uninitiated, Persona games are a spinoff series from another series of games called Shin Megami Tensei, which all involve harnessing the same stable of supernatural beings and doing turn-based battles. It’s Pokémon with demons. The SMT games are grittier and flirt with horror themes, but the Persona ones (at least the ones I’ve seen) incorporate more slice-of-life activities and are generally lighter.

    What’s next? Not sure. For now I’m gonna pass a little time finishing the final episode in Ace Attorney Chronicles which I paused over a year ago. I still don’t feel up to Tears of the Kingdom.

    On the TV front, we finished season 1 of Poker Face and it’s a show I’d recommend to almost anybody. Brilliant writing within a formula that is equally happy to revel in, but also subvert itself from time to time. The twists, the characters, the plays on genre, they’re straight out of an Ace Attorney game (minus the goofiness).

    Netflix also released season 3 of Kengan Ashura, a hyper-violent manga to anime adaptation that I do not recommend to anyone, except I watched the first two seasons ages ago and feel invested in finishing it. Truly, the Venn diagram of people who make this and make Mortal Kombat games is just a circle of sickos. The people who enjoy this are probably in the same circle.

    So I’ve partially fast-forwarded myself through it up to episode 9 now. Hilariously, the main character has been in a coma since the end of episode 1, and while the fight scenes (it’s centered around a Bloodsport-style martial arts tournament) are rendered in a 3D engine that simulates an anime look, all other scenes are drawn in traditional 2D, and boy does their lack of budget show! Some scenes (mostly flashbacks, to be fair) are literally sketches passed off as a stylistic choice.

    ===

    I got my new iPhone, and rejoining the Plus/Max club hasn’t been as bad as I feared. Granted, this is my first large iPhone with flat sides, a design I highly prefer to the rounded sides we endured for many years between the iPhone 6 and 11 series. Flat sides are simpler easier to hold, especially between fingertips when taking a photo in landscape orientation.

    So now with the reduced weight, flat sides, and thinner bezels, I think the Max form factor is finally becoming something I can love. The benefits of the larger screen are undeniable and without a case on the whole thing feels amazing. It’s more of a joy to use for every task: watching videos, writing text and reading pages, editing photos, gaming, you name it. The increased battery life is also a great comfort, especially after the disappointment of the 14 Pro in that area. After a year of regular use, that one is down to 85% battery health.

    There have been complaints about the build quality of the early iPhones 15, with reports of wonky antenna lines, discolored titanium frames straight out of the box, and so on. I did notice the same odd rectangular ghost lines at certain points on the sides of my Natural Titanium Pro Max, but they rubbed away with no issues. I commented a single word, Stains;Gate, on a Threads post from 9to5mac about it but sadly no one appreciated the anime reference.

    Where I have more concern is the fit and finish where the back glass meets the metal frame. New this year are rounded edges, not angular, not chamfered, but with a curve in the metal and maybe even a little in the glass. Some areas on mine are quite well rounded and comfortable to touch, but unfortunately the lower left and right sides where my hand makes contact have a slightly sharper feel to them. It’s clearly a minor defect, with a gap between the glass and titanium that’s probably measured in micrometers, but I can feel it, and that’s that.

    If I were a YouTuber I might make a video where I try to grate cheese with the edge or something. I’ll put up with it for now and see if it “settles in” after awhile, and try an AppleCare+ replacement if I can’t stand it.

    It’s now emerging that the 15 Pro Max’s titanium frame is susceptible to overflexing when pressure is applied, causing the back glass panel to break with nothing more than force from one’s bare hands. You will recall the iPhone 6 Plus’s “Bendgate” issue, where YouTubers were able to bend and break the devices quite easily. Apple reinforced the following year’s iPhone 6S, I think with steel inserts, but doing that with the 16 Pro Max would defeat the purpose of this entire switch to titanium. In the video above, the smaller 15 Pro survives the same bend test. It’s just a problem with the larger models.

    Anecdotally, there’s always some risk involved in buying the first Apple products out of the factory gate; I’ve experienced many odd defects over the years from underpowered speakers in the first-gen iPad Pro (was blown away by the actual volume when I got a new unit after a display fault)to battery and sound issues with AirPods Pro (even acknowledged with a replacement program). Usually waiting a couple of weeks will ensure you get perfect devices. But I haven’t got the patience for that!

    But the cameras! They are indeed an improvement. More natural processing, less sharpening, and the 24mp files have more resolved detail. I’m enjoying the 5x reach, which as one reviewer pointed out, is a more meaningful role for an extra lens than 3x, given that the main camera is already capable of providing a good 2x image (at 12mp), which is close enough to 3x. Portrait Mode does extremely good segmentation now, and I haven’t taken any photos yet where the edges on people or objects were not perfectly recognized.

    A pair of 5x photos, processed in Hipstamatic
    120mm (5x) through a window — sorry, stranger
    28mm low-light shot (not Night Mode)
    28mm close up
    268mm (10x digital zoom)

  • Week 37.23

    Week 37.23

    First things first. As you know, we’re big curry rice fiends over here, and I recently found out that Maji Curry (Kanda Curry Grand Prix winner 2018/2022) has had a Singapore outpost for the past year and I never heard about it. This curry fiend may need some curry friends; I’m clearly not plugged into the scene.

    I went there this weekend and was not disappointed: their signature Hamburg steak curry with soufflé cheese sauce is a winner. It has the fragrant spices associated with Indian curries, but meets Japanese curry’s lower heat level and sweeter profile halfway. Let’s pray they stick it out and thrive here, unlike Go Go Curry (I’m still holding out hope for their resurrection).

    ===

    I was browsing YouTube one evening when I came across a live premiere of a DJ set by Taku Takahashi, playing “only Utada Hikaru”. Being a fan of his remix of their latest song, I stayed for the whole thing, and it was great! And then the next night, at the same time, they did another one with another DJ! And the next night again! They were all shot at the same event hosted by Amazon Music Japan, but the three-day release schedule was pretty smart.

    I also learnt that Jay-Z pretty much wrote the iconic song Still D.R.E. for Dr. Dre’s 2001 album. When the doctor was stuck with just a beat and no words, he sent it off to Jay who reportedly returned with a demo in under an hour, performing both Dre’s and Snoop’s parts in imitations of their voices. Apparently that was it; the whole song was done.

    This sent me off on repeated plays of Jay’s The Blueprint and The Black Album this week. It’s been years since I played them straight through, and I’m humbled to say it’s given me a newfound appreciation of Jay-Z. There was a period years ago when I harbored an intense dislike of him, probably because of how popular he was whilst being technically a less interesting rapper than many other better ones who deserved success. Also, all the clownish ad-libs and general timbre of his voice were just so annoying.

    But you wrote Still D.R.E.? Okay, RESPECT.

    Vagabon’s new album Sorry I Haven’t Called also came out, and I highly recommend it. Her last album featured the song Every Woman, which was one of my favorites of 2019.

    ===

    There was a big tech event this week, and of course I’m talking about the latest Nintendo Direct! There are so many great titles still on the way, this late in the Switch’s lifecycle. A handful of new and remade Mario/Luigi/Wario/Peach games, a Detective Pikachu sequel, a Spy × Family title (an anime game with a simultaneous Western release!?), and even a new Prince of Persia game. The fact that the slate is still so full going into 2024 makes me confident that the Switch 2 will have backward compatibility with the whole catalog.

    I’m kinda sure I played Another Code a little back in the days of the Nintendo DS, and a great looking remake of it and its Japan-only sequel are coming out soon, under the name Another Code: Recollection. But available immediately after the Direct was Trombone Champ, which I bought immediately. Imagine Guitar Hero, but with a comical sounding instrument — an absolute no-brainer. You can even play with up to three friends in local multiplayer, but Kim has not yet agreed to it.

    Oh, it was also time for the new iPhones, and practically all important points had already leaked: titanium frames for the Pro models, a new folded zoom (rumored to be a periscope lens but instead a tetraprism design) only on the Max models, smaller bezels, USB-C, and the removal of leather products from Apple’s entire supply chain. Apparently they’ll even progressively remove existing leather furnishings from their stores.

    I… am not against leather, though I can understand that it’s a net negative for the world at Apple’s scale. But there’s no great substitute: synthetic leather is awful, and early impressions of Apple’s new recycled fabric, a material they’re calling FineWoven, suggest it’s not as premium feeling as hoped. In any case, it’s a woven textile product sitting in for a smooth, supple skin. Not really comparable.

    If Apple added FineWoven products to the lineup any other year without removing leather at the same time, there would be far less scrutiny. After some consideration, I decided to get a leather case from Nomad for the times I’ll need one (going out for drinks is one recommended occasion). I dislike their ribbed power button design, but couldn’t find any better options. Bellroy makes one, but with a cutout and not a passthrough button for the new Action Button. I’m glad I also snagged a last few Apple leather straps for my watch before this happened.

    Back to the phones, though. The one thing that hadn’t leaked was a big one for me: the new A17 Pro chip has a GPU and Neural Engine powerful enough to do real-time ray tracing and AI-powered upscaling. These will literally allow console-quality games (a term carelessly bandied around in mobile gaming quite frequently, but seemingly for real this time) to be played on iPhones. There was the surprise announcement that Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding Director’s Cut would be ported over this year, along with Resident Evil Village (previously announced for the Mac), the remake of Resident Evil 4, and the next Assassin’s Creed game, Mirage, in 2024. These games suggest the iPhone is basically capable of running PlayStation 4 games, but without active cooling (a fan).

    The possibility of playing these games on the go, along with the 5x telephoto lens exclusivity, pushed me to pre-order a 512GB Pro Max model this year. Ugh. As said in too many words last week, I find carrying such a large phone around too much of an inconvenience, but the bigger screen and longer battery life are justified this year. And thanks to the move to USB-C, I had to order a new Backbone One controller as well. I love my original Lightning connector model; it’s a well-built, great-feeling, very clever gamepad.

    On the camera front, there were mentions of a new improved Photonic Engine in the iPhone 15 Pro, which gives me hope that we’ll get less artificial looking photos this year. I was very pleased by the new feature which lets you choose from 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, and 48mm crop settings when using the main camera sensor. These nods to photographic tradition are befitting of a “Pro” model, and help users learn about different focal lengths. You can even set one of them as your default (this isn’t the Apple we knew), and I think I’ll be choosing 35mm. If only we could set a 3:2 aspect ratio to go with it.

    I’d read online that iOS 17 changes something about how photos are processed on the iPhone 14 Pro, making them less aggressively sharp and HDR-ed, and I was sure I could see an improvement after updating to the RC. I really believed they were looking more natural, especially in the 2x and 3x lengths, but after comparing photos from two iPhones on iOS 16 and 17, I can confirm that it was all in my imagination. So you’ll have to get the new iPhone to “fix” the processing if it bothers you.

    You do gain the ability to save photos in “HEIC Max” quality on iPhone 14 Pros, though. This saves 48mp HEIF files, with all the smart processing, which previously required an app like Halide to do. The ability to change a portrait photo’s subject and focal point after the fact will also be available on older phones with iOS 17, in case you aren’t planning to upgrade this year.

  • Week 35.23

    Week 35.23

    The nation voted for a new president this weekend and the winner was Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, which autocorrect changes to “That Man” (a tad disrespectful in my opinion). He got 70% of the vote which is pretty solid, but nobody’s surprised on account of how well liked and competent he is. It’s worth mentioning how painless the process was: my vote was in the ballot box less than three minutes after I showed up, and I was back home watching TV in 15.

    Appropriately, we started Jury Duty on Amazon Prime Video and I think it’s gonna be great. It’s a pseudo-reality show where one man thinks he’s on the jury for an actual case but the whole thing is staged and everyone else is an actor. I’m watching this and wondering if everyone’s following a tight script or just improvising based on their characters, because there are events happening all the time whether the mark witnesses them or not.

    That real-time play concept always makes me think of The Last Express, a classic but underplayed PC game by Jordan Mechner set on the Orient Express. It kicks off with a murder onboard and you have to move around the train investigating and staying alive amidst political intrigue and wartime spy stuff. Events are always happening, and if you’re not in the right place at the right time, you’ll miss crucial conversations. You can experience this for yourself on iOS but the app hasn’t been updated in five years and may be removed by Apple soon if they stick to their controversial plans.

    A lot of other TV was seen. We finally finished season 3 of For All Mankind, an extremely strong show on Apple TV+. I binged all of the anime Oshi no Ko which is as great as everyone says; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stronger (or longer) first episode. It’s a 90-minute movie in itself. I’m now midway through another highly rated anime: last year’s Lycoris Recoil, on Netflix. And on Michael’s recommendation we started on a Japanese drama, My Dear Exes, which is very enjoyable so far, maybe because it doesn’t feel like typical Japanese TV. It’s snappier and funnier somehow.

    Oh, if Jordan Mechner sounded familiar earlier, it’s because he’s the man who created Karateka and Prince of Persia. And if you want to experience the making of a gaming classic, a new playable history lesson on The Making of Karateka is now out. And in a case of lovely things cosmically coming together, it was helmed by former Wired games editor Chris Kohler, who also wrote the article on Japanese curry that probably changed my life.

    Staying on topic, we went down to the Japan Rail Cafe (operated by the actual JR East railway company from Japan, for some reason) in Tanjong Pagar because I’d heard they were doing a tie-up with the Kanazawa style Japanese chain, Champion Curry, for one month only. I had my first Champion Curry back in March, after meaning to check it out for years, and while it didn’t unseat my current favorites, it was still decent by Japanese standards and incredible by Singaporean ones. They sold a small sized plate here for S$19.90 including a drink, but it was sadly inauthentic. The curry’s consistency and deployment over the rice is not going to qualify for a Kanazawa cultural medallion any time soon, but I guess it was good enough that I’d take it any day over most local competition. But I still hope they open a proper operation locally someday and accomplish what Go Go Curry failed to do.

    Champion Curry in Japan
    Champion Curry in Singapore

    ===

    I was suddenly inspired to make a new series of playlists, which will periodically capture what I’m listening to, sequenced like a proper mixtape. If I had the skills to make a DJ mix of them, I would! Here’s BLixTape #1 for my Apple Music fam.

    And the tracklist for people still on *ahem* lesser services:

    1. Gold -Mata Au Hi Made- (Taku’s Twice Upon A Time Remix) — Hikaru Utada (I said I wasn’t a fan of the regular version but this remix works!)
    2. TGIF — XG
    3. bad idea right? — Olivia Rodrigo
    4. You Are Not My Friend — Tessa Violet
    5. Dancing In The Courthouse — Dominic Fike
    6. For Granted — Yaeji
    7. Bittersweet Goodbye — Issey Cross
    8. To be honest (SG Lewis Remix) — Christine and the Queens
    9. Sprinter — Dave & Central Cee
    10. DON’T EVER DISRESPECT ME — NEMS, Scram Jones, & Ghostface Killah
    11. Iceman (feat. Morvasu) — Earth Patravee
    12. ETA — NewJeans
    13. Silent Running (feat. Adeleye Omotayo) — Gorillaz
    14. Kill Bill (feat. Doja Cat) — SZA
    15. a little more time — ROLE MODEL
    16. happy im — UMI
    17. Rainy Days — V
    18. Memory — Sezairi

    Making this involved a detour into the world of NewJeans’ music videos, which are pretty conceptually twisted and seem to comment on the parasocial relationships fans have with them. For example, in the mostly sunny poppy video for ETA, the girls might only be hallucinations seen by a sick fan, telling her that her boyfriend is cheating on her with someone at a party. So she ends up murdering him and the girl with her car! I guess this is what it takes to stand out now.

    Let’s end on a nice note with another video I came across on YouTube while checking out more electronic music. This guy Don Whiting also does a great job killing it on the road — performing a two-hour drum & bass set on a bike, accompanied by a huge entourage of other cyclists. It looks like an awesome day out, at a pace even I could probably handle.

  • Week 33.23

    Week 33.23

    Our fridge is dying. After some eight years of dutifully cooling and freezing our food reserves, it’s losing its mind. Like a soldier left to survive too long in the jungle, it can’t tell right from wrong anymore, and it’s probably a threat to someone’s life. It started midweek when I decided to get some ice-cream and found the unopened tub mushy and soft to the touch. Ditto blocks of frozen salmon — uh oh, not a good sign.

    I’ve realized in recent years that I get disproportionately upset when things go wrong in the household. They’re like waves rattling loose the stones in my psychological seawall; things at home simply need to be predictable, dependable, safe. Maybe it’s the result of some trauma. Maybe the outside world is just too much sometimes.

    A new fridge has been viewed and paid for now, it will be roused from its Korean factory-induced slumber this Monday and loaded up with every surviving vegetable and condiment. I get images of them as war refugees lining up to get on a boat. They’re the tough ones, made of more shelf stable stuff. Pour one out for their fallen brothers: the spoils of war.

    Do you know what new fridges cost these days? I certainly did not. I’m pretty sure our last one was under S$1,000, but they cost more now. Blame inflation, the chip shortage, whatever, but the ones under a grand now are the brands that probably don’t come to mind when you think refrigerators: Whirlpool, Electrolux, Sharp, and local OEM brands you wouldn’t think of at all. So now we’ll have our very first Samsung product, if you don’t count the displays and components they make for others.

    Coupled with the so-called seasonal downturn in the markets now underway (supposedly the August and September months before a US election year tend to see significant corrections), there have been quite a few conversations about everyone feeling poor and worried. More than usual, anyway. I know one has to take a long view of these things, but the lack of bright spots is a little daunting.

    CNA put out a two-part documentary on Singapore’s fiscal reserves, promising unprecedented access and interviews, which I found quite enlightening. There was a visit to a secret warehouse literally filled with tons of gold, and stories about how this war chest came into being from the early days of our independence. It had not occurred to me before that our reserves were used to weather the 2008 finance crisis and Covid without issuing more debt, a luxury most countries did not have. Nor that one of the reasons we’re able to enjoy such a low tax rate is that annual income from invested assets helps to offset spending on public infrastructure.

    Here are the episodes on YouTube:

    ===

    I had fun this week with TikTok’s “Aged” filter, which is certainly not a new concept as far as apps are concerned, but it’s probably the most advanced execution yet. Through a blend of machine learning with harvested personal data from millions of non-consenting people and regular ol’ voodoo, it shows you what you’ll look like as a pensioner (should pension funds survive the financial end times). Some people have tested it on photos of celebrities when they were younger, and the aged photos reflect how they really look now, so… this is probably how you’ll turn out! Might as well get comfortable with it.

    It turns out that old me will look kinda like one of my uncles, and I’ve been having fun recording aged videos in a wheezing voice and sending them to friends and colleagues.

    Some of the other trending filters on TikTok are pretty sophisticated mini apps that involve a prompt box for generative AI. It takes a photo of you and will restyle it as a bronze statue, an anime girl, or whatever you ask it to do. They are also incredibly fast, compared to other generative AI image tools, which suggests Bytedance is burning some serious cash to power these models and gain AI mindshare.

    I also came across a new product called BeFake that will try to take this one feature and turn it into an entire social media network based on posting creative generative AI selfies. It makes some sense — you don’t have to be camera ready (already a low bar with some of the beauty filters now available), and you can showcase wild ideas. Will this sweep the world only for people to get tired of unreality and swing back to finding “boring” posts interesting? Stranger things have happened.

    ===

    On Sunday we went to the ArtScience Museum (at the Marina Bay Sands) for a rare high-profile exhibition of digital art. Notes from the Ether says it’s focused on NFTs and AI, but it’s also got a lot of generative art that just happens to be encoded on blockchains. I was especially excited to see the inclusion of work by DEAFBEEF and Emily Xie (Memories of Qilin), and Tyler Hobbs and Dandelion Wist’s QQL project was also presented for anyone to play with.

    Obviously this movement is in a weird sort of place at the moment. Valuations for most projects are as volatile as shitcoins, and a few “blue chip” projects like the ones displayed are more stable, but only about as much as bitcoin. Because NFT art is defined in large part by the medium, which is currently inseparable from talk of price and value, it’s hard to have a viewing experience divorced from these considerations. You don’t really visit a Monet exhibition and think about how much everything costs. Which is why the Open Editions I mentioned last week are interesting, and likewise with this event, which offers you a free NFT at the end. You get to co-create an artwork with an AI engine by uploading a photo of your own to be transformed, and it’s minted as a Tezos NFT if you’d like. I thought it was a very cool collectible to remember our visit by.

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen more affordable tickets at this museum, just S$6 with a further 30% off if you sign up for a free “Sands Lifestyle” account, so there’s little excuse not to go if you’re remotely interested in this stuff.

    Since we were already there, we also hopped into Sensory Odyssey: Into the Heart of Our Living World which pairs 8K video projections of natural scenes with immersive sounds and scents. In one space you’re smelling fresh air and damp earth in a rainforest, and in the next you’re underground with mole rats. It’s very cool, but ruined by small children being allowed to run loose in front of screens (can’t really be helped), and elderly museum staff loudly declaring that “this is a night savannah, very dark, no need to be scared!” (can be helped with training) in such a way that any illusion of being in a savannah is totally pierced — unless you’ve gone on a safari tour with a gaggle of Singaporean aunties, of course.

  • Week 32.23

    Week 32.23

    Vacation update

    I survived the island. Their warnings of limited internet access were exaggerated, and it turned out that we did have wi-fi in our villa, albeit quite slow; I did not feel completely disconnected, but I managed to avoid being “online”. I did not, however, get a chance to play Hello Kitty Adventure Island, nor finish the book I was reading until I got back to Singapore. That will have to be remedied in the coming week.

    We mostly spent our time sitting by the pool, or the beach, or eating, or walking around and exploring the “private island”, which is incidentally a marvel of self-sufficient sustainability. All water used in showers and bathrooms is collected rainwater and natural well water. Wastewater is processed and filtered on-site and used on plants. Food waste is composted and broken down by black soldier flies bred for this purpose, not shipped back to the mainland and incinerated.

    I managed to get a tan, and now I’m sporting a ‘just healthy enough to look like a living human’ shade. I also need to shed my lizard skin this weekend and head out to a wedding, so there was a shopping trip as soon as we got back to pick up a decent shirt. Putting on a suit stresses me out more than wearing shorts and sandals on the beach, tbh. There’s a Goldilocks zone of comfort somewhere in between and it looks exactly like a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, which is where I plan to stay for life, thanks very much.

    Island photography and phones

    Speaking of being indoors and online, I took a bunch of panoramas on this trip with the express intent of viewing them on the Apple Vision Pro when it comes out next year. Enjoy this one, and a vertical video of some gentle waves if you need to take a little mental break.

    The majority of other photos were taken with the Halide app as is now my usual practice, and in comparison to photos of, say, the sunsets taken with the camera app on my iPhone, they came out much more natural and aesthetically pleasing. It still boggles my mind that Apple shipped the Photonic Engine on the iPhone 14 Pro the way they did because it looks so overprocessed by default.

    I can’t wait to see if the 15 Pro will resolve this, and if I’m honest I’m also keen to replace the ailing battery on my 14 Pro — online anecdotes suggest many of us are suffering from accelerated battery aging this year. I’ve watched mine fall from 88% to 86% maximum capacity over the last two weeks. Some people believe the combination of using a case + MagSafe charging is the cause, because of the heat generated. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want to avoid useful features or stop doing normal phone things just because of this.

    Blue skies

    I finally got into Bluesky this week, and I don’t dislike it! Threads is unfortunately a place where I’m visible to everyone who knows me on Facebook/Instagram, which is to a large degree my real-life social graph. And what I liked about Twitter was that it was an online place for my online identity and my online people. I’m hopeful that Bluesky can be more of a Twitter replacement, and its relatively smaller size could be a strength, as long as the people I want to follow are on there. At this point, I’m rarely even checking Mastodon.

    Follow me at @sangsara.bsky.social if you’re on there.

    Crypto/web3 interlude

    Coinbase launched their new Ethereum L2 chain, called Base, and its stated purpose is to be a more user-friendly blockchain that could go mainstream and be used by the next billion people (ambitious). They say (and I like this positioning) that “online” was the first revolution, and “onchain” will be the next.

    I’ve been playing with it within their Coinbase Wallet app, and enjoying their “Onchain Summer” campaign which focuses on minting a bunch of free/very cheap NFTs. It’s a good demo of how low gas fees are on Base compared to regular ol’ Ethereum; most transactions cost just pennies. There’s still a lot of work to be done to make this more understandable, and arguably the entire user experience of creating and funding a new wallet needs to be rethought.

    The main launch event was Cozomo de’ Medici (who I thought everyone agreed was Snoop Dogg but now may not be?) partnering with the Friends with Benefits (FWB) DAO and the Korean animator DeeKay to launch a pair of Open Edition artworks depicting a cryptocurrency future. Importantly, people could buy them with a credit card, instead of fumbling with wiring money to Coinbase and then buying ethereum and then sending it to their self-custodied wallets on the Base chain.

    Did I lose you in crypto-jargon land? Don’t worry, I can’t keep up either. Think of Open Editions like an all-you-can-eat buffet, but with a closing time. The intent is to encourage access over the usual scarcity and price speculation. In this case, the NFTs were only available to be minted for 24 hours, and apparently some 70,000 were snapped up at a cost of 0.01 eth each (around $20 USD, I think). That’s still a cool $1.4M made!

    Sounds of summer

    We enjoyed this summer vibes playlist compiled by XG (Apple Music) while lazing in the pool this week. I still can’t get their housey new song, TGIF, out of my head.

    Speaking of Apple Music, I noticed a new personalized radio option appeared on my “For You” tab this week, called Discovery Station. 9to5Mac.com reports that this feature has been in testing for awhile, with people spotting it on and off over the past year (how do I get into these betas?!) — in any case I’m glad to see new features and am hoping for more improvements around the launch of iOS 17.

  • Week 30.23

    Week 30.23

    In the early years of mobile connectivity, we counted ourselves lucky to get 1GB of data per month. Fifty bucks bought you a plan, a phone, and a two-year leash. These days? I’m sitting on an 88GB, 5G mountain for half the price. Thank you, technological progress. But since COVID and working from home, I’m only using a fraction of my allowance.

    Yet, like any good consumer, I want more. So I switched providers from Circles to M1, lured by a plan that comes with 150GB at the same price. But there’s a catch, M1’s a little disorganized and provided me no updates on when my number would be ported. Right now I have two eSIMs jostling for control in my phone.

    Their checkout process also insisted on a “delivery” date. Delivery of what exactly? I’d already gotten the QR code for my eSIM over email. Assumed it was just a holdover from the old physical SIM days, too much bother to scrub from the website. But no, someone actually turned up to my doorstep at the appointed time, just to verify I’d activated my eSIM, then had me sign off on it.

    Let me repeat: M1 sends a flesh-and-blood human to confirm I got an email, but can’t drop me a line to say when my number would switch over. I had to spend 10 minutes on a support call to find out that it’s scheduled for next week. Will the data bonanza make up for this frustration? We’ll see.

    ===

    On a mellower note, I started to make use of my dormant brain.fm account again, to provide background music while I read and work. Is it pseudo-science? Beats me. But I like most of the tunes and it seems to work. The app has been significantly upgraded since I last saw it, with many more genres of music to choose from, and the option to vary the intensity of their brainwave-enhancing signals (which sound like wobbles).

    I get absolutely nothing out of referring you, but if you use my referral link you’ll get your first month for $1.

    With a little help from brain.fm and last week’s recommended music from Alice Sara Ott, I finished Sayaka Murata’s Life Ceremony, and also Hervé Le Tellier’s The Anomaly, and Lee Child’s 20th Jack Reacher novel, Make Me. Of all those, I can recommend The Anomaly most wholeheartedly. It’s a book you probably shouldn’t know anything about going in. If you really must know, it has science and mystery elements, but that’s all I’ll say. I’m now reading real-life astronaut Chris Hadfield’s The Apollo Murders.

    Not bad for a guy who’d only finished one book two months ago, now 8 out of 12 down on his Goodreads Challenge.

    ===

    I’ve been listening to Tessa Violet’s new album, MY GOD!, and it’s a playful catchy affair. Incredibly, Blur have reunited with a new album, The Ballad of Darren, and I couldn’t find much wrong with it after one playthrough. Maybe it’s the halo of how good the last Gorillaz album was after a decade of underwhelming me, but I think Damon Albarn is back.

    I made a commitment to use my AirPods Max more — they’ve been neglected because they’re somewhat of a pain, both literally and figuratively: the headband’s a little tight for me and the Smart Case remains a questionable design, adding friction to the simple act of turning a pair of headphones on and off.

    Two things have improved the experience for me. First, a dubious Reddit post from another big-headed owner who suggested bending the metal frame open, briefly straightening them open to form a 180º line, to ease the squeeze. This could obviously damage them, so do it at your own risk. But I think it’s made a difference. This is something you can’t do with the plastic Beats Studio Pros, sadly.

    Secondly, an updated audiogram from the free Mimi hearing test app. The last time I did the test was 2021, and I got slightly different results this time. I highly recommend everyone does this if they’re old enough to worry about losing some hearing. Thankfully my ears are still pretty good.

    Saving your test results as an audiogram effectively personalizes your listening experience on AirPods and supported headphones, applying an EQ profile that compensates for the frequencies you’ve become less sensitive to. You’ll hear music the way you used to, once you dive deep into the iOS Settings menu and find the section on Audio Accessibility, and turn on “Headphone Accommodations”.

    ===

    Another app that played a part in this week is Darkroom, the photo editor for iOS and Mac that I’ve mentioned a few times. They launched a portal to showcase presets made by community members, and kindly put a spotlight on some of the ones I’ve made and shared. You can access this catalog through a new button in the app, too.

    As Twitter is living on borrowed time (this was the week their petulant man-child owner pushed out a hasty, clumsy rebrand to “X”), I decided to republish my thread of Darkroom presets to… Threads. Annoyingly, it’s still buggy and messed up the chronological order of my posts. Nevertheless, I think they’re all still there, and I’ll post future presets to the same link.

    New ones I shared to celebrate being on the presets portal:

    E1: This is my reproduction of the popular E1 filter in VSCO. I wrote that it adds warmth, color, and film vibes in a single tap, and it truly is quite a versatile everyday effect.

    MEM3: This is another strong effect from my nostalgia-forward MEM series. It lightens and fades images with a blue-magenta cross-processed wash. You pretty much lose all highlight detail, but it’s a good look for certain scenes.

    MEM4: I said that this creates a warm and dusty sunset feel, but it’s really also great for low-light scenes. Check out the last photo sample through the link. Again, you do stand to lose detail in contrast areas, so vary the strength to taste.

    ===

    Growing up in the 80s, I caught reruns of Takeshi’s Castle on Chinese TV channels with no context, and no ability to understand what was said. On reflection, I grew up watching a lot of shows visually rather than verbally, which continues to this day whenever I choose to watch movies on planes without headphones.

    Anyway, Takeshi’s Castle, for the uninitiated, was a long-running Japanese game show (?) featuring normal people tackling an obstacle course of heinous physical challenges that would make insurance men squeamish. It was a precursor of Ninja Warrior, American Gladiators, and yet a different beast: whimsical, insane, hilarious. Why the name? It was hosted by the infamous Takeshi “Beat” Kitano, who played the err… lord of the castle that 100 contestants each week tried to storm. Here’s the Wikipedia article.

    I’m pretty sure you all know this, anyway. It’s a cornerstone of modern media culture! Turn in your TV licenses if you don’t.

    So imagine my elation while browsing Amazon Prime Video in bed and suddenly seeing a new Takeshi’s Castle, a 2023 reboot! We’ve seen two of the eight available episodes, and it’s still gloriously fun. It’s still not rolled out globally, as some markets will get English voiceovers (the UK one will have comedian Romesh Ranganathan as one commentator), but I wouldn’t watch it any other way than in the original Japanese, and maybe even with the subtitles off for old times’ sake.

    ===

    On Sunday we visited the Illustration Arts Fest where some talented friends were showing their work. It was packed, and probably the most crowded place I’ve been in since Tokyo. Let’s hope I don’t get COVID again.

    The most common theme was cute cartoon cats. On stickers, posters, keyrings, enamel pins, you name it. Some other artists were out there, scratching their own freaky itches and looking for kindred spirits in the crowd. We bought a couple of things for the apartment, including these little guys below from our friend Reg at Ocio Ceramics. A dumpling and a frog. Cuteness sells.

  • Week 28.23

    At least I’ve got Starbucks in my corner

    It seems my general mood and well-being hasn’t improved. In fact, I fear it may have gotten worse. There were some fires to put out but at some point you’re just on fire yourself and can’t tell if you’re helping or hurting. This is fine, the dog says. But after working over the weekend, I am pretty crispy and ready for a swim.

    Billie Eilish’s new song for the Barbie soundtrack is the vibe I was looking for: all sad, searching, and scared. I watched the Zane Lowe interview of how it came together and that just solidified it for me. I admit that I was beginning to worry her winning streak would soon end, but this is a really lovely song and I think she’s gonna be a great songwriter for a very long time. I also finally got around to Olivia Rodrigo’s Vampire, which I’d heard many good things about, and Jesus this girl sings like she has something to prove. The kids are still alright.

    Oh, at one point this week I had a senior moment, as in I found myself doing something I used to see senior leaders do in my early days in the creative industry: I sketched my ideas out on paper to explain what I wanted to younger people, because I can’t use the newfangled tools as well as they can. I did this twice! Wow, I said aloud, I should just retire soon and move to Thailand and wear beer brand singlets all day like they did.

    I had so little leisure time that I only managed to squeeze in a couple episodes of Love Village, and one more episode of The Bear. I’m getting close to finishing the book Going Zero by Anthony McCarten, which I’m ready to recommend as a fun adventure involving surveillance technology.

    For those who haven’t seen Love Village, it’s a Japanese “dating” reality show for old people. It’s Terrace House where everyone is over 40 and hasn’t been lucky in their relationships — it’s where they go to find their “final partners for life”, as we’re constantly reminded. The show is hosted by Japanese TV personality Becky (no stranger to love problems, it would seem) and comedian Atsushi Tamura (who is described by Netflix in another show he hosts as a “reformed playboy”). I like that they both skewer the participants when they do silly things and shed tears (!) when moved by their stories. It’s exceptionally plain and chill TV, which I like for nighttime viewing.

    I drew my first Misery Man in over a year; inspired, I guess. The caption on this one is “Keep the PMA! (Positive Mental Appearance)”.

    The term PMA actually stands for Positive Mental Attitude, and I learnt about it from the tragic story of Jesse Malin suffering a rare spinal stroke that’s left him paralyzed from the waist down since May.

    Longtime readers may know that I’m a fan of Malin’s music — when he announced a concert to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his debut album, I looked up plane tickets to New York. Not long after that, he was struck down by this rare condition and is now raising money to help pay for treatment. Please consider a donation or buying a “Keep the PMA” t-shirt to help.