Yes, “The Joni Letters” is an album of Joni Mitchell covers and interpretations with guest vocalists (including Leonard Cohen and Tina Turner!)

About a month back, I quit my job. I meant to write about it sooner, but then personal matters have long been absent on this blog (along with new content in general). I largely enjoyed working there, but that’s a story for another time.

In the week just gone, my first sans emploi, I’ve become one of those annoying people who like to drop some French now and then – no, I’m just kidding – in the past week I’ve still been waking up in the morning with vague memories about dreams that involved getting work done. Last night I was working on my Mac in the office, but it was in the 1920s if you can wrap your mind around that, not doing my actual job but instead transcribing dialogue from old movies. So they could be made into subtitles, of course. From English to English. It sure made sense at the time.

It was a tedious and slow process, using some badly designed software, and I had barely gotten three lines done when a friend called asking me out for a drink with another mutual friend (they do not, and will never, know each other in real life but dreams are strange). I said alright, and then realized it would be impossible to transcribe the rest of that goddamned spaghetti western or train robbery movie given a whole, much less an hour. I was seriously stressing it, and then an email came in with EVEN more work from one of my freelancing clients.

Ah yes, that was the point I was finding my way towards. I’m now doing an experimental break/career calibration/freelance writing thing. Although probably not a viable long-term option, I’ve found that it’s possible to make enough, as much, or very much more money this way. Depending on how much time you want to put into it. And I get the added benefit of finally being able to work from home, on the large iMac I once blew most of my savings on. It helps with the guilt.

So now is a time for reading all the books on my shelves, going out whenever the urge strikes, getting to know Hyrule a little better, and maybe even populating this blog with regular posts again. If you look at my stats, the point at which all traffic went downhill was the exact time I started at my job last year.

In anticipation of my iPod touch being delivered today, I’m collecting some useful iPhone web app links. Came across one that promises MSN functionality, at iphone-msn.com, but I’d be wary of any site that asked you to input your IM password.

One thing I noticed playing with the touch on Saturday is that its Safari useragent string isn’t the same as the iPhone’s. Which means some of these sites which are meant to display their apps when loaded on an iPhone, don’t do so automatically.

Updated
These are the best-of-class web apps I’ve found so far.

IM: Beejive
Twitter: PocketTweets / Hahlo (when PocketTweets is down)
Facebook
Calendar: Google Calendar (iPhone only) / Mobile version

Because I’ve been playing this game so damned much since I got my Xbox 360, I thought I’d write a review of it.

Stuart and I have played it on Xbox Live! together twice, and both times the lag was pretty crap but we still had fun. The very first time, I had just started, and my Level 1 agent was completely unable to keep up with his.

Me: Where the hell are you?
Stuart: I’m up here, on the roof of this giant building, I can see the top of your head.
Me: WTF? What do I have to stand on to get up there?

——–

Crackdown (Microsoft Game Studios / Realtime Worlds)
Platform: Xbox 360
Score: 8/10

Criminals are a rotten lot. Turn your back on them and they’ll take over your neighborhood in a heartbeat. You’ll see them start to ride around in hideously painted cars overnight, blasting bad dance music everywhere you turn. The point where it really gets unbearable for me is when they add gunshots into the mix, leaving police corpses outside your home. That’s just not on.

Crackdown is a game where you are tasked with single-handedly crushing a crime wave that the combined efforts of all the world’s police have failed to stop. When I say ‘You’, I mean a heavily-armed genetically engineered agent of justice, of course. But it’s important not to let that minor detail turn you off because you’ll get used to being awesome.

In its essence, this is a game of many discrete joys. While crime-fighting is in itself a fulfilling goal, the numerous creative options and bonus objectives mean that you spend a lot of your time just exploring the limits of your cel-shaded sandbox. Set over five islands that make up the troubled Pacific City, Crackdown offers up plenty of room to play in. You can swim up rivers, drive down boulevards and crowded public squares in commandeered (really, stolen) vehicles, and gracefully traverse city blocks in giant loping leaps from rooftop to rooftop. The crisp, colorful execution has a comic-book playfulness to it, and you’ll find it to be a cross between playing GTA3, and watching Universal Soldier and the Japanese movie Casshern back-to-back.

Its gameplay design has been infused with basic RPG values: the more you do something, the more you’ll come to excel at it. Spend enough time challenging yourself to climb buildings and you’ll find your agility level rising. Mow down villains with mad driving skills, and your Agency-issued vehicles grow faster, and visually morph when you enter them. It’s like being in the boat from Hulk Hogan’s TV series, Thunder in Paradise, except none of the agents have mullets. All in all, improving your stats in a game of Crackdown feels far more rewarding than it does in most action RPGs. Every time your agent gains an extra star, releasing a shockwave of energy, you’ll run back to earlier areas to see if you can finally reach that elusive rooftop, or drive a car fast enough to jump over that bridge. By turning a modern city into a playground, Crackdown achieves a level of spatial connection between player and level that most RPGs do not. The feeling of wonder over new-found powers instantly becomes a deep-rooted desire to see them play out in a familiar setting.

Crackdown doesn’t just offer incentives for obsessive compulsive behavior. In fact, it nurtures it. Hidden across the city’s rooftops are 500 Agility Orbs, and finding them inevitably becomes an addiction to rival Pokémon collection. Elsewhere, you’ll find purple vehicular stunt markers hanging in the air, waiting patiently for you to find a way to get a car through them. Taken along with street races, rooftop Parkour races, games of Stockpile and Rocket Tag, and another 250 Hidden Orbs for those who’ll explore every inch of the virtual city, and there’s a raft of things to do in Pacific City besides hunting down your 21 gang bosses. Although fun is already its own reward, doing any of these tasks also rewards you with points that make you even more badass. Most achievements are also unlocked just by doing ridiculous things like juggling a car up in the air with a rocket launcher.

What you will find lacking in the experience, however, is something most 3rd-person shooters already suffer from: a poor camera. You’ll often find yourself just missing the edge of a ledge and falling 100 feet to the ground, ending your attempt for a record time on a Rooftop Race. All because you couldn’t move the camera quickly enough to see what was under you, after having moved it up to see what you were jumping at to begin with. It’s a minor niggle, and even with other complaints such as multiplayer lag, a lack of good in-car radio music, and the lock-on targeting system that favors parked cars over the guy shooting at you, there’s a significant amount of fun to be had.

The deal has recently been sweetened with the release of downloadable expansion packs (1 free, with another costing 800 MS points), and a patch that enables the resurrection of defeated bosses for more replay value.

It’s been a long time since I posted a mix online, and so I thought I’d let the next one form over time in a blog post, with descriptions.

These songs are currently being considered:

Leah Dizon – Softly
The first single from Chinese-Filipina-Caucasian American import car model turned demure, virginal Japanese idol Leah Dizon is an auto-tuned (har har) wonder of pop schmaltz. Except something about it just grabs me. It could be that little down-then-up melodic hook at the end of the first line. It might also be the cliched production – I think the term is ‘shimmering’ – that encapsulates the feeling of a sunny weekend, right at the end of summer holidays.

We all know it from younger days. That feeling that while everything is right in the world, it certainly isn’t going to last forever, and just at that moment you realize one day you will look back from the position of an older, more troubled person and say, “good times.” Summers are the saddest best times of our childhood, all opportunity, waste, and compromise. That’s what this song suggests to me near its end, and if we were all Portuguese/Brazilian I could have just said saudade and you would have understood without all this faffing about.

This is something I wrote a few months back for a friend’s zine that has now been released.

5 minutes ago, I had myself a really strong cup of coffee from the office machine. So forgive me if my fingers skip a letter over, or leave out a word entirely. I will not be going back to edit it. This will be a forward-moving exercise, and that is the first step in saying goodbye to a city. You must not look back, only pack your things, both tangible and otherwise. I am not saying you cannot reminisce while in the process of leaving, only that you must never stop being in a state of leaving. A pause to think, “oh, if only I could find a way,” does not help your cause at all. If there was a way, you would likely have taken hold of it in a desperate manner much, much earlier on. Resign to your fate, it will be easier.

Like the weary half of a long-stagnant partnership, imagine yourself a young nubile female recently freed from her possessive mobster boyfriend. Look forward to all the cities you will now be sleeping with. Remember all the times when failed public transportation systems slapped you across the face, sending you reeling into Ming vases and all manner of mantelpiece decorations. If that wasn’t enough, now you can finally stop lying to your family about what this place really does for a living. Remember, look forward and not backwards, unless it’s to frame, sully, or misrepresent the past.

Say goodbye to the friends you’ll leave behind. You know, the ones who declined your offer of lifelong companionship (in locations of your choice). They may not be the most sincere of friends, but say goodbye anyway. It is a magnanimous gesture that helps to ease them into some semblance of a life in your absence. Promise to call, and write letters to rehash and reheat the meagre strings of commonality that will scarcely bind you in the lack of physical proximity. Or hell, since it’s 2007 you could just add them to Facebook and be done with it.

Take a tour bus, or regular public bus, around the city for a day. Allow yourself to realize that there were many places you never ventured out to explore. Many faces you never met. Cities are, by the very nature of their naming, very large places indeed. And does Jesus kick himself every night about not appearing to every man, woman, and child in Jerusalem during his time? Does Mick Jagger bemoan the groupies he had to lock out because there is only so much coke and whores a man and his band can accomplish in one evening? Don’t answer that. Instead, try switching them around in your mind. What Would Jagger Do with the ability to generate alcohol from thin air? Given Mick’s position, would the Son of God… you know…? That’s far more interesting, don’t you think!? My point is, learn to let things go.

Have some fun burning bridges. If you’re never coming back, take every opportunity to push the limits of human decency. Hit on that checkout girl who’s always letting her top fall open at you. No, it’s not an accident you fool. Give her your dirtiest come-on. Afterwards, teach her son how to play with knives.

Take photos of everything. No matter how resolutely you leave – and as mentioned earlier, you must – there will be days where a stray song, or stray TV commercial, or stray hair in your food will reduce you to fond tears for your former home. In these moments of unmanly weakness, you will find comfort in leafing through stacks of these mundane images. But remember, although it may salve your forlorn heart, never mistake this for an acceptable practice. It is the nomadic soul’s equivalent of squeezing one out in the toilet of a strip club.

Finally, and most importantly, have your last meal. Only you should have more than one. The same way vacation overeating is excused, the effects of last meal dining tours of a city on your body are forgiven by friends and loved ones. Have at it. Eat all the duck fat, pork belly, smoked sausage and Mexican food you want. Provided you’re not some sad schmuck who frequents chain and themed restaurants, you’ll never find anything quite the same anywhere else. Although you may plan to return to them someday with new friends, Fate is cruel and your favorites will always be shut down on account of rodent infestation and incest. Or an infestation of incestuous rodents, if truly unlucky. I speak from personal experience.

It’s rare that I finds a remix of a favorite song so good that I can’t tell which is better. This Groovefinder remix of Nina Simone’s ‘I Got Life’ (yes, that Muller ad song from a few years back) is a great example. It embraces and extends the palette, with every new element seeming to belong.

Link

Further to the last post, I just had a moment of heartbreak while surfing the Play-Asia site. I recently bought 3 EA games for the price of 2, which is their current summer gaming promotion. That’s about $140 bucks for 3 games: Def Jam Icon, Burnout Revenge, and Fight Night Round 3.

On Play-Asia, Def Jam Icon and Burnout Revenge are both $38. That effectively negates my free game. Fight Night is sold out, which means I can’t see what it used to cost, which makes me feel only that little bit better.

The morale of the story, once again, is check Play-Asia.com before buying any games.

Edit: If anyone’s looking to buy Prey for the Xbox 360, you probably can’t beat this price: USD$17.90 (SGD$27.50)