sangsara.net

  • Songs of the Sea

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    Water Goddess projection, originally uploaded by sangsara.

    Over the weekend, I attended a performance of “Songs of the Sea“, a new ‘musical’ feature on Sentosa that features pyrotechnics, lasers, and water effects. The music is awful, the human actors and their dialogue are awful, and the whole thing would be better off without the story.

    That said, it’s fantastic for the technology alone, and well-worth the 6 dollar entry fee if you’re already spending a day on the theme park island.

    This picture shows an image projected onto a giant spray of water above the set. Quite impressive, and easily 3 storeys high.

  • Japanese phones

    For anyone who’s wanted a quick primer on Japanese cellphones and what they do better than ours, this wikipedia entry is perfect.

    Also, Wired’s How Mobile Phones Conquered Japan. The book mentioned, “Personal, Portable, Pedestrian”, sounds like a good read and I’ll probably be buying a copy. Amazon link.

    It’s a pity i-mode hasn’t taken off here. Perhaps a carrier like Singtel would have done more with it than Starhub has. Or maybe they should all have teamed up to make it a standard (always the best way).

    Bank transactions on-the-go would be a great thing to have, but limiting it to customers of one bank? And movie ticket booking, limited to Eng Wah cinemas? Come on.

    Edit: Here’s a great topic page on cellphones from the Trends in Japan online magazine from Web-Japan, which I’m happy to have just discovered.

  • Haruhi Art

    I’ve seen the dance videos on YouTube, I’ve considered buying the silhouette t-shirt, but before last week, I’d never seen The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in its entirety. What a shame! It’s as good as high-school/sci-fi/moe/existential anime gets. Its quiet, poignant moments are quieter and more poignant than others. Its art is fantastic, and based on the actual town the story is set in (Nishinomiya, Hyogo).

    Examples:

    Full Gallery (javascript disables right-clicks, but be sure to check the page links on top for more)

  • Just funny

  • Real life Gundam mech





    One more thing to add to our Japanese trip itinerary, a visit to the Fuji-Q Highland Amusement Park in Yanamashi. GUNDAM CRISIS Thrill Ride, ’nuff said.





    LINK

  • Game: Stranded (Mobile)

    In the last couple of days, I’ve fallen for a game which bears more than a passing resemblance in setting to a little show called ‘Lost’. Just in case you didn’t see it, the makers decided to go with the name ‘Stranded’.

    I’ve yet to come across a monster, but there have been allusions to something strange going on, and it can’t be far off. What makes this game fun is a combination of portable pick-up-and-play design, and a sense of open-endedness.

    It’s an adventure game with quests to fulfill, but you could just spend all your time hunting chickens and fishing , if you wanted. Or collecting seashells and driftwood. Or cooking. Or planting seeds, cutting down trees, and trading goods. It’s a sort of Animal Crossing + Contact. It’s a hell of a lot of gameplay stuffed into a mobile game.

    The time of day in the game matches real time (from your phone), and that affects how many snakes are out and about, what kind of fish you’ll catch, and so on. And just like you’d expect from a portable game, saving is allowed at any time. Here’s the official site, and in a great move, they’ve put up an emulated demo of the game here, so you can try before you buy.

  • Raiders of the Lost Ark remake

    Wired’s just posted a great story about 3 kids who started an ambitious shot-for-shot remake of the Indiana Jones movie when they were 12, and didn’t stop until 7 years later. They even spent 4 years making the giant boulder, and almost burnt a house down. Can’t wait to see it. [Link]

    The boys premiered Raiders: The Adaptation in an auditorium at a local Coca-Cola plant in 1989 and then, not realizing what they had, tucked the film away for nearly 15 years. In 2003, a VHS tape of Raiders: The Adaptation fell in the hands of Ain’t It Cool News guru Harry Knowles, who played it at his Butt-numb-a-thon festival. It was a hit. Almost immediately, Strompolos, Zala and Lamb’s phones began to ring.

    More info at the New York Times (Eli Roth also played a big part in its ‘discovery’) and some fascinating trivia at IMDB. Examples:

    • The Cabin Scene, in which Indy (Chris) and Marion (Angela Rodriguez) have their big kissing scene – was actually the first time that Chris (then aged 13) had ever kissed a girl. They went on to maintain an off-screen teenage romance.
    • Raiders Adaptation was shot completely out of sequence over seven years, resulting in the casts’ transformation in voice tone, hair style and body size from scene to scene. For example, in the college classroom scene, the cutaway of Indy (Chris) ‘s reaction to the female student’s “I love you” message written her eyelids had to be re-shot because it was out-of-focus. The shooting schedule didn’t permit returning to that location for another three years. By that time, Chris’s voice had changed with puberty. In the final edited version, the re-shot cutaway sticks out noticeably by Chris’s voice dropping several octaves.

  • Sex Xonix!!

    The speed, the skillful driving and fatal collisions… Do you think that it is a racing? Far from it! Sex Xonix is the arcade erotic conundrum with smart girls for sweets lovers. – Gamespot blurb

    This is the #1 most popular/wanted game on Gamespot Mobile today. Perhaps my life is headed in the wrong direction. Every day at work, I face many problems and dilemmas. Sometimes I even find myself in a quandary. And I often ask myself, “is something missing?” Now I know what it is: a conundrum. To be more specific, an erotic conundrum.

    Sadly, this game is not the adrenaline-infused racer it sounds like. It doesn’t feature the usual hot girls standing beside cars. It doesn’t even have any cars. And worst of all, it doesn’t feature bespectacled models solving Times’ crossword puzzles in bed whilst wearing crotchless lingerie.

    My friends, this game is a clone of SNAKE*. That’s right, the game that comes with every Nokia phone, except with naked women in the background. IN THE BACKGROUND!

    *I’m sure this was intentional.