sangsara.net

  • Children’s Season at SAM (look for the giant rabbit)

    According to this press release, it’s part of SAM’s inaugural Children’s Season – being a cute, enormous animal/balloon sculpture named Walter, I can see how that might work. Created by Dawn Ng, it’s been around Singapore a bit, although I hadn’t seen or heard of it before yesterday. Children’s Season will have a mix of interactive pieces and installations from local and international artists, some of them built with rather interesting technology (such as the reactive “Funky Forest” virtual space by Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille). I only managed photos of Walter, but the whole thing kicks off tomorrow (14th May 2010) and runs till mid-July. If you have a young family or little nephews and nieces to keep busy, it sounds like a great deal of fun.

    Update: A photo of the Funky Forest exhibit from my recent visit.

    Funky Forest

  • ➟ Steam for Mac, Portal for Free

    No doubt you’ve already heard: Valve Software’s Steam software is now out for the Mac, and the company has also released its own award-winning game, Portal, for free until May 24th.
    PC users have had Steam for ages, and now the Mac is that much more viable a platform for “serious gaming”. Steam is sort of an iTunes for games, a distribution and marketing channel through which users can browse offerings from many different developers, both indies and majors. It’s a software storefront, and it has been very, very successful. Expect many more companies to consider producing Mac versions of their games now that there’s a trusted, centralized way to put said products in front of buyers.

    Link

  • ➟ Near-Final Screenshots of Windows Phone 7

    When it’s all laid out over three pages like this, the Windows Phone 7 UI looks consistently unattractive to me. The large truncated words leading off the screen, the plainness of the text entry boxes, the use of all-lowercase captions, the occasionally strange leading, and that boldtype software keyboard.
    I get that it’s meant to be flat and text-driven, but it just doesn’t work for me. Too much negative space and a complete lack of pictorial cues is not something I want to be navigating on a small mobile device.

    Link (Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows)

  • Domohawk

    In a fit of madness moment of genius, I noticed that holding a Domokun under my face appears to give it a mohawk. A Domohawk, if you will.

  • ➟ Dan Wineman receives quote request for Flash removal

    The request specified “Removal of Flash programming to allow for web site readability on Apple devices.”
    The full post isn’t much longer than this, but he concludes with “It has begun.”

    Link

  • ➟ WolframTones

    WolframTones: A remarkable new project from Wolfram Research Labs (makers of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha) that intelligently generates semi-random music – I believe the term is procedural generation. It makes musically-sound structures, not just random notes, that fit very well into a range of genres selectable by the user.
    Bonus points for using retro 8-bit instrument sounds and letting you export the music as files you can use for ringtones or just about anything else. I’m listening to some surprisingly good jazz bits right now.

    Link

  • ➟ Marky Star’s Top 5 Ramen Shops in Tokyo

    It pleases me that two of the five ramen restaurants on this list have branches in Singapore. We have a lot of these ‘next level’ establishments selling a bowl of noodles for $15-20, but not enough street-style places where you can have a no-frills serving for under $8.

  • ➟ Japan’s "Charisma Man"

    The Japanese have a comic book (and a name) for the foreign man who comes and steals their women: Charisma Man. This CNN video report is intriguing for how it doesn’t vilify the local women or suggest names for them the way we have “Sarong Party Girls” here in Singapore. The focus is on the visitor and how he’s just a nobody back home.
    The lamentations of the Japanese male population are given some airtime though.