sangsara.net

  • On the prediction of weather in Singapore

    Feeling rather tired in the afternoon and with no work to do, I thought I’d hit up Starbucks for the usual triple venti low-fat iced latte and an hour with William Gibson’s so-far-enthralling Neuromancer.

    I’ve gotten into the habit of relying on the local NEA (National Environmental Agency) website for weather forecasts, despite having been burnt – perhaps ‘soaked’ is the more appropriate word – on a number of occasions. Still, I checked the website before leaving and was guaranteed by a minutes-old analysis that the good weather would last the rest of the evening.

    It takes less than half an hour to get to the nearest Starbucks. Barely a minute after making it here, it started coming down; a fact I could not have anticipated with any of my bodily senses, but perhaps should have with some basic pattern recognition and Murphy’s Law. Photographic proof is enclosed.

    The question I’m leading up to is this: what does it take to be a government-employed meteorologist in Singapore? Do our tropical conditions make the job more difficult? Is it more guesswork than science? If you go to the site, you’ll see an animated rain map which charts the movements of storm clouds over time.

    In the past, I’ve had a lot more success than the “experts” in predicting the spread of rain just by watching which way the winds appear to be moving, but in today’s case the storm hadn’t started yet. Why can’t we get accurate weather reports? Will someone hire me to do this without some sort of degree in making shit up?

    Actually, I do have an English degree.

    — Posted from my iPhone

  • Coming back, and Blip.FM

    If you’re reading this on the website and not through my RSS feed, you’ll notice a new widget above the main blog text, under the Flickr photos, for a new service I discovered this morning via Leo Laporte’s Twitter. The intention is not to make this look like a MySpace page, but it’s nice having someplace to show off all the things I’m doing online. Qik video, the new multi-author Haiku Log, and all that.

    About a year ago, I split up my blog into this one and blast!, which is reserved for links to things I find, with little additional writing and no original content such as photos I’ve taken, movie reviews, or whatever. Of course, it’s exceedingly easy to post to a tumblelog like blast!, and the idea of being “productive” on a daily basis can be very gratifying. This main blog has only suffered as a result; consigned exclusively to “long form writing” and Matters of Great Import – I almost never felt inclined to start a post. I suppose I intimidated myself.

    Well, hopefully that will soon be changing. I’ve equipped myself with the latest version (3.0) of Ecto, a sleek and awesome blogging tool for Mac OS X, and BlogPress for the iPhone. The intention is to post more frequently, and more freely, for my own benefit (I have terrible, terrible, clinically decaying memory, and looking back on any record of my life is usually a revelatory experience).

    I also recently made the decision to open up some previously locked accounts to search engines and the public, out of a desire to see if I would get stalked, and feel my online privacy violated in the way that young people are becoming increasingly immune to. This should all tie together nicely and see mundane elements of my daily life filling this page, and my mutilated body in a gutter by the end of the year.

    So what was that about a new widget up top? Ah yes.

    As a music discovery and sharing service, Blip.FM goes places one-time web favorite Muxtape never even thought possible. Yes, you can put up handcrafted playlists of great music to share with your friends, but by taking on the best elements of Twitter and other social networks, it also means that the experience of listening to what your friends (and like-minded/like-tasted strangers) have discovered is virtually automatic. In other words, it’s a Push model.

    Say I’ve just gotten up earlier in the morning than I have in weeks, maybe months – true story today – and upon seeing my bedroom all lit up with warm daylight, I think of the music video for The Roots’ Birthday Girl (starring Sasha Grey, but that’s another story) and want to hear it. I go to http://blip.fm and search for it. Blip finds an MP3 of the song somewhere online, I suspect blogs and free file hosting sites, and starts playing it. I write a short note and “blip” it, which is very much like “tweeting” something. Now, Birthday Girl starts appearing on the Home pages of all my “followers”, or contacts. What this creates is an infinite playlist of music I probably want to hear. The site identifies with people with similar tastes, which makes it easy to make new friends and replace the ones you’ve suddenly discovered a distaste for.

    Blip also integrates with Twitter, Friendfeed, Tumblr, and a raft of other online presence apps and blog platforms, so you can push out instant-play links to all your contacts. I only hope they’ve sorted out the legal side of their business model and stick around longer than Muxtape did. There are links to buy the songs you’re hearing, and I’ve read something about them winning additional VC funding, so things look sorta positive.

    My DJ name is Brandmaster Flash, a reference to this man, of course.

  • Play-Asia Deal of the Week

    Every week, Play-Asia does some kinda inventory purge and puts out a single non-bargain bin game at bargain bin prices.

    This week, it’s Timeshift for the Xbox 360 at approximately SGD$25 (inclusive of shipping).

    It scored a rather respectable 70% average on Metacritic. Seeing as it’s a pretty slow quarter for games, I thought I might put this out there. Here’s my affiliate link to the store: Buy Timeshift at Play-Asia.com

    Offer ends next Tuesday, the 24th of February.

  • Where I used to live

    Central Singapore Panorama

    This is the view I grew up with for about nine years until we moved. The sun rose in the East to the left and set over behind those trees on the right. In the middle between some buildings you can just make out some of Orchard Road, Far East Plaza and the Tangs pagoda, in particular. Every year during the National Day Parade, we’d stand out on the balcony here and try to see the fireworks to the East. As Singapore developed, taller buildings rose and blocked off all but the highest-rising rockets.

    This was taken with an iPhone 3G and stitched together (3 photos) with the Pano app. Some exposure enhancement was later applied in Photoshop and Lightroom.

  • Liveblogging a beer

    Sitting at the next table over is a group of possibly Russian men drinking beer in the middle of the afternoon, playing cards. They’re using the thin paper stock of an airplane issued deck, or maybe it
    came free with a cheap, unrelated purchase. Further along the row of rickety tables is an Indian gentleman with slicked-back hair and an American accent, even further still, a Buddhist monk and a couple of English chavs. The monk is not drinking.

    Smoke in the air, with the sounds of so many different tongues it would be pointless to call them foreign (on whose behalf but my own?), it’s a scene romantics and film critics might fall over themselves to
    identify as belonging to another time and place, Morocco in the 1940s maybe, Blade Runner’s hybrid America perhaps — given the hide and seek aromas of nearby Asian cooking and the aggressive buzz of neon — but also one that many of us take for granted here in Singapore.

    A beggar approaches and manages to fleece a few dollars off those present. I am invisible to him. The monk numbly declines.

  • Fake HDR from Nokia N82

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    Fake HDR test, originally uploaded by sangsara.
    I never thought it would have been possible to make a convincing fake HDR image from a single JPEG, and shot with a Nokia N82 too. I kinda miss that phone (I gave it up in August for an iPhone 3G) whenever I see old photos from it, but only then, because everything else about it – from the creaking buttons, to the poor battery life and ancient, artificially resuscitated S60 OS – was a mechanical turd.

  • Panasonic DMC-LX3

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    LaSalle campus, originally uploaded by sangsara.
    Loving the 16:9 AR and 24mm lens on my new digital camera.

    I did just buy a Canon IXUS 80 about 6 months ago, but that one was mostly for fun and because I was switching to an iPhone where the camera couldn’t match what I used to have in my pocket with the Nokia N82. In some ways, this feels like my first serious camera purchase. I’ve always sorta backed down from learning the finer (mechanical/optical) points of photography*, choosing simplified compacts where the most one has to supply is a focal range and maybe dial in the film’s ISO rating. With this one, I’ll probably have to learn a thing or two.

    *Also known as the “I’ll fix it in post” approach.

    — Edit:
    It’s been a few days with the LX3, and I’m still very pleased with it. The interface is initially complicated, with a two different menus offering to help you change settings, with overlap into each other. One is designated a “Quick-Menu”, and is activated with the little joystick. In practice, it does live up to its name, and most people will probably use it for changing ISO speeds, AF modes, and so on. Many little things that could have been poorly implemented were thankfully well-designed. This is also the first camera I’ve owned that can accept software updates (there’s one out already), so perhaps my one major gripe will be addressed someday: The very handy Multiple Exposure mode is buried in the “Slow Menu”, and can’t be assigned to the shortcut button. Starting it up takes more than a few keypresses.

    I did a solid day’s worth of internet research before getting it – the purchase was spurred by another friend’s decision to buy it, and my faith in his own inability to buy something without knowing all the alternatives, so what you’re getting here is effectively two recommendations – this camera outperforms anything in its class & price range so long as you’re interested in a wide-angle lens. It shoots RAW and the built-in noise reduction can be dialed up or down in JPEG mode to suit your preferences. If you’re looking for something with a long zoom, then this probably won’t satisfy you (but the Canon G10 might). The build quality is also fairly solid, with very few plastic parts, and should last for years.

  • Lim Seng Lee duck rice

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    Lim Seng Lee duck rice, originally uploaded by sangsara.

    I ate here last week and it was still as good as when my family used to visit on a regular basis over a decade ago. These days they’re closed on Sunday, inexplicably, which is a bit of a bother as there never used to be anything else of interest nearby to make up for going down on a Saturday night.

    The new West Coast Plaza mall has just now opened though, so that’s not too bad. I picked up a copy of Apocalypto on DVD for about $15 and had some coffee from the Seattle-based Tully’s company, which has just opened two outlets here in Singapore. I think the other one is at Far East Square but can’t be sure.

    Lim Seng Lee Duck Rice & Porridge
    38 South Buona Vista Road
    Tel: 6475 9908

    HungryGoWhere users have given them a 5.8 score, which I think is ridiculous because they are at least an 8 by hawker food standards.