sangsara.net

Tag: Headphones

  • Week 36.24

    Week 36.24

    I was able to visit my parents for dinner for the first time in over a month. The long delay was on account of my dad developing a painful case of shingles, which, if you don’t know much about (like me), is a reemergence of a dormant chickenpox virus in one’s body, often after the age of 50. In other words, if you’ve had chickenpox before, you’re at risk of shingles — a nastier, localized version of the same virus.

    Unlike the regular childhood version, it doesn’t usually take over your entire body, just specific areas. In my dad’s case, it affected his back and one side of his torso, leaving the skin painfully sensitive for weeks — nerve pain that, for some, can linger for years. Thankfully, he’s making a quicker recovery.

    I had to stay away because I have never gotten chickenpox, and you can catch it from someone with shingles. I was urged to get the vaccine, because adult cpox is reportedly awful (like shingles, maybe worse), but my doctor suggested doing some blood work first to test for immunity — mostly because he didn’t believe I could make it this far in life without getting chickenpox. But it’s true! My mother swears it, and I have two traits: pretty good memory of my childhood years, and an outsized tendency to complain of ailments. There is no way that I could have gotten chickenpox as a child and everyone just forgot.

    The test results came back, and apparently I’m immune. The only theory I have traces back to this one time in kindergarten, when the boy sitting next to me in class developed cpox and had to leave school early. I recall living in fear that I would be next, and pus-filled bubbles would soon show. I remember checking myself fastidiously for a week or more, but it never came. Perhaps the glancing exposure was just enough to let my immune system prepare itself, but not enough to result in an infection? Or maybe, as my recent run-in with a car suggests, I’m actually Unbreakable like Bruce Willis in that M. Night Shyamalan movie.

    ===

    Kim is away again for work (13,600km away to be precise), and my having to deal with our pest situation alone has been a whole saga too boring to recount in detail. Tl;dr I’ve deployed a fleet of poison/bait traps, struggled with anxious insomnia, taped up a bunch of possible entry points, cleaned up a lot of lizard poop, sprayed insecticide down drains…

    More happily, the morning she left for the airport, I was up early and decided around 7:30 AM that I might go for a walk before it got too warm. This was inspired by Cien’s recent revelation that she’s been taking hour-long morning walks nearly every day. Just to get it out of the way: that’s a bit much for me, but I might go once a week. Spontaneously, this particular morning’s resolution ended in Peishan and me ‘virtually’ joining her for a walk at the same time, in our respective neighborhoods, sending photos along the way. This is actually a pretty fun thing to do!

    It was, however, warm despite the early hour. And it’s been hot and humid all week out here. I had to walk 10 minutes from an MRT station to a restaurant yesterday evening in very still air, and I could feel the sweat on my back not evaporating at all, merely pooling. Even my Sony Reon Pocket 5 brought little relief; I barely perceived that the metal contact point was cooler, or it can’t do much to dispel the mugginess of high humidity.

    ===

    I couldn’t take the wait any longer and upgraded to the visionOS 2 beta. I won’t upgrade any other devices, but I wanted any improvements in eye/hand tracking that I could get. So far, it’s been perfectly stable. I could talk about the new gestures and features, but the single most impressive thing has been the ability to view old 2D photos as 3D spatial scenes.

    What this looks like is simply layers of depth. You obviously can’t look around corners, and it’s not doing anything crazy like building 3D models you can move around in. But it’s like going from looking at a scene with one eye to two eyes. They suddenly have a liveliness to them because your brain can not only see that one object is in front of another, but perceive it too. Sadly, this is not something that can be demonstrated with a photo or video. The only way is to see it for yourself.

    The AI-powered segmentation of objects is somehow flawless, even better than on Portrait Mode (blurred background) photos taken with an iPhone. In one shot I had of a vineyard, every individual plant and leaf stretching to the horizon line was distinctly separated in space from the others. You can also blow them up to life-size with an “immersive” viewing mode, which puts you right in the space.

    Going through photos from the past two decades, of people who’ve passed on, and places I may never see again, has been profoundly moving. Documenting your experiences in photos has always been like building a time capsule, but this approaches time travel. It makes me so glad for every moment I thought to capture at the time, and the fact that the Vision Pro can do this retroactively for normal photos feels like the most unexpected gift I never knew I wanted. That’s what Apple does best, I suppose.

    Before the annual fall event tomorrow night, I’ll go on record again that I don’t think I’ll be upgrading my iPhone or anything else this year (but this time I really mean it!). So far I’ve had 16 iPhones and lost this bet with myself every year, but I can’t justify an incremental tech purchase in the same year as the AVP.

    Things that are unlikely to be announced but might make me reconsider my ‘no upgrade’ vow:

    For iPhone 16 Pro (Max):

    • No camera bump
    • New image processing pipeline that walks back the aggressive AI/HDR look and brings back natural looking photos à la Halide’s Process Zero (but with 24–48mp HEIC/JPEG XL files)
    • Bold, saturated colors like on the old iPod nanos
    • Untextured, grippy back glass
    • Significantly faster or exclusive Apple Intelligence features compared to iPhone 15 Pro
    • Completely new battery chemistry that means I won’t be sub-90% battery health in under a year

    For Apple Watch Series 10:

    • 2x battery life
    • Blood glucose monitoring
    • New body design that shames the old ones so bad you can’t wear them out in public anymore

    For AirPods Max:

    • Redesigned headband that either replaces the mesh or improves its comfort and durability
    • Significant weight reduction and/or new materials (comfort and durability)
    • A great protective case
    • Addition of a power button

    ===

    Media activity

    Recent reading momentum led me to finish reading Neal Stephenson’s Interface after two months. It’s a highly entertaining sci-fi story about contemporary American politics, media culture, and using brain implants to reverse a presidential candidate’s stroke damage. Nearly the entire time I was reading it, I visualized the main character as Robert F. Kennedy, and his VP pick as Kamala Harris.

    For my next book, I’m taking it easy with Jack Reacher #22, The Midnight Line.

    A few years ago, Nintendo remade two classic ‘80s visual novel-style adventure games under the “Famicom Detective Club” banner. This week, they released a wholly new third entry in the series, Emio: The Smiling Man, which got greenlit because of the warm reception that the remakes received. The history of these games is pretty interesting, and I watched this whole video essay on them.

    I bought and played the first remake, The Missing Heir, back around 2022, and found its authentically ancient gameplay archaic and frustrating. For example, in most such games, when questioning someone about a topic, you will reach a point where their answer starts to repeat itself — a sign that you’ve heard all you’re going to hear. In the first two Famicom Detective Club games, this is not the case (pun unintended).

    You: [Ask about the car]
    Suspect: There was a car seen at the time, I heard.
    You: [Ask about the car]
    Suspect: Hmm, that’s about all I remember.
    You: [Ask about the car]
    Suspect: Hmm, that’s about all I remember.
    You: [Ask about the car]
    Suspect: Hmm, that’s about all I remember.
    You: [Ask about the car]
    Suspect: Oh! I just remembered something. It was a black sedan.

    This is such incredibly bad game design, because someone repeating themselves like that is unnatural in the real world, so it appears as a limitation of the game (not having AI to generate different versions of “I dunno”). So of course a player isn’t going to keep pressing, because the suspect’s response isn’t an invitation to keep trying. It’s the equivalent of a brick wall in the game’s interaction model. But no, you’re meant to kick every solid object multiple times in case it comes loose.

    I ended up finishing the game using a walkthrough, and declined to buy the second game, The Girl Who Stands Behind. I’m guessing that Emio, being a new game, will be an improvement in this regard and so I intend to play it someday. But it doesn’t feel right doing that unless I also play the second game (there is no real need, they are not connected).

    Rather than pay $30 USD to frustrate myself, I watched a 7-hour video of someone else playing through the entire game — at 1.5x speed, of course. The first video I found was actually 10 hours long because the player was blundering through some of the aforementioned game design quirks, so I gave up on him and found this better one instead.

    Oh, and there’s another kinda new game that concludes something that started in my childhood, and I finished it this week. That game is of course Return to Monkey Island, which I played on the Switch. If you subscribe to Apple Arcade, you can also play it there. I don’t know how I feel about it; the original two games were the pinnacle of LucasArts’ point-and-click adventures and I probably remember them most fondly of all. The new sequel brings the story to a close, but with a new art style and an acknowledgment that a long time has passed (both in story terms and the authors’ perspectives). There was no way the ending could have satisfied every question and loose end, so they just went for something that felt true enough to its roots, but kinda comes out of nowhere. I was honestly surprised when the credits rolled. But that’s life!

  • 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 29.23

    Week 29.23

    I’ve implemented a new blog theme, which you’ll notice if reading this on the web (as opposed to an RSS feed reader or the email newsletter — I’m surprised at how few people still use the former, and that people are using the latter). For the first time in many years, I’m experimenting with having a listing page instead of just having every post on a long page. Let me know if you think this is better.

    A new cafe opened nearby and we’ve made something of a new routine to go there on Saturday mornings and spend quality time together. The coffee’s good, I get to see and hear people in this community that I’m normally ignorant of, and most importantly, it’s a chance to see cute neighborhood dogs.

    After last weekend’s work commitments, I took Monday off to chill and fly my underused Mavic Mini 1 drone with my dad (who has a newer FPV model that he flies with a video headset). Hmm, I wonder if you’ll be able to use your Apple Vision Pro for such applications — I can’t see why not.

    Bookworm mode has been engaged: I finished Anthony McCarten’s Going Zero, and both started and finished A.G. Riddle’s Quantum Radio this week. Along with Daniel Suarez’s Critical Mass a month ago, that’s a big dose of SF — so I’m now halfway through Sayaka Murata’s Life Ceremony, a slim collection of weird short stories. Whenever life feels like a directionless mess, I always find reading to be the cure.

    Shitty films, such as the latest Fast and Furious installment (Fast X), where I couldn’t even make it past the halfway mark, don’t offer the same solace. It’s not only dumb and unengaging, it’s not even engaged with itself; the writing is awful and nothing makes you care at all. So instead, I watched Dwayne Johnson in Skyscaper on Netflix, and although it was a dumb and kinda bad action movie, it at least had a pulse.

    ===

    Now let’s talk Beats, baby.

    The long-awaited update to the Beats Studio over-ear headphone line finally dropped with the new Beats Studio Pro. My first pair was the Beats Studio 2 circa 2013, with that iconic Ammunition-designed silhouette (the original Studios were fugly, like everything from the early Monster-made Beats by Dre era) — all smooth swooping lines and a low profile on the ears. It’s a design so good they didn’t really change it in 2017 with the Beats Studio 3, and it remains untouched in 2023’s version.

    Throughout all incarnations, the sound quality was, to be blunt, crappy. I love a good design as much as the next guy, but when it comes at the expense of audio quality, it’s a hard sell. But somehow, I ended up buying three pairs. Go figure.

    After being acquired by Apple, there was hope that sound quality would improve, and indeed the entire Beats line has received significant upgrades, with two exceptions: the on-ear Solo series, which got a short-lived premium noise-canceling reboot with the Beats Solo Pro, and the Studio series. After the Beats Solo Pro was discontinued (my guess is Solo buyers are price sensitive and so the Pro model flopped), they went back to selling the pre-Apple Beats Solo 3 Wireless model and never bothered to update the Beats Studio 3 Wireless. Until now!

    The new Beats Studio Pro looks like a proper contender for anyone on Android and those okay with skipping the latest Apple features (e.g. adaptive audio is only coming to second-generation AirPods Pro later this year). It does however have the key ones: spatial audio with dynamic head tracking, improved ANC, and USB-C support including lossless audio over a cable. Given the improved sound quality of recent releases like the Beats Fit Pro and Beats Studio Buds+, I have high hopes for these.

    The Beats video aesthetic is still fresh, like an Apple design language from a parallel universe.

    Beats recently brought Samuel Ross onboard as “principal design consultant”. His job? Picking out colors. Sandstone is a good-looking warm shade of white; Navy seems like an improvement on previous versions, darker and less saturated; Black is, well, black; and Deep Brown is the interesting new addition here. It reminds me of the original Zune. Ross says in the product video that he was going for “elevated” looks, but man, these are plastic. Luxe colors on plastic? Personally, I would’ve preferred a bit more energy and attitude.

    However, a long-standing concern remains: the clamping force. These headphones have always been a bit tight, making them uncomfortable to wear with glasses. Early reviews indicate no change in this aspect, so that’s a good excuse to stop myself from getting them.

    If I do, Sandstone has my name on it.

    ===

    Someone mentioned how you could use ChatGPT as a therapist, which prompted me to try writing a prompt that anyone could use for this purpose. Keep in mind that you’ll get better results with GPT-4, and of course this is no substitute for real professional care and advice.

    That said! I tried it out on a couple of scenarios and it was pretty good at guiding a conversation, suggesting strategies like reframing your thoughts, and helping you to reflect on your situation. I’d suggest talking to it like you would a real person, and saying things like “see you next week, what do you think we should talk about then?”

    Here’s the prompt:

    ===

    New albums on my headphones this week:

    The last one came into view after watching her breathtaking performance of some Chopin on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts of all places (embedded below). I only just learned that she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (like Jacqueline Du Pré, who I mentioned a few weeks ago) in 2018, but has apparently managed to overcome it for the moment. It’s a cosmic joke that bad things happen to the most incredible talents.

  • Week 23.23

    It was WWDC week and hours before the keynote event started, I was telling people that the thought of an Apple XR headset made me tired. I knew that if it really was happening, that the world would never be the same again, and we would be starting a whole new cycle of change: changes in the way we interact not just with computers, but entertainment, services, each other, and the hundreds of companies in our orbits. That takes a whole lot of energy and enthusiasm (positivity?) to prepare for, especially if you’re in one of the industries that will need to be an early mover.

    And this is just my gut talking, but after the big reveal of the Apple Vision Pro, I felt that positivity surging through me. It was an exciting prospect — yes, it’s still a heavy thing strapped to your head, and it has the many limitations and intentional design constraints of any first-generation consumer product — but I felt that Apple thoughtfully got the experience foundations right (again). This looks like it could change the world in an exciting and additive way.

    I can’t wait to try it out and get my own, but it will probably be the end of 2024 before it lands in Singapore. That gives everyone plenty of time to think about and design for a spatial computing future. Do I think the price is justified? Sure! It’s not really comparable to any other product at any price, which is the beauty of their ecosystem play (again).

    On the downside, the technical achievements it contains are incredible, but will need to become more incredible very quickly. Over the next few years, it will need to become lighter, smaller, faster, cheaper to get us where this “vision” is pointing. Or perhaps they believe the parallel development of a photon passthrough technology (that is surely continuing internally) will pay off before then, and become the solution. I’m referring to true AR glasses, of course, rather than this VR headset that acts like glasses by having screens facing inwards and outwards.

    Side note on those outward-facing eye screens: it’s funny how that detail was completely leaked, and we knew it might have screens that showed your eyes to others, but nobody could come up with a way that it didn’t look awful. And yet, the real thing looks pretty good! Dimming and blurring a virtual avatar’s eyes so that they looked recessed behind frosted glass? Brilliant. Wanna put a pair of comedy Vision Pros on? Try this Snapchat lens — it’s super amusing when pointed at the TV.

    But let’s not forget the other things announced at WWDC. I’m super excited for iOS 17’s Journal app*, as I said several weeks ago; the new AirPods Pro adaptive mode sounds exactly like what I’ve been wanting for awhile; Freeform showed that it isn’t being neglected, with some great looking new drawing tools coming; and the Apple Watch really did get a good rethink of the UI! The Side Button will now pull up Control Center instead of the Dock I never use, and it’s being replaced with a new Smart Stack model that sounds good in principle. And that new Snoopy and Woodstock watchface? Plus a smarter transformer-based keyboard and dictation? A more easily invoked Siri? Wow! (Ten bucks says a transformer-enhanced Siri is in the works for next year.)

    Sadly, Apple Music only got light design refinements instead of the rethink I was hoping for, oh well.

    *The Verge’s Victoria Song is skeptical about Journal.app because it relies on AI to suggest journaling prompts, which as Apple’s Photo Memories have proven, can be inappropriate or tone deaf. Personally I’m just planning to use it as a lifelogging tool: where I went, what I saw, what I was listening to. I’ll probably write entries manually, no prompts needed.

    ===

    On Thursday evening I checked out the National University’s industrial design program’s graduation show with some colleagues who came out of the program a few years ago. There were some thoughtful projects and most were well presented. The kids are alright, etc.

    Then on Friday evening I went with some other team members to visit the Night Safari for the first time in probably many years. The iPhone 14 Pro’s camera let me down by defaulting to very long night mode shots even when there were moving animals. I’m talking hold-still-for-10-seconds type situations. I wasn’t using Halide as I wanted Apple’s smart processing to light up the dark as much as possible, but it didn’t seem to make the right trade offs.

    It continues to be super hot and muggy here; I was sweating my butt off both nights outdoors. Looking forward to the cool Melburnian winter weather in a couple of weeks.

    ===

    • Inspired by the album listening technique of Pearl Acoustics’ Harvey Lovegrove (mentioned last week) — put it on all the time in the background for a few days, and then sit down to listen to it once through properly, after it’s already soaked into your subconscious — I’ve been listening a lot to Cisco Swank’s new debut album, More Better. It’s a seamless blend of jazz, hip-hop, and soul that the New York Times quoted a fellow musician describing it as “black music. All of it.”
    • But it was a big week in music, and I haven’t had time to get into the new albums from Jenny Lewis, Janelle Monáe, Christine and the Queens, and King Krule. Okay I’ve heard the King Krule once through and it was good.
    • Speaking of music, Kim returned from her trip to the US and brought me back an unexpected gift: a pair of the new Beats Studio Buds+ with the translucent case! I was coveting them but probably wouldn’t have bought them for myself, and they’re still not available locally with no release date either. But since I have them now I can’t complain. #blessed
    • I started playing Astral Chain on the Nintendo Switch, a stylish beat-em-up title that came out very early in the console’s life and looks astonishingly good, period. I’m now putting Bayonetta 3 on my wishlist because Platinum obviously knows how to get incredible visuals out of this aging hardware.

  • Week 9.23

    It’s been a fairly busy week at work, and it might just be the beginning of a longer stretch of stressful problem solving and multitasking. But we are off to Japan in two weeks! It’ll be my first vacation since Covid began, the last being Taiwan in late 2019.

    I’ve forgotten how to do some of this stuff, from packing to making lists and generally getting in the right mind space to be comfortable going away. It’s also been an expensive week because I’ve had to buy a new suitcase (one of ours got broken last year when Kim had to travel), travel insurance, new power banks, new clothes for cold weather (no, the current cool and rainy spell we’re experiencing in Singapore, with hitherto impossible lows of 21°C, don’t really count), and pre-booked Shinkansen tickets which cost as much as domestic flights.

    Two decisions which are easier this time than they usually are: what headphones and camera to bring.

    The new AirPods Pro (2nd generation) are so much improved in noise canceling ability and sound quality than I have no reservations about using them as my only pair of headphones. Tokyo is a short flight of about seven hours, and their batteries should last the whole way with a short recharge in the case during meal service. Normally I’d pack a pair of over-ears, but I see no need here.

    Since we’re traveling light, I could say I’m just going to rely on my iPhone 14 Pro (I’ve actually done that once; don’t know what got into me), but the Ricoh GR III is small and convenient enough that it will cost me very little to try using it as a main camera. Can’t the iPhone compare at 28mm? It’s probably closer than it’s ever been this year, but the GR sensor-lens system should still have the edge in pure optical quality terms, and there’s no substitute for the shift in mindset and focus you get when walking with a camera in your hand.

    One tip we found on YouTube: there’s a new digital service from the Japanese government called Visit Japan Web where you can pre-declare your immigration and customs forms and save time filling in those arrival cards. You can do it all on your phone and get two QR codes to show at the airport. This should be the default everywhere.

    ===

    We saw Knock At The Cabin, M. Night Shyamalan’s new film, and enjoyed it. I shouldn’t mention the premise, as not knowing much is always part of the fun, but it cobbles together elements of other films and reworks a few tropes.

    While talking about it afterwards, I realized that Shyamalan has two superpowers: he knows how to steal good cinematic tricks and make them great (for awhile I mistakenly thought JJ Abrams did too), and a knack for creating turning points in his films where your perception of the world flips or your immersion intensifies. That can be something like suddenly believing in one of the two dueling narratives (e.g. Is X real? Is this the present and not the past?), or the kind of big twist he became famous for. Often these two things happen at the same time.

    I told Kim that I can’t think of one particular scene in The Sixth Sense without tearing up, and literally did so at that moment, which seemed to startle her. It’s the one with Toni Collette and Haley Joel Osment talking in the car, where the son says something that undeniably proves to his mother that he really does see dead people, which she absolutely did not believe up to that point.

    It doesn’t matter whether you as the viewer already believed or not; their performances are so extraordinary, the scene is so deftly written, that you can’t help but experience the world-reversing revelation through her eyes. It also comes with a manipulative emotional gut punch (a bit ham-fisted, but whatever), which is why it’s stamped in my memory so hard. And The Sixth Sense is great because it does this over and over. It’s a triumph in the way musicians’ first albums are — years of stored-up ideas and raw energy packed into one work.

    Anyway Knock At The Cabin had at least one of these moments for me, and Dave Bautista is a treasure. I’ve read reviews comparing him and The Rock as two former pro wrestlers turned actors, but it’s clear these days Bautista is the Actor. Strong 3.5 stars out of 5.

    ===

    • We finished seeing every episode of Seinfeld. I can’t think of a better show about awful people. I’ll always love it.
    • We started watching Succession at long last, and it’s also a show about awful people but I don’t enjoy it much at all. There’s no payoff; they’re just all pathetic human beings with rich people problems? Perhaps they suffer greatly in the following episodes and you’re supposed to get a kick out of that. I’ll try to make it through the first season.
    • Sharper on Apple TV+ is a good 4-star film billed as a neo-noir, whatever that is. In this case, sharper is a noun, one carefully explained on an opening text card so as not to give too much away. If you don’t already know what the word means, don’t even look it up, just see the film.
    • I did a speed run through a 12-episode anime called Darwin’s Game on Netflix because it’s leaving the service this month. I got through it in a couple of hours. Not recommended unless you love battle royale style stories where people play supernatural “death games” organized by some sadistic game master, a la Alice In Borderland and too many others.
    • I made only one thing with Midjourney this week, a series of Tokyo-ites posing for street fashion photos.

  • Week 37.22

    Big week for Splatoon enthusiasts: the new game finally dropped for the Nintendo Switch! But I’m… not actually a big Splatoon player. I just love the aesthetic and music and bonkers world it takes place in. I clocked about 10 hours in Splatoon 2, most of them losing to much better players, and it never became a habit.

    But that game came out five long years ago, and I wanted to see how Nintendo would squeeze the last dregs of performance out of their aging hardware with Splatoon 3. Initial reactions: loading times have been greatly improved and it kinda looks like a current-gen game, which I mean in the best way possible! It’s colorful and sharp and the action is very fluid — almost too fluid. I basically suck at this; there’s so much visual chaos with paint being thrown everywhere, plus your enemies can swim in the paint virtually invisibly. But I’m having fun anyway.

    ===

    Big week also for iPhone enthusiasts: what was expected to be just a camera-focused upgrade to the Pro model (that a strong enough person [not me] could shrug off and then go hibernate for another year), turned out to be a little more substantial. First up, I decided not to go with “Deep Purple”. It’s not really my favorite color + the “gray” model is called “Space Black” this year (it was actually “Graphite” last year), so I went with that. Apple usually reserves “Space Black” for things that are pretty much black, so I’m hopeful it’ll approach the iPhone 5’s yet-to-be-surpassed black and slate color scheme.

    The Dynamic Island is early adopter catnip; it changes the core everyday experience of interacting with an iPhone in the biggest way since the iPhone X introduced the Swipe Up Multitasking interaction model. How could you not want to play with that? Like everyone else who read the last-minute leaks that the new sensor cutouts would be visibly “joined with software” into one solid black area, I took that at face value: they don’t want a distracting dot and oval visible all the time, so they’d make it one solid black entity. I didn’t think about you could do something interesting by embracing that concept. The little announcement video that shows the island morphing to become a secondary Dock of sorts sold me instantly.

    Some people on Twitter think the animations are superfluous and will get annoying after the first few times, and while I agree, they’re kinda delightful and novel now and will probably be turned down over the next few years of iOS releases. Like most of iOS 7’s jarring and annoying changes!

    Oh, I also ordered a new watch from the Series 8 lineup. It’s one of the smallest hardware updates ever, with hardly anything new except a new temperature sensor and accelerometer, but I’ve been on my current model for four years and even having an always-on display is going to feel like a big upgrade.

    AirPods? I’m err… content with my current ones. Or at least content enough to not pay full price for improved noise cancelling. I can wait for the eventual price drop on Shopee maybe six months from now. Fortunately, the new Personalized Spatial Audio feature doesn’t actually require new AirPods. After upgrading to iOS 16, you’ll be able to scan your ears and use the personalized profile with older AirPods. I installed the iOS RC on my phone this weekend to try it out a few days early, and it’s definitely made a difference to the feeling of immersion with head tracking on.

    ===

    Kim got back from her work trip, and we got started on Season 2 of For All Mankind, which is such a good series I don’t recall why we put it off for so long. We also saw Nope, and while most people I know loved it, and I get what it’s doing and some of that was very much appreciated, I just couldn’t give it more than three stars on Letterboxd. It’s essentially a two-hour build up to a Jaws joke. With that, Jordan Peele’s batting average with me is 1/3. I was talking to a film buff about it, and was drawing comparisons to Shyamalan’s work: how he showed almost his whole hand with his first film, and then spent the next few struggling to break free of expectations and his own language, which was really a well-practiced, keen sense of cinematic tradition more than the Twists. He films the way Bumblebee talks in the Michael Bay films: in pastiche, homage, and remixes. Which I happen to Really Like, by the way. Nope is Peele’s Signs. There’s even a scene where a slow, freaky motion by an object you can’t quite make out sends a chill down your spine, just like the first time you see the thing in Signs. Anyway, the other guy thought I was talking about Peele, not Shyamalan, and agreed. So I guess there really is something in that comparison.

    ===

    In between meetings one afternoon, I found myself near where I keep my always-growing Monocle backlog (I subscribe but ever hardly read) and flipped through an issue from last year. I’m confident I’ll clear the pile soon. Whilst reading about Veja sneakers and the 10th anniversary of their Monocle 24 radio station, I realized it’s been awhile since I tuned in.

    And thus I discovered Enfance 80, an instant classic of a song from 2020 by the French electronic duo, Videoclub. I don’t exactly know what they’re saying, but it’s something nostalgic about childhood in the 80s, and by god does the sound nail that vibe (as remembered in the 2020s).

    The other song that I’ve had on heavy rotation this week is Paul McCartney’s The Kiss of Venus, both his original and Dominic Fike’s reworking of it. The base melody is super pretty, which Fike dials up with Beatle-esque organ parts, but it’s his addition of a funky new bass line and electric energy in the chorus that are pure bliss. And like all great songs, it ends far too soon.

    I also heard Santigold’s new album, Spirituals, once through and really liked it.

    Here’s one MidJourney artwork inspired by a song and a couple more I made this week.

    The Kiss of Venus, co-created with MidJourney

  • Week 5.22

    Welcome back, it’s the last week of the year for people who love the moon. I decided to draw two Misery Men who look like a pair of oranges (which are traditionally exchanged as gifts during the Lunar New Year), and they are proactively numbered #87 and #88 (a famously lucky number in Chinese culture). Numbers 83–86 are done, but will be released later.

    From an artistic standpoint, I think I learnt something new with the little tael hat on #88. The intention was to make it shiny and gold; I could see it in my head but wasn’t sure how to make it happen on the screen. In the end, trial and error got me close enough to be happy.

    Misery Man #87
    Misery Man #88

    Last week, Michael linked to this two-hour video explaining why NFTs and Web3 are a scam at worst, and based on unstable premises at best. Since then I’ve encountered it more on Twitter and set aside the time to watch it. I think everyone touching the space should watch it, whether they’re involved out of personal interest in the tech/money/culture, or on behalf of clients who want to explore it. It covers a lot, but if I had to oversimplify my takeaways, I’d say that I mostly agree with his views — there are glaring flaws in the architecture of the prevailing networks today, enough to suggest a collapse or dystopian outcome if they grow to become infrastructure that the world depends on. I think there are many opportunities to be scammed out there, alongside a lot of space-wasting junk (content, apps, bots) that only exists because of the potential for asymmetrical upside. Maybe natural selection will sort it out and hone the landscape into a workable form, or it won’t. One place I don’t agree: he spends a little time at the start dismissing Bitcoin, but the rest of the video builds a case for why it’s something completely different from “crypto”.

    People say Chinese New Year is generally a time of eating too much, which hasn’t been the case for me because I don’t particularly care for much of the seasonal food, except pineapple tarts. However, dinner on two consecutive days this week was Korean BBQ, as in loads of fatty pork belly, closer to a kilogram than not. We finally got a new smart scale after the old one died a few months ago, and it’s not something I want to confront right now.

    Ironically, I got the new Beats Fit Pro, presumably so named because they 1) fit ears well and 2) are for fit people who work out. In brief, EarPods/AirPods have never fit me well and always feel on the verge of falling out, at least on my left side. But I haven’t gone back to other buds because of their Apple ecosystem convenience, audio features, and pocket-sized case.

    The Beats Fit Pro fix the fit with wingtips that you know Apple would never put on AirPods (that would require acknowledging inconvenient truths about human anatomy), while offering every other benefit of the AirPods Pro. Okay, the case is a little bigger, but it’s manageable. They also have the latitude to sound more fun (whereas Apple would prefer being neutral, aspirationally audiophile) and come in several colors. After being acquired for the platform that would become Apple Music, it seemed at times like the Beats brand might not survive long under the master’s roof, but I’m glad it has.

    Also, this “Behind The Design” video strikes me as one of the best product videos to come out of Apple lately. It simply starts with a strong problem statement and then shows you how they solved it. Then it’s just good music, pretty exploded 3D visuals, and shots of the headphones in use by above average looking people.

    Media activity:

    • Went back to Hades on the Switch in lieu of starting a big new proper game. It’s good.
    • Watched The Puppet Master on Netflix, a 3-part documentary on an extraordinarily bold and psychotic conman who ruined some people’s lives in an unbelievable way. Worth watching just to remind yourself it can happen.
    • Started Den-noh Coil on Netflix, a landmark anime series from 2007 that I’d never heard of before. It has an art style that looks of its time, but the story and central technologies (AR/XR glasses on everyone creating a parallel world) could have been written for today. I’m only three episodes in, but I think I’m gonna love it.
    • The Beatles’ legendary rooftop performance, restored and featured in the Get Back series, has been released as its own album (Apple Music), mixed in spatial audio with Dolby Atmos. Just great on a new pair of headphones.

  • Week 2.21

    • “I’m looking forward to … reading a whole lot next week” — said everyone who ended up doing nothing of the sort. Hopefully I’ll get around to it in the first few days of next week while I’m still on vacation time.
    • You know how you try to avoid visiting the part of town where your office is on weekends and public holidays? It’s tainted ground; a place where neither levity nor leisure can survive within a kilometer’s radius of your desk until years after you move on; a commercial real estate Chernobyl invisibly blackened by exposure to Outlook and your own psychic stress. Well, I’ve got a leak of that sort in my upstairs study where I now work from home. I’ve found myself not wanting to even look at its door this week. It’s funny. Maybe I need to rent another place to live.
    • One thing we did manage to do: finish all available episodes of Billions! I love it, because the writing just loves to wallow in its own proud pen of audacious pretension. It’s the kind of show where dialog doesn’t strive to be realistic; it strives to be good.
    • Not even in the same country, let alone ballpark, but a lot of my week probably went to watching crypto price tickers as if they were live sports I actually cared about. It’s a fascinating hobby. As the numbers go up and down, it’s not unlike a ball being dribbled up and down a pitch, except sometimes there’s a goal and you’re not quite sure whether it benefits your team or the opponents.
    • It only took three months, but we finally visited Apple Marina Bay Sands, Singapore’s third Apple Store to not sell HomePods. As it was a weekday afternoon, there was practically no queue and we were in within minutes. It’s a lovely space, and probably better experienced on a less cloudy day, at night, and without COVID procautions. But these days I hardly see the need to buy these things in person anyway. They only had a few AirPods Max units out for testing (not sale, as they’re backordered everywhere), and that’s probably the only thing apart from watch bands that I might want to try in person first. Yes, you can return any online order within two weeks, but I think that’s pretty wasteful from a logistics and refurbishment perspective.
    • I decided to keep my AirPods Max after all. They are just too much of a joy to listen with. I saw the rumor about the cheaper and lighter “sport” version still being in play and perhaps releasing sometime this year, with plastic in place of metal. I think lighter is a feature that should cost more, not less, and if they really maintained the same audio quality in a cheaper AND lighter package, I’d be pretty mad. But I didn’t want to wait around for a product that may never come, so.