Tag: Korea

• Week 20.23

  • A correction: Last week I said that the the 10th Anniversary release of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories would have been better if mixed in Dolby Atmos spatial audio. It actually IS! But the entire album isn’t labeled as such because the “second side” of outtakes and behind-the-scenes bits aren’t. With that knowledge, I’ve been enjoying it on headphones and need to put aside more time to hear it again. We regret the error!
  • There’s been a slight Korean bent to the week, in that I’ve had KBBQ and soju twice in four days, watched a lot of Jinny’s Kitchen on Amazon Prime Video, and am actually listening to BTS intentionally for the first time as I type this.
  • Jinny’s Kitchen is a reality TV show about a pop-up restaurant in Mexico run by five of Korea’s most recognizable stars, who go largely unnoticed by their customers. Each of its 10 episodes is 1.5 hours long, which is practically feature film length! They could be much shorter, but it focuses on a lot of mundane, repeated scenes like the staff rolling gimbaps, cooking noodles, and plating fried chicken. Perhaps that’s the point, giving fans a chance to watch them doing normal people things? Or maybe it’s normal for Korean reality TV? Is it designed to be left running in the background? Or was it an Amazon Prime Video decision to hit streaming time KPIs?
  • In any case, Korean soft power is wave after wave of these campaigns. The show should be boring but it kinda works, plus it has an unheard-of 9.2/10 score on IMDB. The best moments for me are when someone does recognize one of them, like when an incredulous customer sees V from BTS (59 million followers on Instagram) pop his head out from the back, and likens it to Drake running a restaurant in a country where no one knows who he is. Watching celebs do normal people things is straight out of the idol playbook and it works — I’m listening to their music with an open mind now, and we’re talking again about visiting the country someday.
  • The Anbernic RG35XX arrived and it’s a nice little device that really recalls the Game Boy series in spirit. It feels good in the hand and the screen is bright and beautiful — the community seems to recommend replacing its software with something called GarlicOS but it looks like wayyy too much trouble. The thing just works out of the box, and I’m not in the mood to start modding it. It still blows my mind you can have this for S$90 including shipping, and it does come with uhh lots of software loaded, so it’s great value if you’re looking for a gift.
  • I’m still going strong in Breath of the Wild on the Nintendo Switch, in the final stretch but honestly still in no shape to face some of the game’s stronger enemies. I’m now thinking that if/when I eventually finish this, I’ll probably have to take a break before starting the sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, given that it reuses the same world map and I won’t be in any mood to cover it all over again. Note to self: don’t pre-order any more games unless they comes with discounts or exclusive bonuses!
  • We had a nail painting team event at work, for which the turnout was more male than female because of scheduling conflicts and maybe even a bit of self selection, so I’m sporting gray/lilac nails at the moment. It’s probably been over 20 years since I’ve had colored nails, and I think I’ll keep this going now that I’m too old to be told off and it’s not such a big deal.

  I asked ChatGPT to analyze my post and it suggested I add a conclusion. I said “you do it, then”. Here’s what we agreed on:

  This week has been a whirlwind of diverse experiences and discoveries. From immersing myself in the captivating sounds of Random Access Memories in Dolby Atmos to exploring the world of Korean soft power through Jinny’s Kitchen, I’ve been on a journey of curiosity and appreciation.

  The Anbernic RG35XX has provided me with nostalgic gaming moments, while progressing in Breath of the Wild has been both thrilling and daunting. Even a simple nail painting team event at work has reminded me of the freedom to embrace self-expression.

  These experiences have sparked my curiosity and inspired me to share my thoughts as a writer. Life is full of opportunities to explore, connect, and find inspiration in unexpected places. So, whether it’s through music, cuisine, gaming, or the little joys, embrace the unknown and discover the stories and experiences that await.

  Thank you for joining me on this adventure, and until next time!

  May 21, 2023

  Amazon Prime, Apple Music, ChatGPT, Gaming, Generative AI, Korea, Music, nintendo, Retro Gaming, Switch, Television, videogames

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• Week 17.23

  • I discovered that Midjourney has an alternate set of models called Niji (aka Nijijourney) dedicated to creating anime-styled imagery. It’s astoundingly good. It has four stylistic modifiers: standard, cute, expressive, and scenic. Look at all the implicit context and environmental storytelling in these scenes. I really wonder where they came from.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  • I also found Draw Things on the App Store, for both iOS and macOS, which can download an array of open source AI image generation models off the internet and run them locally on your devices — no fees, no internet connection required. Grab it while you can. Of course they are nowhere as advanced or fast as the paid services, but you know they’re going to get there soon, especially if Apple continues to crank up their proprietary silicon. Incidentally the anime-focused version of Stable Diffusion is called Waifu Diffusion.
  • My Retroid Pocket Flip arrived from China and I was relieved to find it quite a solid product. The build quality is good, no looseness or wobbles; the D-pad and all buttons feel great; the screen is incredibly bright; and the giant 5,000mah battery and active cooling make it more than just an Android phone with physical controls attached. It’s a really nice way to run emulated ROMs. I used to love playing Lumines and Every Extend Extra on my PSP, like over 15 years ago, and being able to revisit them again on this little $164 USD device is quite a thrill.

  

  

  • If I hadn’t impulsively pre-ordered this while in Japan, literally while walking to our anniversary dinner in west Shinjuku, then I would definitely be buying an Anbernic RG35XX right now for a mind-blowing $56 USD. It’s a Game Boy Pocket-inspired device with a bright 640×480 screen and the ability to emulate all 32-bit consoles, and maybe even the N64. I can’t believe how cheap and good these things have gotten, and there are so many of them on the market too.
  • I finally finished watching the Korean revenge drama series The Glory — it took awhile because Kim wasn’t interested and so I only get to see it on my own time. It’s the rare TV show that dares to wrap up its core story in the first season, and The Glory gets some very satisfying closure in. The remaining threads could make for an interesting second season (now in production), but also it could have been canceled and everyone would be okay.
  • We started watching Drops of God on Apple TV+, which starts off with an immediate deviation from its manga source material about the world of wine: a Japanese male main character has been replaced by a French female one. This adaptation is an international joint production that switches between English, French, and Japanese, and each episode begins with a reminder ‘not to adjust your television’. Anyway, I think they’ve managed to keep the main idea while toning down the big, overdramatic ah hah! moments you’d expect from manga/anime. It still has people honing and demonstrating their near-superhuman skills (taste and smell, in this case), which is always fun, even when said skills aren’t the usual martial arts, boxing, tennis, math, golf, you get the idea.
  • Everything But The Girl’s comeback album, Fuse, is officially a hit. It debuted at #3 on the UK charts, a stunning career best for Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt. It’s so good to see musicians from <wheezing> our generation </wheezing> coming back after a long hiatus to demonstrate absolute mastery of their craft (as opposed to embarrassing themselves, e.g. U2, The Smashing Pumpkins).
  • Michael also mentioned the greatness of Karma Police out of nowhere, which led me to play the song in my head, and I commented that it simply sounds like nothing else. I tried asking Apple Music to make a radio station from similar songs but it was totally wrong, just songs from bands in the same wide category, but none of them actually sharing the same vibe or brilliance. Somehow this led to me revisiting Keane’s very strong first album, which I have many strong emotional attachments to. It came out in 2004, I think, and I must have played the hell out of it.

  April 30, 2023

  AI Art, Anime, apple tv, Games, Generative AI, Korea, Midjourney, Music, Netflix, Television, videogames

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• Week 1.23

  Creative Technologies’ founder and CEO Sim Wong Hoo suddenly passed away at the age of 67 this week, which was pretty big news locally. The Verge explained the significance of his career as creator of the Sound Blaster line of PC audio cards which put Singapore on the consumer tech map in the 1980s.

  My first PC was their homegrown Cubic CT, basically an IBM-compatible XT 8086 system, with a CGA (Color Graphics Array: just four colors) graphics card, 5.25” floppy disk drive, and no hard drive. I’m pretty sure my dad drove down to Sim Lim Square or somewhere like that and picked it up in person. After a few years, we upgraded to a non-Creative made system based on the Intel 386SX chip (how that SX suffix haunted me, making me feel like I had an inferior machine! The DX was the model you wanted; the SX lacked the dedicated math co-processor, not that I ever really knew which programs made use of it).

  Neither of these first two computers had proper audio capabilities, just the awful default “PC speaker”, as it was called back then. You could only get beeps and boops. One needed a dedicated audio card like an Adlib or Roland or Sound Blaster to hear proper music or sound clips. So every PC game I played had awful crude calculator music you wanted to turn off, but when I went over to play at my cousin Bryan’s house (he had a 286 with EGA graphics — 16 colors! — and a Sound Blaster), those very same games would have synthesized orchestral instruments and realistic sound effects. I wanted a Sound Blaster more than anything and wouldn’t have one until we upgraded to a Pentium system much later.

  

  Years before I got my first iPod and switched over to a Macintosh, my first MP3 player was a Creative-made device. The year was probably 1999 or 2000. I was looking to move on from the MiniDisc players I’d been using for years, and these new devices let you carry tons more music around without a folder full of discs in your backpack (this was really a thing we did). The model I chose was a Creative MuVo, a nondescript white plastic square with a tiny LCD screen and a soft joystick nub for control. It played WMA files as well as MP3s, which was a deciding factor for me as you could stuff more music in at an equivalent quality using the WMA format at the time. That little guy kept me company through two long years of mind-numbing administrative work during my national service.

  Years later, after graduating and stumbling into my first proper full-time job, the very first task they gave me was writing video treatments for a Creative Technologies product demo DVD. Creative happened to be one of the agency’s longtime clients, and the viral video above was one of the things that happened under their watch before I joined. I remember my partner and I excitedly pitching a direction to our bosses only to be shot down and told to try again. Weeks later, after going out west to Creative’s offices and getting their feedback, it turned out we had gotten it right the first time. That was probably the end of my journey with the brand, although I was intrigued by their attempts to bring a new version of their X-Fi surround audio tech to market in recent years. I almost bought a pair of their headphones to try it, but now Apple’s spatial audio on AirPods has one-upped their approach by delivering a massive library of professionally mixed Dolby Atmos music instead of relying on fake surround processing on stereo tracks.

  His death is a sad loss and I wonder what the company will do from here. Looking back on the various products I’ve owned or tried over the years, they offered unquestionable technical merit, above average build quality, and always great value for money.

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  • The new year got off to a gluttonous start with an impromptu visit to one of my favorite buffets, followed by Chinese hotpot, and then an all you can eat Korean BBQ (these were three consecutive days). Then I rested for a day before hitting Mexican cocktails and an izakaya with 1-liter highballs on Friday, and then rounding off the weekend with a burger from Blooie’s Roadhouse on Sunday.
  • Incidentally, that last meal was my first time at The Rail Mall, which most Singaporeans are probably familiar with, and which I used to pass on the bus daily during the aforementioned two years of national service but never stopped at. There were a few other interesting places we’ll probably be back for, like a craft beer taproom and an all you can eat wagyu yakiniku (so, like, probably tomorrow).
  • I got into the hottest beta program around: Ivory, the new Mastodon client from Tapbots. It builds on their work for Tweetbot, and it makes using Mastodon as a primary social media platform very enjoyable. I’ve checked Twitter a lot less this week as a result.
  • I finished my first playthrough of Citizen Sleeper on the Switch and will probably not be back for more until a little later. So many games! I’ve started on Arcade Spirits, a Western visual novel about working in a video game arcade. Not to be confused with Arcade Paradise which is a business sim that lets you run an arcade cum laundromat. If Spirits doesn’t pick up soon, I’ll probably abandon it for Kathy Rain or the Monkey Island sequel.
  • In need of a new book, I picked up Eugene Lim’s Dear Cyborgs but it didn’t click. I cut my losses after about an hour.
  • King Princess’s Hold On Baby would probably have been my pick for Best Album of 2022, if I’d chosen an Album of the Year. I’ve played it through about four times this week and still can’t enough. As with quite a few things I really love, I kinda hated it at the start. I mean, I used to hate Macs and Korean food.
  • We did a deep clean of the fridge and freezer on Sunday. If you’re ever doing the same, Apple’s Cleaning The House playlist may help.

  Here’s some AI art I made this week:

  

  

  

  

  

  

  January 8, 2023

  AI Art, Apple, Apple Music, Books, Gadgets, Games, iPod, Korea, Mac, Mastodon, Midjourney, Music, Singapore, Social Web, Switch, Technology, twitter

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• Week 49.21

  — It felt like a long week. Part of that might be related to binging the eight-hour entirety of The Beatles: Get Back in a matter of days. And then consuming more videos and articles to fill in the blanks. If you haven’t yet heard the yelps of appreciation for it online, it’s Peter Jackson’s four-year attempt at editing together a never-before-seen side of the band’s final album coming together, down from 60 hours of footage and 150 hours of audio. At the lowest level of why it works, watching talented people create something as ephemeral as pop music through messy collaboration is irresistible.

  I won’t repeat too much of what’s already been said, except that it’s given me an even greater appreciation of them all, Paul in particular. When I look at him, I think about two things: one, he looks like my friend Christian when he had a beard, and two, it’s so hard to mentally connect the guy on screen (just 26 years old!) with the older Paul that I’ve always seen. I don’t know his solo material as well, but it’s probably safe to say he was at his best when playing off the boys. His enthusiasm for them giving it a proper go again suggests he knew it too at some level.

  So my listening shelf now has on it:

  • McCartney – Paul McCartney
  • Ram – Paul McCartney
  • Band on the Run – Paul McCartney & Wings
  • John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
  • All Things Must Pass (50th Anniversary Super Deluxe) – George Harrison / I’m so glad we’ve finally got a remastered version of this by the way!
  • Live In Japan (with Eric Clapton) – George Harrison
  • Encouraging Words – Billy Preston
  • Let It Be… Naked — The Beatles

  — After two months of ADD-ed attempts to finish David Mitchell’s Number9dream, I finally did it. It’s a great book, but every time I tried I would get distracted by something else after a couple of pages. It led me to think that any time in the future I find myself stuck on a hazy and challenging book, I should simultaneously read something dead straight on the side, non-fiction like, just to keep the habit regular. But maybe I’m just coming out the end of a no-reading funk, the kind I seem to encounter every year.

  Afterwards, I went for something totally different, Ben Mezrich’s follow-up to The Accidental Billionaires (which turned into the The Social Network film), titled Bitcoin Billionaires. I usually detest books that try to tell true stories narratively, pretending to know every character’s thoughts at critical moments, and boy does this one do that with a huge dollop of cheese on top. But… it’s an interesting story at its core, about how the Winklevoss twins got over losing to Zuckerberg and successfully invested in their next act. So I managed to read the whole thing in a day.

  That was followed by My Korean Deli: Risking It All For A Convenience Store, which has been on my list for years because I just like convenience stores and stories set in them. Except this one isn’t really a Korean deli at all, although the author’s wife’s family is Korean. It’s just a dilapidated American corner store in Brooklyn, there are several tonal issues like borderline racism and lame jokes, and it’s quite whiny. The image of the American convenience store just depressed the hell out of me but I finished it anyway.

  — I’d like to keep the book streak going, but I’ve played next to no video games lately. The only ones I’ve touched are two beautiful but ultimately shallow and unfun mobile gacha games, Figure Fantasy and Blue Archive. The former has a great idea: some people like to collect figurines, why not turn that into an AR game? They even made it look like several million dollars, but didn’t spend enough on the awful translation, so that was deleted quickly. The latter has a great English translation, but there was nothing in the core game (auto squad combat) to keep me, so that’s gone too.

  — The release of Misery Men NFTs continues on OpenSea, and I’m still enjoying the somewhat meditative experience of drawing and coloring them in my spare time.

  — Our Christmas tree arrived and was decorated after sitting naked and neglected for a few days. It’s a little short on the usual pine scent, despite being very green and flourishing, so either we’ve got the Covid or the trees have mutated as well.

  — Covid numbers have been falling; we actually had a couple of days with cases under 1,000, which doesn’t sound like a huge achievement but can you believe it’s been two months since that happened? In the meantime, we’re just waiting on more Omicron deets like everyone else. Nevertheless, I went out a couple of times this week, either to drink Guinness or coffee.

  On Friday I saw Ci’en, Peishan, and James at a cafe/restaurant that seems to be geared towards startups and remote workers. Just groups of four to five young people on long benches and round tables, hammering things out on PC laptops (weird) and playing mobile games on their breaks while ordering coffee and snacks. I sat there for six whole hours and everyone in my vicinity was there longer. Not a bad place to go hang out and work with your team, but I wonder how they turn a profit.

  December 6, 2021

  Beatles, Books, COVID-19, Korea, Music

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• Week 47.21

  • Went out for coffee and it turned into a night. Ended up with a hangover the next day, a thing which hasn’t happened in a while.
  • Messed up my YouTube feed by watching a couple of new micro-genres: Leica Q2 Monochrom reviews (I won’t buy one, I hope), “Day in the Life” videos of various people in Singapore (enlightening because, well, you just don’t know how others live until you see it), and Chinese street interviews in Tier 2/3 cities designed to teach the language but that are entertaining to me because, well, most of us just don’t know how Chinese people live.
  • Saw No Time To Die, and liked it a lot better than Spectre, although that’s not saying a lot. Like others have already observed, it sends Daniel Craig off while (for the first half) feeling like the first time he’s truly been in a classic Bond outing with glorious globetrotting, stylized set pieces, one-liners, and a new female co-star every 30 minutes. The villain’s entire plot is still nonsense if you think about it afterwards.
  • Got started on Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop series. It’s kinda bad, but works better if you turn on the Japanese soundtrack. The dramatically OTT performances on it better complement the visual and tonal schizophrenia, which attempts exaggerated silliness and deadpan noir almost at the same time.
  • In case you didn’t know, Netflix also has a Japanese audio track for Seinfeld, and it’s surreal to try out. George is played like a timid, wheezing ojisan, and Elaine is a vainsexy mature woman.
  • I also saw the first episode of My Name and it was the rare Korean television show I could watch through without skipping ahead in frustration. It’s not above relying on revenge movie tropes, but moves quickly and the fight choreography is better than Cowboy Bebop’s.
  • Also got back into Animal Crossing New Horizons for the first time in a year — I found a pile of red leaves in my driveway from the last time, and hey it’s fall again now — there’s so much new, while the world feels soothingly familiar. Several friends have said that just hearing the game’s music instantly brings them back into the memory cocoon of playing it in mid-2020 amidst the chaos, and to me it’s an untouchable place we can visit any time. I’m glad so many of us had that one nice thing in common.

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  • Cleaning up some of my old stuff over at my parents’, I found a couple of things worth keeping.
  • One, a pair of Olympus film cameras that I remember fondly. The XA and XA2 were marvels, much better compact point-and-shoots than anything else you’d find on eBay in the 90s and 2000s. It’s years later now, so I can finally confess that I once won first place in a Lomography photo walk contest using the XA2 instead of an LC-A (mine wasn’t working that day); they are distant cousins, I reasoned. They probably need a good cleaning out and restoration before being used again, but will make nice shelf objects in the meantime.
  • Two, souvenirs from the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka that we visited once, a decade ago. Still in the paper bags and plastic sleeves they came in, these pins, stickers, animation flipbooks, and music boxes may now find a place in our home. A drawer in our home, at least.
  • Three, a slim autographed volume of what I suppose you’d call juvenilia by now-published author Alexandra Kleeman, probably from my university days when I read her blog (technicolor.org) in awe and jealousy. I can’t remember how exactly I came into possession of it; perhaps it was offered in an early homerolled Kickstarter project. Googling its title, Matchbox Gods, turned up exactly zero hits, so I pinged her on Twitter with a photo (I live on it and yet the internet still amazes me) and got a response within the day. She said she only knows of one other person who still has a copy, so I’ll just record this info for future rummagers and closet cleaners coming online to find some context. I have nostalgia for how reading strangers’ blogs used to make us feel like we knew them a little through their thoughts, in a way you don’t get from Instagram or Twitter updates. I hope she’s having a great life.
  • Four, a couple of Game Boy Micros including one commemorative edition in Famicom red and gold. I tossed out many compact digital cameras because their batteries don’t work anymore, can’t be replaced, and their bodies weren’t particularly beautiful and worth keeping. The Game Boys still look great, so those can go somewhere.
  • Threw out all my iPods with some regret. Really anything with a battery that’s sealed or discontinued is pretty much useless today without extraordinary effort, unless used as display pieces. And my iPods were scratched up and haven’t held up, quite frankly. The whole white plastic phase of industrial design will not be looked back upon fondly by anyone. They were objects to be used and enjoyed in their time, but not any longer. AirPods aside, it’s nice to see most of our devices today being made with recyclable and longer-wearing materials that should look better a few decades from now.

  

  

  

  November 22, 2021

  Blogging, Books, Cameras, Film, Games, Korea, Netflix, nintendo, Television, videogames, YouTube

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• Week 48.20

  • One of the weakest weeks so far; it feels like nothing really happened.
  • But maybe that’s not entirely true. I went out on at least three occasions and met with several people to drink and catch up — in the same week where COVID cases have re-emerged in the community after about 15 days without a single one.
  • I also learnt about an impressive feature in PowerPoint: Zoom Summary Slides. It’s a sure sign you had a shit week if the first thing that comes to mind when you try to think of highlights is a Microsoft Office trick. I’m really looking forward to the Christmas break, whether it feels like Christmas this year or not.
  • OH I almost ordered a new M1 MacBook or iPad Air in a fit of irritation with new corporate security policies that prevent my work computer from connecting to any external storage (I just wanted to load a file onto my Kobo e-reader, come on). I calmed down and decided to keep waiting for the A14 iPad Pro.
  • A couple of loose thoughts: Thanksgiving reunions in the US are almost certainly going to lead to another surge in cases before the holidays. The result will be more fatalities, reduced spending, and a stock market wobble. If I were investing regularly, I might put that on hold and anticipate a corresponding rise in certain digital assets in the same period. But I’m not qualified to give any investment advice.
  • I haven’t had a really complex or immersive dream in awhile. While recalling some past ones in a discussion the other night, I was reminded of a dream phenomenon that makes no sense and started to wonder if it was a common experience.
  • It goes like this: you’re in a dream and start to hear a sound that makes sense in the context of the dream. Then you wake up, and realize the sound is actually happening in the real world, but something different. It’s the classic movie trope where someone is kissing their object of affection in a dream and awakens to their dog licking their face.
  • But how did your brain make perfect dream sense of the sound in real time? For instance, your alarm clock goes off near you, and in your dream you hear it as a school bell, but for what felt like the last hour, that school scenario had already been playing out in your head. Like you’re in a class that’s nearly ended, so it makes sense that the bell rang.
  • I can only see two explanations: the more impossible one being that your brain anticipated the alarm clock and set up the whole school dream in advance of it happening, and the other is that it hears the alarm clock, and then constructs the interpretation (school bell) and sells the illusion by retroactively creating the school scenario, and backdating your experience of forward-moving time, so that it feels like you were dreaming the school scenario all along. In other words, with the one indisputable marker being the alarm clock in real life, the school bell story can only be made up after the fact, but is so convincingly retconned that you remember living through the whole setup in an instant. I know it sounds like I’ve been smoking something, but if we can construct a reality around us that was always true, doesn’t it mean our subconscious minds already know what it feels like to exist outside of time?
  • ANYWAY, as a long-time skeptic of Korean television, I was surprised to enjoy season 1 of Stranger (on Netflix), a policewoman and prosecutor buddy format murder investigation show, and can now safely recommend it. Yes, some people still overact the hell out of their parts with dramatic glares, but at least it’s tonally consistent and the two leads are very good.
  • Here’s a song of the week pick although I only played it once: Awich’s totally straight, non-rap cover of Happy Xmas (War Is Over).

  November 30, 2020

  COVID-19, Dreams, Finance, Korea, Music, Netflix, TV

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