sangsara.net

Tag: Music

  • Week 39.23

    Week 39.23

    Kim returned from a business trip to Vietnam on Thursday with a nasty bug, which as of this moment I’ve still avoided. We also had a medical checkup done and I got a double vaccination out of it (one in each arm, both of which are SORE) for tetanus and the flu. Firstly, why doesn’t anybody talk about tetanus jabs for adults? I don’t think I’ve had one since I was a kid but apparently adults are meant to every 10 years. Secondly, I’m not sure if the flu jab is going to make me more susceptible or more resilient to her germs right now. I guess I’ll find out as the work week starts!

    If I do wind up too sick for work, I hope to still have the strength to do some gaming on my new iPhone and Backbone One controller. The USB-C one I ordered on September 13 (the day after the iPhone announcement) was supposed to come with a new firmware version on it that would work with both iPhones and Android phones, but it didn’t! And so nothing happened when I plugged it in. I complained online through various channels, and they sent me a free replacement within a few days.

    FWIW, the first one can be made to work if I plug it into an Android phone and use their app to update the firmware. For some reason, they can’t do the same through an iOS app, which seems… weird? I’m sure I’ve owned hardware that updated itself through an iOS app, but maybe it can’t do that over the USB port. So they have to ship out replacements to people without access to Android, and going by Reddit, it seems there are quite a few of us, which is unfortunate for their business.

    Gris is a beautiful indie game that I bought years ago on the App Store and never played, and if you’re an Apple Arcade subscriber you’re in luck — Gris+ is now available in the catalog. I finally started on it awhile back on my iPhone 14 Pro and Lightning-ported Backbone, and finished it on the new equipment this week. The larger screen definitely adds to the experience, and probably comes close enough to the Switch experience to justify this new “console gaming handheld” positioning. I really can’t wait to see how Death Stranding will play (and be priced) on it.

    Japanese Rural Life Adventure is another new chill title on Apple Arcade I’ve enjoyed checking out. It’s played in portrait orientation, so no room for a Backbone controller here. But it’s exactly what it says on the tin. A game where you move to the countryside and clean up a busted old house, start planting vegetables, and getting to know the town.

    ===

    • The musical highlight of my week was the long-awaited release of XG’s first mini-album, New DNA. We’ve heard most of it by now except for the last single to be released, Puppet Show (YouTube), which I didn’t quite love at first but is slowly growing on me.
    • We’ve been watching the new season of The Morning Show on Apple TV+ and it’s getting good. I barely remember the second season somehow, but after a bit of a warmup, things in Season 3 get quite satisfying in episodes 2 and 3.
    • Also on the service is a new songwriting rom-com called Flora And Son, by the director of songwriting rom-com Begin Again and Once (haven’t seen this one myself). I enjoyed it, even after finding out that the lead actress is Bono’s daughter. 4 stars.
    • I also watched an entire episode of Foundation on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which was quite enjoyable! As we don’t have an HDR-capable TV at home — the 8-year-old HDTV refuses to die — this is probably the best screen I have for watching video. The whole time I felt like a “real” character in a show, the kind who watches TV on their phone with dead eyes while eating lunch before getting back to their dead-end job. There’s a scene or two of that in Flora And Son.
    • But the most unexpected, most time- consuming, most addictive new media we encountered had to be Below Deck, which I reluctantly started over the weekend and ended up binging an entire season of. Local Netflix only has seasons 5 and 6 of this nautical reality tv show which follows the crews of pleasure yachts as they take on “charters” — several-day trips booked by rich people who leave tips of at least $15,000. It’s a different kind of workplace drama, and the screwups, often obnoxious guests, and interpersonal relations are just so easy to keep watching.
  • Week 37.23

    Week 37.23

    First things first. As you know, we’re big curry rice fiends over here, and I recently found out that Maji Curry (Kanda Curry Grand Prix winner 2018/2022) has had a Singapore outpost for the past year and I never heard about it. This curry fiend may need some curry friends; I’m clearly not plugged into the scene.

    I went there this weekend and was not disappointed: their signature Hamburg steak curry with soufflé cheese sauce is a winner. It has the fragrant spices associated with Indian curries, but meets Japanese curry’s lower heat level and sweeter profile halfway. Let’s pray they stick it out and thrive here, unlike Go Go Curry (I’m still holding out hope for their resurrection).

    ===

    I was browsing YouTube one evening when I came across a live premiere of a DJ set by Taku Takahashi, playing “only Utada Hikaru”. Being a fan of his remix of their latest song, I stayed for the whole thing, and it was great! And then the next night, at the same time, they did another one with another DJ! And the next night again! They were all shot at the same event hosted by Amazon Music Japan, but the three-day release schedule was pretty smart.

    I also learnt that Jay-Z pretty much wrote the iconic song Still D.R.E. for Dr. Dre’s 2001 album. When the doctor was stuck with just a beat and no words, he sent it off to Jay who reportedly returned with a demo in under an hour, performing both Dre’s and Snoop’s parts in imitations of their voices. Apparently that was it; the whole song was done.

    This sent me off on repeated plays of Jay’s The Blueprint and The Black Album this week. It’s been years since I played them straight through, and I’m humbled to say it’s given me a newfound appreciation of Jay-Z. There was a period years ago when I harbored an intense dislike of him, probably because of how popular he was whilst being technically a less interesting rapper than many other better ones who deserved success. Also, all the clownish ad-libs and general timbre of his voice were just so annoying.

    But you wrote Still D.R.E.? Okay, RESPECT.

    Vagabon’s new album Sorry I Haven’t Called also came out, and I highly recommend it. Her last album featured the song Every Woman, which was one of my favorites of 2019.

    ===

    There was a big tech event this week, and of course I’m talking about the latest Nintendo Direct! There are so many great titles still on the way, this late in the Switch’s lifecycle. A handful of new and remade Mario/Luigi/Wario/Peach games, a Detective Pikachu sequel, a Spy × Family title (an anime game with a simultaneous Western release!?), and even a new Prince of Persia game. The fact that the slate is still so full going into 2024 makes me confident that the Switch 2 will have backward compatibility with the whole catalog.

    I’m kinda sure I played Another Code a little back in the days of the Nintendo DS, and a great looking remake of it and its Japan-only sequel are coming out soon, under the name Another Code: Recollection. But available immediately after the Direct was Trombone Champ, which I bought immediately. Imagine Guitar Hero, but with a comical sounding instrument — an absolute no-brainer. You can even play with up to three friends in local multiplayer, but Kim has not yet agreed to it.

    Oh, it was also time for the new iPhones, and practically all important points had already leaked: titanium frames for the Pro models, a new folded zoom (rumored to be a periscope lens but instead a tetraprism design) only on the Max models, smaller bezels, USB-C, and the removal of leather products from Apple’s entire supply chain. Apparently they’ll even progressively remove existing leather furnishings from their stores.

    I… am not against leather, though I can understand that it’s a net negative for the world at Apple’s scale. But there’s no great substitute: synthetic leather is awful, and early impressions of Apple’s new recycled fabric, a material they’re calling FineWoven, suggest it’s not as premium feeling as hoped. In any case, it’s a woven textile product sitting in for a smooth, supple skin. Not really comparable.

    If Apple added FineWoven products to the lineup any other year without removing leather at the same time, there would be far less scrutiny. After some consideration, I decided to get a leather case from Nomad for the times I’ll need one (going out for drinks is one recommended occasion). I dislike their ribbed power button design, but couldn’t find any better options. Bellroy makes one, but with a cutout and not a passthrough button for the new Action Button. I’m glad I also snagged a last few Apple leather straps for my watch before this happened.

    Back to the phones, though. The one thing that hadn’t leaked was a big one for me: the new A17 Pro chip has a GPU and Neural Engine powerful enough to do real-time ray tracing and AI-powered upscaling. These will literally allow console-quality games (a term carelessly bandied around in mobile gaming quite frequently, but seemingly for real this time) to be played on iPhones. There was the surprise announcement that Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding Director’s Cut would be ported over this year, along with Resident Evil Village (previously announced for the Mac), the remake of Resident Evil 4, and the next Assassin’s Creed game, Mirage, in 2024. These games suggest the iPhone is basically capable of running PlayStation 4 games, but without active cooling (a fan).

    The possibility of playing these games on the go, along with the 5x telephoto lens exclusivity, pushed me to pre-order a 512GB Pro Max model this year. Ugh. As said in too many words last week, I find carrying such a large phone around too much of an inconvenience, but the bigger screen and longer battery life are justified this year. And thanks to the move to USB-C, I had to order a new Backbone One controller as well. I love my original Lightning connector model; it’s a well-built, great-feeling, very clever gamepad.

    On the camera front, there were mentions of a new improved Photonic Engine in the iPhone 15 Pro, which gives me hope that we’ll get less artificial looking photos this year. I was very pleased by the new feature which lets you choose from 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, and 48mm crop settings when using the main camera sensor. These nods to photographic tradition are befitting of a “Pro” model, and help users learn about different focal lengths. You can even set one of them as your default (this isn’t the Apple we knew), and I think I’ll be choosing 35mm. If only we could set a 3:2 aspect ratio to go with it.

    I’d read online that iOS 17 changes something about how photos are processed on the iPhone 14 Pro, making them less aggressively sharp and HDR-ed, and I was sure I could see an improvement after updating to the RC. I really believed they were looking more natural, especially in the 2x and 3x lengths, but after comparing photos from two iPhones on iOS 16 and 17, I can confirm that it was all in my imagination. So you’ll have to get the new iPhone to “fix” the processing if it bothers you.

    You do gain the ability to save photos in “HEIC Max” quality on iPhone 14 Pros, though. This saves 48mp HEIF files, with all the smart processing, which previously required an app like Halide to do. The ability to change a portrait photo’s subject and focal point after the fact will also be available on older phones with iOS 17, in case you aren’t planning to upgrade this year.

  • Week 36.23

    Week 36.23

    This week was a slog, like slowly pushing through a muddy swamp. I don’t know why, but maybe grinding through palaces in Persona 5 Royal and PowerPoint decks in real life had something to do with it. I thought I was nearing the end of the former, but nope, still have many hours ahead. I had to double check my last post to make sure I didn’t miss a week here; the presidential election felt so long ago it couldn’t possibly have been last Friday.

    I went into work twice and discovered a new free snacks/drinks initiative, the kind that large companies everywhere once generously offered. I thought free food incentives were a low-interest rate phenomenon, but the return-to-office movement needs new soldiers. So there I was at my desk eating banana cake and trail mix, drinking VitaminWater, and getting calories I would normally have avoided.

    The real work benefits are the friends we make along the way, though. This week an ex-colleague now based in Tokyo came back for a visit. That led to a three-hour Taiwanese hotpot catch-up last night, the effects of which I’m still feeling this morning. The chief reason is probably sodium, a thing I’ve become more acutely aware of since I wrote about eating Korean instant noodles.

    Fun fact: Most Korean ramyeon contains between 1,800–2,000mg of sodium per serving, which is the recommended amount for an entire day. But Singaporeans tend to average 3,900mg daily, probably because of our proximity to hotpot restaurants.

    ===

    I’m currently enjoying Yo-Yo Ma’s new release, Nature at Play: J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 (Live from the Great Smoky Mountains) on Apple Music. It was recorded outdoors in Dolby Atmos, near running water and singing birds, which means hearing it in Spatial Audio is a truly transportational experience.

    And it’s a brilliant concept! You get a relaxing forest soundscape (the kind I put on sometimes anyway while working) along with a stirring piece of music performed by a master. I hope he does more like this.

    The Rolling Stones put out a new single, Angry, and it seemed like all the old men on my timelines fell instantly in love with it. Eh, it’s okay at best? I didn’t get the hype, and the single-idea video with Sydney Sweeney on a car for four minutes didn’t do much to redeem it.

    Imagine putting out something that mediocre in the same week as Olivia Rodrigo’s new album, GUTS. I believe it was the New York Times’ review that drew parallels to Lorde’s Melodrama, not stylistically but as a brilliant sophomore album from a 20-year-old breakthrough artist under immense pressure to deliver again. It’s so good, just give it a go.

    ===

    Next week is new iPhone week, so I’ll just say for now that if the rumors are true and the periscope zoom feature is only coming to the iPhone Pro Max, I think I’m going to be slightly torn. Apple hasn’t given the larger iPhones better cameras than the smaller ones in several years — that trend meaningfully ended with the iPhone 8 series, where the Plus model had two cameras and the regular had just one. The 12 Pro Max had a 2.5x zoom compared to 2x on the Pro, but that’s minor.

    I think I’ve owned six larger iPhones: the 6 Plus, 6S Plus, 7 Plus, 8 Plus, XS Max, and the 11 Pro Max. And that one year in between when we had the iPhone X, which only came in one (small) size, felt like a relief because you didn’t have to choose a trade off.

    The question will be how much more useful they can make this longer zoom seem. I’m quite happy with the 3x range on my 14 Pro. While the image quality could be better, the actual zoom range is fine! Do I want to put up with a cumbersome phone just to have a not-great-looking 5–10x zoom I’ll only use when visiting the zoo? If you’re currently using a larger phone and regret it, let me know!

  • Week 35.23

    Week 35.23

    The nation voted for a new president this weekend and the winner was Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, which autocorrect changes to “That Man” (a tad disrespectful in my opinion). He got 70% of the vote which is pretty solid, but nobody’s surprised on account of how well liked and competent he is. It’s worth mentioning how painless the process was: my vote was in the ballot box less than three minutes after I showed up, and I was back home watching TV in 15.

    Appropriately, we started Jury Duty on Amazon Prime Video and I think it’s gonna be great. It’s a pseudo-reality show where one man thinks he’s on the jury for an actual case but the whole thing is staged and everyone else is an actor. I’m watching this and wondering if everyone’s following a tight script or just improvising based on their characters, because there are events happening all the time whether the mark witnesses them or not.

    That real-time play concept always makes me think of The Last Express, a classic but underplayed PC game by Jordan Mechner set on the Orient Express. It kicks off with a murder onboard and you have to move around the train investigating and staying alive amidst political intrigue and wartime spy stuff. Events are always happening, and if you’re not in the right place at the right time, you’ll miss crucial conversations. You can experience this for yourself on iOS but the app hasn’t been updated in five years and may be removed by Apple soon if they stick to their controversial plans.

    A lot of other TV was seen. We finally finished season 3 of For All Mankind, an extremely strong show on Apple TV+. I binged all of the anime Oshi no Ko which is as great as everyone says; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stronger (or longer) first episode. It’s a 90-minute movie in itself. I’m now midway through another highly rated anime: last year’s Lycoris Recoil, on Netflix. And on Michael’s recommendation we started on a Japanese drama, My Dear Exes, which is very enjoyable so far, maybe because it doesn’t feel like typical Japanese TV. It’s snappier and funnier somehow.

    Oh, if Jordan Mechner sounded familiar earlier, it’s because he’s the man who created Karateka and Prince of Persia. And if you want to experience the making of a gaming classic, a new playable history lesson on The Making of Karateka is now out. And in a case of lovely things cosmically coming together, it was helmed by former Wired games editor Chris Kohler, who also wrote the article on Japanese curry that probably changed my life.

    Staying on topic, we went down to the Japan Rail Cafe (operated by the actual JR East railway company from Japan, for some reason) in Tanjong Pagar because I’d heard they were doing a tie-up with the Kanazawa style Japanese chain, Champion Curry, for one month only. I had my first Champion Curry back in March, after meaning to check it out for years, and while it didn’t unseat my current favorites, it was still decent by Japanese standards and incredible by Singaporean ones. They sold a small sized plate here for S$19.90 including a drink, but it was sadly inauthentic. The curry’s consistency and deployment over the rice is not going to qualify for a Kanazawa cultural medallion any time soon, but I guess it was good enough that I’d take it any day over most local competition. But I still hope they open a proper operation locally someday and accomplish what Go Go Curry failed to do.

    Champion Curry in Japan
    Champion Curry in Singapore

    ===

    I was suddenly inspired to make a new series of playlists, which will periodically capture what I’m listening to, sequenced like a proper mixtape. If I had the skills to make a DJ mix of them, I would! Here’s BLixTape #1 for my Apple Music fam.

    And the tracklist for people still on *ahem* lesser services:

    1. Gold -Mata Au Hi Made- (Taku’s Twice Upon A Time Remix) — Hikaru Utada (I said I wasn’t a fan of the regular version but this remix works!)
    2. TGIF — XG
    3. bad idea right? — Olivia Rodrigo
    4. You Are Not My Friend — Tessa Violet
    5. Dancing In The Courthouse — Dominic Fike
    6. For Granted — Yaeji
    7. Bittersweet Goodbye — Issey Cross
    8. To be honest (SG Lewis Remix) — Christine and the Queens
    9. Sprinter — Dave & Central Cee
    10. DON’T EVER DISRESPECT ME — NEMS, Scram Jones, & Ghostface Killah
    11. Iceman (feat. Morvasu) — Earth Patravee
    12. ETA — NewJeans
    13. Silent Running (feat. Adeleye Omotayo) — Gorillaz
    14. Kill Bill (feat. Doja Cat) — SZA
    15. a little more time — ROLE MODEL
    16. happy im — UMI
    17. Rainy Days — V
    18. Memory — Sezairi

    Making this involved a detour into the world of NewJeans’ music videos, which are pretty conceptually twisted and seem to comment on the parasocial relationships fans have with them. For example, in the mostly sunny poppy video for ETA, the girls might only be hallucinations seen by a sick fan, telling her that her boyfriend is cheating on her with someone at a party. So she ends up murdering him and the girl with her car! I guess this is what it takes to stand out now.

    Let’s end on a nice note with another video I came across on YouTube while checking out more electronic music. This guy Don Whiting also does a great job killing it on the road — performing a two-hour drum & bass set on a bike, accompanied by a huge entourage of other cyclists. It looks like an awesome day out, at a pace even I could probably handle.

  • Week 34.23

    Week 34.23

    Trivial bullet point notes this week.

    • The new fridge arrived without a hitch. It makes the tiniest ice cubes, they’re like chiclets. We also got baited and switched: the model in the showroom said “20 year compressor guarantee” but the one that arrived has a sticker that says 10 years. In any case, we’ve been assured that these compressor warranties are meaningless because they’re never the first thing to break down. Kinda like LED bulbs that claim to last centuries, then.
    • The Onchain Summer campaign/festival on Coinbase’s Base network (Ethereum L2) continued, and I really got into the release of a few generative art projects on Highlight.xyz, in particular RUNAWAY by James Merrill. It’s designed to be a long-form open edition project, and so the algorithm is wackier than most, with quite a bit of variety in the outputs. Of the four projects launched together, RUNAWAY understood the assignment best.
    RUNAWAY by James Merrill
    • This inspired me to get back to playing with Midjourney, and totally unrelated to the above, I made a couple of images I call “Swamp Aesthetic” and “Pond Aesthetic”.
    Pond Aesthetic and Swamp Aesthetic
    • XG’s buildup to their first mini album continued with the release of New Dance, yet another solid pop song accompanied by a fun video (this one goes for an early 2000s vibe). So far they’ve only released one early dud — Mascara is not a great song imo — and everything else has been a straight banger. It’s an incredible track record, so to speak, and they’ve created a formation where every member is differentiated and recognizable. Back when I found them in February, they had 1.1M YouTube subscribers. That number is now 2.18M. I said back then that they’re gonna be huge and I’m more certain than ever everyone’s going to know them in about half a year.
    • Apple Music agrees, and they’re featured in this month’s Up Next spotlight, which means a short video, radio interviews, and pre-order promotion for New DNA which drops at the end of September. Just for reference, past honorees of the Up Next program include Billie Eilish, Megan Thee Stallion, Sigrid, and Burna Boy.
    • I finished reading Ann Liang’s If You Could See The Sun, which turned out to be a YA novel set in a prestigious Chinese high school, with a protagonist from a poor background who’s struggling not to drown amongst her fuerdai classmates, and then… she develops a superpower? It’s pretty fun, and you can see it being Netflix adaptation fodder. 3/5.
    • We’re currently watching Deadloch on Amazon Prime Video. Throughout most of the first episode, it felt like we would quit, but it somehow picked up and now it’s a fun and ridiculously vulgar ride. It reads as a send up of the small town murder mystery genre (albeit set in Tasmania), but the murder bit is just as interesting as the comedy.
    • I’m still rationing episodes of Poker Face, watching them like little films. Episode 5, The Time of the Monkey, had such a fantastic payoff I’m still thinking about it days later. I don’t want to spoil anything, but that ridiculous episode title will actually make sense by the end.
    • Oh oh, I found a silver bracelet I bought off SSENSE years ago and decided to put it on one morning as I was going to work. Some colleagues immediately noticed it and said ‘hmm what’s going on with Brandon lately? He’s accessorizing and wearing new clothes and painting his nails?’, which led me to wonder if I’m going through some kind of weird mid-life crisis? Technically the crisis probably began when I turned 40, which was the year the bracelet in question was purchased. LOL why are people such cliches?
  • Week 32.23

    Week 32.23

    Vacation update

    I survived the island. Their warnings of limited internet access were exaggerated, and it turned out that we did have wi-fi in our villa, albeit quite slow; I did not feel completely disconnected, but I managed to avoid being “online”. I did not, however, get a chance to play Hello Kitty Adventure Island, nor finish the book I was reading until I got back to Singapore. That will have to be remedied in the coming week.

    We mostly spent our time sitting by the pool, or the beach, or eating, or walking around and exploring the “private island”, which is incidentally a marvel of self-sufficient sustainability. All water used in showers and bathrooms is collected rainwater and natural well water. Wastewater is processed and filtered on-site and used on plants. Food waste is composted and broken down by black soldier flies bred for this purpose, not shipped back to the mainland and incinerated.

    I managed to get a tan, and now I’m sporting a ‘just healthy enough to look like a living human’ shade. I also need to shed my lizard skin this weekend and head out to a wedding, so there was a shopping trip as soon as we got back to pick up a decent shirt. Putting on a suit stresses me out more than wearing shorts and sandals on the beach, tbh. There’s a Goldilocks zone of comfort somewhere in between and it looks exactly like a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, which is where I plan to stay for life, thanks very much.

    Island photography and phones

    Speaking of being indoors and online, I took a bunch of panoramas on this trip with the express intent of viewing them on the Apple Vision Pro when it comes out next year. Enjoy this one, and a vertical video of some gentle waves if you need to take a little mental break.

    The majority of other photos were taken with the Halide app as is now my usual practice, and in comparison to photos of, say, the sunsets taken with the camera app on my iPhone, they came out much more natural and aesthetically pleasing. It still boggles my mind that Apple shipped the Photonic Engine on the iPhone 14 Pro the way they did because it looks so overprocessed by default.

    I can’t wait to see if the 15 Pro will resolve this, and if I’m honest I’m also keen to replace the ailing battery on my 14 Pro — online anecdotes suggest many of us are suffering from accelerated battery aging this year. I’ve watched mine fall from 88% to 86% maximum capacity over the last two weeks. Some people believe the combination of using a case + MagSafe charging is the cause, because of the heat generated. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want to avoid useful features or stop doing normal phone things just because of this.

    Blue skies

    I finally got into Bluesky this week, and I don’t dislike it! Threads is unfortunately a place where I’m visible to everyone who knows me on Facebook/Instagram, which is to a large degree my real-life social graph. And what I liked about Twitter was that it was an online place for my online identity and my online people. I’m hopeful that Bluesky can be more of a Twitter replacement, and its relatively smaller size could be a strength, as long as the people I want to follow are on there. At this point, I’m rarely even checking Mastodon.

    Follow me at @sangsara.bsky.social if you’re on there.

    Crypto/web3 interlude

    Coinbase launched their new Ethereum L2 chain, called Base, and its stated purpose is to be a more user-friendly blockchain that could go mainstream and be used by the next billion people (ambitious). They say (and I like this positioning) that “online” was the first revolution, and “onchain” will be the next.

    I’ve been playing with it within their Coinbase Wallet app, and enjoying their “Onchain Summer” campaign which focuses on minting a bunch of free/very cheap NFTs. It’s a good demo of how low gas fees are on Base compared to regular ol’ Ethereum; most transactions cost just pennies. There’s still a lot of work to be done to make this more understandable, and arguably the entire user experience of creating and funding a new wallet needs to be rethought.

    The main launch event was Cozomo de’ Medici (who I thought everyone agreed was Snoop Dogg but now may not be?) partnering with the Friends with Benefits (FWB) DAO and the Korean animator DeeKay to launch a pair of Open Edition artworks depicting a cryptocurrency future. Importantly, people could buy them with a credit card, instead of fumbling with wiring money to Coinbase and then buying ethereum and then sending it to their self-custodied wallets on the Base chain.

    Did I lose you in crypto-jargon land? Don’t worry, I can’t keep up either. Think of Open Editions like an all-you-can-eat buffet, but with a closing time. The intent is to encourage access over the usual scarcity and price speculation. In this case, the NFTs were only available to be minted for 24 hours, and apparently some 70,000 were snapped up at a cost of 0.01 eth each (around $20 USD, I think). That’s still a cool $1.4M made!

    Sounds of summer

    We enjoyed this summer vibes playlist compiled by XG (Apple Music) while lazing in the pool this week. I still can’t get their housey new song, TGIF, out of my head.

    Speaking of Apple Music, I noticed a new personalized radio option appeared on my “For You” tab this week, called Discovery Station. 9to5Mac.com reports that this feature has been in testing for awhile, with people spotting it on and off over the past year (how do I get into these betas?!) — in any case I’m glad to see new features and am hoping for more improvements around the launch of iOS 17.

  • Week 31.23

    Week 31.23

    I fell ill with a fever that spiked Monday night, and then strangely subsided the next day, replaced by wrenching back pain and body aches after a night of hallucinatory dreams that felt perfectly sensible at the time. Then on Wednesday just as I thought I was getting better, I was struck by the worst bout of diarrhea I’ve had in recent memory. It lasted practically all day, even after I’d eaten nothing but white bread and water, even after there was nothing left to expel.

    What made things worse is one of our neighbors recently sold their flat and the new owners are doing renovations right now, with the few days of heavy demolition coinciding perfectly with my time in bed.

    The doctor I spoke to prescribed me some dubious medication: one of them, meant to be taken an hour before food, is normally prescribed to people with stomach ulcers or gastric reflux problems. I mean, it reduces the production of stomach acid, which surely helps, but I went online and one of the things it’s clearly not prescribed for is diarrhea. It even says that if you are experiencing diarrhea, you need to inform your doctor before they prescribe this. I stopped taking it after the first dose. Maybe I’m too much of a WebMD believer and should just trust real doctors but it was prescribed so casually along with four other things that I can’t trust it’s necessary.

    So I got on the so-called BRAT diet, which stands for Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, and Toast — basically all you can eat is bland stuff. I’m surviving on bread and bananas and a little peanut butter at the moment.

    Oh, I learnt the above neat trick on Twitter in the process. If you wrap the stems on a bunch of bananas with plastic, it prevents them from going black and rotting. They release some sort of gas while ripening (?!) and by blocking the rest of the bananas from it, they last much longer.

    Photo from @BrianLeeWow on Twitter

    Another thing I learnt from on the internet this week was the existence of an obscure Sanrio character turned internet darling, confusingly named “Big Challenges”. He’s an optimistic crocodile that was created in 1978 and then dropped off the map until fans petitioned in 2020 for his return. And now he’s made an appearance as an NPC in the new Apple Arcade game, Hello Kitty Island Adventure, which may have been named in reference to a 2006 South Park meme? (Disclaimer: the featured image on this post is not from the game; I made it with AI.)

    As for the game itself, it’s getting great reviews, and seems to be very much Animal Crossing but with Sanrio characters. So perhaps I’ll be spending some time with it next week while on my own island getaway.

    What island getaway? Well, by the time you read this scheduled post, I will (hopefully) be on a small secluded holiday island with nearly no internet connectivity, no television, and no air conditioning. To be honest, I’m a little worried we’ll get there after two boat rides and an hour’s drive only to be put into cages and executed on camera for the dark web. Barring that nightmare outcome (inspired by a book I read recently), it promises to be three days of unplugged relaxation: reading, floating in a private pool, looking out at the ocean, maybe gaming a little, and sweating my ass off.

    But first I’ll have to get over the anxiety I feel when I think of not being online and connected to everything. I mean, things are moving so fast these days, I could back next week to find the stock market’s crashed, or every country’s locked in a room-temperature superconductor arms race, or some new AI has decided I should do twice as much work for less money.

    On one of those topics, it’s now 6pm on Saturday and I’ve spent the last hour watching a YouTube livestream by the National Taiwan University’s science department, as they test their LK-99 sample for superconductive properties. That’s another thing that started this week (or last?), some Korean scientists released a paper on their attempts to fabricate a superconductor over the last 20 years, in the most confusing way possible with multiple releases, internal fighting, and not much clarity on whether this thing is real. But it’s gotten every backyard chemist online into trying to replicate their process, which is apparently not hard. It’s something the human race could have accidentally discovered a hundred years ago, which makes my skin tingle! Imagine an alternate universe where we’ve had this technology all that time.

    The stream started strong, but then I was appalled at their inability to present this in a camera-ready way. The lab is a mess, and they didn’t have their workspace prepped to work with the sample; it was being moved around with pieces of paper on a crowded desk, and at one point it looked like they were going to drop it on the floor. Watching it, I finally understand why all the videos and photos posted online so far by other enthusiasts have been so blurry and lo-fi. Scientists are not YouTubers!

    So far, it’s been a washout. The tiny sample they derived, in part because of a failure to neatly separate it from the quartz tube without resorting to the use of a hammer, has not responded to a magnet. They’re doing something called a SQUID test now, but I don’t think it’s looking good. Might have something to do with their decision to use different temperatures and baking times than cited in the original paper. In any case, other labs around the world seem to have been able to replicate LK-99 to some extent, so I’m hoping we’ll “be so back” by this time next week.

    Okay that’s enough from me. Here’s some music I liked this week.

    XG released the next song from their upcoming mini-album (I can’t wait), and it’s called TGIF, and it stands for “Thank God I’m Fly”. I love it.

    I discovered the Japanese ambient artist Haruka Nakamura, who came out of a hiatus to work with The North Face to create four albums of background music for their Harajuku “Sphere” store. One for each season. What a gig.

    Light Years
    Those Days, Light Years II
    From Dusk to the Sun, Light Years III
    Sun.Light, Light Years IV

    Utada Hikaru put out a new single called Gold — Mata Au Hi Made which I’ve only heard once but found sadly unengaging. I’ll have to get back to it later.

  • 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.