sangsara.net

Tag: Music

  • Week 50.21

    • We made it through another 50 weeks of a pandemic year. It’s surprising to see the number; saying it aloud instantly recalls many things that happened and also a sense of regret for all that couldn’t. Time is often called the ultimate scarce asset, but I think being time rich is useless if one is energy poor.
    • Energy is the one thing I don’t have this very moment, having just received my booster dose yesterday. I went with Moderna for my first two and experienced some trippy and difficult side effects. The rumors are true: Pfizer isn’t as bad, but it’s not nothing. Much like me, my immune system is prone to overreacting. It also means I can’t do Ring Fit Adventure for the recommended two weeks, during the worst time of year to skip exercise.
    • Maybe I already mentioned our scent-challenged Christmas tree last week. Well, it finally got decorated and there are now gifts under it. As a gift to myself (that I’ve already started using), I got the new Fujifilm Instax mini Evo camera. It’s just launched locally and in Japan, with a North American debut planned for February. Like the various crappy toy cameras that were popular awhile back, the Harinezumi and such, it’s a low-quality digital camera meant for fun shots with a grainy/blurry, poorly exposed aesthetic. On top of that, it has an Instax printer built in, so you can chuck out giveaway photos at a party, funeral, or board meeting. It’s not Fujifilm’s first attempt at this, but it’s the first that isn’t ugly or burdened with some other gimmicks (the last one recorded accompanying sound clips you could play via a QR code on every photo).
    • Many years ago when Go Go Curry shut their local outlets, I was pretty bummed about it and was especially offended by the franchisee spinning up their own copycat brand where all the restaurants used to be. It was a pale imitation, with several gimmicks thrown in that were not to my liking, but made them popular nevertheless. I generally dislike when food is “adapted to local tastes”. Anyway, this week we were near one around dinner time and decided to give Monster Curry another go, since it’s been years and the sour memory needed updating. And… they were actually good? I was just in disbelief that they turned it around: better quality ingredients, properly fried katsu, no skimping on the curry. Credit where credit’s due.
    • We don’t often use our Amazon Prime Video subscription, given the smaller library here, but I went looking for interesting things and came across an exclusive anime series called Babylon. I ended up watching all 12 episodes of it despite the unevenness, hoping for a payoff and some answers. Nope. It ends abruptly without much of a satisfying conclusion to the big questions. Avoid unless they make a second season.
    • Not disappointing at all is Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds, which I’m currently reading. The title and premise may make you think it’s a mediocre YA SF-lite adventure novel, but it refreshes ideas like traveling between parallel worlds, and utopian cities with all the have-nots living beyond the walls, and adds excellent writing around race/class/identity politics, spiritualism, and the lasting effects of violence.
    • Tons of new music got added to my library, but I haven’t had a chance to hear any of it. At the front of the line is Alicia Keys’ and Aimee Mann’s new albums.
    I like that they tried to use the X series’ design language, but the actual product is very plasticky and the charging port is literally covered with a flap of soft PVC.
    Under the right conditions, the Instax mini Evo can take pretty good shots!
    Most suffer exposure metering issues like this white plate of improved curry (you can manually stop down but it’s fiddly).

  • 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:

    — 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.

  • Week 45.21

    • On Monday we had the day off, so it was off to IKEA for some shopping (reasonably crowded for a weekday) and then the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands (not very crowded) to check out two exhibitions. One was kinda video gamey, curated by Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Lumines and Rez fame, and the other was about Sound: artworks visualizing it, historical inventions, and novel ways of experiencing it.
    • The most powerful bit was probably at the end of the above mentioned Orchestral Maneuvers attraction. 40 loudspeakers, each one playing a discrete recording of a single vocalist, working together to literally surround you with a choral musical work. You know what stereo separation sounds like, and even what spatial audio with Dolby Atmos sounds like, but this was on another level for recorded sound. You could walk around and change the mix, as it were.
    • Thursday was another day off, with the Diwali/Deepavali public holiday here. We didn’t do anything of note apart from going out to eat way too much Chinese hotpot. I still think of our visit to Taiwan just before Covid-19 hit, and how we ate at this Wulao hotpot restaurant multiple times. If there was stomach space left at the end of a night after cocktails, Wulao. No plans for lunch the day after, Wulao. I’d previously never gotten into that sort of food before, so it was making up a lifetime of ignoring hot tofu skin, coagulated duck blood, and other things that don’t sound so nice when typed out.
    • We saw the new Apple TV+ movie, Finch, starring Tom Hanks. Two of the biggest films on the service star the same guy, which is slightly odd. Anyway, I enjoyed it just fine. They also did good work on the CGI because I often forgot that a certain element wasn’t actually there in real life. 3.5 stars.
    • Someone mentioned a mutual acquaintance had gotten a job at Facebook, and a quick look on LinkedIn indicated that they are hiring aggressively for the local office, which led to a discussion (okay maybe more of a rant on my part) about people who make the Faustian bargain of working there. Then I came across this piece in The Atlantic saying perhaps it’s time we regard the company as a hostile foreign power rather than just a corporation. Still, calls like these have been made for years, and I think the simple fact is that Facebook has reached a state of untouchability. Money breaks down enough resistance to ensure that they’ll always be able to hire; hell, we all have a price. I see little hope of them being dismantled by either customer outrage or legal process. We can only hope for an unforced error. May the Meta era push for ecosystem ownership be full of them.
    • Radiohead’s newly rereleased KID A MNESIA albums have been on rotation. It was an amazing period for their music, although I’d still have to give the crown to OK Computer. I remember having a copy of Amnesiac that came in a little red hardcover art book. I wonder where that went.

  • Week 43.21

    • Apple unveiled their long-anticipated MacBook Pro redesign on Tuesday, and for once it wasn’t about thinner and sexier, but thicker and comfier. Pretty sure I saw a joke somewhere along the lines of “who among us isn’t thicker now”. I’m glad to see the reversion to more ports, MagSafe, and an integrated SD card reader, more because it shows the company is still willing to correct mistakes, but don’t actually want or need anything I saw — I’m happy not being a Pro and just puttering around doing casual normie shit on my Air.
    • Some people have waited a long time for the 3rd-generation AirPods, and while I’m a little annoyed the AirPod Pros have now been bested at battery life, not resuming music inappropriately when in a pocket, and charging via MagSafe (unless you buy a pair now and get the updating charging case), I understand they’re on their own development path and will someday get new features. Until then, there are attractive new Beats earbuds coming that look like they’ll fix my continuing fit issues with AirPods.
    • A couple of weeks ago I wrote that Covid cases here went nuclear, reaching up to 2,000/day. Well, in the days since we’ve become numb to numbers of about 3,500/day, and they’re not letting up. The majority of us have been vaccinated, so these cases would mostly be without much consequence (well, who can say? This Swedish report is worrying), but as long as it spreads widely and we have people who won’t get vaccinated, we seem unable to risk opening up further. So the authorities have extended restrictions for another month into November. It’s still dining out and movement for people in groups of two only.
    • I finished Journey Mode in Tetris Effect Connected for Switch, which I wasn’t able to do when I played it on the PS4. Maybe a matter of controllers, or luck. The multiplayer modes are novel, and I love the one where you team up with two other human players online to battle the AI, occasionally joining up your three individual playfields into one super-wide collaborative screen. When you pull off a win, it feels like a moment of miraculous teamwork with strangers; good natured, fun, and communicative.
    • I managed to complete last season’s Battle Pass in Call of Duty: Mobile, but just barely in time. For those who don’t play, that means I spent enough time grinding for in-game currency that I can enter the next season without paying real money. But fatigue is setting in. I don’t think I can do four consecutive tours of duty. Will probably drop out after this new Halloween-themed one is done.
    • Tricky released a new album with some friends under the banner of “Lonely Guest”, which is also the name of the album (Apple Music). It’s very high on my to-do list, but I’ve heard a bit and it doesn’t disappoint.
    • Verve/Impulse Records also released a live performance of A Love Supreme from Seattle, 1965. It’s not really mixed for headphones, sadly, so put this on your HomePod if you’re fortunate enough to have one, as they are STILL NOT AVAILABLE IN SINGAPORE DESPITE THIS WEEK’S ANNOUNCEMENT OF NEW ONES.
    iPhone 13 Pro macro photo from a walk this week, film look via the Prequel app

  • Week 42.21

    • As a careful handler and frequent upgrader of iPhones — I joke that it’s one of my few excesses, and if I get hit by a bus, I don’t want one of my regrets to be that I’d spent the last 11 months tolerating the old model — buying AppleCare+ has been a waste of money. I pay for two years, only use one, and don’t actually use it because I never put a scratch on it.
    • This year, I discovered thanks to my friend and colleague Henry that Singapore has also implemented the ability for you to cancel your AppleCare+ plan at any time and get a pro-rated refund. In other words, pay only for what you need. This change happened a year or so ago in the US, but I assumed it wasn’t ever coming here (like the HomePods). So I was able to end my iPhone 12 Pro’s coverage with just a phone call.
    • Afterwards, I managed to sell my iPhone without having to deal with hagglers and trolls on Carousell (local eBay equivalent), or going around to used mobile phone stores and negotiating with them. Reebelo.com literally brings those merchants to you. You specify the condition of your phone/tablet, and get an instant quote from one of them. Set a date and time, and someone will come to your doorstep with cash (there’s still a bit of haggling as they will invariably find a scratch you never noticed before).
    • Last week I mentioned succumbing to a new “Nintendo Switch (OLED model)”, which, hand on heart, is its official name, which should tell you something about the migration process to expect. It is NOT an elegant or lovable user experience. There will be no plug-and-play on Christmas morning with Nintendo at the helm; I spent over an hour individually transferring each user profile over wirelessly (although they were already on the removable SD card), and then redownloading all the games over the internet (already on said SD card), and then manually downloading a separate app onto both systems just to transfer Animal Crossing’s saved data over (yup, SD card) because it’s just a special game don’t you know. Obviously I’ll draw a link to restoring a new iPhone from iCloud (the Switch actually has cloud backups of all save games!) and how comparatively easy that is.
    • The OLED screen is unbelievably, eye-searingly vibrant, and while it’s definitely an improvement over the muddiness of the original Switch’s screens, it will take some getting used to. It’s made by Samsung, and maybe having that knowledge is making my brain go “yes, the saturation does sort of remind me of using a Galaxy phone”.
    • I’ve been playing Tetris Effect: Connected, a game I already bought once for the PS4, but Tetris has such history as a handheld game (especially on Nintendo platforms), so it had to be done.
    • Despite all the wallet emptying or maybe because of it, I’ve really appreciated being funemployed this week.

    • TV-wise, we binged the new season of Love On The Spectrum on Netflix, a reality dating show following people with autism, started on the new season of You, a dark comedy-drama following a romantic serial killer, and continued watching Seinfeld, a period sitcom following a politically incorrect group of friends through romantic misadventures.
    • I’ve been slowly taking in Godzilla Singular Point, an anime series on Netflix that seems to be slowly making its way (reluctantly?) to a story that must have Godzilla in it at some point, driven by an interesting cast of human characters and one adorable AI assistant in cartoon dog form.
    • The new Super Deluxe remastered edition of The Beatles’ Let It Be is finally out, and it sounds pristine as one might expect. I don’t know what Beatles fanatics think of this album — do they think it’s patchy? Aren’t they all in some way? — but it might be one of my favorites.

  • Week 36.21

    • I said last week that I wouldn’t end up buying an NFT, but that’s exactly what I’ve gone and done. Two, even. I’m classifying the associated costs as educational, along with all the time I now spend looking up and absorbing blockchain-related knowledge. Upon reflection, this area probably constitutes the largest and most meaningful use of my time so far during this sabbatical; something I wouldn’t have guessed at the outset.
    • Since people like to display their NFTs, I’ve added a separate page on this site for them, which you’ll probably see in the navigation bar somewhere above. Speaking of which, I’ve also cleaned up the Sidebar/About section and made a separate page for navigating the blog archives via search, categories, tags, and all that.
    • I’ve been listening to Donda, taking it in and feeling kinda sorry for Kanye. Then Drake’s Certified Lover Boy came out this week and it was like easy listening. The first playthrough was smooth, kinda enjoyable, and unchallenging. It felt like relief after Donda, and so I thought I liked it better. After listening to them both again, I think Kanye has created the better work, patchy and weird as it is. As of this minute, the leaked track Life Of The Party still hasn’t been officially released, so I’ll be waiting for that.
    • Meanwhile in the UK, Dave’s just released his second album, We’re All Alone In This Together, and I urge you to give it a chance. The song Clash with Stormzy and In The Fire (which features a Giggs verse with his classic flow) are particular standouts.
    • TV-wise, I’ve been watching a rather good Chinese anime (can you say that?) series called Link Click which has a novel gimmick where one of the protagonists can sort of time travel into the past, provided he has a photo of the scene. He then inhabits the body of the photographer for a short amount of time: the window in which they have to solve a mystery or obtain some information.
    • Similarly titled but nowhere as fun is Netflix’s new series Clickbait starring Adrian Grenier of Entourage fame, which we binged over the weekend. Okay it’s not bad, and if you like having the rug pulled out from under you every other episode, then it’s a fine way to spend some time.
    • I’ve started playing Beatstar, a mobile music/rhythm game on iPhone by Space Ape Games. It will remind you of Tap Tap Revolution from the early days of the App Store, but is possibly even better than that. I learnt about it on Twitter from following @xndra who happens to work there — follow her for mobile gaming-related content.

  • Week 35.21

    • The week passed without much direction, pockets of time invested in various pursuits without any idea of their worth or contribution to a larger whole, psychologically enjoyable but with an undercurrent of guilt and worry. In other words, I’ve been a lousy bum.
    • The existence of a Gossip Girl reboot for today’s teens would make any Millennial feel old, but it… feels like it’s written by one of us? That’s not really a compliment. So while it’s trashy fun with scenes that would have been shocking on TV 20 years ago, the way it tries to incorporate current social media and cultural trends, and how it sounds while doing it, feels inauthentic. Haha, here I am complaining that Gossip Girl doesn’t feel real like it used to. I mostly spend every episode trying to figure out who each actor resembles most.
    • On Monday evening we took a walk in the neighborhood. By Tuesday afternoon, many of the homes we passed would have been flooded up their driveways. It was the single heaviest day of rainfall in any August ever, I believe the news said. It was a normal August’s entire month of rain in a single day. As apartment dwellers we were unaffected, but watched online videos of overflowing canals and mall basements in borderline horror. (It’s now the following Monday morning and we’ve got reports of flooding around the island once again.)
    • For much of the week, I was looking forward to Friday for the (re)release of Asphalt 8 on Apple Arcade, with all its in-app purchases removed and replaced with a more traditional “premium” progression model. The game is 8 years old now, but it looks just fine and is still being played and refined regularly — the free-to-play edition was updated last week, so it must be doing good numbers. As I said in a review I left on the App Store, this is a welcome return to Asphalt’s roots, as anyone who played its original incarnation back on the Nintendo DS (Wikipedia) would know. I paid $60 for it then, which was roughly a dollar per polygon.
    • It’s a testament to Gameloft Barcelona’s work (or my degeneracy as a gamer) that I can be literally sitting in front of a PS4 and Switch but spend hours playing a mobile racing game on my iPad instead.
    • The next Apple Arcade release I’m looking forward to is yet another Nintendo DS revival: Zookeeper World. If you haven’t had the pleasure of playing Zookeeper, it’s essentially an animal-themed Bejeweled with a sort of blocky pixel art aesthetic, cheap but lovably annoying tunes, and a multiplayer mode where you mess with your opponent’s vision. This was also a $60 game back in the day, and I remember playing it to death in university on my DS Phat. It was such a blast that several of my non-gamer housemates ended up buying DSes just to play Zookeeper!
    • At the week’s end, I hung out with some friends at a cafe all afternoon and discovered with the help of my HiCoffee app how it feels to exceed the recommended amount of caffeine in a day: pretty fucking awful. I had what felt like a coffee hangover the next morning and had to cut down to a single shot for the day.
    • Tech-wise, I spent time looking at NFTs and being tempted to do something stupid (pretty sure I won’t) and getting my feet wet in the Terra ecosystem. In particular the Anchor and Orion projects, which enable high interest rates for savings, of around 19.5% and 13.5% pa respectively. To use Anchor, you’ll have to set up a Terra wallet and deposit UST (their USD stablecoin), but Orion makes it easier by bridging your Ethereum stablecoins like DAI/USDT/USDC over to Anchor while still returning higher rates than anywhere else. I think they’re incredibly interesting and worth looking into if you’d like to experience something that sounds too good to be true but actually seems to work. This is not financial advice, of course.
    • Now if you’ll excuse me, Donda (Apple Music) just came out and needs listening to.

  • Week 34.21: I keep looking at my mood ring (it says too much caffeine)

    • There’s a spot on the carpet where I like to sit most days while watching TV or using the iPad, and it’s gone flat from my lounging about. At the start of the week, I told myself I’d play the hell out of Neo: The World Ends With You, which I was once so excited for. I didn’t even start it up once. So I guess now’s not the time.
    • Tetris Beat on Apple Arcade (App Store) did come out, and my hopes were extremely high for a Tetris game set to music, dependent on players dropping tetrominos to the beat. Unfortunately it still needs some polish: there are sync and calibration issues for players transitioning between speakers and wireless headphones; UX gaps; and poor support for iPad and iPhone users with controllers. Even the basic touch and slide controls don’t feel just right. I’m hopeful that it’ll get better with updates.
    • I finished watching the new Evangelion movies with 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time (Amazon Prime Video), which was easily the best of the series. I think it works and transcends its “flaws”, of which there still are plenty, because Anno finally found the will to contrast heaviness with a hint of joy and kindness. Afterwards, I sat through the credits in emotional shock, and immediately resumed my stillborn viewing of the original NGE series on Netflix. Still making my way through those.
    • Lorde’s new album, Solar Power (Apple Music), is finally out. I avoided hearing it for the first couple of days, afraid that it would let me down. Now on my fourth playthrough, and happy to report that I love it.
    • Also discovered this song from Asian American rapper Miyachi, which utilizes the Family Mart audioweapon jingle to great effect. Also check out his new single Chu-Hi (YouTube), about the joys of Japanese hard seltzers, and his street comedy (?) series, Konbini Confessions, which seems to be an elaborate promotion for the song.

    • For what feels like ages now, I’ve been reading Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace. This week I made it past the halfway mark. It’s alright but goes on for a bit longer than it needs to for such a thin storyline. It’s world building, I suppose, but this sort of caricaturized capitalist future where supersoldiers fighting an eternal corp vs. corp war are turned into marketable BTS-type idols that everyone loves and buys merch for, even after they die, doesn’t really need or stand up to this much exploration imho.
    • I drink coffee daily, and at night I think about waking up the next day so I can drink coffee again. This Friday’s App Store refresh highlighted an app called HiCoffee, which tracks your caffeine intake, visualizes how much is in your system at any time, and whether it’s at risk of disturbing your sleep. For those who remember Jawbone’s wearable UP trackers, they used to have a complementary app called UP Coffee that did something similar (The Verge). Despite my miserly ways, I happily unlocked the premium functions for S$10 just because it’s very nice work. There’s a host of iOS widgets and Apple Watch complications for displaying your caffeine levels, and the built-in coffee database has info for all of Nespresso’s pods, Starbucks’ drinks, McCafe, Dunkin, and many more.
    • As if to confirm my beliefs, the universe or its algorithms then delivered me this excellent Guardian article on caffeine and its effects on the body and society. It’s got some interesting bits, like the history of coffeehouses in the UK, and the insight that maybe the rituals of consuming caffeine lend an unconscious order to how we tackle our work throughout the day, ebbing and flowing between focused and creative work as it wears off.
    • Prompted by a friend’s reports of how well their investments in the Luna token were doing, I looked into the Terra ecosystem out of Korea and was impressed by its vision — insomuch as someone with little background in economics can certify a financial flywheel logical and brilliant. I don’t know what I don’t know, but it sure looks good to me.
    • The universe struck again and I found myself out to Korean BBQ the next day with some colleagues, where we drank a beer called Terra. Afterwards realized it was my first time eating out in more than a month: dining out was forbidden back in July, and then full vaccination became a prerequisite for entering restaurants, and Kim only recently got her certification. The initial moments were a little disorienting. As many have already observed, you can indeed forget how to sit across from a group of people and eat together. Thankfully, I didn’t know I missed it till now.