Do you remember Paper by fiftythree, the sketching app that was at one point the very best digital ink engine on iPad? Actually, it kinda still is. I recently decided to use it again because Apple Notes and Freeform have really ugly lines, and Procreate is overkill for anything besides making art. I subscribed to Paper Pro (a very reasonable S$13/yr) which finally lets me sync my skeuomorphic notebooks across devices. I used to sketch scenes and take silly notes on vacations with it, and I’m doing it again now on my iPhone. Paper’s focused simplicity and lovely UI makes it possible, and enjoyable.
Someone remarked that maybe travel brings out the artist in me, to which I replied no, it’s probably more like “not working” makes me happier and more creative?
On the eve of our journey I was playing with the new v5 model in Midjourney (it’s incredible at photorealism) and had the idea of rendering soldiers jumping away from dramatic explosions, but the explosions are ramen. The final images reminded me of the award-baiting print campaigns I saw in my early career as a copywriter. It used to cost thousands of dollars and weeks of several creatives’ time to plan, photograph, and digitally edit these scenes. But here I was lying in bed with the idea of turning them into Pot Noodle ads, and would you know it? I was able to make every word and misaligned pixel of these on my phone in a matter of minutes. The world has changed so much.
We’re in Japan!
We got on the wrong train from the airport which cost us maybe an extra 15 minutes, and it was after midnight by the time we checked into the hotel. But on the street nearby, a cheap ramen restaurant open 24 hours on weekends. A bowl of tonkotsu ramen, a side of fried rice, and a mug of Kirin beer for S$10 — unbelievable value partly thanks to the depreciating yen 🥲
The next day was cold and rainy, and I met Michael for a coffee and long chat — our second ever meeting, and the first in eight whole years. 2015 oddly doesn’t seem that long ago. I think the cafe overcharged us. But at least we remembered to take a photo this time.
Maybe due to the lack of sleep, change of climate, and sudden increase in daily steps, my body rebelled in the evening with a fever that had me shivering under the covers. Obviously I was afraid it was Covid. I woke up feeling much better the next morning apart from a backache, so perhaps it’s just a mild flu. The Covid test came out negative, so I dragged myself out to visit Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara for old times’ sake and see what was new.
The camera section has shrunk down to half its former size, if not more. Side note: the Bic Camera in Ikebukuro has about eight floors of stuff, and no cameras. The Ricoh GR display in Yodobashi is about two feet wide, in their home country. The industry really looks to be in a sad state. And yet, several crowded shops devoted to old and analog cameras exist.
I had lunch at Coco Ichibanya and it was very good. How the Singaporean franchisee has managed to hold onto their business is astounding — they do such a bad job of it. One thing that’s changed is touchscreen ordering at each table. That, and plastic dividers between each patron, seem to be Covid-era innovations that have also made Japan more tourist friendly.
It’s only been a couple of days but something feels different about this visit. Maybe I prepared myself too well for never traveling again under Covid and now this feels like being woken in the middle of the night, disoriented. Maybe I no longer fantasize about moving out here and living a sleepwalking, alien life. Or maybe it’s the fact that many of the things I used to enjoy seeing and buying in Japan can now be found back home (more expensively, of course), or aren’t actually desirable anymore. Case in point: I saved at least an hour today bypassing the hundreds of headphones in electronic stores because between the AirPods Pro and Max, I don’t really need other headphones. Over the past ten years, the things I get excited about have dwindled and become software. Dedicated hardware toys like music instruments and Boogie Boards are just apps or features on an iPhone. They may still sell CDs here but I just stream the songs. Japanese games are plentiful (check out the Nintendo Switch aisles), but I can’t read them so… maybe in the next life. On one hand, less stuff and a neater, more minimal life. On the other, less shopping, silly delight, and souvenirs.
My former colleague/boss/mentor has a new gig heading up programs at a design school. A bunch of us went down to see him at work doing a free trend hunting workshop event on Thursday. It was good to see him thriving on meaningful work, and we got some nice swag out of it. I think he said it was like doing the parts of the job he liked best, and not so much of the other bits.
Amidst busyness; packing and planning for our holiday. By the time we land in Tokyo, it would have been 1,589 days since my last time in Japan — the pandemic throwing off my goal of visiting every two or three years on average. Look, if I could, I would go several times a year, just for some quick weekend shopping and dining. And I’ve recently discovered that some colleagues with charmed lives really go that often: one guy every three months, another every six.
We watched the new Netflix documentary about Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which hasn’t put me in the mood for a seven hour flight. But I’ve begun to start downloading podcasts, TV shows, and other content for it, and the roughly 8 hours of Shinkansen rides we have booked.
I don’t think I could take watching more Succession right now. The banality of it irritates me. I just want it to be Billions but it isn’t.
Missed Fortune is an Apple Original Podcast that I’m going to give a go. It’s completely free and I presume ad-free too. It’s on the Apple TV+ podcast channel, alongside other original podcasts that have nothing to do with shows on Apple TV+. I’ve never heard anyone talking about these, nor seen them advertised. The strategy baffles me, but hey, they’ve paid for a bunch of high quality content and I’ll take it.
I probably won’t be updating this blog weekly while away. I may post random photos or videos; I haven’t decided. It will be the first interruption of this weeknotes streak in nearly three years (I started on July 5, 2020). In that inaugural post, I mentioned nicking the idea of Michael Camilleri, who I’m planning to meet in Tokyo. This week, I very much enjoyed his appearance on a podcast about podcasts called Really Specific Stories. Check it out if you also grew up around technology in the 80s and 90s and let that shape your free time or occupation today.
I may not need to update this blog myself for much longer. Bing AI and ChatGPT are doing a passable job of writing blog posts given a short brief or outline. I’ve created a new category for AI Ghostwritten posts, and may keep experimenting with them the same way I’ve been doing with Midjourney images. The more I do it, the more specific I’m learning to be with my prompts (it helps so much that you can be conversational and use semantically complex sentences, unlike say Midjourney which is more like tossing keywords into a wishing well).
Bing AI is pretty good at generating screenplays as well. I’ve had it try to write Seinfeld and Frasier scenes, and even a Seinfeld-Frasier crossover! Here’s one, but it really helps if you know what they sound like and can play it out in your head:
[INT. JERRY'S APARTMENT - DAY]
JERRY: So, you're really going to Japan?
GEORGE: Yeah, why not? It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
JERRY: What opportunity? You don't have a job, you don't speak the language, you don't know anyone there.
GEORGE: Exactly. It's a fresh start. A new horizon. A chance to reinvent myself.
JERRY: As what? A sumo wrestler?
GEORGE: Ha ha. Very funny. No, Jerry, as a businessman. A successful businessman.
JERRY: Oh, really? And what kind of business are you going to do in Japan?
GEORGE: I don't know yet. Something lucrative. Something cutting-edge. Something...Japanese.
JERRY: Like what? Sushi? Karaoke? Anime?
GEORGE: Maybe. Maybe all of them. Maybe none of them. The point is, I'm open to anything.
JERRY: Anything except reality.
[KRAMER ENTERS]
KRAMER: Hey hey hey! What's up, fellas?
JERRY: Hey, Kramer.
GEORGE: Hi, Kramer.
KRAMER: Guess what? I'm going to Japan!
JERRY AND GEORGE (in unison): You're going to Japan?
KRAMER: Yeah! Isn't it great?
JERRY: How did that happen?
KRAMER: Well, you know my friend Bob Sacamano?
JERRY AND GEORGE (in unison): Yeah...
KRAMER: Well, he just got back from Japan and he told me all about it. He said it's amazing over there. They have everything you can imagine and more.
JERRY: Like what?
KRAMER: Like robots! They have robots everywhere! Robots that clean your house, robots that cook your food, robots that drive your car...
JERRY AND GEORGE (in unison): Really?
KRAMER: Yeah! And they're friendly too! They talk to you and tell jokes and give advice...
JERRY AND GEORGE (in unison): Wow!
KRAMER: Yeah! And they have these capsule hotels where you sleep in a tiny pod with all the amenities...
JERRY AND GEORGE (in unison): Cool!
KRAMER: Yeah! And they have these vending machines that dispense anything you want...
GEORGE: Anything?
KRAMER: Anything! Drinks, snacks, clothes, books, movies...
GEORGE: Movies?
KRAMER: Yeah! Movies! And not just any movies...my movies!
[HE PULLS OUT A DVD CASE WITH HIS FACE ON IT]
KRAMER (CONT'D): Look at this!
[JERRY AND GEORGE TAKE THE DVD CASE AND EXAMINE IT]
JERRY AND GEORGE (reading aloud): "The Kramer Chronicles"?
[KRAMER NODS PROUDLY]
KRAMER (CONT'D): That's right! It turns out I'm a huge star in Japan!
[JERRY AND GEORGE LOOK AT HIM IN DISBELIEF]
GEORGE: Wait a minute...wait a minute...you're telling me you're a movie star in Japan?
KRAMER: Yeah! That's right!
GEORGE: How? How did that happen?
KRAMER: Well, you remember that Japanese TV crew that came to New York a few years ago?
JERRY AND GEORGE (in unison): Yeah...
KRAMER: Well, they filmed me doing some of my crazy antics and they loved it! They put it on their show and it became a hit!
JERRY AND GEORGE (in unison): Really?
KRAMER: Yeah! And then they made a whole series out of it! The Kramer Chronicles! It's like Seinfeld but with me as the star!
JERRY AND GEORGE (in unison): Wow!
KRAMER: Yeah! And then they made a movie out of it! The Kramer Chronicles: The Movie! It's like The Hangover but with me as the star!
JERRY AND GEORGE (in unison): Wow!
KRAMER: Yeah! And then they made a sequel out of it! The Kramer Chronicles 2: Electric Boogaloo! It's like The Hangover Part II but with me as the star!
JERRY AND GEORGE (in unison): Wow!
KRAMER: Yeah! And then they made a trilogy out of it! The Kramer Chronicles 3: Tokyo Drift! It's like Fast and Furious but with me as the star!
JERRY AND GEORGE (in unison): Wow!
[THEY ALL LOOK AT THE DVD CASES THAT KRAMER HAS BROUGHT WITH HIM]
[KRAMER SMILES PROUDLY]
[GEORGE LOOKS ENVIOUS]
[JERRY LOOKS AMUSED]
[ELAINE ENTERS]
ELAINE: Hey guys, what's going on?
JERRY AND GEORGE (in unison): Hey Elaine.
ELAINE: What are you looking at?
[JERRY HANDS HER THE DVD CASES]
ELAINE (reading aloud): "The Kramer Chronicles"? What is this?
[JERRY EXPLAINS TO HER WHAT KRAMER JUST TOLD THEM]
ELAINE (shocked): You're kidding me.
[KRAMER SHAKES HIS HEAD NO]
ELAINE (CONT'D) (impressed): Wow. That's amazing.
[KRAMER BEAMS WITH JOY]
ELAINE (CONT'D) (to Kramer): So, you're going to Japan?
KRAMER: Yeah. I'm going to Japan.
ELAINE: When are you leaving?
KRAMER: Tomorrow.
ELAINE: Tomorrow? That soon?
KRAMER: Yeah. I have to catch my flight. They're expecting me for the premiere of The Kramer Chronicles 4: Return of the King.
ELAINE: There's a fourth one?
KRAMER: Yeah. There's a fourth one. It's like Lord of the Rings but with me as the star.
ELAINE: Wow.
[KRAMER NODS PROUDLY]
[GEORGE LOOKS EVEN MORE ENVIOUS]
[JERRY LOOKS EVEN MORE AMUSED]
[END OF SCENE]
If you made it to the end of that, you can have someother examples. Though I don’t know if I’ll keep those links up forever.
It’s been a fairly busy week at work, and it might just be the beginning of a longer stretch of stressful problem solving and multitasking. But we are off to Japan in two weeks! It’ll be my first vacation since Covid began, the last being Taiwan in late 2019.
I’ve forgotten how to do some of this stuff, from packing to making lists and generally getting in the right mind space to be comfortable going away. It’s also been an expensive week because I’ve had to buy a new suitcase (one of ours got broken last year when Kim had to travel), travel insurance, new power banks, new clothes for cold weather (no, the current cool and rainy spell we’re experiencing in Singapore, with hitherto impossible lows of 21°C, don’t really count), and pre-booked Shinkansen tickets which cost as much as domestic flights.
Two decisions which are easier this time than they usually are: what headphones and camera to bring.
The new AirPods Pro (2nd generation) are so much improved in noise canceling ability and sound quality than I have no reservations about using them as my only pair of headphones. Tokyo is a short flight of about seven hours, and their batteries should last the whole way with a short recharge in the case during meal service. Normally I’d pack a pair of over-ears, but I see no need here.
Since we’re traveling light, I could say I’m just going to rely on my iPhone 14 Pro (I’ve actually done that once; don’t know what got into me), but the Ricoh GR III is small and convenient enough that it will cost me very little to try using it as a main camera. Can’t the iPhone compare at 28mm? It’s probably closer than it’s ever been this year, but the GR sensor-lens system should still have the edge in pure optical quality terms, and there’s no substitute for the shift in mindset and focus you get when walking with a camera in your hand.
One tip we found on YouTube: there’s a new digital service from the Japanese government called Visit Japan Web where you can pre-declare your immigration and customs forms and save time filling in those arrival cards. You can do it all on your phone and get two QR codes to show at the airport. This should be the default everywhere.
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We saw Knock At The Cabin, M. Night Shyamalan’s new film, and enjoyed it. I shouldn’t mention the premise, as not knowing much is always part of the fun, but it cobbles together elements of other films and reworks a few tropes.
While talking about it afterwards, I realized that Shyamalan has two superpowers: he knows how to steal good cinematic tricks and make them great (for awhile I mistakenly thought JJ Abrams did too), and a knack for creating turning points in his films where your perception of the world flips or your immersion intensifies. That can be something like suddenly believing in one of the two dueling narratives (e.g. Is X real? Is this the present and not the past?), or the kind of big twist he became famous for. Often these two things happen at the same time.
I told Kim that I can’t think of one particular scene in The Sixth Sense without tearing up, and literally did so at that moment, which seemed to startle her. It’s the one with Toni Collette and Haley Joel Osment talking in the car, where the son says something that undeniably proves to his mother that he really does see dead people, which she absolutely did not believe up to that point.
It doesn’t matter whether you as the viewer already believed or not; their performances are so extraordinary, the scene is so deftly written, that you can’t help but experience the world-reversing revelation through her eyes. It also comes with a manipulative emotional gut punch (a bit ham-fisted, but whatever), which is why it’s stamped in my memory so hard. And The Sixth Sense is great because it does this over and over. It’s a triumph in the way musicians’ first albums are — years of stored-up ideas and raw energy packed into one work.
Anyway Knock At The Cabin had at least one of these moments for me, and Dave Bautista is a treasure. I’ve read reviews comparing him and The Rock as two former pro wrestlers turned actors, but it’s clear these days Bautista is the Actor. Strong 3.5 stars out of 5.
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We finished seeing every episode of Seinfeld. I can’t think of a better show about awful people. I’ll always love it.
We started watching Succession at long last, and it’s also a show about awful people but I don’t enjoy it much at all. There’s no payoff; they’re just all pathetic human beings with rich people problems? Perhaps they suffer greatly in the following episodes and you’re supposed to get a kick out of that. I’ll try to make it through the first season.
Sharper on Apple TV+ is a good 4-star film billed as a neo-noir, whatever that is. In this case, sharper is a noun, one carefully explained on an opening text card so as not to give too much away. If you don’t already know what the word means, don’t even look it up, just see the film.
I did a speed run through a 12-episode anime called Darwin’s Game on Netflix because it’s leaving the service this month. I got through it in a couple of hours. Not recommended unless you love battle royale style stories where people play supernatural “death games” organized by some sadistic game master, a la Alice In Borderland and too many others.
I made only one thing with Midjourney this week, a series of Tokyo-ites posing for street fashion photos.
My mother-in-law stayed with us for the week and a new routine was soon established: every night after dinner, we’d watch an old film from the 40s and 50s. This worked out well because I’ve been hoarding a bunch of film noir classics which my wife would never otherwise agree to sit through.
The best was undoubtedly The Third Man (1949) adapted from the Graham Greene novel and directed by one Carol Reed. I obviously thought Reed was a woman who somehow got to make a huge film and give Orson Welles direction, but nope, turns out Carol is a man. This is a film I’ve actually tried to watch three or four times; maybe even finished, but I couldn’t remember much. The first time might have been in film class at university. What a strange and meandering film, with intriguing technical aspects and unexpected emotional depth. The very last scene is one for the ages. I gave it five stars on Letterboxd.
The next one was Lured (1947), starring Lucille Ball and George Sanders, directed by Douglas Siri. This was the second-best, and features a pretty strong heroine for the time. Her role in a police plot to catch a killer is to be the bait, but she actually gets hired as a proper undercover detective to do it and she has some great comeback lines. 4 stars.
What a disappointment Key Largo (1948) was, though! Bogart and Bacall in a famous film — perhaps my expectations were too high? It’s slow, unfolds in basically one location, and feels like a play poorly adapted into motion picture form (I recall seeing in the credits that it was). 2.5 stars.
Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) brought the momentum back: a more complex film that plays with chronological jumps, multiple viewpoints, and intersecting roles in a heist that slowly makes more sense as the film goes on. Watched alongside others from the period, it stands out both for having more to say and trusting its audience to come along. 4 stars.
We ended on a slightly weak note with Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), which is apparently called his first true masterpiece. Ehhhhh. I do give it points for walking right up to the edge of incest and staring into it — one reviewer on Letterboxd put it like this: “This bitch wanted to straight up fuck her uncle! Hitchcock was so ahead of his time, he literally invented Cersei × Jamie.” But otherwise, 3 stars from me.
Coincidentally, I saw a tweet this week about the portrayal of sex in these old films, and how not being allowed to be explicit led directors and actors to create even more powerful suggestions of desire. I was also disappointed that this person was only on Twitter and not Mastodon. Can everyone hurry up and move already?
a fun thing about all this Hays Code anti-sex talk is that noir got around the guidelines by making the "unseen" lurid subtext as arousing and suggestive as possible. everybody wanted to fuck everybody and probably did and looked at eachother like this. pic.twitter.com/OacnuNBtZL
I discovered a great little free app, like, totally free. Been Outside uses geofences to track how much time you spend away from home. For someone like me who usually loves staying home and working remotely, it provides a way to assess how much this lousy life forces me to compromise on my introverted, shut-in preferences.
Speaking of, we binged (with fast forwarding) all 10 episodes of The Ultimatum: France on Netflix this weekend. For the unfamiliar, it’s a wretched reality TV show that takes couples where one party wants to get married, and makes them swap partners with each other to see if it changes their minds. Some end up back together stronger and agree to get married, others love the glimpse of another life and decide they don’t want to go back, and so on.
I’ve seen some of the American version and expected the French participants to be more debased, more promiscuous, but they were… not?! The biggest scandal was one person kissing a stranger during a night out. I said “speaking of” 118 words ago because at some point during the show, Kim sighed, “this world is really horrible”, and I laughed.
===
Our trip to Japan is less than a month away and many plans have yet to be made. We went out to a cafe for brunch today and sat side-by-side with our iPads and tried to do research together with a shared Safari Tab Group and a Freeform board. The latter has intermittent syncing hiccups that you never get with Miro, and makes working on it kinda scary, but it’s free and good enough and I’m looking forward to it being well supported and a key part of the Apple ecosystem! I want to believe!
Some Ricoh GR III snaps, Negative Film and BW modesMy one good Midjourney creation of the week
After a couple of Chinese New Year-related family activities in the first half of week, I took the remaining days off work. I’d hoped for it to feel long and restful, and to basically do nothing except play games and plug into new music and movies, but as you’ll know things rarely work out that way. I took way more time off work last year to do that and it still didn’t feel like enough.
We did some research for our trip to Japan later this year, and got hotel bookings in at last — everything is selling out fast, and you may get stuck with small smoking rooms or extravagantly expensive suites if you don’t hurry. Currently, the plan is to spend about a week in Tokyo followed by Kobe and Hiroshima, two places we’ve never been. Next, we’ll have to think about restaurant reservations, although it’s likely too late for anything super fancy or exclusive, if we even wanted that. If you have any recommendations for things to do or eat in those cities, please drop me a note on Mastodon, email, comments, whatever!
On food, I’ve eaten pretty well and badly this week. After chancing upon a new Chinese docuseries on Netflix (The Hot Life) about various regional hot pot cultures across China, I got the yearnings and we went and spent too much at the irritatingly named Beauty In The Pot, which I suppose is my second-favorite local Chinese hot pot chain. I’m no connoisseur but I’ve been to the Cou Cou at Jewel Changi Airport exactly once and it was the best I’ve had (small sample size, current definitive experience = Wu Lao in Taipei, where they infinitely refill the tofu in your steaming vessel for no charge). Oh yeah, there were also two big beef-centered meals of yakiniku and Texas-style barbecue. And a visit to Shake Shack which gave me my first taste of their local exclusive “Pandan Shake”, only like five years after they opened here and introduced it.
We also spent a day with two of our nieces and a nephew, taking them out to McDonald’s and then back to ours for videogames. I did a fresh reset of an old iPad (the last generation of 9.7” iPad Pros, which feels pretty sluggish now just scrolling around in iPadOS 16), filling it up with kid-friendly games from Apple Arcade like Sneaky Sasquatch, Fruit Ninja, Sonic Racing, Cooking Mama. I think they could easily have played on it until the battery died.
We also got on the Switch a bit, where I discovered Mario Battle Strikers is pretty hard at normal difficulty for a 9-year-old (and anyone on their team), and that Untitled Goose Game truly is a masterpiece of game design. The quirky concept just sucks everyone in, and it builds on the brilliant insight that mischief is a universal language.
On my own, I played and completed Death Come True on the Switch, although it’s also available on iOS. It’s a Japanese FMV game (that’s Full Motion Video for you kids who didn’t live through the CD-ROM era) where you watch what is essentially a Japanese network TV drama production and make a few choices that influence what happens next. The plot involves murder, amnesia, and some SF elements. It came out two or three years ago and has been on my to-do list since. I can recommend it if any of the above sounds good to you, whenever it’s on sale.
Another game crossed off my very long list is Kathy Rain: The Director’s Cut, which too is also on iOS. It’s a point-and-click adventure game in the style of Lucasarts and Sierra titles from the 90s. The artwork is on point, but I can’t say I enjoyed the whole experience. The story goes in a direction that didn’t work for me, and requires too much suspension of disbelief. Pity, I really wanted to like a detective mystery starring a motorcycle-riding woman in a leather jacket.
At some point, I will get onto the latest installments of two other classic point-and-click adventure series that are now also on the Switch (with modern graphics): Leisure Suit Larry and Monkey Island.
I also gave Borderlands 2 a go for the second time (I played it briefly on the Mac many years ago) but it didn’t take after a few hours. Between it and Doom Eternal, I was beginning to think I can’t play FPS games on the Switch; something just doesn’t feel right, even after tweaking the controller sensitivity. Is it the low framerate? Input lag? Maybe I hate the Switch’s Pro Controller? I can play these sorts of games fine on my PS4 and elsewhere, but moving and aiming feels so off here. But then I installed Crysis Remastered and it doesn’t seem so bad! Will give it a few more hours.
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Since I wasn’t in the middle of a book but didn’t have the energy to choose a “proper” one, I started on the next Jack Reacher installment, Personal (#19), and it was as easy as falling back into bed after brushing your teeth. Pulp fiction, it’s how you meet your Goodreads goals.
We saw two films this week, Arbitrage (2012) and Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022). I’d say they were 3.5 and 4 stars respectively. The former feels a little like David Finch’s The Game in datedness, despite being much newer. Perhaps it’s because the hedge fund guys are old and not finance bros, and Richard Gere keeps conspicuously thumbing his at his BlackBerry? No one in his rich circle uses an iPhone in 2012! The latter is a sumptuous fantasy with the kind of precision and quirkiness that you’d expect from George Miller, but it doesn’t leave enough of an imprint to be a classic.
Shrinking on Apple TV+ came out, and is very much worth watching. It’s apparently Harrison Ford’s first television role, and although he plays the same grumpy old man type he’s inhabited for the last few decades, he’s not phoning it in like his recent films work. You get the sense he cares here and there’s some nicely played emotional depth.
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Ivory came out of beta, and everyone says it’s probably the best Mastodon mobile app out there, so give it a try. It’s built on the solid bones of the now-retired Tweetbot for Twitter, and Tapbots have been making fluid and beautiful apps since the early days of the App Store.
I’m also beta testing another classic app I won’t name that is experimenting with a new feature: they’re adding an Instagram-like social network feed to what was previously a standalone camera app. I believe it’s something they actually tried before but it didn’t take off then, and I’m not sure why it would now. Which is a pity because the core app is getting slicker and more usable, but this network is probably something they need to prove value to investors?
There’s clearly a movement or at a least growing interest in decentralized, federated social networking models over the centralized ones of the past, as Mastodon’s rise is showing. And now some people are attempting to build the next Instagram using the same open ActivityPub protocol that powers Mastodon. Pixelfed is one I’ve seen, and is also in beta now. I joined its TestFlight through the site above, and you probably can too.
I got stuck at the stage of picking the server I wanted to join for quite awhile. That, to me, is the big UX challenge federated networks face in gaining mainstream adoption. Choosing the right local server for your account is hard. Will it go down someday and lose all your posts? Will unacceptable behavior on the part of its operators someday cause you to be cut off from the wider network? I don’t know how we make this more approachable for more people.
And then I start to wonder if these experiments will ever be successful in overthrowing Instagram. After all, cloning Instagram the app is doable, but building a user base as large as Instagram’s? Oof. Maybe we can fool Elon into buying it. Anyway metrics like engagement and MAU should probably be allowed to fall aside, as people seek more intimate networks (Path was too early, plus another one named Bondee was in the news this week) and products find other ways to pay for themselves. Would you use a photo-sharing network that had less to look at, and fewer (but more important) eyes seeing your posts? Hmm, maybe! I mean, I’m updating this site and you’re reading it.
Processed with VSCO with kc25 preset
I took one photo worth sharing this week as I was crossing a street in the Keong Saik area, after meeting some friends back in town for Chinese New Year. I saw the scene and fished my iPhone out of my pocket and fumbled with the camera left-swipe gesture that never seems to work when you need it, and just grabbed the wide shot (12mp HEIC) while moving.
Later, I cropped it, increased the resolution using Pixelmator Photo’s AI-assisted upsampling feature, and edited it for color and emphasis with VSCO and Darkroom. It would have been less trouble and probably less processed looking if I’d shot a 48mp RAW file, but it turned out okay. Between the improved sensor, ISP, and the A16’s Neural Engine, this year’s model was able to get a shot that I don’t think was possible on an iPhone just a couple of years ago.
Since you made it to the end, you deserve these Midjourney images of the The Golden Girls playing in a jazz band.
After not going on vacation or any breaks all year in 2019 (poor me, I know), I’m now coming off about three weeks of leave that began around Christmas. We spent some time in Taiwan, my first visit, and then I’ve been mostly chilling out on the couch absorbing a good measure of reading material, films both good and terrible, and games from the infinite backlog. I often dream of living out this life for an extended period — half a year at the very least, going past the point of crushing boredom and beyond, hoping to transcend such ideas and just tip over into blissfully inert hikkikomorish life — but now I think it’s unlikely to ever happen.
The closest I ever came was a period of freelancing over a decade ago, when I’d sometimes feel quite content with my modest bank account and calculate how it could be stretched for months if I just cut down on everything and went into a sort of social and nutritional hibernation. It was pre-Netflix, but I was living that life anyway, drowning in film and anime day and night. I think I did a much better job of being an employment refusenik then; I would probably freak out today if I was staring at a life of baked beans across the balance sheet. Deliveroo makes you soft.
So although I’ve not yet had enough of the leisurely, solitary life this time around, I think the inactivity has been getting to me. I’ve not done nothing, but this capitalist world has some part of me convinced otherwise because it’s creeping up in the unusual form of mini anxiety attacks: a sort of waking nightmare state in which I’m certain I’ve forgotten how to do things I took for granted when the momentum of routine life was behind them, “simple” things like leaving the house, speaking to other people, and remembering how to do my job.
I suppose I have a low-grade case of cabin fever. Or maybe just real fever. In the last couple of days I’ve found myself breaking out into a sweat apropos of nothing. Let’s see if I make it to the weekend.
Taiwan
I was told by several people to expect a Chinese version of Tokyo, which I disagree with although I can understand where they were coming from. Taipei’s restaurants, cocktail bars, convenience stores, etc. do take cues from their Japanese cousins, and there’s a non-coincidental reverence for the Japanese way there if I’m not mistaken. But it’s ultimately its own thing, and if Taiwan had a Merlion-like symbol, only more tangible and actually useful, it would be their night markets, frequented by both tourists and locals from what I saw. They’re not really for me — every 10 meters, I’d be hit by the smell of stinky tofu and it just ruined my appetite — but hey I get the appeal of the whole thing.
What did work for me was the hot pots. I’ve always been of the opinion that shabu-shabu is the one true hot pot, and couldn’t see the appeal of Hai Di Lao and its ilk in Singapore… but now after having been to Wulao in Taipei, I think I’m ready to accept that a Chinese incarnation of hot pot can be amazing.
I also took a bunch of photos with my neglected Fujifilm X100T, easily more than four years old now. It’s still a champ, and the lovely JPEG film simulations meant I could decide to spend very little time on edits and just let them do the work. Apart from the very slow autofocus, there’s a case to be made that no one really needs the new X100V iteration rumored to be launched next month. So I tell myself. The nice thing about being a naturally nervous freak having newer cameras and then bringing an older one out is how casual and carefree it lets me be. Bumps and scrapes don’t have to be big deals.
I only reached for the iPhone 11 Pro when it was dead dark (an f2 lens and APS-C sensor are still no match for Night Mode), raining (iPhones are better weather-sealed than almost any camera), or there wasn’t time to fumble the Fuji out of my bag (pocket beats shoulder strap). When you put it that way, the iPhone seems insanely hard to beat, but the Proper Camera was still noticeably better in many ways. In hard sunlight, my phones have always struggled with overexposure, with blown highlights and grittiness in the details even when you manually stop down. This year’s crop aren’t much of an improvement there, even with Smart HDR. So… here are some photos, most of them from the Fuji.
sangsara.net 