sangsara.net

Tag: Videogames

  • Week 49.25

    Week 49.25

    • Canned sardines are my latest obsession. Before you imagine those fancy imported ones from Portugal with the beautifully illustrated tins, costing $20, no — not yet. And honestly, even the $10 ones in the photo are aspirational. But you know how you’re meant to eat two servings of oily fish a week for the Omega-3 heart health benefits? I thought I’d try to do a better job of that, and ended up falling in love with the convenience and versatility of little fish in tomato sauce or extra virgin olive oil. I’ve been having them on their own, on toast, with pasta and a little pesto, whatever. I even joined the r/cannedsardines subreddit, where other weirdos discuss them all day.
    • It was during a chance conversation with my parents that I learnt these healthy fish (including kippers and mackerel) are very high in purine and can lead to gout flare ups. Sure enough, search Reddit and you’ll find many canned fish enjoyers suddenly finding themselves in excruciating foot pain after eating three tins a day. To stay on the safe side, I’ve sadly started to restrict myself to two, maybe three servings a week.
    • Japan-based writer and walking influencer Craig Mod occasionally does “pop-up newsletters” to accompany his projects — say, a cross-country trek. He walks and takes photos during the day, then writes and posts these thoughtful, downright literary journal entries at night. Once the walk is over, the newsletter ends. I sign up for them but don’t read them as they come in because, like delicious sardines you savor, they’re too good to have to rush or get through. This week I finally read his last series from back in October, titled Between Two Mountains. Because it’s now over, the only ways to find them are his members-only archives, or having someone forward you the emails. I recommend subscribing to one of his more regular newsletters anyway, and you’ll be notified the next time a pop-up begins.
    • I read Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money which is notable for being a personal finance book that doesn’t belabor its points. There are 20 individual “learnings” that he wants to pass on, and some take up as little as a couple of pages. His latest book, The Art of Spending Money looks to fill a gap in a market where many pages are devoted to helping people build good saving habits, but not as many on what healthy spending looks like. Unfortunately, it’s fully booked out at the library and I’m 1,110th in line.
    • It’s taken me from Week 31.25 till now to go from owning a copy of Donkey Kong Bananza to playing it. It’s supposedly by the same team that made Super Mario Odyssey, and like that game it’s charming, delightful, and perfectly tuned for fun over frustration. I’m surprised at how easy it is, but that’s not a complaint at all. There are no 30-minute boss fights here. Nothing overstays its welcome, much like the book I just mentioned. I was alone on Sunday afternoon and started playing at 2pm — it was 6pm before I managed to tear myself away.
    • Bugonia is out for home viewing and I watched its ending sequence again because I loved it so much. No spoilers, but it utilizes Marlene Dietrich’s cover of Where Have All The Flowers Gone to brilliant and satisfying effect. I’ve known the song for a while (since Massive Attack referenced it on their Mezzanine album, probably) but never thought about what it says until this particular incarnation. It’s been in my head all week.
    • Did you know Norah Jones has a podcast called Playing Along (YouTube)? It’s a simple concept: she has different musical guests come in each week (recently Sarah McLachlan, Alessia Cara, Sam Smith) and they chat and play together in the studio. The conversations are super interesting for anyone who loves music because you get to hear discussions about technique and inspiration from people at the highest levels of their craft. This is what every artist has had the opportunity to do with the internet for the past two decades, but I can’t think of many who have! Apple Music artist-hosted shows are probably the closest thing, but they’re very radio like.
    • Speaking of people at the highest levels, I hereby record for posterity that two interesting executive departures from Apple were announced this week, John Giannandrea and Alan Dye, which prompted Michael and I to hop on a call and yap about it for a couple of hours.
    • So it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas! The Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas album has been pinned to the top of my Apple Music list where I can play it on every HomePod across the apartment — all is well.
  • Week 43.25

    Week 43.25

    Vertigo (1958) is a great film, because Hitchcock was a master. It’s also the title of a mediocre stadium rock song, because I love hating on U2.

    Unfortunately, vertigo is also something I experienced for the first time this week — I’m fairly sure I jinxed myself at some point earlier this year by saying out loud “I don’t have any problems”. It hit me on Friday night in the form of extreme dizziness and nausea, and even the walk to bed to sleep it off was difficult without support. It got better the next morning with the help of something called the Epley Maneuver, which I found online.

    Asking around, I discovered that this is a more common human experience than you’d think, with several people I know having suffered episodes. Some of them had dizziness lasting days, and yet it’s strangely not discussed like, all the time? From what I can tell, it’s probably something called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), where calcium deposits in your inner ear become dislodged and move around, screwing with your balance. I’ll be seeing a doctor next week to confirm it, but in any case there’s no known cure and it might keep happening for the rest of my life. It’s crazy that so many are just quietly living with this.

    Have I been self-diagnosing with the help of AI? Maybe? I did just sign up for Claude Pro after all, which I’ve mentioned finding more agreeable than ChatGPT. I made vibe-coded two little apps before being laid low: a primitive prototype of my long-gestating stealth game, Cat Creeper, and a tool for my book club to figure out how many chapters of any given book we should read in the coming week. That one is called Book Splitter, and I offer it here for any book clubs out there with a similar need to figure out stopping points conveniently near chapter breaks.

    It’s been a unique experience using Claude’s impressive capabilities alongside reading Asimov’s I, Robot, which foresaw many of our modern discourse around AI safety, and The Optimist at the same time, which has finally begun to chronicle some of Sam Altman’s questionable and unethical moves both at OpenAI and in his private life. The sections detailing his gaslighty, ungenerous, and cruel interactions with his sister Annie ironically reminded me of reading about Steve Jobs’s treatment of his daughter Lisa, in her memoir Small Fry.

    I just passed the part where Dario Amodei and other employees left to start Anthropic. Just as I try to avoid Meta and Google products because of their comparatively weaker stance on privacy versus Apple, it makes sense that some prefer Anthropic over OpenAI for a more cautious approach to AI.

    ===

    My mother-in-law stayed with us this week, which meant getting the newspaper in for her because that’s how some people still get their news. I was shocked to see how thin the physical Straits Times is these days — almost completely devoid of advertising, and on the whole maybe having 20% of the heft I remember from the 90s. It’s also S$1.10 now, up from the 50 to 80 cents I thought it was. Still, it was kinda nice (nostalgic) to sit at the dining table and read the paper in the morning.

    It was also the week where my favorite retro-game-hunting IRL streamer, 4amlaundry, went on a 5-day trip to Kansai, checking out thrift stores and exploring Osaka and Nara. I didn’t want to miss watching it live, so I tried explaining the whole concept of streamers to said mother-in-law, and got her to watch him with me for awhile on the TV, the whole time silently praying that he wouldn’t go look at the display cases of half-naked anime figurines that he sometimes checks out in those stores.

    Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and instead we watched him walk down countryside roads, eat at chain restaurants, and get knocked down by the aggressive deer in Nara. All of that made for some good conversation, so if you get the chance to introduce an elder to Twitch, it’s not the worst idea if you can avoid the NSFW aspects.

    Speaking of shows that you would hope won’t be awkward to watch with your parents or in-laws BUT ACTUALLY ARE, add the latest season of The Diplomat to the list. There’s a lot of cursing (I kinda expected that), and some sex scenes that maybe the producers thought were hot and their audience wanted, but are so unnecessary and desperate that they come across as unintentional comedy. Apart from that, it’s still a fun series that leans into unrealistic political drama, with some unexpectedly good writing (for a Netflix show). Just watch it on your own.

    ===

    I somehow forgot to mention the slate of new Apple products announced last week: M5-powered iPad Pros, a 14” basic MacBook Pro, and a spec-bumped Apple Vision Pro. The product lineup is designed to lead you to the conclusion that you should buy everything, because how do you choose between an 11” and 13” iPad Pro, and a 14” MacBook Pro?

    The 11” iPad size is portable for couch use, but the 13” becomes an advanced desk computer for creative work when paired with the Magic Keyboard and Pencil Pro. But if you’re going to be using it while deskbound, why not get a MacBook Pro with 24 hours of battery life (versus just 10 on the iPad), and the possibility of running local AI models and all kinds of other software that isn’t allowed on iPad?

    Making things harder is the fact that a 13” iPad Pro with accessories costs more than an “equivalent” 14” MacBook Pro, and they’re too costly for an average user like me to justify buying both. So the final decision was to hold out a little longer with my current M1-generation gear, and see what upgrades the 13” iPad Air gets next year — hopefully an M4 or M5 processor, ProMotion, and the aluminum Magic Keyboard currently exclusive to iPad Pro models.

    But bringing the M5 to the Apple Vision Pro makes it a better system to use and own for the next two years, while we wait for the next big leap forward in miniaturization. However as a casual user who only clocks a few hours a week, I couldn’t see myself upgrading for a faster chip alone. The more compelling improvement is a new “Dual Knit Band” that comes as standard, which sorta combines the previous Solo Knit Band and Dual Loop Band into one much-improved design.

    The best part is that this new band is also available as a standalone accessory, so I ordered one immediately for my first-gen AVP. It’s simply a marvel of engineering and feels incredibly premium. The build quality is off the charts, and the Fit Dial they’ve created to independently adjust both the back and top straps might be the most Apple-y thing they’ve shipped on an accessory since the Stainless Link Bracelet for the original Apple Watch.

    Thanks to this more comfortable and ergonomic band, I’d planned to spend more time with the AVP this week, until the vertigo and unusual weekly routine got in the way. Not gonna lie, my first thought during the vertigo attack, after “What if this never goes away and I’m disabled for life?” was “Does this mean I can’t use the Vision Pro anymore?”

  • Week 39.25

    Week 39.25

    The week got off to a bad start when our three-year-old Dyson V12 vacuum cleaner stopped working. The motor cyclone made a pulsating noise and the error message “Airways Blocked” appeared on the little LED screen. Usually this means that you’ve got some ball of hair choking one of the attachments, or your filters need cleaning. I checked everything and knocked out so much dust that my palm hurt, but still no luck.

    Our cleaner shared that another client had similar problems and paid about $150 for repair at a Dyson service center, and a Perplexity search corroborated that would be the starting point, depending on what needed to be fixed. It said complex replacements could take over three weeks! My first priority was to get it working asap, because I have no idea how people lived before vacuum cleaners were invented.

    On a whim, I decided to check what a new vacuum cleaner would cost. The latest Dyson, the “V16 Animal” model is over S$1,100, and another V12 would be S$800. But the shocking thing is how crazy cheap the Chinese clones have gotten, ranging between S$80 (yes) and S$400. Xiaomi’s most powerful, the G20 Max, is only about S$320 and I’m sure it rivals our Dyson in capability and (I wouldn’t have thought so before this) longevity. I was beginning to think buying an entirely new Chinese vacuum for the price of a Dyson repair was a viable option.

    Anyhow, I got an appointment at the service center for a couple of days later, and the staff’s instant opinion was that there wasn’t anything stuck further inside the cyclone unit, but it was an electronic or PCB (printed circuit board) issue. Meaning the entire main bit of the vacuum cleaner, minus battery and air filter, would need to be swapped out. Total cost: S$168. I believe this is simply the modern default for consumer electronics — don’t bother repairing or replacing one little component, give the customer a new unit and send the old one back for recycling (or disposal). It’s wasteful, but means the business doesn’t need to train frontline repair staff and the customer gets a “better” experience to boot.

    Later, I went to have a look at the Xiaomi model in person, and it’s definitely uglier and clunkier, with the same downward dust receptacle ejection system as much older Dyson designs. I do like my V12 very much, I just don’t believe in it as much after this incident.

    ===

    I saw with some excitement that Puzzle Quest was being rereleased in an “Immortal Edition” for the Switch, with remastered visuals. It’s also out on other platforms. I played the original back in 2007 on my Nintendo DS and probably sank over 100 hours into it. It was probably the first game to combine Match-3 puzzling with an RPG storyline and character progression. To date, I haven’t played a better expression of this idea.

    With regards to this new version, it’s been good so far. The UI looks gigantic going from a tiny handheld to a 65” TV, but the great thing about playing on Switch is that you have the touchscreen controls this genre was made for. I have yet to encounter any of the bugs that plagued the original release, but that’s no guarantee I won’t. If I recall correctly, sometimes moves wouldn’t register and you’d die despite technically winning. On one hand it made the game feel unfair, but glass-half-full people would call it extra challenge. The game was so fun, I was happy to play around these deficiencies.

    ===

    On Friday night we met Wen and Sarah for Mexican food at a place called Huevos, in New Bahru. I read awhile back that the retail complex was struggling but that was not the case that night; it was pretty loco. One fun memory that came up was a trip to Bintan we took together back in 2009 where Mandy sang John Mellencamp’s Hurts So Good in the pool so often that it became the theme song of that vacation. I went home that night and unearthed a video I made in iMovie from all the clips I shot, using that song as the soundtrack. The video quality, shot on my Panasonic LUMIX LX3, has held up incredibly well after all this time.

    The next day, I ate at Shake Shack and made the double mistake of ordering a Tiramisu milkshake and finishing it even though I could have stopped halfway. It turns out that single serving had 850 calories and a whopping 90g of sugar — that’s 18 teaspoons of system-disrupting poison! For comparison, the single-patty Shackburger I also ate has only 550 calories. After learning all that, I didn’t have the heart to look up the side of fries I also ate. At this age, I don’t think the damage will ever be undone. I might have to start saving up for Ozempic.

    ===

    My Goodreads annual reading challenge has been completed with a vengeance, and currently stands at 40 books out of a targeted 24. The last few weeks have been made up of financial self-help material, including Nick Maggiulli’s The Wealth Ladder, which I also saw being featured on the shelves of a local Books Kinokuniya. I thought it worth mentioning because of how it lays out different strategies for people on different rungs of the so-called ladder of net worth: $1–10k, $10–100k, $100k–1M, and so on. It’s a very clear way to think about what actions and sacrifices are needed to get to the next level, and whether you’d even want to. There’s also some interesting data on how people at the higher levels distribute their money in completely different ways from us plebs.

    I also read Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, an infuriatingly patchy story about time travel and searching for a father who’s gone missing in time and space. There are some novel ideas here that move the genre forward, some of them explained with a lot of (pseudo?)science and some only intriguingly hinted at. The post-time travel world that it builds is fundamentally illogical, and almost no effort is made to integrate it with a reader’s expectations — in other words, it kind of fails to hold together. However, the actual writing is occasionally brilliant. There are passages that collapse memory, description, and feeling — suddenly you’re thinking about your own childhood and watching it through the quantum bookshelf, like at the end of Interstellar (2014).

    Speaking of movies, I rewatched the Wachowskis’ 2012 version of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas with my book club and it wasn’t as good as I remembered. Turns out both the book and film feel shakier on return. Anyhow, it was only 13 years ago, but there are race impersonation elements in this film that seem like transgressions today. Multiple white actors have their eyes taped up to play Asian characters. Halle Berry and Zhou Xun both have scenes where they play blue-eyed white women. The Korean characters speak English in a mix of other Asian accents. The only line that isn’t crossed is white people putting on blackface. Everything else seems to have gotten the green light.

  • Week 37.25

    Week 37.25

    Happy iPhone week aka Tech Christmas to all who celebrate! I wrote up my thoughts (below) after the event on Wednesday, and since then I’ve seen the same sentiments echoed throughout YouTube videos, podcasts, and articles, so I at least know I’m not reading these things entirely wrong. All in all, one of the best iPhone lineups ever. They went all out, with very few compromises or artificial impairments to make the expensive models more attractive — they are all seriously good value, extremely capable-sounding devices.

    On Tuesday, we went over to my parents’ place for dinner, and spurred by a question someone had last week after seeing a photo of their living room, I asked after some family history and got some new information. The accuracy and completeness of Singaporean family stories must vary widely; after all most families here only arrived in the last century. My dad only knows where his grandfather came from in China, and a suspicion of his occupation (ask me and I’ll tell you), but not why or how they made their way down to Southeast Asia. Apparently no one ever said. I’d say that was weird, but then I’ve waited this many decades to even ask.

    You know what else I’ve waited forever to do? Start The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I finished Breath of the Wild in the summer of 2023 — I could have sworn it was last year, oh my — after letting it languish uncompleted for about six years. Since both games are set in the same world of Hyrule, albeit expanded in TotK, many recommend taking a break in between. Now that the Switch 2 edition is out, with modern luxuries like running at 4K 60fps, it was time. And because this is a game where skills also accrue in the player rather than purely in the character, jumping back in feels great. I’m better at combat and finding my way around than I was at the beginning of BotW, which makes sense for a sequel: Link has been here and done this before. It’s marvelous game design all around.

    Speaking of capital-D Design, Singapore Design Week is back again, but I’m less inclined to explore every venue and event after seeing that last year’s slipshod execution probably hasn’t been rectified. The website and program directory are still confusing and missing key visitor info.

    Case in point: On Sunday we went down to the Science Park district for a talk I’d signed up for, only to find that no one in the stated venue (a building lobby) knew where it was happening. It turned out to be in an open space outside instead. I’m not sure the speakers knew either, given that several used packed slides unreadable on the small screens provided. To make matters worse, some presenters’ slides weren’t even fit to the full screen size. When informed by the audience, they said “sorry, we can’t fix it. We can send you the deck!”

    Nearby, one of the robotics exhibitions had info cards printed in such tiny type you’d literally have to crouch on the floor to read them. I don’t know why we can’t get these things right for a design week.

    But there was a high point! Local graphic and art book seller Basheer had a small stand at the fair, and I found a copy of Silvio Lorusso’s What Design Can’t Do: Essays on Design and Disillusion, which Jose recommended ages ago. It was S$37 for future reference.

    If you follow me on Goodreads and were shocked at the amount of reading I suddenly got done, calm down. Those were not five separate books, but short sci-fi stories in something called The Forward Collection, published by Amazon, and curated by Blake Crouch of Dark Matter fame. For some reason, each story has its own entry on Goodreads instead of just one for the compilation. I recommend them!

    ===

    Apple Fall Event

    • The annual Apple fall event took place as it always does in early September (I love that it’s been over 15 years but some people still ask “When do the new iPhones come out?”). This year was of particular interest to me because 1) I didn’t upgrade my iPhone for once last year, mostly content with my iPhone 15 Pro Max and even wondering if I could stretch it out to three years. 2) If I can save any money somewhere in my annual budget, I’d be open to it! Alas, my Apple Watch is three years old, and my AirPods Pro 2 are the Lightning version that don’t do lossless audio with Vision Pro. So as the livestream began, I started praying that none of the announcements would make me feel like I needed to buy stuff.
    • Right out of the gate, the new AirPods Pro 3 were shown and I was like “goddamnit!” These mostly look the same, but have been subtly refined to fit better in your ears and yup, I need that as they’ve always been a little loose on one side. They supposedly sound better, thanks to a new acoustic port design. The active noise cancellation is now 2x better, and battery life has gone up about a third, to 8 hours. There’s also heart rate monitoring but I don’t give a crap about that. Nevertheless, a very hard purchase to resist.
    • Then, the Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3 were shown, but thankfully I’m not sporty enough so the bulk of their workout/outdoors adventure-centric improvements bounced off my consumer armor. I mainly use my Series 8 as a timepiece, with occasional notifications and stock prices that I read when waking up in the middle of the night, and all it needs is a new battery. Lighter, smaller, more health sensors, faster charging — these are all nice to have but not when a new titanium model comes to over S$1,200 with AppleCare+. What’s that? Buy aluminum? Oh no, darling.
    • I was excited to see the iPhone 17 get a ProMotion display (variable refresh rates up to 120hz), because it suggests that the iPad Air might get one next year too. Overall, this is a truly great phone to offer as the base model. With better battery life, 256GB starting storage, and very capable cameras (including a smart new multi-aspect selfie camera), there are no compromises to be seen here and most people will be fully satisfied with one. It stands up well beside the Pro phone for everyday use in nearly all aspects.
    • When rumors of the the iPhone Air leaked, I didn’t believe a thinner phone with less battery life made any sense. And including only a single camera with no ultrawide lens? That excludes most Gen Z buyers! But I think I was wrong. The new wider front-facing camera might handle the Gen Z selfie use case. In truth, this is a phone that matches or exceeds the specs of last year’s iPhone 16, but is way more desirable. With its unique and recognizable design, glossy titanium frame, and premium semi-pro price positioning, this is the peacocking model. It’s literally the shiny new object. And that place in the lineup is made possible by a welcome pivot in the Pro line.
    • The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max are now freed from their jobs of pushing up iPhone ARPU by appealing to customers with a little more money to spend, and who want something better than the base model. That’s the Air now. The Pro models have now transitioned to powerful professional tools with features that most people won’t even have heard of (e.g. GenLock for video), let alone know how to use. Which means they can ditch premium/luxury materials like stainless steel and titanium, for a more pragmatic forged aluminum that’s lighter and better for thermal management. They can also withstand weirder/uglier industrial designs (emphasis on industrial) like the new camera plateau that houses bigger sensors and makes room elsewhere for massive batteries. These models can now be thicker and heavier than most consumers would like because the Air exists.
    • The Air, by the way, looks like they got halfway through the development of next year’s rumored foldable iPhone and decided to ship one half as a product. Which is probably not entirely untrue; many niche Apple products are test beds for scaling ideas that will later appear elsewhere. The Air’s remarkable miniaturization and the Pro’s new vapor chamber cooling system will probably be echoed in a future Apple Vision Pro.
    • It’s also worth noting the ever-changing definition of “Air” in Apple parlance. It usually means either cheaper or lighter, and never premium/luxury. The MacBook Air is both the cheapest and lightest laptop, at least for now. The iPad Air is a Goldilocks model, sitting between the basic iPad and the Pro (which is the thinnest and lightest). But while the iPhone Air is cheaper than the Pro, it’s the thinnest, lightest, and also nicest. It’s elegant where the Pro is beastly, and I think this is their main design direction for the future.
    • Even if it doesn’t sell well this year, I don’t see this being canceled like the Plus phones. If anything, the Pro Max might be the one to go next. Its role is now to simply be the biggest screen, which a certain folding device might take the place of. So 12 months from now, we may be talking about iPhone 18, iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone Air 2, and an iPhone DS or whatever.
    • So it’s decision time. By the time this gets posted, I would have chosen a phone, size, and color. The Air is very tempting, except I couldn’t live without macro and telephoto photos. I do think its 6.5” screen size is in the sweet spot. The Pro’s 6.3” is too small and according to myself in 2023, going back to a bigger Pro Max after three years of Pro was worth the pocket bulge and hand strain. The new Cosmic Orange is striking as hell, but will it look tired after two years? Or two weeks? Brian called it reminiscent of “80s anime” and I think he’s onto something with that bit of free association. It also reminds me of some Sony MP3 players and phones.
    • Update: Pro Max in Silver. Big, heavy, and expensive. I’ll have to tighten my belt now in more ways than one.
  • Week 36.25

    Week 36.25

    • I’ve been with Gomo (budget SingTel) since last August, barely scratching my absurd 600GB/month plan. But after reading Michael’s blog post about switching telcos, I jumped back to Giga within the hour — they’ve finally fixed 5G support for iPhones, and it’s a 5G Standalone network (better) as well. Overall, this will save me a few bucks each month, drop me down to a still-generous 400GB limit, and give even more international data. This new trend of bundling roaming data is a boon for travel; I’ve managed to do without buying separate eSIMs on a few trips now. Until next year, then.
    • After finishing the Shinchan game last week, I started on a game that I fell in love with at first sight: Tiny Bookshop. It’s almost as good as I was hoping — you do run a tiny bookshop, stock its shelves, and recommend real book titles to fit people’s needs, but the core gameplay loop is quite simple. That’s not a bad thing — it just means this is the sort of cozy and casual game you play alongside something more involved and epic. One thing that did happen almost immediately: it gave me a hankering to do some reading.
    • I got tired of waiting for my book club to inch through Cloud Atlas and finished it on my own. It’s not as groundbreaking as I recall it feeling when I read it in 2013, but perhaps that’s because many of its moves have been copied in popular media since. It’s also a lot less sci-fi than I remembered, and much more like a genre writing exercise with several loosely (and one might argue unnecessarily) connected stories. In my Goodreads review, I called it a 3-star concept with 5-star execution.
    • Much more sci-fi: I also finished John Scalzi’s The Ghost Brigades, which I’ve been reading in parallel over the past couple of weeks. It’s a lot of fun, and a sequel that’s even better than the first book, Old Man’s War.
    • Speaking of old, Ryan Adams released a reworking of his seminal album, Heartbreaker, for its 25TH ANNIVERSARY (!?). Where did the time go? Incidentally, I came across that album the year it came out when a friend in the army recommended it. I remember borrowing his copy to burn a CD-R because I couldn’t afford to buy my own. I haven’t seen that guy in 20 years, but coincidentally this month, I discovered that Kim knows him through work and sent my regards. The original record was a lightning bolt: raw, full of yearning and reckless honesty. The new version sands it all down into a flaccid bore. He’s taken a hungry debut and embalmed it in strings and piano. Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now is an example of how to do this well. A few tracks survive the treatment, but most of it lands like one of those Disney live-action remakes: glossy, lifeless, and unnecessary.
    • Speaking of old, it was Peishan’s birthday this weekend and we hung out for a brunch that went from noon to evening. Nice day, no notes. The discussion touched on topics that have come up on ChannelNewsAsia programming recently — it turns out I watch too much of this — such as home-based businesses, which is incidentally where our coffee came from. I also thought for a brief moment that it might be fun to do a podcast from the future, recorded in an underground bunker after the fall of society, discussing found pop culture artifacts from our present day and guessing at the role they played in the apocalypse. Things like Labubus, Season 4 of Entourage, Magic: The Gathering, Blackpink, live-action Snow White. Maybe call it “Funintended Consequences”.
    • We also talked about the different approaches men and women (generalized) take to making podcasts. Men apparently are happy to record hours of conversation that’s interesting to nobody else, refusing to edit it down to only the useful bits; basically having no interest in the needs of their audiences, as seen in real life in a meeting room near you. I figured that this makes sense because men get together and record podcasts mainly as an excuse to hang out and shoot the shit with friends. At least, that’s been the motivation every time people I know say they should start one.
    • Speaking of old, I put on Apple Music’s “Classic Hip-Hop” radio station (algorithmic, not human hosted) expecting to only hear the usual 80s–90s boom bap, you know, the stuff I was too young to hear in real time, but oh my… there was some Jay-Z and Dr. Dre material from the 2000s mixed in there. We’re the classics now.
  • Week 35.25

    Week 35.25

    • We lost a grand aunt at the close of last week, and attended her funeral and cremation on Tuesday. It got me thinking about qing ming, which is a day in early April (I had to look this up) where Chinese families traditionally visit their ancestors’ graves and do some neatening up. I have vague memories of being dragged along to do this as a kid, and even being allowed by my parents to skip school for it. I mostly remember the smell of burning joss sticks mixed with the dewy morning air and damp soil. For some reason we stopped going by the time I was a teen.
    • I talked about this with Cien and Peishan and they seemed to still be in touch with the practice of visiting graves, or in these days of diminishing real estate, a columbarium. If you asked me where my family members are buried or stored as ashes, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I assume many of them have been scattered, either into local waters or some faraway favorite destination. Honestly, I like the idea of not being tethered to a single spot. If your spouse is still alive, maybe they’d like to keep you near, in some vessel at home. But if too many, or too few, people are sharing you then it’s better to be everywhere. A memory triggered by some food, place, or figure of speech. An algorithmically assembled photo collage tossed up by a personal computing companion one morning. A mention in some dusty book on a top shelf in a library, waiting to be seen by a future student or recycled into a supermarket receipt. I’d be fine with any of that.
    • Back to the funeral: it was held at the Mandai Crematorium and Columbarium, one of only three cremation facilities serving the whole of Singapore, and I was upset by how much it is in need of some design intervention. I wonder if any of the people managing the place have tried to look at the process with fresh eyes, or at least through the tired and grieving eyes of the people passing through it. Because they’d see so many moments that could be made kinder, more understanding, more dignified. The script could use a rewrite. Playing ‘Amazing Grace’ out of tinny $40 Bluetooth speakers in the final viewing halls is not it. For Chrissakes, please also remove the ugly MS Word-designed notices plastered on the viewing room windows, they obstruct the view of the caskets as they’re delivered (by industrial forklifts!) into the flames. I’m not exaggerating.
    • My shoes fell apart. They were the second pair of New Balance 990s to do so, doing nothing more strenuous than supporting my occasional walking about town. The last pair lasted three years; these only made it to two. At around S$300, these are supposed to be the best shoes that NB makes, but I’m beginning to think their ‘Made in the USA’ label is more a statement of liability than superiority these days. The Chinese-made models could probably survive a decade. Alas, with my big feet and aversion to swooshes, the 990s are some of the only shoes I’m comfortable in, so I’ll be buying yet another pair — online, too, since they stopped local distribution of the wide sizes.
    • Google upgraded Gemini with the Nano Banana image model that’s been trending on Twitter, and the bar for impressive generative AI has been raised again. It’s extraordinarily capable (and fast) at combining images with accuracy, as well as reimagining them in different styles and from different perspectives. A few months ago, Gemini was an also-ran, but maybe something’s shifted at Google and they’re an actual contender again. As much as I try to avoid Google services, I suppose I find them preferable to OpenAI and Meta. Take a look at the example above where I asked it to redraw a scene I photographed last month in Melbourne, but from above.
    • On Thursday I met two friend-couples, who I’ll call Mong and Jogina because it sounds amusing, for a rare weekday afternoon lunch where it was made abundantly clear that I’m behind the times for not having seen K-Pop Demon Hunters yet. Circumstantially, we’ve all got the time and flexibility to do these weekday catchups more often than once or twice a year, and maybe we should.
    • Aside: I did see the movie later, and it’s really good! My main gripe is the use of stuttering frames for the character animation, which worked fine in Sony’s Spiderverse films but break immersion here. The frame rates also seem uneven from scene to scene? Speaking of Sony, I’d hate to be the person who decided to sell this to Netflix for just $100M.
    • Afterwards, some of us went on to check out a nearby Crocs store (hear me out!) because a new collaboration had just launched: Animal Crossing! I just tagged along for a look, but became increasingly afraid as we got nearer that I would end up buying a pair. Kinda like how I bought the first iPad at Funan mall in 2010, that I absolutely wasn’t interested in… until I joined the line. Thankfully, my senses returned, and they only carried the smaller women’s sizes. God bless my big feet!
    • The book club is still reading Cloud Atlas, and at one point, a character mentions Carole King’s Tapestry album playing at a low volume in the background. I realized that I’ve known about this album forever but never heard it. So I put it on while reading. And boy did I know half the songs on this. I was beginning to wonder if it was a covers album, that’s how familiar they were. Incredible work, and a deserving #38 on Apple Music’s Top 100 Best Albums list.

    And finally, a little gaming episode:

    As previously mentioned, I’ve been playing the first Shinchan game on Nintendo Switch as a way of marking the summer — never mind that it’s always summer here in Singapore. It started well but I found it increasingly repetitive and uninteresting, and have been trying to just get it over with. The game features a time loop, where you replay the same week over. I spoke to Evan about it while I was on the second week, and he told me to hang on until the fourth week.

    >> I was like, “there’s four fucking weeks??”

    >> He said, “the real game BEGINS after week four!”

    >> “How is that possible?”

    Reader, I’ll tell you, I was ready to delete the game then. At the end of the third week, it seemed that I had all but completed the game. All my tasks were done. Then as the credits rolled, I texted him back:

    >> “Dude, I’ve finished the game, what’s going on?”

    >> And he says, “You haven’t, that’s just the beginning, get ready.”

    >> “I don’t believe you, don’t mess with me!”

    By this point, I had put in about 7.5 hours and couldn’t take it any more if this was just an extended prologue. There was just no way. The game was surely done! Then he asks me if I’ve done a certain thing yet, and I’m like:

    >> “Uh yeah… long ago? In the first week?!”

    Suddenly, I realized he’d spent the first three weeks mucking around and not doing any of the main game’s tasks, and only got started on the story just before time ran out. So yes, I had finished the game. Thank fuck for that.

  • Week 33.25

    Week 33.25

    • I had some ice cream at last, but no beers yet. Maybe I’ll stretch this sobriety a little longer. Alcohol is, after all, just a poison worth doing socially but not so much alone.
    • But man, this illness. Being sick for three consecutive weeks was not on my bingo card for the year. I should say illnesses, because we saw a doctor early in the week and she said (and these are the words every INTJ raised on WebMD loves to hear), “I think you’ve correctly diagnosed yourself — this seems like two separate illnesses one after the other, rather than a viral infection that became a bacterial one.” So, just bad luck and weak immunity on my part.
    • Fortunately, it’s just about over. Only a mild cough remains for both of us, but still bad enough that we slept in separate rooms for most of the week. It wasn’t a perfect solution; we still woke ourselves up coughing in the middle of each night.
    • I’m reminded at such times to stop whining and be grateful for minor health issues. Our part-time cleaner just returned from a rather invasive surgery to remove two large fibroids growing on her uterus. It’s been a multi-month ordeal navigating hospitals and insurance companies. I tried to help with some internet research and reassurance, and was glad to see her back to (light) work this week.
    • To get me nutritionally through the sick days, I bought quite a few bananas and unlocked a new breakfast item: peanut butter and banana sandwiches. The PB acts like a glue that keeps the slices from falling out. Gastro engineering! It’s basically a fat handheld dessert in the morning, and maybe I could kick it up a notch with whipped cream?
    • On the video gaming front, I managed to start Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation on the Switch. I’ve been wanting to get into this for several years — recreating the small countryside childhood I never had. It reminds me of Attack of the Friday Monsters! on the 3DS, not surprising since they were both designed by Kaz Ayabe. He must really miss his summer holidays because he’s also the director of Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid, which is pretty much the same concept: catching bugs, fishing, exploring nature, making friends. I’ve err… also bought that game, but might not get to it this year.
    • Guiltily, I’m actually kinda dying to play another game that just came out, despite just starting on this one. Damn my infernal backlog! That game is Tiny Bookshop, an indie title that’s shot to the top of the eShop charts, beating Nintendo’s own Super Mario Party Jamboree! It is what it sounds like, a cozy game where you manage a tiny mobile bookshop. You decorate it, stock titles, and recommend books to passing townsfolk. I can’t believe no one made this game sooner because the premise is obviously gold. Moreover, it appears to have some beautiful locations for you to set up shop in, in the vein of ‘lo-fi beats YouTube video scenery’, so I assume you can just kind of chill in the game and listen to the waves while admiring your little caravan.
    • Ballard on Amazon Prime Video turned out to be a perfectly fine series on its own, with a different tone and a kookier cast than the mainline Bosch show that it’s spun off from. I can’t complain, especially because Titus Welliver shows up now and then to reinforce ties. I don’t know how old Renee Ballard is supposed to be though. She’s living with her grandmother, who looks 70 at most, but Maggie Q is 46.
    • We started on season 2 of Poker Face and I’m loving it. I would have been fine if they’d kept the same episodic format of Charlie on the run and solving crimes from 30 minutes in for the entire show, but they’ve decided to switch things up a bit. Still works. Still a brilliant platform for insane and creative stories with a rotating list of guest stars: John Mulaney, Giancarlo Esposito, Rhea Perlman, Katie Holmes?!
    • I installed the new beta OSes on my iPad Pro and Apple TV 4K and can report they are solid enough at this point. Not enough to risk my iPhone or Mac, though. The Liquid Glass effect is still a little confused. Sometimes a button will be darkened to stand out against what’s behind it, but upon being clicked, it flashes and changes to the brighter style to match some new frosted glass items that appear. It just seems to have to morph and adapt a little too much to be used for UI items that ought to be stable. But maybe that way of thinking is just old fashioned now.
    • Next to be updated will be my Vision Pro. I’m really curious how the glass elements will react to light and real world environments as you move them around in space. My Persona is also horribly outdated and I’m feeling the peer pressure to upgrade to the new, detailed ones — nearly everyone in my book club already has a proper face on and mine still looks like the Lawnmower Man.

    ChatGPT’s closing words for the week: Funny how even illness turns into iteration — new foods, new games, new software skins. Maybe we’re all just beta versions trying to get stable.

  • Week 31.25

    Week 31.25

    Checking in now from the first row of a Boeing Dreamliner — a plane that has probably been in the news recently for the wrong reasons. But if you’re reading this post, it means we made it back safely.

    There was a moment early in the week where we were telling our Melbourne-based friends about last year’s trip to New Zealand and for some reason we both blanked on some key details and took awhile to align on what exactly happened. Maybe we were just tired, but then I had another theory: what if planning that trip with the help of AI meant the details didn’t form strong memories? Normally, planning a trip forces you to do research and make choices, with the resulting success or failure of your trip all on you. Those actions burn the memories in. But when ChatGPT spoon-feeds you an itinerary, maybe the details just float in and out of your mind. I wonder if this will really rot our lazy brains like no technology has before.

    We dropped in on a French Impressionism exhibit at the National Gallery Victoria, and I should say “yet another”, because every time we come by there seems to be something either French or impressionistic on. It was fine, but the $50+ ticket prices are surprising in contrast to exhibition prices in Singapore. I was also really hoping to see something new at ACMI, but sadly their new ‘Game Worlds’ videogame exhibition won’t open till September. Maybe I’ll have to come back.

    And then I fell ill and had to take it easy for a couple of days! If I had to guess, I probably picked up a flu bug from the airport or on the flight out. Still, I spent a large chunk of the week in bed or otherwise resting while Kim ran shopping errands for her mom and so on.

    As I got steadily better, we went out a bit for a nice dinner, lunch at a winery, and a visit to this bookstore, The Paperback, in the CBD that I always buy something from. This time I got a collection of Louise Glück’s poems that I’ve been wanting for awhile. Just taking it slow and enjoying a change of scenery. Normally getting sick on holiday would be a disaster, but having no expectations or plans means no disappointments either.

    I also went to my first Costco and had their famous hotdog, which was just $1.99 AUD with a soda. The financial engineering is strong at this company because it was a good and sizable pork sausage that I would have bought at thrice the price. We bought some other things there not worth mentioning except for a physical copy of Donkey Kong Bananza for the Switch 2 that’s S$20 cheaper in Australia than in Singapore. We really are getting ripped off out here; even buying it off the US eShop is S$5 cheaper than the local physical price.

    Another thing I discovered was how nice it can be to watch a fire and sit in front of a fireplace for a few hours. This is something that I maybe understood before but forgot. Continually tending to a fire — rearranging logs, blowing on embers, adding more fuel — it’s like a mindfulness retreat no one has yet packaged up for Singaporeans without winter experience. I cleared my inbox one evening while doing that and warming my feet by the flames.