Nothing significant to report, except that we’re fast approaching the mid-year and if you are still thinking that the year has barely begun, you only have a fortnight left to be obnoxious about it. Indexing the internet, aka things read and things to read:

- How David beats Goliath, When underdogs break the rules
If their strengths are your weaknesses, you gotta stop playing to let them win.

- The Squint Test – How to protect fashion designers like Jason Wu from Forever 21 knockoffs

- Objection, Dear Leader! – How do court trials work in North Korea?

- 19th-Century Pregnant Dolls

- How Not to Photograph

Bored. Four minutes to Monday.

Lately, my favourite button to click is the ‘Mark all as Read’ one on my Google Reader. Thus, the dearth of non-me-me-me-me related entries. Sleepy. Yawn. Steamed crabs.

Unborn babies on Twitter. That is quite creepy, actually. Not into babies. Nor toddlers. Nor teenagers. Best if they come out as adults (no Benjamin Buttons, though; yes, am rather fussy).

A tad out of the blue, I know, but I miss Yahoo SG Auctions sometimes. The local eBay site has seen a lot of improvement since a few years ago, but it is quite boring since everyone seems out to make a buck. At least on the former, I was able to find some nice gems at great bargains. Maybe I’m just saying this because I can’t seem to find what I want on eBay right now, and I’m pretty sure that if Yahoo Auctions was alive, there would be some ending-soon-at-no-reserve-$5! auctions waiting just for me.

Celebrate Odd Day! After reading this book, I wish I had a math teacher who was half as inspiring and passionate about the subject as The Professor was. Unfortunately, all the teachers I had were pretty dull and probably part-time O-Levels assessment book saleswomen.

On the subject of school days(-ish), I’m regretting not working hard enough in my Home Ed classes. For some reason (well, I know the reason, but it will take forever to explain, so that shall wait), I never really cared much for the subject in school. Like P.E. and art (yes, I didn’t like art classes too), Home Ed periods were supposed to be endured and dozed through every three hours a week. Somehow, the idea of baking cakes and sewing on buttons didn’t appeal to me at all back then. Who cares if you can bake cookies, who cares if you can tell a thimble from an unpicker! Frankly, I didn’t give much of a shit. I guess then it is karma that I actually find these activities interesting now and that I stay up at night sewing something that probably lost half its width to textile perspiration. Why are my stitches bloody uneven and crooked? And bloody might have a more literal meaning than you may think. Bah! Goes to show that I will eventually develop an interest in say, gymnastics 20 years down the road.

Come on brain, work with me here. It is Thursday, just one more day to the weekend and one more work day before I go on holiday next week. Nine full days of idleness await you, so there is really not much point in getting sleepy now. You have an itinerary to plan, accommodation to book and countless decisions to make. What cameras and film to bring, and how much. What time to wake up on Sunday morning. Whether to go for driving lessons this weekend. Buy batteries. Tidy up the room before the new bed arrives tomorrow (this, I suspect, is a lost cause). What books to bring. Which character to like. Futures to plan for. Contacts or spectacles. Why is my part 5 of Project Runway Canada episode 3 taking so long to load? Why has the clock just passed 12? Shit, all these things that do themselves before I have time to notice them. Why isn’t my iTunes playing a song to which I know the lyrics to? My internet connection has gone back to impersonating a snail. Buy dog food. Learn cycling. Move on. Yesterday night, after seeing Wendy and Lucy, J. and I were attacked by the wind who demanded, with threats to turn over chairs and send beer bottles to the ground, that we not do anything but bear witness to its prowess. We agreed, but chairs were still toppled and grown men were sent scuttling for shelter. We lost four fishballs and half a can of Coke, then stood around agreeing that it didn’t feel like we were in our country anymore. But across the road from where we stood was a big Hotel 81 (special rates from 89$), so of course we were still in our safe little country. Today was hot as hell. (I liked the film; it wasn’t as fulfilling as I would had hoped for it to be, but there was a honesty/unpretentiousness/rawness about it that I enjoyed. Plus, Lucy the dog was wicked cute.)

Youtube is still loading that damn video. Yawn. Time for my regular indexing of the internet then.

Bookarmy.com. Literary version of Last.fm. I like books.

Kottke: Media packaging mashups. Packaging for popular culture re-imagined and Penguin-ified. These movie posters are great, and I would like these Harry Potter books, please.

My Google Reader is possessed.

Slate: Would You Like Your Cable Company More if It Were Quirky and Hip?. Actual effectiveness aside, I quite like the ad and the campaign website (very well done; and I like decorating rooms if it doesn’t involve actual manual labour).

Luis Mendo’s Tokyo Diary

My First Dictionary. The best dictionary, ever. Well, the most honest at least. Proof as follows:

This evening, I was trying to test and make full use of my powered-up internet connection so I watched a few videos, which, rather coincidentally, had a similar theme – data. Access to data, interpretating it, presentation of it et al. I’d bet good money on that there has never been so much raw information available publicly than there is now. Tomorrows will, most undeniably, bring more information, so I guess my definition and usage of ‘now’ is pretty much tagged to the ever-changing present, rather than a static time frame (i.e. ‘now’ being forever midnight on 22nd April 2009). But anyway, the following from TED are very insightful videos.

Tim Berners-Lee: The next Web of open, linked data
Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen
Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world

Am especially charmed by Hans Rosling, haha. Midway through the second talk, he demonstrated Dollar Street, which appears to be a very interesting interactive tool for presenting statistical data in a more palatable format than graphs and charts, and then correlating that data with more familiar / practical benchmarks (i.e. the presence of certain furniture in a room versus daily income). And he swallows swords too. Wicked.

Sigh. Spoke too soon. Connection just went ‘Local only’. Knn.

So the story is I was looking for a nice wallet..

(All images from Supermarket)

Sports anchor: “I think wrestling warm-ups are probably the most homo-erotic thing I’ve ever seen.”
Sports director: “It’s like a poor man’s Cirque du Soleil.”

Editor: “This guy’s name is Donald Fries. He’s making me hungry. Like that lady in that other story named Hamburg.”

(from here)

Indexing the internet, part #some-funny, some-silly.

Failblog, Faildogs
Fmylife

A tad old, but so true: AdVerbatims
Overheard in New York, Overheard in the Newroom, Overheard in the Office. Hmm, try googling for “Overheard in _________” and you will probably get a relevant result. Ah huh. Some are hilarious, some are boring.

Of course, lolcats (and loldogs!). And the hipster equivalent: lolbook

No gloating here.
Papercuts: Layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers in 2009
AngryJournalist.com
AngryWebDesigner.com (erhem, not me)

Interesting reads or things.

Total Recall: The Woman Who Can’t Forget
“Researchers had never found a subject with a perfect memory — then along came Jill Price.” I think I over-romanticise the idea of having a perfect memory. Watching Kiina certainly didn’t help that.

Monopoly Killer: Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre
“Klaus Teuber took four years to create what some have called the perfect board game (The Settlers of Catan).” I wanna play this. All your settlements are belong to me.

Diane Ducruet on Lensculture
“In a brilliant new photobook, French photographer Diane Ducruet has come up with a thought-provoking series of staged portraits that play with the ideas of family dynamics, identity, control, influence, postures of power, and more.”

Traceyscapes
“Aki Lumi’s new work ‘traceryscape’ consists of monochrome photographs of everyday landscapes and urban scenes directly on top of which have been drawn countless fine lines and elaborate shapes.” Very interesting images indeed.

Sir Roger Casement: The Unlikely Irish Martyr Whose Death Hinged on a Comma

Size Matters: The Mini Comic Blog
And featured in one of the blog posts, Oliver East and Trains Are… Mint! I am utterly convinced of the statement. Unfortunately, the first three books are no longer available. Book 4 can be viewed online here.

Claska, Tokyo by Tokyo
I want this. An alternative guide to Tokyo by Tokyoites. Each contributes a themed list of his/her favourite spots and places in the city. Some themes: “Getting along with the neighbours physically and mentally”, “Tokyo cliches viewed from overseas (the Bladerunner district)”, “Visiting real restaurants that appear in manga”

This chair likes me. I know it does.

There are needs and there are wants, and there are things that you want to need. Like, say, if I get my own place, I will be able to get this lovely steamer pot, this impossibly cute polka dot mug, and this pitcher that I initially had qualms about but am ready to overlook because roosters can be cute and there is really no better place for them than on a kitchen counter. And the pitcher will be happy to have a teapot friend. And a kettle confidante. I miss my kitchen already. Let’s move on to wardrobe.

» Continue reading “with reality, it’s never true enough”

The 22nd Singapore International Film Festival
The 3rd Singapore Indie Doc Fest

This year, so far at least, seems to be a year of film-watching. Am looking forward to Dinner with Murakami this Sunday, and then the film fest in April. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like I’ll be watching a lot of stuff too this year, seeing that most of the stuff I was interested in happen to be screening at the same time. Why, oh why.

Am also browsing the Hong Kong International Film Festival site and feeling a tad envious because I’ve counted at least 5 shows that I’d love to see. And their selection of Japanese films is just delectable.

» Continue reading “films are made for watching; sites are made for reading”

PhotoEphemera – photography-related ephemera. Now, that is a redundant description. But, an interesting site; I really do not mind having that Eggleston flyer. I used to collect these as well, but there was this time when I decided that my life could be better led if my room was neater (uh-huh) so I threw the bulk of them out. I still have a few; my favourite is a namecard-sized gallery announcement of an art show. Loved the photograph, and adored the title of the exhibition “Working like a tiger”, for reasons still undetermined. I digress. (link via 5B4)

Ahorn Magazine – an online photography magazine. Very promising, and I really enjoyed what I’ve seen so far. This had me very close to breaking my Paypal abstinence. (link via Conscientious)

Kathryn Parker Almanas – Okay, the site loads exasperatingly slow, but her photographs are gorgeous.

Mindfuck Movies – Yeah, pretty much about those. Mindfuck movies are terribly, and can be annoyingly unrewarding (and loooooong) at times, but sometimes you can’t help but be drawn to them. Sometimes. Like Drowning by Numbers by Peter Greenaway. I don’t exactly remember much of it at all, but I do remember being weirded out and fascinated at the same time – which is a nice combination in my books.