Category Archives: Links

Links from the past weeks

Links from the past weeks 

  • We started watching Girls5eva and “New York Lonely Boy” is an awesome song.



  • Quirky slides from Softbank’s 2020 earnings call

    Slides in my industry are umm, more academic but I am always up for inspiration.



  • I almost bought Marcin Wichary’s book on keyboards, but instead, I soothed myself with a 2018 article he wrote: Bigger in Japan.


    (The Kickstarter page is here.)



  • After reading this MacStories piece about how there is a remake of the classic version of Angry Birds, I went and paid my $0.99.

    It is a simple game and very enjoyable, but it was made stupid in later years, when it became saddled with mechanisms aimed to get you to make recurring in-app purchases.



  • Reading The Art of War, and bemoaning the lack of the Chinese text in my copy. Not that being able to read the characters mean you understand the text, but well, I would like to refer to it and pretend my education hasn’t been wasted.



  • Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market


    I really love this piece of journalism. Not so great for those involved in the Singaporean project.



  • This is a little against my desire to stop using music as background, but I read somewhere about slow radio and went looking for the BBC Radio podcast.



  • Apparently, Chinese youths are referring to themselves as rats. It is a self-deprecating way to refer to themselves while describing their struggles. The article also touches on other memes, and includes the Chinese characters and Hanyuan pinyin to help one understand the wordplay.



  • Another day, another artificial sweetener to be careful about.



Links from the past weeks

Links from the past weeks

  • Harry Styles is very likeable, and while the song’s merits can be debated, the music video for As It Was is a work of art. I had to find out where it was filmed.



  • I was trying the Matter app, and I enjoyed Kieran Setiya’s piece titled What’s the use of hope?

    I like the Matter app’s interface, and the play audio function was great. It was free to try before 15 January 2023; the subscription is US$59.99 per year. I have been a user of Reeder, and I have flirted with Instapaper and Pocket previously but I’ve usually found that I do not use read-later apps that much. Reeder does have a read-later function, but I tend to not use it. I am now also trying out Anybox, which I am treating as a bookmark manager, but it also has a download/ read-later function. At this moment, while the Anybox interface makes things nicer to look at, given my needs (not much), I might just stick to Pinboard since the repository function is the main point for me (I paid a one-time fee previously, before the site changed to a monthly fee model). So I will use Pinboard + Reeder + Apple Notes.



  • The mac mini M2 is finally out. The lowest end model is cheaper than the M1 version. Such a sweet little box.



  • Why You Really Shouldn’t Spend a Lot on a Standing Desk

    This article’s title amused me. We are there already? I haven’t gotten a standing desk, because I’d have to remove from my just-the-right-size apartment our trusty bludot Strut desk. I had considered converters but could not stand the idea of my monitor & keyboard & mouse shuddering as they were being moved up/down. Also, a large converter that would fit a monitor + keyboard seem to be such an ugly mammoth atop the desk. And yes, the “solution” is the same as before standing desks came into fashion – get up, take a walk.



  • Ten Percent Happier has a course they call “The Dalai Lama’s Guide to Happiness”. I enjoy the format, where you watch a short video before the meditation session. Roshi Joan leads the meditation sessions, and she has a very calming presence.




  • We started watching The Chase, a trivia game show, and of course, I had to find out more about the Chasers. Buzzy is such a fun presence and Victoria Groce was so good, I thought she was an actor who was supplied the answers.



Links from the past weeks

Links from the past weeks

  • If Books Could Kill – Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers
    Michael Hobbs asked what is the most harmful airport book, and following up on this interesting question, he does a podcast about Malcolm Gladwell’s very popular book. It is worth a listen.
    I looked through my Goodreads and I’ve read 4 of Gladwell’s books, giving them around 3 stars each. Gladwell’s books had its attraction. He was able to write about things in an interesting way. But as the podcast shows, some basic fact-checking might bring some interesting finds!



  • Another podcast: Is pay transparency good?
    Apparently not always – because you need to factor in equal increase for all workers and therefore bosses will make increments smaller and/or be more cautious about any increase.



  • Word Persons and Web Persons
    In the wake of the Twitter exodus, we have all read pieces on the resurgence of blogging, but I particularly enjoyed this one by Roy Tang.



  • What really matters.
    The economy and the markets are giving people pause these days. It is good to spend some time thinking about what really matters, and calm yourself.



  • I watched a documentary on Netflix called Generation Wealth. I stayed mostly because of the great visuals. Lauren Greenfield’s photographs are gorgeous. This peek into extreme wealth is fascinating but it also induces a feeling of repulsiveness. I also noted that Greenfield and her family are featured quite a bit in this show. Does this make the film better or worse? Overall, I would still recommend a watch.



  • A reminder to turn gratitude into grace.



Links from the past weeks

  • I have been spending time on crosswords and the Spelling Bee on NYT.
    I was reading The Puzzler (which I really enjoyed but it opened with crosswords, which sent me down a rabbit hole, ending with my subscribing to NYT Games).



  • As might be apparent from a previous post, I am the sort who would enjoy a video titled 15 reasons why I still buy CDs.



  • I stumbled upon this vast and deeply lived resource on thinking called Less Wrong.


    It is amazing and I don’t know how I’ve never seen it before. It is “an online forum and community dedicated to improving human reasoning and decision-making. We seek to hold true beliefs and to be effective at accomplishing our goals. Each day, we aim to be less wrong about the world than the day before.”



  • This article that mentioned that employees who are motivated to be kind and helpful tend to have higher well-being at work piqued my interest.

    Workplaces are generally competitive place; an abstract idea of teamwork is generally acceptable as a positive trait in a year-end appraisal, but kindness, helpfulness and compassion are not. I don’t know whether such traits / behaviour make a difference to your renumeration, but I fall on the side of believing in the benefits of being helpful because the time spent at work is long, and even if you are incompetent, I hope you are not unhappily incompetent.



  • This is a really good video showing a slice of life in Singapore: Where Have Singapore’s Karung Gunis Gone?


    Karung gunis are in essence scrap dealers. They used to be prominent in society, roving round blocks, soliciting your trash. But the worldwide reduction in demand for the scrap they collect means lower earnings, and there seem to be fewer of them around these days. If you are interested in this topic, you can read Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter.



  • There is a tool for you to figure out the proper distance your TV ought to be placed at.



Links from the past weeks

  • Japan’s jazz coffee bars transcend global barriers.
    On the day that it was announced Japan will soon allow tourists back into the country, a flurry of links about Japan were sent around. We Singaporeans seem to have a mad love for this country. But yes, that image of us in a dark room in Tokyo, sipping black coffee and listening to music… I can’t wait to go back to Japan.



  • Apparently, being wowed is good for you.
    I do like looking at trees, and my phone contains too many photos of “oh I like this big tree” without me being able to recognise its species, but hey, now I know for sure looking at trees is good for me.



  • I have not been keeping track, but there are now many new switches on the market.

    Having used a TKL for many years, my current favourite is a 75% Vortex 3. And why did I end up buying a Varmilo Minilo? Was it for the skin-like texture? Or the Iris switches touted to have a superior typing experience? Why did I end up with a 65% keyboard that does not have the Home and End buttons that I rely on?



  • ‘There’s endless choice, but you’re not listening’: fans quitting Spotify to save their love of music
    This is of course a very familiar feeling, and I too am guilty of passive listening, and taking too utilitarian an approach when I set music to an experience (e.g. for work; for running), instead of what we used to enjoy: music for the sake of music.

    And so I cancelled my Spotify subscription, bought a few albums off Bandcamp, and consoled myself with this page asking whether ripping CD collections to FLAC is worth it. I also popped some CDs into the Denon, and then smiled when I realised I have quite a number of CDs already ripped using iTunes. Apple doesn’t play that well with high quality audio, and some things don’t change, so you need advice on how to play hi-res music on your iPhone.



  • I remembered being pissed off about the way the knotting appeared on a badminton racket that was restrung by a company that offered delivery services and confirmed my bias by reading this forum thread on badmintoncentral. I will be sending my rackets to the shop I like in the east, even though it is a little troublesome and I will have to collect the rackets some days later when they are ready. Racket re-stringing is always such an exercise.

Links from the past week 

  • 8world: Tuesday Report – Trails Across Time: Thomson
    This is a video made by Mediacorp Singapore and it traces the developments in the Thomson area from the 1930s onwards, where there were once villages and plantations. The green spaces and reservoirs we know of now were once places where people lived, cultivated food, washed their clothes… The video includes a segment where an old gentleman draws a map of his village (he could still remember where each household was!). There is also a rendering of how a village looks like; I can still drag up a fuzzy image of my grandmother’s kampung house but it is such a distant memory.



  • Love, Happiness, and Time
    Is love/ happiness a thing/ a place? Or is it an event? This is worth a few minutes of your time.



  • The Apple Watch Ultra finally convinced me to leave Garmin behind
    Quite an unexpected title, but I guess this “good enough” and being part of the Apple ecosystem explains why there are people who would take the Apple Watch over a Garmin (or any other real sports watch).



  • What’s the Most Harmful Airport Book?
    What a good question, and what an interesting read. The #1 is a little unexpected, but the view expressed is quite valid. 🤔

Links from the past weeks