Trying Obsidian

I finally got around to trying Obsidian and, with the Things theme installed, it seemed to do everything I wanted. Mainly, I really like the way it displayed checklists and dimmed the text if you checked something was done. And being able to add little icons to the mobile toolbar to move items up and down is also great.

One thing I didn’t love about the theme was that on my iPhone it put a big blue dot in the bottom right hand corner to let me change from one kind of view to another but also got in the way of the words I was trying to write.

After a bit of head scratching I worked out how to turn it off. You have to install a plug-in called Style Settings. Once you’ve installed and enabled it, there will be an option in the general settings to allow you to make the dot disappear along with a bunch of other little tweaks that you can make.

Things seemed great until I tried it out on my Mac using Voice Control, my preferred text input method at the moment. And for some reason, unlike almost every other app on my computer, nothing happened — no text appeared. I’m not sure why, but there is some kind of disconnection between Voice Control and Obsidian. This seems to be something of a known issue with some people reporting that it works about 10 per cent of the time and fails the other 90 per cent.

So, back to Bear it is.

Posted in Technology Tagged ,
Posted on 13 January 2024

MarsEdit media manager issue (and how to fix it)

If you use MarsEdit and its media manager is showing hardly any of your photos, the problem is most likely your setting in the Photos app for iCloud Photos.

You have two choices: “Download Originals to this Mac” or “Optimise Mac Storage”.

If you have it set to download originals, all your pictures will show up. If you have it set to optimise Mac storage, you’ll just see a random smattering of images.

While troubleshooting this with Daniel Jalkut, the author of MarsEdit, he mentioned he was looking at ways to address this including, perhaps, using a newer Apple facility to access the Photos database. As SSD space on Macs remains limited and image resolution on iPhones expands, I hope Apple will make it easier for developers to deliver what users expect.

Posted in Technology Tagged , ,
Posted on 25 December 2023

Like Kings

This is a great point. So much coverage of tech focuses on the wrangling of aristocrats.

This is not a fully formed thought, but I have a visceral reaction to seeing coverage of Altman’s firing treated as a top-left news headline. It feels part of the hagiography of these dudes, that we cover them like kings and we cover their companies like nations, but somehow we don’t cover what their tech is going to do to real people.

Mandy Brown

Posted in Internet
Posted on 19 November 2023

New Love Glow

What kind of monster, when meeting their brother’s ex-girlfriend at the pharmacy, would casually mention that he’s got that new love glow?

Posted in Culture, Music Tagged
Posted on 13 November 2023

Gardening in the Rain

I have accidentally left cleaning up the garden to the day before our rent inspection and now it’s raining. Looks like I’ll be living a real life version of that early REM song “Gardening in the Rain”.

Posted in Life, Music
Posted on 12 November 2023

Shush

Although Mastodon is the social media thing that feels most like home to me, I’ve been dipping my toe a little into the slightly murky waters of Bluesky and Threads.

One thing that has surprised me is the primitive implementation of the mute feature. I use muting to temporarily make my feed a bit quieter and stop it being dominated by people who are being particularly vociferous. It’s more of a “shush” than a “mute”.

Neither Threads nor Bluesky lets me do that. I can’t just remove someone’s posts for a day and have them start showing up tomorrow, which is pretty much all I want to do. You can mute someone, but you have to manually unmute them to see their posts again. It’s more of a way to quietly unfollow someone without them knowing. Maybe that’s what people want or maybe they’re planning on adding more granular controls.

Oh, and neither has keyword muting yet either. So if you’d like to take a break from hearing about the Cybertruck or whatever, they can’t help you there either.

Posted in Internet, Technology Tagged , ,
Posted on 12 November 2023

Thunk

I love the soft thunk you get when you drop the kettlebell on the grass at the end of a set.

Posted in Life Tagged
Posted on 12 November 2023

Super Spicy

So if you buy your daughter some super spicy chicken wings at the Taiwanese chicken place whose supposedly non-spicy chicken is too spicy for you, it’s a bad idea, when you put the super spicy chicken wings into the oven to heat up, to plunge your hand into the bag, bring out an assemblage of crunchy chicken bits and the super-spicy spice mix and put it in your mouth. You will not be happy. Lesson learned?

Posted in Food
Posted on 10 November 2023

TAR

This was great — just so full of great scenes and much less straightforward than I’d expected. After just one watch I don’t really feel I have a handle on what this film is about or trying to say. But I do know I’ll watch it again.

Some things that stood out for me:

  • Lydia pretending to find her partner’s blood pressure medications upon returning to Berlin when she actually stole them in the first place. A pretty clear signal that she is not a good person.
  • The whole white male cis composer scene — that student’s bimbou yuzuri is off the charts.
  • Her threatening a child — “No one will believe you because I’m a grown up.”
  • Her gradual increasing sensitivity to sounds — screams in the park, ticking metronome and the like. I need to be more aware of this on the next watch.
  • Noémie Merlant just disappears halfway through the film when it’s clear to her that she has fallen from favour — no dramatic confrontations.
Posted in Culture, Moving Pictures Tagged
Posted on 9 November 2023

Playstation Language Settings

Nine out of ten times when I turn on the Playstation I have to change the interface language from Japanese, my daughters’ preference, to English, which is mine.

Why can’t I set the preferred language at the user profile level rather than it be a global preference? For families like mine it would be a huge benefit and it doesn’t seem like it would be difficult to do. Maybe Sony thinks there just aren’t enough multi-lingual families to make it worthwhile.

Posted in Games, Language, Life Tagged
Posted on 5 November 2023

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

Second watch. The first two episodes of this three-part anthology seemed just as off as before — odd casting for the first and too much of a contrived structure for the second.

But the third episode was even more moving than before. Just wonderful performances from the two actresses as they wrestle with regrets and doubts. I love that it is shot in a very flat and uncinematic way. For forty minutes you get to share this wonderful day without anything getting in the way.

There’s so much to love here: the moment the mistaken identity is discovered, the In the Mood for Love-ish role-playing, and calm, but deeply emotional tone.

Posted in Moving Pictures
Posted on 4 November 2023

The Platonic Ideal of KFC

In the last few weeks I’ve made the long drive down to Busselton or Bunbury and back about ten times. Today, on my last drive back to Perth for, I think, a week or so, noticing my eyes were getting that droopy feeling, I stopped at one of the roadside service centres to get a coffee. I decided to pass on the coffee, which I knew would be either too milky or too bitter. A splash of cold water in my face did the trick to snap me out of highway fatigue.

But I was feeling peckish. Against my better judgment I went for one single piece of KFC original recipe chicken. KFC is one of my most reliable disappointments with Australian fast food. I should add that I judge all fast food by Japan standards — a very high bar. It’s either too soggy, too oily or too dry. But I just needed some calories to keep me going.

When I got back to my car (air-conditioning and good music) I opened the little one-piece pack to find the platonic ideal of KFC — crispy, flavourful and perfectly cooked inside. My faith in the fast food gods have been (temporarily, I’m sure) restored.

Posted in Food, Life Tagged ,
Posted on 3 November 2023

Dolphins

We decided to swing by the Bunbury Dolphin Discovery Centre on the way back from Busselton so got up early and headed off to get there for eight o’clock.

I am still haunted by our first visit, when I failed to take into account that the dolphins are wild and don’t just hang around the whole time the centre is open. They come and go as they please, which I’d have realised if I’d given it even a moment’s thought. So we turned up late, after they’d been in, and waited for a fair while hoping they’d make a rare second visit. They did not.

So we got there a little after eight this morning and just as soon as we got our stuff out of the car, ready for an indeterminate wait, the bell rang that signalled there was a visitor. We got to spend about twenty minutes as she swam about just in front of us. A very nice anniversary (plus one day) present.

Posted in Life Tagged
Posted on 2 November 2023

Mendokusai

I lived in Japan for close to 20 years and, after 10 years of living in Australia, there are still many Japanese words that are part of my mental language — you may never hear me say them, but they are the ones my mind goes for to describe certain things.

My favourite is probably mendokusai. Unlike some others, like fuinki or natsukashii, which don’t really have straight English equivalents, it translates pretty easily as What a bother! or It’s a hassle.

But there’s something about mendokusai that I love and that makes me prefer it. I think it’s the hard consonant sounds that do it for me — and that I can draw it out into three distinct parts: men doku sai. That doku means poison also helps add the feeling that something is such a hassle that it is toxic.

Posted in Language, Life Tagged ,
Posted on 12 October 2023

A Week In Late September

Started the week feeling stretched in a thousand directions at once. Things evened out after a day or two thanks to the restorative powers of conversations with friends.

Alvvays’ Perth show in December sold out quicker than I expected, leaving me ticketless. Although I signed up to a waitlist, I didn’t think much would come of it. Given their tight tour schedule, it seemed impossible for them to add another show. But something did come of it! They changed to a bigger venue and I managed to hold my procrastination at bay long enough to get a ticket. Looking forward to mucking up the lyrics as I sing along to them just as much as I do in the car.

The Barbie movie was fun. I especially appreciated the Malkmus reference, of course. Sadly, although it was supposed to have Japanese subtitles, they were nowhere to be found. Apple gave us a refund, but I would have far preferred to have got what was — and still is — advertised.

I finally got a Bluesky invitation as, it seems, many others did. Haven’t really used it enough to get a real sense of what it’s like, but I’ve found a few people who I’d like to keep up with. People seem really into using “skeet”. I see it way more than “toot” on Mastodon. The app is surprisingly slow and flaky for something I thought had big VC dollars behind it. I suppose I’m spoiled by Ivory and Mona.

Posted in Culture, Life, Moving Pictures, Music Tagged , ,
Posted on 30 September 2023

Irma Vep Saves the Day

I gave High Life a go last night and ended up having to bail about halfway through — something I almost never do when watching a film by myself. It was just too bleak and unpleasant — and I usually have a high tolerance for bleakness. Each minute sapped my curiosity about where things would end up further and further until it dried up completely. Maybe it had something to do with having driven for six hours earlier in the day.

It was still early when I pulled the plug, so I reached for another film that had long been on my to-watch list — Irma Vep. What an absolute joy from start to finish! I had expected something more serious about the struggles of creating art — part of the reason it’s been sitting unwatched for so long — and worried I’d have to cringe through some blithe 90s racism. I was wrong on both counts. There’s tonnes of drama and argument behind the scenes, but it’s all so enjoyable to watch, and Maggie Chueng comes across as being totally in control the whole time. All the performances feel so natural and the camera dances about the whole time, adding energy to every conversation. It’s a nice change from the fussy framing and intentionally stilted delivery of so many films today.

Posted in Culture, Moving Pictures
Posted on 9 September 2023

What’s In My Ears Right Now?

What to do when you’ve listened to Blue Rev a million times and can’t wait for a new Alvvays album? Simple — go back and listen to their previous one, Antisocialites, which also has tonnes of great songs. Probably works better if you haven’t heard it before. Can’t get enough of In Undertow right now. Has one of those bits that I love where Molly’s voice goes from highish to lowish, taking the song from great to greater.

Speaking of old music that is new to me, Morningside by Fazerdaze is a revelation. It was Lucky Girl that hooked me, but it’s not really representative of the rest of the album. Song after song had me amazed that this was her first album.

Sometime last year I saw a video of Courtney Barnett recommending some albums to Kurt Vile. There may have been more, but the ones I remember were Dick Diver’s Calendar Days and Chastity Belt’s I Used To Spend So Much Time Alone. That album’s opener, Different Now, was the soundtrack to hours and hours of wintery driving in Japan last December. Now Courtney has released a cover of it and, umm, it didn’t do much for me. Maybe the original is too hardwired into my head. I keep waiting for things to happen than don’t. Oh well, it’ll probably turn more people onto Chastity Belt so overall a good thing.

Posted in Music Tagged , , ,
Posted on 17 August 2023

Writing in “Chinese”

Lovely story on Language Log about an American prisoner in Japan in the 1980s teaching themselves “Chinese” and using it to send a special message to a member of the consulate staff.

Posted in Culture, Language
Posted on 8 August 2023

Properly Crispy

Happy to announce that my fear that Recipe Tin Eats’ method of tenderising the pork for sweet and sour pork by marinading it overnight in a sauce containing baking soda either wouldn’t work or would taste strange was unfounded. Super tender, super tasty and super crispy. Total home run!

I can’t speak for the sauce because we used a Japanese one from a packet — that was the flavour we wanted — but I doubt it’d be anything but great.

Posted in Food Tagged
Posted on 4 August 2023

Gathering Crickets

While playing the main story of Ghost of Tsushima, I tended to ignore all the little collectible things — singing crickets, Mongol artifacts, banners and the like. Basically, anything that didn’t make me a more effective killing machine seemed like a pointless distraction.

Nowadays, things are different. I start each play session by donning the Traveller’s Attire and choosing something to search for. Then I just follow the guiding wind across the countryside, taking out stray bands of mongols and bandits along the way, until I find what I’m looking for. I like that these items don’t appear as icons on the map. There’s no point in using fast travel because you don’t know where you’re heading — just the general direction. It’s very relaxing and peaceful to just walk or ride across the countryside.

Posted in Culture, Games Tagged
Posted on 18 June 2023