Singtel iPhone unable to connect to Twitter Approximately 80% of the time, my Singtel iPhone is unable to connect to twitter.com or refresh my tweets view in Twitterific (which uses the Twitter API). This only happens when connected to the internet via 3G or GPRS. If I connect via my own WiFi network, Twitter works whenever the whale isn't flying. Either something is wrong with the DNS resolution over on their end, they're blocking twitter (which makes no sense to me; it's not the highest traffic application), or something much worse. Whatever it is, I am getting seriously pissed off. At long last .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } photo.jpg, originally uploaded by sangsara. I got an iPhone last night after 5 hours of queuing at the launch event. Which was nothing really, considering that I've been waiting 592 days since the first iPhone was announced last January. It's just not worth getting unsupported Apple products, so I never got one on the black market. And now at last! Carried home in the obnoxious little Singtel paper bag you see above, I have an iPhone and it's really freakin' sweet. At long last I got an iPhone last night after 5 hours of queuing at the launch event. Which was nothing really, considering that I've been waiting 592 days since the first iPhone was announced last January. It's just not worri getting unsupported Apple products, so I never got one on the black market. And now at last! Carried home in the obnoxious little Singtel paper bag you see above, I have an iPhone and it's really freakin' sweet. My iPhone Diamond Twister review I'm very glad that Apple let me post a review like this on the local App Store. Food File: Uluru Aussie Bar & Restaurant 40 Duxton Hill Singapore Date dined: 31/07/08 Although the term "Australian cuisine" suggests something between a tribal cook-out and a white suburban barbecue, there's a lot more to eating down-under than grilled meats. Roast beef, for one. Many 'traditional' Australian favorites have their roots in English recipes, a warning sign if ever there was one, but these days – as Australia's cultural identity is being transformed by her migrant populations – one is as likely to find a Roghan Josh as a Sunday roast. Uluru, a fairly new restaurant in Singapore's KTV-happy Duxton Hill area, seems to embrace the cosmopolitan face of Australian cuisine a little too readily, as there is nothing on its menu that stands out as being definitively Australian. Items run the gamut from grilled salmon steaks and Japanese-seasoned scallop salads, to fish & chips and cuts of prime Wagyu beef. International cuisine it is then, although Victoria Bitter (VB) and other Aussie beers put in some effort. The French Onion soup was above average, but the Cream of Tomato soup was even better. It tasted as if it were made from ripe tomatoes grown in a field of bacon, if one could do such a thing. The two flavors were perfectly twinned, leaving a rich result that was possibly the best part of dinner. My burger ($30) was ordered medium-rare but turned up very close to well done. It lacked the beetroot that one would expect to find in an Australian burger, but by the time it arrived I was hungry enough not to care about the beetroot. Honestly, who likes the stuff? The slices of jalapeno pepper in its place, however, were a matter of gross misjudgement. The accompanying potato wedges could have used some salting, or even ketchup, but this was not provided. Ho hum. I'll probably be skipping dessert on my second visit, as the Granny Smith Apple Tart was soft in the crust and very hot inside, suggesting the use of a microwave oven, and for $16 including the wee littlest scoop of ice-cream in the world, represented pretty poor value. Top marks for the inclusion of fresh berries on the side, though. The braised beef cheek, ribeye steak, and baby back ribs ordered by others at the table fared much better, so it is possible that some Australian heritage is at work here after all. * * * ½ Singapore Garden Festival .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Singapore Garden Festival, originally uploaded by sangsara. I went with my mom and girlfriend on some complimentary tickets, and on the whole can't say I'm too sorry I spent a Saturday afternoon looking at indoor "fantasy gardens", even if they were largely useless vanity projects for rich landscaping companies. Some, like the one above, made for good photos. News: Monkeys control robots with their minds Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!This is what they really meant, but the short version is funny. Bali .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Altar, originally uploaded by sangsara.Spent a few days in Bali last week, and it was pretty awesome. I was never a fan of short, un-epic vacations before this, but now I can see myself squirreling some money away for a few more of these getaways. Seminyak was a far more pleasant and quieter place than the popular Kuta, with its gaudy local economy built around serving foreign surfers. Every meal was pretty great, and almost always half the price of their equivalents in Singapore. I daresay I had the single best pasta dish of my life served in a Belgian bar/restaurant with six fresh prawns for just SGD$12. Anyway this altar here was in a street corner restaurant where we stopped for lunch after 3 hours of walking in the heat after coming off a night without sleeping on a really uncomfortable flight on Indonesia's Lion Air. Film Notes: Get Smart (2008) It's been settling for two days now, and I think Get Smart was better than Wanted and You Don't Mess with the Zohan, but worse than Kung Fu Panda. I liked some of the references to the old series, and I always like looking at Anne Hathaway too, but an unnecessary remake movie's gotta have more to offer than that! I doubt many people are on the fence about seeing this anyway, so I won't go into any details. It's an alright 2 hour movie to see in the middle of a hot afternoon, but don't make it the high point of your night out. I laughed a couple of times, so I'd say it was worth 3/5 stars. For the record, Wanted got 2, Zohan got 2.5 (mostly for its opening minutes), and Kung Fu Panda got 3.5. Film Notes: Kung Fu Panda (2008) I saw this last night and was rather disappointed with the story. This movie has gotten something like 88% at RottenTomatoes.com, which is in a region previously reserved for Studio Ghibli and Pixar movies (or Disney, if you're old enough to remember a time when they didn't suck). So naturally, I had my expectations high enough that anything short of a beautiful, sensitively made film that delivered the old "if you believe, you can do anything" message in new ways was going to feel like a waste of 10 dollars. Kung Fu Panda, sadly, is not that 'something new'. And it is very flawed, structurally. I think they were just hoping that the animation and inherent panda cuteness would make up for the fact that the writers never managed to solve the problem of how to have an unfit panda convincingly best the world's greatest warrior in combat, apart from using his ass/belly as a bouncy surface. As a result, the film looks like this: 2 minutes of Panda being a bad-ass (dream sequence) is followed by 55 minutes of Panda shown as well-meaning but incompetent as a fighter followed by 5 minutes of his teacher having an epiphany followed by 1 minute of training montage followed by 10 minutes of Panda being a full-fledged kungfu expert followed by 10 minutes of doubt followed by 5 minutes of unbelievable, unjustified competence followed by THE END. I know I sound like a picky asshole who can't just relax and enjoy a summer blockbuster for kids, but the bar has been raised by others that came before, and so Kung Fu Panda has to work a little harder. In ways, it is the perfect example of Dreamworks' approach to animation, and offers several reasons why they consistently fail to deliver something as timeless as say, oh... any Pixar film? These include: loud, brash characters who don't change so much as they do unlock their artificially stunted potential that everybody else saw from the beginning. Pop culture jokes (admittedly fewer here). Uneven pacing and plot progression. Disregard for the passage of time – and this is a big one for me. In order to build believability, you have to let certain events breathe. Compared to something like Ratatouille, Kung Fu Panda occurs almost in real-time. It honestly feels like everything happens overnight. The result of such carelessness is a lack of drama and audience emphathy for the characters. How are you supposed to feel that Po (the panda) is really ready for his challenge when you're given at least 30 times as much evidence of his unreadiness as his 1 minute training montage? Classic heroes were products of sustained hardship. Rocky had the heart, and even Remy from Ratatouille had the nose and talent from the beginning. Po, in contrast, is only shown having a fan's interest in the history of kungfu. It's like saying little Johnny Redneck by ringside can throw it down with a pro wrestler after a weekend of training with Hulk Hogan. Animation is a feature film industry where you have far more time and money to get things right, and so directorial failures are even more disappointing. I imagine the guys at Pixar (and I've read a little to this effect) hammer the hell out of every detail for their films in pre-production. They're not afraid to throw away great scenes in order to find even greater ones. The results haven't just been the best 3D animated films; they pretty much legitimized the form. Kung Fu Panda has a couple of dead-air scenes that I think John Lasseter wouldn't even wipe his ass with. One last thing. I've had Pixar movies move me to tears. Those guys know how to write emotionally effective scenes that don't feel like manipulation. And when the time comes to deliver an inspirational message, they know how to show rather than tell. WALL·E pretty much proves it by having two non-speaking leads. Kung Fu Panda on the other hand relies on lines as false as fortune cookie proverbs. A burger can only be wide and flat (or medium all around) I just had to defend wide/flat burgers against tall/thick burgers for 30 mins. I'm finding that this is an argument I get into with too many people. For the record, it's not about taste. I acknowledge that it is possible (but less technically likely) a tall/thick burger can be evenly cooked and taste great. My issue with them is one of design, construction, and symmetry. Real burgers need to be large, pleasurable meals (I'm not talking about those goddamned sliders or mini-burgers; when was the last time you ordered a half-pint as your first drink?) and a wide footprint on a burger encourages the eating of it to last longer, while visually implying a satisfying quantity. Width also make them stable against cutting actions, letting you slice in straight lines perpendicular to the plate. If you eat them with your hands, then it's also less likely that bits are going to be squeezed out. One solution for my rage is to not think about them as "burgers". Or to think of them as "Tall Burgers". Somehow, that makes everything better. It's like "Chicken Luncheon Meat", or "Turkey Bacon". Build an excuse into the name and suddenly all can be forgiven. I'm just very protective over some words and can't stand to see something wrongly labeled. This could be a problem with my brain, because lately I've realized how much I hate some words, because of the way their sounds kinda feel wrong.  Like unexpectedly biting into something crunchy when you were expecting smooth ice-cream. It just ruins your day. "Terrier" is an example of a perfect word. When you look at a terrier and think of how it came to be named that, you know the guy did a fucking first-class job. It absolutely fits. Test Drive Unlimited for cheap I've spent some time on driving games recently, although generally I'm quite poor at them and like smashing into stuff more than anything. I'm overcoming that habit now and spending more time on PGR 3 & 4 than Burnout Revenge. Play-Asia is selling Test Drive Unlimited for just $25 SGD, which is very tempting. It's a Massively Multiplayer racing game that models the entire Hawaiian island of Oahu, and has people from all over driving across it in real time, challenging each other to races and so on. I wonder how many people still play it though, and whether Atari might be discontinuing server support anytime soon. Still, for 25 bucks it's hard to say no. White iPod touch? .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } White iPod touch?, originally uploaded by sangsara. If it's not enough that your spelling is terrible, here's a way to let on that you're selling some kind of fake ipod! Repairing an old family portrait .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } grandma's portrait before after, originally uploaded by sangsara. My grandma's 90th birthday is coming up, so we've dug up a bunch of old photo albums to be made into a video slideshow. This family portrait was probably taken before 1930 (that's my grandmother on the extreme right, and I don't think she could have been more than 12 then), and has faded, peeled, and cracked in many places.I spent about 3 hours in Photoshop retouching it and I think it's turned out pretty well. Of course it's better looking when viewed full-size . M1 isn't getting/doesn't get the iPhone 3G M1's CEO Neil Montefiore has been quoted (in Marketing magazine and today's myPaper) as saying that the iPhone 3G is "a plain 3G phone, and not even 3.5G" and is hence unlikely to make a significant impact on a telco's data traffic revenues. I've never liked M1 very much but FUD of this level is shocking. The man heads up a communications company but can't even open a web browser and read about it for himself? I'll save you the time, it says UMTS/HSDPA right there on the specs page. With apologies to John Gruber for nicking his phrase, it sounds like they're a really bright bunch over there at M1.Maybe he was using M1's own broken broadband network to load it and gave up. Film Notes: Bullitt (1968) Since I don't have a lot to blog about these days, I think I'm going to write short bits about movies I've seen, right after seeing them. Who this could possibly appeal to remains to be seen. I've also been feeling overloaded with work lately, and am making the effort to declare some break time on a daily basis, because otherwise my entire day is split between writing and being unable to write. There are no other states between them that I care to consider. Hopefully I'll manage a film every day or two. Tonight I saw Bullitt on DVD (haven't gotten to the special features yet). This was actually the first time I've seen Steve McQueen in a movie, ever. He's pretty bad-ass and reminds me of Daniel Craig a little, and Robert Redford. The bad guy at the end looks like Clive Owen. They should do a remake... actually, no. It's got plot holes, yeah, but the rest is a very well-constructed movie that I don't think modern audiences would pay money to watch for two hours, which is a shame. I should explain that the archetypical 'modern viewer' in my mind is an American teenager with a short attention span, bad grades, and who likes to plays Halo. That's really the target audience for 99% of the movies that I see coming out anyway. What other reason could there be for the dumbing down of everything? I can't remember the last time I saw a thriller that made the viewer work to distill its elements; to piece together a chronologically dissected heap of stimuli, or guess at characters' meanings and motivations before they are formally introduced (or not at all). It's sad because I go to the theatres most days now only to become irritated at the couple beside me, one member of which will inevitably ask the other at some point, "who is that?", or "what just happened?" as if they were watching two different movies. And mind you, these aren't Hitchcockian movies, or foreign imports where thick accents might have caused a crucial line to be missed – I'm really talking about shit like Wanted, or Tokyo Fucking Drift. Bullitt is two hours long and nowhere as kinetic as I'd expected, which turned out to be a pleasant surprise. (However) there's a car chase in the middle that I hear is the main reason for its cult status: it is one of the earliest examples of modern chase sequence structure, and has some phenomenal stunt driving down the hilly slopes of San Francisco. Very impressive work. But I think the movie's strongest point is the way it frames and presents its dialogue. Some incidental scenes have characters speaking words that feel like they're exchanged for purely practical purposes in the film's world, and not for the benefit of viewers. There is no benefit for us at all, except immersion. I think I've just been watching too many bad movies lately, where every line is used for some ham-fisted exposition or foreshadowing of later drama. And yet there are long stretches where nothing is said, like in the chase scene. McQueen does not quietly curse to himself, and the two antagonists in the other car barely exchange looks, let alone words. It's a fantastic change. At times the camera just settles on Lieutenant Bullitt (that's the name of McQueen's cop), squarely on his face from the shoulders up as his eyes search the room we cannot see, or ponders his next move. It's far more effective than what M. Night Shymalan has done recently with The Happening, which tries a similar gimmick with Mark Wahlberg as he supposedly struggles to reconcile his science-rooted atheism with growing evidence of intelligent design. The necessary charisma is lacking. Jumping on the Flixwagon Finally got my invite to Flixwagon today, after about four months of waiting. I think they might be pushing the beta a little harder now, so if sign up now you might get it a lot quicker than I did.My first impressions of the application (S60, on my Nokia N82) are that it's well-designed and allows you to start broadcasting immediately AND set up a more specific broadcast with title and privacy settings through a wizard. I don't know if it's the compression codec used, but uploading/streaming seems much snappier than with Qik. Quality is pretty good even at normal quality (other setting is 'best'), so long as you don't have too much movement. One other major difference is that it records video with your phone in portrait orientation, as opposed to Qik's landscape. This actually makes more sense for handheld cellphone video, as it attracts less attention, is easier to stabilize, and doesn't get as tiring.Will be thinking about using this over Qik for this website's embedded video widget. As you can probably see, I haven't broadcasted any video in weeks, partly because Qik took ages and tons of battery life.(Apologies for the terrible Straits Times-like title.) Haagen Dazs Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!Did you know that Haagen Dazs has a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough flavor? I didn't.I do like how the brand identity is so far up its own ass that the copy has to practically apologize for the flavor being so "playful", and point out that you, the adult consumer, are separated from the pure-hearted child who enjoys sticking his finger in the bowl by, oh, I don't know, millions of dollars? Heaven forbid a child could afford and enjoy Haagen Dazs ice-cream! Incidentally the only positive feelings I have about the brand were fostered in my childhood, when it was pretty much the costliest thing I ate. Now in my old age (where I theoretically aim to recapture lost youth), they've pretty much destroyed all of that goodwill on their own, leaving me to embrace the unapologetically fun Ben & Jerry's instead.I hope those faux-European bastards are happy now! And what's up with the lowercase? I don't get fashion Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!So... one leather pochette resembling a wrinkled labia? That'll be £485, ma'am. Now Playing: The World Ends with You (DS) How does one balance playing Grand Theft Auto 4 with other games and other consoles? Square Enix's "The World Ends With You" on the DS makes it pretty easy actually, by rewarding you with ability points relative to the time you've spent not playing the game. It's an ability you earn pretty early in the game, called Shutdown, and using the system's internal clock, it calculates the numbers of hours you've been away (up to 7 days), and gives you PP when you come back, which can be used to powerup your weapons. The in-game description of this feature reads: "Work, school, or life getting in the way of gaming? Shutdown's got your back!"It's a smart feature that ensures people who don't get to play too much still enjoy the game at a level that more dedicated players do. I think acknowledging that your audience have lives outside of your games, and providing a peace-of-mind incentive like this, is a great step. Nintendo's Animal Crossing is a game that does the exact opposite. Leave the game alone for a week, and when you come back to it, the world is overgrown with weeds that you have to remove – a tedious process. It's a heavy-handed approach that essentially slaps a paying customer on the wrist for having the audacity to neglect a game they should be free to enjoy however they wish.The game also uses a real-time clock in other ways, such as limiting the amount of food you can consume in one day (pretty logical, really). Eating food allows your powers to grow, but only after time has passed and the ramen/burgers/etc have been digested. What it's all about will take a little more time to get into, but the short summary is that it's an ultra-modern RPG set in a parallel universe version of Tokyo's Shibuya district, where wearing the latest fashions gives you an advantage in battle, and powers are bestowed by wearing lapel pins. I've never seen another game like it, and if the idea of fighting spirits called "Noise" in Shibuya while eating Japanese street food to hip-hop beats appeals to you, then give it a go. Avoid M1's Broadband Service Just found this disturbing news via cneil's twitterstream: M1 Broadband passes all requests through a proxy that serves up low-quality images. In order to see the original images, users have to mouse-over the pictures they want and wait a few seconds. Obviously this involves a javascript code injection into all webpages, and could completely screw some sites.Without exception, I would encourage anyone to avoid an internet service that interferes with the data they've requested in this way. Of course, all pages in Singapore are filtered against a blacklist of pornographic/political/hate sites, but aside from that which cannot be helped, no one should pay for anything less than a pure, direct connection.*Previously: Singapore and Mobile Internet Data Plans* Singtel offers two internet configuration profiles for mobile phones: One is named IDEAS WAP and the other, IDEAS INTERNET. The former passes through a sort of proxy server (supposedly) optimized for websurfing, while the latter is the direct connection that you should use – it also allows traffic on other ports, such as those needed for FTP, email, P2P, etc. Guitar Hero 3 widget It's not quite the same thing, but if you love Guitar Hero then here's an official version you can play in the office browser! If you hold your keyboard upside down, it's pretty close to the real thing (at least on the new aluminum Apple keyboards). See below.I love that I don't have to start up my Xbox for a quick fix now! Uploaded with plasq's Skitch! Singapore and Mobile Internet Data Plans I've noticed that more than a few of my local Twitter contacts update via text message to the UK, which is a pretty inelegant way of doing things, seeing as how the mobile web interface allows you to do so for far less money (and more geek cred).It is a sadly little-known fact that all 3 Singaporean cell providers now offer near-unlimited data plans for very low prices, and there's no reason why anybody with a fairly modern phone (that is to say, equipped with GPRS/3G/HSDPA connectivity and a web browser) shouldn't be hooked up with one. The providers have done a pretty good job of obfuscating the availability of these plans – i don't know why, perhaps to protect their margins from consumer overuse, or just because their marketing departments suck – but they are there if you know what to look for.Part of the problem is that they sell these services as meant for use with portable computers, along with HSDPA modem dongles that plug in via USB. But they are fully compatible with phones too, after all, these ARE cellphone service providers.Singtel calls their service "Broadband On Mobile", and plans start for about SGD$22/month, giving you 50GB of bandwidth. That is a lot for any phone. I've been unable to use more than a couple hundred megabytes a month myself, and I am constantly on my phone. Note: They claim you need a 3G-enabled phone to use this service, but that is rubbish. I used it fine on my old Sony-Ericsson K750 with GPRS.M1's offerings are even better, giving the use of unlimited bandwidth at similar price points. They call theirs "M1 Broadband" to one-up Singtel on the confusion front. It's easy to see why people don't associate it with their mobiles; it sounds like a purely desktop internet solution. Starhub's "MaxMobile" plans are the most expensive, with the unlimited coming in at about SGD$70/month, but so-called Hubber customers can get 50% off that by signing up for cable TV and internet with them.There's a lot that having the internet on your phone can do for your life, if you like to be as constantly connected as I do. You can use IM networks like Gtalk and MSN with apps like ebuddy, check your gmail, update Twitter and Jaiku, browse Facebook, and of course, catch up on your RSS reading while on public transportation. "M" subdomains aside, if you have a good enough browser like Opera Mini, or the S60 Webkit browser that comes on high-end Nokia devices, you can pretty much visit any of the websites you're used to. That the iPhone really shines when you have a mobile data plan goes without saying. Snickers from China are wack yo I've been sick and too busy catching up on movies and blowing snot out my nose to complain about as many things as I'd have liked to, but here's one. Can I? Can I just b&w in a childish petulant fashion about the state of Snickers candy bars in Singapore? They're all made in China now, you know, and they really suck. I mean they're crap. They're shit. They're not the same (preceding sentences for the benefit of search engines only).Snickers Dark and Snickers Almond are STILL perfectly alright. That's because Dark comes from the US, and Almond from Australia – traditional origin of all low-cost, Singapore-bound chocolate. The regular Peanut variety is made in China where apparently the caramel is way too sticky and sweet, and the nougat is so dense you'll tire your jaw out from chewing on it. Dark and Almond are lighter with a more pleasant mouth-feel, and I believe the industry standard term is that the nougat is more highly "whipped", although I wouldn't repeat that phrase in public.Sadly, the Dark and Almond bars weigh in at about 50g each, give or take, while the Chinese-made Snickers Peanut bars are 60g for the same price. But honestly, I'd rather have 50g of good old Peanut Snickers wrapped in milk chocolate with light nougat and caramel that doesn't pull a long string out from my mouth like it was fucking mozzarella cheese, made back in the first world, and I'd pay good money for it. Goddamn you MARS CORPORATION INC. for screwing with my only late-night-working source of sugar!!! Simply indescribable .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Simply indescribable, originally uploaded by sangsara. Well, I can think of "lazy copywriting" to start... Al Qaeda is watching Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!Not sure what to make of this... Foggy's dead, again It looks like Ryan Adams has quit blogging again, and one of the last things he said on Foggy (about 21 posts overnight) was this, which I can understand, I think:The Sad Truth Is This Blog, It’s What Happens When One Day You Don’t Have That Person You Talk To Everyday Anymore. They Leave. Any You Get Desperate. And Pathetic. And You Don’t Know Who To Talk To. Life Goes On Without You. That Is What This Is. This Is A Horrible Loneliness. I Hate It. I Hate It So Much I Do It Every Fucking Day. Embarrassing fanship post A couple of days ago, Ryan Adams pretended to quit blogging - or perhaps be was serious but he's come back now - and left a video clip as a parting gift to his fans. In it, he performed a rough version of a song he had earlier announced as having just written for his next album and so honest that it could be his best ever. It has since been taken down, but not before I heard it.Adams is one of few performers I know that can sit down and perform a song straight to mic and have it sound good enough to go on a CD I'd willingly pay for. Maybe its because his sound works best when a little ragged around the edges, but that doesn't change anything. Funnily enough, Prince, whose prolificity is most closely rivaled by Adams, is another such performer. But whereas I've been let down by Prince before, Adams has always delivered incredible music, even in the hundreds of outtakes from the shells of unreleased albums he's littered all over the Internet (I think there were at least ten albums last year).Anyway, back to the song. I'm writing this on my iPod touch which might not last much longer.It was called "Crossed-Out Name", and beautiful despite the raised expectations. I wish you could hear it. I might post a rip later on my Muxtape. From what the gossip blogs have been saying, his last relationship didn't end too well, and in the two weeks that I've followed his blog, he worked like a maniac writing several songs a day, making short films, and posting to his blog like ten times a day. And then one night he said he was going to try and write some flat-out honest songs and came back with "Crossed-Out Name". It's an analogy that should make me cringe, but instead it just kills.Chorus:I wish I could tell you just how I feltI don't pray, I shower and say goodnight to myselfAnd when I close my eyesI feel like a pageWith a crossed-out nameAnyone who's ever been left or broken up with has got to feel a line like that. Charlton Heston DIES, in life! .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Charlton Heston DIES, originally uploaded by sangsara. The Straits Times sure knows how to typeset a classy obituary. From this day onwards, I can do little else but live in the hope of receiving this level of respect (and drama) at the end of my life.It's almost as if the editor was shocked about it. Like it was the last thing anyone could expect Charlton Heston to do at the age of 84, after years of battling Alzheimer's. I imagine they were probably in the midst of preparing other possible "Charlton Heston _______" headlines when the news came in over the wire."Oh my god, I just heard.... he's DEAD! Pull the 'Charlton Heston Breaks Motocross Jump Record' story, now!""But what will we use for a headline!?""Good god, man, just get it out there! This is no time for craft!!" Bad Curry Favor Ad .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Curry Favor Bad Ad, originally uploaded by sangsara. Employee:"Hey boss, I've got an idea for that ad you wanted to run!"Boss:"Hmm? Oh, do you mean the one that I said should explicity address the small group of people who know they dislike Japanese Curry? And offer them a number of clear and indisputable reasons why if they were to just try OUR Japanese Curry once, they would immediately change those mistakenly conceived preferences?"Employee:"OH, you wanted REASONS! Nevermind then, I'll come back later."Boss:"Now now, give it to me. I'm sure it's perfect."Employee:"If you say so, dad."