Work:

• Still moving and writing test data for the oauth2 model classes

Personal Life:

• The left CMD button on my macbook keyboard is off, so now it’s annoying to type using it. Thankfully I bought Das Keyboard beforehand
• Back to another session of a driving lesson. Should be able to get my license in a couple of months.

Guitar:

• More practice on thumping than Marigold.

Book:

Still reading Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

Movies:

None

TV Shows:

Nothing new, Dark is still very good, Portlandia is still weird, Parks and Recreation is still funny, and Hannibal is still one of the best series out there.

Music:

Missio – Loner: Unexpected found, an electronic duo that sounds like Depeche Mode. Here’s Animal

Poppy – Poppy.Computer: I like Poppy, but his debut album sounds way too Jpop-y. My Microphone is the only song from this album that I enjoy listening to on repeat.

That Poppy – Bubblebath: Again, I like Poppy a lot. Her original debut EP, Bubblebath sounds way better than the debut album, since it’s pop reggae. I was expecting her to shout Jah Jah Jah during the bridge. Lowlife is groovy reggae, that sadly doesn’t mention Jah nor Hailie

Do Make Say Think – Stubborn Persistent Illusion: Post Rock, sometimes sounds good, mostly boring instrumental. Bound sounds okay

Dance Gavin Dance – Happiness: Man, I like the riffs, the instruments, but the vocal melodies sometimes just don’t fit. Here’s Carl Barker

Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz – Kings of Crunk: The only crunk album that matters. Throw It Up!

Arch Echo – Arch Echo: Arch Echo is djent / progressive metal that looped around and now it sounds like jazz fusion, which is goddamn amazing since I love jazz fusion. Here’s Earthshine

m-flo – BACK2THEFUTURETHEALBUM: Remix album, some sound better, other sounds worse than the original. Love Bug

Sean Tarpey – Sean Tarpey’s Album: Groove with Me is a funky groovy unfinished song.

Work:

Finally moving my test auth db to my larger project

Personal Life:

Back to my morning run after getting sick last time. Now back to 4.5 km, should be up to 6 km by the end of this week.

Guitar:

Almost done with Marigold’s Periphery. There are parts with unusual finger stretching that I kept stumbling on

Book:

The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck: Basically read till chapter 6. It’s pretty obvious book, that tells you that you should know what to prioritize and learn to ignore stuff.

Movies:

Thor Ragnarok (2017): The first Thor movie that I actually like. It’s because half of the setting takes place in a futuristic planet, and there’s actually some humor in the movie, rather than just Asgardian stuff that I don’t find to be interesting at all.

El Secreto de sus Ojos (2009): Deservingly this movie won the Goya award. An amazing murder mystery that kept me intrigued throughout the whole film.

TV-Shows:

Dark (2017): Like El Secreto de sus Ojos, Dark is both full of mystery and intriguing. Hope that it stays like that throughout the first season. The first German TV series that I watched, and it looks like a good one.

Portlandia (2011): The absurdist humor is sometimes grating, but I’m interested in more. The issue with Portlandia is that every part is a sketch about a different pair of people (which still feature Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein), so it’s hard to be invested in the characters.

Parks and Recreation (2009): Apparently it’s like The Office, and I have never watched The Office. It establishes the characters pretty well, and they are many chuckle-worthy moments. Pretty good,

Music:

Scale the Summit – In A World of Fear: It features popular musicians like Yvette Young and Angel Vivaldi, but somehow none of them songs have enough hook, that they become only technical musings. Here’s Astral Kids

Sikth – The Future in Whose Eyes?: It’s an okay album, but somehow the vocal parts are weighing down some of the parts. Sikth – Vivid

Modern Day Babylon – Coma: The guitar thumping makes the album sounds so good.

Intervals – The Way Forward: A good album, some of the songs like Rubicon Artist, are fun to listen to.

Milco – Nerima: Milco sounds great, especially Designer. Again, the percussive sound of thumping makes the song sounds great.

Julieta Venegas – si: Latina pop! I thoroughly enjoy the album, especially Lento

Mariya Takeuchi – REQUEST: I really like Mariya Takeuchi due to future funk. There’s so much addicting beat in her songs. 夢の続き is one of my most favorite songs, just listen to the basslines.

Night Tempo – Babymaker 2: Night Tempo is still the king of future funk. Here’s Cheek

Future Girlfriend 音楽 – Through Space to See You: One of my favorite future funk albums. Here’s the collab with Android Apartment: 今を生きる

Vitalism – SY: This is one of best albums I’ve heard in years. It mixes Djent with Jazz and Brazillian music. Here’s one with jazz sax and piano, Yami Obi.

Work:

FUCKING NONE

Personal Life:

• Fever for 7 days straight, lost around 7 kg.
• Chinese New Year, basically fell into food coma

Guitar:

• Still practicing Periphery’s Marigold

Movies:

The Post (2017): Supposed to be interesting, chronicling Washington Post’s contribution in publishing The Pentagon Papers. I guess I was too sick while watching it, that I can’t remember anything.

42 Grams (2017): Documentary about a 2 Michelin-Star restaurant, from its heyday as an underground restaurant to opening an actual restaurant in Chicago. Really good.

TV-Shows:

Altered Carbon (2017): Supposed to be an interesting cyberpunk show, ended up as kind of boring.

Hannibal (2013): Hannibal is great, one of the best thriller series out there.

Music:

Jade – Don’t Walk Away: The first 30 seconds beat after the telephone intro is so good. The rest is just cookie cutter 90’s R&B melody.

Good Tiger – We Will All Be Gone: Not good. Sounds too boring and emo to my taste. The Devil Thinks I’m Sinking

Takeuchi Mariya – Variety: Plastic Love is basically the poster song for future funk, it’s so good that I can see myself listening to it in the next decade.

悲しい ANDROID – APARTMENT¶ – From Earth to Moon: It has weird splicing, that most of the lyric parts are cut-off. Kiss Me and Goodbye

 

Work:

• Went to startup incubator and talked to the people who managed it. Also at least my existence is somewhat known by one of the potential investors.
• Went to a progress update meeting of a startup acquired by one of the local conglomerates (don’t ask how I got the entry to it), the founders seem to be a bit too idealistic that they are bit afraid of monetizing their business.
• Testing out flask-oauthlib and trying to integrate into my own stuff, since now I also need to be oauth2 provider.

Personal Life

• Back to driving lesson. I haven’t driven a car for the past 15 years, so it’s refreshing lesson basically. No, I’m okay in driving, everything went smoothly, every single instructor realizes that I have driven before.
• Reached 7 km on my regular run.

Guitar:

• Still working on Periphery’s Marigold, now practicing the second variation of the riff and the outro.
• Still learning thumping.

Movies:

Trainwreck (2015): I don’t like Amy Schumer, I don’t think she’s a funny comedian. However, Trainwreck is an entertaining movie, if you view it more of a drama than a comedy. Amy Schumer did well in this movie.

Devilman Volume 2: The Demon Bird (1990): The second part of the Devilman OAV, and  to be honest, it’s kinda uninteresting.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017): Ultra gory prison brawl thriller starring Vince Vaughn. It’s rare to see an American movie that is so violent, and good at the same time. The plot is fairly straightforward and the action sequences are very raw, no bombastic scenes nor shaky cam parts.

Mom and Dad (2018): Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair act as psychologically triggered/infected(?) in such a way that, they start to hunt and try to kill their own children. This is a fun movie.

The Birth of Sake (2016): Documentary about sake brewery. Somehow it didn’t manage to resonate with me, thus I find the whole thing very boring.

TV-Shows:

The X-Files Season 1: I have never really sat down and watched X-Files. And to be honest, it still holds up pretty well, each case is still intriguing.

Firefly: On the other hand, Firefly is very dated, and doesn’t hold up that good. The conversation seems to be very 90’s, and I barely finished the first episode.

Wormwood: Such a weird mishmash of documentary and drama fiction(?) about MKULTRA conspiracy. It’s that kind of TV show that feels very unsatisfying and you’re not sure whether you should stop watching it.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season 3: Brooklyn Nine-Nine is not as funny as Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt nor Angie Tribeca. But it’s okay enough to be time filler.

Homeland Season 1: I’m very excited after finish watching the first episode since thriller is my favorite. I can’t say much, except that the first episode is fairly gripping.

Music:

ev.exi – Remember: The best album I’ve listened to this week, future funk with great beats. Here’s the titular song.

Maximum The Hormone – Mimi Kajiru Shinuchi: Classic MTH sound, sadly I can’t find the songs on YouTube.

Monuments – The Amanuensis: I dislike the vocal parts, and I like the guitar parts, especially the riff in “I, The Creator”

Magroove – b cool: Really good chill funk song featuring Melanie Faye.

Childish Gambino – “Awaken, My Love!”: Mea Culpa, I’ve only heard of Childish Gambino from the iPhone X ad, and of course, here’s Redbone

Chris Stapleton – Traveller: Tennessee Whiskey is still one of the best country songs of the recent years.

Joe Satriani – What Happens Next: Satch tried to change up his sound in this latest album, but somehow I couldn’t get into it. Here’s Thunder High on the Mountain

Modern Day Babylon – Travelers: Okay, I guess? Here’s Lost in Dreams

Born of Osiris – Tomorrow We Die Alive: Mixed feelings, there are parts that I like (the djent riff), and parts that I find them boring (vocal, etc). Born of Osiris – Machine

Long list, because I just add a list of media that I’ve consumed in the past month. Should be shorter next week.

Work:

• Basically, I have been researching on a better OAuth2 framework, way better than rolling out my own. Currently looking at python-oauth2 (which seems to be wonky when working with Python3) and flask-oauthlib
• Also, encountered JointJS, javascript diagramming library, might be useful.

Personal Life:

• Experienced first earthquake, 6.4 magnitudes, the chair was wobbling and air conditioner fixture was creaking.
• Have been running > 6 km regularly (daily), with an average pace of ~8′.

Guitar: 

• Learning Marigold, currently still practicing the riff and solos, not the sweep picking outro yet.

• Practicing thumping, still superbly slow

Movies:

Really long list, since I decided to list out the ones I watched in the past month:

True Lies (1994): Doesn’t age well, and again I’m indifference toward James Cameron’s works

Bright (2017): Okay, I guess, not hot garbage, I glossed over halfway thru.

Tokyo Ghoul (2017): Garbage, the problem with japanese Cinema, is that most of their actors and actresses are pop idols, so most of their acting are just overly melodramatic.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017): Denis Villeneuve still remains one of the best directors out there, from Prisoners to Arrival. Blade Runner 2049 is great.

Hell or High Water (2016): This further cement the fact that Taylor Sheridan is an amazing screen writer.

Locke (2013): Locke is amazing, because the whole movie is just Tom Hardy driving in BMW X5, enganging in multiple phone conversations. It’s one of those movies that are great because they just focus on well written dialogues.

12 Angry Men (1957):  The original 12 Angry Men. I prefer the TV remake which feature more diverse cast, however the original still holds up really good. I love the fact that they play with camera angles to gradually increase the tension

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017): An amazing thriller directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. The deadpan and emotionless dialogues actually creates more tension in the movie.

Lady Bird (2017): This is a really fun coming of age drama.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017): More of a good drama for me than a comedy. I like how Noah Baumbach directs the dialogues, very normal with interruptions and people talking over each other, which is rarity in most American movies now. There are nude parts that are totally unnecessary though.

Wind River (2017): Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan. The plot is very straighforward, but the way it’s written in such a way that it eschews exposition and lets the audience figure out what’s going on, makes the whole movie way better than it should be.

The Shape of Water (2018): I came in expecting sci-fi, ended up with really amazing and heartwarming romance movie, and I normally dislike romance movies. Guillermo del Toro is still one of the best craftmen out there.

Miss Sloane (2016): Fairly average thriller about lobbying.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017): This might be one of the funniest movies I have seen in years. Frances McDormand is amazing in portraying a bitter mother clashing against the local police department.

Molly’s Game (2017): Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, featuring Jessica Chastain, based on true story. This is really really good.

The Villainness (2017): Came in wanted a female John Wick with South Korean amazing action scenes, ended up with boring story and lots of shaky cam.

Drag Me to Hell (2009): This is more of a comedy horror, but again it’s directed by Sam Raimi. I love how campy it is.

Snake Eyes (1998): It’s not good, and I am not sure whether it’s because that it’s originally bad, or because it hasn’t aged well. But I’m still contractually obligated to watch all Nicolas Cage movies.

Devil Man – Volume 1: The Birth (1987): I watched it after watching the Devilman Crybaby TV series. It’s fairly average, but again it’s an old film. Some of the background arts are pretty good. I still need to watch the second part though.

TV-Shows:

These are the ones I watched in the past month:

Devilman Crybaby (2018): There’s an excess of sex and violence in this anime. The whole series is depressing and dark, and I enjoyed almost every moment of it.

Angie Tribeca (2016 – ): If you like Mel Brooks’ films, or any satirical parody films, then Angie Tribeca is perfect fit for you. It shot up to one of my most favorite TV shows.

Alice no Toge (2014): Starts off good, but then halfway thru, since the screenwriter is contractually obligated to write melodrama scenes, the second half just devolved into bad TV show.

Music:

 DIR EN GREY – VESTIGE OF SCRATCHES: A compilation album, but features new versions of 3 old songs, namely Fukai, Beautiful Dirt, and The IIID Empire.  I really like this new version of Fukai, a lot.

 Eminem – Revival: What a disappointment, there’s no song from the album that sticks with me. it just feels generic.

 Brockhampton – Saturation III: While Eminem’s new album is disappointing, Brockhampton have been picking up the slack. Boogie is such a banger.

 Brothers Osborne – Pawn Shop: Yo, this is might be the first country music that I like. It Ain’t My Fault

 Big K.R.I.T. – 4eva Is A Mighty Long Time. I enjoy this flavor of Southern Hip Hop. Big Bank

 MONDO GROSSO – 何度でも新しく生まれる: Labyrinth is probably the second MONDO GROSSO song that I have been listening on repeat.

 Taylor Swift – 1989: I’ve never heard of any Taylor Swift song before, and I really really love Shake It Off, it’s fucking catchy. Still no motivation to touch other songs though.

 Polyphia – The Most Hated: I bought the album and tabs, since I like the guitar lines in 40 oz so much.

 CHON – Homey: Sleepy Tea is a chill but still technically complicated song.

 Elise Trouw – Unraveling: I accidentally came across Elise Trouw on Instagram, and tried out her debut album Unraveling. She Talking is really catchy and one of my fave songs from that album.

 Periphery – Periphery III: Select Difficulty: I haven’t listened to other songs besides Marigold yet. And I love Marigold.