JioCinema’s Design Blog by Ananth Pai: It is a piece on how the team recently redesigned the carousel element on their homepage by taking into account phone orientation, color schemes, logo and poster de-coupling, all of which were pointed at delivering a seamless and fun user experience. To someone in the design UI/UX design field, this may be day-to-day stuff and nothing out of the ordinary, but as someone who isn’t from the field, and occasionally works with them, I found the articulation of the thinking process fascinating. I felt it put into words feelings I have sometimes had with poor or substandard UIs (but have been unable to find the language for).
The Classical Fix by BBC Radio 3: This is a ‘podcast for classical newbies.’ The guests are sent upto five classical pieces picked out specifically for them by the host, and they talk about what the guest liked and did not like and why. Thought I am not new by any means to classical music, what I like about this podcast was that it does not care to delve into technicalities of the music, but rather it goes for the purest form of feedback which is “What did this piece of music make you feel?” and it is so fascinating to hear the descriptions given by the guests on where the music took them, what they pictured in their minds, and what mood they would place that music in. The guests are also quite honest when a certain piece does not do anything for them, and it is again interesting to hear why. Some episodes are a hit and miss, but I started with the episode with Cherry Healey which was lovely.
Scott Sumner and his film reviews: Fancy finding film reviews hidden in a blog about monetary policy. Scott Sumner’s quarterly film reviews are by no means the central tenet of his widely read and much loved blog, but they come across as diary entries of a passionate movie buff. A fan has already created a spreadsheet of these reviews, and I’m making my way through these films slowly. He even throws in the odd film reference or two in his non-film pieces. Like when he comments on a 48-second clip of JD Vance advocating for blocking women in red states traveling to another state for abortion as being “three seconds longer than the shower scene in Psycho.” His review of Akira Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well reads:
The first time I’d seen this Kurosawa film, and I’d say it’s his most underrated effort. Loosely based on Hamlet, but you’ll be disappointed if you expect another Throne of Blood. Rather than Shakespeare, expect a great film noir—one of the best ever. I didn’t even recognize that Toshiro Mifune was the star. Released in the same year as Psycho, L’Avventura, The Apartment, Peeping Tom, Breathless, La Dolce Vita, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Late Autumn, The Naked Island and lots more. That’s almost a masterpiece a month. And what did 2020 bring us? Tenet. LOL.
The Beef & Dairy Network podcast by Benjamin Partridge: A double Gold winner for Best Comedy at the British Podcast Awards in 2017 and 2018, this is an absolute gem of a podcast delivered with straight-faced sincerity by Benjamin Partridge. I have gone from side smiles and smirks to audible chuckles and outright burst of laughter in the course of listening to this, often while walking or in trains full of people. The latest episode Shaving involves a conversation with ‘bovine arse vet’ Mike Wozniak, and they talk about the importance of cow shaving, how the oldest barbers were really cow shearers first, how the move from crop circles to cow circles was a win-win for both the cows and the milk, the best practices involved in shaving the anus in particular, and how you don’t work a day when you do this for a living. It’s best to just listen to this here.
Matt Lakeman - Thoughts on meaning and writing. Also his take on Peep Show.
Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte - This book came as a recommendation through a Product meetup I have recently joined, and it talks about the importance of curating information you are exposed to on a daily basis, and developing tools to distill the essence of it, and fueling it into expression. I’ve captured some notes and quotes that stuck with me here.
Films: This became an unexpected horror/thriller month . . .
Longlegs (2024) - Give me more of the weird, twisted, batshit crazy Nicholas Cage please! We caught this on an impromptu drive to a nearby cinema late at night, and came out thoroughly entertained. An FBI agent with supposedly psychic powers investigates a case of serial murders that have an occult-like phenomenon to them. The only complaint with this film is there was so little of Nic Cage in it.
Pearl (2022) - This is a prequel to X, but we saw this before and loved it. Mia Goth is a brilliant writer and actor. Set in Texas during World War I, it’s a chilling tale of a woman whose ambitions for stardom drive her to the extreme.
X (2022) - Again, great storyline, but think I ‘ruined’ the experience by having seen the prequel before. Both films are great thrillers.
Arab Blues (2020) - Clever, funny, and refreshing, this is an excellent film. Golshifteh Farahani plays Selma, a psychoanalyst who returns from Paris to her hometown in Tunisia to begin her own practice, and encounters interesting characters and challenges along the way.
Music-wise, I’m grooving to We are the People, a gypsy jazz playlist, and have been introduced to the beautiful and ambient Chimaera by Andrew Batson’s blog which I’ll be following from now for recommendations. Chimaera had me revisit an old favorite - The Cinematic Orchestra’s In Motion #1 - and the two tracks from that album I adore, namely Dream Work and Lapis.
A quote by Gulzar that hit the spot:
मुस्कुराते बहुत हो तुम,
कभी खुश भी रहा करो . . .
Because of Us - Em Berry
This morning I learned
The English word gauze
(finely woven medical cloth)
Comes from the Arabic word […] Ghazza
Because Gazans have been skilled weavers for centuries
I wondered then
how many of our wounds
have been dressed
because of them
and how many of theirs
have been left open
because of us.
On a personal note, July has been eventful. I had a short work trip to Sydney where aside from work, I caught up with friends, visited Mary’s and Bella Brutta, and enjoyed working from the new office space in Chippendale, very close to Chinatown and right opposite KOI dessert bar. My tummy sure had a good time on this trip.
I also had great fun appearing on an episode of Bits and Pieces, a cricket podcast that’s more fun and banter than serious analysis.