https://clippings.claudrod.me Clippings Wed, 16 Apr 2025 16:33:32 +0000 https://clippings.claudrod.me en http://clippings.claudrod.me/Plot-points Wed, 16 Apr 2025 16:33:32 +0000 Clippings 456583 17 April 2025 Plot points 🗺 Started a new format of casual journaling via Google Maps (which is probably my favorite big tech service, if I had to pick). Calling it 'Project Plot Points' (3P??)04-12-2025: Me pretty cool  Index Readme 17 April 2025 Plot points 🗺 Started a new format of casual journaling via Google Maps (which is probably my favorite big tech service, if I had to pick).... http://clippings.claudrod.me/S2N-Singapore-Jan-2024 Mon, 30 Dec 2024 09:17:56 +0000 Clippings 455333 Stopping to Notice Singapore, January 2024Went on a quick trip to Singapore with coworker-friends, who booked our flight on a whim. Kept the entries as they are, as written, stream-of-consciousness style! Logged on 15 January 2024. <img width="676" height="407" width_o="676" height_o="407" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/196643eaa6b4de8e33527ca8bcf6c89a33f03fdaaf53a89866be9fda556a2c13/Scanned-Document-6-11.jpg" data-mid="1389633" border="0" /> Female flight attendant walking in reverse through the airplane isle while in flight with her hair pulled up, food menu on hand while saying ‘Any puh-chaaase?’ as if with melody, similar to a magtataho Airplane window open with deep scratches on the glass, forming multiple hashes, as if scraped with nails. In the gap between both inner and outer glass are tiny rocks, like roasted sesame seeds Hotel roommates sound asleep, both under a singular white duvet, heads almost unseen, faint light from the window lining their unidentifiable form. Sounds of motorcycles buzz through the silence. Hotel staff receives smelly pillow, lightly sniffs, then walks away. Cherry Garcia. Period. Boarding staff at the gate takes my passport and boarding pass, asks that I remove my mask. He looks at me and I say: I aged a little. He laughs and hands me back my documents. On a dangling type roller coaster ride with a little boy. The ride starts and I ask him if he’s ok. He responds in Mandarin,with quite a long statement. I reply with a ‘Ni hao ma’ and boy doesn’t react, while both of us are thrown into an aerial turn securely. I realize the question sounded like a greeting, so I revise the question to properly ask if he’s ok and where his mom was. He replies with a line muddled by the wind as we zip through the air and he grimaces right after. A few seconds later, the ride slows down and just like that, we dock. We stand from our seats after we lift the safery rails and walk our separate ways. After I meet with my friends, at a distance I find him with his mom, exiting the ride area together. Pharmacy staff takes my purchases with a slight smile on his face as he punches each item through the cashier. I ask him about the free item with my purchases, and he smiles shyly saying I didn’t meet the minimum. He continues to punch a few more items then picks the free item from behind him and adds it to my shopping bag. I smile in disbelief and he simply says ‘yes, here you go’. I thank him in return and leave the shop happy. We do self baggage check in at Changi, with a machine kiosk and a luggage belt. We line our items on the belt and the machine tells me that there’s a problem. We wave at an airport uncle and he smiles and jokes that we don’t know how to use the machine and scolds us for placing 2 bags when we should’ve loaded them 1 at a time. He finishes our check in and we leave. A blonde girl by the plane window wears a pair of light gray headphones and picks a podcast to listen to on Spotify. Shortly after she pulls out a crossword puzzle book and a clicky pen from her bag. She flips slowly though the book as the plane revs up for takeoff. Google Maps confuses us as it takes us to a different bus stop after every refresh as we navigate our way home from a mall. We decide to take the train and easily get off our stop, and follow Google Maps as we walk our way to an exit we cant find. The long back and forth short walks in front of the War Memorial Park and a line of high end hotels as we find our way home in the nicely lit district, with cool winds lightly whispering. We step out of the elevator and friend stomps her way through the floor hallway quickly to reach our room. Friend uses the hotel bathroom with a frosted glass door where her moving silhouette is fuzily outlined by the street lights outside the bathroom’s open window. The pitch black sky as seen through the plane window is suddenly dotted with small white dots and I am momentarily in doubt of them being stars. I move closer to the window to see without wanting to understand. I take a sloppy photo to document the sight. Lining up to drive through the Luge trail behind my friend. A boy cuts the line and bumps on my friend’s ride and tells her to move. I tell my friend to just make way and my friend steers slightly to the right. The boy zips immediately through. The 3D animated boy character at the light show belts a soulful run in a group ballad, with an emotionless face The attempts to speak in Filipino about deeply personal stuff in a crowd of mixed nationalities, keeping in check when English words slip here and there The slight maze heading into a female restroom at an airport and suddenly feeling the nerves of being alone, as the place is completely huge but empty The group arrives at the cubby and ominous looking hotel lobby with a man at the concierge. I tell him that we’re checking in as a group of three and he utters my first name in response. ‘Oh, you’ve been waiting…,’ I reply Kenny Rogers: A man with ginger hair in a light gray shirt and olive shorts sit at a table and alternately taking a bite off his burger and a thin stack of sour cream Pringles We struggle to take a group photo in our seats on the plane and a male flight staff makes a peace handsign and interrupts to jokingly join the photo Going through the Donki goods maze, slightly confused as to why we are buying Japanese goods in Singapore Walking through grassy turf on a pleasant day with large reflective sculptural spheres spread out through the area, reminscent of the Chicago Bean. I jokingly call them Singapore Boba because we’re in Asia. We take mirror selfies on them and attempt to record a silly birthday video greeting for a coworker. After a few tries and being quite loud in the process, a tinge of embarrassment kicks in as we find ourselves in the midst of people. After suddenly being thrown in the air in a roller coaster ride, friend grips my left hand while screaming The worries of aging kicks in after realizing the last time you mightve been on a pretty intense theme park ride was 10+ years ago The thrill of being back in a country that’s extremely familiar and safe, but also with so much more to reveal A man with a face of salt and pepper facial hair scoots to give way as I sit beside him on the same row in the plane. I replay his face in my head trying to figure out if i know him from somewhere. Sitting on the plane, unintentionally counting down to a full bladder while trying to hold a fart Feeling the mesh surface of a cute BTV wallet in different colorways and walking out of the shop buying nothing. At 19:00 - Looking at the plane window and seeing mostly darkness but with thin sliver of orange, signaling the late closing of a day Kaya milk bun with butter and kopi c in a buzzing eatery filled with locals, with a few tourists mixed in A chicken rice place with a young-ish uncle waiting by the entrance and notices our intent to enter the shop hesistantly. He casually guides us into our table, in a tone that sounds like we’re being scolded, as we try to understand what he was saying in his accent. We enjoy our brunch, discover nice tasting chili paste. Friends express their satisfaction and would like to return given the chance On the bus ride to Sentosa, slowly helping us with placemaking as we realize how near yesterday’s touristy stops were from the place we live. Takes mental note of reviewing where destinations are before defaulting to train rides. On the way home via plane at night with the sky pitch black and the stars in stillness as we fly right above them Watching an episode of an unfamiliar show from a fellow passenger’s phone through the seat gaps; and seeing a half naked woman in a dungeon a few minutes in. It was definitely R18 Index Readme Stopping to Notice Singapore, January 2024Went on a quick trip to Singapore with coworker-friends, who booked our flight on a whim. Kept the entries as they are, as... http://clippings.claudrod.me/Stopping-to-Notice Mon, 30 Dec 2024 08:07:02 +0000 Clippings 455332 30 December 2024 Stopping to Notice I started 2024 with Miranda Keeling’s The Year I Stopped to Notice , and I’m glad I did, as it helped me frame a lot of life moments this year. I wanted to counter what I (formerly!) used social media for and be more mindful about what I photograph. I’ll admit, this newfound habit was largely informed by age-related anxiety of a possibly weakening memory, as I inch closer to 40. But instead of being crippled by the thought, I wanted to see life in a more celebratory way, as all moments, big or small, are worth closely inspecting. As inspired by the book, I started writing down at-the-moment observations in my commonplace book , and at times belatedly, when writing tools are unavailable. <img width="1717" height="1200" width_o="1717" height_o="1200" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/fe88f0eeb89e6a7ad431eb46194adc033d97fde6c28085608e3335ca229e4f7a/4-scan.png" data-mid="1389630" border="0" /><img width="1681" height="1200" width_o="1681" height_o="1200" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/90feacde9e18dd573bf1290e12553bcf841519aaaab7d039f3603d01ac83c5a1/3-scan.png" data-mid="1389631" border="0" /><img width="1201" height="868" width_o="1201" height_o="868" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/018ab5eae56e76ca99bf03b80c704aba2950fe280c033c4229b850568e989920/Group-376151.png" data-mid="1389629" border="0" /><img width="3424" height="2400" width_o="3424" height_o="2400" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/01b24db894d2fd42ee733e6140950c1675e0ce30decd5e00b55967b69d2af4b3/image-19.png" data-mid="1389628" border="0" />My handwriting is GREAT /sHere are my Stopping to Notice (S2N; abbreviation mine) attempts this year, in the hopes that this practice becomes a life constant. In writing things down this way, I carve out a fragment of time and take it as a piece I can truly call my own. And later, I hold these pieces up again, hoping to be thrown back to a moment and maybe see them in a new light. Singapore, January 2024🔜 Tokyo, January 2024 Index Readme 30 December 2024 Stopping to Notice I started 2024 with Miranda Keeling’s The Year I Stopped to Notice , and I’m glad I did, as it helped me frame a lot of... http://clippings.claudrod.me/Slow-web Sun, 11 Aug 2024 07:40:08 +0000 Clippings 453948 thoughts on the slow web • 21 April 2022 Dumping incoherent thoughts here (not even in full sentences, so beware~) as a draft before I write something more fully formed. Or maybe not. It’s been a long-running thought/unspoken personal philosophy, but the thought seed that truly led to a sprout is Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism book, aka one of my life-changing reads for 2021. After reading this book and giving very actionable starting points in beginning a ‘digitally minimal’ practice, I have fully realized the meaning (or lack thereof) of posting on social media for myself, that it’s made me lose the itch to post about any event (or even uhh non-event) in my life. My reflecting for the past few months on this change in behavior has led me to revisit the stuff I learned in college: Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, McLuhan’s Medium is the Message. Baudrillard on simulacrum, via Wikipedia:&nbsp;“According to Baudrillard, what the simulacrum copies either had no original or no longer has an original, since a simulacrum signifies something it is not, and therefore leaves the original unable to be located. Where Plato saw two types of representation—faithful and intentionally distorted (simulacrum)—Baudrillard sees four: (1) basic reflection of reality; (2) perversion of reality; (3) pretence of reality (where there is no model); and (4) simulacrum, which 'bears no relation to any reality whatsoever'.” Seeing how people think in social media formats, i.e. travel itineraries being driven by how they can take event/location photos that can be framed as a square perfect for Instagram, ‘this life event can be a Reel’, taking 3 images to complete an Instagram grid visual, etc -- basically life is now viewed through these formats, consciously and subconsciously Jack Cheng’s OG post from 2012 still rings true (albeit with a sad disclaimer from 2016, which is already a while back; I badly wish I could write like him) - www.jackcheng.com/the-slow-web/ Jack Cheng’s definition (emphasis mine): “What is the Fast Web? It’s the out of control web. The oh my god there’s so much stuff and I can’t possibly keep up web. It’s the spend two dozen times a day checking web. The in one end out the other web. The web designed to appeal to the basest of our intellectual palettes, the salt, sugar and fat of online content web. It’s the scale hard and fast web. The create a destination for billions of people web. The you have two hundred twenty six new updates web. Keep up or be lost. Click me. Like me. Tweet me. Share me. The Fast Web demands that you do things and do them now. The Fast Web is a cruel wonderland of shiny shiny things.” Craig Mod’s stand on finding edges and how technology provides an infinitude of stuff~ that we literally have no (tangible) hold of digital platforms. (Partly related link: https://craigmod.com/essays/unbinding/) Even if the use of numeric pagination as a design component on websites feels old/dated, I personally still like it, he he. In relation to Craig Mod’s thought on ‘edges’ (emphasis mine): “When you sit down with a book, you understand the parameters of engagement. You know how long the book is. The book isn’t changing as you read it. It’s a solid, immutable thing. You and the book are on equal terms in many ways, as least from a physics point of view. You know what’s going to happen, and the book abides by its implicit contract, which is to be a book. However, in digital-land many spaces (apps, games) quickly turn into slithering creatures beneath your feet. You never know where you stand. Their worlds are optimized to pull you back in for one more minute, one more click. Over and over. Cascades of chemical reactions in your noggin’ tell you to keep going, just one more hit; I feel this persona of the addict very strongly when I am online or using certain apps or devices.” - from https://craigmod.com/essays/offscreen_interview/ Still of Craig Mod: Stab a Book, the Book Won't Die: On the resilience of books in the face of apps, attention monsters, and an ad-driven online economy Discuss: the design of livestream chats/comments~ (If comments are made with the intent to be read, but they’re delivered in a way that makes it ineffective for the reader to go through them, is this the appropriate interactive execution? How might we...) Today’s definition of productivity sometimes means having posted something online. Because someone’s feedback, aka a comment or a reaction, gives a sense of fulfilment that is tied to the act of posting, hence feeling like you’ve ‘done something’, when you really haven’t. Yeouch. If we were to step back and assess how we want the Internet to work for us, what role/s should we assign to it? One of the main triggers why this section of my site exists and why it lacks form, as intended: https://joelhooks.com/digital-garden Phil Ensminger, back in 2015, has also compiled a list on Medium: My Thoughts on the Slow Web, includes the mention of main guy Tristan Harris Trying badly to recall who shared this thought on the term ‘content creator’ being weird, as it doesn’t speak of the quality of content (or what it is), but just content being...content. ‘Content’ - like a thing that fills up space. ‘Content’ - as long as there’s something, should be ok. ‘Content’ - because without it, our platforms are hollow. ‘Content’ - feels like it focuses on the item for consumption, that what the thing is. Kind of like junk food, aka empty calories. Which is why sometimes, for ‘content creators’, releasing something--ANYTHING--can feel enough, because that’s already ‘content’ that fills up. (Filmmakers don’t call themselves content creators...or do they?? They make films!) Platforms like Instagram or Twitter, inasmuch as they’re used to journal or act as a scrapbook by most people, don’t work best for old posts. They’re optimized for Now things, because the engagement of posts today are what matters. The recency of things matter because freshness matters, it’s as if our lives/posts are seen as news. (And tbh I’ve tried to scroll back through 1,000+ posts on my Instagram, and it is not optimized to serve your old stuff, believe me. It becomes buggy at some point. Again, it works best for your Now posts, not so much old posts you deliberately choose to revisit.) Last updated: 21 April 2022 Index Readme thoughts on the slow web • 21 April 2022 Dumping incoherent thoughts here (not even in full sentences, so beware~) as a draft before I write something more fully... http://clippings.claudrod.me/Kindred-Records Sun, 11 Aug 2024 06:58:33 +0000 Clippings 453947 Starting a record store • 11 Aug 2024 Music has always been a big part of my life, even if I’m not an expert. I’ve often thought about running a record store, seeing it as a way to assert my personal preference (to myself, mostly) and a way to find likeminded folks. I find myself drawn to less popular artists, not to be different, but because it feels like a natural way to find people who think like me. If you’re into certain lesser-known acts, we might have more in common than just taste in music. It’s not about dismissing popular music, but when you already have a wide range of things you love, you’re less likely to be pulled in by what's easily available everywhere. It’s about finding those unexpected connections in a world that often feels too big and impersonal. Running a record store isn’t easy, obviously, and there’s more to it than just selecting things to sell. With my intent to curate and with my personal desire to start conversations with friends on the things they actually like (which leads to a larger conversation on ‘why’s’ that go beyond the celebrity performer and the nature of the work, and what these pieces of art mean to our lives on the daily), I started a list project masquerading as a fantasy record store. It’s my way to bring the dream to life, without the grunt work, at least for now. &nbsp; Kindred Records &nbsp; a music catalogIndex Readme Starting a record store • 11 Aug 2024 Music has always been a big part of my life, even if I’m not an expert. I’ve often thought about running a record... http://clippings.claudrod.me/x-Notes-on-the-fridge-1 Mon, 22 Apr 2024 05:40:47 +0000 Clippings 452732 Notes on the fridge #1 • 22 april 2024 As I write this, I feel a slight relief from the facial itch (understatement of the season) I’ve been battling with, on and off, for the past few weeks (almost a month now, afaik). There are a number of possible causes that have led to this situation that I can’t quite pinpoint. Usually a skin itch for most people is just that—a skin itch. Scratch it, apply a balm, and you should be fine. But an itch that takes over to the point that the only thing that will ‘relieve’ you is using your newly clipped nails to scratch off a layer (quite literally) of your skin is something else. Your face will remain to be the canvas of fresh, lightly bleeding cuts and washing your face can be both a coolant from the summer heat and like salt to wound. Nothing seems to be the solution, and everything is the enemy. #eczema Index Readme Notes on the fridge #1 • 22 april 2024 As I write this, I feel a slight relief from the facial itch (understatement of the season) I’ve been battling with, on... http://clippings.claudrod.me/Crumbs Fri, 17 Mar 2023 04:36:16 +0000 Clippings 439958 26 December 2023 🧹 With so many things we take in on a daily basis, we mostly remember bits and pieces of content in different forms, almost like enjoying the crumbs we inadvertently collect and being satiated by them. A meme is a tiny piece of something else, given new life, enjoyed for the renewed bit that it is. A song is a taken from an album, thrown automagically (albeit uninterestingly) into a playlist c/o AI, and is one piece that we taken in, after another, and then another. The piece is even broken down with a section chipped off, when all we enjoy of it is played through a dance challenge or a looping Reel. Honestly, there are things that entertain me from what we see on a daily basis on social media and different places on the internet. I take a break from work and watch 3 Shorts that run for 60s each, then remind myself that I shouldn’t even be on YouTube! The bits I watch are tiny fragments of bigger things, and all I truly take in are crumbs that I don’t even get to digest. There’s more that I consume, (mostly unintentionally—or mindlessly) spread out through the day. I probably end the day with a small bag’s worth. A crumb is a crumb after a crumb, and then another. We end the day with a mound; the week, with a hill. I wonder, how much do we have by the year’s close? Index Readme 26 December 2023 🧹 With so many things we take in on a daily basis, we mostly remember bits and pieces of content in different forms, almost like enjoying the... http://clippings.claudrod.me/My-YouTube-home Sun, 04 Dec 2022 08:26:50 +0000 Clippings 434722 An attempt to redesign my YouTube homepage • Started 4 December 2022 I wanted to redesign my YouTube homepage, mainly because it’s become by mindless go-to. I know how useful it is as a platform—it’s practically become the new search engine. But aside from its practical use, it has become my mindless go-to. By that I mean, I'd always open my browser the moment I boot up my computer and immediately type ‘youtube.com’. And observing this has somehow haunted me. It’s basically my version of checking the fridge to see if there’s anything I could munch on, even when I wasn’t hungry. YouTube gives me shelf upon shelf of snackable things and most of the time, they’re all junk. So here I am with an exercise, because there might just be a way for me to make this happen someday. <img width="2328" height="1484" width_o="2328" height_o="1484" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/11fb8e2169edea1312f1867305f0065b152c7e46e5de0dc137191b5b6faeddf2/Group-1.png" data-mid="1244770" border="0" /> Someone’s already designed a ‘distraction-free’ YouTube experience via plugins like what you see applied above (see icon on the upper right corner), where the YouTube homepage is emptied. While it has served its purpose of helping me use YouTube more mindfully, the sea of black is just disconcerting. So! Here’s an attempt to design my ideal YouTube homepage, which has the following: My top 4 channels with their most recent uploads (4 would be a good control for the main highlights, because you really can’t love everything, right?) - These will be defined by the fact that I have subscribed to these channels (a deliberate decision to receive updates) + frequency of viewing (What better way to define your favorites than by how often you keep coming back to their stuff, right?)Random recommendations from 3 channels I’ve subscribed to and used to watch often, but have not seen any videos from in 6 months - This is for discoverability within a familiar selection! Also a good prompt to revisit my subscription if any of the channels no longer connects with me. &nbsp;A row for news - basically just an import of the existing news row but as a carousel of sorts, because I don’t have a TVAn expandable grid of recommendations - an import of YouTube’s recommendations, because I also don’t want to live in my bubble, but I also don’t want to keep mindlessly watching stuff; also ‘expandable’, because this section should be collapsed or hidden by default Index Readme An attempt to redesign my YouTube homepage • Started 4 December 2022 I wanted to redesign my YouTube homepage, mainly because it’s become by mindless go-to. I... http://clippings.claudrod.me/x-Obsessions Tue, 15 Mar 2022 22:53:43 +0000 Clippings 421256 ☝️ This post is a stub. Check back again soon. An inventory of obsessions Keeping track of those nicely odd moments when I end up zeroing in on one particular thing, taking up significant mental space for a period of time. <img width="750" height="1624" width_o="750" height_o="1624" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/3128a792dba0dfa06bd3133126ae7b0a7b5984b5c9f6ba8625e1245a1c1006dc/IMG_E1481DA1267A-1.jpeg" data-mid="1201114" border="0" data-scale="70"/> 16 June 2022(Not Boring) Weather! “Built like games, run like apps.” Love the interaction design, the time slider thing that causes music to be played, and the sound design (just to name a few things, hah!). I am grateful for this app for pulling me in because it keeps me from mindlessly scrolling through my alternate Instagram feed. 🤫 <img width="2032" height="1169" width_o="2032" height_o="1169" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/6fc653d0bc06645fd9c28f6d9e6e544c74ea0ac5c53282938c69688010a5041f/Screen-Shot-2022-04-22-at-10.52.45-AM.png" data-mid="1184823" border="0" /> 22 Apr 2022A long-time obsession, but bears repeating. Filed under: Stuff I Wish I Made (or I’m at least a part of) - radio.garden. It’s just one of those well-rounded projects that’s just overall great; I would love to take a look at how the team works. Also, I am just grateful for this site because I get to listen to some of my favorite radio stations (as I am a radio junkie), including BBC Radio 2, NTS 1, and Shonan Beach FM. <img width="1440" height="1440" width_o="1440" height_o="1440" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/472348ba68f1b5162075a01b55e5d7c7491cf7f4abda154a9febe2ca2ff1f497/278917209_1962064970643644_6899235461379829487_n.jpeg" data-mid="1184530" border="0" />21 Apr 2022 This freaking album design by Sparks Edition for Yugyeom. They made an LP version, too.&nbsp; Index Readme ☝️ This post is a stub. Check back again soon. An inventory of obsessions Keeping track of those nicely odd moments when I end up zeroing in on one particular... http://clippings.claudrod.me/Postcard-1 Sat, 04 Jan 2020 14:32:28 +0000 Clippings 352118 Postcard #1 • Posted 4 January 2020  Heijō Palace <img width="3072" height="2304" width_o="3072" height_o="2304" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/542de02a13d9191b732ad3506c623d483a01ce18b6be1599afd60b7ae68bbfc4/photo1.jpg" data-mid="840899" border="0" />I find myself here in a quiet historical spot situated in a compound where most of the locals go along with their day-to-day—jogging in the cold, playing afternoon baseball, walking their dog, biking from the grocery (the front basket’s almost always filled with something~), etc. I sometimes think whether or not being on tourist mode in such a place that’s quite low key and unassuming can be disruptive and a bit bothersome. I say this because in the expanse of space, a person aiming a camera at just about anything can stick out of the landscape. I sit here in a quiet waiting shed (there’s a waiting shed!) just watching the people pass by. The air is clean and nippy, but makes me a teensy bit sniffly. Wish I can stay here a bit longer here. IndexReadme Postcard #1 • Posted 4 January 2020  Heijō Palace I find myself here in a quiet historical spot situated in a compound where most of the locals go along with...