12 January 2012

Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!

Of a modern interpretation of Sherlock Holmes


'Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!'

I finally watched The Hounds of Baskerville and it was compelling, very compelling. If you have not watched the BBC production of Sherlock, I recommend it.

The programmes in the Sherlock series have cleverly referenced the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and set them in a modern setting. Baskerville is now a secret military research facility with supposedly monstrous creations, the dogs of war...

Sherlock Holmes would be embracing the trappings of modern society with his mobile, accessing the internet while Dr. John Watson, an Afghanistan war veteran, would maintain a blog, all very fitting and hilarious. A tonic for our times.

Mediacorp

Someone representing Mediacorp just called to ask if they can use the warehouse where I work at for filming. I told her, 'no'. That ended the call.

11 January 2012

Sherlock

The new BBC TV series, Sherlock, has been most engaging. For once, you get programmes that do not insult the intelligence of the audience.

The death of Google+

I am wondering when Google+ will die off. It had secured some numbers but are the people on it really using it? Somehow, I doubt so. There is little reason to leave Facebook for Google+, another large faceless corporation.

Meanwhile, Google will come up with yet another iteration to attempt to beat Facebook.

The dogmatic artists

The world is full of dogmatic and narrow-minded folks. For instance, in the urban sketching group, there will be those who cannot accept that people sketch outside of urban sketching too and these narrow types will want them others to adhere to the so-called manifesto.

People don different hats at different situations to draw and paint. People have their own reasons for drawing and painting. If you were to be different from them, you will be labelled as 'extreme'.

You would think that an art community would be full of open-minded and liberal types. However, I find it full of conservatives and the narrow-minded.

Huama or Suzhou numerals

I was just talking to my father about Suzhou numerals or huama and he knows it well. He said it was in many of the old invoices. It was still commonly used in the sixties and seventies. He also said that one member of the staff also uses it. He wrote them out without a pause.

10 January 2012

Drawing mecha

I have meant to draw mecha and powered armour since last year. I have finally gotten down to drawing them. I have also unbounded the force of habit in drawing them in a certain way time and again. Liberation!

09 January 2012

God's gift to blogs


Shyue Chou Chuang says (11:26 AM)
Well done! You made it to my blog!

Kuoby says (11:26 AM)
did i?
WOOT!

Shyue Chou Chuang says (11:26 AM)
Yep yep!
Again!

Kuoby says (11:28 AM)
man
i'm good
it's like i'm god's gift to blogs
i create content for you

Very rude


Kuoby says (11:21 AM)
spending much time with your toucan scrabble freak friend?
or delusional emperor quack doctor?
oops! mischan, very rude.

Shyue Chou Chuang says (11:21 AM)

Whoa!
Shyue Chou Chuang says (11:22 AM)
You have been obsessively monitoring my activities!

Kuoby says (11:22 AM)
huh?
it's logical
you are a loser

Shyue Chou Chuang says (11:22 AM)
That does not bode well Mister Paedophile!

Kuoby says (11:22 AM)
losers have few friends
losers hang out with each other

Shyue Chou Chuang says (11:22 AM)
Whoa whoa!

Kuoby says (11:22 AM)
therefore, ergo, you still hang out with losers

Shyue Chou Chuang says (11:22 AM)
Whoa!

Kuoby says (11:22 AM)
what's up horse face

06 January 2012

Blimps or the Imperialist Middle Class in Singapore

"The stagnation of the Empire in the between-war years affected everyone in England, but it had an especially direct effect upon two important sub-sections of the middle class. One was the military and imperialist middle class, generally nicknamed the Blimps, and the other the left-wing intelligentsia. These two seemingly hostile types, symbolic opposites – the half-pay colonel with his bull neck and diminutive brain, like a dinosaur, the highbrow with his domed forehead and stalk-like neck – are mentally linked together and constantly interact upon one another; in any case they are born to a considerable extent into the same families.

Thirty years ago the Blimp class was already losing its vitality. The middle-class families celebrated by Kipling, the prolific lowbrow families whose sons officered the army and navy and swarmed over all the waste places of the earth from the Yukon to the Irrawaddy, were dwindling before 1914. The thing that had killed them was the telegraph. In a narrowing world, more and more governed from Whitehall, there was every year less room for individual initiative."


George Orwell



I wonder if we will see the emergence of blimps in Singapore, perhaps a military class, mainly ex-military men voicing their opinions in the political arena. Blimps writing in to the papers to say how the ex-military can run major corporations, blimps clamouring for new F-35s or an aircraft carrier for Singapore?

No, these blimps will not be in the junta sense as the military types here are more bureaucrats and managers. I think it is not entirely impossible that the blimps are already here.

Do you know any blimps?