Tintin, Enhanced

I have a new lock-screen background for my PC which is from the cover of a Tintin book, Red Rackham's Treasure. (My active wallpaper is a painting of Guanyin, which you can see in this post.)

I found the Tintin image online, but the quality was not very good. So I asked ChatGPT to improve the resolution, make the lines crisper and get rid of the jpeg artefacts, but without changing the content.

ChatGPT's first attempt (Edit 1) was too cartoonish – flat and oversaturated.

I then requested a do-over, specifically asking it to preserve the hand-painted look of the original, and its delicate, less saturated colours.

Here's a comparison of a magnified detail in the three versions:

If you look closely, Snowy's left year is not quite right, and the black reflection lines on the glass have white segments in between which were not there in the original. But these are things which I could have fixed manually, or through another round of prompts. Overall, I was really impressed with how well the AI managed to clean up the image while preserving the organic look of the original.

Lakshmi Amidst Pindou

My Chinese friend Muzi recently became interested in Hinduism. She says her favourite goddess is Lakshmi because she is "nonchalant" (Gen Z turns of phrase can be so amusing).

I gave Muzi a little terracotta figure of Lakshmi, and she put it on her dresser alongside various pindou characters. Pindou (拼豆) or Perler-bead craft is apparently trending among young people in China.

Coincidentally, while I was procrastinating over this post, my friend Beverley also posted an arrangement of a female figurine amidst (mostly) Chinese objects. I thought it pairs well with Lakshmi Amidst Pindou, so I asked Bev's permission to share it. A cute detail: the song playing on the iPod is Blink-182's All the Small Things.

Music System Update: Visualizers

Earlier this month in my music system "upgrades" post, I talked about equalizers and visualizers. Equalizers then got a separate follow-up post, so it's only fair that visualizers get one too.

I started out, as I said in my first post, with a Rainmeter skin called Monstercat Visualizer. It looks cool, especially with the album art, but since it plays on my desktop, it gets covered up by any active windows. What good is a visualizer if I hardly ever see it?

I often listen to music while doing other things on my computer, so I thought it would be nice to have a visualizer which is always visible, perhaps floating on top of other windows. After a good deal of searching and trying out different programs, I've landed on BeatHUD.

BeatHUD has a variety of visualizations – my favourite is pixel, shown below – with customizable colours and backgrounds. In HUD mode, it does exactly what I want – float wherever I want to place it, while also letting me adjust its size or minimize it if it's in the way. In the pic below, BeatHUD at bottom right is responding to Spotify, while I edit photos in Affinity.

I really like BeatHUD. It's surprisingly well-designed and full-featured for a free app – or by any standards, really.

I use Spotify for streaming audio, but for music that lives on my hard drive, I like to use Winamp. Mainly for nostalgic reasons: Winamp – and Winamp skins – were a big part of my teenage years. So while I was at it, I also downloaded Classic Spectrum Analyzer for Winamp:

Having sorted out the visualizer situation on my computer, I wanted something similar for our living-room system – a custom-built amplifier by Pradip Deb (which supports Bluetooth as well as wired inputs for turntables and such) plus two passive speakers.

Maybe someday I'll get a streamer with a display, like the WiiM Ultra, but until then, I'm just using my phone screen as it streams to the amp via Bluetooth:

On my phone, I use Spectrum Analyzer & Visualizer, which can display various customizable visualizations as well as Spotify album art (in the pic, I'm playing ฟื้น / Athithan by Yellow Fang).

This is a free app, but I like it so much that I'm going to buy it just to support the developer.

If you let the app access your phone mic, it can also respond to external audio, e.g. from a record-player. But when playing records, I like to simply display the record sleeve itself – the ultimate "Now playing" visualization.

Incidentally, I added a new track to my Speaker Test playlist which I mentioned in an earlier post. I thought I should have a track which uses obvious stereo panning, so the playlist now includes Pink Floyd's Money. The cash-register sounds in the intro pan between left and right before transitioning into the bass groove which is in the middle.

Snake in the Box

We have a toy – no one seems to remember how we acquired it – which is a wooden box with a lid. When you slide it open, a snake pops out.

I don't have a pic of how it originally looked, but here are a couple of product photos from Amazon:

I recently painted our box. It now has a coiled snake on one side:

...and a mini snakes-and-ladders board on the other:

I used my recently-acquired set of acrylic markers which, despite being super cheap, are a delight to paint with.

I also painted another box and sent it to Tommy. It's a good gift for him because he's working on the snake-in-the-box problem in higher dimensions. His box has a coiled snake like mine, plus another snake traversing the edges of the box in a manner that respects the constraints of the problem.

When I went to the post office to mail it, they asked me what the box contains. I said it's a wooden toy, but in their customs form, they only had an "electronic toy" category – no "wooden toy" or even just "toy". A sign of the times! In the end, they filed it under "handicrafts".

Speaking of snakes, the other day at the Dhakuria Lakes, we saw an Oriental rat snake's unsuccessful attempt to hunt a rat. The snake climbed halfway up a tree and crept into a hollow in which the rat was hiding. But the rat jumped out just in time and scurried away, seemingly unharmed.

Music System "Upgrades"

I recently went down a hi-fi audio rabbit-hole, frequenting r/BudgetAudiophile and Audio Science Review, and watching videos like this fascinating lecture by Floyd Toole.

Long story short, I didn't buy anything in the end, and decided, at least for now, to just stick with my current low-budget setup. And by low-budget I mean truly low-budget: S$20, to be precise – a Creative A250 set which I bought secondhand a few years ago. It consists of a subwoofer and two satellite speakers, and is plugged into my computer's headphone jack.

Someday if I'm settled somewhere – or at least know I'm going to be in the same city for the foreseeable future – I might invest in a pair of nice bookshelf speakers, and an integrated DAC and amplifier. For now, I'm happy with the Creative, not least because I suspect I'm not a very discerning or demanding listener to begin with. For example, my parents have a nice set of speakers and amplifier. I can tell that the sound quality is superior to my Creative, but I'm not sure I would want to pay a significant amount for the upgrade.

If anything, all my research made me appreciate my Creative even more. By audiophile standards, it may not be up to scratch, but lay reviewers rate it highly in its class. It really was amazing value for money.

I then started wondering if there were any upgrades I could make to my setup that didn't involve buying gear.

DAC

The first thing I experimented with was a DAC – a device which converts digital data (e.g. from a computer or phone) to an analogue signal that speakers can play. DAC prices start at just a few dollars, and go up to the thousands. I read online that a DAC should improve sound quality – that is, plugging speakers into the DAC which is in turn plugged into the computer's USB-C port (as opposed to plugging speakers directly into the headphone jack).

As it happens, I already had a DAC – from the 'just a few dollars' end of the spectrum – which I had bought to connect wired headphones to my phone. When I tried this out with my Creatives, I couldn't hear any noticeable improvement. It could be because my DAC is too basic. Or perhaps the limiting factor is my speakers, or Spotify sound quality, or... who knows!

Equalizer APO and Peace GUI

Next, I thought about equalizer settings.

Much as I like my Creatives, I had long suspected that they are a bit bass-heavy. Certain things, like thunder or explosions in movies, sound impressive, but music can feel a bit muddy. My brother, who plays music and probably has a better ear than me, confirmed my suspicions.

The Creatives don't have a bass knob, so I downloaded the highly-regarded Equalizer APO with Peace GUI. Google AI gave me an impressively thorough set of recommendations tailored to my speakers and the kind of music I listen to. It even explained and justified each individual setting. One bit which I found interesting:

Budget 2.1 multimedia systems are inherently "scooped" by default – meaning the small satellite speakers struggle with lower-mid frequencies, and the down-firing subwoofer can quickly become muddy and overpowering.

This video explains subwoofer crossover; the AI response seems to be saying that the Creatives' frequency response likely has a dip, as shown at 4:19 of the video.

The AI-recommended EQ profile, designed to compensate for this shortcoming, does improve the sound. The speakers sound less muffled, more clear and airy – while the bass still packs a punch.

Monstercat Visualizer

The final "upgrade" was cosmetic, in the sense that it has no inherent impact on sound quality. But it looks nice, and thus improves the listening experience, however slightly.

Monstercat Visualizer is a Rainmeter skin – a kind of widget which shows dancing frequency bars on my desktop when I play music, and also fetches album art and track info from Spotify.

You can customize the number of bars, plus various other parameters like their height, width, colour, sensitivity and so on. I made a little demo here.

If you want to install the visualizer on your PC (this is Windows specific; I don't know how it works on other operating systems), the process is a bit complicated.

First off, I recommend using older versions of Rainmeter and Monstercat (I use 4.5.0 and 2.1.0 respectively), because the latest versions apparently cause Rainmeter to crash.

If you want not just the bars but also album art and track info from Spotify, you need to install two more tools – WebNowPlaying and spicetify-cli – as described here and here. Again, you need an older version of WebNowPlaying (I use 1.2.0), because the latest version doesn't work as documented here.

I don't want Rainmeter to launch on startup, so I disabled that option. Instead, using AutoHotKey, I configured my keyboard so that Win+S launches Spotify and Rainmeter simultaneously.

Clearly, Rainmeter and Monstercat are third-party tools, and their functionality is sometimes affected by Windows and Spotify updates. I am not sure how long the visualizer will continue to work, but hey, at least it works for now.

---

Edit: See Part 2 and Part 3.

Notes on the Malayan Tiger

When visiting a new country, I like to read books set in that country – like A Room with a View before going to Florence, A Fez of the Heart before my Turkish holiday, and Independent People before visiting Iceland.

On a recent trip to Malaysia, I read The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo – a novel set in the 1930s, when Malaysia (then called Malaya) was a British colony. I took this pic on my night flight to Kuala Lumpur.

I like when airplanes have this little folding table above the main table; it makes life easier for those of us who like to eat while reading. Yangsze Choo's author bio says she too "loves to eat and read (often at the same time)."

* * *

Soon after I moved to Singapore, I read an edited volume of essays called Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene (for which, if I may brag, my friend Xiaoyun wrote the titular chapter). A subsequent chapter called 'Consuming Tigers' has this line which made a deep impression on me:

In 1930, the last wild tiger of Singapore was shot in Choa Chu Kang.

The story was reported in the Straits Times of October 27. Stuff like this is a powerful reminder of how quickly Singapore was transformed from an island which was mostly jungle, to the highly urbanised city-state that we see today.

* * *

Ng Xin, author of 'Consuming Tigers', says:

Since I began writing this chapter, I’ve started to notice tigers everywhere. They’re on beer cans and balm pots, on airplanes and bank facades, in the living room of Crazy Rich Asians and the Singapore state crest.

I had a similar experience after reading The Night Tiger, which features tigers as well as a character who may or may not be a weretiger.

Klang, which is near Kuala Lumpur, has some nice street art. This tiger is painted on a door, but the metal gate makes it look like it's in a cage.

I liked these tiles outside Cheah Kongsi, a temple in Penang:

...and I brought back this fridge magnet which now adorns my whiteboard:

* * *

In a previous post I wrote that I have a 19-inch monitor, but I recently got a 24.5-inch one (Acer EK251Q P6). The first film I watched on my new monitor was a documentary called Malaysia's Last Tigers.

It's on YouTube, but that version has a few minutes missing. You can watch the whole thing on Māori+ if you are in New Zealand (or use a VPN).

One of my favourite bits of the documentary is around 24:00 where they show footage of all the other animals which were captured by the National Tiger Survey's camera traps. They show lesser mouse deer, sunbear, wild dogs, binturong, yellow-throated marten, serow, pig-tailed macaques, Indian civet, crab-eating mongoose, Malayan tapir, Asian elephant, clouded leopard, marbled cat, leopard cat, golden cat, and my favourite, a black panther. And that's just the mammals.

Rainforests are really something.

My Court Shoes Saga

My toxic trait is being resistant to buying specialised apparel for activities that I partake in.

Years ago I wrote:

I have trekked in the Himalayas in trainers – one trail took us to over 18,000 ft – and maintained, not without a touch of disdain, that only people who were not surefooted enough needed specialized boots for hiking.

When I first got into pickleball, I just wore my regular trainers – an Adidas pair which I got secondhand (but unused) for something like $20.

Because I also used those shoes as daily wear – and because, for reasons unknown, I always seem to wear out my soles much faster than most other people do – I soon ended up with virtually no treads at all.

The treadless shoes were slippery at the best of times, but when it rained, it was like playing on ice. It got to a point where if the court was wet, I would rather play without shoes, because even barefoot I had more grip.

Photo by my friend Li Ling; I like the blurry ball at top left!

I finally accepted what my friends had been telling me for months: I needed new shoes.

After much research, I found a heavily discounted pair of Asics Solution Speed FF 3.

The orange was brighter than I expected, but once I got used to it, I really came to love that pair. They were comfortable and bouncy, they had good traction and support, and best of all, they were extremely light – like running on clouds.

The Solution Speed series are all-surface shoes, so I could wear them on both indoor and outdoor courts. And they are non-marking, so I could wear them for badminton too. I even wore them in non-sports situations, pairing them with jeans.

But once again, as with all my shoes, the treads eventually wore out.

Brand new (left) and after a few months' use (right). In places the blue outer sole

wore out completely, exposing the white inner.

In hindsight, I think that non-marking soles are simply more delicate. Even if they are marketed as all-surface, if you wear them on hard courts, they won't last long.

Recall that I started out not wanting to buy specialized court shoes at all, then acquired an all-surface pair which proved to be not so all-surface after all. Finally, I capitulated completely and ended up buying two separate pairs for indoor and outdoor courts.

My current outdoor court shoes are a pair of Adidas Court Spec 2. I don't love them like I loved my orange Asics, but they do the job.

However, I do love my indoor shoes – badminton shoes, which I also use for indoor pickleball. This Yonex Dominant pair, which I got secondhand but unused:

They have excellent grip, and they really help with quick directional changes which are a key part of badminton. Looks-wise, they are nothing special, but I got colourful laces, and behold!

I stole this idea from Japanese badminton player Tomoka Miyazaki. I don't have a fraction of her badminton skill, but hey, at least I can wear non-matching day-glo laces.

Baroque Wordplay

Two instances of wordplay which rely on (a) swapping, and (b) some knowledge of few-centuries-old western art.

Dick Cavett asked us to imagine a newspaper photograph of the billionaire Aristotle Onassis standing outside, and thinking of purchasing, Buster Keaton's former Hollywood home. Cavett's suggested caption was "Aristotle Contemplating the Home of Buster" – a play on the title of a Rembrandt painting, Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.

On similar lines, riffing on the first line of a Shakespeare poem, a Cincinnati sporting goods store apparently put a sign in the window: "Now is the discount of our winter tents".

I should say that baroque, in the title of this post, is not strictly accurate. While Rembrandt is indeed a baroque painter, Shakespeare is more of a Renaissance guy, though his later works supposedly show "emerging baroque aspects". However, baroque can also mean "complicated in style, often when this is unnecessary or too much," and in that sense, I thought it was fitting!

Labours of Love

Sometime back I saw a tweet by @pervocracy (the account has since been locked):

types of websites that exist anymore:
- algorithmic feed of whatever makes the rat keep pushing the lever
- we hope you enjoyed your 3 free articles
- ENABLE NOTIFICATIONS? SHARE LOCATION?? GET NEWSLETTER???
- labor of love by an actual person, last updated 2009

Fortunately, some websites from the last category still exist. And some – praise be! – are even updated.

Here's an off-the-top-of-my-head list of labours of love by an actual person:

• Pink Floyd's The Wall: A Complete Analysis by Gerald Scarfe
• The Fish List (fisheye lenses database) by Luca Vascon
• Coconut Stamps by Lin Yangchen
• Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info (now maintained by others)
• Typography for Lawyers by Matthew Butterick
• Ian's Shoelace Site by Ian Fieggen

I focused on websites made solely (or primarily) by just one person, as opposed to, say, Wikipedia, which is a collective effort. I also didn't include resources which are not websites per se, like this Google Sheet about mini PCs. And finally, the list reflects my own interests, but I'm sure there are many such labours of love which are still out there. If there are any that you know of – whether existing, or late lamented – let me know in the comments!

Mechanical Keyboards, Part 2: Customisation

Sometime back I wrote about choosing a mechanical keyboard (MK for short). This post is a sequel about customising my MK – both hardware (switches and keycaps) and software (using Autohotkey which is a free, open-source program). The MK posts are rather dry and technical, so feel free to skip them. I mainly wrote them for my own future reference; if they happen to help someone who is actually interested in MKs and facing some of the same choices that confronted me, that's a happy bonus.

Part 1: Hardware customisation

1.1 Switches

The photo below shows keycaps (green and white) and switches (red) which sit below the keycaps.

Let's talk about switches first. On hot-swappable keyboards, a switch can be removed and replaced in a matter of seconds, using a simple tool that usually comes for free when you buy an MK or a set of switches. This is helpful if a switch is damaged or worn. Or if you want a different typing experience, you can swap them out for another type of switch.

This page goes into more detail, but in short, there are three main types of switches: blue (tactile bump and audible click), brown (tactile bump but no audible click) and red (neither bump nor click). I tried out my friend's keyboard which has blue switches, and various other switches at retail stores. My current preference, as you can see in the photo above, is for linear red switches (the least noisy type).

1.2 Keycaps

Since my previous post, I now have not one but two MKs – one for home and one for work.

My work keyboard has white keys. Keycaps come in a variety of colours, materials and profiles. I found this set of "bamboo forest" keycaps online that I liked the look of, but when they arrived, I realised that the white keys are in fact off-white, while my keyboard base is pure white:

This discrepancy bothers me (possibly more than it should), so I went back to the white keys.

Truth be told, the white keys have kind of grown on me. I do wish they had used some other font (what we have here is a stencil font with open counters; come on guys, keep it simple!) and I could have done without the F-key inscriptions (it's fairly obvious that 2 doubles up as F2, for example). But on the whole I like them, especially the way they light up.

For my second (home) keyboard, I searched long and hard for one whose base colour would match my bamboo forest keycaps, and miraculously I found one which is a perfect match. Here's my home keyboard with its original keys:

...and with the replacement keycaps:

The only (slight) downside to this keyboard is that it's wireless; I prefer wired keyboards because I don't have to worry about charging or replacing batteries. But I can live with that.

While we're on the topic of keycaps, I should note that key sizes can be different, depending on your keyboard configuration (my previous post, under Size, goes into more detail on configurations). For example, the key sizes for a typical 65% (68-key) keyboard like mine are shown in the image below (unmarked keys are 1x, and larger key sizes are denoted by a multiple thereof).

But in a full-size (100%) keyboard, some of the keys are sized differently, e.g. the right Alt, Fn and Ctrl keys are 1.25x, and the right Shift key is 2.75x. A complete set of keycaps should have multiple variants of certain keys, to cover the more common layouts. Here, for example, is the complete set of my bamboo forest keycaps:

So when choosing a set, it's worth checking that it has all the right key sizes for your keyboard type.

1.3 Stands

I guess this is also a form of customisation, albeit of the homebrew variety. My white keyboard has little fold-out stands, but my green keyboard doesn't. So I made stands from rubber pieces, cut to size.

Part 2: Software customisation

2.1 Keyboard layout

Qwerty is by far the most common layout, but there are alternatives such as Dvorak and Colemak, whose proponents claim they are faster and cause less strain. (Incidentally, I love how this alternative layouts page, in the list of reasons why people fear switching away from Qwerty, has listed "fear of ridicule".)

I stick to Qwerty, but with some minor modifications (see the "AutoHotkey" heading below). I considered learning Colemak because I like trying new things, but in the end I figured the time spent in getting up to speed with a new layout would vastly outweigh the gains (if any). And even if I did, I would then have a hard time typing on other keyboards with Qwerty layout.

This tool analyses various keyboard layouts, including user-defined custom layouts, on the basis of typing effort (though effort is of course subjective). And this page, about the lesser-known Workman layout, has a nice graphic showing the "the approximate amount of difficulty/strain" in reaching for or pressing various keys.

If switching from Qwerty to a whole new layout is a bridge too far, one option is to switch just a few keys. Carpalx lists the five most effective keyswaps. Apparently the first swap (K and E) alone reduces effort by 13.4%. But I haven't tried this myself.

2.2 AutoHotkey

Although I opted not to change my keyboard layout, I made various modifications using this wonderful free, open-source program called AutoHotkey (currently available for Windows only; other operating systems may have similar tools, but I haven't looked into them).

The AutoHotkey website has a comprehensive tutorial, and even though it might look intimidating if you're not a coder, it's actually not that hard. (I figured it out on my own, and I have minimal coding experience.) In short, you have to download AutoHotkey, then create a script which can be edited in Notepad. This script can then be used to change the behaviour of keys, effectively customising what they do. The final step is to make sure that the script runs automatically on startup.

Incidentally, regedit (Windows Registry Editor) can also be used to remap keys, but for most users, AutoHotkey is a better and more flexible solution (their own site lists some of the pros and cons of each approach).

My AutoHotkey script makes quite a few customisations, which I have iteratively tweaked to my personal taste over a period of months. You can see the whole script by clicking the link below:

Show/hide script

; For use with 68-key US keyboard layout.

; SYMBOLS, NEW

RAlt::–
^!-::—
^!d::°
^!x::×
^!t::Send("~")
^!.::…

; Shortcuts for ï and \ are disabled in Affinity to avoid conflict.
#HotIf !WinActive("ahk_exe Photo.exe")
^!i::ï
^!b::Send("\")
#HotIf


; SYMBOLS, REMAPPED

$;::!
+;::Send(":")
^$;::Send("{Ctrl Up}^{;}") ; For Affinity: Ctrl + original semi-colon key to hide and show guidelines
/::?
; Backslash to slash, long-press for hash
$\::
{
if (KeyWait("\", "T0.2"))
send "{/}"
else
send "{#}"
}

; to match UK layout
+$2::"
+3::£
+'::@


; CAPS LOCK

CapsLock::;
^CapsLock::CapsLock


; NAVIGATION

Home::Delete
RShift::Home
Del::PgUp
PgUp::PgDn
PgDn::End


; F KEYS

; For F2, long-press Esc
$Esc::
{
if (KeyWait("Esc", "T0.2"))
send "{Esc}"
else
send "{F2}"
}

^!w::Send("!{f4}") ; Ctrl+Alt+W for Alt+F4

RCtrl & Left::Send("{F5}") ; Refresh browser
RCtrl & Down::Send("{Shift Up}+{F3}") ; Change case in Word
RCtrl & Up::Send("{F11}") ; Full-screen for browser and some other programs. Also engineered to work for full-screen in Word (see Program-Specific heading below)

; PROGRAMS

#B::Run("Chrome")
#C::Run("::{20d04fe0-3aea-1069-a2d8-08002b30309d}") ; Win+C to open My Computer
#D::Run("C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Resolve.exe")
#G::Run("MSPaint")
#N::Run("Notepad")
#S::Run("C:\Users\sroyo\AppData\Roaming\Spotify\Spotify.exe")
#W::Run("WinWord")
#A::Run("C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\SerifEuropeLtd.AffinityPhoto2_2.5.6.2887_x64__3cqzy0nppv2rt\App\Photo.exe")
; Affinity path changes each time it's updated. For how to get access to the protected Windowsapps folder, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKnnj8DQlK4


; VOLUME

~LButton & WheelUp::SoundSetVolume("+5")
~LButton & WheelDown::SoundSetVolume(-5)


; EMOJIS

#Esc::Send("🙂")
#1::Send("😊")
#2::Send("😅")
#3::Send("😂")
#4::Send("😍")
#5::Send("😎")
#6::Send("😔")
#7::Send("😢")
#8::Send("😭")
#9::Send("😐")
#0::Send("😬")
#-::Send("😳")
#=::Send("😱")
#Backspace::Send("🤦‍♂️")
#Home::Send("🙈")
#[::Send("👍")
#]::Send("👌")
#\::Send("🙏")
#Del::Send("💪")
#;::Send("👀")
#'::Send("❤️")
#,::Send("🔥")
#.::Send("✨")
#/::Send("🎉")

+Del::Send(":)")
^Del::Send(":(")

; LONG PRESS
; ] > email. Note: There a couple of long-press hotkeys elsewhere in the document (search for KeyWait). Esc > F2. Bkslash > #.
; Note: don't assign long-press to a key if there is a chance you'll hit that key and another key in quick succession, because the order gets reversed.

#HotIf !WinActive("ahk_exe Photo.exe")
$]::
{
if (KeyWait("]", "T0.2"))
send "{]}"
else
send "[emailredacted]@gmail.com"
}
#HotIf


; PROGRAM-SPECIFIC

#HotIf WinActive("ahk_exe WinWord.exe")
RCtrl & Up::Send("!vu")  ; Full-screen
^!$f::Send "^!f{Tab}" ; Ctrl+Alt+F (footnote in Word) automatically adds Tab for indent
#HotIf

...but here are a few examples in a more human-readable form:

1. Shortcuts for symbols, such as:

• For – (n-dash), I press Right-Alt. (My Right-Alt otherwise gets very little use, since I almost always use Left-Alt.)
• For — (m-dash): Ctrl+Alt+-
• For ° (degree-symbol): Ctrl+Alt+D
• For ï (i with diaeresis, as in naïve): Ctrl+Alt+I

2. Program-specific customisations, such as disabling the aforementioned Ctrl+Alt+I shortcut in Affinity Photo, because that combination is used for Image size.

3. Some customisations to speed up typing. For example, I mapped my ; key to ! because I use the latter much more frequently. It's therefore convenient to have ! within easy reach (right pinky) and not have to press Shift+1 each time. My Caps Lock is mapped to ;, so I can still access it easily. To actually activate Caps Lock, which I seldom need, I press Ctrl+Caps Lock.

4. A 65% keyboard like mine doesn't have F keys; instead you have to press the Function key plus the corresponding number key (for example, Fn+1 for F1). I don't use that many F-keys anyway, but for the few that I do use, I set up workarounds which are faster than Fn plus number keys:

• For F2 (rename file): long-press Esc
• For Alt+F4 (close program): Ctrl+Alt+W
• For F5 (refresh browser): Right-Ctrl+←
• For Shift+F3 (change case in MS Word): Right-Ctrl+↓
• For F11 (full-screen): Right-Ctrl+↑

5. Shortcuts for launching programs, such as Win+N for Notepad, Win+W for MS Word, and Win+A for Affinity Photo (I take care not to reassign any useful defaults, such as Win+P for Project Screen).

6. Mouse left-button plus wheel up/down to increase/decrease volume.

7. Windows key and various numbers for commonly-used emojis, such as Win+2 for 😅.

8. Long-pressing ] generates my email address, to save me having to type it out in full.

9. Remapping some of the navigation keys, most notably right Shift to Home (I always use left Shift, and it's nice having Home and End on either side of the Up Arrow key).

In the process of customisation, I discovered a few helpful principles:

1. Try to make shortcuts easy to remember, because otherwise they fall out of use and are forgotten. For example, Ctrl+Alt+D for ° (degree symbol) is easily memorised.

2. Make sure shortcuts don't conflict with other commonly-used functions. For example I initially used Ctrl+Alt+M for × (multiplication symbol) but that is also the shortcut for Insert Comment in MS Word. I then switched to Ctrl+Alt+X, which is also easy to remember.

3. Long press is a nice way to assign additional functions to a key, but don't assign long-press to a key if there is a chance you'll hit that key and another key in quick succession, because then the order gets reversed. For example, let's say you assign some long-press function to T. Now if you press T and H in quick succession, which we often do, e.g. when typing the, you'll get hte instead. I have long-press enabled for ], because I rarely hit another key very quickly after.

Truth be told, it's likely that I spent more time on customisation than I will actually save, even in the long run. But to me, the process of customising and optimising is inherently satisfying. For example, I love tinkering with my Fuji X-E4 camera, customising the various buttons and shooting menus to suit my personal preferences and shooting style. As dustypomerleau puts it in his page on alternative keyboard layouts, "efficient processes feel better than inefficient ones, even when the end result is the same – they improve our emotional well-being and quality of life."

Balestier Buildings 3: Sim Kwong Ho Shophouses

The two previous posts in this series were realistic drawings, but now for something a bit different.

I recently went to an event at a local library which had a booth by Drool Stamps. There was a selection of lovely stamps to try out, and blank bookmarks which you could customise.

I chose a shophouse stamp for my bookmark, and then painted it at home.

The colours were loosely inspired by the Sim Kwong Ho shophouses, but I took some artistic liberties.

Thanksgiving

My friend Abbi's 3-year-old nephew made this Thanksgiving Turkey – or rather his mom filled it in for him, but he told her what to write.

It says water bottle, my guitar pick, snacks, new baby sister, Aunt Lisa, zoo, Daddy, Mama, Aunt Abbi, Uncle Nate.

I asked Abbi about the guitar pick and she said, "My mom found one and gave it to him (he loves music and has a little pretend guitar). But he lost it 😂"

Anyway, I love guitar pick and water bottle – that he is thankful for objects – and cheap, everyday objects at that. It got me thinking about cheap, everyday objects that I am thankful for.

I recently got these plastic drawers which were only S$5 each (you can see them on the shelf below the typewriter).

I used to keep my art supplies in my storeroom, but now that I have them in my study, in neatly organised drawers, I use them more.

I'm likewise thankful for my cotton bedsheet, a pair of sneakers that I got for a steal (secondhand but unused), and a mint-blue retro-style toaster which I found abandoned in our recycling bay.

In my previous post, there's a photo of Chiok (who made the pomelo kombucha) and our mutual friend Emiri. Emiri is Japanese, and said itadakimasu before drinking. Chiok's partner Guofeng asked her what it means, and Emiri said it's a way of saying thanks.

Guofeng:	Like thanks to Chiok, for making the kombucha?
Emiri:	To everyone. To Chiok, to the farmer who grew the pomelo, the people you bought ingredients from, and also to the pomelo.

Balestier Buildings 2: Whampoa Colour Centre

Sometime back I drew one of my neighbourhood buildings on Balestier Road, and although it was my only such drawing at the time, I optimistically titled the post Balestier Buildings 1 because I was hoping it could be a series.

I suppose there need to be at least two to call it a series, but would I ever get round to making another drawing? If the suspense was keeping you up at night, worry no more: I hereby present the second drawing of the series.

Whampoa Colour Centre may be visually less interesting than Lam Yeo Coffee Powder Factory, but it's a part of my life because I go there to develop colour film (I process black-and-white at home).

The shop is run by a man in his 60s or early 70s ("Uncle", as we call him). One time I wanted some inkjet prints, and he said it would take about five minutes. I also needed a baguette, so I said no problem, I'll quickly pop by the bakery next door.

Uncle shook his head in exasperation. "You people, always rushing, rushing. It just take five minutes. You wait!"

I waited. Sometimes, it's good to slow down. After all, that's one reason I still shoot film too.

Art Galleries and Beverages: London Photos

Some photos from my recent trip to London, as promised. Captions are below each photo.

Looking at art in 2024 (the National Gallery)

Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern

One-second exposure resting my camera on the railing. My friend who was with me saw the photo on my LCD and asked for a copy to hang on her wall :)

Camden Art Centre

Phone pic! I hadn't been to Camden Art Centre in all the years I lived in London. This time round, I met a friend here for coffee. I'm glad I went; it's a lovely space.

The Chandos, a pub near the National Gallery

Café in South Kensington

It would have been easy enough to straighten this in post, but I like the Dutch tilt.

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Blog note: The text column of my blogposts is 580px wide. But if images are 580px wide, the image quality suffers on high-pixel-density displays like the one on my Asus Zenbook laptop. One solution is to upload 1500px-wide images, and edit the HTML code so that they are displayed at 580px. I've been doing this manually for a while, but Tommy kindly wrote some code for me which makes the process easier.