Best of 2012

From Antiflux Wiki

Current revision

Events

• Amy and Warren got married
• Madeleine and Ben got married
• Guelph Park is unofficially renamed to Dude Chilling Park
• A 5125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar ends, triggering cataclysm-themed random hysteria instead of simply incrementing the b'ak'tun to 13 (Long Count 13.0.0.0.0).
• John McAfee, of anti-virus software fame, goes totally bananas in Belize, flees to Guatemala, and is caught thanks to GPS data in a Vice photo.

TV

• Girls
• The Mindy Project
• New Girl (started towards the end of 2011, but close enough)

Films

• Django Unchained
• Live at the Beacon Theater (November 2011, but close enough) - Louis CK releases his comedy special through his web site for $5 instead of through HBO or another distributor, and makes Internet history. Also, it's funny.
• Dangerously Delicious - Aziz Ansari went the same route as Louis CK and it was also funny.
• Looper
• Moonrise Kingdom - everyone loves Wes Anderson
• The Raid: Redemption
• Samsara, the HD (8K) eye-candy followup to Baraka for your balls tripping pleasure.

Notable HD Releases

• In The Mood for Love (2002)
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Film Technology

• High frame rate (48Hz+) enters the movie mainstream with The Hobbit (2012), hopefully putting an end to juddery 24Hz vomit vision.

Books

Written and read in 2012:

• Andrew McCarthy - The Longest Way Home
• Denis Rouvre - Low Tide Incredible portraits and landscapes of post-Tsunami Japan.
• Hugh Howey - Wool Omnibus
• Robert Chaplin - Teeny Ted From Turnip Town - The world's smallest book, large print edition. Wikipedia.
• Selwyn Pullan: Photographing Mid-Century West Coast Modernism. Vancouver-area architecture porn.

Read in 2012:

• Annie Dillard - An American Childhood
• David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
• Jiddu Krishnamurti - Freedom from the Known
• John Jeremiah Sullivan - Pulphead Essays (written late 2011)
• Joseph Heller - Catch 22

Theatre / Other

• Venus In Fur on Broadway. Wickedly sharp, funny, and erotic. Nina Arianda won 2012 Best Actress at the Tony Awards for her performance.

Music

• Alt-J - An Awesome Wave
• Andrew Weatherall - Masterpiece
• Bahamas - Barchords
• Dominik Grötz - Freunde von Freunden Mixtape #26
• Gonzales - Solo Piano II
• Japandroids - Celebration Rock
• Twin Shadow - Confess
• The Weeknd - Trilogy

Live Music

• Gonzales supporting Solo Piano II
• Moogfest 2012

Music Videos

• Chilly Gonzales - Kenaston in Pianovision
• Die Antwoord - Baby's On Fire
• Macklemore and Ryan Lewis - Thrift Shop feat. Wanz
• Psy - Gangnam Style at 933 million views, how can this not make the best of list?
• Quakers - Smoke (feat. Jonwayne)

Technology

Games

• Letterpress
• Sega's been doing some good work releasing classic Dreamcast games for iOS, like Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio. Also Sonic CD.

Hardware

• 13" MacBook Pro with "Retina" Display. Finally some high DPI love in a compact laptop! Also of note is the belated acceptance of USB 3, bringing cheap accessories with reasonable performance to Mac Land.
• T+A DAC8 High end DAC performance at mid-range prices. Computer audio (USB inputs in addition to SP-DIF/AES) DACs are finally coming into their own in ~2012.

Software

• 1Password - Why did it take me so long to start using this?
• Fusion Drive - Because spinning drives are slow and SSDs are small and expensive. I'm classifying this as software instead of hardware because the cool business is in the logical volume special sauce that makes the 2 discrete drives work together.
• Mountain Lion (10.8)
• Pixelmator 2.0 (late 2011, close enough) introduced content-aware fill and other fancy features
• Tower is a pretty good Git GUI for OS X, although it's pretty slow with big repos
• Waze crowd-sourced commute traffic data is just what I need now that I drive a million miles to and from work every day
• Windows 8 Microsoft steps out on a limb and makes some significant changes to their desktop OS. Including in this Best Of list for their risk taking (compared to the OS X 10.7 -> 10.8 evolution) rather than any specific feature of the new OS.

Food & Drink

Breakfast Spots

• Duck Egg Café, Brixton - For an extra £1 get your English Breakfast with extra cholesterol duck eggs.
• Harry's Cafe, Sacramento - Get the House Special in the Asian section - eggs, ground beef, cabbage, bacon, and maybe sprouts on a bed of rice. Epic.

Lunch Spots

• Cafe Rolle, Sacramento - The smoked salmon salad is probably the best lunch for <$10 anywhere.
• Meat and Bread, Vancouver - Seriously, why didn't I eat there sooner? That's a tasty sandwich.
• The Squeeze Inn, Sacramento - The squeeze with cheese!
• Tacos El Fenix, Ensenada - Easily the Best fish tacos in Ensenada.

Dinner Spots

• Les Brassins, Brussels - Go for the Boeuf Simple Face (steak seared one side only, the other smeared with a mustard/onion/parsley concoction). Obviously served with frites.
• Magpie Cafe, Sacramento - Easily the best, freshest restaurant I found all year and it's two blocks from my apartment.

See also

• 2012: The Year In Photos from The Atlantic
• The Best TV of 2012 from the AV Club (see also the ballots)
• 2012 music wrap-up and mixtape 124 from jwz
• Best of 2011
• Best of 2010
• Best of 2009
• Best of 2008
• Best of 2007
• Best of 2006
• Best of 2005
• Best of 2004