Best of 2012

From Antiflux Wiki

(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
(Books)
(Books)
Line 33: Line 33:
* Andrew McCarthy - [http://www.amazon.com/dp/1451667485 The Longest Way Home]
* Andrew McCarthy - [http://www.amazon.com/dp/1451667485 The Longest Way Home]
 +
* Denis Rouvre - [http://www.rouvre.com/en/gallery/3/low-tide Low Tide] Incredible portraits and landscapes of post-Tsunami Japan.
* Hugh Howey - [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0071XO8RA Wool Omnibus]
* Hugh Howey - [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0071XO8RA Wool Omnibus]
 +
* Robert Chaplin - [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/721409234/the-worlds-smallest-book-a-large-print-edition Teeny Ted From Turnip Town] - The world's smallest book, large print edition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teeny_Ted_from_Turnip_Town Wikipedia].
 +
* [http://www.amazon.ca/dp/1553659473/ Selwyn Pullan: Photographing Mid-Century West Coast Modernism]. Vancouver-area architecture porn.
Read in 2012:
Read in 2012:

Revision as of 05:47, 9 January 2013

Contents

Events

TV

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.
  • Moonrise Kingdom - everyone loves Wes Anderson
  • Samsara, the HD (8K) eye-candy followup to Baraka for your balls tripping pleasure.

Notable HD Releases

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:

Read in 2012:

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

Live Music

Music Videos

Technology

Games

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.

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

Personal tools