OpEd: a disrupted future

March 28, 2020 by

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The current state of the world is a bleak but let’s be honest, unsurprising one. We have a disease to which nobody has any natural immunity; it is easily transmitted and highly infectious but not lethal enough to break the chain of transmission by itself (by killing off its hosts, like say Ebola or Marburg – both of which tend not to spread because there are no carriers left). In the past, the chain was broken by community isolation; travel was difficult or expensive and few went – certainly not if you were sick. Now, it seems everybody is a tourist – to the point that the lack of tourism probably has a bigger economic impact on most countries than domestic market shutdowns. Like most people around the world, I’m stuck at home on lockdown at least until the end of this month; tomorrow our (unelected*) government decides if we continue for longer or not. Over the past two weeks, I’ve had a lot of thinking time as there hasn’t been a whole lot to do between not being able to go out to photograph and the supply chain for the watch industry shutting down and everything effectively being on hold. Let’s examine a few scenarios and plan accordingly…

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OT: A tale of two Porsches

January 30, 2020 by

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Earlier in the year, I opened discussion to the floor for suggestions around the quest for a different, tactile driving experience – a sort of cathartic break from the increasingly numb efficiency of modern cars. Most of the responses suggested that as usual, the answer was Miata; Miata is unfortunately not an easily accessible proposition in my country, and especially not a manual. For that matter, there are few manuals available outside the truly woeful econoboxes so bad that the dealers don’t even keep demo cars in stock (think the cheapest cars from the local manufacturers; so cheap that airbags and ABS are marketed as headline features). Needless to say, these did not prove to be pleasant motoring. What I did manage to find, at around the price of a new Honda Civic for the former, and a base 3-series for the latter – were two rather interesting Porsches.

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Merry Christmas!

December 25, 2019 by

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As another year draws to a close (where do they all go?) it remains for us at mingthein.com to wish all of our readers Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and may you either have somebody to buy you the treatment to alleviate your GAS, or have the wherewithal to buy it yourself. Lapses in judgment can be excused for at least one day a year! Thank you for sticking around and providing intelligent discussion below the line even though we continue to move away from hardware – it’s reassuring to know there are still people who are into photography for the pictures. So go on, get off the internet and social media and spend time with the special real people in your lives. Eat too much, drink too much, and don’t forget to bring a camera to record it all.

-MT, Robin & Praneeth

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The quest for tactility

November 16, 2019 by

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No, the header image isn’t meant to be some abstract representation of touch; it can’t be, since physiological visual and tactile pathways aren’t the same. However, it is a demonstration of why we prefer object or image A over B when they are both conceptually similar (for example: one person over another; one car over another; one meal over another), and I suspect also why some things trigger certain responses in certain people – and moreover, why we are driven to seek out certain qualities of things over others. Today’s post is the distillation of some self-examination over the last year or so – I think I understand my own personal motivations better; hopefully you might take away something, too.

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OT: Hobbies and diversions

September 20, 2019 by

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Photography for me started off as a diversion – just as it probably did for many of you. It was the ideal hobby for a busy corporate person: without predictable chunks of free time, looking for something piecemeal that could be satisfying in a ten minute gap or stretched to fill an unexpected day. It combined elements of unpredictability, reward for improvement in skill, as well as instant gratification (between instant results and gear lust). As I developed my skills and found other things I wanted too communicate, it turned into a tool to let me express ideas in a way that could be understood by others. And then it became both a calling and a career. But at some point in the last couple of years, it also became all-consuming – to the point that there was no longer any boundary between work and not-work, and thus between photography for creative fulfilment and photography (and related activities) for a living. Photography used to be a break that forced me to refocus my thoughts and allow for creative experimentation; inspiration would flow between different kinds of photography, different approaches for different subjects (i.e. client-subjects and personal-subjects) and different creative processes – photography and non-photography. But without the break: how does one you find inspiration?

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Adventures of the travelling audiophile: Endgame (nearly)

August 3, 2019 by

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First confession: I’m listening to them now.
Second confession: I seem to have come full circle; it isn’t the first time I’ve heard them. Not by a long shot; in fact, they may well have been the first really exceptional bits of hifi I’ve heard.
Third confession: I don’t know when to stop; there’s the beginnings of diminishing returns, and then there’s $1,000 cables. I’m not quite there yet, thankfully. And I admit I’ve tried to find something better, but fortunately, failed miserably.

You might have noticed I’ve abandoned the in-ear setup from the previous instalments; part of the problem is one of prolonged comfort/sensitivity – namely my ears’ inability these days to feel good about something crammed in tightly for more than an hour or so – and part of the problem is sonic. In-ears also tend to have a very forward presentation that feels like MAXIMUM ATTACK all of the time, and moreso if you have a detailed, hard-hitting monitor. You don’t get the spatial separation and airiness of an open, over-ear can; much less the coherence of just one driver doing all of the sound generation. The problem with in-ears is they either require you to accept some fuzziness and interstitial connections between the notes and the accompanying lack of definition and precision (if a single driver), or have multiple drivers to cover multiple frequencies, then risk tonal imbalance and coherence issues. It’s not easy to get anywhere up to 12 (!!) drivers per ear to play nice with each other. And that doesn’t even start on the 2018 setups that use as many as three types of drivers – miniature dynamic, balanced armature and electrostatic – in each earpiece. I can’t help but think that’s a reliability nightmare waiting to happen too, given the number of tiny components in there. Having gone off the deep end here (to the point of commissioning my own monitors with their own configuration and tuning, and a modest six drivers per ear) – I’ve gone the over-ear route for the aforementioned reasons of coherence and comfort.

There’s only one problem with all of this: the travelling part. I just can’t do it with this setup, but I have the most amazing static listening experience short of probably some six figure speakers.

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Off topic: For the joy of driving…

June 28, 2019 by

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Not so long ago, we’d all have laughed if you’d said hybrid and electric vehicles were the way of the future. I know I did; infrastructure being the main stumbling block, the other one simple physical resource requirements and handling (think of all those batteries and limited lifespans). Technological development is much less of a headache whenever there’s large-scale consumer spending involved; look at how fast we’ve gone from phones with buttons to touch everything – though I can’t help but wonder why small scale batteries are still so rubbish given that market must still surely be much larger than electric vehicles. Long story short, given the current state of legislation, misunderstandings of technology* and social media hysteria – internal combustion’s days are numbered. Even the EU has legislated a halt in combustion engines from 2030. I make no secret of the fact that I like cars. And honestly…the vast majority of these modern-produced things are not cars. Where does this leave us enthusiasts?

*Remember diesel? It was cleaner/more efficient then it wasn’t and now it’s non-existent. All in the space of five years. I know I miss 1200+km/tank range and filling up my car once a month…

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Off topic: Why I started making watches, part II

June 16, 2019 by

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The unexpected: 19.01, November 2017

Continued from part I.

Our group wondered if there were alternatives. We started looking into independents, and for me personally, those who would be willing to entertain serious customisation without breaking the bank; this meant compromising on the movement side, but as it turns out there were still interesting alternatives to be had. Ochs und Junior took the challenge and gave me very simple (read: reliable) annual calendar and high accuracy moon phase watches, but more than that, forced me to adapt the design to be coherent with the immutable parts (cases, complication locations and indications, production limitations). Until this point, I was still designing; evolving both my movement conceptualisation skills and aesthetics. By now, I’d developed a coherent design language and over 50 watches (including movements) on paper; these watches would represent the first baby steps towards seeing them come to life. But first, the ornamental complexity had to go; design would be reductive instead of additive. It was an interesting process that forced me to really identify and simplify critical elements required for time telling and identifiable stylistic cues down to their bare minimum. The Simpleton and Celestial were the product of those experiments, and it’s probably clear that design elements from both made it into our subsequent watches.

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Off topic: Why I started making watches, part I

June 13, 2019 by

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The MING family, as of March 2019

It’s a fair question, and one I’ve been asked frequently enough to properly explain myself somewhere, for the record. I suppose it isn’t just something you pick up on a whim one day, nor is it something that even if you had a burning desire to do – can easily begin by submitting a CV to a headhunter. Watchmaking, in its purest definition, is a vocation – not a profession. You physically have to make something, and in the process of doing so (from scratch, of course) understand everything from engineering to metallurgy to physics to aesthetics. It is the kind of masochistic intellectual pursuit undertaken successfully by only the most dedicated, the most skilled, or the most masochistically insane. I am not a watchmaker in the pure definition, nor am I dextrously skilled, but I am fairly dedicated and probably also insane. After all, eight years ago (has it been that long?) I did quit the top of the corporate game to start all over again as a photographer. And now, not having learned my lesson, history repeats.

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Addressing some rather serious feedback

April 1, 2019 by

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The quality of readership here has always been very high, and I owe the audience a big thank you for contributing intelligently to the discussion. But there are some occasions where people go above and beyond to bring something truly special to the table. I therefore feel it is only fair to highlight some of these today and give them the stage and attention they truly deserve.

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