As I mentioned yesterday when I posted episode 9 of the Codex, it’s only after I was done that I thought it would be a good idea to do a Christmas episode, and I wanted to get it done as soon as possible. Here we are then, an extra-sized holiday episode with 20 yuletide tunes that I hope make for a Christmas soundtrack that’s a bit different from what you tend to hear everywhere.

As I said on the show, a lot of the tracks were found thanks to a great holiday music round-up post on Pitchfork. Here are also links to some of the compilations I mentioned, that you can download for free: The Christmas Gig, Ho! Ho! Ho! Canada Deux, and A Familyre Christmas Volume 3. Also, you can still download the Christmas episode of Radio OK Fred (15) we did last year (me, along with my co-hosts Yoshi and Ay2).

You’ll find the link to download the episode below, along with the complete playlist, and you can subscribe to an RSS feed so as not to miss any future episode. The show is on the iTunes Store too.

Codex 10 (61.8MB)

1. James Kochalka Superstar – “Christmas in Dimension X”
2. Pine*AM – “Snow! Snow!”
3. Blazer Force – “Electronic Santa”
4. Sufjan Stevens – “Put the Lights on the Tree”
5. Low – “Taking Down the Tree”
6. Bishop Allen – “You’ll Never Find My Christmas”
7. Best Coast/Wavves – “Got Something for You”
8. Coconut Records – “It’s Christmas”
9. Summer Camp – “Christmas Wrapping (The Waitresses Cover)”
10. Los Campesinos! – “Kindle a Flame in Her Heart”
11. Dressy Bessy – “Hopped Up on Xmas”
12. Dent May – “Holiday Face”
13. By Divine Right – “Mall Santa”
14. The Zolas – “Snow”
15. Paper Lions – “Jingle Bells”
16. The Mountains & The Trees – “My Favourite Sweater (Happy Holidays)”
17. Ben + Vesper – “Planet Witness”
18. Rachel and Jon Galloway – “Glory”
19. Joshua Stamper – “To Us a Child of Hope Is Born”
20. Halcali – “Strawberry Chips”

For some reason I’ve always avoided doing year-end lists of favorite things — I don’t really know why — but I just felt like doing one this year, and so here goes. Now, of course, this is all based on what I’ve actually seen/played/used/listened to, and so consider this a personal compilation of the favorite things I experienced this year in the world of media (it’s not a “best of” thing) — and note that it is limited to things that were released in 2010. Two categories that may be conspicuous by their absence are books and magazines — I just don’t feel like I read enough books to justify a proper list, and for magazines, I don’t have five truly favorites that come to mind.

So here then is my highly unscientific, truly subjective list of favorite media obsessions of 2010. Each category includes five items in alphabetical order (I think it’s silly to rank them in order), and I’ve occasionally included a few honorable mentions, things that I really wanted to have in those favorite fives.

FAVORITE GAMES
As you’ll see, my favorite genre tends to be RPGs (with a strong emphasis on action RPGs), and then racing games too. I could probably have done a separate downloadable game category as well, but decided to just put them all together.

• Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
• Fallout: New Vegas
• Mass Effect 2
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
  
• Red Dead Redemption
• Honorable Mentions: Costume Quest, Fable III, Limbo, Heavy Rain, Split/Second
  

FAVORITE IPAD APPS
There are many more apps that I really like, but these are the ones that I use the most, that I have in my dock. I decided to only list iPad apps and not iPhone apps (same for games), since I do really spend a lot more time on my iPad, and my iPhone is just something I pull out when I’m bored waiting somewhere (most used apps on that would be Twitter, Instapaper, Camera, and listening to podcasts).

• Cloudreaders
• Instapaper
• NYTimes
• Reeder
• Twitter
• Honorable Mentions: Air Video

FAVORITE IPAD GAMES
I’ve kept this to real iPad versions of games only — I did play a hell of a lot of DoDonPachi Resurrection on my iPad, but it’s really just an iPhone release.

• Carcassonne
• Infinity Blade
• Plants vs. Zombies HD
• Robot Unicorn Attack HD
• Word with Friends
• Honorable Mentions: Highborn HD, Small Worlds, Space Invaders Infinity Gene, Canabalt, Puzzle Agent HD
  

FAVORITE TV SHOWS
This year was absolutely amazing for TV, and you’ll see that my tastes are definitely on the cable series side of things (Community is the only network show to be included) — that fact that you can be truly mature is one thing, and the shorter seasons (and so more focused storylines) is another.

• Eastbound & Down
• Dexter
• Mad Men
• Sons of Anarchy
• True Blood
• Honorable Mentions: Community, Treme, The Walking Dead, Louie, How to Make It in America, Bored to Death
  

FAVORITE MOVIES
This was difficult because I obviously haven’t seen a ton of movies that came out in theaters in recent months in North America, so my list could honestly have included movies that came out towards the end of 2009 as well. I know the two Mesrine films originally came out in France in 2008, but I felt like I could include them since they came out in North America this year.

• Cyrus
• Inception
• Mesrine: Killer Instinct/Mesrine: Public Enemy #1
• The American
• The Ghost Writer
• Honorable Mentions: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Kick-Ass, The Social Network, Exit Through the Exit Shop
  

FAVORITE ALBUMS
Music is also very difficult, since I listen to so much of it, and to such a variety — which is one of the reasons I started Codex — but I think I was still able to come up with a list of favorites, in part based on the “most played” count in iTunes.

• Record Collection (Mark Ronson & The Business Intl)
• Swim (Caribou)
• There Is Love in You (Four Tet)
• The Suburbs (The Arcade Fire)
• The Way Out (The Books)
• Honorable Mentions: The Social Network Soundtrack (Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross), King of the Beach (Wavves), Not Music (Stereolab)

FAVORITE TRACKS
Again, these are mostly based on the “most played” count in iTunes.

• “A Cold Freezin’ Night” (The Books)
• “Bang Bang Bang (feat. Q-Tip and MNDR)” (Mark Ronson & The Business Intl)
• “Happy Up Here” (Royksopp)
• “Threshold Apprehension” (Black Francis)
• “Odessa” (Caribou)
• Honorable Mentions: “King of the Beach” (Wavves), “Rococo” (The Arcade Fire)

FAVORITE COMICS
This was the hardest category for me, because I read A LOT of comics, and so it was hard to narrow it down to just five — and these five are basically the things that I could remember really liking — and the reason I don’t even include any honorable mentions is because it would be ridiculously long.

• Justice League: Generation Lost
• Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit
• Scott Pilgrim
• Sweet Tooth
• The Unwritten

Following last week’s special two-parter (episodes 7 and 8), Codex is back this week with a regular episode. After I was done recording it occurred to me that maybe I should have done a Christmas episode, and so since I’d like to get that out at least a few days before the C-day, I’ll try and record one this weekend.

The link to download the episode is below, along with the playlist, and you can also subscribe to an RSS feed so as not to miss any episodes — the show is on the iTunes Store too.

Codex 09 (38.2MB)

1. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – “40 Day Dream”
2. The Lowbrows – “Blue”
3. Junior Senior – “Take My Time”
4. Kid Cudi – “Revofev”
5. Deerhunter – “Coronado”
6. Duck Sauce – “Barbara Streisand”
7. Djako – “Devil Train”
8. Halcali – “Tandem (Mutable Chromosome Remix)”
9. Halcali – “Peek-a-Boo (DJ Mitsu the Beats Remix)”
10. Momus – “The Thunderclown”

Hey, you lazy blogger, aren’t you doing anything?

If you think I’ve suddenly dropped everything, I would remind you to check (and often) my other little web publications that do get a lot of love throughout the week: SNOW Magazine and The Magaziner. It’s amazing the amount of attention the latter has gotten — more than any personal project I’ve launched so far, and I gotta say it feels good. The Magaziner will also be involved in the launch of a very cool project in January that I’m excited about — can’t say anything yet, but trust me, if you’re at all into this whole digital magazines thing, then you’ll love it. And Gym Class Magazine has offered me a regular “The Magaziner” column, starting from the next issue (out in February).

If it’s more Codex you want, fret not, as I’ll be recording a new episode tonight or tomorrow. I absolutely love doing these, and so huge thanks to everyone for the great feedback — it’s very much appreciated.

The title to this post simply refers to the amazing poses my dog performs when he’s jolly and jumping around during play — he would make any kung-fu master proud.

Here is Codex 08, which is part 2 of of my special session with special guest PMKFA (Micke Thorsby)– make sure to download part 1, as they really go both together. The two shows were recorded over dinner at Micke’s home — with plenty of wine — and so apologies if the sound is a bit low at times, as Micke moves around the room preparing things (it sounded fine on our headphones). As promised during the show, I’ll be posting the recipes of what we had to eat, as well as a few photos to give you a better idea of what our dinner looked like.

Below is the link to the episode, as well as the complete playlist, and you can also subscribe to the RSS feed so as not to miss any future episode — the show is on the iTunes Store too.

Codex 08 (58.1MB)

1. Mr. Lexx – “Big Up (True Friend)”
2. Chan Dizzy – “Go Hard an Dun Mix”
3. Major Lazer – “Halo”
4. Twin of Twins – “Leggo Mi Head – Raw”
5. Kollosus – “Breakin’ Bread (Phaseone Remix)”
6. Max B – “Tattoos on Her Ass”
7. Leftside – “Mi Tyad – Grandpa”
8. Marcus Price and Carli – “Mat Bira Kvinnor Weed”
9. The Dream – “Kellys 12 Play”
10. Sleigh Bells – “Tell ‘Em”

Yes, it was just last night that I uploaded episode 6 of the Codex, but here we are the following day with not one, but two new episodes, or rather a show in two parts featuring special guest graphic designer PMKFA (Micke Thorsby). We recorded over at Micke’s home as he prepared dinner for both of us — over a a lot of wine — and that would explain why Micke’s voice is often low (it sounded good when we tested over headphones). You can download part 2 here (both episodes really belong together), and I’ll eventually be posting some photos of the session, as well as the recipes of what we ate.

Below is the link to the episode, as well as the playlist, and you can also subscribe to the RSS feed so as not to miss any future episodes — it’s on the iTunes Store too.

Codex 07 (61.3MB)

1. Babe Rainbow – “UP by OFWGFTA”
2. Golden Birthday – “Exposed”
3. Marcus Price – “Surf (Hedmark Remix)”
4. Teen Daze – “Four More Years”
5. Small Black – “Despicable Dogs (Washed Out Remix)”
6. Star Slinger – “Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins Rework)”
7. Salem – “King Night”
8. How to Dress Well – “Decisions (Feat. Yuksel Arslan)”
9. Cam’ron – “Yo Momma On Ya (Feat. Snoop Dogg & Jim Jones)”
10. Paper Route Gangstaz – “Bama Gettin’ Money (Feat. Kristmas, Mali Boi & Big P.O.P.E.)

This week’s episode of Codex (06) comes a bit early as I wanted to get a regular show in the can before heading to the home of PMKFA (graphic designer Micke Thorsby) tomorrow to record a special episode in which he’ll be the selector. This episode also includes the very first Codex Coda, which as I explained before, are short sets by people I’ve invited to contribute. This first one is by London-based art director/graphic designer Michael Bojkowski — keep an eye also on Michael’s Linefeed site, as that’s where he posts new episodes of his Antimix podcast.

You’ll find the link to download the show below, along with the complete playlist, and you can also subscribe to an RSS feed so as not to miss any future episode — the show is on the iTunes Store too.

Codex 06 (48.3MB)

1. Arling & Cameron – “Open”
2. Quincy Jones – “It’s My Party (Feat. Amy Winehouse)”
3. Brasstronaut – “Hearts Trompet”
4. Matt & Kim – “Cameras (Mike D Remix)”
5. Lykke Li – “Get Some (Mike D Remix)”
6. Stereolab – “Two Finger Symphony”
7. The Streets – “Going Through Hell (Diplo Remix)”
8. Yacht – “Psychic City (Classixx Remix)”
9. Wave Machines – “Keep the Lights On”

Codex Coda 01 by Michael Bojkowski

1. Lene Lovich – “I Think We’re Alone Now (Japanese Version)”
2. The Zombies – “Come on Time”
3. Cotton Candy – “Fantastic & Spectacular”

I just posted something on SNOW Magazine about Momus‘ latest podcast, in which he talks about his new life in Osaka — he has recently relocated to the city. Momus used to do a lot of these talk-only podcasts, often recording them as he was walking around a city (Tokyo, New York, Berlin) describing the things he was experiencing. I really loved these “virtual tours,” and it even inspired me to do a few of my own.

Now in this new one — which he says “may” turn into a series, which I hope so — he mentions me, saying how he used to follow my blog back in the day, and he says how it’s interesting that when you look at pretty much all of the tweeting I do these days — which is admittedly a lot — that there is barely ever any mention of anything Japan-related. Now one thing that should be obvious is that I’ve moved all of my Japan-related art/design/culture content to SNOW Magazine, and the accompanying Twitter account, but there is something to what he says.

Momus states that it’s possible that after a foreigner has been here for long enough — I’ve been here for 10+ years — he starts losing interest in the things around him, and I can’t entirely disagree. I’m certainly no longer intrigued or surprised by the differences between Japan and other cultures. These have become routine for me. But I will admit that over the years my interests have evolved, and I’ve taken a bigger interest in things that lie outside of this country — you could probably count recent projects I’ve launched, like Codex and The Magaziner, as a reflection of this.

There was certainly a long period time where I was so obsessed and in love with all of the things I was seeing and experiencing in Japan that yes, it pretty much made up everything I was absorbing in terms of daily culture. But the past few years have seen me re-connecting with what’s happening in the rest of the world, and it has changed my perspective on things. Now, this is not to say that I don’t genuinely like what I cover on SNOW Magazine — I really do — but it’s also something I produce as a “project” now. As a whole, I’m just not as excited or intrigued by Japanese culture (meaning in art, design, culture, and more) as I used to be. Now whether this is due to me turning jaded or because of a general decline in what is being produced on the cultural landscape, that’s a topic for another post.

Does this mean I lose my Tokyo Boy crown?

Just a reminder in case you’re wondering whether there’s a PauseTalk tomorrow night (Monday, December 6) — no, there isn’t. As I mentioned in my write-up following the previous edition, we’re taking a two-month break (December/January), and will be back February 7.

It was Saturday night, around 2:00, which of course (I guess) was a perfect time to record a new episode of Codex (5). For this episode I decided to use a theme, and it’s a rather simple one: A selection of tacks taken from albums with titles that start with the letter “A” — I explain why on the show.

You’ll find the link to download below, as well as the playlist, and you can also subscribe to the RSS feed so as not to miss any episodes. Note that Codex is now also listed in the iTunes Store.

Codex 05 (42.5MB)

1. Flin Flon – “Ukraina”
2. France Galle – “Les yeux bleus”
3. Delicatessen Mixture – “Aguas de Agosto (Sunaga t’ Experience)”
4. Guided by Voices – “My Valuable Hunting Knife”
5. Matthew Sweet – “Time Capsule”
6. Sketch Show – “Wonderful to Me”
7. Taichi – “RPM”
8. Radiohead – “Pyramid Song”
9. Sufjan Stevens – “Dear Mr Supercomputer”
10. Melissa Auf des Maur – “Real a Lie”

Every month or so, Warren Ellis puts out a post on his site in which he explains where you can find him on the web and elsewhere — sort of a monthly updated FAQ on what he’s up to — and I figure I should do one as well, since I’m sure that someone who has just arrived to my site for the first time might have trouble understanding what exactly I’m up to these days.

First off, this week saw the launch of my latest project, The Magaziner, a new site that will cover the growing push of magazine into the digital world — something I’ve been covering here for a couple of months now, but realized it made more sense to create a proper space for it. It is also accompanied by a Twitter account, which I’m now using for my magazine-related tweets, and has a Facebook fan page too.

Last month I also launched a new weekly music podcast I call Codex. It’s usually me playing a selection of 10 tracks, but I’ll have the occasional themed shows (like the next one), guest episodes (soon), and I’m also going to start adding what I call the Codex Coda, short guest mixes. You can download all previous episodes here and subscribe to an RSS feed — it’s in the iTunes Store too.

Radio OK FRED is the long-running music podcast series I do with Editions OK FRED‘s Yoshi Tsujimura and Audrey Fondecave, and although it’s been on yet another extended break (apologies for that), it still pops up every once in a while, and I’m hoping we’ll be able to make 1 or 2 new episodes this month.

Then there’s PauseTalk, my monthly creative talk event that takes place at Cafe Pause here in Ikebukuro. We’re on a bit of a break this month and the next (due to the holiday slowdown), and so the next edition will take place February 7. If you’ve never been there, it’s a very casual salon-like atmosphere, where a bunch of “creatives” basically get together and discuss topics that affect us, share projects, ask for advice, etc.

SNOW Magazine is the natural extension that was launched at the start of the year for all of the Tokyo/Japan-related art/design/culture coverage I used to do on this blog for many, many years. Although most of the content is provided by me, it does include the occasional guest columns and feature. SNOW also has a presence on Facebook and Twitter.

That means that this place, JeanSnow.net, is again a hub for all of my activities, so don’t come looking for Japan-related news, really. I’m on Twitter as well — where some say I actually tweet too much — and of course Facebook.

On the book side of things, while I’ll remind you that my previous contributions — Arcade Mania and Tokyolife — make for great holiday gifts, next up will be the release early next year of the fifth editions of The Rough Guides to Tokyo and Japan.

And although it doesn’t get updated as much as I’d like, my little gaming corner — simply called GAME — still features a host of games that I like a lot. I’ll try and get back to adding a few each month.

The PLAY series, where I would spin virtual discs at Cafe Pause every once in a while, is also on hiatus, and I think it has pretty much been taken over by Codex. I actually want to occasionally record some live Codex shows from the cafe.

You can also still catch my monthly design column for The Japan Times, “On Design,” which is published on the last Thursday of every month. It focuses on product design, and each one usually has me recommending five new items. I also contributed two items to the Japan Times‘ holiday gift guide piece, which was published today.

And even though I don’t really contribute anything in the written sense, I would say that I’m a “spiritual” contributor to Néojaponisme, David Marx‘s web journal that covers social and cultural aspects of Japan, which explains my editor-at-large title. Although the site has slowed down a bit this year in terms of new content, expect a bunch of great year-end reflections to appear later this month.

I’m also a proud member of Luis Mendo’s Goodfellas Network, and more specifically part of the GOOD Inc. Japan team. If you’re looking for a terrific group of people to work on a magazine-related project (print or digital), then please get in touch.

Last, but CERTAINLY not least, I continue my work as Executive Director of PechaKucha, where my role is mostly behind-the-scenes, but I also provide a public face through the PechaKucha Daily blog, and on Twitter. Local PKN organizers from around the world are the people I mostly deal with, but do feel free to get in touch if you have any questions regarding all things PechaKucha, whether it’s about holding a one-off PK event, starting a regular PKN series in your city, or anything else you may have on your mind. Since the organization is run as a non-profit, sponsorship enquiries and collaborations are also VERY welcome!

So there you have it, and if all of this wasn’t enough, do feel free to email me with any question you may have.

Just a note to say that Codex, my weekly music podcast, is now listed in the iTunes Store, which means that you can download episodes from there, as well as subscribe — here’s the magic link.

And speaking of the show, the playlist for the next episode is all done — it’s going to be a themed episode, first in a series — and you’ll also soon see the new December color combo for the cover.

I gotta say I’m getting a kick out of this: In the past 24 hours I conceived of a site, a name, bought the domain, got it working, installed WordPress, imported posts from this site, found a theme that I modded to my liking, and have now launched my latest project, something I’m calling The Magaziner. What’s a magaziner you ask? Here’s my made-up answer:

We hereby define a new term, that of the magaziner, described as a person who exerts an unhealthy amount of love for all things magazine. The Magaziner is a site that mostly focuses on the intersection between magazines and the digital frontier, and what it means for the medium. This does not preclude the inclusion of a healthy amount of print love.

It all started last night when I was reading a comment on Facebook by Craig Mod, who suggested that all of the magazine-related coverage I’ve been doing over the past couple of months is getting lost within the rest of what I post here. I think he made a good point — and god knows I have a lot of respect and admiration for what he’s accomplished over the past year or so — and so I decided to launch a new site that would be exclusively for all of the magazine stuff. Expect the same kind of coverage you’ve been seeing here — commentary, news, new release announcements, reviews — that weighs heavily on the emerging digital side of the magazine publishing industry, something I’m quite passionate about (although I do still love my lovely print publications, thank you very much).

So this site returns to being a hub for news on me and all of my various projects, which on top of The Magaziner includes Codex, my new weekly music podcast, Radio OK Fred, SNOW Magazine, PauseTalk, and other fun stuff. Hope you’ll continue to follow what I’m up to here, and if you really enjoyed the magazine coverage, then please head on over to The Magaziner — and you can of course subscribe to an RSS feed. There’s a Twitter account too (@the_magaziner) that I’ll be using to post magazine-related news as well.

Oh, and one more thing about The Magaziner, please consider this a beta version of the site. As I said at the top of this post, it all came together rather fast, so over the coming weeks I’m sure I’ll be changing things here and there, fixing things I missed, and maybe coming up with new features or sections to add.

It’s a new episode of Codex (04), my weekly music podcast, recorded on a late Saturday night (past midnight), not that this piece of information has anything to do with anything.

Below is the playlist for the show, as well as a link for download, and you can also subscribe to the RSS feed so as not to miss any episodes (and apologies, but it seems that the feed didn’t update properly last week, but it’s now fixed).

Codex 04 (33.8MB)

1. Röyksopp – “Eple”
2. Daft Punk – “Derezzed”
3. Tricky – “Murder Weapon”
4. Bear Hands – “Crime Pays”
5. Familjen – “Det Var Jag”
6. The Wombats – “Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves)”
7. Magic Kids – “Superball”
8. Bell – “Dialtone”
9. Freezepop – “Science Genius Girl”
10. Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett) – “Do You Love”

Tomorrow night (Wednesday, November 24) isn’t any old PechaKucha Night, nope, it’s actually the last one of 2010, since December is always a skip month. So come on down to SuperDeluxe for what is looking like a great night of presentations, including my pal Ian who is promising to give away free stuff, and Audrey who will be talking about TOO MUCH magazine. If you want to say hi, just drop by the front either before or during the beer break, as I sit at the front next to Mark and Astrid.