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Verge Favorites: Nathan Ingraham

Verge Favorites: Nathan Ingraham

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The Verge editors pick their current favorites in music, movies, books and more

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The Verge staffers aren't just people who love technology. They're people who love stuff. We spend as much time talking and thinking about our favorite books, music, and movies as we do debating the best smartphone to buy or what point-and-shoot has the tightest macro. We thought it would make sense to share our latest obsessions with Verge readers, and we hope you're encouraged to share your favorites with us. Thus a long, healthy debate will ensue where we all end up with new things to read, listen to, or try on.

Donkey Kong Country Returns

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Don't let the fact that this is a Wii game fool you. Sure, the graphics are decidedly last-generation, but this reboot is both fun and incredibly challenging. It's entirely possible that I'm not very good at games anymore, but Donkey Kong Country Returns contains some wickedly tough levels that nearly drove me to Wii-smashing fury. Fortunately, it's also a really good time, mixing enough new level design and gameplay mechanics with the classic DKC formula. The game seriously tickles the nostalgia bone of anyone who played the SNES in the '90s — the art direction is great without being too derivative, and the original game's fabulous soundtrack is largely intact.

Jim Guthrie — Sword and Sworcery: The Ballad of the Space Babies

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Whether or not you've played the excellent Sword and Sworcery EP, Jim Guthrie's soundtrack is a haunting collection of offbeat instrumentals — the kind of music that makes your day feel just a little more epic when you listen to it. You can buy all the music direct from Jim Guthrie here — for $8 (Canadian), you can get the entire album plus 23 minutes of bonus material. I sprang for the 180g vinyl pressing, which came in a gorgeous sleeve along with some custom artwork. For those who still enjoy a physical presentation with their music, Guthrie put together a top-notch package.

Day One

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Sure, other apps can duplicate Day One's core journaling functionality — any basic text editor can get the job done. That said, it's not often you come across a piece of software that so perfectly executes its function, with pleasing style and design to boot. Dropbox and iCloud syncing between Mac and iOS devices means everything is backed up and available no matter where you are, and the high quality of the app means I'm a lot more likely to use it.

CFCF — Exercises

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Exercises is less than 30 minutes long, but it does more in that time span than a lot of albums twice its length. The music is beautifully minimalistic: a great blend of acoustic instruments with electronic textures. While it might not get you pumped up when things start to slump in the afternoon, it's a great way to ease into a morning. It's a heavily textured, slow-burning collection of tunes — I'm still finding new auditory delights each time I listen to it.

Airport Express

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I fought with my old router for months. Eventually, I was unplugging and rebooting it multiple times a day while trying to figure out why certain devices would crash the entire network. It was no way to live (especially considering I work from home). Finally, I sprang for Apple's Airport Express, and I haven't thought about my Wi-Fi connection for weeks. Setup only took minutes, and the Airport Utility program guided me through the setup as if I were a human being. The best compliment I can pay this router is that I barely even know it exists.

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