We went to Hunter Mountain this past weekend. I don't know what I was talking about, it's actually this Tuesday and Wednesday. We went on Tuesday morning and stayed overnight in Howard Johnson.
We got Alex into the Explorer program, by the end of the program he was at level 2 and was able to ride a 4 seater chair lift and came down without any problem. I did two runs with him and I was impressed.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Monday, February 20, 2006
Blurry image as good image
copyright Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin for The New York Times(hey it takes a team of two to make a blurry picture like that.)
Most people don't like out of focus and blurry images. They are generally considered to be made with bad technique and bad lenses. This rather blurry image of George Clooney made the cover of the New York Times magazine. If you are a sharpness whore, then this is not for you. If you are arty farty, perhaps you dig it. When Robert Capa's made his D-Day pictures, I don't think it's his intention to make them blurry. But I think Capa's images work.
UPDATE: Most searched item in this blog
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Johnny Weir, making men's figure skating worth watching
Johnny Weir, currently trailing Russian skater Plushenko, in Men's figure skating in the 2006 Winter Olympics.
You got to love the guy. Too bad he can't compete on the women's program, it got to be entertaining. The video is more than 9 minutes long.
Update: The result is in, Plushenko got gold. American skater Johnny Weir is fifth.
You got to love the guy. Too bad he can't compete on the women's program, it got to be entertaining. The video is more than 9 minutes long.
Update: The result is in, Plushenko got gold. American skater Johnny Weir is fifth.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Throw Quadruple Salchow
What does that mean? It means a nasty fall and a silver medal for the pair skaters Zhang and Zhang.
Skating to the tune of "The Descendants of the Dragon", Zhang Hao threw Zhang Dan the quad salchow which had the 20-year old Dan ended up crashing down on the ice in visibly excruciating pain. Undeterred and unbelievably, the pair still summoned the Olympics courage, whatever that means, and finished with a Silver.
The Russian pair won the Gold but the Zhangs definitely won the crowd or at least me over.
Skating to the tune of "The Descendants of the Dragon", Zhang Hao threw Zhang Dan the quad salchow which had the 20-year old Dan ended up crashing down on the ice in visibly excruciating pain. Undeterred and unbelievably, the pair still summoned the Olympics courage, whatever that means, and finished with a Silver.
The Russian pair won the Gold but the Zhangs definitely won the crowd or at least me over.
Valentine's Day
A fabricated festival so merchants can sell overpriced roses, chocolates and tacky huggy bears.
Winter Olympics 2006
2006 Winter Olympics Updates:-
Bode Miller didn't make it to the podium. He made the cover of the Sunday New York Times PLAY edition. He didn't ski down the slope wasted.
Michelle Kwan bowed out of the Olympics for good. There will be no redemption. It was a sad thing but the right thing to do. She had her chances in Nagano and Salt Lake City. She should have no regret. It's a young girl's game, she was there, she should know.
Shaun White lived up to the expectation and hype. He is I have to say a rather likable old teenager or dude. Despite turning pro since 13 he still seems to have his youthful spirit intact and quite down to earth. Oh, just in case you want to buy a Shaun White Board, it's 499.95 from his sponsor's Burton website. This guy is going to be very marketable.
Apollo Ohno, a rather controversial figure, or a much hated figure in some part of the world, lost his chance to defend his 2002 1500m short track. He won the gold last time because the South Korean skater was disqualified for illegally blocking him. I don't know if there is any illegal passing. Apparently from what I saw on TV, his passing on the Chinese skater was rather unnecessary and might have caused the Chinese guy a chance to advance. I think in the interview, Ohno was saying something to the extent that he was bumped by the Chinese skater...ehhhh I think the Chinese dude was in the front and Ohno made a bad pass and actually touched the Chinese dude's skate almost causing him to fall. Anyway the Chinese dude was later disqualified on subsequent run.
Another Non-Olympics event
Vice president Cheney shot hunting partner. Sorry, no podium ceremony for our VP. Probably disqualified for conduct unbecoming and hunting without a game stamp.
Bode Miller didn't make it to the podium. He made the cover of the Sunday New York Times PLAY edition. He didn't ski down the slope wasted.
Michelle Kwan bowed out of the Olympics for good. There will be no redemption. It was a sad thing but the right thing to do. She had her chances in Nagano and Salt Lake City. She should have no regret. It's a young girl's game, she was there, she should know.
Shaun White lived up to the expectation and hype. He is I have to say a rather likable old teenager or dude. Despite turning pro since 13 he still seems to have his youthful spirit intact and quite down to earth. Oh, just in case you want to buy a Shaun White Board, it's 499.95 from his sponsor's Burton website. This guy is going to be very marketable.
Apollo Ohno, a rather controversial figure, or a much hated figure in some part of the world, lost his chance to defend his 2002 1500m short track. He won the gold last time because the South Korean skater was disqualified for illegally blocking him. I don't know if there is any illegal passing. Apparently from what I saw on TV, his passing on the Chinese skater was rather unnecessary and might have caused the Chinese guy a chance to advance. I think in the interview, Ohno was saying something to the extent that he was bumped by the Chinese skater...ehhhh I think the Chinese dude was in the front and Ohno made a bad pass and actually touched the Chinese dude's skate almost causing him to fall. Anyway the Chinese dude was later disqualified on subsequent run.
Another Non-Olympics event
Vice president Cheney shot hunting partner. Sorry, no podium ceremony for our VP. Probably disqualified for conduct unbecoming and hunting without a game stamp.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Friday, February 10, 2006
Bloomberg fired Albany Office Assistant
The poor guy got fired because Bloomberg saw a copy of Solitaire on the monitor while he was visiting his Albany office. Holy crap. This is the most frightening office policy I have ever read. Maybe except some sweatshop video from Youtube.com depicting workers sweat through the days in China.
It was only Solitaire. The guy was not even downloading viruses, not even playing online games. Essentially he doesn't give the network guys any trouble. Just some harmless good old fashioned Windows game. You got to be some good harmless guy to play Solitaire at work, period. What about smokers at work? Is Bloomberg going to fire them all? These folks spend a minute bitching about the elevator not coming up to pick them up, then spend another minute riding the elevator, then spend another 10-15 minutues puffing outside the building, then another minute bitching and waiting the elevator coming back to the office, then another minute riding the elevator back to their floor .... You multiply this amount of time spent on each smoking trip and times that by the number of smoking trips one makes, you get how much time 'wasted' during office work hours.
Getting fired for playing Solitaire is just absurd.
It was only Solitaire. The guy was not even downloading viruses, not even playing online games. Essentially he doesn't give the network guys any trouble. Just some harmless good old fashioned Windows game. You got to be some good harmless guy to play Solitaire at work, period. What about smokers at work? Is Bloomberg going to fire them all? These folks spend a minute bitching about the elevator not coming up to pick them up, then spend another minute riding the elevator, then spend another 10-15 minutues puffing outside the building, then another minute bitching and waiting the elevator coming back to the office, then another minute riding the elevator back to their floor .... You multiply this amount of time spent on each smoking trip and times that by the number of smoking trips one makes, you get how much time 'wasted' during office work hours.
Getting fired for playing Solitaire is just absurd.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
I like to have consistent error
I got the base Debian installed. But I have problem getting a consistent bootup.
GRUB was OK.
I changed the BIOS, disabled APCI or some crap under advanced setting. Saved and Exit, the first time it reboot to Debian OK, but then it can't boot back to Win2000 unless I changed to enable the APCI. Okay, I thought disabling the APCI would work consistently as far as booting to Debian. But no, on subsequent boot, it just hung there while booting the kernel.
And sometimes disabling the APCI works, most of time it doesn't. I even disabled the plug n play from the BIOS.
I don't like inconsistent error.
That's when I tried to flash the BIOS. My motherboard's BIOS was from American Megatrend but the BIOS have to come from the board manufacturer. So I got to the manufacturer downloaded the stuff. The winflash utility simply doesn't work, so I have to resort to DOS, but then I found out my floppy drive doesn't work, I jiggled the power and the 'rainbow' cable then I smelled something from the floppy drive, I guess it's toast. OKAY, then I took the floppy drive from my IBM Aptiva. and dumped it into my Win2000 machine. The transplant actually works but then Win2000 can't make a DOS bootdisk in order to flash the ROM, so I am stuck again.
At work, I was able to install slackware OKAY.
My take of the situation in the basement:-
Possible problems:
The number 1, got to be the one between the keyboard and the chair. OKAY that got out of the way.
The BIOS may be no good
The CD media is not very good
The CD-ROM drive may not be very good (but I got it changed to some relatively newer one)
GRUB was OK.
I changed the BIOS, disabled APCI or some crap under advanced setting. Saved and Exit, the first time it reboot to Debian OK, but then it can't boot back to Win2000 unless I changed to enable the APCI. Okay, I thought disabling the APCI would work consistently as far as booting to Debian. But no, on subsequent boot, it just hung there while booting the kernel.
And sometimes disabling the APCI works, most of time it doesn't. I even disabled the plug n play from the BIOS.
I don't like inconsistent error.
That's when I tried to flash the BIOS. My motherboard's BIOS was from American Megatrend but the BIOS have to come from the board manufacturer. So I got to the manufacturer downloaded the stuff. The winflash utility simply doesn't work, so I have to resort to DOS, but then I found out my floppy drive doesn't work, I jiggled the power and the 'rainbow' cable then I smelled something from the floppy drive, I guess it's toast. OKAY, then I took the floppy drive from my IBM Aptiva. and dumped it into my Win2000 machine. The transplant actually works but then Win2000 can't make a DOS bootdisk in order to flash the ROM, so I am stuck again.
At work, I was able to install slackware OKAY.
My take of the situation in the basement:-
Possible problems:
The number 1, got to be the one between the keyboard and the chair. OKAY that got out of the way.
The BIOS may be no good
The CD media is not very good
The CD-ROM drive may not be very good (but I got it changed to some relatively newer one)
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Slackware ....
Just for you Sid. I am still struggling with the install. Probably my BIOS is not up to date. Or something.
I tried Debian as well. Still no go.
My floppy is 'broken' as I was trying to flash my BIOS.
I tried Debian as well. Still no go.
My floppy is 'broken' as I was trying to flash my BIOS.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Slackware
I am basically a Linux masochist. For the most part, I don't know what I am doing. I had some experience running RH, compiled a kernel, got wifi working from the basement. One day, the box got hacked and I couldn't SSH into my own box, the root password was changed. That was about a year ago. Now I am back, I am trying to get Slackware running now. My CD-ROM drive was so very old that I actually couldn't boot the kernel by using the default bare.i, I have to use old_cd.i to get over the booting from kernel line. I thought the CD was bad or something, it took me a while to figure out that.
It still very much a work in progress and perhaps remains so indefinitely.
It still very much a work in progress and perhaps remains so indefinitely.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Day in the Park
I used Gimp to convert the NEF files. I am amazed at how much compression it can do to the file, the NEF file is more than 5MB, and this file is only 77KB. Harry likes to ride the dolphin all by himself.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Friday, February 03, 2006
Thank You
Thank you for all the "hardcore" readers (you know who you are) of my blog, who consistently put up with bad writings and second hand news and uninspired opinions.
I just sort of finished watching "Return of the Jedi" on DVD. I am not a big fan of The Star Wars money machine. But hey, I just bought a set so my kids can see the legendary Star Wars. For some reason, they seem to be genuinely interested in Darth Vader and of course the lightsaber. I guess I grew up watching Chinese Wuxia and Gung Fu movies, Star Wars wasn't such a huge deal.
So Memoirs of a Geisha is officially banned in China. That's always how things go. Don't matter, I suppose 1 can always find $1 pirate DVD or download somewhere online. Just that the filmmaker doesn't get any royalties from the Chinese audience in China. And Brokeback Mountain is the next.
I just sort of finished watching "Return of the Jedi" on DVD. I am not a big fan of The Star Wars money machine. But hey, I just bought a set so my kids can see the legendary Star Wars. For some reason, they seem to be genuinely interested in Darth Vader and of course the lightsaber. I guess I grew up watching Chinese Wuxia and Gung Fu movies, Star Wars wasn't such a huge deal.
So Memoirs of a Geisha is officially banned in China. That's always how things go. Don't matter, I suppose 1 can always find $1 pirate DVD or download somewhere online. Just that the filmmaker doesn't get any royalties from the Chinese audience in China. And Brokeback Mountain is the next.
I can't access my blog
that's pretty weird. if you can see this post great.
...some time later. I guess blogger must have been doing some maintenance on the servers.
...some time later. I guess blogger must have been doing some maintenance on the servers.
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