Reading Dav Pilkey

Because my boys like Captain Underpants so I end up reading them as well. The series is all about underpants, booger, poop, fart and toilet, mostly things kids love but adults consider taboo.

I think in one of the series, Dav Pilkey, creator of the series, I hope I remember it correctly, says something to the extent that in the first two years of children's life, their parents desperately want to talk about poop, pee, walk and talk. And then ironically after the children mastered those skills, the parents would spend the rest of the children's childhood years trying to make them stop talking about poop, pee and want them to shut up and stay still. No wonder some children are confused.

Captain Underpants is a series about poop, toilet and booger. I can see why kids or mostly boys love it.

Talent Show

MF Nikkor 50mm f1.4

Here is a picture I shot using the MF 50mm f1.4 lens. I forgot about the setting already. Chances are I was shooting at f2 and 1/80s at ISO 640, OR something. When used with this lens, my D70 won't meter. But fear not, you can always guess and the instant feedback you get from the rear LCD display helps.

I post process this JPEG using Picassa's "I am feeling lucky." That's it. There are a few more 50mm shots in my flickr account.

To Photoshop or Not To Photoshop

© Alan Kim/The Roanoke Times
JPEGs from pdnonline.com

The thingy potruding from victim Kevin Sterne's lap appears in the first picture and enlarged on the bottom picture was a tourniquet which was mistaken as the victim's penis and was so eagerly edited out by some publications, like People magazine (2nd picture) and The New York Post (3rd picture).

Publications Fumble With "Disgusting" Virginia Tech Photo, April 26, 2007 by Daryl Lang

April 25, 2007

• Got up, Breakfast: Oatmeal and 2 pieces of toast;
• [ mundane but joyful stuff goes here ...];
• Got a call from work. Solution: use some hex editor to edit a file; vpn and vnc to work. My boss got a handle of the problem, hopefully all is well;
• Dow cracked the 13,000 barrier. Now sky is the limit;
• Dinner: sauteed zucchini with dill weed with a splash of lemon juice, some fried rice;
• Played action figures with Harry ....
• Mindlessly watching American Idol and reading blogs.

Swimming

Except for the top one, the other two were straight from the camera JPEG, shot using Aperture shutter priority at f2.8 at 1/125s floating shutter speed and auto ISO camera set at 1600. [I was wrong, the bottom two were shot at shutter priority at 1/125sec, I usually shoot at Aperture priority, indeed some of them were shot at Aperture priority, just not these two. If you check flickr, you can see all the EXIF data for those JPEGs straight from camera, as if you care.]

The top one was shot in NEF and subsequently converted into JPEF using GIMP with UFRaw plugin just for the fun of it. Normally I only shoot in JPEG. For me ISO 1600 under fluorescent isn't great but hey I will take it. It's just that after sharpening (most often you should do USM, but I am too lazy to fuss with my pictures, I got to get on with my hobby ...) the noise got worse. But since I am not submitting my images to Getty, I guess they are OKAY.

All shots using AF Nikkor 80~200 f2.8D. I have been using my D70 for over a year or two, and overall I am pretty happy with the results. And the kit lens 18~70 really exceeds my expectation.

Nikon is doing pretty well in the amateur DSLR market with models like D80 and below. But for the pro market, I believe Canon takes the lead. 2008 Olympics is about a year from now. Hopefully Nikon will have the next pro models ready for the big game.

Soccer Ultraman

Alex as Soccer Ultraman. Ultraman T-shirt and cap from Hong Kong, courtesy of my sister and brother. Thanks.

$10 Haircut

Queens Botanical Garden. Harry, me, and Alex.

$400 Haircut

Credit: Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press
John Edwards appearing at a public forum in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on March 9, two days after one of his $400 haircuts. (caption from the New York Times)

Just when I thought $75 a pair of socks is out of this world, the latest closet (now outed) peacock Presidential candidate John Edwards shows the world his $400 haircut.

Further evidence how much this guy cares his hair can be seen here in "I am Pretty"



Sources: In the Beverly Hills Style: Candidate's $400 Coiffure by Adam Nagourney

Breaking: Cho sent out Multimedia Press Release Before Virginia Tech Massacre

Cho produced and sent out a multimedia press release to NBC in the 2 hours between his first shooting and the later mass murder and suicide on April 16, four days before Columbine.

UPDATES:-
Warnings: material may be upsetting and disturbing. You have been warned.

Source: NBC

Cho's plays Mr. Brownstone and Richard McBeef

Cho's "Oldboy" look. Here's the movie as from imdb.com.

(4/20/07) Dead man finally done talking, almost. After having milked dry Cho's message-from-the grave for a whole day, most if not all network TVs and cable outlets pulled the disturbing pictures and video from the air and their website's front page. This was really a test of freedom of press, the public's right to know and sensitivity to the victims' families and the larger question, what do those still images and video serve in the aftermath of all these?

(4/21/07) We had everything backward. Now the media, The New York Times included is calling the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, instead of Cho Seung-Hui. The Cho family adopted the American way of writing given name then followed by surname instead of surname followed by given name as in their native country and most Asian countries.
Now perhaps we could understand why some Asian immigrant kids are like so confused. Is it last name first or last name last, is my two syllable given names hyphenated or not, or do I even have a middle name as opposed to a hyphenated given name?

Of Shopping and Groping

Picture Doug Kanter for The New York Times.

Groping is emboldened by some department store in Beijing. For most guys and some girls, shopping can be tedious and boring, so how about mix it up and kick it up a notch with groping? This is genius retail marketing.


No Spitting on the Road to Olympic Glory, Beijing Says, by Jim Yardley, April 17, 2007.

Leopard is Limping to an October Release Date

Apple formally announced that its next operating system codenamed Leopard won't be ready for Spring 2007 as previously scheduled instead it will be released in October 2007.

The reason? One word, iPhone. Apple blames the delay for limited resources being diverted to iPhone to make its June ship date. After dropping the Computer from its name, Apple Inc. really prioritizes accordingly.

$75 Socks

Mr. Tom Ford in a Tom Ford, a 3-piece suit, very anal retentive and very fitted look. Picture by Terry Richardson from the NYTIMES.COM

Tom Ford opened his "uberluxury" store on Madison Ave, where shoppers who are (a) oblivious to credit card debt, (b) rich, and above all, (c) gullible can shop for $75 a pair of socks and $5,000 bespoke suits. The economy can't be all that bad if you can see a store of this caliber blossoming in the Spring on Madison Avenue.

Money Does Buy Looks, Eric Wilson, April 12, 2007, The New York Times.

Of Fashion and Freedom

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Abedin Taherkenareh/Europen Pressphoto Agency

The freed 15 Britons with parting goody bags are waiting for their flight back to London. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dresses his captives just like himself, gray suit sans tie.

Fashion victims of ill-fitting 3-button gray suits.

Children's Zoo

Checking out the prairie dogs.

Lunch

Lunch outside the Dancing Crane Cafe. The Cafe was full so we had to eat outside. Alex, the sloppy eater.

Bronx Zoo

All superheroes gather to have a picture taken.

Egg Hunt At Bronx Zoo

It's good to be a child. Finding an Easter Egg could be so much fun and all.

Bronx Zoo

Egg Hunt.

It was unbelievably cold.

At the Met

This is the only section that captures their attention. All the knights, swords, and armors.

At the Met Cafeteria

Eating, best activity of the day.

The food is good but seriously expensive. The children have kid's meal, i.e. hot dog, French fries and apple juice. Jin has some chicken wrap and I have an chicken entree with grilled potatoes and tomatoes and some asparagus on the side and a soda. And the bill comes to a whopping $40.

I was supposed to have free company pass. But man, the cashier told me my company just dropped the corporate sponsorship. Anyway, the admission is supposed to be a recommended fee. As a matter of principle, I never pay the recommended admission fee. I believe it's $20 per adult. I will let the upper west side or east side well-heeled folks and the tourists pay full price. Me, no, never.

At the Met

Checking out Van Gogh.

Alex found out Mr. Van Gogh only lived to 37 years old. Alex was a bit shocked because his semi-illiterate Dad once told him Van Gogh probably died in his early 40s. I wasn't sure. But I didn't sugar coat what happened to Van Gogh. He was an absolute failure when he was alive. He never sold one painting or drawing when he was alive (OKAY, maybe one or two but that's about it).

The average American lives to 77 years old, give or take a few years I guess. And the average man dies earlier than the average woman.

Met

Kids don't care about Monet.

Of Sex, Love, Money and Happiness

Vincent told me the below quote by James A. Baldwin

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.

I think Iggy Pop once said sex is more objective. You always know if you have good sex or not, unlike love which is more subjective and may change over time. The same is also true between money and happiness. Money is more objective, you always know how much money you have. Happiness is more subjective and fleeting. If you can't have love and happiness, sex and money aren't all that bad a substitute.

Movie Review Double Feature

This also falls under old video review by yours truly.

Before there was Infernal Affairs, there was City on Fire.

City on Fire or Lung fu fong wan (1987) starring Chow Yun Fat as Ko Chow, and Danny Lee as Ah Fu and directed by Ringo Lam. I remember first seeing it in a movie house in Manhattan Chinatown in probably 1987 when human beings didn't exist and dinosaurs roamed the Earth...but that was another story.

I was immensely impressed by the movie. The direction, the story and the acting in general. I had to say, even by today's standard, Chow's on screen wardrobe was pretty impressive. The parka, the boots, and very narrow tie and even a bow, I mean it's over the top and if anybody, it would be Chow who could pull off that overall look.

City on Fire probably set the bar for all future undercover police stories, by and large.

******

Fast forward to 2003, we had this crap called Heroic Duo or Shuang xiong (2003), starring Leon Lai as Jack Lai, Ekin Cheng as Ken. Jack was a MIT educated hypnotist who of course didn't fail to put the audience to sleep with his wooden performance through out the entire movie. Jack was in jail for a murder. And now Inspector Ken has to enlist Jack's help to solve another case involving hypnotics. The scene where they tried to capture "mindhunter," Jack's alleged hypnotic master was a scene from Se7en, only minus the rain. The scene when Jack and Ken first met, the scene the cops are waiting for the elevator to come down remind me The Silence of the Lambs. The plot starts out mildly interesting but as it progresses it becomes more retarded and of course the final show down was just like 007 with tortured chamber and plenty of explosions.

To make matter worse, Ekin Cheng's Ken and his on screen love interest, Brenda, another cop, played by Kar Yan Lam, were like a three way competition to see who could give the most wooden performance through out. And I think, the first place is a tie between Leon Lai and Kar Yan Lam and the runner up is Ekin Cheng who has the advantage of a more action oriented role to spice up the role just a tad than the other two.

Overall the movie is silly but not funny.

Apple News

Apple iTunes offers DRM-free music downloads from EMI catalogs. Or so I heard. In the sea of piracy and places where there is no law, this is not very germane.

Apple offers its cheese grater with 8-core processors. Honestly, I don't know what it means anymore. The Mac Pro now has the power to run the entire world and probably beyond, that must be it.

Look like there are more good news and product roll outs as Winter turns to Spring. Ah Spring, the season of hope and rebirth.

Straight from the horse's mouth.