Fashion Week Tomorrow

In less than a day, Byrant Park will be taken over by wild fashionistas. For the latest, please get the f out of this blog because this blog blows.

The official site seems to be running better than it was last year. Let's see what happens when the event is in full swing tomorrow.

Other usual suspects as recommended by The Gothamist are The Daily and Fashionista.

Australia Open Updates

Federer got ousted by Djokovic
Tennis great Federer got ousted by tennis clown prince Djokovic in the Australia semi. Djokovic won in straight sets.

Both players wear blue on black. Both Addidas and Nike think alike. And I thought blue and black don't mix. Oh well.

So, it's all Addidas in the men's final. Addidas owns both Djokovic and Tsonga.

Maria Sharapova, woman champion of the 2008 Australia Open
Maria Sharapova, the femme fatale of women's tennis proves once again she is indeed championship material. Nike got their money worth. Her red undergarment probably brought her good luck too ....

New York Times Endorses Clinton and McCain

Breaking: NYT endorses Clinton and McCain. That's not surprising. What's rather unusual is the NYT's searing remark on NY Mayor Giuliani, and I quote

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

Tsonga Shocked Nadal And Rest of Us

Another French man got my attention.

I am watching the Australia's men's semi using my time machine otherwise known as DVR, short for digital video recorder. Wow, 22-year old Frenchman Tsonga is really dictating the game. The guy is 6 foot 2 and he can come to the net and win the point; and he serves like a cannon. The match was a 3-set victorious dream for Tsonga, a total nightmare for Nadal.

That's going to be a very interesting final.

What the heck happened to American tennis? The Europeans are dominating the game on the men's side, while the Russians and Serbians are ruling the women's game.

Gates Wants "Creative capitalism"

More headlines streaming in.

Barings introduced "creative trading" to the world and now Societe Generale best it with a $7 billion loss.

Arthur Anderson might not be the pioneer of "creative accounting" but certainly made accounting bad ass by orchestrating the most spectacular collapse that's called Enron.

And now Gates wants "creative capitalism."

Botox Is Bad For You and You

U.S. group seeks Botox warning after 16 death reports. Somebody got to tell Nicole Kidman.

French Responsible For Global Market Meltdown?

This a developing story. 31- year old junior trader Jerome Kerviel from Societe Generale is allegedly causing the global market meltdown that began on Jan 21, and hence the discount rate cut by our Uncle Ben here and George Bush Tax refund, to shore up the economy. So it's not the sub-prime mortgage market? It's totally the French guy. Anyway, I will take the $1,800 tax refund, thank you.

Sharapova vs. Jankovic

Sharapova is steamrolling Jankovic in the Australian women's semi final. Jankovic finally took off the pink head band that only a two-year old should be wearing and managed to get two games. Meanwhile Sharapova is keeping her bird droppings decorarated or Louis Vuitton look alike Nike visor.

Looks like the pink baby head band had been holding Jankovic back.


UPDATE:
Sharapova 5
Jankovic 3

Dow Continues The Path of Least Resistance

Dow decided to fall to 0. The end of the world is near. Let's repent or party. Look like shit is hitting the fan.

Uncle Ben called an emergency meeting and cut rates to whatever percentage he deems appropriate, which is usually considered not enough or too late by the Wall Street type. Later on the day, Dow recuperated some early loss and ended the Bloody Monday at [fill in]. What a shitty trading day.

Wall Street darling Apple is going to announce its last quarter results after the bell, let's see if Steve can save the market by selling more pretty up cellphones and mp3 players. If he does, may be Uncle Ben may let Uncle Steve run the Fed.

UPDATE: Apple did well selling mp3 players to the fashionable and gullible but falls short on next quarter's forecast leading to afterhour sell off. Price dropped $17.15 to $138.49. Ouch. With impending iPhone2 and Asia's official launch, Apple should have something to spin in the coming quarter. But with Google fast closing in on the cell market, look like there is going to be some serious battle for Apple. I don't know what I am talking about.

Movies I Like

Superbad

Knocked Up

Juno

At least they have something to say. And they said it.

Crazy

This is not Cloverfield. This is better. Original footage shot using a JVC GR-DVM70 U. Video captured via FireWire in Ubuntu 7.10. The FireWire combo card is listed a few posts below. I downloaded Kino and barely understand how things work. I rendered this video in mpeg2. And uploaded to blogger. The original mpeg2 is 720x480 30 frames per second, 42.6MB in size.

There is this good post detailing how to get FireWire, Kino, and essentially video capture going in Ubuntu 7.10. The poster uses a different or better FireWire card while your truly uses a cheapo combo card as told in my post below. Let me get the permalink ....

New York City

Hollywood has a penchant to destroy the most hated/loved city in the world, New York City.

Right on the heels of "I am Legend," New York City is once again messed up, this time by some mysterious monster or whatever.

"Cloverfield" generally received lackluster reviews from the press. It runs less than 90 minutes, which for the attention impaired is good news. If recent movies are of any indication, the art of editing is just gone, the movies are getting longer and longer, not that they have more things to say, just that they can't say things in a concise way. I personally prefer movies that are no longer than two hours.

Read what a real critic has to say about Cloverfield (Ed: the permalink generated from NYT doesn't work at this time, they screwed up).

UPDATE:
CLOVERFIELD is a piece of shit. There is no if or but. It's the biggest nauseating piece of crap from beginning to end. If you enjoy it, you probably can enjoy a piece of shit.

For The Ballerina In You

Prada Fall 2008. Photo Marcio Madeira from men.style.com

Straight Edge

Due to habitual nonchalance and lassitude, I don't shave every day. If I do, I prefer a close razor shave to an electrical one. But if one hasn't shaved for days or weeks, a regular Gillette just won't cut it. I always think a straight edge razor is the ultimate tool to a clean shave. And my old Shanghai barbers have proven just that.

Last evening, out of the blue, sort of I guess, I went to a "beauty" supply shop in seedy Flushing and asked if they carry straight edge razor. And they do. The guy led me to his locked glass cabinet and showed me his wares. He showed me the cheap ones and hinted the $60 one piece solid steel ones are too expensive, like for me? And I ended up taking his hint and bought a cheap one that uses a separate razor. He demonstrated how to split a double edge razor in half and installed one half of the razor to the cheapo straight edge. I never would have thought a razor could be split in the middle and got mounted on a straight edge blade. And the way the inner cut pattern of a safety razor is designed just serves that mounting purpose. Some genius design there.

Around 12 midnight, I tried it. I shaved part of my right cheek and barely not cut myself. My left cheek, not so lucky. I made three bad cuts. Long before I was old enough to shave, I played with my Dad's razor and I shaved a piece of my chin off. Maybe deep down, I wanted to have this bad cut again ....

Crappy PC Hardware That Works in Ubuntu 7.10

If you were like me, who don't know dick about HW or SW, and are desperate to find out whether this or that $6.99 PCI sound card works in your crappy Ubuntu box, you are in luck. Most manufacturers and vendors don't bother to put up anything remotely resemble "Linux compatible" for some obvious (can't test every linux kernel combination?) and not so obvious reason (too busy sucking MS's dick).

To make a short story long, I am going to continue to list what works in my punny crappy Ubuntu box.

PCI USB 2 and Firewire combo card. Two in one card with plenty of ports for your PC's ass.

Today, I bring you the mighty PCI card that's manufactured by my fellow Chinese men somewhere in China or Taiwan. As far as USB 2.0 goes, I have been living under a rock for the past five years or so. I have never experienced the blazing 480 mbps speed until now.

Without much ado, I introduce you the SYBA PCI USB 2.0 & FireWire/1394a combo card Model SD-COMBO-02. The chips as read from the card directly are VIA VT6214L (USB2) and VT6307 (FireWire).

Here is what I got from lspci after booting up

00:0f.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
I/O ports at cc00 [size=32]
Capabilities:

00:0f.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 5
I/O ports at d000 [size=32]
Capabilities:

00:0f.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 63) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
Memory at cfffde00 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
Capabilities:

00:0f.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80) (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
Memory at cfffd000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
I/O ports at d400 [size=128]
Capabilities:


With this comforting lspci output, even without any exhaustive testing as if I know any, I am quite confident that this piece, this fine piece of crappy PC HW will work perfectly with my crappy box.


Display
HP w2207. This is a nice display with some big footprint. The base is so big that it's almost like having a CRT monitor. I wonder if one could accidentally knock it over. The native resolution 1680 x 1050 is unattainable here. With no skill whatsoever, I only manage to configure it to 1600 x 1000 and make it stick. So 400 pixels are missing in action. The text is a bit fuzzy which I think it's the OS' fault. It has a couple of USB 2 ports and a pair of puny speakers which I never tested.

If one knows how to make that 400 pixels appear or how to make text sharp or both, let me know. Thank you.

UPDATE on 5/16/08: I got all my pixels back, just use the VGA port, and under Hardy Heron or Ubuntu 8.04, all my pixels are back.

UPDATE: To make Firewire, video capture work in Ubuntu 7.10, please see here. I got mine work following the howto post.

There's something in the air

Usually I take it an an ominous sign, like somebody just farted within 5 feet while you are riding the subway.

This is indeed the latest Macworld tag line. The show is just hours away. And technology messiah Steve Jobs is going to reveal what's really in the air. Is it some ground breaking paradigm shitting pernicious hardware or software or it it just some cock sucking innocuous marketing BS? Dow is responding to the pre-show by dropping more that 150 points and Apple just shredded 1.63 from yesterday's close. So much so for yesterday's rally led by IBM.

UPDATE:
So, how does the Street respond to Steve's keynote? Give it a thumb down. The stock is down almost 9 freaking dollars. I guess it's all because of Citigroup (Steve can't do no wrong). Citigroup blows. How can those morons have a write-down of $18 billion and a quarterly loss close to $10 billion? And it seems the write down number is getting bigger every day.

We Are In A Recession

We are officially heading into a recession in 2008 because Goldman says so. We are all screwed (except the average GS employee who is positioned to earn $600K bonus). Judging from the recent Dow diarrhea and unemployment numbers, we should be afraid, very afraid.

Now back to our regular program ....

Clinton, skirt please.

I demand to see Clinton in some nice skirts. I get tired of seeing her in pant suits. What's wrong with a nice skirt and a jacket?

What's Happening in Hampshire

After her defeat in Iowa, Clinton made an emotional teary eyed plea with the voters, which the pundits are split on what that would do for her. Does that humanize her or does that make her a cry baby? Or we shouldn't even read too much into it? Yours truly is scanning CNN on TV and according to the Wolf, only 10% of the votes are coming in and so far Clinton is leading by 38% with Obama trailing a close second at 36%, Edwards is third with some 17% of the votes ....

Stay tuned for more ....

UPDATE 10:52pm
McCain is declared the clear Republican winner of the NH primary. It does give all senior citizens some hope.
As of 10:52 ET, Reuters has declared Clinton the NH Democratic primary winner, The New York Times is still too cautious to make the call. Look like the teary speech helped. Okay, it's "official", The New York Times headlines "Clinton beats Obama in a Comeback." Hey, when did she go away? Clinton, speaks from your heart.

The Week In Review

Dow crash landed the first week of the New Year with a thud; shredded some 256 points on Friday and ended the week at 12,800.18. That's pretty messed up.

PC Hardware That Works in Ubuntu 7.10

If you were like me who basically takes a cookbook approach to Ubuntu, then this may help you somewhat. I have this old beige box which is the opposite of sexy that lies around in the basement. And I decided to give it a second life. I did some research on some ubuntu forums but they are mostly for whiners and moaners like myself. I was more into looking at what works but instead they are posts for what doesn't work. Like my sound card has no sound or my wifi doesn't work. I did my homework and with some blind faith I just ordered what I think would work.

Here I can tell you what actually works, or at least what works somewhat. I got my goodies from newegg. Notice that they aren't the latest and greatest. These are parts for the budget minded. My motherboard (the almost 5~6 year old K7S5A, which you can still find at eBay) is an old one that won't even accept the newish parts even I want to. If you are looking for a souped up machine, look elsewhere.

Video card:
EVGA 128-A8-N319-LX GeForce FX 5500 128MB 64-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video card.
Ubuntu has something called restricted driver and it works. I don't play games so this card works for me. Plus I am still using my very humble 17" Dell CRT monitor.
UPDATE: 4/28/08
I got myself a whopping 22" hp w2207 monitor with 1680x1050 resoluton. Sadly I can only cajole it to a resolution of 1600x1000, so I got short changed of 400 pixels. This has happened in both 7.10 and now 8.04. I did some research I suspect it's the DVI connection that limits the resolution. I read that if connected through the vga, I might be able to get it. Even I read about it many months ago, I never bothered to try it. Maybe I should. The thread mentioned this was referring to the fx 5200 card, I guess it's close enough.

RAM
pqi POWER Series 1GB (2 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR266 (PC 2100) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model MD641GUOE-X2
The ram works and is recognized by the system. Not much to write about.

to be continued....
DVD
LITE-ON Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 8X DVD-R DL 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM IDE Burner with LightScribe Technology.
I just used it to play my DVD and audio CD so I don't know if its other features work or not. I guess they will, somewhat.

Sound Card
Creative Sound Blaster SB0570 Audigy SE 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card.
I guess this is the piece that sort of gives me the most trouble. I have a pair of speakers from my 7~8 years PC. They work. The sound capture doesn't seem to work. I did some digging online and it seems to be a GNOME problem as opposed to the sound card problem. In the end I was able to make it work from the command line environment. But the Gnome still bitches if I dare to sound capture. I don't see myself using the mic often but I just feel like to make it work. The command I used is from the alsa project.

% arecord -vv -fdat foo.wav

Ctrl-c to stop the recording from the terminal.

And % aplay foo.wav

does play back the sound.

D3 Review

Bjorn gave everyone a New Year present, the D3 review. It's up here.