Link

The Web is about links, without links there won't be any Web as we know it. I believe in links though I don't have a lot of them as I am not all that promiscuous. Also link is the way to go if you can't write anything better.

Here is a link that I find pretty interesting, though not interesting like I can read it in one go. If you are interested in translation, and you know who you are, this one is really for you in case you've missed it.

This is a translation of Leung Man To's essay by Snowdrops at http://crisapples.blogspot.com. If I didn't know it's a translation, I would have thought that it's originally written in English. I hope the fact that the post got linked here, a conglomeration of nonsense, doesn't reflect poorly on her part.

gtkpod and xmms

It's always one thing leads to another, and before you know it you almost forget why you are doing this in the first place.

I was trying to get my first generation 512MB gum stick iPod shuffle to load and play songs.

I got the gtkpod to work in Ubuntu 7.10 okay so this isn't exactly new to me. However, you know there is always a catch or something is wrong, otherwise life in the Linux world would be boring. Though Ubuntu claims to just work, I just don't believe it.

I got the song loading okay but when I try to right click the song to play it just says xmms command not found. So that begins my quest to find out what the heck that xmms is. For the die hard, it's the only audio player that should be on the machine. Anyway. I found some good sources and was able to follow the blow by blow installation instruction, i.e. getting the source and compiling the program, which I don't get to do too often. Of course, my newly minted Ubuntu 8.04 doesn't have the C library or the GTK+ to compile, so again it took me quite some time to figure out what ingredients I actually need and from where to get them.

Here is an excellent write up, this is especially helpful for a Linux newbie like myself. Here is another one that is like what should have been there but not there in 8.04 kind of write-up.

Story Time

Bullfighting by Roddy Doyle on April 28, 2008 The New Yorker.

iMac Ups Spec

Apple just refreshes its popular all-in-one iMac line on Monday, a day ahead of what others have speculated to be a Tuesday announcement.

The souped up iMac can be configured to max out with a 3.02GB Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 6MB L2 cache and 1066Mhz front side bus, 4GB of RAM, 1TB of SATA HD, and a Nvidia card with 512MB of memory.

Meanwhile, Apple's stock price has been slowly digging itself out of the cold dark ditch, trading now around $170.

Macrumors sums it up nicely.

Queens Botanical Garden

Japanese cherry blossoms have done wonder to the parks.

This image is captured using my standard tools. It's monkeyed with using GIMP and UFRaw plug-in. Gimp comes with Ubuntu 8.04 but not UFRaw, I downloaded UFRaw via Add/Remove Program, but Gimp can't invoke that so something wasn't right. OKAY, I should have downloaded gimp-ufraw plugin not just the stand-alone version, so UFRaw can be invoked from gimp. All is well except I still couldn't find the nvidia driver to work with my display. This is loaded via Firefox 3.0b5. I didn't think they could improve on the browser but apparently they could and did.

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

I got my Vista to download the iso ... don't you think Vista is good for nothing. md5 to check sum and burned the image onto a CD-R. All by following Ubuntu's instructions which are usually are OKAY if you can find them. I find their site generally pretty hard to navigate.

My rig is a dinosaur machine with two harddrives with Ubuntu 7.10 running pretty well from the smaller 40GB drive. My whopping 160GB drive was pretty much unmolested. (The other earlier post using Update to update from 7.10 to 8.04 was for another machine all together. This is done via a CD-R burned LiveCD installation)

wifi using Realtek 8180, resolved.

So I decided to install Ubuntu 8.04 onto my whopping 160GB drive and see what happens. The installation takes about 15 minutes and it all went well except I still can't get my wifi works out of the box. My cheapo wifi PCI card uses realtek 8180 chipset and never worked out of the box. I was hoping the ndiswrapper (Windows wireless driver program) would be automagically installed in 8.04 to make life less painful. Alas, life is not a bed of roses when it comes to Linux. And how the hell am I going to get the 7.10 ndiswrapper back....I really forgot how I found this one out even though it was only yesterday. It's via Synaptic manager of course. I just need to put the LiveCD into the drive and let it be a source and then search for the string "ndis". Then installed the packages from the CD. I mounted my 40GB drive and find the INF file I downloaded from way back when I did Ubuntu 7.10 and copy it to my drive (what was I thinking? I could have just installed the INF from there why did the copy and paste). I then run the Windows wireless driver program from the System Administration menu and it's almost painless. I got my network connection back. Once I got the Internet under my thumb, I rule.

GRUB error 18, resolved.

Well things went kind of downhill and straight to hell when I tried to get the ATI graphics driver to work somewhat better like in 7.10. For some peculiar reason, after a couple of add and remove, my system or actually GRUB can't even boot to 8.04 nor 7.10 any more. That's major.

The error was like GRUB error 18 and the system just stopped cold.

Again I somewhat forgot how to fix it ... even it's only yesterday.
OKAY I will try to recall ...

I even tried to re-install the system again. But to no avail, thank goodness it took about 15 minutes....

Okay, more Googling....

Boot up from the LiveCd again,
get to the terminal
type some crap like
>sudo grub
grub>root (hd0,0)
grub>setup (hd0,0)
grub>quit

then reboot system
and magically, now grub gives me back my 7.10 boot menu.

But I am not happy with 7.10. I was but once you got it, you wanted to be at 8.04...
So more trial and error and more Google.

I tried to change hd0 to hd1 but again no good. I tried to re-install the system again, no good.

OKAY, re-installed again, but this time after some Google and some insights or sixth sense actually, when in partitioning, I clicked on the advance button, and changed the default hd0 to hda from the drop down and went through the rest of the 15 minutes installation process. Reboot, now I am in business, the GRUB menu now gives me the option of picking 8.04. I have yet to fully understand the mistake I've made and how I actually got it corrected. My primary drive is the hda where the boot takes place. My second drive is where 8.04 is. So far after 24 hours, a half dozen reboots, GRUB is still working properly so I guess I must have fixed the problem.

Now I have to go on solve the display problem...the thread I got for it didn't quite help.

UPDATE 4/27/2007

Display, nvidia-glx-new, resolved.

At least I got my display back to 7.10 performance.
The nvida-glx-new package was I guess never installed. Under System, Administration, Hardware drivers, the nvidia-new was marked enabled, but not used. It's really the pinnacle of message, what the hell is it trying to tell you? I have no idea. I googled a bit, and some easy but doesn't make sense solution was like unmark to disable. Reboot. Then mark enable. I tried a few times wouldn't do anything. And I even monkeyed with Synaptic manager to change the Repository to Other and let the manager find the fastest servers for download. But no go. BUT, the strangest thing happened. After I actually shut it down, and boot up, and marked it enable, actually the system went to download the package nvidia-glx-new this time and got the sucker installed. And now with a system reboot, I got my 1600x1000 back at least where it was. I could never get my 1680x1050 back and I read maybe I have to use the non-dvi plug for the HP w2207. So I am always 400 pixels short.
UPDATE: 4/28/08
Finally I unplugged the dvi cable and used the vga cable instead. And guess what, I got my 1680x1050 pixel back but the refresh rate is either 50 or 51hz, that's a bit mind boggling, why the 1 hz difference? The ideal 60hz is unattainable as of now. The DVI is supposed to give better graphics but I can't tell the difference. So I will stick with the VGA cable.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: 4/30/2008
Via Add/Remove, I got the Nvidia server and the System Info. And System Info I can configure using the Nvidia Server to make the display on spec, that is 1680x1050 @60hz. But I have the impression that it might not be very stable. Why, because I was doing that in Ubuntu 7.10 and for some inexplicable reason, or things I don't know enough I call inexplicable, when I changed it to 1680x1050@60hz, between users, the screen blackout. I haven't do a few reboots in 8.04 so I don't know if the setting will stay and reliable, but it's doable.
YET STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: 5/5/2008
Seems like the 1680x1050 @60hz is sticking just fine in Hardy Heron. Well, I haven't tested it when I switch between users as I don't have any other users setup there.
YET YET STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: 8/2/08
the 1680x1050 @60mhz is doable but you have to use the VGA plug. The DVI plug wouldn't work. That's my experience with my LCD monitor. That's not a new piece of information, just to recap.
YET YET STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: 3/11/09
The video card is GeForce FX 5500 with 128MB, the DVI just max out at 1600x1000


First impressions
The fonts look better from Firefox 3 in Hardy Heron, actually much better, much better.
Even got yahoo! blog display correctly.
You still need to download Gstreamer extra plugins to simply play mp3.

The Forbidden Kingdom

It got a user rating of 7.6/10 at imdb.com. So it has a real appreciative audience out there. As for me, I am most likely not their demographic audience. I think the movie looks like some low budget B movie with second rate action, third rate acting and fourth rate production. (I know the action was supposed to be choreographed by Yuen Woo Ping, and filmed by Peter Pau. Oh well, not their best works) OK, maybe Jackie Chan and Jet Li are sort of A-list foreign actors in Hollywood. The only reason I went to see the movie was because I wanted to have some father and son experience with the kids.

Alex kind of likes it. Since Alex kind of likes it, Harry says the same thing. But I know both were a bit scared throughout the movie and I didn't hear them laugh once maybe except when Jet Li was doing the unthinkable to Jackie Chan in the dessert. They think Transformers is better, that I agree. The C-word for Chinese were uttered more than once in the beginning of the movie. For a movie of this nature, I don't think it's all necessary.

First show, $8 each. Big popcorn and big soda, $10.75.

One more thing, I find it quite disconcerting to see the male villain has such heavy application of bluish black eye shadows.

UPDATE 4/30/2008:
I talked to another guy who happened to have seen this movie and he too heard the word "chink" a couple of times. I really feel the movie has no right to use that word. Jackie Chan and Jet Li should really know better. Why use an offensive, derogatory ethnic slur for a PG-13 movie, knowing full well that kids are going to see the movie. I can understand if it's a R-rated movie, in the proper context that would be acceptable. As it is I found its use totally unnecessary, stupid and offensive, more so coming from a mainly Chinese cast and crew.

Cycling In The Playground

Look Mom, no training wheels.
Training technique adopted from a friend of mine, Raul.
Kid's legs should be able to duck walk comfortably with butt firmly planted on the seat.
With butt on seat, upper body leans forward, duck walks to push bike forward, once got some momentum, pedal. Every now and then give a slight push from behind on the seat. For the most part, I just stayed away. It took less than two hours to get him pedal by himself.

Back in 2005 when Alex was learning to Ride.

Summer Movies

What's better than watching some mind blowing and mind numbing summer movies? Watching them free with your kids and eating lots of popcorns and drinking super sized sodas or slurpees till you burp, much to the annoyance of other people around you, just kidding ... or not. Watching them free is pretty much a pipe dream so scratch that, but the rest holds true.

Here is a list from the Coming soon of IMDB:

• Made of Honor, if you can watch him on TV, why bother paying $11 to watch him doing almost the same thing on big screen. More importantly, not my summer kind of movie;
• Iron Man. Oh Yes, flying robot and lots of explosions. Though Robert Downey Jr. isn't exactly the super hero type. Well I heard he's a good actor and Oscar worthy;
• Son of Rambow, some arty stuff I guess;
• Speed Racer, the whatever brothers' follow-up since the Matrix trilogy. Plenty of cutting-edge FX margins on looking absolutely comics. Perhaps that's the idea, playing tribute to the genre;
• The Incredible Hulk. This time around with Edward Norton. I don't think the last time was that bad.
• The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Kids probably love it.
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Senior citizen AARP eligible Harrison Ford is reprising his role as Dr. Jones. And what's his name from Transformers is his son. I remember how I was so blown away by the first one the first time I saw it. I was a teenager, didn't know better or it was actually that good. I guess kids would love it.
• The Forbidden Kingdom. This is not coming soon, it's been showing since last week and was number one in the box office. It got 8/10 from imdb's users reviews, I think most of the reviewers must be 16 years old or something. I think I will see it too. My kids would love to see it. This is like Ha Jin's immigrant novels, the Chinese characters actually talk in English, you really have to suspend your belief to a whole new level. We will probably check it out tomorrow.
• Hancock. This one seems to be major, starring Will Smith as some super human. Just saw a promotional clip on TV. Seems interesting. The last one what's the name "I am Legend" was a letdown and I was being generous already. Though it wasn't really Smith's fault. Smith is probably the only action hero left that can carries a movie, like a solid opening.
  

So there you have it.

Ubuntu 8.04 Is Here

Perhaps it's time to crank up my hardware just a notch so I can have a better experience with the OS and the applications.

I am doing the upgrade now ...

For packages:
65 are to be removed.
193 to be installed.
903 to be upgraded.

[I began this upgrade at 9.30AM]

And together 702M to be downloaded. It goes on to estimate that it will take 2 hours and 2 minutes. Wow, how does it get to the 2 minutes part?

But of course, that was an overly optimistic estimate, with the traffic and unpredictable nature of the Internet, now it says it's going to take more than a day to download the packages. The download speed varies quite somewhat, from 70kb/s to 200kb/s. So there you have it.

This one is code named Hardy Heron, and it's LTS, WTF is LTS? Well, it's long term support, meaning for server it's 5 years free upgrade and desktop 3 years from Canonical. Wow, that kind of make it a must have upgrade, isn't it?

[2.20PM]
It took about 3 hours to download the packages. Now it's installing the upgrades.

[3:48PM]
The system is done and needs a reboot.

So the entire upgrade didn't take 2 hours 2 minutes or did it take a day. It took 6.5 hours in all. The whole process went so smooth that it seems rather unreal. Most notable change is the default desktop picture. Other than that Firefox is now version 3 Beta 5. Oh, I am so shallow in Ubuntu. I think I will upgrade my other monster Ubuntu rig when I have more time or maybe when their server is faster, I don't know. Maybe 6.5 hours isn't bad I really don't know.

hp Compaq 6910p

The notebook is chugging along pretty nicely.  The pointing blue nipple thing fell off already even though I am not known as a rough nipple player ... but I can always put it back, though it isn't like secured anymore.  On the other hand, my century old Thinkpad's red nipple is still firmly, snugly and securely erected in between keys like the first day I got it.  Note, hp calls it a "pointing stick," how inappropriate to refer a thingy this length a stick?

Of Garage Door And Banal Suburban Life

My garage door broke a few months ago and I always thought I will be able to fix it.  Only the lowest panel was broken and it seems easy enough ....  When the weather gets warmer I will get to it.  I know I was not the handy man type so I was in denial, I was just delaying the inevitable:  to hire someone to fix it, or better yet, not to fix it at all.  Jin and I had gone to Home Depot to check out the doors and the experience wasn't entirely positive, I noticed they use the same HP monitor I do, so we had something in common.  But that was the only connection we had.  And it just reinforced my denial that I was going to fix it myself.  Some day.

Anyway, one day I got myself into the garage and the door just dropped.  And it stuck and I couldn't pull it up so I was locked inside.  In the end I was able to climb out from the broken panel.  So Jin and I headed to Sears the following weekend.  Except the fact that they didn't carry the actual door in store, surprisingly the Sears experience was pretty positive.  I got the ball rolling by requesting call back online and I got a call back and was given a quote right away.  Then a Sears contractor came to take the actual measurement and reconfirm the quote.  It went like $60 higher as the door needs to cut down from the standard 8 x 7 and blah blah blah.   Through out the transaction I got emails confirmation of the quote so I felt comfortable.  The door came much faster than promised, and two guys came to install it in the morning, arrived even earlier than promised, and got the door installed in about an hour.  Was it an absolutely perfect installation?  Not quite, but given the experience I had with prior contractors, I was quite happy with this rather painless experience and was pleasantly surprised by how quick the whole thing was done from beginning to end.

I paid about $750, about half goes to labor and the door is just the very basic model, no insulation no nothing.  I am glad it's over.

Apple Thinks Different Again

Apple thinks different again. Apple is buying P.A. Semi, a fabless semiconductor company (as if you will know what fabless is? at least 5,679,902 clicks through this link, and the website is overwhelmed by my post and temporarily out of service, how lame) for $278 million according to Forbes. Apple would not comment on the purchase, but most analysts think the purchase is an effort to differentiate Apple products in the increasingly crowded mobile computing space. P.A. Semi is known for its power efficient chips based on the IBM's Power architecture which Apple abandoned in favor of Intel, just like the rest of the industry, for its line of desktop and notebooks just a few years ago. Chances are P.A. Semi might have some very efficient chip in the offing and that would further differentiate and cement Apple as the leader in the cellular market and other mobile devices, notably the rumored re-issue of the Newton tablet.

Apple is to release Q2 results at 5 P.M. Eastern time after market close.

Clinton Won Pennsylvania

The tenacious, unwavering Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary. Essentially Obama asked those small town bitter voters not to vote for him. According to most political pundits the win in Pennsylvania does give Clinton reason to go on but it doesn't drastically change the political outlook of the Democratic primary, i.e. Obama still has a better chance getting nominated.

Things to Look Forward To This Summer

Other than the usual childish summer blockbuster movies that I love to loathe, this summer is shaping up to be a good season for Nikon users. Rumor is going rampant that Nikon is releasing its 24MP D3x in June together with a consumer grade D90, a successor to the D80. Rockwell, not known as a rumor monger, even has a picture of the alleged D3x on his website. It's really an exciting time for Nikon and its user base, that's myself included, though I couldn't imagine myself actually using a D3x to shoot family snapshots. But if I have the money, I don't see why not.

Another major event is going to be the Summer Olympics that is going to be held in China. I childishly believe in the Olympics ideal, that is people compete on a level playing field and let sports transcend religion, politics and race.


From Gizmodo.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

More boring pictures ...

Happy Family I

Happy Family II. Where is Mr. Harry?

Happy Family III

Japanese Flowering Cherry. Continuous shooting, manual macro focusing, exposure. Nikkor 35~105 at f5.6.

Mr. Harry

Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Unlike the one in Queens, this one is bigger and badder: no free admission and no picnic. Admission for adults are $8 per person and children are admitted for free. Japanese Cherry Festival or however it's called is on May 3, and 4, we will probably come again.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The chili and chicken vegetable soup from the cafe are pretty good.

Philoxenia

Last night, Jin and I sticked to our Queens root and didn't bother to be one of the bridge and tunnel crowd in the City.  But still we needed to get on the highway to reach Philoxenia but definitely a better driving experience than it would have been should we choose to drive all the way to anywhere in the City on a Friday night.

Philoxenia is really what it says it is, "Greek hospitality at its finest" and some more.  The wait staff is all round very courteous which seems surprisingly a dying art in the restaurant business nowadays.  We ordered a bottle of fancy water Aqua Panna ($5.5) which is non carbonated and non Greek, but hey it's Mediterranean, so it's close enough.  We ordered a few sharing small dishes: Greek Salad (it actually comes in a big bowl, $6?), Grilled Octopus (one long tentacle chargrilled, $11.50), Bekri Mezi  (or cubed veal and pork in tomato sauce and feta, $13.5), Mussels in Ouzo (I made up the name, isn't it good or what?   Anyway, it's mussels in some light tomato sauce and feta) and for dessert we tried the Greek yogurt with grape toppings ($5.5).  Total for the night, tips included, around $73.

Overall both the food and service are very good.  The clientele is on the older side, you have guys in their 50s dressing like lawyers and doctors with their spouses on a causal Friday night.  And most customers bring their own bottles.  The neighborhood is not bad but not much to look around before and after dinner.

Philoxenia's website (it got silly background music, you may want to mute your speakers if you are at work, and or if you are (un)lucky not to have speakers at work, you know who you are, then no need to bother).

Review from NYTIMES.

Queens Botanical Garden At Noon

All macro shots. Nikon D70, Nikkor 35~105. Manual focus and exposure. All hand-held shooting around 125s to 200s, aperture set at f5.6 or f8 or something else, give or take here and there.

Nikon D3 Review

All armchair photographers rejoice.

Actually, it's called in-depth review which was credited to Simon Joinson and Phil Askey at dpreview.com. As noted, the review was done with firmware v.1 prior to the first firmware upgrade which allegedly could corrupt image files in certain circumstances and was hence pulled from distribution. Nikon screwed up.

After reading the comparison, and seeing with my own eyes and recalling what Ken Rockwell's early review, I have to conclude that, all things being equal, based on out of the camera unmolested JPEG, Canon delivers visually cleaner and sharper images.

More Trouble in Paradise
As if the firmware upgrade blunder wasn't bad enough, Nikon suffered another embarrassment. The latest review on its once class leading, pro grade lens Nikkor AFS-VR 70~200 f2.8 was deemed to be largely poor when shot using Nikon's own FX sensor D3 camera. Digital Loyd says"Its optical performance is without a doubt the very worst I’ve yet to see on the D3 from any lens." Long time Nikon shooter Bjorn declares that "the covering power of this slim design simply is not adequate for a good performance across the entire FX frame." And I have heard Nikon is going to sell newly designed nano coated lens. Could that be a marketing ploy? The 70~200 is up for an upgrade.

UPDATE
4/25/08
Just as promised, Nikon re-released the D3 firmware update.

Weekend Fodder

This is going to jumpstart your weekend.

To my Irish blog friend Snowdrops who lives in Ireland.  You have been warned.

image pilfered from here.

Emails Found From The Gutter

In reverse chronological order.  Read from the bottom up.  Only if you are really bored.

I notice [redacted]'s got great birthing hips, too.

[redacted]

My grandfather's 1st wife died when my grandfather was relatively

young, left him 2 daughters but she was very kind enough to find a

young girl for my grandfather before she died, the girl was my

biological grandmother, who then made 6 to 8 kids for my grandfather,

one is my Dad.

I never seen my Grandfather before, not even a pic, I only know his

name and some relatives told me he's a slow motion person like my Dad

and me. Too bad I didn't inherent his gene.

My Dad has one wife and made 4 kids, I am the worst in my [redacted] family

[redacted]

--------------------

For my part, I have been making enquires. I am very receptive to the idea.

[redacted]

it's in Texas.  All men should love living there.  I don't know why they could do it for so long, men practicing polygamy and nobody really cares. They have child bride, arranged marriage, anything you can think of.  And the women are brainwashed that they believe that's what god want it.  Holy cow.  I didn't read up on this though, but I know it's in Texas.  Can you believe that, it's God's way to live a polygamy life.  God I love that kind of shit.

> 

is it the one recently fuck up in US ? I forget which state, the motherfucker with many "wives", or sex slave age 14 to 16 ? how come the Amercian girls so stupid for many years

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Or the Fundamentalist Church of Latter day Saints.

Communisum is not longer a threat to the west, [redacted] should give up his communism though and switched to Islamic

You have been spending too much time reading penthouse. You need to understand how the modern globalised economy works. Don't just look at the PICTURES. You have to look at the big picture.

-------------------------

I like her without her bikini on.

I like Guo Jiang Jiang too, in her Bikini

[redacted]

Guo jing jing is also from that town.

[redacted]

> For your reference, guys. [redacted] is pretty [redacted] from 石家庄。

> [redacted]

Jared also wrote a book called 'why is sex fun?'

This guy is very original. I like his books.

I'm and horny and I know why.

---------------------------

已 婚 男 子 與 情 婦 合 謀 迷 姦 好 朋 友 的 Ｖ 太 案 ， 陪 審 團 裁 定 男 被 告 兩 項 以 虛 假 藉 口 促 使 他 人 作 非 法 性 行 為 的 罪 名 成 立 ， 但 強 姦 罪 名 不 成 立 ， 案 件 押 後 至 明 天 判 刑 。 

 

this motherfucker is lucky, how come these silly women so stupid

[redacted]

------------------------------------------------------

They don't tell you: "[redacted], I think I'm horny."

You've got to get to know a woman better and figure that out for yourself.

In Jared Diamond's words, women don't "advertise" that they're being

horny.    The female human being is the only species among primates

[including chimps and gorillas] that do not make love in the public.

Chimps and gorilla do.    [IMHO, perhaps they don't build homes with

doors.]

There's evolutionary reasons for that and it benefits the human

society.    But that's a long story.

-------------------------------------

Don't bother about them.      By natural selection, these women will

be weeded out and become extinct pretty soon.

By the same token, natural selection will allow horny women to have

lots of offspring and their horny genes will flourish in humankind and

there's always the chance that a hornier mutant gene will pop up from

nowhere in a woman and hornier women will flourish and beget more

hornier women.

It goes on and on like this and women therefore will generally become

hornier and hornier until the horniest woman [again a mutant] came

about and she will have the most offspring and these offspring will

have a greater chance of becoming the horniest women who will again

have the most offspring.    As a result, humankind prevails over all

other species.    This is known as evolution.      It is able to

explain why women are generally horny and why they enjoy sex.

Got it.    Please read Charles Darwin's books or Jared Diamond's

books.    The book Third Chimpanzee: the Evolution and Future of the

Human Animal by Jared Diamond has a very interesting chapter analysing

[the need for] different lengths of penis between man, chimp and

gorilla, as well as their relationship with the depths of vagina of

woman, female chimp and female gorilla.

[redacted]

I wonder there's some women in this world didn't need any sex at all,

like [redacted]

[redacted]

If I Can Only Have Three Alphabets

If I can only have three alphabets, IBM is it. This company is doing everything right in a troubled market.

Bored

a 5-minute long video
At 2 minute and 18 second, this self-described so cool, albeit at time boring 17-year old utters the magic word "bored." Then again at 3:29. You decide whether it sounds exactly like "board" or not.


The shirt-optional Iggy Pop proclaims that he is bored, probably a dozen times.

In reference to comments exchange between Hong Kong Big Uncle, also aka nobody knows as Sidney Sweet and Dublin Martha.

A Day in Queens Botanical Garden

Nikon D70, Nikkor MF 35~105, Nikkor AF 17~80. The flowers macro shots were shot using the manual focusing lens, with manual exposure, set on a tripod. The people shots were done by the auto focus lens with camera set at continuous dynamic focusing.

Jeurgen Teller

Juergen Teller and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York.
Top: Cindy Sherman, left with Mr. Teller.
Bottom: Victoria Beckham as photographed by Mr. Teller for an ad campaign for Marc Jacobs. Images from nytimes.com.

Once again, Mr. Teller proves that you don't need a $10,000 rig to shoot a multi-million dollar ad campaign for the purveyors of high fashion and styles. He shoots with a Contax G2, the little camera that can. He shoots fashion and celebrities all right but to say that he is just a fashion photographer is akin to declare a fashion collection very wearable, which inadvertently and unmistakably reduces fashion to an utility, not a high praise indeed. Mr. Teller's works are more recognized as art works than mere fashion shots. His style runs much in the same vein as that of Terry Richardson, and to a lesser degree pants-optional Don Charney and a boat load of other photographers shooting for downtown fashion/lifestyles magazines like Nylon and such. The images are usually offbeat, irreverent, and not overly polished at all; in short, images much rely on the photographer's seeing and the visceral response to the subjects as opposed to elaborate lighting and Photoshop techniques. So you can easily end up with photographers who shun overly polished techniques but truly know what they are doing artistically, and those who have no techniques and also don't know what they are doing.

Source: When Is a Fashion Ad Not a Fashion Ad? by Cathy Horyn of the New York Times.

China's Latest Exports

This Is Lead Free?
“Bloodline: The Big Family No. 3.” by Zhang Xiaogang. Photo: Sotheby's. Saved from the nytimes.com

In addition to lead laden painted toys, poisonous tooth paste, substandard medicines and a myriad of other deadly daily supplies, China also exports hot contemporary arts by Chinese artists in their 40s and 50s. The above oil on canvas was sold more than 6 million to a Taiwanese-born collector in the US, almost doubling the original estimate. China is ranked 3rd in the auction world, ahead of the French and behind US and Britain. As far as hotness meter goes, Zhang is ahead of Jeff Koons but hehind Damien Hirst, a guy who specializes in dead animals in formaldehyde. What's the point of this post, really nothing, there is no point. Perhaps I am just happy to see China is able to export something high quality and high priced. Let the French do the mass produced luxury, and we will hit the world with million dollar paintings.

Source: The New York Times.

Olympics Related News

Since you've asked ... I will not attend the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, nor will I run the Olympics torch relay.

(And yes, who the fuck cares?)

Finally Some Better iPhone Reviews

Finally it takes a sassy Singaporean girl who is secured enough to give us the ultimate iPhone review on video.



Now for the readers who aren't so crazy about YouTube video but prefer cartoon, animation and white text on black background 1990's style pre-blog web page, I have good news for you. This is by far the most objective review, bar none.

Nothing Better To Post

TV doctor turned movie star turned director George So Suave Clooney's latest vanity project "Leatherheads" got trumped by "21" in the box office.

The House Behind A Weeping Cherry

"The House Behind A Weeping Cherry," written by Ha Jin, an award winning Chinese immigrant writer, and published by The New Yorker on April 7, is yet another immigrant experience story, set in Flushing, Queens, one of the outer boroughs that has nothing to do with Sex And The City, in fact it's the opposite of Sex And The City, where nothing is glamorous and nobody is self-consciously reflective. The story takes place in a whore house in Flushing and centers on a young man who ultimately falls in love with one of the three prostitutes in the house. In the end, the couple only survives the City by running away from it. It's not one of my favorites, but it does put Flushing in The New Yorker, so it is special, at least to me, a long time Flushing resident.

Queens Botanical Garden

All pictures shot using an aging Nikon D70, jpeg, aperture priority f-stop set at f5.6, ISO 200. This is like my way of shooting, painless. I don't do any post processing, unless when I am shooting on assignment for National Geographic, which has never happened and has yet to happen. Usually I find pictures come out better from Canon makes, but I find my D70 holding up pretty well, or I just have alarmingly low standard.
The garden is still under renovation, almost deserted, part of it was because of the cold weather. I hope to see some flowers soon, maybe next week or the week after next week.

hp Compaq 6910p

Is it an hp or is it a Compaq? Does it even matter? hp perhaps is really into this hard plastic kind of thing. On the upper right hand on the display, it says Compaq 6910p. But it's an hp. Can they just do a bit better on branding? Is it too much to ask?

I have an aging IBM Thinkpad r51, the display is still bright enough if I want it to. On the other hand, this hp never seems to give me the kind of brightness I want, no matter if I am running it on tethered power or battery. I want it to be so bright that I need to wear sunglasses. Alas, the screen is kind of lame. I like it to be my decision whether to have brightness or long battery life. UPDATE: I suppose I did cajole some brightness by pressing the fn-f11 key. Unfortunately, this combination also toggles Firefox's full-screen, it can get a bit confusing. The lack of visual clue while adjusting brightness and contrast doesn't help.

And this notebook is definitely not a laptop. It has a few vents right underneath on the bottom. So it's not really a good idea to put it on your lap. But I do it anyway. It's winter time and I can use some heat on my lap. I am going to use it in bed right on the comforter sort of to block all the vents, even the ones on the side, see if it will blow up.

So far Windows Vista is just what I've expected. Some minor annoyances, here and there, but nothing really major.

UPDATE:
Try hold down fn key and press f10 or actually f11, it brightens up the display.

UPDATE 5/1/2009:
It's been like this for the past few months. The battery, or could it be something else, even at 100%, but the LCD would just quickly goes black no warning or anything, maybe in 10 or 15 minutes after unplugged from power. It's just horrible. I won't recommend people buying this at all, if you get it for free then sure. Otherwise forget about it.

UPDATE 7/2/09:
The e key on the keyboard fell off, put it back, it doesn't quite respond like the rest. Very annoying.

 UPDATE 3/2010
The thing was smoking, literally.  I unplugged the machine and hoped it didn't explode.  Got somebody to change the motherboard all together.  Now it has bee running fine for a month or so.

The Cradle of Aviation Museum, Long Island

Jade Asian Restaurant

We haven't gone to this place for a long time. I can't even remember when was the last we went there. But I decided to give it a try. The place had changed hands a few times for the past few years and now it's called Jade Asian Restaurant.
Jin and I went on a Friday morning and the place wasn't crowded at all. The service was good except when we left the manager didn't even bother to say bye or thank you. As a manager, meet and greet, saying thank you and goodbye to your customers is really part of the job. I think it's just common courtesy to acknowledge patronage.
All the dim sum I tried were good. The wait staff were attentive.
Tea, 60 cents per person, all dim sums are selling $2 each, tax included, I suppose it's some sort of weekday discount, just don't expect the price stays the same during weekends or holidays. We used to go to East on Kissena and Laburnum but I don't like their practice, charging kids for tea, and putting 15% service charge even on the sales tax, so we have been staying away from East.
Tea @0.6 x 2= $1.2 + dishes @2 x 5 = $11.20 , the lowest bill I've ever got for a long time.
We will go back.

The gothamist's review.

Junior's cheesecake and pineapple carrot juice

Freshly juiced pineapple and carrot juice. Junior's cheese cake. My hard plastic 6910p comes with bluetooth and now I can tooth my nokia 6682 pictures right to my harddrive sans cable. Wireless connection is the pinnacle of human achievement.

hp notebook and sushi

My new HP (hard plastic) notebook. This little puppy runs Vista Business. So far I have experienced some minor annoyances. My good old Canon G3 doesn't have a driver for Vista. Windows sometimes doesn't wake up nicely, the screen stays off until the third time I press the power button. I want it to wake up the first time I press the power button not turning it off and back on, a total of three times hitting the power button. I notice there is sometimes left over Windows element on the screen. It didn't happen until a couple days ago, about two or three weeks into my usage. Maybe doing a power down would clear it. I don't normally turn off a notebook.

This was from a midtown sushi joint. I didn't order this, my friend from work did. It's a lunch special sushi set. The eel sushi was just unbelievably oversize, maybe that's what made it a special. I think Chiyoda is one of the better sushi joints I ever have, especially for a lunch and take-out restaurant. From the lunch menu, $9.50 for regular sushi set, and $12 for a bento box (mackerel, sashimi, california roll, salad). And I think they have the best chirashi, both in presentation and in quality.