Derby Car

Best Costume

Oh Yeah. Some people like to wear costume or costome-like outfit every day because life is just a stage? I just want to say sure Black Swan and The King's Speech are worthy contenders, but The Social Network, the hoodie, the sandals and the unforgettable bathrobe are just well chosen, contemporary and relevant. It's just more subtle more nuanced, and for the untrained eye, it could be bland but for those who can appreciate the exqusite beauty of the mundane, can separate the noble from the gaudy, The Social Network is definitely, beyond a doubt, has one of the best costumes in modern cinema.

Homepage

For people who don't know much about HTML or anything and yet want to have a homepage, I would say a blog is the easiest way to go. Wordpress, Blogger, tumblr or whatever free tools you can get is the correct approach. And that's what I suggest if you were to ask me. But of course if you have the money and want to spend a few thousand dollars to jolt the ho hum economy, that's even better. But for cheap skates, I prefer free tools.

Blundstone

They're on their last leg. I need to find another pair. Or switch to something else. It's my third pair already.

Update:  There were made in Australia.  Not anymore.

Tuesday

I hate Tuesday because it's garbage day.  I have to search the whole house, collect all the garbage and take them out.  It's a chore I don't enjoy and but grudging do.  And worst, there is something called  recycling, the glass, the plastic and the newspaper.  I have yet to learn the perfect knot to tie the newspaper.  I miss the days when everything is just garbage.

School Winter Break

When your kids are on winter break that means you are not.  Even if you don't do any pre break arrangement like finding the cheapest after school programs or dumping your kids to your friends but at least you have to do some more driving around, I know I do.  Thanks for GPS, even a direction-less driver like myself manages to drive around in the cut throat morning commute.

Men At Work

Skiing

Lunch

Blue Mountain

D7000 NEF TO JPEG

There is a 40pixel wide band to the right of the image when NEF is converted to JPEG using UFRAW.  The image above has that band removed already.

Everybody Is Outside

Spring-like Weather

iOS 4.2.1 And Ubuntu 10.10

Despite whatever people say, iOS 4.2.1 (8C148) is not working on my Ubuntu 10.10 AMD64.  It's able to mount, to see everything that is there (i.e. read only) but I simply can't sync it.  No way no how.  This is the conclusive reference for me as of now.  Based on what I read, it's because of libgpod.

Fifth and 42nd

I For One Welcome Our New Computer Overlords

Ken Jennings provides us a much needed quote for the three-day man against machine Jeopardy! when he jokingly writes "I For One Welcome our New Computer Overlords" below his answer to the final jeopardy clue. With or without our welcome, Watson has arrived. It bested the best human players ever in Jeopardy! namely Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Watson is a harbinger of what's going to come from Big Blue: truly intelligent machine that can augment or replace human intelligence.

Off-Brand Lenses

Personally I just don't do that. If my camera says Nikon, I use Nikkor. Of course there are exceptions like if it's a Carl Zeiss or when I was 17 I bought a Tamron 70-210 for my Nikon FE.

iPhone is The Internet

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images via nytimes.com

The iPhone comes to represent the Internet (or the ubiquitous device to the Internet)  in the mind of young Egyptians.  IBM is just giving up and instead gets into this game show business using Watson.

What is Toronto?????

Watson is such an abomination.  Or at least some super computer afflicted with savant syndrome?  Despite his excessive smartness which is unlike any average American, and like many Americans young or old, he is very bad at geography and can't tell Toronto is not an American city.  In an effort to make light of his own lack of common sense, he does what teenagers do best--abusing punctuations, adding extra question marks at the end of his answer or question.  His equally robotic human contestants Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter got the answer or question correct. (I know it's confusing.  In Jeopardy! one has to phase the answer as a question so the question is the answer.)  Human kind still has hope.

Flowers on Sidewalk

Man vs Machine: Jeopardy!

While Apple, Google, Facebook and twitter are grabbing eyeballs and even credited for toppling regimes, IBM is quietly building a machine that can play Jeopardy! (to win some prize money to offset the dismal sales ...) Watson made its official debut yesterday and played a game of Jeopardy! with two of the most celebrated contestants, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. According to pcmag , Watson has specifications like below:

• 90 IBM Power 750 servers enclosed in 10 racks
• 16 Terabytes of memory
• A 2,880 processor core
• Linux system
• While not officially disclosed by IBM, Watson is estimated to have cost $1-$2 billion
• Uses "DeepQA": a technology that enables computer systems to directly and precisely answer natural language questions over an open and broad range of knowledge

All of these are just (futile) attempts to match the human brain which according to IBM researchers can fit inside a shoe box and is powered by a tuna sandwich.

The result of the three-day contest is a well guarded secret. But my bet is Watson will win on the third day.

More on Watson from Big Blue.

New York Public Library

Proudly taking boring pictures since 1974.

The Internet Shall Kick Your Butt

The Internet has changed how everything is marketed and consumed, including the latest revolution in Egypt.  A legion of young technorati, armed with notebooks (notably the Apple MacBook Pro that seems permanently and surgically attached to Wael Ghonim), using Facebook and Twitter and sure their unwavering love for their country, was able to topple Mubarak's 30-year old autocratic regime in eighteen days.

Note to Zuckerberg:  Don't even think about opening an office in China.

Nokia: The Beginning of The End

Nokia partners with Microsoft to make smart phones.  The End.

Mubarak Transfers Power to VP

C'mon!  Like that would satisfy "all their demands."  I don't think that assuages any anger of the anti-government movement, at all.

All Protestors Demands Will Be Met

The American and The Expendables

Every now and then George Clooney likes to remind us movie goers, in addition to making blockbuster crappy movies like his bread and butter the Ocean movies, he is amply capable of making pretentious artsy movies that are seemingly deep but are actually just interminably drab and weary.  The American is one of those.  The only saving grace is the movie has quite a few nude scenes, a stark contrast to your regular nude-less American movies, I think that's the only good European touch The American has to offer, which nevertheless could not possibly salvage the movie from its utter slow paced bore.  Since I am a fan of anal retentiveness, so I sort of enjoy Clooney's character Mr. Butterfly's (what a pretentious name) demonstrably encyclopedic knowledge of fire arms and hands-on experience--believe it or not, his character is able to fabricate a rifle silencer out of parts from a tiny chop shop in a god forsaken little Italian town.  Is he a genius or what?

The Expendables is the polar opposite of The American.  The Expendables is either a wet dream come true or a nightmare of a movie--aging action heroes join force to fight bad guys.  Maybe I have outgrown action movies, I find the story incredibly tired and the action scenes pretty forgettable.  Mickey Rourke probably has it the easiest.  He doesn't even need to fight, all he does is mumbling and he calls that acting.

Ghonim Speaks

Ghonim says, "Definitely.  This is an Internet revolution.  I'll call it a revolution 2.0" when asked by CNN's Ivan Watson.  Dude likes Pringle of Scotland so much so that he has two of the same polo T-shirts in blue and burgundy.  And he's always seen with an Apple MacBook Pro.  Dude is rad.  But you see material goods just aren't enough.  People need democracy, the ultimate Western (or American?) export.  See how he got pissed off when he mentions Omar Soliman says Egyptians aren't ready for democracy?  Dude got emotional when talks turn to people who made the ultimate sacrifice and says he is ready to die for his cause.  Wow.

See it yourself.

New York Public Library, Again

New York Public Library

I am not a big fan of the fish net over the facade of the New York Public Library.  It's just not good for photography.  I am sure the pigeon there concurs.

Technical nobody really cares:
I applied curve to adjust the exposure.  And I found in general the D7000 jpeg files pretty easy to work with, and no post sharpening other than in camera sharpening +6 is needed.  The 105mm f/2.5 AI lens offers plenty of sharpness, that's if you can hold and shoot it steady.  With the D7000 16MP, I found any fault in focus and camera shake very revealing.  It's almost impossible to shoot close and handheld with this 105mm lens, as steady as I am, when viewed 100% the image is simply technically faulted--obviously not in focus and blurry.  With digital, you can increase the yield somewhat by either carefully shoot your subjects like with a tripod or shoot with CH, a successive burst of images with a fast enough shutter to minimize blur.

I'm taking a second look to the picture.  Notice how properly horizontal the picture is?  I was handholding the camera with a 105mm lens pointing upwards.  So I am glad.

Certain Hong Kong Lamestream Medium Sinks To New Low

Certain Hong Kong lamestream news outlet sinks to a new low, and obviously stinks to a new high. We already know nobody is reading their crap (except for their unintended entertainment value), now we know not even the person who pens it nor the editors, if any, read their own crap. Wow, this piece of turd speaks for itself.

UPDATE
No wonder not too long ago a crazy environmental group, here mental group for short, demands some student journalist to take out the garbage and clean the bathroom (OKAY, voluntary work) in exchange for granting an interview. The mental group just knows for a fact that Hong Kong journalism is by and large bullshit (see above turd for proof) and hence deserves no respect or maintain any independence from its source. According to the mental group, the source and reporter should have a beneficiary relationship--a ground breaking yet unsurprising new guideline for Hong Kong lamestream news organizations.

Korean Chinese Food

Amy Who?

Amy Who? That's essentially what Zuckerberg senior says.

Jay and Jones

Jay and Mr. Morgan Jones.

Shot using a Nikon D7000 and the venerable AF Nikkor 80-200 f/2.8. I find the AF coming from the lens and camera pretty accurate and reasonably fast. Well I wasn't shooting Formula 1. But given all the complaints I read on the forums I am just happy that mine turns out to be pretty OKAY.

Lousy Weather

Untitled

Is This The Video You Were Talking About?

Is Ho having lobster?

Chinese Lunar New Year

Wow, NYC has some healthy respect to the Asian community. I certainly took this opportunity to random park (though I really don't understand what exactly alternate side parking entails). I just took a day off.

Hong Kong Teachers Are Hot*

From mingpao.com  photograph 林振東

This is one of the rarest, happiest pictures I've ever seen about Hong Kong teachers in a long long time.

* Not the one I personally know though.

I Love My Boots

I love my boots so much so that I keep buying them.  (Blundstone 500 in case you must know)

Update:  These were Made in Australia.  Not anymore.

I Love My Jacket

I love my jacket so much so that I own two of them, one in size 42 and one in 44. I like the size 44 leather better, it's more muted less glossy than that of the size 42.  (Schott 141 in case you are wondering)

D7000 AF and Exposure Quick Thoughts

Autofocus
I think mine works well, I don't see any obvious problem.  Meaning, I have had time when I tried focusing using my manual lens and I had a hard time getting it right.  It says it's in focus but the pictures is back focus (that's when I shoot real close like this).  But I can't conclusively say it does it could be a lot of other things like movement and whatnot.  I don't shoot a lot with my AF lenses but in the event that I do, I find the AF fast and accurate.  And if you don't choose single AF point, the camera may just happen to AF on one of its 39 points you like or it may not.  In that case the the camera does focus correctly but just not on the point you want.  That's my findings and if you disagree that's just fine with me.

Over exposure (and yellow cast)
I find it true.  Of course the most photographically correct way of thinking is there isn't really over or under exposure perhaps just exposure that you like.  But that's just too photographically correct for my taste.  I find the D7000 overexposes quite often especially shooting my kids (or most scenes for my taste).  They aren't white people white but kind of fair for Asians.  Anyway, I like to dial down the exposure if I were to shoot them.  Perhaps I like my exposure more saturated and more underexposed in general.

Spreadsheet

Can people refrain from formatting the spreadsheet?  If the purpose is to annoy me then sure it has achieved great success.  But there is a price to pay.  Please construct your spreadsheet intelligently.  If you cannot construct your spreadsheet intelligently then at least refrain wasting your time in coloring your spreadsheet.  Leave the coloring to the grade school kids.

Photograph

It's just something I do.

Memo To UBS Staff

Yes, you may wear red undergarment should you desire to do so on Chinese New Year Day (or any day of the year). It's OKAY.

歡樂年年

It's irritatingly cheerful. But that's what we need right now.

How Do You Back Up Your Pictures

You simply don't.  I dread reading backup and stuff.  Somebody just forwarded me an email on How to backup your photos.  It's not something I look forward doing.  It's not sexy it's not fun and it's downright boring, just like most other things in life.  Even I did it, I never bother to keep up with it.  It's like OKAY I can do it and it's done.  And I never want to revisit that again.

At Bryant Park

Fruit Platter

All Is Well