Dinner

Baked macaroni and cheese and spareribs and vegetables - all prepared by Jin Lu.

For the Rest of Us

If you don't have a 1-7 million to live fashionably next to Sean Jean's....now I am depressed.

Here's next door

Here at 475, the fashionably Sean John is hawking his perfume, you know every successful designer got to have his own line of perfume. Sean Jean is a marathon runner, I have no doubt he can do his 3-some all right.

Live Fashionably

If you are willing to spend 1 to 7 million, then you can live fashionably. With beautiful chicks like the one photographed here as your neighbors.

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Slowpoke.

Spare Ribs

Ribs prepared by Jin. Recipe is from Mark Bittman for the New York Times, here is the extract
quote
Winter Ribs
Time: At least 2 1/2 hours

1/2 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon paprika
About 4 pounds spareribs.

1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Mix seasonings together and rub ribs all over with this mixture. Put them in a roasting pan in one layer. Bake, pouring off accumulated fat every 30 minutes or so, for 2 hours or longer, or until ribs are cooked through and very tender. (If you are in a hurry, cover roasting pan with aluminum foil, which will shorten the cooking time by about a third.)
2. When you are ready to eat, roast ribs at 500 degrees for about 10 minutes (or grill them or run them under a broiler), until nicely browned; watch carefully for burning.
Yield: 4 or more servings.

unquote

Learn English

English is not something I am good at, in fact, I would admit I am not good at English or Chinese.
But I take pleasure in doing things I am not good at, like photography, snowboarding and even cooking much to the annoyance of others, perhaps.
Here is a piece I find it pretty interesting, it has the quality of great comedy: it's funny and it's sad at the same time. Without much ado, here is the piece.

Floating Ads

I am a reader of the mingpaonews.com.
I don't remember when they started using the all annoying floating ads on their pages.
Webmasters/Advertisers who have the gall to do floating ads just reflect how poor their web tech choices are. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should. Am I going to click on the ad just because it is scrolling along with me, hell no. It just annoys the hell out of me.
I believe in ads in general, somebody gullible has to click the ads to pay for the contents, right?
But floating ads? Pleasssssssssse. Take a page from Google, use text.

Scito Te Ipsum

After reading this, I still don't know what kind of a "photographer" I am. I kind of know my photos usually suck, that much I am sure. I don't live near any mountain or any water, so I don't take landscape shots. I take snapshots most of the time.
I got to buy more gears, more tools to enhance my photograhpy. I need to get a Canon 1DsMkII or whatever the latest pro full frame DSLR, or the Nikon D2X, with their whole lines of professional lenses, no consumer lenses, absolutely no. I deserve only the best.

Brokeback related

Se7en recut

Before Brokeback Marriage is called brokeback marriage, there is Jim McGreevey.

Flushing Brothel shutdown

Flushing made the frontpage of yesterday's New York Times, albeit under the fold. A brothel run by a couple of Koreans at 57-24 164th Street was shutdown by authority. What's interesting is "there were two prices in place, for some unexplained reason: $150 for Chinese patrons, and $200 for Koreans." So it's true, there is discount for Chinese...for sex. [picture copyright of the New York Times, of course]

update:
This probably inspired a story by Chinese American novel writer Ha Jin.

Toothing is a Hoax

Sid, you have a G3 bluetooth handset and yet you don't tooth, that's OKAY. Because toothing is such a hoax. Nobody does it anyway. So don't feel left out. On the other hand, if you are a sucker for mainstream media and believe in this hoax and actually made it a self-fulfilling hoax, I am mighty proud of you. Alas, that didn't happen, did it?

2nd Floor

3/8/2006

Origami = Ultra-Mobile PC

If you think the suspense is killing you, hey, the wait is over.
OKAY, if you are loaded, or thought you are loaded, or you are some executive with some deep pocket expense account, here is what MS wants you to buy. The so called ultra-mobile PC.

Face time

I don't like pictures of myself, they totally shatter whatever disillusions I have about myself.
If this picture induces nightmare, sorry, blame that on william2006. OKAY William, at your request here is my picture. Hope you are happy. This is a face only a mother can love.

Google guessed Crash is Trash

Apparently that's what Google thought about the Oscars winning motion picture, Crash. I, being very so not original read it somewhere else but was still able to duplicate the search result today. Google, you have spoken for millions.

Censorship is hot

I think censorship is really hot these days. Information needs to be free, how long can you actually censor some news or block some sites. Somehow, some people always find a way.

New York City Weather 46F

Grand Central.

Blogging on blogs

I am not sure if the New York Times is that original. I came across a Times article that seems deja vu to me yesterday about Chinese bloggers. And today I came across an article here.
I guess Chinese bloggers are really hot now, or actually blogs that blog about Chinese media in general.
I believe there is yet another article on the NYT today regarding China's online market.
I for one admits that I am totally not original. I usually blog about other people's blog or just BS abour things in general.

The Lovely Natalie Portman

The always lovely Natalie Portman as in Saturday Night Live.


Watch it before it's gone.
Update: 3/6/06 4PM or earlier. Youtube pulled the video.

The rightful copyright owner finally got their acts together and put it on nbc's website. Just don't expect the thing actually works like from Youtube. You would have thought NBC would have done a better job hosting a video, no. The link just says LOADING...gosh what happens to these gazillion companies? Can't they have enough bandwidth? Oh, it works with IE, but not Firefox, so that begS the question WTF?

Let's pray MTA and TWU work out a contract soon

Here is a piece on New York City transit workers, how they fare in comparison to the riders they serve.
Also, in the same article, it mentions that young lawyers who are getting starting from $125,000 to $145,000. If you can't be a transit worker, a young lawyer in a white shoed law firm isn't such a bad idea, provided you are willing to work 15-24 hours a day and don't sleep at work.

Make sure you have a nice pair of running shoes some where under your desk, you may need them for yet another transit strike.

Oscars

Zhang Ziyi just presented the best film editing award to Hughes Winborne for Crash. I didn't see all of her films, the ones that I saw, Rush Hour included, she did deliver some solid performance. I would say anything she got, she earned.
Philip Seymour Hoffman won Best Actor in his title role for Capote.
Reese Witherspoon, Best Actress for Walk the Line.
Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, won Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material previously produced or published for Brokeback Mountain.
Now the Best Director ... goes to Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain. The always humble and gracious Ang Lee, in closing, thanks everyone in Taiwan, Hong Hong, and China in Mandarin.
Best Motion Picture goes to ... Crash.
Brokeback got all the buzz but loses to Crash, it isn't totally unexpected but it is quite a surprise. In 2001, Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon won best foreign language film while Gladiator won Best Picture. If the pictures wins, the director loses, can't have it both ways.

Some Random links

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/weblog.htm This is probably one of the best blogs I come across, not counting this one of course. This is in essense like a good a RSS feeds for all the Chinese news that matter, except for the entertainment news I care. I can't read Apple Daily's online edition as the site demands pay subscribtion, so we give up on each other.

A spoof on the movie Wu Ji by Chen Kaige. The clip is in Mandarin and I didn't see the original movie. This is probably 2 months old news but it's news to me, I think it's worth the link. The clip is pretty long, and the download speed isn't all that great, but I guess you will be rewarded. The original Wu Ji was almost universally panned by the critics and the general audience alike. Chen was greatly embarrassed and now with this spoof, he was incensed and he threatened to sue or had sued Hu Ge, the maker of the spoof. I didn't follow up on the latest.

China has changed so much, I am just constantly and sometimes presently surprised by all these.

Origami

Microsoft's video promoting its latest soon to be released handheld invention.
"The viral marketing" plug on google and youtube is not rocket science, but then not every agency is catching up.

Hunter Mountain

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Yeti

Yeti walking away from the photographer.

Alex

Alex the snowman

Harry inside the garbage can

Harry having fun hiding inside the garbage can.

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Harry got The Thing ....

The Thing

The Thing ....

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Harry sitting on the bench.

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First Major Snow Storm 2006

Snow just keep pouring down.

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.

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)

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.

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.

Kissena Park

Tree

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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.

A Day in the Park

Harry got his haircut on Friday. I wasn't the barber this time.

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 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.

The State of the union is ... Strong

Breaking: The state of the union is strong.
Let's see what the street reacts tomorrow. I guess the market will go down further.

Google tumbled in after hour trading

Google closed at 432.6601 and then tumbled down to $381.10 in after hours. Look like the beginning of the end of irrational exurberance of all things Google.
Let's see what's going to happen tomorrow. My guess it's going to go down more, perhaps like $20 more.
All right, let's see what our President has to say...there we just have it
The state of the union is strong ....With war in Iraq going on, even though we sort of declared victory, and Google lost $15 billion in a few hours, I am not so sure about the strong. I long the days of Clinton.

Portrait

DSC_4191_hsv_compose
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Shot using my old Nikkor 50mm f1.4, mounted on my D70, manual exposure and focusing. Post processing: UFraw using D70 input curve opened in GIMP, decompose hsv, USM 3, .03, 0 and compose back.

The New York Times Don't Care About Chinese New Year/People

Yesterday was Chinese New Year.
I don't expect the Times to have an article on the front page, but I do expect a picture, maybe the size of a postage stamp about the New Year, on the Metro Section. But guess what? Nothing. I am going to cancel my freaking home delivery, now that they are raising the price and don't give a $hit about Chinese people. The 7-day home delivery price is $9.65 effective February 6.
The Chinese New Year parade is as far as I know only limited in downtown Chinatown around Mott Street, a few blocks here and there and in some other Chinese enclaves in Queens and Brooklyn. Perhaps the Chinese should take up a whole freaking section of the 5th Avenue just so we get some attention and press coverage. Perhaps not.
Updates: I searched the nytimes.com online edition, no coverage either.
To read about the Chinese New Year, you have to read the free newspaper like amNewYork or the New York Post or the New York Daily News. Good things I was actually there to enjoy the festival, because you just can't read it on the Times.
I used to not care about the Chinese New Year. But now I am converted. Perhaps I have gotten older and have two children. I plan to go to Chinatown on every Chinese New Year as long as I am in the city.

Chinese New Year

DSC_4318
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Harry is having a blast.

Chinese New Year

DSC_4322
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Chinese New Year in Chinatown

DSC_4303
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

The three of us

harry-dad-alex-usm
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Chinese New Year

DSC_4316
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Firecracker fun.

Chinese New Year in Chinatown

DSC_4300
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

The three of us

DSC_4331
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

After the parade, on our way to Broadway and Broome Stree.

Chinese New Year in Chinatown

DSC_4326
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Some Chinatown action.

Chinese New Year

DSC_4294
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Got to take some pictures first before starting to eat.

Coffee maker and other kitchen goodies

DSC_4298-svga
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

I have yet to find a good French press of some other good coffee maker. So we bought one of these from Pearl River on Broadway. They have some good Chinese stuff there.

Chinese New Year Dinner

DSC_4291_nef
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Alex is having Ginger Ale.

Chinese New Year Eve Dinner

DSC_4293
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

I pretended to be the master chef of the night.

Chinese New Year

DSC_4310
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

We have a good time enjoying the New Year festivities.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Hey, it's Chinese New Year

It's the Year of the Dog.
Gung Hey Fat Choi to all.

Wall Street dishing out 21.5 Billion on Bonus

Don't you want to be part of it? You know you are in the wrong profession, don't you? You know you are in the wrong industry when all you got is "verbal bonus" like thank you you have been doing a good job, or worse, hey you are just doing what you are supposed to do. What bonus? You out of your freaking mind? You are lucky just to have the job.

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D70, 50mm AIS. Home grown basil in the back. Harry discovered the hand in the pocket cool look. Shot in NEF and converted to JPEG using GIMP and UFraw pluggin. Not that I know what I am doing. The image isn't all that sharp as I probably focused wrong and have a relatively slow shutter speed. It's not that easy to do manuel focusing looking through the D70 viewfinder.

From Chinatown to Hong Kong

I know they have this New York - Boston bus, but I have never heard of a van running from Hong Kong to New York.
The sign reads Hong Kong. A van running from Chinatown all the way to Hong Kong. Hey this could be my next ride to Hong Kong. Maybe this van would fly, just like this one here. Cool $hit in Chinatown, every day.

Canal Street, Chinatown

This is probably the biggest Chinatown in North America. The most authentic, dare I to say. The neighborhood has a lot of characters. Once in a while I like to check the place out.

Rooftop Spectacle in Downtown Flushing

A coconut tree and a big bowl of noodle.

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Tree at night

Night shot at the backyard. f5.6 and exposed for 30 seconds.

Horie-mon got arrested.

Takafumi Horie, otherwise affectionately known as Horiemon, a reference to a cartoon cat Doraemom many Japanese and Asian children grew up and fell in love with, was arrested by Japanese investigators on securities fraud charges on Monday evening. This was kind of expected so the market didn't react by panic selling. His arrest was seen by some as "the revenge of the establishment."

Untilted

Plant, night shot

Nikkor 5omm f1.4 AIS, f8, 6 seconds manuel exposure. Some rescale and USM using GIMP.

Panoramic

A panoramic view of the living room. The stitching wasn't done quite right, and of course that's my fault. But you got the idea of how things lay out. It's done with my Canon G3. Broken tripod courtesy of Fung Chan.

Thanks to Ming Ming and Wheelrover

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my emails. I really appreciate that. I hope all is well with you guys in Taipei.
As to pictures of New York, I haven't really gotten around doing it, anyway, I know most people prefer looking at crappy pictures to reading crappy blogs.
I hope I can post a little bit more pictures in the very near future.
This blog is all mine, so I will take all the credits and all the blames for all the errors and shitty grammars you find here.
Oh, yes, thank you all.