Fashion Week New York

Live reporting from the OUTSIDE ... oh well, you do what you can.

The official site is slow and badly Flash designed, see when you paid big money to build a site, it actually could turn crappy and useless.

Wall Street Doesn't Like What Steve Says

Wall Street is not happy with "The Beat Goes On" special Apple event held today. Apple stock dropped more than 4 or 5 or 6 (make it $6.90 at closing) dollars when Jobs was hawking more iPods and slashing iPhone price. NBC Universal has just given 90 days notice not to renew its contract with iTunes and takes its business to Amazon where nobody really buying, well maybe that would change with new contents added, or maybe not. NBC Universal always thinks iTunes should price their video offerings at a higher price, but for Apple, the iTunes Store is just a means to sell more expensive iPods, so the video is selling at 1.99 a price most content providers aren't happy but grudgingly go along because of the huge iPod user base. NBC Universal has just had enough with chicken shit Apple and decided to play hardballs. Let's see if other content providers follow suit. An iTunes store with no content is no store at all. But then iPod has this huge user base. It's going to be a great fight. Well, we can always go back to pirating if things don't work out.

The new iPodtouch comes with WiFi, it plays songs, video, browse the world wide web and do your dishes, okay, maybe not the last bit. But can it do VoIP? Guess not (because that would eat into the iPhone market and pisses off its wireless carrier at&t ... well maybe not so much on the last bit, let's just turn a blind eye to let hackers unlock the iPhone.). If it does then it would be fantastic. You have an iPod that can do phone calls without the phone company getting into the way between you and your callee. I hope Google can come up with something like that. They should, I would buy into that.

... iWhoring finished.

Apple slashes iPhone price.

Sperry Top-sider

Joining Doc Martens, Top-sider is enjoying some press and come back recently. Band of Outsiders is updating this classic and selling them at where else, Barneys for $190~300 a pair, and they don't even come with the leather laces. The original is selling for $64.95 a pair at Sperry's site and they do come with laces. My pair of top siders never got to walk on a boat deck, its purpose of existence was never fulfilled.

From men's style. From Gawker.

UPDATE: One of the most searched posts here. If you were to ask me what to buy, I think any sane person would opt for the orginal top siders which are like the original and they come with laces.

US Open Updates: Henin vs. S. Williams

Henin took the first set in a tie breaker.

The 2nd set, Henin is off to a good start taking the first three games. Williams has to figure out something quick to dig herself out.

UPDATE:
Henin never let up the pressure and finished off Serena Williams in two straight sets. Henin packs a lot of power in her 5'6" frame and it showed on this match. For some reason and probably not the nicest thing to say, after her divorce, she seems more personable. Now Serena can enjoy her early exit, probably can attend the New York Fashion Week at Bryant Park tomorrow.

US Open Updates

Feliciano Lopez took the first set from number one Roger Federer. That was a real surprise. Though no one expects Lopez can knock out the number one tuxedo man in the fourth round of the US Open.

UPDATE
Lopez is on fire, trading backhand with Federer and actually won the point.... Federer is slowly turning the game around, that's what a number one player can do, figure out your opponent on the fly and crack his game. Sharapova faltered when she couldn't come up with a plan B when played against Radwanska. As an aside, while plenty of spectators were rooting for Sharapova, her father-cum-coach is her toughest critic, he walked off the stadium before the match was over in total disgust, now that's some tough parenting. I totally digressed.

UPDATE
Lopez in the end was no match to tennis great Roger Federer. Federer, after losing the first set, regained his composure and rather quickly broke Lopez down in a four-set victory

Basement Jam

If I am not mistaken, this is the first time I can see the track in all its Chinese character glory. But my mobo kind of sucks. It has all the cheap components like onboard everything, so whenever I do anything the sound just cracks up. The system is so old that I can't remember how old it is. The other day, I have a hd that's from 1989 or from the last century. Anyway, after leaving it on for a few hours it actually crashed and burned literally, I can actually smell the burn. I savaged the RAM and the CD-ROM drive, because the CD-ROM drive in the "better system", read: one that hasn't burnt up yet, has a lousy drive that keeps giving me some hdc i/o error. So far the CD-ROM and RAM transplant have been a success, there is no rejection or burn yet.

Anyway, I am just happy there is some sound or noise when I am pounding away in the basement.

The Tennis Court As Fashion Runway

Lady in Red

Sharapova can just go clubbing after dispatching her opponent in 50 minutes in a two set victory, partly by blinding Roberta Vinci in her 600 Swarovski crystals encrusted little red dress. The dress is seamless ... is it a good thing? I don't know, probably it is.

Man in Black

Federer wears his tennis tuxedo. Notice the shorts has nice satin trimming on the side (not seen) and a much narrower leg openings.

The Nike stable has some very nice outfits for its top dogs.

Related tennis/fashion blog site. And here. And here. Americans aren't too crazy about tennis, but if you mix it up with good looking guys, gals and fashion, well you may have something here, at least for the fortnight that's called the US Open.

(The nice pictures are from Jonathan Fickies/usopen.org)

D3 From Guardian's Dan Chung

Here is a hands-on first impression from an award winning working professional as opposed to some armchair photographer in front of a PC monitor .... Dan's major complaint as a photojournalist is not on the D3 per se but rather on Nikon's lack of prime lineup like a 50mm f1.2 and a 35mm f1.4. Shooting wide and Shooting wide often in low light look like are requirements for journalists.

Dan Chung: Did you miss me? (Editor's note: what kind of a post title is that for a professional?). Also accompanying short D3 video in English English no subtitles.


Culled from Nikonwatch.com

Lust, Caution

The MPAA is giving "Lust, Caution" a NC-17 (no children under 17 admitted) rating. That should be interesting.

Ang Lee tackles forbidden love in steamy new film

Media attention ahead of the new movie's release this year will focus on the long, acrobatic and sometimes disturbing sex scenes between the main characters, which Lee hinted were real.

When asked in Venice about the authenticity of the sex, he replied: "Did you see the movie? Then why do you ask?"

In a recent interview Lee described his new film as "a scary place," and "like hell." But although lust is used to lure a man into a dangerous trap, love's power also offers a glimmer of hope to characters caught in a world of violence and fear.

Related Blog post here.

Blundstone

If for some reason you think Doc Martens is too grungy, too skin head, too polluted by the fashion crossovers like Chloe and Yohji Yamamoto, and thoroughly disgusted by their blatant ad of exploitation of dead people, fear not, there is still Blundstone, the unpolluted Aussie invention since 1870.

I can attest to its light weight, comfortable and durable construction as I wear a pair of 500 every day.

Related post.

Notes to Self

To Run Jar File

Ubuntu 7.04 has already JRE 1.4.2 installed but no go running a JAR file, gave me
java.awt.AWTError: Cannot loadAWT tookkit: gnu.java.awt.peer.gtk.GtkToolkit
....
Go to Application Add/Remove, Search Java for All available applications...
Download and install Sun Java 5.p Runtime.

$ java -jar some .jar

some's GUI comes out. It worked.

[just like most other things, I don't know why, but as long as I can get it to work, I am happy, if I know why that's better but I am not pushing it]

Notes to Self

Notes to self
You are an idiot, a masochist.
This is my n attempts to learn Linux ...
This is by far the easiest installation, Ubuntu 7.04

Ubuntu 6.06 did the live cd thing but crapped out on the harddrive installation, Error in removing some language packs.
Downloaded 7.04, burned a CD, live cd worked, harddrive installation worked, but wi fi didn't work.
The funny thing was in 6.06, the wi fi actually worked. I tried to boot Live CD from 6.06 but no longer worked. I have a PCI card from Trendnet TEW228PI, a discontinued product that uses the Realtek RTL8180 chipset.
Searched Internet on Realtek RTL8180 chipset and Ubuntu but to no avail.
Searched more, finally found the following instructions.
You need to be root to do edit the blacklist file.

From the terminal

sudo editor /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
rem out the line by prefixing the line with a #, like so
# blacklist r818x

Reboot system

And append a bogus character to the ESSID.

Now I am blogging using my Ubuntu.

The last time I got this card to work was years ago using Redhat, I think I used either a ndiswrapper or a Linux driver. But I am not sure anymore.

This is the easiest by far.

US Open 2007

David Nalbandian ...

Tim Henman, flaring his nostrils while serving. He's going to retire after the US Open, not giving any more false hopes for his countrymen. Nice fella off court, playful, good with his fans.



Jonas Bjorkman getting ready to return.

[All JPEGs shot handheld by yours truly using a Nikon D70 mounted with a 80~200 f2.8. Give attribution when used for non commercial purpose. All rights reserved.]

Nikon D300 @ ISO 6400?

Nikon D300 @ ISO 6400?
Originally uploaded by BKMD.

This is allegedly shot from a Nikon D300 at ISO 6400. It's not ISO 640, it's 10 times that, ISO 6400.

Picture via flickr via tinyrul.com/3xjapt via Nikonwatch.com

D3 Video Demo

This is a video I found via Nikonwatch.com, the video is in Spanish. A guy in white polo shirt with Nikon's emblem is seen demoing the Nikon D3. If you know Spanish that's great, if you know only English, then you can read the English subtitles. If you know none, then just enjoy watching the D3.


Source:
Nikonwatch.com


Another one from YouTube. In Japanese, No English Subtitles.

Doc Martens Are Back, Officially

jpeg from the New York Times.

It's official now. Doc Martens are back. Or did they ever go away? Every generation discovers Doc Martens. Every rebel without a clue at some point in his youth wears a pair of Doc Martens. If you haven't well you get the chance now ....

The Gawker
The New York Times

Back To Classics

Dan Martensen for The New York Times; styling by Susan Joy

Lanvin zip-up silk blouse, $1,090, and Alexander Wang wide-leg herringbone pants, $585, both at Barneys New York. Karen Walker leather belt, $132 at Mick Margo; LaCrasia leather gloves, $200; Patricia Von Musulin hand-carved ebony ring, $825 at Takashimaya; Kelly Christy felt fedora, $300 to order from kellychristyhats@hotmail.com; Chloé leather satchel, $2,595 at Chloé.
[above jpeg and caption copied from The New York Times electronic edition]


Fashion critic Cathy Horyn is predicting a more sober fashion fall outlook in her New York Times article"Après Rehab: A Lovely Sobriety" published on August 23. Basically fashion would be more classical and gasp more "wearable" which is, mind you, very different from affordable, see merchandise and price caption from above. To be in the fashion business is to be in the recycle business, after all, we all suffer quite a bit from Britney Spears and Paris Hilton fatigue, perhaps it's good to get back to more classical stuff like from the 60s and from an era when etiquette and underwear mean something.

Subway Reading

Subway Reading.
Parallel Play, by Tim Page, published in The New Yorker August 20, 2007 (it's free)

Nikon's Foray Into Full Frame

So all these years, Nikon has been feeding us Kool-aid, contending that 1.5DX format is the right format to go and digital noise doesn't matter, while secretly sweating and busying itself catching up with Canon's full frame development. This reminds me when Apple was still using PowerPC chips and seriously lacked in clock speed. What did they say, clockspeed doesn't matter, the whole is important than the sum of its parts, blah, blah, blah. Look what happened.

All things being equal, a faster processor is a better processor; and a bigger sensor is a better sensor. And I am not going to footnote my previous statement.

PS: OKAY, I am going to footnote. If you are a no talent photographer, no amount of technology and full frame can make that up. In some cases, a complicated camera can actually obstruct and hinder one's creativity. But in the right hand, a better camera does help produce better images.

UPDATE:
A thread at good old photo.net by Ellis Vener x Bjorn Rorslett. I thought Vener totally abandoned Nikon but was actually invited to attend the event in Tokyo. I just found out my invitation pass was mailed to my neighbor two houses down, oh well, there is next year. If you are NOT invited, then don't call yourself a Nikon pro, switch to Canon. Because Nikon doesn't give a F U C K what you have to say and think. Vener once answered some of my stupid questions at photo.net. Nice guy.

Nikon D3 & D300

They are either real or real fakes.

All hell broke loose after 1PM, August 23 Japan time ....

• Pdnonline.
• Nikonusa press release.
• From Land of the Rising Sun Press Release. Nikonusa's whole website is still same old same old, there has been no updates so far. I like to work there, everything is sort of slowly unfolds. There is no man made urgency to satisfy those silly hobbyists.
• Dpreview on D3 and D300.
• Rob Galbraith broke the news.
• Rob Galbraith made the new lens announcement too, all before the Nikon's official sites. The price is simply out of this world.
• Translated from a Korean site.
• Picture from dpreview forum.

I want one so I can shoot snapshots of my kids, my shadows, and what nots. VL2007, buy one so I can borrow it, it's only $5,000 for the body. I can only imagine how cool I'll look with that thing hanging over my shoulder or held in front of my eye.