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.

Dith Pran Dies At 65

From The Gothamist and The New York Times.

Taekwondo

Mom, this is especially for you.

(The video is about 1:27 minute long, the audio is kind of loud I think, maybe because I am using a pair of earphones to edit ....)

Just whipped up this short video using Windows Movie Maker. The original was shot using a Canon G3. I can't suck the video out using Vista as there is no driver for my old G3. Ubuntu is my friend, so it sucked out the AVI video OKAY. But unfortunately kino can't edit the AVI. So I just have to move the AVI back to my VISTA notebook over my wifi by dancing some samba and did some quick and dirty video editing on my notebook. The Windows Media Maker wasn't all that bad for what I tried to do, until I tried to render or what Windows call publish the video. I just clicked publish and the notebook started thinking ... then I went to take a shower. When I was done showering like 10 minutes later, it was still thinking and then I noticed the title bar says not responding. Good thing I saved the project first before publishing. The second time I tried to publish, it went okay but the only format I can publish to was WMV. I was like where is my mpeg? Anyway, Google is okay with wmv. So wmv it is. Enjoy.

MacBook Air Hacked

Again, I am reporting on other's reporting. MacBook Air was hacked. I was reading something about this hacking contest yesterday and back then none of the OS, Linux, Vista and OS X was hacked, and today when I was wandering online at 9to5, MacBook Air was hacked.

The hacker Charlie Miller was a former No Such Agency employee and a researcher. No wonder.

As reported here on Macworld and RoughlyDrafted.

Yet another MacBook Air story.

Subprime Debacle: Same Old Story

The subprime mortgage is just same old Wall Street story. You have greedy executives who want big fat bonus and will do anything to shore up the financial statements. You have the accountants and auditors who don't quite have the backbones are just too willing to go along with the management. The SOX is just a joke, it burdens the average rank and file type but it doesn't do anything, I mean anything good to curtail this kind of corporate recklessness or outright fraud. The SOX is simply designed so the accounting firms can get more billings for doing bullshit consulting jobs and makes sure the average cubicle office drone will do all these compliance bullshit works 12 hours a day non stop devoid of any life at all.

It's just revolting.

Inquiry Assails Accountants in Lender's Fall.

#7 Line Is The Second Cleanest

I take the number 7 train twice a day every work day of the week. Do I care about its cleanliness? Yes to a certain extent. What I care most is the frequency and reliability of the ride. The line just finished a month's worth of repair and maintenance, and hopefully things will even get better. Downtown Flushing is still expanding and I wonder if the #7 train has the capacity to handle this ever expanding immigrant town.

Shmutz Survery 2007.

Miscellaneous

Just got a Wii component cable from monoprice. Their service is good so I am a returned customer. I plugged the cable in and the screen does look better but not by a big margin.

Just came back from another office. Took a yellow cab to 53rd and 8th Ave. I normally don't take any yellow cab so this deserves a blog entry. The fare was 7.30, from Madison and 41st St. So it was $20 round trip. I am not exactly a people person but it's nice to have some face time with people I talk over the phone but never met. People are generally nice.

The weather is nice, it's almost 60.

I need to help out a friend in getting wifi using a notebook bought from Taiwan later in the day. UPDATE: I got it to work. I was asking where is the wifi, the box, the router, what's the name as in ESSID, those questions were met with a blank stare. Something I just take for granted. Plus it's Vista in Chinese. So I had a difficult time figuring what's going on. To make a long story short, I was there for an hour, make the wifi a little bit secured and let the notebook connect via wifi.

Ubuntu 8.04 Is Coming

Ubuntu 8.04 is coming to a computer near you.

Hillary Pants On Fire

Hillary Clinton gave an exciting but mendacious account of what happened to her when she traveled to Bosnia as First Lady in 2006. This is rather silly of her, why o why did she have to exaggerate the truth by saying that she had to dodge snipers' bullets while disembarking from the plane? You are no G.I. Jane? Now she has to grudgingly admit that she "misspoke." Hillary, I expect better from you.