Rooney Mara Is Lisbeth Salender

With a body like this, who needs clothes?

The zero body fat Rooney Mara is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Photograph by Jean-Baptiste Mondino for WMagazine.com.  Image belongs to its rightful owners.  Wow, that's hot and cold.  More Millennium Trilogy from yours truly.



You think only Lisbeth Salender can survive a gun shot in the head?  Think again.  Arizona House Representative Gabrielle Giffords is apparently recovering from a through and through gun shot wound from a Glock 19.  Get well soon.

What Would Amy Chua Do?

What would Amy Chua do? Would she approve what Uncle does?  Would she approve his message?
Notice the Asian fan in the background? Could that be from Amy? Did Uncle get his parenting skill from a Chinese mother and take it up a few notches? I won't discount that possibility. Video via Gawker.

Warning: Video may not be suitable for children, young or old adults. Crude language and violence against a minor.

This Week in Review

Everybody is into parenting now!

Here is my wikileaks from emails cables savaged from the Internet gutter.  It says whatever I want to say except saying it much better than I am capable of....

QUOTE
I have come acrosss some ABC or heard about those people in my previous working life. Straight A student, played varsity tennis, Ivy League school..then worked for Morgan Stanley or a similar I-bank. 'Incredibly smart' for anyone who has met him/her. But is this for real? For one thing, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to work in an i-bank. Besides, if they are so smart, then why they got into such a mess anyway in 2008? Doing well in an exam. doesn't mean you are smart. It only means you have (A) good study habits (B)
discipline. That makes you employable provided you also have some (C) EQ.  But that doesn't mean you are 'smart'. Yes, some geniuses shine from a small age, like Francis Crick (1962 Nobel for the double helix in genes) but Einstein was not particularly sharp when he was a kid. But to achieve great things as those luminaries had, you must have great curiosity about this world. Exams don't mean much. In the context of Hong Kong, to say that exams are  useless is nonsense. It is a necessary evil. There must be some sort of tests to evaluate students. That is from someone who always thinks of himself as a maverick. In my ideal world, a mix of the Chinese and American system is the best for the most 'gifted' students. For those who are, admittedly, less brilliant, some sort of discipline is needed. But for the smartest, the key is to stimulate them. Once they are stimulated, they can do it on their own, cruising along, so to speak. They may not do as well as Amy's children in public exams, but they will come through.
> 
> 寄件者: [redacted]
> 日期: 2011/01/14 星期五 下午 02:39:48 HKT
> 收件者: [redacted]
>        [redacted]
>        [redacted]
> 主旨: Invitation
> 
> I'd like you to read the following article from The Diplomat magazine:
> 
> http://the-diplomat.com/china-power/2011/01/03/the-trouble-with-parents/
> 
> 
> And to compare and contrast with this one [Thanks be to [redacted] for
> drawing my attention to it]:
> 
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html
> 
> 
> And the following is very illuminating and related to Amy Chua's book above:
> 
> http://shanghaiist.com/2011/01/10/tales_of_a_chinese_daughter_on_the.php
> 
> 
> Especially the following from Shanghaiist's blog post above:
> 
> "My big sister was what I used to jealously call "every Asian parents
> wet dream come true" (excuse the crassness, but it really does sum up
> the resentment I used to feel towards her). She got straight As.
> Skipped 5th grade. Perfect SAT score. Varsity swim team. Student
> council. Advanced level piano. Harvard early admission. An
> international post with the Boston Consulting Group in Hong Kong
> before returning to the U.S. for her Harvard MBA. Six figure salary.
> Oracle. Peoplesoft. Got engaged to a PhD. Bought a home. Got married.
> 
> Her life summed up in one paragraph above.
> 
> Her death summed up in one paragraph below.
> 
> Committed suicide a month after her wedding at the age of 30 after
> hiding her depression for 2 years. She ran a plastic tube from the
> tailpipe of her car into the window. Sat there and died of carbon
> monoxide poisoning in the garage of her new home in San Francisco. Her
> husband found her after coming home from work. A post-it note stuck on
> the dashboard as her suicide note saying sorry and that she loved
> everyone.
> 
> Mine is an extreme example of course. But 6 years since her passing, I
> can tell you that the notion of the "superior Chinese mother" that my
> mom carried with her also died with my sister on October 28, 2004. If
> you were to ask my mom today if this style of parenting worked for
> her, she'll point to a few boxes of report cards, trophies, piano
> books, photo albums and Harvard degrees and gladly trade it all to
> have my sister back."  --  [Source:  Christine Lu, CEO of Affinity
> China]
> 
> 
> It's really really scary and every parent's nightmare.
> 
> 
> 2011/1/14 [redacted]
> 
> D won't her spent her or [redacted] 'valuable time' with my friends, she
> will insist [redacted] to do the supplementary exercises for IGCSE O Level
> Science and Math
> 
> [redacted]
> 

UNQUOTE

Snow

Sound track sampled from Videotape by Radiohead in In Rainbows.  Edited in Cinelerra.

Vimeo Difficulty

Perhaps everybody is crashing to watch Palin defensing herself or everybody is uploading his own version of Idiot With a Tripod, Vimeo is having difficulty transcoding video since last night.  I heard the problem is fixed but backlog is there to be cleared.  So patience is always a virtue especially you don't want to pay up for a Plus account.  If you don't have money you'd better have patience, lots of it.

UPDATE:
FAILED.
After waiting for no less than five hours for Vimeo to transcode or whatever they need to do.  It says failed.  Oh Well.  I should have known better that Theora/Vorbis or ogg isn't well supported.  But I gave it a try anyway.  Live and learn.

Snow

this is the blogger version.

Public School Kids Are Just Tougher

While most other private schools in the city declared closed even on yesterday, public schools are still open--I am sure Amy Chua approves though I doubt any of her kids go to public school well that's beside the point. Anyway. Public school kids are just tougher. I guess.

Good Service?

Then perhaps we need more snowstorms.

Snowpocalyse, VPN and Vista

If you haven't gotten your VPN client and Vista working, then you have to go to the office to work, or else.

Your IT probably blames you for messing up the VPN client like as usual and ask you to re-install or reboot, and you know in your heart of heart that it isn't you, at least not this one. And no matter how many times you reinstall and reboot it simply won't work.

If you have the fortune to still use Vista, and certain VPN client that gives you 442 error, fear not, you can get it to work and enjoy the snowpocalyse in the comfort of your own domain.

Just follow the instruction here.

Basically you need to
Right click to enable the Cisco Systems VPN Adapter
Right click to Diagnose
Select Reset the network adapter

Try to connect via the VPN client again and you "should" be connected--"should" is a big word that I use very loosely. If not, just haul yourself through mud and snow and head to your cubicle farm where you belong. Good luck.

One Day

It's 2:56 too long and it's rated B for boring.

UPDATE
Music: Adagio by Secret Garden from original 2046 soundtrack.
Camera: Nikon D7000
Lens: Nikkor 24mm f/2 AIS
Cinematographer: me
Editing: me
Computer: Quad-core Linux running Ubuntu 10.10 with 4GB RAM
Edited on Cinelerra CV

It has been a one-man production by yours truly with dozens of help from various online heroes.

Snowpocalypse

The picture doesn't do justice to what's going on out there. I shall declare a snow emergency now. Everybody goes home.

UPDATE:
There was no snowpocalypse. The snow emergency lasted for about one minute.

Snowpocalypse Part Deux

The city is still buried in two feet of snow and ten feet of garbage.  I don't know where the sanitation department is or has been.  I don't think the city is ready for another snow storm which is actually coming in like tomorrow.  But I think I am ready.  Snow shovels, check, snow thrower check, gasoline check, camera check, battery check, lens check.  Maybe I can also make a video too, much like the Oscar worthy Idiot with a Tripod except much lamer.

Cinelerra Part Deux

I guess for as long as I live, I struggle with Cinelerra.  Every time I try to use it, something is broken.  Granted it crashes and burns, but the latest is really the weirdest, when I quit Cinelerra it even logouts my account and gives me a reboot, consistently.  A major WTF.  I think that's pretty crazy.  I will try to compile the program from scratch and see what else it does to destroy my work.

I tried PiTiVi and the rendering result was pretty dope I have to say, Theora/Vorbis or something like that.  On the other hand, Cinelerra's rendition is sub par by comparison, probably it could be better if I know the right parameters and codec to use.  A video edited with PiTiVi is of course a few posts below.

Untitled

The coolest man on earth gotta be the Snowman and he likes to hike butt naked on Bear Mountain.

Szeto Wah and Lie Huo Qing Chun

To me, Szeto Wah will be forever remembered as the one who called for the ban of Lie huo qing chun (1982). I remember one Sunday morning I was listening to CR2, and John Shum lashed out on Szeto for his call on banning the movie.  Shum, if I remember correctly, defended the movie and by extension the director Patrick Tam, saying that Szeto had no idea how much Tam had spent on the movie and how Tam stood to lose a lot if the movie was banned.  So on and so forth.  The verbal assault was so vicious, vitriolic, violent and I guess so unbecoming, CR2 had to turn off his mic in the middle of the broadcast.  Wow, I thought that was pretty cool.  At that time, as a youngster I thought and still think Szeto wasn't cool to call for a ban on the movie.

UPDATE: 1/10/2011
Apparently there is some pent up demand for the movie.  And not everybody is a search fiend.  So at the risk or ruining my PG rating of this site, here is the, or one of the, controversial clips.  Well if it's on YouTube I think it can't be that controversial.

Warning:  Maybe inappropriate for young children or adults.

American Pastoral

Whenever I feel like I need to pretend to be some kind of intellectual I pick up a Philip Roth. And they never disappoint. I started reading American Pastoral in 2010 and couldn't finish it until 2011, mostly done on the train. I'm just glad I got it done. And I guess in 2011 I will spend less time reading crazy shit like that and begin reading like more pragmatic stuff. Adieu.

Breakfast

UPDATE:
I like the music I have chosen. It enables an emotional dissonance between the video and the audio.

Colored Pencils

Nikkor 50mm f1.4 at f1.4.  I never thought I would appreciate live view like I do now.  The view finder despite being 100% and 94% magnification, approximately, it's no match to liveview.  Sometimes the focusing point feedback is fooled even the subject you want to focus is not actually in focus.  Liveview with its gigantic screen and many many dots really shine when you need to focus macro or the like.  The D7000 really breathes new life to my grand collection of AI lenses.

UPDATE:
Just downloaded the firmware upgrade.  I was at my Linux machine.  But I got Wine so all was well.  Took the bin file, saved it to the SD card.  Plugged it back to the camera and upgraded.  I wouldn't know the before and after as I never seriously shot video in the dark to notice any red pixels to begin with.

01.01.11

Happy New Year.

01.01.11

Happy New Year.