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

Can You Tell The Chinese Don't Teach Me How To Play Tennis

Li Na absolutely hated her fellow Chinese country men.

Exit Through The Gift Shop

A documentary that is at once entertaining and enthralling.  It's not like you see how graffiti artists work every day, let alone the great Banksy.  Exit Through The Gift Shop delivers both and more.  It tells the story of the greatest documentary on graffiti artists that was never made and captures the utter absurdity of a feverish obsessive compulsive videographer, Thierry Guetta, who takes a keen interest in graffiti and becomes an artist himself.  The movie asks the perennial question that eludes everybody, what is art anyway?  Just like any other meaningful questions in life, it really doesn't have an answer.

On The Street ... Bikes Covered With Snow

The obligatory bikes covered with snow.

Crappy WiFi HardWare That Works with Ubuntu 10.10 AMD64

My crappy Trendnet TEW-228PI has been on its last leg for a long time.  It gives me some connection but I really have to stay on top of it as it takes a long time to see my AP and drops connection randomly.  I was able to get the Windows driver to work with it but only barely.  I don't know if it has to do with its shorty antenna or what.  But bottom line, it doesn't work well at all.

Finally I had had enough.  I bought this super duper Wireless 802.11b/g PCI card from Edimax, model EW-7128G.  Wow.  I didn't have to type any command at all.  What a disappointment.  Perhaps it has this detachable antenna, the signal is much better than before.  The card just works and I feel like why didn't I buy it earlier.  

uname -a
Linux [redacted-desktop 2.6.35-25-generic #44-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 21 17:40:44 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux

lspci
04:07.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI

sudo lshw -C network
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI
vendor: RaLink
physical id: 7
bus info: pci@0000:04:07.0
logical name: wlan2
version: 00
serial: 00:1f:1f:a8:22:36
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rt61pci driverversion=2.6.35-25-generic firmware=N/A ip=192.168.1.108 latency=32 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
resources: irq:21 memory:fdef0000-fdef7fff

On The Street ... After The Snowstorm

A Couple of Sanitation Workers Removing Snow

Shooting and titling just like The Sartorialist does, that is, minus the punctuation part.  The guy may know how to shoot but he is the worst offender of the ellipsis abuse ever.

I spotted a couple of sanitation workers hard at work on the street after the snowstorm and I asked if I could take a few pictures of them and they were kind enough to let me snap away.  Here are the pictures.

Camera and Cop

A cop with a camera is not a cop anymore.  Immediately the camera transforms the law enforcement agent into a keen observer, a voyeur who cares more about the unfolding and the recording of the event in front of the lens so much so that he almost encourages what's happening continues to happen uniterrupted regardless of what's actually happening and in spite of his primary duty to serve and protect.

Nikon D7000

It gives very clean very detailed images--some people may say it's too clean.  In terms of color there is something needs to be done by ... me I guess.  Something is off sometimes, too yellow to my taste but this can be subjective.  Maybe it's the auto white balance.

I like the body a bit wider (and I don't even have big hands) and the live view and multi selector swaps places.

See label Nikon D7000 below for pictures.

Shooting Into The Light

Wow, there is no flare and no ghost.  And I have an UV filter and no hood on.  The Nikkor 28mm f/2 AIS is that flare and ghost resistant.  Shot at f/5.6 aperture priority with -0.7 or -0.3 EV compensation.

update 1/26/2011
When I made the above two shots I wasn't thinking about testing the D7000 or the 28mm Nikkor f/2 AIS, let alone on flare or ghost specifically.  I shot them just for artistic or no reason at all.  As it turns out my comment on flare and ghost concurs exactly what Bjorn Rorslett has said about the 28mm AI (not AIS though) on his lens survey.  I found the flare and ghost resistance pretty unusual myself.  Maybe if the sun was a tad higher it would have more of an effect.