the klog

I was driving up 22nd St toward Mission St when the hills in the distance reminded me of this Inception poster.

(Shot this photo while standing in the middle of a crosswalk at S Van Ness Ave.)

The Russian cruiser Varyag is in town. It's the first time a Russian warship has docked in San Francisco since 1863! I didn't have time for the ridiculously long line to go aboard, but I took several pictures from shore. My favorite is this one because of the awesome expressions:

See a larger version.

I also like this walking stereotype:

See the rest of the set here.

View it Large or View it Even Larger

Davies is so gorgeous, but usually there's a performance, so photography isn't allowed. Hurray for attending a graduation there! :D

Wow, I can't believe last August was the last time I used my DSLR to take concert photos. In any case, I was happy to have the chance to do so again twice this past week!

Friday night, I went to see my friend Felipe perform with Pauchi Sazaki from Peru:

Pauchi is an experimental violinist who puts on a very eclectic live show using pedals to loop her various instruments and sounds. My favorite part is when she looped her own giggling, and it was super creepy, like something you might hear in a haunted house. Here are the rest of my photos from her show.

Earlier in the week, I saw a friend's friend's friends' band, The Matinees. They kept introducing friends from other bands to play with them just about every song! Here's one of their friends helping out on the cello:

I like how the colored streamers taped onto the window behind them give the scene sort of a meteor shower look.

And here is an adoring fan, watching them play: (Okay, actually a painting on the wall. :P)

Here are the rest of my Matinees photos.

My photo "London's Finest" has been accepted for the latest Pictory showcase: London! It's the eighteenth photo.

I made a set of my top 18 photos of 2009.

Of course, Waiting with Sheep is my favorite photo I took last year.

Earlier: Top 12 of 2008 and Top 13 of 2007.

And here are my favorite 141 (and counting) photos that I've taken, ever.

I had seen these flagpole-like structures before outside of San Jose City Hall, but I didn't know what they were for. Here's a photo I took of San Jose City Hall a while back.

It turns out they are flag poles of a sort.. only they fly flags of mist! So awesome.

I went to see my friends The Bad Beginning play at Hotel Utah. Here's the full photo set. My two favorite photos of the night, though, are of the other bands. On the left are The Party Fouls, and on the right is DoubleDouble. DoubleDouble's fans ripped up and tossed newspaper bits all over the stage, and it gave the place a post-apocalyptic look I liked.

Again, you can see the rest of the pictures here.

My first attempt at a band promo photo, and also my first attempt at a posed photo using off-camera flash; click to view it larger:

Thanks to Praveen for holding the flash for me (at camera right). That's what gives their faces that painterly feel. Also, the sheep had actually wandered off by the time I shot this, so I had to photoshop them in from a previous test shot. :P

Here's a Reservoir Dogs style shot:

And here's another shot that I used off-camera flash on, this time holding the flash in my left hand while shooting with my right; click to view larger:

I like the first one the best. Must be the sheep. :)

Here's the full set from the shoot, and here's The Bad Beginning's MySpace page.

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A few days earlier, I went to their show at the Retox Lounge, where a bunch of their friends played, too. Here is Prof. René Lysoff playing spacey electronic music:

I tried to give it that new Star Trek lens flare look. (That bright light at the bottom right is my flash.)

I liked how these shots of Husni (guitarist for Orkes Pantai Barat) and DJ Chris Beale turned out:

And of course, a couple of shots of The Bad Beginning:

Here's the full set from Retox Lounge.

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A couple of weeks earlier, I saw my high school friend Miles perform as they toured in San Francisco. He drummed for Mouse Kills Tiger [MySpace]:

Here's Mouse Kills Tiger's lead singer Jens:

And a spectator watching them:

Jens also drummed for another band, My Imaginary Friends [MySpace]. Their lead singer, Erin, has a great voice:

I feel like this picture looks like something out of an old time musician's biopic or something:

:) Another spectator shot. I like the colors:

Here's the full set from Mouse Kills Tiger and My Imaginary Friends.

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At Miles' show, I met a friend of his, Alice Tong [MySpace]. She performed later that week at a condo complex in Oakland that's doing events like this as promotions:

I like this shot of her cellist:

Next up were Michelle Jasso, an opera singer, and dj fflood, calling themselves The Diva and the DJ:

Their music was inspired by the blue alien diva scene from The Fifth Element [YouTube]! Jasso doesn't have a public page yet, but here's fflood's MySpace page.

And finally, here's the full set from Golden Bridge Lofts in Oakland.

I dropped by a skateboarding competition and took a bunch of pictures. See also slide show mode. Here are a few highlights:

They had to clear several steps in a jump, and preferably do tricks while they're at it.

It was crowded, and people found every which way to actually see the competition. They climbed fences and trees, but this guy impressed me the most. How did he get up there with all that gear?!

It was much easier to take pictures of people just practicing off to the side. :)

Go take a look at the rest of the full set (or slide show)!

Just put up the first batch of photos from my trip to Boston last weekend. Mostly architecture shots. Here's a subset.

The view from my 21st floor balcony at the Radisson (click to enlarge):

Downtown Boston has a lot of interesting industrial buildings. Here's Big Dig Vent Building #1:

Here is a neat power station (left) and a factory I haven't been able to identify on Kneeland St (right):

Finally, here's a shot from the plane that turned out pleasingly abstract:

See the full set for the rest!

Panorama I made from my patio. Double-click to zoom:

I recommend viewing the full-screen Gigapan view, or pan around the flickr version if you don't have Flash.

That one is created from 30 photos! The final image is about 70 megapixels, and that's only because I reduced the size so I could edit it at all. Editing a 1.5 GB file on a computer with only 2 GB of RAM can be... slow. Although saving the file would take forever, props to Photoshop for actually being pretty snappy during the editing. It still took me forever to manually clean up all the double images... I also made one of the reception, only 5 photos:

No Gigapan version for this one since it's only 30 megapixels, and Gigapan has a 50 megapixel minimum, but you can click it to pan around the reasonably big flickr version.

Gigapan link, or see a reduced-size version on Flickr.

San Francisco 24-Hour Time-Lapse from Kenneth Lu on Vimeo.

Update: I've added a soundtrack! The track is "City Cell" from the album Boundary Waters by my friend Senz of Depth (aka Miles Senzaki). Used with permission.

I made a 24-hour time-lapse video from my patio!

10 fps, 1 frame = 5 minutes.

Click through to the video's main page, and then click the "expand" icon at the bottom-right of the video to watch it full-screen!

Some people on the photography list at work were posting their top 10 photos of 2008, so here's my stab at it. (You might also want to try this scrollable flickriver view.) Didn't quite manage to get it down to 10, but oh well. :) It's sorted in chronological order.

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I thought I'd take this chance to mention that if you don't want to follow every photo on my photostream, you can see a smaller subset of the more visually interesting ones in the Everything Good set (currently 236 photos) or the even smaller Only the Best set (currently 78 photos). Both are sorted in reverse chronological order, so you can always see the latest ones at the beginning.

The sign on the back of this fire truck says "Keep Back 500 Feet". That's a whole city block! One and a half football fields! There's no way I could possibly read that sign from that distance! So I'd have to get up close to even read it! Wtf? Is this a joke?

That was my reaction, and why I took this picture while stopped behind the truck at a red light. Upon further research, I discovered that it really is the law to keep back 500 feet from a fire truck, but only if it is responding to an emergency, with lights flashing.

But in that case, why doesn't the say "Keep Back 500 Feet When Siren Is On" or something like that? It would only take up one more line, and of course they clearly don't expect you to read it from 500 feet away anyway. :P

I took this at Pine and Grant in Chinatown. I saw this when hanging out with a friend one day, but I didn't have my DSLR. This time I had my DSLR with me. I think I could do a better job next time by using a wider angle lens and a tripod.

I went to Reno this weekend, but my favorite photo that I took was this one of the Oakland Docks, with the Bay Bridge and San Francisco in the background. I had to warm up the white-balance because it looks better in orange than blue, but I really like how it turned out.

View on black or View it full-size

Here are the rest of my public Reno trip photos.

Btw, to see the power of post-processing, compare the processed version to the original. :P

Here's a photo I took of One Rincon Hill, the new residential tower in San Francisco. The color scheme was inspired by the Dark Knight. I thought I'd add some more thoughts here about the movie.

Mild spoiler warning! (I'm not going to give away real spoilers, per se, but I'm going to discuss the plot a bit more than I did in my initial review.)

* * *

First of all, I read in some review (forget which) that the Joker isn't just the Joker here. He's basically the Devil himself. The Prince of Lies. The smartest guy in the room (smarter than Batman), who's always a step ahead of you, who doesn't play by any rules, whose words you can never trust, and who does something totally unpredictable just when you think you've got him figured out. One thing that amazed me is that he's the most menacing villain I've seen since I can remember, and the movie is only rated PG-13, proving that unseen violence and a good script trump gorefests any day.

Ain't It Cool News has a great (though spoilerful) review by Alexandra DuPont. (I definitely recommend you put off reading it until after watching the movie.) I agree with many of her points. I like that this movie is mostly gadget-free, and I think the realism of it makes Batman Begins (which I never liked that much) look like Schumacher-era Batman. :P I liked the score. At times it felt blatantly manipulative, but I didn't mind. I was begging to be manipulated by this movie. :)

I agree with some of her criticisms, too. Harvey's actions as Two-Face felt rushed and not entirely convincing. Bale's Batman deep Batman voice got pretty irritating when he went off on long speeches with it. :P I didn't mind the editing and slight logical shortcuts too much, though. In fact, I liked that Batman's first fight scene felt confusing and messy. To me, it showed that Gotham is a confusing a messy place.

But DuPont's comment that I found most interesting was when she talked about how she loved the way the movie respected classic cop dramas, how the rank-and-file cops seemed to have depth and character. I noticed this, too. Chris Nolan was supposedly inspired by Michael Mann's Heat while making The Dark Knight. I think he must also have been influenced by classic Hong Kong cop dramas like Infernal Affairs or old John Woo/Chow Yung Fat movies (like A Better Tomorrow or Hard Boiled). I don't think it's a coincidence that the only major scene outside of Gotham was set in Hong Kong.

Maybe it's the police funeral procession, so popular in Hong Kong cop dramas? Maybe it's the fact that the cops seemed so earnest, whether they were doing good or bad? They seemed to come from another era, when cops were cops, and not wise-cracking jokers. They also reminded me a bit of cops in film noir, like L.A. Confidential. The Dark Knight definitely had a police procedural feel to it at times. Take out the costumes and the Batmobile, and you might as well be watching something like In the Line of Fire or Silence of the Lambs. The Joker is as menacing a serial killer as the silver screen has ever seen.

What it all boils down to is that The Dark Knight takes its cues from classic live action police movies instead of superhero movies. Note how none of the movies I compared it to is a comic book movie. (Okay, except for my comparison to Batman Begins, I guess, but that doesn't count. :P) The Dark Knight is grounded in a mean gray reality and then tacks on the superhero aspect only to exaggerate and emphasize its points. That's why, to steal some other review's comment, it's not only quite possibly the greatest superhero movie of all time, but a great movie, period.

P.S.: How did I manage to write two reviews without mentioning how perfectly Gary Oldman plays Gordon? He's kind of aloof, but you totally trust him to do the right thing. Oh man, there's some movie (again not a superhero movie) I've seen where there's like the rebel cop, but there's also the cop who's trying to keep everything together from the inside, and it's as hard a job if not harder... I can't remember what that movie was, but Gordon perfectly embodies that kind of role.

See also my initial review and my third review (spoiler warning).

I went to a midnight showing of The Dark Knight. I saw a few other people in various outfits, but this guy's home-made getup was the most impressive.

As for the movie, it was crazy intense. I was thinking of going to rewatch it in IMAX, but I might need a while to recover. :\

There were some parts where the Joker would, well, make a joke, and some of the audience would laugh, but I'd be cowering in my seat, thinking, "That's not funny! It's freaky!" :\ This is one freaky Joker.

Many of the reviews I've read said, "Aaron Eckhart's performance will be overshadowed by Heath Ledger's, but he was awesome, too!" And he was. I believed in Harvey Dent. He was so likable. But while many reviews downplayed Batman himself, saying he wasn't as interesting as the villains he faced, I don't think this movie shortchanged the title character at all. I loved the ending sequence, which wasn't about plot so much as it was about who Batman is, what he represents, and what he sacrifices. For all the high melodrama, all the ups and downs of the movie, it was that final sequence that got me a little misty-eyed.

It's a damn shame that Heath Ledger won't be able to reprise his irreproduceable turn as the Joker, but Chris Nolan is still around to write and direct more Batman movies. I look forward to future installments, because he really understands what's at the heart of the Batman myth.

Update: Added more thoughts about the movie in a follow-up post.

See also my second review and my third review (spoiler warning).

A week ago, I went to see my friends' friends' band Thrillionaires. Here's a shot of the band that played before them, The Playground Kings:

Amazingly, all four members of The Thrillionaires just got their PhDs. The stormed onto the stage in their graduation gowns! I wasn't ready for it, so I only got a shot of one of them:

I am only just beginning to learn the art of off-camera flash, but in the meantime, I'll settle for the poor man's off-camera flash, accidentally catching another photographer's flash:

All the colors of the rainbow:

(That was more or less how it came out of the camera; I just pumped up the saturation a bit.)

And finally, my favorite shot of the evening:

There are a few more shots in the full set.

Last Sunday night, I went to Bimbo's for the first time. It's quite a classy venue. All the bands were from Sweden. I was wondering what the deal was with this Swedish invasion of the last few years until Dan X pointed me to an New York Times article about how Scandinavian governments are subsidizing their popular music with funding for recording and tours. Wacky. (I'm not saying these particular bands were, btw.)

Anyway, the first act was Anna Ternheim [MySpace], a singer-songwriter type. She was quite good! Here she is:

Presumably she didn't have enough money to bring a whole band with her, and, well, you know how some bands use a drum machine or a synthesizer with recordings? Her backup band was her iPod. :)

I took that last shot with my trusty Fujifilm F30 compact camera. A security guy tapped me on my shoulder, and I was ready to put my camera away, but instead he said, "We're fine with you taking pictures, but no flash, okay?" I was like, "Sure!" I had noticed someone else using flash, so I guess they were bugging everyone with a camera. But see, then I thought, sweet! They're officially letting people take pictures! I had just just bought a Canon 85mm f/1.8 lens, and I wasn't sure when I'd get a good chance to try it out. I immediately ran out to my car to get my DSLR. :) These next few pictures are all from my shiny new lens.

Next up was Lykke Li [MySpace], and she was an awesome indie pop singer. Easily my favorite of the evening:

She went from sorta slower songs to danceable songs, always just a little odd but less weird than, say, Björk (whose personality she reminded me of a little), and with sort of a mysterious sexiness through aloofness appeal. :P I like her guitarist's pose in the background of the above shot. Here's a her guitarist in focus:

The quality difference between these and the F30 shot isn't as obvious at this size (a testament to the low light ability of the F30), but click on the guitarist to zoom in, and see the detail on the hair, then zoom in on the first shot to compare. (The one of Lykke Li has a bit of motion blur.)

The headliner was El Perro del Mar, another indie pop band, though more mellow than Lykke Li. Here's the lead singer:

I like how the backlight on her hair makes it glow. They had an incense stick on stage that acted as sort of a poor man's smoke effects. It worked pretty well in the lighting:

I only thought that shot was okay at first, but my friends all seem to like that one the most. It oddly reminds me of a radio telescope and moon shot I took a while back.

There are a few shots I didn't post here; see the full set here, or watch the full-screen slide show.

I love the new lens. It's so perfect for concerts, at least! I'm totally gonna want to find more concerts that allow photography now. :) And I look forward to trying it out at my friends' weddings this summer.

Actually, this was shot through a reflection in a window. The band is The Mary Onettes, from Sweden, playing at Pop Scene. They were so-so. Kinda new wavy, with a dash of Bloc Party's more poppy stuff.

I went to see Lyrics Born [MySpace] at The Independent in San Francisco Friday night. (He's a half-Japanese, half-Italian rapper who lives in Berkeley.) I like that they actually officially let us take photos, which they rarely do in SF, even at some smaller venues. The show was really fun. I like that he had a full band and backup singer with him:

It was a great contrast from the opening act, who only had a DJ for music. It was also an interesting contrast from a typical rock show because the music never stopped! Every time he finished a song, the band would immediate segue into the next, just jamming along even when he's talking to the audience. It gave the show a non-stop party feel.

The hipster crowd wasn't quite as loud as it could've been, but it was still a lot more into it than the crowd at a typical nod-your-head indie rock concert. All-in-all, I'd say the music was actually even better live than on the album. I think that Galactic [MySpace] album I've been listening to, From the Corner to the Block [Amazon] has really gotten me to like this whole funk music backing hip-hop thing.

Lyrics Born live:

Lyrics Born / Later That Day... (2003):

It has two awesome tracks, "Callin' Out" and "Do That There", but the production is a bit spare, and I wasn't that into the album as a whole when I got it.

Lyrics Born / Same !@#$ Different Day (2005):

Half the tracks on this album are remixes of his first album, but in most cases I actually like the remixes together (with the exception of the two songs on the original I really liked already). The interesting thing is that most of them are more than "remixes" in that they have whole new verses or even new guest rappers with new lyrics, so they're more like alternative versions than mere remixes. The production on this album is much fuller and more exciting. I particularly like "Shake It Off (Bad Dreams Part II)" and "The Last Trumpet (Halou Remix)".

Lyrics Born / Everywhere At Once (2008):

Galactic / From the Corner to the Block (2007):

I might as well review this while I'm at it. It's the best album I've heard in a while. Galactic is this New Orleans funk band who joined up with a different rapper for each track on their new album, and it's awesome. (Lyrics Born is on the first track, but it's not really one of the best tracks on the album.) My favorite is track 2: "...And I'm Out", featuring Mr. Lif. Click that link to listen to it. Pure awesome.

* * *

And now for something completely different, from Maker Faire on Saturday:

[flickr video link]

This is an anti-smoking ad in a magazine. On the left you see a warning flyer posted on an elevator, and on the right is a closeup of the flyer, which is mostly in Chinese. The small print at the bottom is in English, and it says, "In some developing countries, one tobacco company voluntarily placed warning labels on cigarette packs in English."

So it was showing you how useless a warning label in another language is. The cool thing, though, is that the Chinese isn't gibberish, but it isn't just a normal warning label, either. It roughly translates to:

ELEVATOR WARNING IF YOU CAN READ this message, that means you understand Chinese. Congratulations! The reason we're doing this is because we want you to know how people in Third World countries feel when they read warnings on cigarette packages that they can't even understand. But we think the fact that you understand Chinese is really great.

ACTUALLY, WE'RE EVEN A LITTLE ENVIOUS. Elevator warning if you can read this message, that means you understand Chinese. Congratulations! The reason we're doing this is because we want you to know how people in Third World countries feel when they read warnings on cigarette packages that they can't even understand.

[Yes, it repeats.]

Lucy on the Grass:

I played softball with some friends this afternoon while their dog chilled out on the grass.

I loved how this Cars playset contained a video game controller and big screen TV for Lightning McQueen to play with in his downtime:

And finally, "Ming and Ping":

I saw this bizarre electronic music act last week. They had a bunch of people dancing around in Peking Opera outfits, but this was the lead singer.

I wasn't so much into the music, but I liked how "Ming" claimed that the guy on the video screen behind him was his identical twin brother "Ping", when it was clearly a pre-recorded video of himself. They would sometimes sing together, and other times they would banter with each other.

I spotted this base off the side of CA State Route 237. I think we're being invaded.

A couple of pictures from the summer of 2006. An accordion festival!

And I like this scene from shortly after the accordion festival:

From our trip to the National Science Bowl in 1996.

A shot I took in Boston back in 2002 from a cab on the way back from the airport. It was the last time I headed back to school from Logan. I think it looks kinda futuristic (so I tried to enhance that with the blue-ish tone).

P.S.: For the curious, the double-white line means you're not supposed to change lanes. (I just looked that up. :P)

I started posting some of my best pre-project 365 photoblog pictures to flickr. This one I left out of my original Panama photoblog post, but I quite like it.

This is a pencil sharpener I got from a coworker who visited New Zealand.

I just got my Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens today (not to be confused with the kit lens with the same numbers but no IS). I knew that, compared to the kit lens, it has image stabilization and an additional aspherical lens element that creates better images (less distortion and fringing). But what I only found out upon getting it is that while the kit lens is made in Taiwan, this lens is made in Japan.

I'll still love my Sigma 30mm f/1.4 for indoor people shots, because the image-stabilization only helps steady your hand; only a bigger aperture can help when the people are moving. But one advantage (other than the zoom) this new lens has is that it can focus as close as 0.25m just like the kit lens, whereas my Sigma can only focus at 0.4m. Couple that with the 55mm end, and you can take some decent macro shots with it.

I thought these guys looked pretty ridiculous in their suits. :)

A "Virgin Fogcutter" at a friend's birthday party last weekend.

My first post-Project 365 but Project 365-ish photo.

(Project 365 Day 365 (actually 366))

[Because I accidentally labeled two days Day 86, I was actually done with Project 365 yesterday, though I thought it would be today. Look at yesterday's entry for more details. I decided to write my end-of-project notes there, since this entry's comment is going to be long enough as it is...]

A couple more shots:

You can't really see it well in this picture, but she's playing what I thought of as a "key-flute". It's apparently actually a melodica. (And I think the little bit of shoulder you see on the right is the leader of the band. :P)

Today was an eventful day. First of all, I've been having kind of a bad week. So I was looking forward to tonight's The Go! Team concert. (They're this awesome band that's a mixture of 60s/70s pop, 80s action movie theme music, hip-hop, and cheerleader cheers!) I had bought two tickets, hoping to find someone to go with me, but I couldn't find anyone! I eventually I asked around at work, but all I found was someone else who also got two tickets but couldn't find a buddy. :P We decided to meet up at the show. The tickets were only $15, so eating the cost of the spare ticket wasn't a big deal.

Meanwhile, another friend mentioned that he's going to a screening Justin Lin's new movie. (Justin Lin directed the "milestone in Asian-America cinema" Better Luck Tomorrow. (Personally, I found Harold and Kumar to be a bigger breakthrough for Asian-American cinema.) Lin then "went Hollywood" and made Annapolis and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Now he's returned to his indie roots and made a mockumentary set in the 70s about trying to cast a double for Bruce Lee after his death in order to finish off Game of Death.) The director was going to be there, too, so I was curious.

I was running a little late. I had to go home after work to grab some stuff, including the concert tickets, and I couldn't find them! I eventually did, but that wasted some precious time. Then it started raining, and traffic slowed to a crawl on the highway. I noticed I was going to be at least 45 minutes late to the movie, so even though I already bought the ticket online, I decided to skip it. Oh well. More ticket money wasted.

I grabbed some dinner at a Korean place instead. (I love how at this place, when I ordered the rice bowl, they first gave me some Korean pancakes before the standard Korean appetizers, and then they gave me huge bowl of tofu stew on the side as well. One time when I was there they actually gave me free fish.)

Okay, so then I get to the venue, and I mention to the doorman that I have an extra ticket I'd like to get rid of. He tells me to go over to the line of people waiting to get tickets and just sell it to them. I go over there, and this big bouncer tells me I have to go around to the back of the line to sell my ticket. I'm a bit confused. Meanwhile, one of the guys in line who was about to go to the window says, "I'll buy it right now." The bouncer goes, "No no no. This is exactly what you can't do!" He directs me around the line to the back and tells me to do my business there. (I'm sure they had policies and all, but I didn't appreciate his attitude.) The guy who said he'd buy my ticket just gets his ticket from the window. I ask the guys in the back of the line, and they say they all have will-call already. So I think, screw this, decide not to bother trying to sell it, and just head on in.

As I walk in through the front door, my pager goes off! I'm on duty this week at work, which means that I need to go diagnose problems... Thing is, my normal phone broke last week, and I'm using an old phone with older phone numbers. I wrote down some of my friends' numbers on a sheet of paper, but I forgot to write down my coworkers' numbers. I want to ignore the page. I really don't want to have to go home at this point. But I don't have any of my coworkers' phone numbers to hand it off to someone else! I'm really stressing out at this point. All this crazy stuff happening, and now this!

Luckily, I eventually figure out how to use my pager to send text messages to my coworkers, and another on duty coworker tells me he'll take care of the problem. *Whew!* I breathe a huge sigh of relief at this point. I wasn't going to be able to enjoy the concert with this hanging over my head!

The concert, luckily, was awesome. The Go! Team is kinda weird in that it actually started out as an album recorded in some dude's parents' kitchen, and not as live gigs. There are lots of sampled cheerleading chants and such that are replaced by different singers in the live version. And a lot of what I thought was horns on the album was a harmonica live. I guess they don't have the money to bring a whole horn section with them. So musically, it didn't quite work as well, in that I think the album tracks sound better, but the ENERGY was definitely there! And they did have two complete drum sets. :) The whole crowd was totally into the music and jumping up and down and sideways throughout the show. It was great! That was exactly what I needed at the end of a rough week!

(I didn't actually manage to get a good shot of the actual band leader. After my encounter with that draconian bouncer, and because it was a relatively small venue, I decided to play it safe and only whipped out my camera toward the end of the show, when I wouldn't have much to lose on the off-chance they kicked me out. (...which of course I've never actually seen any venue do. That's another pet peeve of mine: unenforced (or worse: selectively enforced) rules that basically reward people who break the rules.))

Back when the show started, it had occurred to me that I had parked my car on Howard Street, where I once got a street cleaning ticket. (Street cleaning starts at 12:01am on that street. What the hell? People are still out! Literally like 20 cars in a row each had a ticket the time I got mine. So they clearly have no intention of cleaning the streets and actually enacted those times just as a source of income. :P) But anyway, I was like, no way I'm going to bother moving it now. This show is going to be worth it even if I get a ticket! :) And yeah, the concert was good enough for that. :)

This story has a bizarre coda:

After the concert, my newfound friend from work (the guy who also got two tickets and wasted one) had to retrieve his jacket from coat check. I told him I'd wait outside. But I was still kinda worried about getting a ticket, so I went back inside to tell him I was going to head out.

On my way back out, two tall guys in the coat check line intentionally blocked my path and loudly proclaim, "WAIT IN LINE LIKE THE REST OF US!" I think he was drunk. So I reply, "I'm exiting!" Then he's like, "Oh... He's EXITING..." His friends laugh. I find him so obnoxious at this point that I flip him off a couple of inches from his face. His friends are like, "Ooooo...." but they don't do anything as I leave. You have to realize that I can't even remember the last time I flipped someone off. It's just not something I do. Especially to 6-foot tall drunk guys. :P

Immediately afterward I felt kinda bad about it. I felt like I should've taken the high road. Maybe I could've said something like, "We're all having a good time. Why do you have to go and bring us down?" I don't know. :P Maybe flipping him off was the right thing to do. Who knows. So that felt like kind of a bummer end to the evening.

But then I got to my car... and no ticket! No street cleaning tonight. :) Yay! Happy ending to my day after all.

Plus today marks the end of my Project 365. Very eventful day.

I guess I was so pumped that I came home and typed like the longest Project 365/blog entry every. :)

(Project 365 Day 358)

Last weekend, I watched the documentary Helvetica. Yes, the font. It's only had special screenings, not wide release, but it'll be out on DVD next month. The film mostly consists of interviews with typographers, and it's pretty crazy how excited some people get about Helvetica! It would've probably been better at 60 minutes instead of 80, but I still really enjoyed it.

Helvetica was invented in 1957 in Switzerland. It was meant to be the ultimate Modernist typeface, neutral, utilitarian, communicating information without adding connotations of its own. It has since spread to be, well, everywhere. I'm pretty sure the air bag warning on my car's visor flap (pictured) is in Helvetica.

So some people see it as practically the culmination of Western society or something. :P Meanwhile, other people utterly despise Helvetica (and they think Microsoft's clone, Arial, is even worse), because it has seen such widespread use by corporations, and because people are lazy and tend to just use Helvetica by default.

I took this photo right after watching the new Ang Lee movie, Lust, Caution (which the "Warning" reminded me of). I really liked it. It has this epic yet personal feel of a classic film. Lee put so much loving detail into developing the environment of World War II era Shanghai and Hong Kong. The movie is really intense (my new favorite word), which is also its theme. The much ballyhooed sex scenes are definitely relevant to the plot; they were more unnerving than titillating, showing the contrast between these moments of freedom and the cautious, calculated world that the characters usually inhabit. (I really liked the opening scene of four women playing Mahjongg, making ostensible small talk where they tensely and carefully choose each word.)

Hm. Maybe that's the argument against Helvetica. It's cautious. It's restrained. It attempts to reveal as little emotion as possible while speaking a controlled, calculated message. Sometimes we need more lustful fonts.

And yet, giving in to our primal desires may lead to tragic consequences... like bad page layout.

Helvetica: Lust, Caution: [ Rating Key ]

(Project 365 Day 337)

Tonight I watched 3:10 to Yuma, and it was pretty good. Very well-cast and great music. The only thing that sucked was how this couple behind us kept giggling and making fun of the movie. They didn't tone down giggling until maybe halfway through the movie after I gave them several dirty looks. I think they must've been high. :\

(Project 365 Day 336)

This patio heater reminded me of the Icarus II spacecraft from Sunshine. The stem totally looks like some sort of truss, and the light part might be some sort of futuristic engine.

For comparison, here's a shot of the ship from the movie:

That's St. Pancras Station, as seen from the British Library.

Our plan was to see London a bit at the beginning of the trip and a bit at the end. We were pretty exhausted from the flight, though, so we just went to see Tower Bridge and took a bunch of touristy photos there. I liked this big red wall the British Library had, though.

We had some dinner at this Chinese place I used to go to all the time when I lived in London, but it was kinda bad. I think they must've changed owners some time in the last few years. :\

I was very excited to finally have some European Orange Fanta again. You see, Fanta in Europe has 10% juice! Fanta in the US has 0% juice. It tastes totally different.

Virgin Atlantic has a screen on every seatback, and you can watch the movies you want when you want to. It's pretty awesome, even if their safety video characters kinda freaked me out.

I watched Waitress, which was light but fun. My favorite character was this plucky, insecure, and utterly adorable supporting character called Dawn. Turns out she's played by the writer/director, Adrienne Shelley, who was unfortunately senselessly murdered while working on post-production for this movie! :( So sad! She was found hanging by a bedsheet in her bathroom, but it turned out she was actually strangled by a neighbor who get pissed off when she made a noise complaint. Wtf?! And so her promising career was cut short. :\

I also watched most of The Namesake, but with half an hour left, my movie was cut short because the plane landed half an hour early. D'oh! Once we got on the ground, the jetway broke down, so we ended up having to wait half an hour on the ground at Heathrow before they sent us some stairs. :P

What was even more amusing was that, once we got down the stairs, we got in a bus that drove all the way around the plane in a big circle to the left... only to drop us off at a door that was no more than 100 feet to the right of the plane. I guess they had to do that for safety reasons or something, but it was still kind of ridiculous. :)

But I get ahead of myself! Technically, all that happened on Day 2, not Day 1. I boarded the plane on Day 1, but arrived in London on Day 2. Oops.

(Project 365 Day 314)

Today I fell for a phishing scam. :( A friend of mine sends me a link via Yahoo IM asking me to check out some geocities link. I click on it, and I get a Yahoo 360 sign-in page. "Strange that you'd need to sign in to see a geocities page, but Yahoo does own geocities, and I haven't been there in a while," I think.

So I put in my username/password and just get a Yahoo 360 homepage. Weird. I IM my friend to ask what the deal is, but he doesn't reply. I'm in the middle of working, so I quickly get distracted by other duties and don't think about it much.

A while later, I get a reply from my friend, along the lines of, "Huh?" Turns out he never sent me the link! "Crap!" I think. "I'm a doofus! I just fell for a phishing scam!" My friend had gotten the same link from one of HIS friends, and so I bet the bad guys have a program that recorded his password when he typed it into that bogus page, then logged in to his Yahoo IM account and spammed it to everyone on his buddy list.

It's quite insidious, because you're tempted to trust links your friends send you, and because this doesn't require any spyware on your computer; it's all done over the web.

So again, people, don't be an idiot like me. Think twice before putting your password in a page that asks for it!

Oh, and needless to say, I immediately reported the page to Yahoo (and it's been taken down now), changed my Yahoo password, and then changed the password in the various other places I use that same password, just in case. I also emailed everyone in my Yahoo IM buddy list to warn them, just in case my account sent them the bogus URL, too. Pain in the ass.

(Project 365 Day 313: "Snuffing out a flame")

I don't know why people feel the need to make up poorly-evidenced conspiracy theories when there are conspiracies right under our noses with plenty of evidence. According to this AP report, whistleblowers in Iraq get smacked down. When private firms are misusing gov't funds or selling weapons to insurgents, brave individuals occasionally report the abuse. When they do, they get their responsibilities stripped, detained for months by the military they think they're trying to help, and even tortured.

In every case, whistleblowers get their lives destroyed. In the only case where a whistleblower was actually won a case in court, it got overturned by a higher court on the basis that the Coalition Provisional Authority was not part of the US Government.

Silencing the "rats"... That's a classic Mafia tactic, isn't it? Why aren't people more outraged about our gov't doing this?

I read an article a few weeks ago about the power that factory owners now have in China. A New York Times reporter was detained by a factory for trying to report on them, and the cops and even local officials were powerless to intervene. "Man, things sure are messy in China," is what I thought. "I'm glad things aren't like that here." Well, I guess they aren't like that here because there are too many eyes watching. But plop these same Americans in Iraq, away from the prying eyes of journalists and the public, and human nature re-asserts itself.

So depressing. :(

I don't know why I feel so riled up about this, but I do. I mean, I normally feel kinda numb to war and civilian casualties and all that, but not with this. Maybe I've been watching too many action movies? The lone advocate, bucking the system to take on the bad guys! A candle against the darkness! And here he's getting snuffed out. Or maybe it's that I actually do have faith in the system. Our country should be better than this!

Maybe I feel that, for all its flaws, our gov't does have mechanisms to heal itself, to improve itself. And here, all those mechanisms have failed. It's scary to think of our gov't as so actively corrupt. I feel like I lost a little faith in our country today...

(Or maybe I just stayed up too late last night watching the lunar eclipse, and I need to go to bed. Good night.)

(Project 365 Day 312)

This is the first time I've ever watched a lunar eclipse! It's so neat how the moon turns red.

(Project 365 Day 311)

I just watched Stardust, and my reaction was, "Wow! They actually managed to make a movie based on a Neil Gaiman book that feels like a Neil Gaiman book!" The fairy-tale-for-adults feel of the book was definitely present, even though they lightened up the ending a bit (in more ways than one).

Anyway, for those who don't know anything about the book or the movie, the plot centers around a falling star. Thus today's photo. (It's just me flicking my flashlight with a one-second exposure. Then I cooled off the color temperature.)

(And yes, I realize that the framing is a bit off.. The main flash is a bit too close to the bottom edge. Oh well.)

Try it large and on black.

(Project 365 Day 308)

I saw this at a book store. It's Strunk and White's Elements of Style.... the illustrated version. WTF?! An illustrated grammar book?! Not only that, the drawings were all really surreal, too, having little to do with what they're supposedly illustrating. For instance, the dude with the cardboard box over his head is captioned, "Illusion. See allusion."

WTF?! Why would you choose to illustrate a pointer entry, of all things?! And what on Earth does putting a cardboard box over your head have anything to do with illusions or allusions?!

(You can also see a big version.)

Aha, I found the artist's page, with more sample illustrations. That dog is the illustration for, "Well, Susan, this is a fine mess you are in." So crazy!

(Project 365 Day 295)

So I was reading this WaPo article about "sworn virgins" in Albania, women who take an oath, dress and act like men, and thus gain the social status of men in otherwise traditional areas where women have few rights. Fascinating article, but that's not what this post is about. :)

There was a video link on the article, and I clicked it. I was presented with a 15-second "pre-roll" ad that I couldn't skip. Why are those so annoying? I hate them much more than banner ads or even interstitial ads. I hate more than TV commercials, too. I hate them so much that I'm liable to just close the window and forgo watching the video just so I don't have to watch the pre-roll ad. (And it's not just me.) It occurred to me that they remind me of button-based walk signals.

I grew up in San Francisco, where all the signals are on timers. When you arrive an an intersection, the signal sometimes says Don't Walk, but sometimes it already says Walk, or it's at least still flashing. Also, with few exceptions, the pedestrian signals are synchronized with the normal traffic signals.

I went to college in Boston, where most of the signals use those button-pushy things. Even when the light for cars is green, the walk signal is sometimes still red, because that allows cars to turn more smoothly. At many of these intersections, when foot traffic is light, the light is always red when you arrive. And I found this really annoying! Other people seemed to as well, because people seem to violate walk signals a lot more in Boston than they do in San Francisco. It seems only fair to have to wait some of the time when you get to an intersection, but it seems unfair to be forced to wait every time you get to an intersection.

I think my psychology is similar when it comes to pre-roll ads. With TV commercials, as I switch channels, I sometimes have to watch a commercial, but I usually don't. Most of the time, I get to see some content before I have to see a commercial. Imagine if, every time you switched the channel, you had to watch a commercial before you got to see any part of the program. Television would be a most frustrating experience then. But that's precisely the experience pre-roll-infested web videos present us with.

(Project 365 Day 281)

The Vallco mall in Cupertino has struggled a lot over the year. The latest attempt to bring it back to life has renamed it "Cupertino Square" and added a new AMC movie theater.

One striking thing about the building is how empty it still is. On the way to the theater, you can see lots of blank white walls free of posters and advertisements.

It's kinda eerie!

I feel so vulnerable without the warm embrace of omnipresent marketing messages!

(Project 365 Day 277)

(Project 365 Day 280)

These palm trees are just down the block from my apt. It just really amuses me to see all these palm trees in the middle of suburbia. :)

(30 second exposure taken at 2am that I brightened and saturated a bit more afterward. The sky is orange because it's overcast.)

(Project 365 Day 274)

A little painting-effect processing and a ton of cropping go a long way toward rescuing a drive-by snapshot into one of my favorite pictures. :) See the flickr page for more details, and be sure to view it large.

I took pictures at two Scarab shows this weekend. Here are a couple of my favorite shots. You can go to the flickr sets to see the rest of them.

Saturday night, they played at Brain Wash again. I like how the brown shirts made it easy to give this shot a quasi-sepia look:

Sunday night, they played at Ireland's 32. Here's my favorite shot of that evening:

(Project 365 Day 256)

This is my re-creation of the opening scene of Rejected, a short film by Don Hertzfeldt. I guarantee it's quite different from anything you've seen before. (Warning: Features graphic stick figure violence at times.)

You should also check out Billy's Balloon and L'Amour.

A friend of mine showed me these videos back in college. He found them on the Internet somewhere, in the days before YouTube. :) I just bought Don Hertzfeldt's DVD, though, to finally actually support the artist. :)

(Project 365 Day 251)

I went to watch Live Free or Die Hard tonight. The bad guys essentially hack the computer infrastructure of the north-eastern US. (I've heard someone call it "Die Hard... in a country!") I actually found it kinda freaky because, well, I bet the security of our critical services really is pretty crappy and hackable.

On the other hand, computer hacking just doesn't present the kind of visceral sense of danger that an action movie really needs. (And the movie does supply its villains with guns and kung fu, to supplement the hacking.)

So here I present to you my attempt to depict my computer networking infrastructure with a sense of menace. :P

(Btw I went into the movie with extremely low expectations due to reading a bunch of negative reviews, and I ended up enjoying the movie. I enjoyed it as a summer action flick, but it definitely felt kinda light, and it certainly didn't feel like anyone was dying particularly hard. I did like, though, how Bruce Willis played it with a sort of "not this again" feel. Some of the biggest laughs of the movie were his subtle, weary sighs. Oh, and Mac Guy wasn't as annoying as I expected him to be.)

(Project 365 Day 246)

I went to watch 1408 last night. It's about an evil hotel room with that number. It was pretty mediocre, with John Cusack being the saving grace. But it did inspire this picture of my neighbor's door. I hope my neighbor is able to emerge safely in the morning!

(Project 365 Day 237)

My car seemed very lonely when I went to get it.

(Project 365 Day 235)

Lord Vader waddles through the rain forest.

P.S.: The background is this plant.

I went to hang out with Jesse over at Fort Funston, where he was checking on his hang glider. He didn't actually fly, but I got some nice pictures of other people! :P Here's a glider at sunset:

(Project 365 Day 233)

Hang glider over the Pacific Ocean.

I like this one, too:

I was thinking, "Man, this totally looks like there's a thermonuclear explosion in the distance." And then I thought, "Oh wait, that's exactly what it really is! Lots and lots of thermonuclear explosions all the time, too, not just a single one!" :D

Here's the rest of the set.

(Project 365 Day 232)

Went over to my friends' house for a BBQ for no reason. Well, just because it's Friday, I guess. :) That's their really cute dog Lucy.

(Project 365 Day 228)

I was taking pictures of my friends playing Bocce Ball, and I thought it kinda looked like the Reservoir Dogs cover, so I made this silly thing. :P

At one point when they were walking across the grass, it kinda reminded me of the Abbey Road cover, but I didn't get a picture of that. Who knew Bocce Ball could reproduce so many famous photographs!

Here it is large and on black.

I used these splatter brushes for the blood.

(Project 365 Day 223)

I heard John Edwards speak today. I need to start by saying that I saw Hillary Clinton speak a few months ago, and the most exciting part was when she first walked in, not 20 feet away from me, and smilingly waved at us. I was all like, "Oo look! It's Hillary Clinton! She's right over there!" Once she started talking, it was boredom city. Everything she said sounded like it was precisely calculated to offend the minimum number of people. Her Q&A was entirely devoid of content.

Admittedly, I already had a somewhat negative impression of Sen. Clinton going in (because I felt that she'd been pandering to the center in the most cynical ways possible, through meaningless family values issues and such), but her talk cemented my impression and then some. I came out with a much worse impression of her than I had going in.

(For comparison: A friend of mine who had the same experience with Clinton also saw John McCain. We also both had negative feelings about modern day McCain, feeling that he's towing the party line a lot more than he used to, but my friend said that he had a better impression of McCain after seeing him talk.)

Anyway, back to John Edwards. I honestly didn't know much about him going in, but I really like him now. He was amazingly open and honest. He actually, well, SAID stuff and made POINTS.

He said that he'd close down Guantanamo as his first act in office. He talked about regretting his support of the war in Iraq. When someone asked him about the mercenaries we use there, he said they should never have been there, and we should pull them out. He said he wants fully publicly-funded campaigns, adding that he knows he's raised millions himself in campaign funds but doesn't like the system.

He talked a lot about foreign aid, specifically focusing on primary school education and clean water in third world countries. He admitted that it may not be a popular topic with some people, who'd rather see us spend all our money at home. He said he wants to create a cabinet-level position to oversee humanitarian aid. I think he said that he wants to spend about $5 billion a year on it.

That led him to segue into mentioning farm subsidy reform, which was what I applauded the most. (Everyone talks about Big Tobacco and Big Oil, but it's time we got Big Corn on everyone's radar!) He wants to get rid of subsidies for million-dollar farms, but he does want to keep them for "family farms". He said the trick would be drawing the line, and he figures around $250,000 a year in income would be a reasonable one.

Edwards spent a lot of time talking about the work that the people of the country need to do. He said that nothing will happen if we just vote and elect someone. For instance, he said that fighting climate change would require a lot of sacrifices on our part, admitting that changes would require conservation and hikes in energy prices. I kinda really liked this part. In a way, it's sort of obvious, but it made me feel respected. A lot of politicians want to pretend that gov't can do everything for you. That's the easier route, no? All of Bush's talk about "maintaining the American way of life" comes to mind. Or maybe since people complain about Edwards being too young, he's just trying to channel some JFK associations. :P

On that note, he said that he doesn't believe in a President who wants to move cautiously and avoid offending people, and that there are candidates in both parties who are like that (which I think might be a thinly veiled attack on Sen. Clinton). He thinks we live in a time that requires a President who's willing to make bold moves even where it's not politically expedient.

I even liked how he was very open about dodging questions. One questioner first lightened mood by complimenting Edwards on his new haircut and then asked if the US should send military support if China invaded Taiwan. Edwards laughed, said, "Why don't you just get right to the question?" and then started, with a smile, "First of all, I'm not going to answer your question." He followed that with the expected fluffy non-answer, but I think a lot of candidates would ONLY give the fluffy non-answer.

Similarly, he was talking about how when he's President, he'd want to surround himself with smart people who didn't always agree with him. When asked if he wanted to name some such people he might choose, he gave a jokingly curt, "No." I'm impressed with the way he so directly handles questions he doesn't want to answer and sort of makes them into a joke. I guess it just gives me a sense of respect for the audience, as if he were saying, "I'm not trying to pull a fast one on you, but you know how politics works."

When the host said that they were running long, and they'd only take a couple more questions, Edwards insisted he'd stay as long as he needed to. He even answered a few more questions after the next prompting. Eventually, they just had to end it. I know this is part of the politics, and his insistence on staying is a pre-considered part of the act, but I still liked it. :P I don't mind calculated actions if they're sending the right message.

John Edwards is one smooth operator. He needs to just do more of these. I think the more people he speaks to in person, the more votes he'll get. I couldn't say the same for Hillary Clinton. :P

A couple pictures of him after the speech below:

He stuck around afterward to chat with fans and take a few pictures. Note that at the beginning of Sen. Clinton's talk, the host told us that she had asked us not to take any pictures.

I tried to get a picture with him too. At one point, his minders urged him to leave; he waved over at us and said, "But what about all THESE people?" Sadly, after he left after only a couple more photos, and I just barely missed the cut. :P Again, I know what he said was calculated and designed to sound charming, but it still worked. :)

Funny how I went in knowing nothing about him, and by the end I wanted to take a picture with him. With Sen. Clinton, I wanted to take a picture of her before she came in, but by the end of her talk I just wanted to leave. :P I wonder if I would've dug Edwards so much if I hadn't seen Clinton first? :)

I've been to Monterey several times, but somehow for one reason or another never actually went to the aquarium. I think it was hyped up a bit too much for me, so it wasn't AWESOME, but it was pretty cool. I particularly liked the jellyfish. So here's Project 365 Day 220.

Too bad the kelp in the background gives away the fact that this shark isn't that big. :p

The octopus was all squished up against the side of the display. That couldn't have been comfortable! Or maybe it was?

And I managed to get this shot without flash by setting my Fujifilm F30 to ISO 1600, though sadly many other people were using their flashes despite the sign. :(

These tiny jellyfish looked more like a slide under a microscope than something I could actually see!

Light on and light off shots of a type of jellyfish that is almost invisible in the open ocean. These jellyfish remind me of those transparent LCD clocks, you know the ones that have the numbers on transparent glass. It's like, where's the circuitry?! Here, it's like, where's the organs? :P

(Project 365 Day 185)

Tonight I went to see Merrily We Roll Along, a musical. The gimmick in this musical is that each scene takes place progressively earlier in time. So at the very first scene, you know the ending, that the main character is a composer who's "sold out" and miserable in middle age. Then each scene tells you a bit of his history, and of those around him, until you get to the wide-eyed days of his youth, when he was still optimistic and full of wonder.

It was so twisted! I mean, it gets happier and happier, but that actually means that their lives got sadder and sadder! Also, the production values were really good, and the acting was great, too, so if anyone who reads this lives in the Silicon Valley, I'd recommend that you consider taking a look.

(Project 365 Day 176)

I took a picture of this TV in B J's Restaurant & Brewhouse because it's the first time I've ever seen a public HDTV display regular TV in pillarboxed format instead of distorted/stretched format. I was impressed. Details below:

So traditional TVs have an aspect ratio of 4:3. When you watch a movie on a normal TV, it's sometimes presented in "letterboxed" widescreen, which means you see the full picture as originally intended, with black empty spaces above and below the picture. Other times it's presented "pan & scan", where they crop the sides off of the image to fit your TV, customizing the cropping based on what makes sense for each shot. (The marketers love to call this "full screen", even though it actually means you're missing parts of the picture.) People used to get confused by letterboxing, wondering if parts of the picture are cut off, etc, but I think almost everyone understands it these days. In fact, some TV shows being shot for HDTV even broadcast in letterboxed format on normal TV these days. Which brings us to...

HDTVs have an aspect ratio of 16:9, which is wider than normal TV. This presents a bit of a problem when you're watching normal TV. To get the full picture, you would have empty spaces on the sides of the screen. (It's called "pillarboxing".) This presents two problems: (1) People aren't as comfortable about blank areas on the sides of their screen as they are about blank areas on the top and bottom. I think part of it is that people don't want to feel like they're wasting display area on their expensive HDTV. :P (2) Plasma TVs, the most common type of flat screen HDTVs, suffer from burn-in, such that if you leave the sides of the screen black and keep displaying stuff in the middle, the middle eventually turns a different shade from the sides.

To solve the second problem, plasma TVs usually come with gray bars (which will burn in the TV just as much as the rest of the image, on average, kind of an "I am Spartacus" way of damaging all the pixels equally so nothing stands out). That's what you see here. The problem, though, is that gray bars are even more ugly and annoying than black bars.

So then you really only have two options: You could ruthlessly crop off the top and bottom of the screen and fill the screen with the middle. Unfortunately, it's not logistically feasible to manually pan & scan every TV show, not to mention that movies are usually shot with pan & scanning in mind, whereas TV is not. So this usually cuts off important information and isn't very feasible. You could also simply distort and stretch the 4:3 image so it fills the whole 16:9 screen.

Who would want to spend $2000+ on a fancy new TV and watch most of their programming extra fat, as if it were on stretched-out silly putty? The answer: Almost everyone! I'd say about 90% of the time I see an HDTV, it's showing non-HD standard TV programming in stretched mode. I admit that the stretched images are not quite as annoying as you might expect, because our brains compensate for it to some degree, but I'm still baffled that this is the norm.

Anyway, this is why I'll never get a plasma HDTV. I don't want to watch my shows stretched, and I don't want those ugly gray bars, either. I'm waiting for LCD HDTV prices to come down before getting one of those. LCDs don't have that burn-in problem, so they can use black bars on the sides, which is far less annoying.

Still, I think I definitely prefer the gray bars to watching stretched images, and so I applaud B J's Restaurant and Brewhouse for giving us undistorted TV!

The ironic thing is that I didn't care at all about what was actually on TV there. :)

(Project 365 Day 175)

The fight of the century! Has Bunny met his match? But wait, McGraw's got a shiv! Is that even legal?

(Project 365 Day 174)

Look out! Bunny's got a weapon now!

(Project 365 Day 173)

I still remember finding this book at my local public library. I think I was drawn to it by the image of an intrepid girl backpacking her way around the galaxy. Turns out it was the third book of the Foundation Trilogy, often named the best science fiction trilogy of all time. I ended up reading them in reverse order the first time through. :P

It was the first Isaac Asimov book I had read, and I became totally obsessed with Asimov in my teenage years. Two concepts of his have stuck with me all these years: (1) Complexity. his stories often involved multiple parties each trying to achieve their own goals, but once their plots interacted, the outcome wouldn't be what anyone anticipated, though it would of course be perfectly logical. That's kind of how I see life. (2) Clarity. I loved Asimov's direct style of writing. He was never big on poetic flourishes; he always just wanted to get the ideas straight through, and that's what I aspire to in my writing. (Yes, I know this post is ironically somewhat long-winded. :P)

I had considered buying a copy of the Foundation Trilogy and re-reading it for a while now, but the new covers always felt kinda cheesy to me, and they made the books seem different, somehow, less appealing. I mean, take a look at the recent covers on Amazon. Then one day I noticed this used copy with that cover from the 80s that drew me in originally, and I finally bought it. (It took me a while, rummaging through used book stores, to find copies of the other two books from the same edition, but I eventually did.)

I judged this book by its cover, and it lead to the wonderful world of Asimov, so I feel attached to it, I guess. But then, I also still buy physical CDs because I think the album cover art affects my appreciation of the music. So maybe I'm just weird. :)

And in the end, it's also just a wonderful cover.

(P.S.: I noticed that the glow from my lamp was just about the right size to put a halo around the image. I think it makes for a nifty effect. :) )

Update: Hm, you know what? I'm terrible at remembering the plots of books, and, despite the fact that the Foundation Trilogy are nominally my favorite books, I can't actually remember a thing about what this girl actually does in the book. But I do vividly remember this cover and all the ideas and emotions that it evoked the first time I saw it. I guess I'm just a visual person.

(Project 365 Day 171)

This is my Easter-themed photo of the day. :P

(flashlight + bunny + wall)

(Project 365 Day 160)

So I was over at SFMOMA to see a "Picasso and American Art" exhibit, and I saw this cubist oil painting by Arshile Gorky titled "Composition with Head". It was painted from 1936-1937, but I couldn't get over how much the thing at the corner looked like my cell phone! Could Gorky see the future?

Zoom in for a better look at the painting.

(Project 365 Day 158)

"Ah, you're awake," said the bunny. "It would appear that the operation was a success. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Scarier large and on black.

Final Fantasy (the band.. or rather, the guy) was pretty neat. He plays his violin in a variety of ways, and he'll play a short loop, record and replay it with foot pedals, and then play new layers over that. Meanwhile, there's a shadow puppet show via overhead projector to go along with the music.

Here he's covering Bloc Party's "Modern Love" as he opens for them: (The drummer from Smoosh, the other opener, is helping out on this one, but she's not in frame.)

And here's Bloc Party. Clap your hands.

The ticket said "no camera or recorders", but flashes were going off all over the place:

This really made me appreciate the shutter-priority mode on my Fujifilm F30. Even though it doesn't have full manual, the shutter-priority is useful in a case like this when I want to artificially shorten the exposure beyond what I could do even with exposure compensation set to -2. (The backlighting effect wreaked havoc with the auto-exposure. :P)

I had fun taking pictures of the band's reflections through the broken mirror glass pieces that were mounted on the wall.

Scratches:

Funhouse:

Two guys:

Two guys, closer. No, this is not homoerotic at all:

Triangle:

The Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood:

My last three Project 365 photos have been themed around "yellow". The first two inadvertently, and the last intentionally.

Round Lamp, Yellow Wall:

This is not a yellow truck:

This is a Yellow truck.

Why am I yellow?

I figured I'd continue with the yellow theme of my last two photos.

So I can understand where the terms "black" and "white" come from. One's darker, one lighter. I can even understand "brown". "Red", a little less so. But I've never understood "yellow".

Okay, so this notepad isn't the world's greatest example of yellow, but still, compared to my arm, one is clearly yellow, and one is clearly not. Even compared to other people, how am I more "yellow"? If I'm in between "black" and "white", why not "gray"? :P For that matter, I'm clearly more "orange" than "yellow".

In all seriousness, though, I actually really am quite curious about the origins of using "yellow" to refer to East Asians. I wonder if it had anything to do with the "cowardice" definition? That is, I wonder if "yellow" was originally meant as a derogatory term. Did it originate with the term "Yellow Peril", or did it predate that?

(Project 365 Day 132)

After a power outage, my microwave clock tells me, one word at a time, to "PRESS CLEAR THEN PRESS TWO TO SET CLOCK". So I took a picture of the clock saying "clock", because I'm all into self-reference. But then I thought: Is it really self-referential?

I figure: At the time it's displaying this message to me, it's not acting as a clock. If it's not a clock while it's displaying the word "clock", then it's not self-referential, after all, right?

On the other hand, if you had a digital watch that displayed some message, you'd still think of it as a watch. So, from that perspective, it's still a clock that's just temporarily displaying a message, in which case it IS self-referential.

But then again, this is a microwave, and the display's primary use is as a timer, not a clock (subtle difference). So maybe it really IS only a clock when it's acting like one.

So yeah, I can't decide whether this photo is self-referential or not. :P

(Project 365 Day 123)

So it's President's Day today, and I wanted to take a President-themed picture. I know it's supposed to be for Washington and Lincoln's birthdays, but I figured I'd try to find do something relating to one of the lesser-known Presidents instead. Looking through a list of former Presidents, I found Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President of the United States.

So I looked through his info for something interesting, and hey! Turns out he signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law in 1882. It was a federal law that was specifically designed to limit Chinese immigration. Yellow Peril and all that. A number of related laws followed, and large scale Chinese immigration didn't resume until 1965!

Even today, Title 8, Chapter 7 of the United States Code is still labeled, "Exclusion of Chinese"! Of course, all the sections are now "repealed" or "omitted". But still, what a way to remind us of our history. (I can hear the foreign exchange student applicants now: "History?")

And so I came up with this picture: "Excluded Chinese".

P.S.: On a more flippant note, if vampires don't have reflections, does this make me an anti-vampire? And what do anti-vampires do, anyway? Spit blood, feast on garlic, and get burned by darkness? :P

(Project 365 Day 102)

The ticket counter at Shoreline Amphitheatre. Can you tell I've been obsessed with the decrepit carnival look lately? :P

(Project 365 Day 119 Year 00001)

Vernor Vinge (pronounced VIN-gee), who wrote the mind-blowing novel A Fire Upon the Deep and the ground-breaking paper The Coming Technological Singularity, gave a talk at the The Long Now Foundation tonight.

The concept behind The Long Now is that we're constantly living for the next day, if not the next five minutes, and we need to sometimes take a step back and think about the next ten thousand years, instead.

Meanwhile, Vinge speaks of a "singularity" that may well happen within our lifetimes when, through technology, we create a super-human intelligence that then, through a feedback loop, creates exponentially superior intelligences, until there exist minds that are far beyond our comprehension. After this happens, the world may be turned into something we cannot possibly predict.

Tonight, he gave a speech about what might happen if the technology singularity DOES NOT happen. He doesn't bring us new information so much as a new way of framing the issue, a new way of looking at things.

For anyone who lives in the San Francisco area, I highly recommend checking out future Long Now seminars. (They call the series SALT: Seminars About Long-term Thinking.)

(Project 365 Day 114)

I shot the shuttle in front of a poster, and then I shot the poster sans shuttle so I could manually mask out my hand in Photoshop.

UFO?

I didn't do any post-processing on that one aside from cropping.

And I lit this next one with the high beam of my car:

(I think it kinda has a bit of a deserted Coney Island look.)

Hooray pretty lights:

Seems every good picture of Felipe involves him screaming:

Banzai:

Okay, maybe he doesn't always have to be screaming:

Smoking in a tree:

Click above to expand. flickr link

I froze my hands off taking this picture. :P I knew I wanted to photograph this thing when I first saw it off the side of the freeway, but there's no way I can take a picture from a moving car at night.. So I was happy to find a dirt road off to the side of the freeway. It's the cross at the center of this map. (The power plant is to the north. Hover your mouse over it or click it!)

Click the above image for the flickr post (and larger version). I also took too more pictures of the telescopes here and here.

(Project 365 Day 78)

This is one of the four radio telescopes over by NASA Ames Research Center, right along Highway 237. I always thought they looked really cool. For one week, I drove by them every day to work nearby, and then I changed jobs. So sad.

Anyway, they didn't seem to actually belong to Ames, so I looked up Ames in Wikipedia, and that led me to something called WikiMapia, and I figured out who it belongs to.

Apparently, it belongs to Onizuka Air Force Station. It's soon to be decommissioned, but it has a windowless building called "the Blue Cube" that has for decades housed some of our most top secret projects. I had no idea! A bit more info in this other flickr user's description.

Hm. Come to think of it, Onizuka AFS redevelopment plans were mentioned in the Winter 2007 issue of the Sunnyvale Quarterly Report that I flickred a few days ago! The City of Sunnyvale is actively seeking community input in shaping its plans. :)

(Project 365 Day 77)

Quick snap while I was at a red light. (Cropped.)

I went to a bowling alley, but the wait was too long, so we didn't actually bowl. I did, however, take some pictures, stitched here into a QuickTime VR panorama. Drag left to pan the camera!

The still panorama version of this is my Project 365 Day 70 post.

Embedded version of the QTVR is below the fold.

The Yes Go's were up before Scarab:

The TV was playing that Doors movie, but with a really terrible signal causing lots of scan lines that made everything look really freaky:

DJ Chika was spinning some awesome alt. hip-hop:

Some badass standing in the back: ;)

(Hm. Now that I look at it some more, those light patterns make it look like he's having flaming flatulence. :D)

"Scarab has finally been spotted."

(I'm jealous of people with bigger lenses than me. :P)

Angry:

Apparently Felipe yells a lot: ;)

Emoting:

Scarab is for lovers:

Here's Scarab at back at The Vibe, where they played once before. There were more people there this time:

Here's a big (1024x325) version on Flickr.

This is Wii Bowling. The game says to twist your hand to curve the ball. I was rather impressed that the ball would tend to spin left, just like real life. I figured it was because I was right-handed, and I naturally twist my wrist a bit. I was impressed by the subtlety of control. When the pins were on my right, I twisted my hand right, and it would spin right. If I used both hands, I could get it to go straight. Cool, right? The Wii controller could sense the slightest of wrist twists. Impressive. Right?

Well, given the situation above, try to make the ball spin LEFT. You can't. It's impossible. In fact, most of the twist control is just an illusion! Yes, if you use both hands, you can get it within a small range where it actually goes straight, but if you give it the slightest twist, it will always spin in the direction of the pins (within certain limits). The easy way to test this is (assuming you're right-handed) to start to the left of the pins and just bowl normally. Or even intentionally twist left. Note that the ball will now curve right, leftward twist be damned.

Within the game, this means that strikes are largely a matter of luck, but that spares are relatively easy to pick up. Beyond this game, however, it means that the Wii controller's sensitivity is probably not as good as it seems at first glance, and that they have had to fudge it quite a bit. They might also have just done this to make the bowling game easier, I guess, to make beginners happier... but at the expense of making you lose your sense of accomplishment and enjoyment once you realize how much of your score is based on luck.

Either way, it is another demonstration of the Wii control scheme's focus on "perceived performance".

Update (Jan-24-2007): I thought I'd respond to the comments below over here as well. So I did more testing, and I have noticed that, contrary to what I thought, you can control the amount of spin, so that you can make it spin more or less. However, I still maintain that you cannot control the direction of spin.

When you start a lane, hit "right" a few times so you're standing to the right of the head pin, but facing straight. Now try to get the ball to curve into the right-side gutter. It is impossible. You can only curve it left. (If you aim to the left of the head pin, you can only curve it right.) However, it is possible to curve the ball very little so it misses the head pin on the right or curve it a lot so it misses the head pin on the left.

There is more skill involved than I thought, but the direction of curve is still determined before you throw.

I'm fascinated by how the Wii Remote Controller (barely visible on the right) makes you think it's doing more than it does. You put this "sensor bar" on top of your TV, and you think that it's somehow magically detecting exactly where in 3-dimentional space your "Wiimote" is. I mean, you can move it, and it detects that, and you can even point at things on the screen. But in fact, the Wiimote is actually two completely separate technologies.

(1) There are accelerometers inside the controller that detect orientation and, well, acceleration. What it does NOT do is detect POSITION in any way, but it gives the illusion of detecting that through human behavior. For instance, in the boxing game, you kind of naturally hold your controllers up vertically to keep your fists high, and you kind of naturally hold them horizontally when your arms are down low.. But the game doesn't actually know if your arms are high or low. You can test this by turning your hands while holding them high: The game starts thinking your fists are low, etc. So how can you point at things on the screen if it doesn't know the position of your controller?

(2) The "sensor bar" atop your TV is not sensing anything at all. Instead, it's actually just a couple of IR lights. it's your Wiimote that actually has a camera! There is a calibration screen where you can see this in action, and that's what's pictured here. What you see is the view from the Wiimote. It sees the two dots of the "sensor bar" near the bottom right, tilted right, so it knows that you're actually pointing the controller at the top left, and tilting it left. Awesome, no? In fact, there's a YouTube video of a couple of guys using two regular remote controls to simulate the sensor bar.

The sensor bar in this picture is the thing with purple dots on top of the TV. Here's a close-up:

What's neat about this is that those lights are completely invisible to the naked eye, because they're infrared, but the CCDs on my digital camera pick it up somehow. Just another reminder that cameras and eyes actually work differently. :)

P.S.: I brought my Wii to Thanksgiving dinner. Even though I only have one controller, it was still a hit among the "adults". My mom got really into the bowling game. If Nintendo can keep releasing games that are as accessible as Wii Sports, they could really expand their market. I think the tough part now is getting the third parties to think in that mindset.

I'll spare you my actual shirtless self and present you with this virtual version (what Nintendo calls a "Mii").

"The Vibe" was fully packed, as you can see here:

Behind Mel is a question often asked of the band:

Pipe's got crazy hair:

I never realized how much Mark looks like Goose:

Mel's singing, "WhatEVER":

(Project 365 Day 26)

Here you are, watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip as if you were me.

Here's my latest project365 picture:

(Project 365 Day 24)

I went down to Ocean Beach at sunset, knowing that sunsets are really difficult to take pictures of (because people have already seen so many), but I figured I'd find something interesting somehow, and I did! The ocean was behind me as I took this picture.

I'm dressing up as Ash for Halloween.

And they're building a new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. Tons and tons of cranes!

Judevac convinced me to do Project 365: Taking and posting one picture a day, of anything. I started a couple of days ago, and I've been uploading them to Flickr. You can see them all by looking at my Flickr pictures tagged project365. I'll probably try to set up a sidebar box or something at some point, but for now, I'm not going to post them all here on this blog. I'll only be posting ones I particularly like, like this one:

The view from the roof deck of a party I went to. That couple at the bottom are on the roof of an adjacent building.

Pictures from the show that I made the flyer for. :)

"Four Skelchies"

A glimpse of Lisa.

Felipe, larger than life!

They look liked they're facing away from each other, all pissed or something, but we're actually looking at Mark through a mirror... so they're really facing toward each other!

Did I just blow your mind?

The revolution will be blogged.

Jammin'

And, just to make sure you can't sleep tonight, here's a completely undoctored picture from the evening. :-o

Scarab spontaneously played at a block party in San Jose with With Report.

This picture is comes right after they announced, "Our next song is about driving from one stop light to the next."

Got stuck at an intersection on my way home tonight because of this thing:

There was a bigass truck in front of it at first, too. What is that thing? Some sort of road-paving thing maybe?

P.S.: And why do the green lights look cyan?

My friends' band Scarab (now with MySpace page!) played Friday night at the Li-Po Lounge in Chinatown! The bar looked all Chinesey and stuff:

But that's not quite where they were playing. Instead, they were playing here:

No, that's not a restroom. That's just the staircase to the basement (which is also where the restrooms are). :P

Ah, and we finally get to the basement! It doesn't get more "underground" than this!

The "lighting" consisted of a couple of lamps set up on the floor:

But check out the disco ball at the back of the stage:

That disco ball is the only bit of decoration in the place. It totally classes up the joint! :P

This is ancient martial arts form called "flex-filming":

Russ looking passionate: (He's so hot! ;) )

Mel looking snooty: ;)

It was too dark to get good pictures of the other band members. :\

Banging away:

The band's awesome glass-tinting van:

BONUS PICS!

From Scarab's second Brain Wash show a while back:

Look! Russ is an ATM! :P

Brain Wash has apparently changed their paintings since the last Scarab show there:

My new phone takes still-crappy but at least halfway viewable pictures, so I present to you three signs.

I noticed this sign at the gas station:

Does anyone actually follow the directions and turn off their cell phones when they're filling up? Unenforced rules are one of my pet peeves. I mean, if it's really important, then station attendants should at least yell at people who use their cell phones (assuming it's impractical to check if it's turned off in their pockets). Anyway, I mostly found it interesting because I had never heard of that rule before.

Now for a couple of amusing signs:

The one on the left was in the parking garage elevator at Jack London Square. I think it's glued on, but still: Hilarious! Actually, what I also found fascinating about it is that, against all rationality, I was afraid to press it. :P

The one on the right is the label for the back entrance of the building where I work. We just moved offices, and this sign suddenly appeared one day. What's particularly amusing is the shadow it casts against the inside walls in the afternoon. It reminded me of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy holds up the Staff of Ra at just the right time, and the sun beam hits a map to indicate the location of the Ark. Someone walked over to the wall and started patting it down, but, alas, he did not discover any hidden rooms, let alone the Ark of the Covenant. :P

I didn't actually go to most of the Feburary 15, 2003 London Anti-War Protest, but I caught the tail end of it in Piccadilly Circus (which is basically a square, no clowns or elephants). They were cleaning up, and people were heading home when I got there.

What amuses me about this picture is how you have this big line of police, and here I am taking a picture from behind the line. :) Actually, there were quite a few people still behind the line. The police were just shepherding new arrivals onto the crosswalks.

I took a solo Northern California road trip this week. Pictures!

Like any good All-American road trip, mine started with an All-American road-side diner! The food kinda sucked, though. It was cold.

This is where that diner was:

I stayed at an ocean-side hotel for a couple of nights in Fort Bragg, CA. I like how Google Maps satellite view only has half the town in hi-res. Guess what this next picture is; I'm pretty proud of it:

It's the building next door! That's a 15-second exposure I took with my mini-tripod. :)

The view from my back porch in the morning:

Reverse angle shot from the Glass Beach:

Okay, so you can't actually see the hotel, but at least it's a reverse angle shot of that group of trees!

This store reminds me of those "Chinese Food and Donuts" joints, except even more peculiar:

(It's not a joke! They really do sell both music and photography equipment!)

The highlight of my trip speaks for itself:

It reminded me of this picture I took of Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium in Graz, Austria, though that's not named after him any more! And yes, the State Park is actually named after a different Van Damme. :P It still makes me want to go find places named after Stallone and Seagal, though. And then I can go on a real scavenger hunt and look for a landmark named after Lundgren!

I wanted to check out the the Pygmy Forest, but it was closed because the bridge was damaged by a storm. :(

This is a cool bridge, and I like how you can see the river peeking through the trees here:

It's a tiny town where people looked at me funny when I drove in, so I drove right back out, but I think it's quite photogenic from afar. :P

Sunset panorama in Mendocino:

Closeup:

I got back to Fort Bragg, went down a side road, and found the littlest Sears you ever saw:

Had some decent dinner at Mendo Bistro, where they had this odd ginger ale:

(I was also amused that my fish came with baby bok choy. I guess it's a theme!)

I love the way this building looks. I love the logo font, and the texture reminds me of suede:

They have a restaurant across the street, where I had the best fish sandwich ever. Locally caught fresh fish makes a big difference! I didn't drink their beer, but I did try their "Mendocino Mustard" that's made with their beer, so I guess that counts! :) (It was good and interestingly textured mustard, too.)

The next day, I drove up through the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt State Park, where you wind through a redwood forest. It was very pretty, but I don't have any good pictures from it. :P

It rained the whole way back down to Santa Rosa. This picture I took along 101 is kinda spooky and pretty at the same time:

I love how all the roadside attractions proclaim themselves as "World Famous". :) This is supposed to be the house with the tallest ceiling or something like that. It was closed, though, but I took this vertical panorama:

Next to my motel in Santa Rosa was a very nice steakhouse. (The $25 prime rib was great stuff!) I also liked the juxtaposition of the classic Bates Motel look of the building and the modern sans serif font on the sign:

Good Ol' Charlie Brown! The pattern on his forehead is a drawing of the Charles M. Schulz Museum, which is where this was:

In the courtyard was this odd sculpture:

My favorite part was Woodstock's clipboard:

:)

Finally, I checked out the Pacific Coast Air Museum, where I saw lots of nifty planes, and also this other kind of flyer:

I like the part that reads: "Equipped with a full one horsepower 24 volt electric drivetrain, the best way to describe the power capabilities of the E-200 is that it is equal to the power of one person, struggling, to move the aircraft." :)

A couple of pictures from my phone (which is why they're so blurry):

We saw this out on Clement. It's a whole bunch of CDs strung up, spinning around, with colorful lights and a curved mirror behind them. Why? I have no idea.

And those, I just found creepy. From Forever 21, I think.

So I hate the junkmail that says "IMPORTANT FEDERAL LOAN NOTICE", especially ones that get printed on those envelopes where you tear off the perforated sides so they look more official. Why do these people not get prosecuted for deceptive advertising? *sigh*

This envelope from the WWF (no longer confused with the WWE) amused me, though:

[Bright red circles added.]

I mean, doesn't that bit at the right undermine the seriousness of their "EMERGENCY" banner? Just a little? :P

So when I was a kid, we'd often burn "gold ingots" made of paper for the ancestors. The idea is that anything you burn goes down to the Netherworld. We don't do it much any more.

My dad recently visited my grandfather's grave in China. These were the offerings: (Our relatives took these pictures.)

(No, you don't burn the food.)

Well, you see that box of Mahjongg tiles there? That's a complete set of paper Mahjongg tiles, meant for burning, so my grandfather can play Mahjongg in the afterlife! :) And you see that small red box in the upper-right corner? That's a box of paper "cigarettes", of my grandfather's favorite brand, so he can take a drag in the afterlife! (No, he didn't die of lung cancer. :P)

The Mahjongg tiles being delivered:

These are pictures from my trip to the Moss Beach tidepool area.

A colorful hermit crab:

Anyone have any idea what these are? They look like miniature palm trees to me:

Sea grass, bright pink algae, and an anemonemone:

Some kind of buoy? Also a seagull:

And here, a heron:

"Hi there. I am a rock."

This post is dedicated to the above rock, who started falling apart when I tried to take another picture of her.

From my trip to Vegas a few months ago:

That's a sushi restaurant in the MGM Grand.

Below to your left is a picture from the Aladdin. Below to your right is a picture I took years ago in San Francisco Chinatown, of a similar theme.

(Also from that trip: The Butter Knife of Damocles.)

The ship is the Balclutha, which used to sail 'round the tip of Cape Horn during the Gold Rush! My strongest memory of elementary school was the night we spent on the Balclutha as a class. We weren't allowed to bring modern things like digital watches on the ship, and we learned to tie various knots and such. We even split up into groups and had to complete various tasks under time pressure, like hauling ropes in from the dock.

Unfortunately, the galley crew was really bad at it, and they kept having to redo it. We ended up having dinner at 1am! That was unheard of back in elementary school. :) Luckily, I was voted 2nd mate, so I got to eat inside with the teachers instead of out in the cold like the commoners. :P

We didn't get to bed (sleeping bags in the ship's hold) until 3 in the morning, and then I had to wake up 5 to stand watch! I think I got another couple of hours of sleep before we left in the morning. I pretty much slept through the entire next day. :)

And now, seal fight at Fisherman's Wharf!

The seal on the right was knocked off into the water, but it just jumped back up for a sneak attack:

Oh, but to no avail. We have a winner!

* * *

Bonus picture:

"Items Found at a Friend's House"
mixed media
2005

* * *

Okay, to cleanse your mind of that, here's another bonus picture, from nearly a year ago (November 18, 2004, apparently), behind the old Motorola building:

Earthquake. Flavor. Potato Chips.

This one kinda speaks for itself.

Okay, I take that back. It really doesn't. It doesn't speak for itself at all.

Scarab's second gig. This place was livelier than the last, but the lighting wasn't as interesting, so fewer pictures. :P

Guitar + tambourine + Hindi lyrics = great song.

This next one is my favorite picture of the night. I call it, "Two Men".

I wonder how many instruments they actually use throughout their set. It's at least 10.

Colorful!

BONUS PHOTOS!

Lucky you! Here are a couple of pictures from their first gig that I didn't post last time.

This next one is of This Band Is A Ship, who played after Scarab at both shows. Yay, fog machines!

I almost forgot to mention my greatest accomplishment of the weekend!

I introduced a five-year-old to Super Mario Brothers. :D

My dad's friend gave me a couple of original animation cells from Journey to the West cartoons of the 80s! The guy knew the director of the Shanghai Animation Studio, who brought a bunch of cells to an awards show in Brazil and gave him a couple on the way. They've just been sitting in storage some 20-odd years until my dad mentioned to his friend that I liked the Monkey King. :)

For those who don't know, Journey to the West is one of the classic Chinese novels. You could think of it as the Chinese The Odyssey, maybe. The main character is Sun Wu Kong, a trickster monkey deity, born from a rock, who rules a monkey kingdom on Flower Fruit Mountain. You may have heard of him as "The Monkey King". He learns martial arts and magical powers and becomes extremely arrogant. Eventually he crashes a party in Heaven itself and causes a ruckus. The Jade Emperor sends warrior after Heavenly warrior after him, but he defeats all of them.

Finally, the Buddha Himself captures the Monkey King and imprisons him under a mountain. Fiven hundred years later, he's finally freed with a chance to redeem himself by helping a monk, Tang Seng, journey westward to retrieve Buddhist sutras from India. They're joined by two others seeking a second chance, Friar Sand and Zhu Ba Jie (a lazy, greedy, womanizing pig creature whose family name Zhu is literally "Pig"). That's them here:

That's actually a background plate with the characters painted on a clear plastic plate above!

The rest of the story is basically an episodic road trip. Rumor goes that eating Tang Seng's flesh would grant you everlasting life, so of course all sorts of demons come out of the woodwork.

Anyway, kids like me loved the various animated portrayals of the Monkey King. In a way, I think of him as my favorite part of Chinese culture. I looked all over the place for a poster of him, to no avail. These days, most portrayals are anime-style or whatnot, which just doesn't resonate with me.

My dad's friend also gave me this cell of Ne Zha, a hot-tempered child deity who flies around on flaming wheels. He was in some ways the Monkey King's arch nemesis, because they're both mischievous. Similar personalities tend to clash, I guess. :)

I can't wait to get these things framed and onto my walls. I looked all over Shanghai and couldn't find anything like this, and I was just looking for mass-produced posters, not original animation cells!

There's a memorial at the corner right across the street from my apartment. Apparently, a teenager was killed in a car accident on 680, and he used to live around here. Many kids have been visiting the site, adding more flowers and candles, talking to each other, all Saturday night and throughout the day Sunday. I saw one girl simply stand there, motionless, soundless, simply looking at it.

I wanted to capture the moment, but I didn't feel right taking pictures of them, so I waited until late at night when everyone had gone home to show you a few pictures of the memorial itself.

Update: His friends have been holding memorials at the same corner on the anniversary of the accident. I took another photo in 2007, two years later.

Here's a selection of the pictures I took at Scarab's first gig. (Also the first time I've been to a friend's rock show!)

Tuning.

"¡BUENAS NOCHES!"

Once more, with feeling!

She can't take her eyes off her man.

So that's where that Technicolor Dreamcoat went!

The crowd at Edinburgh Castle (the pub, not the castle).

I like how the basson bisects the lantern and makes kind of a null set symbol. ∅ *ducks*

I kinda like the effect of someone else's flash going off during my long exposure.

Head-banging!

The cleanup. And now you see why I hate flashes. Anyone see the atmosphere? I could've sworn it was around here somewhere. Where did it go?

I sent a new batch of pictures to myself from my phone.

To your right is a breakdancing reindeer. It kept spinning 'round and 'round on its head. :) I'm not sure how it deals with the antler situation.

I like this moving company's logo. :P

Below is a Chinese guardian lion in a color that's oh so very very wrong.

Posted on May 9, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3)