Dec 20, 2009

Dec 11, 2009

Winter.

It's a cold winter, the fireplace is barely hot enough. The street outside is wet, the sky is grey. There aren't many people walking their dogs, and those who are, are huddled up and shivering.

Yeah, I shouldn't be whining, this is California and not Ontario, but they really don't know how to insulate buildings here. I liked wandering around the neighborhood when it was warm - it's not as pleasant now. In memory of happier times, here's something I found scrawled on a nearby building a month ago, when the sun was still shining.

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Nov 11, 2009

New phone time

After many mostly-reliable years of Nokia-ness, I've finally upgraded to an Android phone. Overall, it's a lot more features, but a lot less UI polish. I feel like I need a lot more apps to get things done. And while I used to be able to text with one hand while driving, that's pretty much impossible now.

On the plus side, I did get a free show out of it. This video, is NOT from the phone camera though.

Oct 29, 2009

Being sentimental

Had a few drinks at the wine bar down the street (nice neighborhood joint, got a free sticker!), which lead to being sentimental. So thus comes three items of canned seafood from my childhood:
- Brunswick brand sardines with Tabasco peppers
- Clover Leaf brand canned tuna
- Unknown chinese brand of fried dace with black beans

I can forsee some cheap tasty meals in the near future...

Sep 30, 2009

Randoms.

Been flipping through the NYT runway slideshows, and it seems like that season of madness that was the mid-2000s has passed, with the booming economy, towering platforms, and garbage-bag silhouettes. I'm sure there's tonnes of articles out there on how fashion reflects the highs and lows of the economy and consumer confidence. I'm not sure. Maybe tighter budgets mean tighter waistlines, and practical sensibilities mean practical shoes (practical can be relative?). Or maybe Timberlake's been busy off-stage bringing sexy back. I particularly liked the United Bamboo shots. Never heard of the label before, but I'm wondering if it's hinting at a boom in asian/american designers (along with names like Derek Lam, Peter Som, Jason Chu, Richard Chai, and Alexander Wang).

Spring fashion shows means its actually fall. I'm not sure where that came about, maybe it's just a symbolic gesture on how detached from the real world these designer folks are. But anyways, fall means winter is coming, and that means my mind's detached and is running 3 months ahead. Well, that's what happened when I saw this video.


Yeah, I got that from browsing too much YouTube. Some other awesome stuff on YouTube. I might try doing some time lapse videos. After I get around to uploading vacation pics.


And finally, somehow I found this video. Now last year I had thought Lady Gaga was some forgettable flavor-of-the-week dance music singer(?), prancing around in her music videos with her tight little swimsuits and funky makeup. The whole attention whoring outfits didn't help. Never realized she actually could sing. Now I want to go see her live. Maybe she'll be the Elton John of the 2010s...


Here's another one, with absolutely lo-fi audio, from a Marc Jacobs party. Which brings us back to fashion shows. Darn.

Sep 11, 2009

A different pace of life.

I can't believe that I was on vacation just 2 weeks ago. I also can't believe it was already 2 weeks ago.

Not that I want to live in a village in the middle of nowhere, where there's nothing to do but farm quinoa and llamas, but the slow pace out there is kinda relaxing.
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Sep 8, 2009

Figs.

Apparently my coworker has a neighbor with a fig tree, that drops a tonne of figs each summer and makes a mess. So the neighbor gives boxes of figs to the coworker, who doesn't happen to like figs. So now I get a box. Now I just gotta find me some prosciutto or jamon serrano.
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Sep 2, 2009

I hate Ticketmaster. With a passion.

Every time I buy a ticket for an event through either TicketMaster or LiveNation, a swell of an rage and anger floods my being. Ok, LiveNation is a little better because of their occasional sales.

But get this:
Full Price Ticekt: 22.50x2
Facility Charge: 2.50x2
Convenience Charge: 8.50x2
Delivery: 2.50
Order Processing Fee: 5.40
Total 74.50

That's practically 40% in fees on top of the ticket prices. It's insane.

Sep 1, 2009

Views from above.

Lima's pretty dim at night. I'd have expected more lights from a city its size.
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La Paz spreads like a brown blanket over the Andean hills. The size is surprising, as well as the violent layer of air that you pass through right before you land.
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Miami is big and bright; the energy of the city pulses, lightning flashing through the clouds above and around.
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Los Angeles is burning, choking in the billowing smoke.
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I recognized the contours of the Los Altos hills on the way down, with a warm sense of familiarity. Does that make this home?

Aug 30, 2009

Book.

I'm a big fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' flowery style. I'm almost halfway through "Love in the time of Cholera". It's nowhere near as epic as "100 Years of Solitude", but it's still a decent read. I've learned a new word, "atavistic", but I haven't figured out "the bicycle on the sea, or the chicken on the grill, or the drawn-and-quartered angel".

Looking forward to the flight home, I might finish on the plane.

Aug 28, 2009

Unprepared

One thing I forgot to do before taking off was to install photo software on my netbook. There's two apps I usually use. Breeze System Downloader Pro copies photos off of my camera's CF card, and gives you a bunch of options on how to organize the photos as they're downloaded. I organize mine by date. It makes my life easy, since it doesn't copy photos that have already been copied before. All I have to do is plug in my CF card, and photos are automatically copied over and organized quickly.

I'm still using C1 RAW to convert RAW images to JPGs that I can upload to flickr. RAW files are much preferred, since they contain a lot more colour information than JPGs. That is, you can fix the white balance, or find detail information in areas that appear to be all white or all back. C1 is far from being the top app out their for this purpose. I'm using both apps because they were more or less the best of their breed a few years ago, and they're purchased and legit.

Unfortunately, after the first two days in Cuzco, I realized that I was filling up my CF card. Although I had a few more cards, I suspected they proably wouldn't last too long. Luckily I had a trial version of Adobe Lightroom installed. Lightroom's probably the best of the breed right now, but I'm still not certain I'm ready to drop $200 to replace C1 which is sufficient on the most part.

That's the long way of saying that Lightroom was useful on the first day of the trip, I got a few photos up on flickr, but trial period expired within a couple of days. I managed to extend it a few days by never shutting down and only using hibernate. Unfortunately, Win7 crashed once when I unplugged my memory card reader. I can try shooting in RAW+JPG, but I won't have a chance to put up any MP pics before I get back.

Aug 5, 2009

July was awesome.

Hm, I keep thinking of blogging about things, like visiting Montreal and eating at Au Pied de Cochon, visiting Crater Lake, weekends in SF, meeting strange online people IRL, or water-balloon-sniping the CEO at a company fundraiser, but I never seem to get around to it.

I can't believe it's already August. Last month was packed, and the birds are all out chirping this month.
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Jul 17, 2009

Things I didn't expect to find in Toronto.




We can make this an entirely unfair scavenger hunt. Next time I'm back I'll bring a present for whoever can identify where these are. If I remember. If you were there when I took the picture, you don't qualify.

Jul 9, 2009

It's not the same Toronto.

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People change. That's a given. For better or worse, I'd run into people after a few years and find they're not quite as I remembered. Recognizeable of course, but usually the interests aren't necessarily the same as before. Some people grow more adventurous, others a little more settled and staid. Others have additions they carry around in diapers.

Toronto's a little different too. Don Mills and York Mills used to be kinda dead, now it's upscale. The condo on the corner of Bayview and Sheppard used to be a big grassy hill on the edge of a parking lot. The garbage dump on the corner of Bayview and Leslie used to be a parking lot too.

While still flooded with immigrants, it seems like the faces are changing. I'm noticing more people with darker skin then before, and hearing more Arabic, along with other languages I don't recognize.

I was wondering, listening to the radio, whether 102.1 was still the Edge. It seemed somehow, a little less edgy. Like how alternative's gone mainstream. Then just yesterday I read about the suicide of Martin Streek. I've been listening to the Edge for so long that his voice had become a fixture. Even though I *know* they come and go (like morning show hosts "Don and Erin" and "Humble and Fred", I still find it mind-boggling when they change or disappear, especially in such a tragic manner.

Speaking of celebrity, does it strike anyone else as kinda odd how the protests in Iran kinda toned down with MJ's passing, and now they're back up and at it now that his tribute's done?

Ok, I know I'm writing about YYZ, but I've been listening to a band from SFO.

Jul 6, 2009

Retro Monday.

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I seem to be keeping myself pretty entertained these days. I haven't even blogged about camping out in Joshua Tree in June, and already it's July.

There's a deep subtle thrill to camp out in the middle of nowhere. Not at a campground with facilities, but just out there, where there isn't another soul in a 10 mile radius. It might not be as exciting as night in the hustle of the city, but for a moment the world falls into another perspective.

I felt so small and insignificant in the vast emptiness. Looking upwards just revealed an even greater vastness of an incomprehensible scale. The rest of the world seemed so far away and inconsequtial; only the blinking lights of high flying planes or slow moving satellites reminded me of that high tech society on the other side of the mountain range. It felt like the world could end, and I'd miss it entirely. It was brilliant.

On another note, I heard a Matthew Good song on the radio the other day. Haven't heard any of that down here. How's this one for going back a few years?


Jun 18, 2009

I do requests.

This NAFTA thing clearly isn't working, because whenever I make a trip back to Canada, 3/4 of my suitcase ends up carrying things that are cheaper when bought online in the US. Take for example:

Anonymous Stranger: hi
me: hi Anonymous Stranger.
AS: can i ask a favour?
me: yes?
AS: do you have room in your bag to bring something for me from US?
me: a lens?
AS: no....
AS: a colon cleanse system?

Yes, my friends can be incredibly funny. In this case, even without joking.

Jun 11, 2009

On healthy eating.

Remember those drink your vegetable commercials? Do hops count as vegetables?

What about pesto?

Jun 3, 2009

Reminder to self.

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The world isn't all bad.

May 23, 2009

Beyond all expectations.

It's a McG movie, so there's the lowered expectations and all. But how bad can a Terminator movie be, especially with Christian Bale as John Connor? I'll have to say, this wasn't the movie I thought from the trailer. It didn't for a moment, feel dark or gritty. This is the cheeziest, most cliched, feel-good Terminator yet. So, the answer is: about as bad as you can imagine, and maybe a little bit more. Thanks McG, you've exceeded my expectations again!

May 19, 2009

Whatever happened to winter?

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I like looking forward to that last snowboarding trip of the year, the one where you end the season with a bang and wave goodbye to the snow capped peaks for another seven or eight months. Some years don't quite work that way though, a few busy weekends here, bad weather there, and before you know it, it's 35C out and the grass on the east bay hills is golden again.

I had an idea to blog about music, but the days flowed into weeks and months, and I've forgotten most of it. I have noticed that imeem's somewhat become my new radio (Pandora seems down a lot, and YouTube audio quality just isn't that great).

Not that any of these are new, but just an assortment from the past couple of months:


Your Hand In Mine - Explosions In The Sky

<

im good im gone - lykke li


Hope For The Hopeless - A Fine Frenzy











L.E.S. Artistes (Single) - Santigold


1901 - Phoenix


Bach: Partita No. 2 in D Minor - J. S. Bach

May 6, 2009

Quixotic.

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I just got $300 in Amazon gift certificates. At first I thought it was spam, but then I found the certificate codes work. I think someone out there can't type their own email address.

Apr 29, 2009

Braindead.

How come every so often, I'll read something intriguing or inspirational, and I'll never get around to blogging about it?

And when I do come around to blogger, my mind draws a blank?

Work is sucking out my brains. <slurp>.

Now where's that schmassion?

Mar 17, 2009

what monoculture?

Toronto's always boasted about it's multiculturalism. But since there's a small group discussion going on in Hindi in the cube to my left, and my coworker's talking on the phone in Mandarin in the cube to my right, I don't feel *that* far from home.

Mar 5, 2009

On Storytelling.

Part of the appeal of studying the sciences is the immutability of the physical laws. There's the hope (or perhaps fantasy) that contributions to the field will last as long as the physical laws themselves, to be applied universally by mankind, years and millenia down the road. Like how Einstein's theory of relativity is still constantly applied to physics and astronomy. The arts on the other hand, are subject to fashion, politics, and the capricious winds of humanity's trends. One man's epic may be another's satire; a woman's fashion statement may be the laughingstock to the next generation; a failed artist can die in poverty - either to be hailed a master posthumously, or to remain in the obscurity for the rest of history.

Perhaps unchanged over the millenia of human existence is the enjoyment of a good story. The intriguing characters, the rise and turn of the plot, the ideas and commentary all serve to play upon both the intellect and emotions. Story after story, fact or fiction or some combination of the two, have been repeated across the globe and through the ages. The story's taken many forms, spoken by a grandparent, sang by a bard, a puppet show, a play, a dance.

Today's most popular medium is probably film or television. But the video games industry is already bigger than Hollywood. I still recall playing "Grim Fandango" a decade ago; the story there was entirely captivating, in a way few following games have succeeded. Some recent titles, "Dead Space", "Mirror's Edge", and "Need for Speed: Underground", all from EA, all shared the same story. You do task after task (kill zombies/jump across buildings/drive your fast car) to get to some goal, just to realize that the character who's been giving you directions is a traitor and you have to defeat them.

There was no great storytelling, but all three games attempted to create some sort of cinematic atmosphere, and it's just an indicator that the industry is moving beyond twitch-based entertainment to a real storytelling medium.

After reading "Watchmen" a month ago (after having heard about it for years), I was struck by the stupendous storytelling genius behind it. In my mind, Dostoyevsky was literature, comic books cheap entertainment, and graphic novels somewhere in between. "Watchmen" firmly put itself into my literature category, with its allusions to religion, discussion of humanity and exploration of (anti-)(super-)heroes buried in the plot. And compared to your standard novel, it was rendered two-fold, in both the text and the symbolism in the art. Perhaps four-fold if you include the comic-book-within-the-comic book.

Just as the comic-book matured into something like "Watchmen", I suspect it'll just be a matter of time before a game of such epic proportions would be created - provided game creators aim above the teenage male demographic (just like graphic novelists).

That being said, I'm skeptical of how well the "Watchmen" will translate to film. I'm sure there's plenty like me out there. It would be extremely difficult for some of the nuanced symbolism to come across in a moving picture. Plus, let's face it, comic book text bubbles just need to have that little extra bravado and flair. Speaking it aloud in a leotard onscreen would be just - cheezy.

Feb 23, 2009

On supply and demand.

A few days after release, I had to call around to maybe 6 stores to find myself a copy of Street Fighter 4. All the stores were sold out of the two $80 or $150 Mad Catz built, Street Fighter branded 6 button joysticks though.

Checking online, the high end stick is now going for over $400. That's more than 6 times the price of the game itself. Recession wha?

Feb 18, 2009

It's pouring.

Not working on a midweek Wednesday and hitting these conditions instead:

Snow Stats (snow totals in inches)
Last 24 hours 14-16"
Last 48 hours 38-44"
Last 7 days 102-132"

Oh, and it wasn't actually pouring, it did that over the weekend. It was sunny. I'd like to think it's a little like what heaven's like. Except maybe in heaven I won't suck and spill in waist deep powder on the flats. Oh, and T & V will be there too.
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Feb 17, 2009

It's raining...

What's better than working on a long weekend Monday?

Jan 21, 2009

There's probably a Law for this somewhere.

It's been sunny for what, 3 weeks straight? So no fresh snow up in the mountains. Great. So how come it is that the day I want to ride the bike around, my battery is dead, and the following day when I actually have it all recharged and ready to go, it starts raining?

Yo Obama, you gotta work on controlling the weather.

Jan 20, 2009

Early to the party.

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Back at what we used to call the old house, there was this small magnolia tree, smack dab in the middle of the front lawn. Every spring we'd see it's tiny fuzzy buds emerge like like pussy willows, but bloom into huge magenta and white flowers until the petals fall off and whither on the ground while the leaves eventually fill the tree.

That was then, this is now. Screw waiting for spring, the flowers come out in January. I hope this isn't the end of the snowboarding season, it's barely started!

Hm, that magnolia tree back home must be fricking huge now.

Jan 16, 2009

RAW Workflow: Bibble Pro 4.10

While Bibble Labs has announced a faster and more featureful Bibble 5, the latest version available is still 4.10. While screenshots of 5 show a modern grey UI like C1 4, Lightroom and Apple's Aperture, the existing incarnation bears a more traditional, labyrinthine interface. Once upon a time, I believed that an app should be judged by its capabilities, and that the user interface was merely gloss. By that reasoning, Bibble should earn top scores. In terms of things that you can do with your image, it's got almost everything that you can do with Lightroom 2 (except dodge and burn), and far more than you can with C1. It's also reasonably priced, with Bibble Lite coming in at $89 with all the image manipulation features, and the Pro version coming in at $159 with more batch processing and tethered shooting.

When it comes to workflow apps though, a better UI isn't just about being prettier, it means you can get stuff done faster. While I wouldn't say Bibble's interface is poor, it's a minor frustration after being comfortable with C1 or Lightroom. After using C1, playing with Lightroom and Aperture were quite intuitive (even C1 was pretty intuitive to start with). Out of all these apps, Bibble had the steepest learning curve, probably because it gives the user the most choice. Instead of giving you a single view like C1, or different views where you can do different things like Lightroom, Bibble offers you multiple views where you can pretty much accomplish the same things; some are more optimized for particular tasks, but i found that it distracted me more than anything. If you're the type that appreciates being able to set things up just so, you'd like Bibble's options of customizing your UI. Personally, I'd prefer it if the app developer did the research to figure out what's the most efficient UI so I don't have to experiment myself, but I'm sure others would like to spend the time figuring out what's their personal preference - I lack the patience.

My main complaint about Bibble though, is that the browsing of images is incredibly slow when compared to the competitors. Again, it's a case where Bibble has not prioritized the UI sufficiently. Bibble actually has the fastest RAW->JPG conversion; the thing is, if I can queue up all the conversions in one step, I can walk away from the computer and do other things, like make dinner, and wait for all the images to get processed. What I would prefer to be speedy is browsing through my hundreds of images, when I actually have to sit in front of the computer. This is the case though, where Bibble is pathetically slow compared to its competitors. The developers have optimized the wrong thing.

Another case where too much choice comes in is the selection of plugins. Not only can I tweak the image through the standard contrast/saturation/curves/levels tools, but also through a bunch of other plugins with anthropomorphosized names like Sadie, Andy, and Rumplestiltskin. Seriously, by looking at these plugins, I can't tell exactly what they're meant to do. Plus it seems I can get similar results with some of the standard tools. I'm just confused, and that's not a good state to be in. C'mon guys, make it clear, not confounding.

One final comment about Bibble is the use of Noise Ninja. A few years ago, I had tried out the actual Noise Ninja product, and it was awesome compared to any other noise reduction algorithm that I've used. Noise Ninja is entirely worth it's price, and it seemed like Bibble included this piece of software. Unfortunately, the version of Noise Ninja includeded in Bibble is not much better than the noise reduction technology that you get in any of the competitors (okay, maybe better than the muddy results the C1 produces when you turn up the NR, but it's not noticeably better than Lightroom). To get the real Noise Ninja, you still need to pay to upgrade to the Real Deal.

Overall, I think a lot of good work in Bibble. The features work well, and there are a lot of them. Unfortunately, it lacks polish, and the other apps have it. If you told me, Bibble is actually faster to use once you get used to it, I'd be tempted to believe you, although you'd still have to prove it to me. In my short experiments though, the learning curve just threw me off, and I'd still prefer one of the other apps.

Jan 11, 2009

Best weekend in ages.

It's a matter of getting back to the roots, hanging out with old friends, and having all the pieces fall together just so.

Hiking up Mission Peak with djpraise to get back into shape brought back memories of Morocco, though this hike was far easier than hiking up the dunes in the Erg.

Getting the old crew back together for a few hours of zergling rushes and dropping nukes, this time across the continent, instead of an IPX lan.

Driving up to Tahoe, towards the sun, rising golden in the horizon above the haze in Livermore as the full moon set in the rear view mirror. Driving back and watching the hazy crimson disk of the sun disappear behind the East Bay hills, and a blazing orange moon rise peek above the western horizon. The camera was in the trunk, but the picture's in my mind.

Jan 8, 2009

I miss Amsterdam.

The renovated Safeway's got a new big beer fridge. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any Affligem or Leffe or Chimay or Westmalle. I would have settled for a Jupiter or even Alexander Keith's.

Jan 2, 2009

Anecdotal data on drive failure.

While cleaning up my old archived data, I realized I had a couple of backups of my old computer, Totoro. Totoro was my main machine during university, from 1997-2001. It never got to the point of failure, it was sitting around mostly unused between 2001 and 2007 when I eventually recycled it. One backup was from around 2004, the other around 2007. Since that machine was mostly unused during that period, I expected most of the files to be the same. Just for fun, I did a comparison to check. The interesting thing was that I had 19,294 identical files, and 18 files that were different. Somehow, after sitting around for 3 years, about 0.093% of my files became corrupt.

Now, I have way too many uncontrolled variables to even determine where the corruption occurred. I had backed up that original disk twice - the first time was over the network to my archive server, the second time was after I had pulled it out of Totoro, stuck it into a different computer, and copied it onto a portable disk. My guess is that the disk became corrupt, although the errors could also have been introduced at some point when I was copying the files around.

In any case, this introduces a bit of paranoia. Just because I have something backed up, I have no idea that the backup copy is perfect. My current "backup process" is just to copy important files over to my archive server, which has mirrored disks, meaning if one of the disks in the server dies, I still have a 2nd copy. This experience has shown that I ought to look for some specialized backup software that generates CRCs and can verify file integrity instead of simply using "copy".

Addendum: Found another partition from Totoro that I had backed up twice. This time the "newer" backup contained 285 truncated files out of 4377, that's 6.5%.