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?

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.

It's raining...

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

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.

Early to the party.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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%.

Advent conspiracy.

Here's an awfully un-timely video given the struggling economy. I think there's still hope that Christmas will be more than just another consumer holiday when people don't feel like spending. While I have enjoyed shopping for my cousins (as tough as that could be at times), and I admire thoughtfully purchased gifts, I've noticed that I've somewhat missed out on the Christmas spirit in the past few years, given all the rush and commotion (though the family time is always excellent).

So hopefully I'll do something about that this year.

RAW workflow: Lightroom 2

Most RAW workflow apps were developed by smaller companies focused on the needs of photographers. When Adobe came out with Lightroom 1.0 early in 2007, ir validated the market, confirming that Photoshop alone didn't meet the needs of professional or advanced amateur photographers. I had toyed with the Lightroom 1 beta release. It was slow and didn't much impetus to switch over. However, through various releases, bugs were fixed and performance improved. At $299, Lightroom 2 is priced less the Capture One 4 PRO, but still double the price of Capture One 4 or Bibble Pro.

Lightroom operates in one of 5 modes, Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, Web. This structure forces you into a certain workflow. First, in the Library mode, you "import" your images, after which you can quickly browse and make your edit. Lightroom offers a number of tools to aid in organizing photos, including the ability to add tags to images and search with them, as well as "smart collections" that can update themselves. I was able to easily create a smart collection of all photos within a date range that were rated 3 and above. After I finished rating my photos, this folder automatically contained all the files that fit the rule. I don't have a habit of tagging images, so I haven't done this.

After you have your edit, you can move on to the Develop mode, where all the postprocessing tools are provided. In addition to having all the basic tools that I'm familiar with in C1, there's a number of new tools, all potentially useful for creative manipulation, but which also give you power to violate your sense of "journalistic integrity". Advanced colour controls let you tweak particular colours, for example you can make your oranges redder without affecting your blues or greens. Split toning allows you to modify the colours of your bright and dark areas separately. There are tools to fix chromatic aberration and vignetting flaws in your lenses (available in C1 PRO), although some people (like wedding photographers) may choose to use this to add some vignetting for that vintage effect.

The most standout features though, are the tools that allow you to manipulate a small area of your image, something that Photoshop does effortlessly, but are unavailable in C1. Use the clone/healing tool to get rid of a spot of dust here or a pimple there (available in Bibble). Or do some dodging/burning by changing the brightness, contrast, saturation or sharpness of one little area of your image (unavailable in Bibble). These aren't as full-featured as they are in Photoshop, but having them built in means there's much less reason that you would actually need to start up Photoshop at all.

One other thing I like about Lightroom is the availability of Presets. You can save a certain set of settings and name them, say "Super Contrasty" or "Way Oversaturated" or "Fake Lomo", which will then appear in an organized list on the left. You can then select them to apply to your image. In C1 and Bibble you can mimic the functionality with some clunky methods, either by saving presets to file and reloading them (takes a lot more moouse clicks), or having "template" images with your presets applied, and copy from them later. However, the real magic they can't emulate; when you mouse over the names of the presets in the list, the effect is shown practically immediately on a preview image. You don't even need to you click, just move your mouse up and down and decide extremely quickly what preset you want. Potentially huge time saver.

My biggest gripe with the Develop mode is that you can only manipulate one image at a time. For example, you can't select a bunch of images and apply a Preset to all of them. Now, it's possible to do this in the Library mode, so all is not lost. It is annoying however, to have to switch between modes to do this, and it was not at all intuitive.

When I'm done processing my images, I select the ones I want to convert to JPEG, and use the File\Export option to convert to JPEG. It's pretty convenient, especially since you can create Presets on where and how you'd like your files exported. There's also plugins available that can do stuff like automatically upload your photos to flickr or smugmug with the tags you added while editing in the Library mode. There's also three modes, Slideshow, Print, and Web for creating ways of presenting your images. Right now, I'm done when I export to JPEG, so I haven't used any of these modes.

Overall Lightroom 2 was the favourite of the apps I tried. The features are great, it's quick and responsive, the layout is easy to use and is mostly intuitive. The only drawback really is the price, but if you can get a student discount or a similar deal, it's a good way to go. As a last random thought, one way to increase your productivity in any of these workflow apps is to learn to use hotkeys instead of clicking through menus and options with your mouse. Common hotkeys get picked up fairly quickly with use, once you know what they are, but there's probably enough in any of these apps that you won't memorize them all immediately. One thing about Lightroom is that there's only one must-remember hotkey, Ctrl-/, which will bring up a well-organized list of the hotkeys available in the current mode. It's just one more example how the UI design of this app is so well polished.

Dubious achievement.

I don't recall the last time I've been at work this late. But maybe it means I'm back to being focused. Now, I better leave early tomorrow.

Here's to consolation.

What's with days at work where nothing works properly? I'm supposed to be done when I leave at midnight, instead of having spent the whole day just figuring out how to get to where I can start.

I guess the consolation prize is that the new baby's here!

RAW workflow: Capture One 4.1

Phase One is a Danish company that manufactures high end digital "backs" for medium format cameras, systems that cost halfway into the five digits. They've also been developing Capture One (C1), RAW workflow software for both their cameras as well as popular digital SLRs. They've been releasing their full featured "professional" version, as well as a less expensive and dumbed down "consumer" version.

I bought Capture One LE (the consumer version) for $99 in 2004, and have been using it, along with free upgrade versions, since. The current consumer version is simply called Capture One 4 ($129), whereas the full-fledged version is Capture One PRO ($399). Although I've tried the demo of the pro version a few years ago, I've been using the consumer version, and the notes here reflect Capture One 4.1 (though now a more recent 4.5 release is now available). I definitely have a bias since I've grown used to C1's way of doing things, though that's probably had some negative influence as well.

The first step in RAW processing is to select images. At the very least, you need to be able to browse all the images available to select the single image, or the set of images you actually want to spend time working on, a process called "editing". When editing you need to be able to view many files at once, but you also need to able to zoom into an image to check the details. Sometimes you may also need to be able to view two or three images onscreen, but also in close enough detail to be able to compare side by side. Being able to do zoom in and out and switch between images exteremely quickly is key. Often it only takes a moment to determine whether an image catches you, but if it takes a few seconds to switch between views, the task of editing may take many times longer, a problem when you have hundreds of images to sort through. Although C1 4.x (built on .NET, at least for Windows) takes somewhat longer to start up than the older 3.x versions, it's still reasonably responsive when changing images or zoom.

When I edit in C1, I typically keep my hands on the keyboard, using the arrow keys to switch back and forth between images, and the number keys 1-5 to "rate" each image. When I'm done rating, I just sort the images by their rating, and decide where the cutoff point is. What C1 does not offer is an organizational tool for keeping track of a vast library of images. You cannot tag images with keywords, or search for particular images, or filter them by criteria (other than by sorting). Although C1 does allow you to create "albums" of images, they only exist within the application. Consequently, I haven't tagged or "organized" my archive of images, although I have organized them by date taken (outside of C1).

Photoshop is the gorilla standard of image processing applications. RAW workflow apps seem to know better than to compete; most focus on the basic tools that photographers use the majority of the time. Since I "grew up" on C1, I've managed to get by using the limited set of processing tools it provides. One tradeoff from having fewer possible tools is that it's easier to and quicker to switch between the few tools you have, or to be able to have the majority of them be displayed onscreen at the same time, as opposed to constantly having to switch between menus to get things done. One of the things I still like a lot about C1 is its simple and uncluttered UI that gives quick access to most tools without the need to search around much.

C1 lets you process whichever image you have selected while browsing, so you are free to adjust your processing even as you "edit". I've found this works well when you have a few images to go through, though when you have large sets, I find it easier to finish the edit first before going back through and processing your edit. I find myself using most of the tools provided in C1. I almost always use the curves and saturation controls, exposure and white balance whenever required. I crop a significant fraction of my images, but always with the same width to height ratio as the original image. I use the sharpening and noise reduction as they are applied, but I usually leave them fixed to a setting and almost never play with them, unless the noise is exceptionally bad. C1 3.x did not support arbitrary rotation (except in the expensive pro version) so I got by without it. Since it's been introduced, I've found it very useful in straightening slightly crooked pictures, but I wonder if it's simply encouraged to be lazier and less precise. The other recent addition has been to C1 4.x has been the high dynamic range tools to recover blown highlights and underexposed shadows. I'm extremely grateful that these are available when needed.

I find the quality of the output generally acceptable. The one exception is that when the noise reduction is turned up high on noisy data, one sometimes gets extremely muddy output tha tis pretty much unusable.



When generating output, C1 has options for formats (JPEG, TIFF, DNG), scaling, output location, colour profile to apply, and an option to launch a another app when the conversion is done. To generate output in C1, you first select an output directory. After that's done any image you view can quickly be "queued" to generate output in the background. The queue can either be running as you edit and process, or if your computer is slow, you can focus on processing, and have the queue run after you're done and you can let the computer crank away. Personally, I haven't had any problems with the queue running. I generally like this process since it's very convenient to generate output, and most of the time when I'm done editing and processing, the queue has often almost completed operating on my images. Earlier 3.x versions of C1 allowed you to specify that the output directory always be a subdirectory of the current image's directory, a system that worked well for me. This was removed in 4.1, meaning that I would have to manually create and select the output directory every time I switched to images in a new directory.

My current biggest grip with C1 is that it will generate a directory for temporary files (ie thumbnails, etc.) called CaptureOne in each directory that you work in, and it leaves this directory lying around. Since these are fairly large, I find myself cleaning them up fairly often. It would be great of the app had an option to clean these all up automatically (even though that implies losing track of your changes).

I'll probably continue to use C1 simply because I've already paid for it and am using it legally. It's reasonably functional and the drawback aren't too severe. It is however, currently outclassed by the competition.

RAW workflow, an introduction

Back in August I was thinking of doing an informal review of the various RAW workflow applications out there to determine which one would suit me best. I figured with three months off, I'd have plenty of time to do a writeup; I'm not sure how that never came to fruition. Hopefully I still remember enough to come up with something moderately useful in the next few installments. I definitely do not recall enough for a comprehensive review; my methods were neither stringent nor controlled.

Before jumping in, this is an introduction for beginners. What is RAW? Why should I use it? What's the difference between RAW workflow software and Photoshop?

The first digital camera I had, the Canon G1 in 2000, could save files to either RAW or JPEG format. At the time, I couldn't quite figure out the benefit of using RAW files. They were bigger, and they were a pain to "process" on the computer before I could post them online or do anything with them. This recent (and in my opinion, heavily flawed) comparison of the two options reflected my thinking back then: JPEG were easier to post online, RAW files were a hassle and used up all the space on my 128MB CF card. However, when I got my for dSLR, I spent more time playing with RAW, looked into RAW workflow software and eventually moved to shooting RAW exclusively.

The JPEG format was standardized in 1994, and is pretty much the standard for photos stored and displayed online. Pretty much every camera can save its images as a JPEG. JPEG uses a "lossy" compression format, meaning that it will drop detail information to make a smaller file. Most cameras have some quality settings for JPEG to balance the file size and detail level. At the highest quality level, detail is not a problem with JPEG. The primary issue with JPEG is that the range of possible colour values for each pixel is limited compared to RAW. Every pixel is stored as three values representing red, green and blue. In JPEG, each of these values is an 8-bit number, meaning it can range from 0-255.

Now unlike JPEG, there isn't a single RAW format. Rather the term refers to a camera specific format that contains all the "raw" data captured from the camera's sensor, before it's compressed into JPEG. As cameras improve, the RAW files contain more and more data that ends up being lost when compressed to JPEG. On my G1, the RAW file contained 8-bits for each colour component, no better than the JPEG. On modern dSLRs though, the RAW file contains up to 14-bits for each colour, a range of 0-16383. All this extra data is lost when compressing to JPEG. The camera picks a subset out of that range for each colour in order to get the proper white balance and drops the rest. Details in very bright or very dark areas may also be lost in the compression. Camera settings such as contrast, brightness, saturation and sharpness are also applied before saving to JPEG, and cannot be fully undone. Though not available on most point-and-shoot cameras, some form of RAW is available on some high end models and pretty much all dSLRs.

The larger RAW files gives much more flexibility to save not-quite perfect photos, especially when the white balance or exposure are off. These two changes in particular are practically impossible to do well after compression to JPEG. The extra data also lends itself to better results in general with other tweaks, reducing ugly "colour banding". With 4GB CF cards costing under $20, storage is no longer a significant problem; I'd much rather be able to recover an almost-perfect shot. Although modern displays can only show JPEG's 8-bits per component, technology is on the verge of improving this within the next few years. At some point in the future, all the extra data in RAW files would likely translate to richer colours and more detail in bright and dark areas than JPEGs would ever allow.

In addition to the file size, the other primary complaint about RAW files is the time required for processing. Back in 2000, the RAW conversion software that came with my G1 let me open a .CRW (Canon RAW) file, make some tweaks, and then save a JPEG version of the image. It might take a few minutes to go through this process, but even if it took me 3 minutes a photo, then going through say 300 photos from a wedding would still take 15 hours!

This is where the RAW workflow software comes in. Instead of following your average application's model of opening a file, editing and saving (much like Word or Photoshop), workflow software is specifically designed to expedite working photographers process of converting RAW files to JPEGs (or other publishing formats).
Usually this process goes through three main phases:
1) sorting photos, applying "tags" to make them easier to search later, and selecting the photos for publishing over a set of hundreds or thousands of photos taken over a shoot (known to photographers as "editing")
2) tweaking individual image settings of the selected good photos, and changing the picture to appear as desired (known as "postprocessing")
3) converting to a final JPEG (or other format) and printing, or publishing to DVD or the Web.

Workflow applications tend to combine all 3 steps into a single application. Photoshop on the other hand, is a general image processing app, aimed not only at photographers, but also for artists, video postprocessing and editing, game developers, web designers, graphic designers, publishers and even scientist, engineers and architects. Photoshop gives you amazing capabilities for step 2, but you'll need separate applications for steps 1 and 3. Workflow software on the other hand, gives the full package, but lacks the majority of Photoshops features in step 2. You'll be able to complete common photographer postprocessing tasks that apply to the entire image very quickly, with a UI and hotkeys designed specifically for efficiency: fixing white balance, exposure, contrast, saturation, "curves", cropping, sharpenning, noise reduction. However, any "special effects" will require a more advanced processing application. You probably won't be able to do stuff like cut the ex-girlfriend out of one image or insert grandma into another, changing the colours or license plate of a car, or removing wrinkles and adjust the unevenly large right eye of your aspiring models.

On the argument of RAW processing taking a long time, you'll realize that step 1 (and perhaps 3) are steps that are required if you take JPEGs anyways. Step 2 will take significant amounts of time if you process each image individually. However, if you just stick to the automatic settings (as you would have by shooting JPEG), and convert to JPEG, it takes about an extra 6 minutes for every 100 images, which is probably manageable for most photographers.

I took a look at three apps: Phase One's Capture One 4, Adobe's Lightroom 2, and Bibble Lab's Bibble 4.10. There's a number of other contenders. Camera manufacturers each have their own RAW conversion software, which I haven't looked at. Apple has Aperture, which is available on Mac only. It's a very serious contender, but since I use Windows, I haven't taken the time to review it. Hopefully I'll have individual discussions up soon.

Zero.

Went fishing in Capitola and caught nothing. Zippo. Not one bite. So much for getting up at 6am. This is the second attempt, I'm not sure there will be a third. Should have been surfing instead. On the plus side, there's something extremely relaxing in napping in a gently bobbing boat with the warm sun on your face.

In other non-news, my long weekend productivity has been mostly zero. Not only did I not catch a single fish, I've finally started (and caught up with) the current season of The Office and Heroes, and transforming characters seems to be the common point between the two series. The last few seasons of the Office have actually started to be funny. As Michael Scott has shifted from being tyranical to bumbling, so has the show's humour shifted from mostly uncomfortable awkward moments to actual hilarity. Ryan's schizophrenic shift from the hapless abused temp to the confident wunderkind to the disgraced yet manipulative temp further illustrates how the tone of the show has gradually shifted from season to season.
I had put off Season 3 of Heroes because of the utter disappointment that was Season 2. My hopes were pretty low after seeing this article on the show. Much to my surprise though, I was engrossed through most of episodes 1-9, and was quickly reminded of why the cliffhangers in the first season were so great. The writing keeps you on your toes as the story comes together amongst the twists and turns. The whole premise of the heroes becoming villains and vice versa certainly fleshes out a lot of the character and brings back questions about how we perceived the first season. The only disappointment is now that I'm all caught up in a day, I have to wait weeks between episodes now, just like everyone else.

A day in the life.

I'm trying to get over the uneasy feeling that I should be doing something better with my time. I'm still in the process of just learning to slack off on the long weekend. Happy Thanksgiving!

On photography.

I think the question I've heard most often regarding my LOA is "So did you take a lot of pictures?". One answer might be yes, I think I took about 3000 pictures over the three months in europe (plus another 1000 over a weekend in San Francisco). From a numbers perspective, I guess it's reasonably large. But then a lot of them are duplicates, multiple shots of the same subject or scene, maybe with different settings or different angles. So off the top, there's only a fraction of those that contain different subjects. And out of those subjects only a fraction were probably really interesting. And out of the interesting subjects only a fraction were visually appealing.

To say the least I'm not particularly happy or proud of any of the pictures; I don't think I really "accomplished" much in terms of photography in the past few months. My initial lofty goals of intimate portraits of some human condition never came fruition. It never got off the ground. I really just ended up with a collection of tourist photos, distant and detached. I already knew engaging people isn't my forte. I guess I had somehow imagined I'd just get better at it by taking more pictures in an unfamiliar place; perhaps I'd be forced into it by the mere fact that I just didn't know anyone in Amsterdam.









Obviously, it didn't come so easily, and getting to know random strangers doesn't come naturally either way. I guess I'll just have to make much more of an effort in the future. The first weekend I was in Amsterdam happened to be the gay pride parade. I did manage to take a lot of pictures of mostly drunk partygoers. There's other random pictures of Amsterdam here as well.

The one below's probably one of my favourite shots, from my first few days at the hostel. It's not really a picture of Amsterdam though, it could be a picture of any city. People each with their own destinations and priorities, passing by within a few feet of others with entirely different lives.

Brutal Bond.

I don’t know what it is with all these poor reviews of Quantum of Solace.

For the most part it was brilliantly executed and impeccably choreographed. Craig is the most f!@#$%^ badass Bond ever. I think he’d be the first Bond who’d have me scared s!@#less as an adversary. Any complaints might be that he’s less suave (and perhaps less sexy, but I wouldn't know) than the Bonds of old. This Bond is certainly no Dalton, Moore or Pierce pretty pansy boy.

For all the action, you also see in Bond a broken killing machine acting on impulse, a driven psychopath in denial of his murderous inner rage. Yet in between there's moments of compassion before he buries beneath his facade of control. Maybe this was executed a little to deftly, too subtly, but I think for once you see there’s some emotions (albeit dark ones) in Bond, instead of a caricature of a superspy. I suspect however, many Bond fans adore the warm and fuzzy happy Bond.

Overall I liked the way that most Bond elements were much more subtle than the films of old. There's no Q introducing over-the-top gadgets, but who wouldn't give their firstborn grandchild to get at M's multitouch international intelligence database, or Bond's phone with GPS suspect tracking and 3D camera? He doesn't order a martini, but his bartender up in first class certain knows he likes it shaken and not stirred (although that martini ended up being awfully clear for a shaken drink).

Even the plot that everyone complains about as being sparse mostly makes sense. The criminal organization here is no SPECTRE. There's no gaudy plot with Dr. Evil demanding a ransom of $1 million and the world blowing up. Instead they're less flashy, similar to any other profitteering corporation plundering resources from third world countries, insidiously invisible and efficient.

Overall this Bond film is about as realistic as Bond films get after all the flashy elements and cheezy oneliners have been toned down. Despite all that, Bond wreaks some mighty havoc.

Also worth mentioning, the trademark implied-naked-bond-girls opening sequence was one of the less cheesy ones, and the Jack White/Alicia Keys theme is pretty sweet too, up there with "A View to a Kill" and "Live and Let Die".

Regression.

Back in California. Back at work. Back living with the roommates that I lived with during school in '97. Back to playing video games till 5am, except now only on weekends. Incidentally, the game happens to be Fallout 3. The original Fallout also came out in '97.

So it seems like a regression of sorts. At work a "regression" refers to a bug where a new change breaks something that used to work fine. In that sense, progress almost inevitably leads to regression. Joints that crack a little more. Skin that's a little drier. Injuries that take a little longer to heal. Wrinkles that dig in a little deeper.

Wait, what am I talking about? I'm asian and well protected from solar radiation. Speaking of solar radiation, it's 24C and blazingly sunny. And the battery on my bike is dead. Bummer of a regression.