Chinese New Year

My grandparents live in Taiwan, and the rest of the family in HK. A few days ago I called and talked to grandma. She asked if I could go spend the Chinese New Year holiday with them. I said I couldn't. The other day my brother talked to grandfather. He said he could buy my brother flight ticket if he wanted to spend the Chinese New Year holiday with them. I knew they want some company from the family for the holiday. So when my brother said the ticket found some not-so-expensive tickets, which still cost more than usual, on the web, I told him I would pay half of the price. So that's what I do for them for this New Year.

Men vs Women

From http://rootsgpk.blogspot.com/

The Inner Life of the Cell

It is a bit long, but it is by far the most amazing animation for cell biology. It includes protein synthesis, trans-membrane signal transduction, intra-cellular cargo transport and leukocyte migration into tissue. Created by Robert Lue of Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University.

Head sucks

Head squash racquets suck. I retired my last two Head racquets before their frames are whacked because of some stupid problems. One of them is bad stability, the other has its end of the handle broken away. Now my latest one has a grommet broken, making the ball stays so long on the net such that it rolls on the net at follow-through, instead of bouncing off right away. It just can't keep up with the speed of play.

Well, of course I can replace the grommet, but that means I need to restring the racquet again. The grommet should not have broken in the first place! What a terrible quality control!

I am turning away from Head, which I have depended on for the last 4 or 5 years. The pre-2003 models were very good. It was those made from 2004-2005 keep failing on me. Even the world top squash players are not using Head anymore. They instead use Dunlop. Maybe I will order a couple of demo Dunlop racquets to try out before getting a one. But with the braces and other spending, I may as well just replace the grommet and hang on to this Head racquet for a while.

p.s. It is inhumane, but the proper end of the life of a squash racquet is being whacked and broken apart after 2 or more years of usage. Anything other than that I consider the failure of the manufacturer.

Snowy winter

It is snowing again. It started some time during the night. Now it is almost 3 inches deep.

Although there is plenty of snow this winter, the temperature would raise between snows such that even 14 inches deep of snow had all melted before today's snow. But back up in Maine where the temperature is always below freezing, the ski resorts are packed with a good layer of new snow almost every week. I skied there once this season, and I am looking forward to the ski trip in February.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee, Ancient Sound, Abstract on Black; 1925
Oil on cardboard, 15 x 15 in; Kunstsammlung, Basel

Summer 2005

The Lagoon, Boston; Aug 2005.

Braces - 2

I put on the lower brace today, a week after one of my lower front teeth got extracted. I am having the sore again. I didn't know even a small slice of pizza took a lot of chewing before.

Sweeny Todd

What can 15 years' exile in the remote world of Australia turn an innocent English barber into? In 18th century London, he becomes a barber who cuts more throats than shaves.


Tim Burtin has turned this 19 century classic horror tale and 1979 Broadway musical depicting the dreadful world of Benjamin Barker, now Sweeney Todd, into a grand musical movie doped with his signature black-gray-silver picturesque. Some of the scenes actually resemble those in Corpse Bride.

It is truly a musical movie. More musical than Chicago, more so than Moulin Rouge! I would say over 80% of the scripts are embodied into the lyrics. The music can be as grand and as haunted as the story goes. Johnny Depp's singing plays out so well as a disparate husband and father who has lost his beloved wife and daughter, as well as a raged and merciless serial killer whose mind settles on nothing but revenge. Most of the killings serve nothing but simply releasing the rage resides within Todd. Burtin's beloved Helena Bonham Carter, in her signature witch-like persona, plays Mrs. Lovett who butchers the corpses and makes meat pies out of them. You will also see blood slashing from the victims' necks, furious red against the unsaturated black-gray-silver sets. Unlike Kill Bill, they come in a very realistic and subtle way.

This Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is "something close to a masterpiece," as A.O. Scott of New York Times puts it. It has won the 65th Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical) and Best Actor (Comedy or Musical). More awards are expected to come.

Seasicked

I watched Cloverfield today. The movie is made as if it is taken by a hand-held camera. The guy is originally shooting a going away party, but as the city gets attacked, he turns to document the event.

The movie is quite thrilling, if you survive the shaky and swift-turning camera. It brings you right on the spot in New York City under attack. It was quite real to me because only a few weeks ago I was walking down the same street outside Grand Central Station the main characters ran down, looking at the steel bridge station and the station itself at the very same angles they were shot. They even shoot on the street where the hotel we stayed located. The building next to the hotel still has steel cranes set outside just like I saw it.

The filming crew and Paramount were highly secretive about the story all along. It didn't even have a name until a month before the release day. At last they named the movie by the name where the studio is located in California: Cloverfield Blvd, Santa Monica. You can find out what the story is about here if you are not planning to watch it.


My stomach got quite cramped because of the thrill and the never-steady camera. Shamik even dropped off 15 minutes before the movie ended. Luckily, this whole shaky wacky business lasts only 75 minutes. But that's enough for me to get some seasickness.

Cloverfield is produced by JJ Abrams who also produces Lost. If you are a fan of Lost, you won't be disappointed, again, if you survive the ever-shaking camera. I am more looking forward to the new Star Trek movie he directs. It is coming out on Christmas day.

P.S. I went to the cinema and watched Sweeney Todd the next day. Now they have put up a sign next to the ticket office:

The way Cloverfield is filmed may cause the audience symptoms similar to motion sickness experienced on a roller coaster.

情與義

九十年代真的是周星馳創意的黃金時代。雖然電影的情節有時不合情理，但整體故事多數言之有物，而且個別笑位真的令人噴飯。此為食神中莫文蔚為周星馳擋了一刀之後，剎有介事地唱70年代電視劇《陸小鳳》的主題曲《情與義》一段：



還有用摺椅圍摳敵人的少林十八銅人：

人與咸魚的因果關係

Braces

I have got my teeth braced today. Yes, I should have done it 20 years ago, but my parents didn't get me to do it. I wanted to do this myself for years but only get the chance and money to do it now. It is really expensive to do bracing here and now. You can buy a more than decent used car with that money. Now I need to make sure I live long enough to have it paid off.

My orthodontist only extracted one tooth in my lower jaw. He said I only needed to brace for 9 months for the upper teeth and 4-5 months for the lower ones. I am sure I am going to lose some weight because it is a pain to eat with braces...

Snow storm

We had a snow storm today. Not a particular bad one, but it kept snowing from the middle of the night into the afternoon, and had dumped 14 inches of snow onto our driveway. Luckily it was only about 8 inches of snow in the morning, and we didn't need to plow the snow to pull our cars out of the driveway. But still, I didn't want to plow the snow in the dark, so I went home and did the snowplowing during lunch time.

On the way home I spotted a few very nice natural black and white scenes. So I took my G9 on the way back to work and snapped a few shots. This is one of them.

This is the driveway leading onto Rt-128 from NEB. I am always fascinated by the exposed tree lines in the winter. I have taken pictures of this scene at different seasons, but this natural B/W is my favorite so far.

Brainteasers that I managed to solve - 2

I got this wrong the first time but I figured out how to solve it given the correct answer:

There are 8 billiard balls of the same size. One of them is slightly heavier than the rest. You are given a classical two-pan balance. What is the minimum number of time you need to put the balls onto the balance to tell which ball is heavier.


The answer is:

Two
Take any 6 of the 8 balls and split them into two groups of 3. Place each group of the balls onto each side of the balance. If they weigh the same, the heavier ball is one of the two left behind. If one of the groups is heavier, put any two of the 3 onto each side of the balance. It will tell you either one of the two is heavier, or if they weigh the same, the one left behind is the heavier one.

Brainteasers that I managed to solve - 1

You are given two buckets, one can hold 5 pints and the other hold 3. Now you are asked to take exactly 7 pints of water from a river with these buckets in one single trip. How can you do that?


The answer is:

Fill the 5-pint bucket with water, and use the water to fill the 3-pint bucket. Now you have 2 pints of water left in the 5-pint bucket. Then you empty the 3-pint bucket and pour in the 2 pints of water. Now you have an empty 5-pint bucket and a 3-pint bucket with 2 pints of water. You know what to do next.

The back door

I really like this B/W I made out of a color picture I took back in Feb 2006. I adjusted the level of each of red, green and blue such that the snow in the foreground is over-exposed and the rust-like pattern of the wall on the right is maintained. The shades on the tree truck in the middle bring the tree up from the one on the left. Too bad the scene is deserted. A man walking toward the glass door would add a lot of solitary to the picture.

The PCR Song

A colleague of mine found this video on Youtube. It is actually an ad for the PCR machines from Bio-Rad, but it is just madness. I can't stop laughing watching it. It is gross at some point, mind you.

Change of Aeronautical Terms

As the airliner was pulled away from the gate, the flight attendant gave the passengers the usual information regarding seat belts, etc.
Finally, she said, "Now sit back and enjoy your trip while your captain, Judith Campbell, and the crew take you safely to your destination."
Ed, sitting in the eighth row, thought to himself, "Did I hear her right? Is the captain a woman?"
When the attendants came by with the drink cart, he said "Did I understand you right? Is the captain a woman?"
"Yes," said the attendant, "In fact, this entire crew is female."
"My God," said Ed, "I'd better have two scotch and sodas. I don't know what to think with only women up there in the cockpit."
"That's another thing sir," said the attendant.
"We No Longer Call It The Cock Pit."
"It's The Box Office"


Adapted from http://rootsgpk.blogspot.com, of course.

On another accord, the name "cockpit" probably came from the pit where cockfights took place back in the middle age. Shakespeare first coined the lower pit around the stage of a theater "cockpit", probably to refer to the spectacular of the plays (see www.aerospaceweb.org). However, given the now well-known "naughtiness" of Shakespeare's multiple referral of words, there is a chance that he indeed meant that pit to be filled with "cocks".

The Canon P

I received the Canon P on the 26th. I was trying it out and the shutter sound was so solid. It also sounded desolate because the shutter release was not coupled to film advance, as we used to in more "modern" film cameras.

Well, I tests everything and it turned out the self-timer lever was stuck. It didn't go all the way back to its stall position when I pressed the shutter release. Worst of all, it locked the shutter release so that the shutter couldn't be released.

I wrote to the seller and told him the condition. He told me to ship it back to him and he would send me a refund. So I did. I am sorry to let it go.

Museums

So we have seen some museums. These museums do not only hold great artworks but their architectures are quite pleasing to look at.

MoMA looks like any other glass-walled buildings in NY, but it has a few nice touches inside. It has a hall 4 levels tall with clean and sharp contrast of color and geometry. With the artworks the space becomes an artwork itself.

I have just found that MoMA had been closed for 2 year and a half in 2001 for a complete make-over and was only re-opened on Nov 20, 2004. The building and the interior is designed by the Tokyo-based architect Yoshio Taniguchi. The new building has almost doubled its gallery space. NY Times has an article for the re-opening.

Met. Although we arrived NY at 2 on Saturday, Met happens to close at 9 pm on Saturday. So we arrived Met at 3 and stayed until it closed, but we still couldn't go over everything. We ended up walked the African arts very briefly and skipped the Egyptian mummies all together. As we walked the Greek sculpture at night, the lightnings made the hall glow like jewels. I have been there during the day a couple of years ago, but the hall didn't look the same during the night.


Fogg Art Museum, Harvard. It is only a small museum but it has done a good job in blending modern and Renaissance architectures.



p.s. I took all these picture with my G9. Sue bought me a nice Canon leather case designed for G9. It binds to the camera the sweet old range finder camera way: the front part of the case swing open to expose the lens and viewfinder, now with the back part swings open also to expose the LCD.

Knicks vs Lakers

We watched an NBA game in NY. It was Knicks vs Lakers. Lakers was leading 24 points at half time and I thought they would win by 20s. The guy sitting next to me kept saying "my tam sucks". But Knicks came back in the third and fourth quarters and they managed to make it a 3-point game to the last 7 second. Lakers stole the ball and added 2 points to the final lead.

Kobe Bryan made his 20,000 points in the third quarter. The commentator said it but there was no flashing billboarding for that. It was Knicks' home game after all.