Frogs:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3640561983

Xylophone:
http://robpongi.com/pages/comboMOKINHI.html

And finally, scary propaganda - the General’s Grapes of Love:
http://robpongi.com/pages/comboGRAPESOFLOVE.html

There’s no way she’s three. My Korean friends who are musicians are all older than their press materials say they are.

I just took a look at some more of the North Korean videos on robpongi.com. Very… scary.

I’ve been looking for a little travel mouse for a long time. I finally settled on a Logitech MouseMan Traveler, which I like a lot (I’ve always liked their mouses). Before the Logitech, I had a Kensington Pocket Mouse Pro — the one that has a retractable USB cable, which I thought was a nifty feature. My Dad uses a Kensington as well. Unfortunately, there is a fatal flaw in the Kensington mouses I’ve tried that makes them impossible for me to use: the Windows XP driver makes the cursor jump to the default button on popups — possibly one of the most annoying features in Windows computing today (a couple more: 1) modal dialog boxes that force their way to the top, grabbing focus, and 2) the lack of a Windows key on IBM Thinkpads). I can’t tell you how many times I cancelled things on accident. With the Kensington mouse and Windows XP, you can’t change this behavior for some reason. So… no more Kensington mouses for me. Anyone want it? :)

A post, just for search engines to find:

After upgrading to some flavor of BreezeBrowser 3.7, the program (which had been rock solid in the past) started to crash during certain operations involving EXIF data. Specifically, if I tried to copy EXIF data around from images taken with multiple Canon cameras (the 1Ds, D60, and S50), BB would sometimes crash or freeze with 99% CPU usage and ever-increasing memory usage. When restarting BB after a crash/freeze, merely clicking on a culprit image would result in an immediate crash. Restarting BB again and doing any other operation not involving the culprit image would somehow “fix” the problem temporarily — until another crash.

Chris Breeze, BreezeBrowser’s author, had never heard of any such stability problems. Finally, in desperation, I deleted BB’s registry entries and re-registered my install (I was now using version 3.8, with the same problems happening). The problem went away. Chris thought that it might be a problem with certain color profiles, but it’s impossible to know. I’m just happy that it’s stable again. Over the years, I’ve been really impressed with Chris’ responsiveness in bug reports and feature requests. BreezeBrowser is definitely worth every penny it costs to register. [check it out]

*UPDATE* Jan 9, 2004: It turns out that ACDSee’s rotate routines were corrupting Canon MakerNotes, which crashed BB. Chris has since added a sanity check to BB so the program won’t crash if it finds corruption. Here’s the message he sent me:

“What appears to have happened is all the portrait orientation shots have corrupted Canon MakerNotes and this is causing BreezeBrowser to crash. … I’ve added a “sanity check” in BB which should prevent the problem. … It appears that something is taking a JPEG with Motorola aligned Exif and is trying to rewrite it as Intel aligned Exif but is leaving the MakerNote Motorola aligned.”

Hi, all. Thanks for making the show opening such a success! It was a little frustrating that I wasn’t able to talk to anyone. But it was still great to see you all. :) (updated entry, with photos)

It’s 39°F outside. Isn’t it supposed to be warm here?

dusk in del mar. the two blips up top are venus and a passing airplane.
I apologize to those of you I’ve been neglecting (but you’re all busy with the holidays, anyway). I’ve almost literally spent all of my time here so far assembling frames and preparing for the opening tomorrow. I’m going to have to get up “early” in the morning to put together slides for the 2:30pm lecture on underwater photography. A warning: it will be very basic with regard to actual photography techniques, so don’t come until 3:30pm if you are already an established photographer. :)

I’ve been wearing the coconut shell necklace Pamina gave me for a few years now, but I think I misplaced it while I was in Indonesia. I feel naked. :(

It was Mandy’s birthday yesterday. Happy Birthday, Mandy! I’m glad we’re all growing “old” together. :)

Hello, guys. I will be showing photos from the Galapagos at an exhibition in the San Diego Taiwan American Community Center from December 28 until the end of January. The opening will be held on December 28th at 2:30pm. Please come, if you can! You can show up anytime in the afternoon, until gallery close (6pm, I think?) [more info]

a preview: most of these photos were taken in the galapagos
*UPDATE - DEC 28* I’ve posted some photographs from the event. Thans you all so much for coming! We packed over 100 people into that little gallery space. :) It was really nice to see friends and family there: all of my extended family living in the States (except for Wendy, who is off in Hawaii for the new year), Eryn Roston, Teri and Norm Hamson, my old neighbors the Sullivans (Brian, Shawna, and Mom), Angela Filose, Mr. Syndromes, Sven and Moonpuddle, Nick Abadilla, his wife Nancy, their super-cute daughter Sophie, Oliver/Melissa & Mother Miao, Mel, James Wiseman and Sarah, the Tarng family, the Fans, Doug, who came to my last show, Didi, who is a new acquaintance somewhere out there on the web, Wen, who joined us for Thanksgiving dinner, James, who was with us for dinner on Christmas Eve, and Stephanie and Jennifer, whom I both met on Christmas, and the rest of you who have been so supportive over the past year. [see some photos]

Every half an hour, I find a little red and crawling on my computer. I think some have taken residence inside, which unfortunately reminds me of the computer that Jim Watt lost to a colony of ants in his very own home. These little red guys are the same ants I saw at Wakatobi. Will I get in trouble for bringing ants native to Tukang Besi home with me — through Bali and Taiwan? What if they are evolutionarily superior and wipe out the local ant population? :)

I was browsing around my referrer logs today, and found that this journal has been nominated for Best Taiwanese Blog. I have all of *two* votes! Yeah, baby. [vote for me]

Yesterday was gorgeous, but last night, the wind and rain picked up, and it hasn’t stopped since. The weather these past few has been somewhat inconsistent, presumably because the rainy season is just around the corner. However, underwater, it’s always good. There’s no runoff here to spoil the visibility. :)

a clownfish portrait
There are many, many neat critters here to photograph. I’m having a great time with them. :) The staff here timed a delicious outdoor feast with my birthday a couple of days ago, and brought out a birthday cake at dinner’s end. Birthdays are getting less exciting these days, and being here without spectacle and gifts was just fine. :)

me, playing around underwater (photo: dave patchen)
Thanks again to all of you who sent nice birthday wishes! :)

If you tried to e-mail me, send it again. :)

I have a fever. Something has been going around the guests and staff here, but it seems to be something like a 24-hour flu and it goes away relatively quickly. However, I’m not taking any chances, and am taking the day off from diving.

Speaking of the diving, the reefs here are the lushest I’ve ever seen! Pristine coral growth covers literally every square inch of the walls we have been diving, and the possibilities for macro photography are endless. I saw my first pygmy seahorses; it’s hard to appreciate how small they are until you actually see one. We’ve seen both the smallest and largest species so far, and even the largest ones are significantly smaller than a typical pinky nail.

A pair of pygmy seahorses at Waiti Ridge
I’m also impressed with the way Wakatobi is run. So much energy (and money) goes into working with the local population to conserve the reef, which is every dive resort’s primary asset.

I’m off to Indonesia. I doubt I’ll have internet access there, but who knows? :) Happy Holidays!

Taiwan rules. Even before I got on the airplane, I had to push someone to get where I needed to go. He tried to walk between me and the woman who was taking my ticket during the boarding process, and I had no choice!

Stuff I’ve forgotten so far: iPod (sitting on a desk at “home”), swim suits (uh.. I’m stupid).

I’m sure the list will grow.

December 2, 2003 - My friends are so cool. Somehow, being out of town so much has made my time in San Francisco with my friends more social, and more intense (you know, since I sleep over at their places all the time. :). We had decided last week to have a little dinner gathering at Geoff and Livia’s place, but what I didn’t know is that they would turn it into a not-so-surprising surprise birthday party! (the surprise was foiled because no one else knew how to get in touch with Emile and Zhenya. hehehe). Livia cooked up a huge Indian feast (it took her two days), and we sat around listening to music and chatting. Even my sister showed up for awhile! Somehow, she always has things planned when we gather at Geoff and Livia’s place. Also present was the elusive Jim Batcho, who allowed me to take photos of him eating before retreating home to finish some work. Heidi drove up from the South Bay after finishing a final, and Emile, Zhenya, and Clara all stayed out late on a weeknight. Thanks, guys. :) [see some photos]

November 30, 2003: On Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, our family drove up to Orange County for Tony and Ai-Jen’s reception. Tony and I have been friends since we were little kids, and I’m very happy for his happiness with Ai-Jen. Many of their friends flew over from New York for the banquet, and it was obvious from the evening (or, “the program,” as Ting and Scott kept calling it) that the participants were used to organizing gatherings and events. :)

Ai-Jen was dressed in a white dress for the first part of the reception, but changed into a beautiful, traditional red dress not long into the evening. As she walked by, I overhead one of her friends (joking, of course): “Is that Ai-Jen? She’s hot! Is she taken?” Speaking of their friends, it was plainly obvious that the two of them have really touched the people they surround themselves with.
[see public photos] [see private photos] (ask Tony for access info)

Why does it cost so much to get a photo matted? I normally buy them online, but for this coming photo show in San Diego, I just don’t have the time to do it myself. I called the local FastFrame here in Noe Valley, and they wanted $46 each for matting + backing my prints to 24″x18″. I managed to haggle them down to $40 each, but that’s still ridiculous. My normal San Diego FastFrame will go no lower than $24 each, even though just last January I managed to get them to do it for $15 each.

Anyone know of any local, inexpensive, high-quality matting sources (in SF or in SD)?

*NEW* I’ve created a forum to handle all the discussion that has been going on here.
Its URL is: http://echeng.com/asianblush/

Go to the forum and post your questions and answers! (comments closed, below)
—
Here is the original post:

Can someone in the medical profession out there educate me about RU-21? In theory, it might be able to “help” prevent the Asian Blush. Some sites say that it actually helps to metabolize acetaldehyde, but other sites say that it slows down the ethanol oxidation to acetaldehyde. One of my friends has been taking it, but he isn’t sure that it is “working.”

I don’t drink much, but when I do, I sometimes take Pepcid AC 30-60 minutes before having any alcohol. I find that it usually prevents me from turning red, but (un)fortunately makes me tipsy rather quickly.

Jan 11, 2005 *UPDATE* — Hey, guys. The response here has been overwhelming! I’ll install forum software soon and get a link posted here, so we can all post anecdotes.