Food seems to be the theme of my New York experience. Food, pretty strangers, good friends, and a very healthy lack of sleep. As is obvious from my weekend update post, Vienna Teng is here, hanging out in New York during a rare day off. Yesterday, she played at the Borders in the Time Warner building at Columbus Circle; I wanted to go, but that whole “work” think got in the way. Pat went, with some Microsoft buddies, and in the evening, the three of us ate dinner at a nice Indian restaurant in the West Village, where we had a very nice, spicy okra dish. I really like okra, and eat it whenever I can. Vienna had never been to Magnolia Bakery, so we went there afterward for cupcakes. :)

I’d like to take a moment to point out that with regard to television programming, Vienna is even worse than I am. (read more »)

My friend Alex King has released Tasks Pro 1.1:

Tasks Proâ„¢ is the multi-user version of Tasks: a powerful web-based task manager (to-do list manager) that allows you to organize your tasks in a hierarchical structure. Group controls allow projects to be set up only for people who need to see them. The easy browser based interface lets everyone in your groups work together easily and efficiently. The Tasks Proâ„¢ server component is cross-platform compatible and can be installed on any Windows, Mac OS X or Linux computer running PHP and MySQL.

I’ve used it for my own purposes, and highly recommend it.

Slashdot reports that D&D is 30 years old. I was a AD&D sort of kid and played it nearly every day for years, starting when I was around 8 years old. One of the comments in the slashdot article points to a comic strip, which I thought was a joke until I got to the end. Actually, even at the end, I still thought it was a joke, but after looking at the page for awhile longer and following some of the links, I was thinking, “please be a joke. please be a joke.” It is, in fact, not meant to be a joke.

I feel like a zombie. My dirty secret is that I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate II: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath with Tony. Both of us are pretty busy, but we still manage to squeeze in one or two long nights of “work” every week; last week was particularly taxing because we had to finish the game before my leaving New York! Luckily, each of those games takes 15-20 hours to “finish,” which isn’t so bad when spread out over several weeks. :) I spent Friday night and all-day Saturday in Jackson Heights; Saturday was Haeyoung’s birthday, and a bunch of people — mostly CAAAV members — threw a surprise party for her at Tony and Ai-Jen’s place. I found out the day before that the party was being advertised to Haeyoung as my going-away party. A party for me, and I didn’t even know about it! ;) It was the first time I have been in the company of people playing Pictionary with keywords centered around organizing (e.g. “solidarity” and “imperialism”). (read more »)

My guestbook (Advanced Guestbook 2.2) was hacked via a SQL injection vulnerability last week. The hackers were kind and only changed the last guestbook entry. Luckily, my guestbook database lives by itself, so there’s only so much damage they could have done.

The lesson? If you’re running Advanced Guestbook 2.2, you should upgrade to 2.3.1. :)

Shit. I wrote over my anti-spam modifications. I’m going to have to replicate them.

*UPDATE* After the update, I couldn’t seem to login to my guestbook admin panel. The initial login works, but then I get kicked out if I try to do anything. The solution: (read more »)

I loved this scene in Kill Bill, Vol. 2 :)
It’s too bad I can’t laugh on cue like Pai Mei does in Kill Bill, Vol. 2. And it’s too bad I don’t have a long, wispy beard to stroke while layin’ out the insults in Cantonese. This scene was pure genius.

I’ve just experienced my first winter/spring transition ever, and it was pretty damn cool. (As you know, we don’t really have proper seasons in California). I can’t believe things changed so fast! Just over a week ago, it was cold, miserable, and snowy. But by this weekend, the temperature was in the mid-to-high 70s and flowers were blooming everywhere. I get distracted everywhere I walk, and even at night I’m looking up at the new, lacy whiteness of the trees. I love seeing the arching blooms along the streets flanking Central Park West. On my way back from Queens this morning (stayed over at Tony’s last night), I hopped off of the E train at 5th Avenue so I could walk across the park to my place on the UWS. Everyone was out walking the paths and sunning themselves on the grass (I’m SO OVER tanning these days. The sun is an evil ball of fire). It took me about an hour to saunter slowly across, and I was sort of withdrawn into my own little world, alone despite the throngs of people surrounding me. I remember looking at the ray of sunlight on my white-ass arm and thinking, “wow — this arm has been covered by clothing for months.”

The clash of church clothing and people in summer clothing (women in tank/tube tops!) was interesting.

I had BBQ Saturday evening at Pearson’s BBQ in Jackson Heights, AND tonight at Brother Jimmy’s on the UWS. After avoiding beef for so long, I gorged myself on it this weekend. I’m in a downward (upward?) spiral! I weighed myself yesterday at Tony’s place, and I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been — by eight pounds! See? Everyone scoffs when I bitch about gaining weight. Now I have proof. By the way, walking into Pearson’s BBQ gave me a Twilight Zone sort of feeling. It’s a little enclave of Caucasians surrounded (and I mean surrounded) by South Asians. :) [see some photos]

The Nash clan was in New York this weekend for a wedding; being around so many Nashes is always a lot of fun (eight Nashes there were — plus two girlfriends). The “kids” poke at each other non-stop, and I often end up talking with Mom and Dad Nash, the three of us amused at the antics of the Nashlings. It was great to see all of them. Mom Nash thinks that it’s “cute” that I’m here in New York. That’s a very different reaction than I usually get from people when I tell them what I’m doing. :)

Adam, Carolyn and I had brunch at Public with Paola, one of Adam’s friends from Harvard Business School. Paola is a lot of fun to chat with; she’s always laughing, and has sparkly eyes. “See? I have cool friends, despite my barbarian ways,” Adam quipped. After the meal, Joechang and Rachel came down from the Upper West Side to meet up with me and the Nash Horde at Ground Zero. It’s still a Big Hole in the Ground, but now you can walk all the way around the south side in a covered walkway. [see some photos]

This is mostly for me, to track my progress dealing with this problem, and for others to find, if they have the same problem. (Progress in trying to fix my recent BSOD problem with my Dell 8600). (read more »)

How is it that my personal website gets more visitors than does Wetpixel.com, a site considered one of the premiere sites in its (very narrow) industry? It’s upsetting. Perhaps I should invest some of the (very little) income I’m getting from Wetpixel back into its own marketing. Thus far, we have grown — through word of mouth — into a site that gets nearly 30,000 unique visits per month. But my site here is getting around 35,000 uniques a month.

I recognize that our readership at Wetpixel is valuable because it is extremely targeted. Most people who visit the site are loyal, returning day after day. But collecting a tiny sliver of a huge “market” seems to work better than getting a larger share of a tiny market. I really wonder how many digital underwater photographers there are out there in the world. Probably not many. Oh well; at last I have fun running the site — most of the time. :)

I just heard someone in the room refer to time passing in the real world as “clock ticks” and events in the real world occuring “with some probability on each tick.” I’m a fan of using geek language outside of its world when appropriate (e.g. “pinging” someone, which describes something specific that isn’t as easily described otherwise) or when humorous, but using it for no reason makes me cringe. There’s chic geek, and there’s dorky geek; sometimes the line between the two is just very clear.

I just realized the other day that one 250GB disk is enough to hold my entire 400 CD music collection — uncompressed. The next time I am home for a long time (hah!), I’m going to build a music server and rip all my CDs in both WAV and MP3 formats. I’ll stick ‘em in a cheap $400 DELL box with IDE RAID and two mirrored 250GB drives (or whatever the largest size o’ the moment is), and stream them to cheapy client boxes with digital audio outs. With my nice DAC, it should sound heavenly (enough), and will be available all over the house. :)

I dreamt convincingly last night that I cleared my left ear of earwax by sticking something all the way into my right ear. Surely, that is not a good sign.

I had dinner at Ghennet and rice pudding at Rice to Riches with Peter, Karine, and Christine the other night. It’s fun to hang out with sisters; I like noticing their similarities. [see some photos]

We turned on the TV last night at Tony and Ai-jen’s place, and Dubya was on the screen giving a “speech.” English-like sounds came out of his mouth, but we had no luck deciphering it, so we changed the channel. Dubya, again. Changed the channel again. Dubya. And again. AND AGAIN. Channels 1-6 or so were soiled by the mug of our wonderful president, and not until we hit Univision did his face disappear. “This is like my worst nightmare!” [someone] exclaimed, and we all had a little laugh (but one tainted with disgust). Even evil-cat Cocoa looked annoyed, but that might have been because I discovered a new way to torment her.

I am torn. I feel like I’m ready to leave New York, but I am quite enjoying the stability of daily routine. In fact, when I look ahead at my travel schedule, a bit of dread creeps up on me, mixed in with the anticipation.

Unrelated: AP has a story today about a Taiwanese cat using the toilet. I’d like to point out that certain Taiwanese people have a history of training cats to use the toilet. ;) I’d also like to point out that roughly 50 people a month hit my site by doing a web search for the word, “pooping.” You sick bastards.

Unrelated 2: I just saw this on Slashdot. Clicked over to the site with the images and got really excited! Science is cool.

eating at pampa

My good friends in the St. Lawrence String Quartet are here in New York for a few days, performing in a couple of different venues. On Saturday night, I took Tony and Ai-jen to see them play an all-Dvorák concert with Menahem Pressler at the Met. (The web page for the event is a little weird, because it shows a photo of Pressler in the Beaux Arts Trio, instead of with members of the SLSQ.) I really like Dvorák’s Piano Quintet Op. 81, so it was a real treat to get to hear it performed live by such great musicians. Pressler is very cute at the piano; he sort of bops around and stares out at the rest of the group. I love seeing musicians play who radiate a strong connection with their fellow music-makers.

After the show, we went out to Pampa for Argentinian steaks. Tony, Ai-jen and I had eaten before the show at Josie’s (because of time, we cruelly deprived Tony of their lemon curd yogurt pie, which is one of the best desserts EVER), but we pigged out again on fries, desserts, and sangria. I was impressed with Daisy (she’s one of the SLSQ’s students from Toronto); she probably weighs no more than 100 pounds, but ate a steak that was literally hanging off the plate at both ends. I wanted to see how there could possibly be room for so much meat, but I thought it might be rude to stare. Speaking of rude, much of the conversation at dinner — at the other end of the table — centered around p o r n, for some reason. I mentioned that the search term that hits my site the most is “pooping” because of a photo I have of my cat pooping on the toilet, and Geoff’s old NY-buddy Sean looked up and said, “oh! I’ve been to your site.” I wonder what search led him to pooping Hiro … ;)

Saw Barry, Lesley, and John (Lad) for dinner tonight, up at Gennaro on the UWS (really great slow-roasted (or braised?) lamb shank), and we bumped into Elise and Ben, whom we all knew from the music department back at Stanford. Almost felt like we were back in California. :) [see some photos]

Tickets are available to the general public as of 3 minutes ago:
http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/1C003876E57C9091

The Carriage House at Villa Montalvo is a fantastic venue. Quiet and intimate…

While walking on the streets adjacent to Central Park yesterday, I noticed that some of the cherry trees were just starting to show signs of white. Any tonight, as Claire and I came up from the subway after hanging out with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, I looked up, surprised: all of the cherry trees in front of Lincoln Center were in full bloom! The blossoms were beautiful, even when only peripherally lit by the street lights on the Upper West Side. I know it won’t last long; I’m going to see if they are photo-worthy tomorrow. I’m sure there are other areas of New York where the cherry blossoms are beautiful. Anyone have any tips on where I should go to find them?

I’ve got to get to Japan one of these years.

miss vienna teng, in central park
I left work early (there was no one there, anyway) and walked up the street to meet Vienna Teng and her violinist Alan Lin at the corner of Fulton and Broadway. Alan waved a quick goodbye as he headed south toward the water (”I’m going to go get lost.”), and Vienna and I hopped back on the subway, heading north to Central Park, where we roamed around for a few hours. I like Central Park, and spend far too little time exploring it. Oh yeah, we had popovers at the Popover Cafe. I think it was my first popover. The restaurant is fully themed: the waitress was wearing a popover-looking hat on her head, too.

After dinner, we wandered down to a little bar in SoHo, where Vienna met up with Dani Linnetz, a singer she briefly toured with last year. As we walked into the bar, a woman who was sitting close to the entrance suddenly stood up and started running toward us. I was about to defend myself, but then realized that she had given Vienna a big hug — it turned out to be one of Vienna’s old high school acquaintances. Yeah, it’s a small world (blah blah blah), but the story gets even stranger. As we were walking out of the bar, we heard a tentative, “[Vienna]?” Yet another high school acquaintance of Vienna’s was on the same block!

ANYYWAY, enough about that. We found our way to Crash Mansion, where The Animators were playing (they had been touring with Vienna for the past week). I met Alex briefly at Joe’s Pub a couple of weeks ago, and it was nice to finally get to hear them perform (they were awesome!). [see some photos]

I had an e.piphany sometime last year while in the hallway with Vienna: “I need another dimension. That way, I’d have enough pockets to hold everything.”

Since then, I have discovered cargo pants, which have temporarily quenched my need for another dimension, but carrying geek toys can still be a pain in the ass. As I was getting ready to go to work this morning, I started my morning ritual: I threw all the things I might need during the day onto my bed, and had a little mental debate about whether I’d need to wear a man-purse. Strewn about were my wallet, phone, Palm Tungsten, iPod Mini w/headphones, Canon SD10, and keys. Luckily, it is winter, and the jackets I wear have anywhere from three to six pockets in them. No problem.

I’m dreading the arrival of summer. No jackets w/pockets = complications! But maybe it will be fine. When travelling, I’ll have a bag to put things in. And when I’m back “home” in San Francisco, I should be able to scrap my Palm since I won’t be riding the subway anymore (and therefore will no longer be reading shitty eBooks), and I probably won’t be bringing my iPod either, since there won’t be anyone I need to drown out at the “office.”

- Today is Good Friday. There are exactly two people here at work, and I’m one of them. Yay.

- Go donate to Kerry’s campaign. Gotta vote out the Dubya. The lowest amount is $50, and every penny helps. I can’t say that I am a huge fan of Kerry. But the alternative is another four years of Hell. Fundrace.org is a great site for finding out where notable people live and how much they donated to various campaigns.

- I started using Kinja, because there are too many blogs out there to keep track of. I find that I waste a huge amount of time going to each blog/news source/etc., just to see if there are new posts, and since not everyone uses RSS, you can’t just depend on a RSS reader to keep up to date. I’d want the RSS reader to be web-based anyway, so I can keep up on my readings from any terminal. *UPDATE* I’m not sure whether Kinja is consistently indexing the weblogs I read that don’t support RSS, or how often it updates. No real information can be found on their site about how they work.

- I’m going to reach 1.4 million hits (since 8/26/99) sometime today. Cragee. Actually, it isn’t really 1.4 million hits. The number of hits is much higher, and the number of visits is much lower. I recently switched from counting #visits to #hits, for no real reason.

- I recently reminisced a bit and went back to read my real-time journal of the game. Man, that was fun.

So I finally decided to put 5 minutes of effort into increasing Wetpixel’s google ranking for “digital underwater photography,”* and lo and behold, it works! (ranked #1, at the time of writing).

* you know, because it’s clearly the best site for digital underwater photography. shameless, i know. i’ll stoop.

I’m very impressed with Google’s new GMail service. It’s the fastest and easiest webmail interface I’ve ever seen — really, the first usable one I’ve come across. There are convenient keyboard shortcuts and javascript/DHTML tricks that streamline the mail workflow and minimize page refreshes. All messages are organized into conversation threads that expand and contract with a single click. As expected, Google did it right. If they add multiple identities and IMAP/POP access (I’m sure they’ll charge for this, if it ever gets implemented), it could be the perfect mail solution for someone who checks mail both from a client and on the web*. As it exists now, the user experience is good enough to replace pretty much any native mail client.

*that is, if you don’t mind the clauses in their privacy policy that are currently causing a little media mini-bloodbath…