at brunch gathering: peter shows off ella

New York was a lot of fun, and I saw lots of people. You can see all the photos on Flickr. Special thanks to Al for the use of his amazing place to host my little brunch party.

Folks I saw: Peter and Karine Kim (+Ella!), Tony Lu, Pat Suh, Beverly Yang, Francis Lam, Heidi Connal, Jeremy Desmon + Hilary, Isaac Krauss, Lorri Elder, Mandy Knox, Julia Cheng, Tiffany Kuo, Tammy Loh, Victor Wishna, Claire Bryant, Todd Palmer, Pedja Muzijevic, Jim and Leslie Margolis, the SLSQ, Cindy + Pete…

Damn. I may have more friends in New York than I do in the Bay Area. Lots of displaced Californians out there…

peter and pat at InTENT. i really like this photo.

Geoff comes out to say hi seconds before the lights dim

On Monday night I went to the Baryshnikov Arts Center to see the St. Lawrence String Quartet play in the Movado Hour salon series. Contrary to what the website lists, the quartet did not play Shostakovich 8 nor Schumann 1. They ended up playing a Haydn String Quartet (one I had never heard), Shostakovich 7, and Schumann Op. 41 No. 2 in F Major (the one no one ever plays). (read more »)

parallels desktop for mac os, now with coherence

I took a screenshot of my Mac Pro desktop a few minutes ago. See anything weird about it? That’s right: there are Windows apps running along side Mac apps! The most recent build of the new Parallels Desktop for Mac features Coherence, a feature that allows you to free Windows apps from the constraints of a virtual OS window. I also tested drag ‘n drop between windows (copying files), and it worked without any problems.

Before today, I was afraid to try Coherence because the product is still in beta, but for some reason was infused with a jolt of courage today while using Windows apps (for increased productivity — some of them are just better!).

Now I can run my two favorite Windows apps (BreezeBrowser and Beyond Compare 2) without having to work within a virtual OS window.

An e-mail forward arrived my inbox yesterday, sent from Jeff Padilla, an old friend from middle school and high school. Brian Freeman, one of the four or five soldiers reported to have been killed in a raid in Iraq, was actually ambushed, kidnapped and executed. Brian went to my high school, but I don’t think I ever really had a conversation with him back then. I did, however, recognize a younger version of his face when I saw the military portrait I found on a tribute website.

Among the trail of recipients in the e-mail were 21 other names from Torrey Pines, all from our class. I haven’t seen nor spoken with most of the folks on the list, but even seeing their names in print brings back fond memories from the past — memories from before growing up and being thrust into Real Life…

Peter wouldn’t believe me when I told him that my Blackberry throws uncaught Java exceptions, so I snapped a photo of it happening.

It happens every once in awhile when the phone area is searching for address entries (and I’m tapping out name). I also get strange address book update errors when adding/editing contacts. It tells me that the “contact has been updated externally,” and that no changes can be made. But it saves the new data, anyway.

In unrelated news, I was invited by a Daily Show producer to go see the Bill Gates taping tonight, and I CAN’T GO! Geoff tried to convince me to go to the taping over the St. Lawrence String Quartet concert, but that just wouldn’t be right.

I laughed out loud when I saw this, and felt compelled to post a link. A couple months ago, Microsoft released a blue screen of death screensaver. Brilliant!! I really want to install this on someone’s machine when they aren’t looking. :)

Anyway, this came up because my sister just had BSOD problems with some new hardware I sent her. I, myself, have traded my sporadic BSOD problems for the exciting SPOD. Both are a pain in the butt.

More than once, I’ve been in a cab in New York and have been forced to listen to the driver rant about the evils of one ethnicity or another (I also remember seeing news programs about overt cab driver racism), but today was the first time I had a cab pass me over for a white guy. And I have to say, it felt pretty shitty.

I was over at Mandy and Elliot’s place last week, and as usual, I felt compelled to take a few photos of their two black cats. Those of you with black cats know that it’s very difficult to get a good photo of one.

It was really dark in the loft, but all I had with me was a Canon Rebel XT and its dinky onboard flash. Popping up the flash, I snapped a few shots and discovered that one of their cats was hypersensitive to the camera’s preflashes, which strobe quickly (and normally, imperceptibly) before the main flash.

one cat kept closing her eyes when the flash went off

Note that I’ve also met some people who are sensitive to preflashes. They’re typically the ones who have that drugged, half-blinking look when you photograph them. (read more »)

Before going off to Cartahena for a performance a couple of weeks ago, Geoff and Livia sent me home with a planted amaryllis bulb that they had been nurturing for a little while. Within days, the thing exploded into five red blooms.

I know nearly nothing about flowers, but I am very impressed with how much energy an amaryllis bulb must store in order to grow so quickly into something so large. You give it a little water, and it goes nuts. Best bachelor plant ever!

As has been the tradition for the past few years, Tony picked me up from the airport last night for a bite to eat at a greasy diner before depositing me at Al’s place, where I’ll be staying for the next four days. I was utterly unable to sleep last night, possibly because I slept for four hours on the plane in the afternoon. My sleep schedule is completely screwed up.

Unfortunately, I seem to have arrived in New York just in time for a cold spell. The wind howled all night, and after laying in bed for hours, it’s finally light outside. Even up here on the 37th floor, sunrise in Manhattan always seems to greet you with the sound of sirens.

My friend, Victor Wishna, is featured in the January/February issue of Stanford Magazine in an article called Curtain Speech by Joann C. Gutin. It’s about his new book, In Their Company: Portraits of American Playwrights, a collaboration between Victor and photographer Ken Collins.

Congratulations on the book (and article), Victor! I’m going to get you to sign a copy when I see you this weekend in New York. :) (read more »)

This is really weird. One of my friends placed an order for a new MacBook today, and during the research process, I noticed that in one of the stock photos of the black MacBook (in this case, seen on Amazon.com), the women on the left in the iChat screenshot looks a lot like Livia. Even Livia agrees that it looks like her.

UPDATE Upon closer inspection, Lan informs us that “Linda” has double eyelids. (read more »)

Ahhh, the joy of computers. Address Book.app on Mac OS X just froze up while I was editing a contact. While it was “not responding,” Mail.app, iCal.app, and Adium.app also refused to respond, and I had to force-quite them all.

When I launched Address Book again, all the data was gone. Luckily, I back up often — and you should, too. :)

It continues to bother me that upon finding out that I am an underwater photographer, a large percentage of people I meet for the first time ask, “so, how do you make money?” In my own twisted fantasy-land, I always look them straight in the eye and reply, “none of you goddamn business,” but in real life, I’m not allowed to be that rude. Instead, I reply with a vague answer. Those who are perceptive pick on the cue and don’t follow up, but many continue to follow up with more specific questions, forcing me to go into the complicated topic of How I Make Money. (read more »)

This is the best 2 minute doco ever. Thanks, Ken, for the forward. :) (read more »)

I went out bowling with Lynn tonight (@ Presidio Bowl). My scores were: 99, 104 and 182 (!!). How’s that for unevenness?? Part of the problem was that I used a 15-lb ball for much of the first couple of games. Switching to a 12-lb ball made a huge difference. (read more »)

I’m finally in town for more than a week and have dedicated time to sell some of the things I haven’t been using enough to justify their ownership. There’s an updated list at my stuff for sale page. Some of the items for sale: Sony PSP, Sony HVR-A1U HDV camcorder, Panasonic Optio S, Blackberry 8700C (unlocked), iRiver clix media player, Aeron chair, miniDV tapes, and more.

Wow. I took most of the day off, and it felt really, really good.

victor a. eyes an iPhone

On Thursday, I made my annual visit to Macworld with Victor A. and Adam Tow (Nash couldn’t make it on the same day this year). Aside from the two iPhones sitting in display cases, there wasn’t much to see. Apple TV was sort of interesting, but there was no good content on the demo units, and I lost interest quickly (there was only the highly-compressed, relatively low-res content from iTunes).

I spent a lot of time in the Canon booth hanging out with Tammy Loh, who was in her full Canon getup. (read more »)

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