Black Coffee (Deprecated)

Heavy Duty Documentary

During the busiest hours of my day, CNN replayed a their documentary of the prison revolt at Mazar-e Sharif in Afghanistan last year. (House of War: The Uprising at Mazar-e Sharif) I could only give it 40% of the attention I would have liked to.

That's the long incident where a mob of Taliban beat a CIA interogator to death, Allied Special Forces poured laser-guided bombs onto the prison for a day, and eventually traitor Taliboy John Walker Lindh was pulled out of a basement with a few other survivors.

The documentary was amazing. Throughout the drama there was a team of German(?) journalists in and around the prison recording. CNN compiled this and other footage, along with interviews with people at the scene into a gripping hour-long film.

It's probably one of the rare instances where you'd ever get to see real-life special operations soldiers milling around, doing their jobs (every type was there -- CIA, SAS, Seals, and Delta Force). The candidness of the footage makes it really compelling to watch.

If that doesn't grip you, there is lots of macabre medieval footage too -- watching the two primitive sides fight each other in their clumsy, tooth-and-nail way. (Including a brutal head-shot of a Northern Alliance soldier blown off the parapet of the fort, and the grenade-suicide of a Taliban prisoner)

I'm not sure if the video has played on US CNN, but its last run on the international circuit was november 26. If you're unfortunate enough not to get to see it on tv, you can at least browse their web gallery, which covers the 'high' points, including photos. {there actually is a video option, but you have to pay for it}

My Wife and Her Sister

In one paragraphy I can succinctly describe the characters of my wife, Tien-Ling, and her younger sister, Tien-Lee.

THE STORY SETUP
After a nice ribeye lunch at Brewerkz (a much better restaurant than its corny name implies), we often go across the river to an authentic Japanese department store, Daimaru.

Their basement grocery store sells very high quality gelato ice creams. So our hobby is to buy double-scoop ice cream cones (I always get rum-raisin + strawberry), and then stroll around the grocery, poking at the beautifully presented, horribly expensive produce ($50 bunches of grapes, $9 eggplants, etc), finishing up our cones just about the time we've reached the cascading water tofu display.

Today to celebrate Shyan-Woei's final exams being over, and Ling's mom's birthday, we went out for lunch and wound up at Daimaru.

THE STORY
We were standing in the aisle full of different miso pastes. My ice cream was 2/3's consumed. After eating a ribeye and drinking two pints, I was stuffed. I walked up to Lee, held the cone out towards her, and said, "if you don't grab this by the count of three, I'm dropping it right here." She took the cone when I reached 'two'. Flush with my success, I grabbed the cone back from her, and served the same ultimatum to Ling. My countdown hadn't even reached 'one,' before Ling had whacked my arm, knocked the cone to the ground, and walked away.

Texas Turd Teacher

This wanker is apparently an English teacher at a high school in Dallas.

Looks might be deceiving?

No, not really. Take some excerpts from his "'encounters' and 'sightings' vs. the x-files fragment":

There is an ideology to keep things gaia-centric that permeates the pseudo-documentaries that target the same X-Files audience.

...

Most important about this naming in relation to X-Files and Encounters is that the pseudo-documentary has the running voice over as the "name" giving agent; whereas the fiction drama finds Mulder speechless in the face of the unknowable. Just in the way that Encounters objectifies phenomenon and the way that Alien Autopsy names "greys" are the pseudo-science docu-dramas actively "manufacturing consent."

...

This was the beginning of my thoughts about how the economics of government spending might be perpetuated with the hoax of an alien. Cold War Capitalist Militarism can continue after the communists are gone if "alien invasion" is being warned against.

Rating: WANKER

More China/Tibet Photos Available

More photos from Tien-Ling's trip to Tibet and China are now available on Tien-Lee's yahoo photobook.

Suprise for me

I had a late dinner with colleagues last night, and was headed home around midnight. At around 11:30 Ling started calling me fairly incessantly, wondering when I was coming home, etc, and other uncharacteristic queries. I figured she was either just being weird or had drank coffee at night, which is a nightmare, because she will stay up all night asking me to keep her company.

When I got home, I found out why she wasn't sleeping, and why she was eager to see me home. On our front door was a Christmas wreath {she laughs when I call it a wreath, as that word is used almost exclusively for the flower arrangements at funerals}, and inside the house, small reindeers made of synthetic pine needles and bric-brac. The funniest thing, though, was that she had bought ornamental bulbs and (sophisticated) blinking lights. Only, instead of decorating an artificial Christmas tree with them, she had draped our living room's 13-foot tall bamboo bush with the outfittings of a Christmas tree! It was terrific. I haven't had a Christmas decoration in years.

4458 -- die, die, never prosper!

One curious thing about Singapore is the obsession with numerology of license plates. Everyone, regardless of race, is obsessed with getting an auspicious number for their car. My indian colleague, who just bought a $450,000SGD 745 BMW paid an additional $3000 to get a license plate w/ lots of 7's. It's not unheard of to spend more than $10,000 for a "good" plate.

I, of course, couldn't give a fuck. Therefore we'll be allocated one automatically by the Land Transport Authority (LTA). Hopefully it will be at least neutral.

On the way home from purchasing our new Ford Focus we were passed by a car identical to the one we've bought, driven by a white dude. As I pointed it out, we saw the license plate: SDU4458.

Ling broke out in horrified, hysteric laughter...

SDU is an acronym for the Singapore Government's dating agency, the "Social Development Unit" known throughout Singapore by the alternate title, "Single, Desperate and Ugly." Ling cracked up, saying 4458, in Chinese sounds like the very unauspicious "Die, Die, Never Prosper!" Thats about as bad as it gets. I think even I might spend a little money to avoid a plate like that...

Detroit Techno

So after some extended haggling tonight I booked a deal to buy a Ford Focus 1.6l hatchback. Due to some financial optimizations and a bit of bureaucracy, I'll take possession of the car first week of December.

The timing of the financial optimizations I referred to also gave me the strength of patience in dealing with the car saleswoman. I barely had to wield any hyperbole or temper to get various concessions amounting to about $7,000, simply because I knew they were under pressure to make sales. (Final cost for the car was $82,900SGD (~$46,000 USD groan))

It will be a garden variety Focus hatchback, automatic tranmission 1.6l, leather upholstery, cd changer, 'sports rims', and some sort of parking sensors. (oh and some stupid key that 'features' remote entry, but is also bizarre and probably costs $150 to duplicate) There is no choice in components when you buy cars here.

The lack of choice is a bit depressing. It just happened that this day I signed the deal the salesgirl was at the Singapore Motor Show. When I went down I saw a strange looking Focus hatcback, a ST170. It was obviously setup for speed - a 6speed manual transmission and hot engine. I asked if I could buy it, but apparently it is banned in Singapore, along with some other similarly powerful Honda hatch. Apparently the LTA thinks that it has too much power (170bhp) for its size.

You should be aware to carefully study all terms given in Singapore for loans. For example, what Singapore calls a 2.6% loan is effectively a 5% loan because they don't calculate the interest on a daily basis. Vet every figure they give you with a financial calculator.

At any rate, relatively painless experience and I feel like I got myself a reasonable deal and didn't get pushed about.

I will be happy to get the car and stop having to take the rickety cabs steered by awful drivers who stink of human grease.

But who is so excited you'd think it was Christmas is Ling! She's been taking a refresher driving course and is having a great time. She is essentially feeling the same way you and I felt about driving when we were 16. The average American 18yo has driven far more than 28yo Ling.

Eldie Precog

31die provides a first screenshot for his Precog Terrain Visualizer. This is the software that will give us Predator Drone-like coverage while we are blasting through the Australian Outback in a convoy of diesel Land Cruisers in 2003. Excellent Stuff.

Hong Kong Street Chun Kee Thomson

For several months we noticed the busy Hong Kong Stret Chun Kee Thomson restaurant along Upper Thomson Road. Last night, we tried it for dinner and found it to be top-shelf szi-cha ('called dishes').

Their specialty is a fish hor fun (thick, wide, flat white noodles). I am not a fan of hor fun, but even I was impressed with this dish. The sauce was fragrant but didn't have the stink of docks. The noodles were properly cooked, intermingled with black pepper. Nearly every table ordered it.

Most dishes had some sea bass mixed with it. That went for both the hor fun and the tom yam soup we ordered. The soup was the suprise winner. I wouldn't have expected them to prepare it so nicely, but since the soup we originally ordered was out of stock, we went with it. Its excellence came from the thick broth. I don't think I've ever had a tom yam that was thicker than this one. It must have used a frightening amount of coconut milk. I couldn't get enough of it until my throat was burning so painfully that I was drinking it in some curious way that gave me uncomfortable ur-hiccups.

We ordered whole fish served with honey-chilli sauce. We wanted a Garoupa, but they only were left huge $39 beasts, so we settled for a Sea Bass (Sea Bass in Singapore is not the same as what we called Sea Bass in San Francisco. Here that fish is known as cod. Singapore Sea Bass is a much smaller, more bony fish) The fish was deep fried whole and then covered in this remarkable sauce -- which was a great balance of sweet and very spicy -- and slathered with a huge pile of sliced fresh onion and coriander. The onion and coriander made a great cooling counterpoint to the strong sauce.

The side dish of baby kailan vegetable tasted crisp and was cooked with a discreet amount of oyster sauce.

The restaurant is crowded with a lot of big families pouring in for dinner. That's a good sign. The only problem is that the large, misshapen room has tiled walls and floors. It's an acoustic nightmare. Even without a full house the place is deafening with the sounds of plates, silver, and people bouncing off the walls. It was thick with din.

Hong Kong Street Chun Kee Thomson
Lunch: 11:30AM-2:15PM
Dinner: 5:30PM-11:15PM

222/224 Upper Thomson Rd, Singapore 574354
Reservations (Weekdays only) 6454 2988

Damn Foul

So I was talking with some friends today. Apparently one of their former colleagues, who has since shipped on to a new posting, had left behind his company car. This car was actually a minivan. It had the typical fender and bumper abuse. But it had a special sort of abuse that I found enormously repulsive.

It seems this guy had a cat. He and his wife were going back to the US for a two week holiday. Instead of putting this cat into a kennel while they were gone, they parked the van inside a parking garage, with the windows partly rolled down, and instructions for the secretary to drop off food and water occasionally!

I was told that when you'd open the door to this van, the odor of two weeks' accumulated cat urine, scenting, and shit was so enormously overpowering that it hit you like a wall.

The poor Chinese man who cleaned out the upholstery only did so once he was paid double the normal rate.

I would love to know what this guy was thinking? How was this possibly the optimal solution to his cat storage problem?

Robust CSS (pt 2)

A few weeks ago I was complaining that I needed to find a more robust template that wouldn't break when I used html for accents (things like line items and bullets), and that scaled appropriately in the browser.

A robust template is one that uses valid CSS, has a liquid design, doesn't use tables, and works around the errors and inadequacies of all the common browsers.

Three weeks ago I sat down and sketched out how I want the index page of my Outback2003 section to look. Marvelously, I was able to find a robust template that satisfies all those criteria and provides a blog area + two columns.

One decision I have to make is what level of backwards browser support should I provide. The saila template is provided in several levels of backward compatibility.

I will make the unilateral decision to not provide support for Netscape v4. I don't need the debugging headaches or the hobbling technology necessary to satisfy some dirty gnu hippy. I'll use the next most basic version that "will work in all Windows-based Internet Explorer browsers over version 4; the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer 5; all Gecko-based browsers; and Opera version 5 and up."

So now it will be a matter of setting up the blog and piecing together the template and styles for my new page.

'Desert Explorer' Arrived

So yesterday my Hema Maps Desert Explorer CD Rom arrived. It's a single CD and has a quick installation. It comes with a copy of "OziExplorer LITE," which as far as I care should be named "OziExplorer BROKE."

There were a number of irritating graphics-based problems immediately. The tiny little drilldown-zoom window was being misdrawn. You could only see about 55% of it. The map index window, once minimized couldn't be restored.

I have no time for shabby software like that. I did a short search for software upgrades for OziExplorer LITE, but failed. So I ended up going back to using the "OziExplorer 'DEMO'" version. At least the graphics errors were solved.

So how are the maps? There are six of them designed to provide overlapping coverage of the central outback of Australia. The scale is 1:1,250,000. The typography and legending is nice. However, the map lacks the track detail I'd hoped for. Maybe I am being unfair.

My total lack of sense for the size of Australia probably to blame. These maps are 1:1,250,000 scale. Is that big or small? To put it in perspective here are some map scales for some Arizona Maps...

• 1:24,000. 7.5 Minute Series (Topographic). Reston, VA: U. S. Geological Survey, 1945 to present, app. 1971 sheets when complete. G4331s.C2 1882.U6

• 1:50,000. Arizona 1:50,000 [15 Minute Series (Topographic)]. Washington, DC: Army Map Service and Defense Mapping Agency, 1947 to present, currently 92 sheets, coverage incomplete. G4330s.50.U5

• 1:62,500. 15 Minute Series (Topographic). Reston: USGS, 1910 to 1968, 306 sheets, coverage incomplete. G4331s.C2 1882.U6

• 1:100,000. 30 x 60 Minute Series (Topographic). Reston: USGS, 1980 to present, 68 sheets when complete. G3700s.100.U5

• 1:125,000. 30 Minute Series (Topographic). Reston: USGS, 1901 to 1939, 23 sheets, only partial coverage. G4331s.C2 1882.U6

• 1:250,000. 1 x 2 Degree Series (Topographic). Reston: USGS, 1953 to present, 22 sheets, periodically revised. G4050s.250.U5

• 1:500,000. State of Arizona. Reston: USGS, 1981, 1 sheet. G4330. 1981.G4

• 1:1,000,000. World (North America) 1:1,000,000. Reston: USGS, 1952, 4 sheets, coverage incomplete. G3200s.1,000.U51
  

So you can see that the entire state of Arizona can be comfortably mapped at 1:500,000 scale. That scale represents 7.891 miles in one inch.

The entire area of Australia is 7,682,000 square miles, similar in size to the 48 mainland states of the USA. Lonely Planet says that 75% of this continent is referred to as the 'Outback.'

Therefore, it's impossible to squeeze the desert outback (assume it's only just 50% of Australia) into Arizona-scale maps -- roughly 20 states' worth of data on six maps -- 3 states on one map.

Consequently the Hema maps are 1:1,250,000 scale where one inch equals 19.728 miles and you can fit the equivalent of half the 48 states into six maps.

Once I considered the maps in scale terms, I'm more comfortable with the detail level they provide. Maybe moreso when I realize that Hema field-checked all these tracks, which tend to move around and degrade. So the major tracks on the map you can rely on more comfortably.

Of course, I would like more detail... more side trails, more pointers to ruins, mines, and other strange points of interest, but I'll get at those in different ways.

Thanks to the OziExplorer software, I can keep several different maps, even satellite images, inside the software. Then as we are driving along, the GPS updating our coordinates in OziExplorer, I can switch to different panes showing our location on each of the different map sets I have loaded into the software. Therefore I am able to drill down on my specific location as necessary and as the mapping data is available.

For sure the next series of maps to load would be the Auslig data. Since these maps are much larger scale (1:250,000) than the Hema maps(1:1,250,000), you get a lot more detail, even down to dwellings. That is a very good start for points of interest, for example.

There are more piecemeal data sources too. Recently I found data for the 'Northern Territories' that allows me to get actual aerial photography of the regions around and north of Alice Springs all the way to Darwin.

To show the level of extra detail provided by those two compare the Hema Map detail to the the Aerial Photo detail of the same region. Drilling down further on the Aerial Photography maps yields thumbnails of aerial photos that you could order!

This allows us to take an interesting approach to trip navigation. We plan a route based on the basic Hema maps and Auslig maps. And then we drill down on specific areas and points of interests and seek out supplementary data, like aerial reconaissance and satellite imagery to provide some more color to the navigation.

Les Bouchons Restaurant

Last week we went to L'Angelus' new sister-restaurant, Les Bouchons ('The Corks') right around the corner from Club Street, at 7 Ann Siang Road.

The plan seems simple: a variety of red-meats, some basic side-dishes, and wines under $48SGD.

It's been only open a month. Run by Sam Chin and C.W. Choong, it was off to a rocky start. The chef they imported from France, and indulged with a tony third-floor flat above the restaurant, left his key and a "sorry!" note on the floor of the restaurant early one morning before he exfiltrated back to France!

Although it's a new restaurant and doesn't have much traffic yet, things seem under control, and the staff provide the same service that Gabriel and Phillipe up the street at L'Angelus do -- attentive, pleasant and occasionally entertaining.

We got off to a great start when I was introduced to a liqueur that I've never tasted before, but instantly fell in love with: Creme de Cassis. Chilled, I mistook the light red blackcurrant liqueur as some sort of beaujolais. It's refreshing, without even a hint of harshness and is extraordinarily smooth. The flavors are restrained. If I'd been told what it was, I might have expected a cloying, sickly sweet beverage. However it was nothing like that at all and served admirably as a side-beverage to my nice, rare ribeye and potatoes meal.

For appetizers we had snails and a plate of mozzarella and tomatoes. I must say that the snails were rather bland, especially compared to what they serve at L'Angelus. At least part of the reason might be that there were no toast points served with them, hence no way to soak up any of the rich butter.

The mozzarella was a much better dish. Firm roma tomatoes without any mealiness, and a suprisingly tasty mozarella--often a terribly bland cheese. The oil mix locked in the flavour and connected the cheese and tomato nicely.

There isn't a great variety to the main course. It's mostly red meats (ribeye, filet, a large 2-person roast), although it serves salmon and prawn dishes for non-beef eaters. Of course I chose the ribeye which comes with "free flow french fries" and a salad.

The salad wasn't so smart, and I didn't finish it. Too much arrugula, that bitter, bitter weed I hate so much, and the lettuce seemed slightly less fresh.

The mediocre salad didn't long distract me from the nicely marbled ribeye I was served, and the truly excellent fries. Freeflow french fries may sound like a weird gimmick, but they're truly good. I've read all about the fries at Les Halles, and the extraordinary production steps they take to produce uniform perfection. I have to assume these are prepared similarly. We tore through two baskets of them, cooked to the correct softness, with a golden brown coat, and lightly salted.

I passed dessert for a single espresso. My wife enjoyed an ice cream dish. Alternatives would have been typical French desserts like Creme Brulee and Clafoutis. L'Angelus prepares them excellently, so I can only assume they're similar quality here.

The restaurant itself is charming, designed and decorated as a typical Parisian Bistro. The bonus is a second-storey private dining room. The cozy wooden area has a large teak table, some couches, and radio. Enough to host a 5-15 person party. We're looking for a good reason to hold one there soon.

Les Bouchons Restaurant
7 Ann Siang Road (perpindicular to Club Street)
Singapore
069689
Tel: +65 6423 0737

Notorious U.R.L.

So I was doing another vanity search on my site's referer logs during a lull today.

I've been getting corn-holed by the Googlebot lately, but one of the site strings was interesting......

Well, sort of horrifying, actually...

#3 on the German Google's Search for 'balloon popping videos'....

Not even hottt porn, but perv porn!

Another Australian Map Datasource

Logisitical planning for our 4wd trip through the Australian Outback next year is made easier by the excellent mapping resources provided by the Australian Government, through Geoscience Australia.

The most important item is their "Natmap Raster 250k Mapsheets 2002." The project, "provides georeferenced digital images of Geoscience Australia's 1:250 000 scale national maps covering the whole of Australia." Two cd's hold the entire 518 map collection. "Each map image is georeferenced to Map Grid of Australia (MGA94) coordinates, which allows interfacing with software that uses geographic positions such as GPS mapping software and geographic information systems (GIS). The MGA projection is ideal for measuring distances and areas."

How would we use the data? "NATMAP Raster 250K contains all the software needed to use the maps on the Windows 95/98/2000/NT4/Me/XP operating system - all you need is Internet Explorer 5.5. " Futhermore, folks have written some free software to allow this map data to be used inside OziExplorer. I also expect the 31die Precog/Terrain Visualizer could take advantage of the data.

The maps, updated as recently as June 2002, show nice detail that would be helpful in finding interesting sites to seek out -- things like abandoned mines, salt evaporators, and other ruins.

It only costs $99AUD, so I will order it and have it for December, when 31die is in town the Summit, when we plan our wicked works.

Geoscience Australia is worth browsing. One of the goodies is a zoomable/scrollable Landsat 7 Picture Mosaic of Australia

Totalalternatives?

Yesterday I was investigating Deke McClelland's Photoshop Video Series. Have some reservations about it, after seeing what a poor website he created, and seeing the cost ($250) of his DVD Series.

A helpful guy on photo.net pointed me to an alternative:

I have been working my way through Photoshop 7 Techniques, which is a CD-ROM based tutorial by Julieann Kost, one of Adobe's top Photoshop trainers. I have to say that this series is really superb. I think that CD-ROM based instruction is far superior to videos for learning a software program like Photoshop. You actually watch her demonstrate everything on your own computer and then you can try the same things sith the files provided. I think that it is the best computer based instruction I have ever used. There are two sets of 4 CDs, the first called "Fundamental techniques" and the second "Advanced Techniques". I actually learned quite a bit from the fundamentals set. The list price for boths sets bought together is $198, but I bought them for $150 using a coupon code I found in one of the photoshop magazines. I think it was "Photoshop User". I bet if you called the vendor and asked for the discounted price they would give it to you.
I think they have a 30 day money back guaranty, but you should check on this
yourself. I have no connection to this product other than being a very
satisfied customer.

Her site, adobeevangelists.com isn't as offensive as Deke's. Furthermore, her pedigree at Adobe makes me a lot more comfortable than Deke's 6' stack of Dummie books. As well, her art/photography background sounds more similar to my interest than making ugly-looking web buttons and logos.

She provides a list of training materials (one of which is our friend Deke. Deke++ ). More interesting is the link to her product, Adobe Photoshop Fundamentals. There is a discount for this product, ask me about it.

At any rate, there are a couple other video seminar series listed on the adobe evangelists' site. The Ben Willmore series looks like it is probably pretty good, but just deals with specific, more advanced issues. Maybe later. www.photoshopvideos.com just looked like a bad ecommerce site filled with a lot of videos.

I guess right now my idea is to go with the Julieanne Kost series.

Totaltraining or Totalturd

Some time ago I asked on photo.net if there were any decent options for learning Photoshop in Singapore.

One of the responses said I should check out the video series 'Total Training for Adobe Photoshop 7' by Deke McClelland.

Straightaway I'm having some credibility problems with the guy... That he's written fifty+ "Dummies Guide..." books doesn't prove much to me. When I goto his home page, I get taken to an awful 'doorway page' (Why Graphic Designers Just Don't Get It) with the added insult of a message: 'This site is designed to be viewed on a screen set to 1024x768 pixels or higher. If your screen is smaller, some buttons will be hidden.' Nice... good start for an 'expert' in desktop publishing.

Well, ok, then, the second page I visit, against all odds, is worse. The strange background texture renders the text nearly unreadable.

Why am I persisting with this site? I'm not. I stopped. It sucks. But I'm still curious whether his lectures are any good or not.

If the series does turn out to be any good, I found it offered for cheaper on Ebay anyway...

All-consumed

I was doing a vanity study of my url referrer logs today (who has looked at me, from where, etc). One of the referrers was allconsuming.net.

It's an interesting search-angle to look at books and blogs. The idea is that it scans through blogs for amazon.com references to books. Perhaps it could be turned into a better bestseller-listing mechanism than the NY Times Booklist, which is notoriously corrupt. But otherwise I am not sure there is an obvious direct application.

What do they say its purpose is?

"offers new insight into what the weblog community is reading at the moment."

and

"I'll be increasing the feature set so that people will eventually be able to receive personalized lists of books that are being read by your friends... and your friends' friends, and your friends' friends' friends, etc."

So basically no great reason, other than that is kind of a cool query to run across the blog internet.

Creative Day in Singapore (part 3 of 3)

Even if we hadn't been inspired by our discoveries on the second or third floors of Bras Basah, when we discovered the Basheer Graphics Books store on the fourth floor, that would have been enough to excite us.

It's a phenomenal collection of fine books dealing with all sorts of art: architecture, graphic design, fonts, web art, all styles of drawing, photography. It's eminently browseable, and just spending thirty minutes there inspires you to start all sorts of artistic projects.

Basheer Graphic Books
Block 231 Bain Street, 04-19 Bras Basah Complex, Singapore 180231
Tel; 336-0810 Fax: 334-1950
E-mail: bgbooks@singnet.com.sg

Creative day in Singapore (part 2 of 3)

The Bras Basah Complex is an old-fashioned building. It's built 'open' like many of the Housing Development Board (HDB) buildings, with hallways exposed to the outside.

So when we climbed to the fourth storey, Ling walked to one side of the building and discovered an enormous view. Next door Singapore is constructing a giant branch of the Singapore National Library, a full city block. The stunning thing was that we had an unobstructured view of the entire works.

What made it even more exciting was it's only in the foundation phase right now. So all the esoteric machinery is working (it looked like a cattle yard of cranes). This is the stuff that you can't even see from the sidewalk because it is below the viewline of the wall that rings the project. But here, you have a God's eye view of everything taking place.

It inspired me to imagine a neat little photo project I'll try to shoot this weekend. It comes at a great moment because just this week my query on photo.net about renting lenses in Singapore yielded a useful response. Looks like I can try out a Canon 100-400 f4.5-5.6 lens for around $200 for a couple days' use.

Creative Day in Singapore (part one of three)

So today was the Indian Deepavali holiday in Singapore, so I spent a chunk of the day off from work. We went to the Bras Basah Complex shopping center.

I've been there a dozen times or so. The four storey rickety-looking old place holds a lot of art supply stores, copy/printing centers, and marginal bookstores. But today, we gave it a further inspection (going up to the higher, more deserted levels) and had a field day of creative discovery.

On the second storey, a Chinese painting gallery, Xuanhua Art Gallery, caught our eye. Ah-Ling and I both like Chinese paintings with a bit of western fusion. The collections of Liu Mao Shan and Du Ying Qiang both had that quality. Liu added colorful splotches of deeply saturated paints (almost looked like oil) as highlights. Du used also used very rich hues to make some beautiful tree foliage.

We talked to the owner, Ho See Jui, about our own Chinese painting and its problems. The painting, since I bought it in 1998 has developed circles of orange molds. I figured the painting was unsalvageable, and that I had been ripped-off by the gallery I'd bought it from. Either that they sold me an inferior, non-hermetic frame or some other cost-cutter that resulted in a ruined painting but a sweet sale for the gallery.

Ho said that in fact, the frames needn't be hermetic, it's just that they need to be around circulating, fresh air (not necessarily air-conditioned). Ling and I now believe moving to our cramped, hot, dark flat in Ang Mo Kio probably led to the problem. The mold started after we moved there. Not necessarily unsalvageable, though... Ho said that there are craftsmen who separate the rice paper away from its backing, remove (how?) the mold, and rebuild the picture. Price? Around $200SGD. Suprisingly little. Furthermore, the chances of me again living in a non-airconditioned flat in Singapore are zero.

So back to the paintings. We really liked them, and of course queried the price. One of the larger Lius was $9000, and quotes on the smaller works were $3000ish. Expensive, yes, but of course Lao Ho went on about "only carrying third generation works of acknowledged talents," or something like that. Whatever. They were beautiful, and if we had the wall space, they would make the house more pleasant.

So when I started writing this entry, I searched around Google for some of these artists. Barely into my search, I found a Liu (unmistakeable style) for sale on the East Coast of Singapore for $460! Who knows who's the scam -- the cheap one is a come-on or a counterfeit, or Ho was trying to score a knockout deal with me, or some combination thereof.

At any rate, it just serves to warn me that buying art here is a treacherous pursuit, and that I had better buy it just to enjoy, not as any sort of insane investment. In fact, Ling and I talked about the advice her art instructor gave her -- to goto China and purchase them there. That would be a much more rewarding way to find a painting anyway.

Business aside, we found their works very pleasing.

(Liu) Water Village

Two thumbnails from the apparently-defunct Xuanhua website cached in Google. And the other one.

I couldn't find anything online for Du Ying Qiang, unfortunately.

The madness returns

So today I got a suprise email from someone who'd stumbled onto a dead link in an obscure corner of karavshin.org. I fixed it up for him but then also asked, "how the hell did you find my site?"

"found ur site during one of my searches at yahoo singapore search engine."

hmmm...

so I searched Yahoo.

Of course Yahoo uses Google search.

Mysteriously, the results included karavshin above the fold!!!

I truly have no idea what is going on.

Moveable Type Staggers Online

So karavshin.org is being nameserved over to my new host at deru.net right now. MoveableType is now operational. Now adding in the subsystems and looking to customizations.

Billiards Physics Simulator

Java applet that simulates the physics of a pool table. I still don't see how you are supposed to visualize the reflection angle without having the mirror, but at least they've revealed the solution.

... I've played around with thing during London lunchtime, and am starting to see how cool it is...

//First Tuition Lesson

All you want to do is figure out what the bouncing principle is, as well as how to interpret the mirror image notation provided in level one.

Turn the setting to "Level 1" first. This gives you the most information.
Secondly, totally ignore the blue ball, focus only on the red (cue) ball.

So you aim and fire the cue ball (the red ball) by clicking the mouse over the ball and drawing it back. It shows a line which represents power (length) and direction. Release the mouse to fire.

So there are nine squares (3x3). The center square (2,2) represents the actual pool table, and its six pockets. The grey squares surrounding it represent the "mirror images" of the pool table you're playing on. The show the pockets and the balls. The empty circles represent the the red/cue ball, and the solid circle represents the blue ball.

The first part of this exercise is to play around where you choose a 'real' pocket (an actual pocket on the (2,2) table, and find its corresponding 'mirror' pocket in each of the surrounding mirror images. It helps aid location, and is more fun, if you take this opportunity to shoot around the red ball, directly into the pocket you are focusing on, to determine whether you are mentally transforming them correctly.

Once you are comfortable looking at an arbitrary pocket or rail and identifying the corresponding rails and pockets on the mirror images, you can start thinking about how to choose an arbitrary pocket and rail and identify the right way to bank the red ball directly into that pocket.

How do you do it? Start with the red ball in an arbitrary location, choose a pocket, and choose the rail you want to bank the red ball off of before it sinks into the target pocket. Now look at the mirror image adjacent to the rail you want to use. Inside that mirror image, identify the pocket you want to sink the ball into. Line up you cue until the direction line shoots straight and true through the that mirror image's reflection of that pocket. Fire! You'll see that it banked and headed striaght there. It'll probably miss -- you need to fine tune your power setting (the ball banks as a function of the speed I think, and there is some granularity to the aiming, but the principle is obvious pretty quickly).

Do that a lot of times, just firing the red ball directly into pockets using the rails. Pretty cool, right? I never knew the mental trick for lining up these shots. Now I do. I guess the challenge now is applying the same principal to an actual pool table and correctly visualizing the imaginary mirror images at the physical table. But hell, knowing this mirror trick is at least half the battle.

Next lessons? Trying to figure out how to knock the blue ball accurately with the red ball....

I was not imagining things...

Here is a copy of what I sent to RogerColombia and 31die...

Advanced Search Preferences Language Tools Search Tips


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Searched the web for karavshin. Results 1 - 20 of about 223.
Search took 0.23 seconds.


View karavshin
karavshin. (The Karavshin Group) a comment realm in Loquacious maintained
by Nils Blutig (http://karavshin.org) Password to Administer Realm: ...
www.greenspun.com/com/view-realm?realm=karavshin - 2k - Cached - Similar
pages

Enter Password for karavshin
Enter Password. for the "karavshin" Comment Realm Password: Note:
if you keep getting thrown back here, it probably means you aren ...
www.greenspun.com/com/admin/karavshin/ sailing/trips/amazon-sentosa - 1k -
Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.greenspun.com ]

Risk Online: The mountain region Karavshin
Regions: The Pamirs: The Pamir-Alai mountains: The mountain region Karavshin
View from the east wall of Peak 4810. Photo Y. Koshelenko. ...
www.risk.ru/eng/regions/pamir/alay/karavshin/ - 27k - Cached - Similar pages

Risk Online: Yuri Koshelenko. Photo Gallery
... The portret of animal driver. Vorukh, Pamiro-Alai. Karavshin air. From
the 4810 Wall.
Pamiro-Alai. 4810 East Face. Karavshin valley. Pamiro-Alai. A Climber. ...
www.risk.ru/eng/gallery/galkosh/gallery/ - 27k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.risk.ru ]

The Karavshin Group
The Karavshin Group. Global Positioning (GPS) Garmin Field Notes Geocaching
Singapore
Trails Gallery. Sailing RSYC Class Trips. Black Coffee Blog. Arizona.
karavshin.org/ - 3k - Cached

Support karavshin
Support karavshin.org. ... Basically, when you jump to Amazon from a url
here
on Karavshin.org, and buy anything, I get a tiny kickback from Amazon. ...
karavshin.org/about/support_karavshin.htm - 7k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from karavshin.org ]

Karavshin region map in Rus-Win

Karavshin.org climbs above the fold! (or does it?)

Karavshin.org climbs to the fifth entry on a Google search for 'Karavshin'!

ADDENDUM... a Google Mystery.

RogerFiveOh and 31die both say they do not see karavshin.org listed on the search results page. This is even after confirming the same url, and repeated verifications by all of us. Mysterious how it would be returning different results.

Some data:

Me (Singapore)
From my machine, an nslookup of www.google.com returns 216.239.53.100
When I did a traceroute from here to 'google.com' the request wound up at 'www.google.com [216.239.51.100]'

31die (North San Jose):
Name: www.google.com
Address: 216.239.33.100

RogerLo (City of Angels)
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.google.com
Address: 216.239.53.100

My results search give the following urls:

WAIT!

Hell's bells...... it no longer turns up!!!! What the hell is going on here? I was not seeing things... the search worked yesterday. I even copied the results page and emailed it out to people. Good grief. What the hell???