:: Momentary Flash of Genius ::
What's in this section?
These are little grains of genius that strike at unexpected moments. Keep in mind that what I consider "genius" may not be quite up to snuff with what *you* consider genius!
D-SLR = hardest choice ever
Thursday, November 02, 2006
How did i decide to get a Nikon D80 instead of the myriad of other DSLRs available on the market?
This was probably one of the most painstaking decisions i’ve ever made in my life. It’s funny - i can will take months and months to deliberate, trying to figure out which camera to buy, but i’ll shell out the equal amount for to rent an apartment and not really think twice about it. Oh well. I guess you never really have to think that hard about putting a roof over your head.
In any case, Nathan asked why i chose the Nikon D80, and i’m fully prepared to answer! It began with lots of reviews. I went to websites like CNET and NewEgg to see what people had said about the camera. It wasn’t very helpful though, because in the end, they probably haven’t used that many cameras. At least, not enough to give a full quantitative/qualitative analysis. So i decided to go to a more comprehensive site: www.dpreview.com.
I was comparing D-SLRs that are roughly in the same category: Canon EOS 400D (otherwise known as the Digital Rebel Xti), Sony DSLR-A100 and the Nikon D80. I pored over the specs of each, trying to learn more about lenses and features. I even considered Fuji cameras because i had heard that their sensors were superior. However, their image processors are not as sophisticated as the other brands.
It took me at least 2 months of research once i got serious about buying a camera. I mostly went of the DPreviews breakdown of the Nikon D80. Resolution wise, the three contenders were quite comparable. The differences broke down to:
1. The Nikon’s image is a bit more color saturated than the Canon’s images, which usually turn out sort of blue-ish.
2. The Nikon handles better in low-light situations than the Canon and Sony
3. Nikon had more unique and interesting features at which they excelled over the other two. This includes features like multiple exposures and having up to 32 of your own pre-sets.
4. I just don’t like Sony: they always run out of batteries quickly and have all sort of proprietary issues such as memory and video formats, etc. Sony just rubs me the wrong way in that sense.
5. Canon’s lens that comes standard really sucks.
So the big hurdle was the price gap between the Digital Rebel and the D80. The D80 is quite a bit more expensive, but it also has a nice lens (18-135mm) which allows me to do wide angle shots as well as telephoto shots. I figured that if i got the Canon, i would spring for a good lens and then it would cost the same as the D80. BUT that would require more research. And by that time, i was getting tired of it all.
But do you know what? All that research was wonderful (and headache inducing), but I still wasn’t sure. In the end, do you know what did it? Going to BestBuy and just picking up the camera and playing with it. I was pretty much sold on the Rebel Xti. And then i picked up the D80.
And it was over. It’s like that proverbial moment when you meet the person you’re supposed to marry. You just know.
I just loved the way the D80 felt. Everything was in the right place, it had a good heft to it. The lens was wonderful right off the bat, and the color was great. The Rebel, on the other hand, had somehow gotten white-balanced incorrectly and everything was showing up dark blue on the display. I tried to reset it but it was not intuitive enough for me to figure it out. In the end, i just got frustrated and went back to playing with the D80.
In the end, I bought it from BestBuy instead of RitzCamera or those other places that have it tax free because those sites don’t have it in stock. BestBuy even agreed to drop the price in an attempt to match the no-tax price of Ritz. So in the end, it was about the same price. :D Sweeeeeeet.
And so that’s my tale of how i came to own a beautious Nikon D80.
The New Era of Clothing
Monday, October 09, 2006
With all this skank in today’s clothing, isn’t it about time we recognized this evolution?
And by recognition, i mean, why don’t we linguistically give clothing of that nature its own moniker, its own title, its own category. Currently, we call things of the genre terms such as “clubbing clothes,” “hoochy clothes” or “skank outfits.” These terms and those like it usually include such articles as sheer tops, bustiers, clear heels and thigh-high boots.
In a stroke genius (well, it was an accident caused by me mumbling), i have coined a new term that embodies the meaning, emotional provocation and connotation that all those previous names and images collectively represent.
It is…
HOETHING
It’s a ho thang
* Note: this hoething line is not to be confused with those of Chinese ancestry and who have the family name, Ho.
Dave Chappelle was Right!
Friday, July 07, 2006
It really IS the guitar music that makes white people dance!
Susan and I validated Dave’s amazing discovery last night at The Shins/Belle and Sebastian concert last night at the Hollywood Bowl. People were dancing in the aisles and going nuts! That may seem perfectly normal for a big rock band, but maybe you’re not familiar with the group. Actually, before last night, i had never even heard of Belle and Sebastian. I thought it might be a Disney group with a guy in a crab suit and a woman in a gold dress dancing around. Let me just say their music is not that kind i thought anyone would ever dance to.
It’s sort of depressive mood music that you’d hear in the background of a swanky lounge or something. Not to say that it wasn’t fun. It was great music, but just not the “I’m going to get out of my chair because i can’t help but dance” kind of concert. But there they were, white people dancing like mad all around us. We kept testing the hypothesis throughout the night. The result: they wouldn’t dance when there was music but no guitar! The drums wouldn’t do it! Very strange indeed.
In particular, there was this one guy who was AWESOME! But strange. He had all the right moves. For a girl! He had some crazy hip action, diva arms and everything! As Susan remarked, “His hips have a mind of their own. They seek out other people!” He was so energetic and so *normal* looking. I think that’s what threw us off. I mean, if he had been dressed totally in drag, it would have been completely understandable, but no, he was just a normal dude. He made the whole night entertaining. We just watched in awe all night as this boy swivelled and twirled, pranced and wiggled. I tried to catch video but it was too dark. Booooo.
The other revelation for the night was that the lead singer of The Shins is very hard to take seriously because he looks like a combination of Kevin Spacey and Edward Norton.
Can’t you see it? It’s like he’s pulled together from the parts of other less-musical stars. And he looked so concerned the entire night. But most likely, it was just his eyebrows that made him look that way.
The other highlight of the night was the girl that Belle and Sebastian called up on stage to be the embodiment of the girl that they were singing about. When asked for her name, she blurted out, “Baby Beeatch!” That was very classy. And very funny. And the band ran with it!
I’m lined up for a bunch more concerts at Hollywood Bowl, so it looks like it’s going to be a great summer!
My commitment
Friday, June 30, 2006
I’ve been really slow about posting in the past couple of months.
So today, I am committing to you, oh loyal followers of my blog from the World Wide Web, to post several times a week. And if I don’t you can send me tons of hate mail, which I promise to block with my spam filter!
So here are the days when you can expect something new to show up here. Are you ready to take note so you can check my blog in eager expectation? Ah, i thought not. Anyway, here they are:
Sunday
Tuesday
Thursday
And i’ll be posting in the evening, west coast time. So don’t go checking all early and sending me hate mail before it’s due!
Ok. With that, I will now post something for yesterday! (wow, late on the first post of my new commitment...perhaps this is a bad start.)
The stolen Sidekick
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Sometimes people get away with doing wrong. Other times, they get posted on the internet.
You have to check out this link:
The Story and Updates of a Stolen Sidekick
So the story goes that two friends were riding in a cab. One left her T-mobile Sidekick II in the taxi. The other guy friend text messaged her phone, saying that there would be a reward for the return of the phone. There was no reply, so after a day of waiting, she bought a new Sidekick, only to find that the person that took the phone had logged into AOL which allowed access to both their user name and password. AND they had taken pictures of themselves!
So the friend, the owner of the website above, contacted the AOL user and asked for the phone back. The girl who had the phone immediately refused, saying that they weren’s so stupid as to return a phone, and then sent threats from her and her boyfriend.
He was rightfully upset with this response. So now, he has turned the power of the internet against these thieves. Needless to say, these individuals have been getting all kinds of communications through their MySpace accounts and other contacts.
Read the whole story. It’s not resolved as of yet, but it is pretty amusing.
Midget plumbers
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
There really is a market for them.
I think i became more convinced of this fact than EVER when the toilet in the downstairs bathroom decided to stop working so well. I don’t know anything about plumbing, so i called over Gary who knows stuff about stuff. He’s a very knowledgeable guy to have around. So we find out that some kind of column and floater thingy device are not working correctly, so we head over to Home Depot and buy a new one. Easy, right?
Not so easy when we got back. The problem stems from the fact that there is about 8” between the bowl of the toilet and the wall. Yeah, not much can fit in there. To make matters worse, my brother recently got a bidet washlette toilet seat. It has all kinds of tubing and electrical stuff that toilets traditionally have never needed. I used to affectionately call these seats the “Gundam Toilets,” an allusion to all the mech/robot cartoons of Japan in the 80s.
So you have me, a not so small asian female, and Gary, a very big Chinese dude, working in a 8” wide x 24” long space. Mostly it involved squeezing your head and upper body into that space so you can TRY to manipulate a crescent wrench around an immovable nut, only to find that the tubing and the proximity of the wall prevent any sort of torquing of said tool. It was very frustrating. Gary could only fit his head there. It took us about 3-4 times as long to fix the toilet simply because we could not REACH the darned thing!
After removing all the tubing and plugs and extra bolds and stuff, we managed to finish the job in 2.5 hours. We rewarded ourselves with coffee, chocolate, and the idea of hiring midgets for the next time that thing breaks down. What a difference that would make! He or she would be able to get right in there! You’d think someone else would have capitalized on this idea already, but i guess he and i are original thinkers.
All I can say is that I’ve never had my face that close to the toilet or the floor of a bathroom before. I can probably go without ever doing that again. And if you ever come over to my house, i want you to appreciate my toilet and sing songs of praise to Gary and me. Thanks. 