My friend is thinking about coming to Houston around rodeo time and she asked me about any good websites about Houston and things to do here. Unfortunately I don’t know of any such sites, but I did find an old google map of my favorite places in the city which I had put together when Dongwoo came to town.
I spent a couple hours updating it and here it is!
I gotta say that my most interesting places are really just eateries. But there is a reasonable helping of odd ideosyncratic places and wacky moments. If you have anything you think I should add, ding me. Otherwise, here is a snapshot of my mental map of Houston.
Blue is places of interest Cyan is Eateries Magenta is places I still need to go visit
I wonder how if Picasa 3.5 could work with prawns? In any case, I have been having a lot of fun messing with the facial recognition on this latest release of Picasa. It works quite nicely thought it does have a share of mistakes.
So decided to make a list of movies I want to watch. I ended up with alist of 100 movies that I knew that I wanted to watch/rewatch and then threw in all the Fred Astair/Ginger Rogers collaborations, Hitchcock movies, and Jason Statham movies. And this doesn’t include any asian action flicks I’d want to check out…yikes!
Of course, until I get netflix (and a lot of free time) I doubt I’ll watch that many of them, but it was fun imagining how cultured I’d get if I actually saw these films!
1920
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920
Nosferatu 1922
Number 13 1922
Always Tell Your Wife 1923
The Pleasure Garden 1925
The Mountain Eagle 1926
Downhill 1927
Metropolis 1927
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog 1927
The Ring 1927
Champagne 1928
Easy Virtue 1928
The Farmer’s Wife 1928
Blackmail 1929
Sound Test for Blackmail 1929
The Manxman 1929
1930
An Elastic Affair 1930
Elstree Calling 1930
Juno and the Paycock 1930
Murder! 1930
City Lights 1931
Mary 1931
Rich and Strange 1931
The Skin Game 1931
Number Seventeen 1932
Flying Down To Rio 1933
The Gay Divorcee 1934
The Man Who Knew Too Much 1934
Waltzes from Vienna 1934
Roberta 1935
The 39 Steps 1935
Top Hat 1935
Follow the Fleet 1936
Modern Times 1936
Sabotage 1936
Secret Agent 1936
Swing Time 1936
Shall We Dance? 1937
Snow White and Seven Dwarfs 1937
Young and Innocent 1937
Carefree 1938
The Lady Vanishes 1938
Jamaica Inn 1939
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle 1939
1940
Fantasia 1940
Foreign Correspondent 1940
Rebecca 1940
Citizen Kane (w/ commentary) 1941
Mr. & Mrs. Smith 1941
Suspicion 1941
Casablanca 1942
Saboteur 1942
Shadow of a Doubt 1943
Aventure malgache 1944
Bon Voyage 1944
Laura 1944
Lifeboat 1944
The Fighting Generation 1944
Spellbound 1945
Watchtower Over Tomorrow 1945
Notorious 1946
The Paradine Case 1947
The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) 1949
Third Man 1949
Under Capricorn 1949
1950
Stage Fright 1950
Sunset Blvd. 1950
American in Paris 1951
Strangers on a Train 1951
Singing In the Rain 1952
I Confess 1953
Dial M for Murder 1954
Rear Window 1954
The Trouble with Harry 1955
To Catch a Thief 1955
The Man Who Knew Too Much 1956
The Wrong Man 1956
12 Angry Men 1957
Vertigo 1958
North by Northwest 1959
1960
Psycho 1960
Manchurian Candidate 1962
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964
I just had a nice dinner with my girlfriend at Griffs, a local sports bar next door to the Chinese Consulate.
We had $8 pork chops literally in the shadow of the mother country. The bartender/cook was kind enough to give us two helpings of sides (one on each plate) and this one order ended up filling both of us as well as giving us some leftovers for tomorrow.
That said, I think we’ll most likely just stick with Tuesdays Steak Night from now on … for the extra $4 you get MORE GRILLIN’! MORE JUICYNESS and MORE FAT!
I’ve always been interested in open and legally free software. So between my mom’s visit to Houston and getting serious about studying for my architecture registration exams, I wasted the better part of the weekend installing Linux and various free software programs onto my computer. The most painful to install was Linux. Installing the new operating system was not a problem – the painful part was creating the separate partition on the hard disk on which I could install Linux. The partitioning software (provided with the Linux installation software) was pretty easy to use, it was just really painful to defragment my hard drive multiple times with different defrag preferences until it finally defraged in a way where I could partition the hard drive. Trying to set up my dual-monitor (or any drivers) was not much fun either. And in the end, Ubuntu is does not really boot up any faster than good old Windows XP.
Fortunately, the other software programs, Open Office, GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP, the Photoshop replacement), Inkspace (Vector editor Illustrator replacement), and Scribus (book layout InDesign replacement) were all quite easy to install. I mean, install in Windows. I tried installing them in Ubuntu Linux, but none of them seemed to have a GUI installation package and I was sick of messing around in the Unix terminal. In any case, after playing around with these programs in Windows, I realized that I doubt I would ever get around to using any of these programs just due to the the hassle of learning how to use them.
In the end, I got the impression that free software will always have a major problem – in general they are clones of the “standard”. As such, they don’t really present much of a feature upgrade (if at all) and people have enough trouble learning the “standard” interface that they aren’t really excited about spending time to learn the alternative, even if its free. If I was in an office, I would say that my time is valuable enough that it would be worth purchasing a license of Adobe CSx instead of wasting the company’s time to learn the new program.
The exception that may prove the rule is Open Office. I haven’t messed with it much, but I have already ported over my Word and Excel Documents over to Open Office. I was using MS Office 2003 and the current version of Open Office emulates that interface almost perfectly. I’ve heard that Microsoft has messed with the UI of current version of MS Office and if that’s true I think I’ll just stick with what I know – Open Office. I don’t know how much one can emulate the UI of another company’s product, but if these other free image editors can get their UI much closer to the Adobe CS Standard, I’d seriously think about jumping over.
I still might try to learn GIMP, Inkspace and Scribus, but now that I’m about to start my Architecture Registration Exams, I think I have a better use for my time than learning redundant software interfaces just for the conceptual pleasure of running on a all open-source rig.
I just got my new mirror lens from Adorama on Friday and I spent a good amount of time messing around with it today, stalking some birds and feral cats that hang out in a local parking lot. For what its worth, I should preface that I have been messing around with a 50mm f/1.8 series E for the past couple weeks so I am pretty familiar with shooting in full manual without metering.
So here are some general thoughts. For a full review by Peter Kolonia check out popphoto.com.
Given that I had wanted a 500mm lens and didn’t want to pay big money for it, the Mirror Lens is the way to go. Basically, there is really only one common option (both new and used) – f/8.0. The only alternative is the ProOptic lens from Adorama with f/6.3 (fyi, these lenses come with only one f/stop) My question before purchasing the lens was whether the f/6.3 would be an unforgiving DOF (the manual says 1/2″ at 6′ close focus). After playing around, I agree it is a very thin and unforgiving DOF, but as someone who is used to shooting wide open at f/1.8, it really isn’t that thin!
What did surprise me was lens shake at 500mm. As such I think the extra speed of f/6.3 was WELL worth it. As someone spoiled by f/1.8, going to f/6.3 was a shock. Combined with the desire to keep the shutter speed near the focal length for hand held shooting, I was shooting at iso400 around noon on a sunny bright day. By the time the sun just started setting, I was at iso800.
I found focusing quite smooth. My only gripe with the lens is that I wish there was more barrel that did not rotate while focusing so that I could keep more of my hand supporting the lens while focusing.
People say that mirror lenses are small and unobtrusive. Well they must be speaking in relative terms because is this lens is definitely big enough to be noticed when walking around. It doesn’t help that ProOptic decided to paint the barrel white instead of black. Then again, I haven’t handled a real 500mm lens, but from what I see online, I don’t think you can even really “walk around” with those beasts!
Of course the big question with these lens are the bokeh rings. And I can attest that those mirror lens bokeh rings do really show up any time you give them a chance. But, if you just roll with it, you’ll survive — and even have some extra optical tricks to play with when you get tired of straight photography.
For $160 I think this is basically a no brainer if you have a little money and want to dabble in telephoto photography, as long as you don’t find the funny bokeh rings are as hideous as some people on photo forums like to exclaim.
The 80/20 rule definitely applies, – you get 80% of the function for 20% of the price of a full size 500mm lens.
Apparently these guys were the ones who brought Tex-Mex to Houston. They were clearly not at their apex when I arrived. It was sad, but at least there was always someone at the restaurant.
I stir-fried some carrot and asparagus today and it turned out to be a pretty good combination. Put some peanut oil in pan and set on medium high until hot. Put a few cloves of crushed garlic in the pan along with some green onion. Let it sizzle in the pan on very low heat while you chop asparagus. Chop the tough parts into thin strips and leave the tops. When the carrots are coated in oil and wilted, dump the asparagus in. Put in some salt and a dash of chardonney and chicken broth. Keep stir frying. Turn the heat back to medium high. Cook until done.
My friend recommended Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions and it turned out to be an absolutely great read. The basic premise is that people do not act rationally and certainly not as the rational agents that one assumes in classical economics. Instead, we act in ways that would be considered “irrational” but are often quite consistent (hence the title).
Mr. Ariely is a professor in Behavioral Economics in MIT so his case studies are tested through experiments conducted on various college campuses. For example, one of his case studies examined the appeal of “FREE!”. In the experiment, they put up a concession stand selling chocolates – Hershey’s Kisses at 1¢ and Lindt Truffles at 15¢ a piece (you could only buy one). 73% chose the Truffle over the Hershey’s Kiss, even when they raised the prices a penny. They then took the prices and dropped them a penny. With the Hershey’s Kiss as “FREE!”, only 31% of the folks chose the Truffle. According to rational economics, this total reversal in behavior makes no rational sense (the price difference between Kiss and Truffle remained the same), and yet it does make “common sense”.
The book is filled with other such studies of “common sense” behavior tested empirically through different experiments. He closes each chapter with takeaway concepts which could be applicable in more substantial situations (i.e. if you want people to get preventative health care, it would be much more effective to make it FREE! instead of “really cheap”).
Well written and very readable, it is well worth picking up — not a classic that I must have on my bookshelf (I got my copy at the library) but is worth the time for a read.
So I’ve been in the middle of reading a wide variety of books and Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae slips into the business/marketing area of the reading spectrum. Its a good read, easily taken in chunks, not surprising since he is a blogger. Actually, when I think about it I could easily imagine that most of his chunks are reformulated blog posts, but they hang together so nicely that it is not noticeable.
The basic premise of his book is that the new way of marketing demands a new way of doing business. According to Godin, the old way of doing things is to mass produce a bunch of stuff and then interrupting people (like TV ads) to get them to want it. While that has worked fabulously in the past, he contends that there are too many ways to get people interrupted and they are shutting off the interruptions that happen to them. Thus there a new type of marketing (direct communication with consumers, long tail, google, web2.0) has arrived and you can’t just apply the new marketing to the old business model and expect it to work. As per his title, you can’t just put flashy sundae toppings (cream, sprinkles, cherry) on the classic old meatball and expect anything good to come out of it. The web is not just a more efficient way of doing things, but a paradigm shift way of doing business with consequences that reach past the IT department.
However, as an architecture person, I’m not sure how new marketing works with my industry, even after reading the book. Part of the confusion is that Godin basic dichotomy is the mass versus the individual. If so, the architecture and design is already a very personal profession (especially at the small firms that I have worked at). Maybe he’s saying the paradigm shift is tilting the world towards my direction. If so, the lesson may well be that architects should get off of this mass production/prefab myth that they have been chasing for this past century.
Even so, I guess the book presents a mindset that may be useful in jumpstarting how one should view the role of computers in design, using them as more than just hyper efficient drafting mechanisms. Or it might be a bunch of new-speak that isn’t really work practicing. I’m just not sure — but I do think it is a good read, even though it is less entertaining than his other book Small is the New Big (which actually is a collection of blog posts).
