GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Life

  • A Map of Houston Hits.

    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

    Houston according to Justus

    If you click on this link that takes you to google maps, you’ll see a sidebar with all the places listed.

  • Some Golf Balls

    My girlfriend’s office has a competition every year for their annual golf tournament. This year, she won! In celebration, I pulled out her old golf ball designs — including her non-winning 2007 design which was highlighted as a good example in this year’s call for entries.

    I do have to admit that I slightly tweaked her 2006 design, and I just totally made up the 2008 design this morning. But in any case, she is the big winner!

    Kolaches all around!

    KHA golf logos

  • Griffs

    Griffs

    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!

  • Documenting the return of U.S. war dead – The Big Picture – Boston.com

     

    Documenting the return of U.S. war dead – The Big Picture – Boston.com.

    Intense images.  One understands why the government did not want this published. One thing I thought of is how this is such a display of the strength and the wealth of our nation. Is there any other civilization before ours that had the luxury to fly home their honored dead from around the world – and so quickly, these men were alive only a week ago.

    Of course, all respect for these men who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our country. #15 reminds us how young so many of these guys are — I’m just about to turn 30 and it hurts me that I may well have already had a good 10 extra years of living.

  • leader or martyr?

    I don’t remember the episode, but a funny little quote:

    If you’re one step ahead of the crowd you’re a leader, if you’re two steps ahead you’re a martyr.

    TWIPPHOTO.COM.

  • Welcome

    You know you’re in Texas when…

    You are at an photo critique and when a picture of two bullets come up in a slide show, the a couple audience members debate which caliber they were.

    I think they settled on “22 longs”.  In any case, it was a lot of fun.  I didn’t bring any work, but it started with a lecture by a copyright lawyer about best practices in maintaining one’s rights.   After that, was an hour of open critique.  There about 12 of us and each person had 7 minutes to show their work/get critique and it was on to the next one.  There was some interesting stuff, and some not so interesting stuff, but that’s they way it goes.  People were very nice but constructive.

    Houston Center for Photography

  • One Year without a Car

    These images that are really remarkable – and not so much for the image quality or composition, but just the fact that we were in this car and that neither of us had long term effects – even without the airbags going off!

    It’s been a year of not having a car anymore…amazing how quickly time flies!

  • Shoes in Seattle

    In front of the Liu's home for Ben and Angie's wedding pre-party
    In front of the Liu’s home for Ben and Angie’s wedding pre-party

    Hey!  I found a cord for my cell phone and so I was finally able to rip out all the pictures from my little phone — and they are surprisingly decent!  They look so aweful on the little screen, but they are legit 640×480 pics so I thought I’d upload a couple photos from them.  This one as you can see was from my cousin’s wedding, Ben Liu and his wife Angie.  We were at his parent’s house and I went outside for a walk.  being a good asian household — there were a bunch of shoes outside mirroring the bunch of folks inside!

  • Portfolio posted

    I'm official =)
    I’m official =)

    well…I finally got my portfolio posted.  I started this weekend using an automated function in Photoshop to collect all the dwgs into web galleries and then worked on the overall navigation and stuff.  As when I set up this blog site, it amazes me how much free information there is on the internet when it comes to putting up websites!  In any case, check it out and ding me if there are any problems, portfolio.grizzlypear.com

  • So I’ve been gone for a while

    Between visiting New Orleans and starting up the new year – updating my portfolio and shopping for a new camera).  Unfortunately it means that  poor GP has been languishing.

    No guarantees it won’t continue to languish, but I now have one less thing to do!  It turns out my friend Dong had gotten a camera a while back as a gift and he never uses it.  When I told him about my current obsession with camera shopping (I won’t dignify it with calling it photography until I actually go out and take some =) He offered to send me the camera for my use.

    Even though its a bit scary to get someone else’s Christmas present (even if he says wear and tear is ok), this “rental” period will be good for me to know if I am the type who will be interested in the nicer form factor or if I just got caught up in the moment due to too much websurfing. Its easy for feature creep to happen when you run into a community of obsessives!  Its been an interesting exercise in desire and fear, especially in these uncertain economic times and our plans to move back to the Bay Area.

    On other news, the portfolio is more or less updated (everything except my grad school work(!), and I’m going to start messing with a simple online version this weekend. That and start making contacts with some people out in the Bay Area!

    PS I did go to the aamera shop the other day and I must say I did like the feel of the Rebel more (and it does have DOF preview)…but now that is a moot point since if I do buy anything (other than a nice camera case) it will most likely be in the Bay Area now!