June 2008 Archives

so i had a chance to listen to coldplay's new single viva la vida in the car after sarah pointed it out and couldn't help but notice that immediately sounded familiar to alizee's 2003 hit j'en en marre. alizee is a french pop artist who became famous from her single moi lolita back in 2000. hit the links to listen to both songs. i mean c'mon wtf?! i normally wouldn't say anything, like with the case of linkin park's shadow of the day sounding pretty much like a wannabe version of u2's with or without you, but this is just too much... who knows, mebbe they had some arrangement, and at some point will re-release it as one song.

meet mike, my boss homie. wanna know more about him? click here. he's having his first kid soon and seemed to have a done a thorough job of researching the theory of being the perfect parent, so if you ever need advice or a spreadsheet on the economics of all x number of diaper options there, you know where to turn!

took this while minae and i were at LAX airport waiting for her sister to arrive. gotta love that bluetooth-connected computer-to-phone to get that internet-connection technology! i think that's what they call it...

i just got back from a long but fun day over at the ucsd graduation where some of us went to congratulate myung-hwa's final day as an undergraduate. it was a perfectly sunny day, but almost too perfect, as some of you might see me more tan than usual tomorrow from baking in the sun for three hours. i'll be slowly adding more photos in the extended entry section of this post, so check back here for more photos!

so i'm pretty bummed because i made my bro pay 35 bux on shipping to mail me a slide scanner i lent to him only to find out that i left all my home-brewed b&w negatives from the photos i took with my pentax k1000 in storage back in north carolina -_- all i have left are a handful of rolls from a trip i took in nyc and some photos my bro took at my graduation. i think he had a leica m7 with him at the time, but can't remember. in any case, the slide scanner comes tomorrow, but in the meantime, here's one frame from the roll my bro took of me and minae after my graduation in 2006. enjoy!

this is the photo anjali tried to delete off my camera (which, incidentally, is probably the worse thing you can do to someone's camera), but because of my awesomeness, i was able to recover it... muahaha.

Chris' wife is leaving town this weekend for a ladies weekend out, so I decided to throw a party at his house. They were both kind enough to lend me their property to potentially trash, and so naturally I've invited pretty much everyone. Woohoo, omg!1 party!!yay!!

i took this picture taking a late night train from d.c. to northern virginia sometime back in february of 2004. i was pretty much the only person riding the subway at that time of night, and as i recall it was pretty effin' cold down there. i think i had hitched a ride with emily who was visiting her sister in georgetown, forcing me to take public transportation to get to my folks' place. the d.c. metro is one of the nicest subway lines in the nation, so it's definitely worth riding if you're ever in that area.

after months of talking about getting one, we finally went out and got a wii from somebody off of craigslist. for 300 bux we got the wii console, three controllers, two nunchucks, a rechargable battery and charging station, three games (legend of zelda, ratatouille, and resident evil 4). not bad! we immediately went out and got rayman's raving rabbids 1 and 2, along with an extra controller and two more nunchucks for four-player goodness!

i've always been a big fan of a korean music group called clazziquai, which has a unique style of acid jazz, house, and electronic music. one of the lead singers, alex chu, sang this song on a korean t.v. reality show 우리 결혼했어요 (above) and i thought i'd share it with everyone else. it turns out it's a cover from another one of my favorite bands, loveholic, which can be found here and is also on the left. i thought the song sounded familiar!

i took this picture at my old west village apartment, probably in january 2004. this was during the obligatory "let's shoot everything in my apartment" phase of the learning curve, where i was particularly interested in contrasting and/or competing textures. coupled with that was trying to figure out how to process my own black and whites well, and toward this roll film i was finally able to avoid scratches and large grains in the negatives.

i just recently found a CD with the very first set of slide-scanned, yet unprocessed, b&w photos i took with my pentax k1000 when i picked up photography for the first time in 2004. there were several pictures that are still my favorites, but looking back at them i felt i could have done a better job processing them. this photo was one that i took right after an ice storm hit north carolina and was taking just outside my apartment which was a renovated old tobacco warehouse. the original posting can be found here.

my roommate back in college, gianmarco, was an excellent chef and has a website full of recipes for dishes he used to make. one of my favorites is pasta carbonara, and a couple days ago i was flipping through to expand my menu and decided to try his thai dish. it turned out really good, and i thought i'd share his recipe below with everyone else. thanks, gm!

this is last shot i took from sunday evening, well after the sun had set in san diego. i haven't really had a chance to shoot much with such low lighting, and with the bonfire dwindling down, i asked justin to angle himself against the fire, cranked up the iso (gotta love noise ninja!) with the lens wide open, held the camera as steady as i could and crossed my fingers. with a shutter speed of 1/50, it was hit or miss as to whether the picture came out clear with the long lens i was using. i think it's safe to say i lucked out with this one!