Category: arts and letters

Flights of fancy

Flights of fancy

Flights of fancy
somewhere over the Eastern United States

Leica M8, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON 35mm F1.2 Aspherical
1/90sec, iso 320, 35mm (47mm)

My tweets make no sense.

This is why nobody follows me and even my friends have turned off updates.

I just can’t seem to explain my experiences in 140 characters. Maybe I should have titled this blog “The Circumlocution.” Oh well, at least two people asked me about this confusing tweet after my plane landed.

But it’s really quite a simple story, even if I can’t tell it right.

Here is a helpful diagram…

Helpful diagram

[More misadventures after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 16

'tis me fav'rite day o the year

Like last year and the year before…

Annual Talk Like A Pirate Day ecARRRRRRRRd

Text reads: Ahoy me mateys and buxom wenches!
The day ’tis ripe fer Talk Like A Pirate.
Ye be talkin’ like a pirate or ye be a scurvy bilge rat!
Arrrrrrr!
—The Dread Pirate Terry

I think the reason I love Pirate Day so much is that I had a horrible speech impediment in grade school where I couldn’t say my r’s (you can still hear it if you listen closely, but please don’t). Now I’m making up for it with some extra Arrrrrr’s. The infamous Meebo Pirate emoticon

[More pirate after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 3

The death of a lens

Weird and unfair

Weird and unfair
Somewher in ATL, Atlanta, Georgia

Nikon D200, Nikon 85mm f/1.4D
1/60sec @ f/1.4, iso 180, 85mm (127m)

I didn’t take this photo, though it is one of three such shots of the same thing on my memory card. The camera was in my luggage at the time so I can only guess that this photo was shot by the TSA during inspection all the while I waiting to board an airplane.

(I guess this sort of explains why my luggage didn’t arrive with me.)

The unfair part is when they opened my luggage, they somehow either took off the rear lens cap or didn’t replace it correctly on my Nikkor 12-24mm f/4G DX lens (a $1000 lens and my favorite lens for shooting) thus causing the rear element to collapse into the lensbody during transport.

The lesson here is to carry your photo equipment with you on the airplane. But I appreciate any suggestions on how to deal with the situation at hand. The lens is under extended warranty but I doubt Nikon is going to replace something that is clearly the TSA’s fault. (Um, yes, Nikon, it is a manufacturing defect that when someone takes off the protective lens cap and then places it back in a bag of luggage and electronics for a transcontinental flight that your rubber mount gave and the plastic ring cracked.)

This lens is dead

This lens is dead
North Beach, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Nikon 85mm f/1.4D, Canon 500D diopter
1/40sec @ f/2.8, iso 160, 85mm (127mm)

By the way, While I don’t do much airplane traveling (just twice a year), but every time I travel, my luggage is opened and searched. This is the first time since 9/11 that I haven’t had a slip in my luggage saying that to “protect me and my fellow passengers.”

Posted on by tychay 5

Ruby, Photography, and Women

My second twitterstalk was Andrei at Caffe Trieste in North Beach. Andrei is someone everyone should be nice to for reasons I mentioned before. He’s trying to get me back into photography.

I think it’s because he has a photoblog now…

from Andrei’s photoblog, 9 august 2007

and probably figures that getting my competitive juices flowing will be the photography equivalent of dollar-nassau. But I hate to compete and the only thing that motivates me is, quite frankly, intense fear. And besides, what chance do I have? As Ed Finkler says, the man’s got scary amounts of kevorka:

This White Russian smiles

This White Russian smiles
CNET Headquarters
SOMA, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX. SB-800
1/60sec @ f/2.8, iso 100, 38mm (47mm)

Go subscribe to his blog now (besides the pictures are good, quite unlike mine).

[cats, coffee, photography, ruby, and women after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 21

…and I still haven't written my talk

Apparently, I’m giving a talk at php|works in Atlanta on Friday. My talk should be just interesting enough to avoid it.

This year, I need to change it up and go low key on my mad Apple Keynote skills. (What? You think it’s because I still have yet to make an outline for my talk? Have you been twitter stalking me again?) That’s okay, because according to Ed I’m most likely to pull a “Drunken Batman.”

Not to sure if he means this or this, but I’m guess probably both.

See you there!

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 2

Not a way to begin an e-mail

I got this cold-email from a Hank Z…

Mr. Chay… (Ms??)

We are the deleted

We saw your resume on the Web…

We are urgently seeking candidates who are SW engineers, and have a background in database SW development, and also expertise in mySQL.

Boy, Hank, (or is it Ms. Hank?) you recruiters know how to bring back bad memories, fuck you very much!

See, when I got in to the physics graduate school at the University of Illinois, I got a “Ms. Terrence Chay” acceptance letter from them. I thought Oh shit, I checked the wrong box. You might think this is impossible, but when I asked my father to dig up the photocopy of my application, he didn’t give a pause and I could see he was already relishing the opportunity to lord this mistake over me for the rest of my life.

(Thankfully, I checked the right box—truly, the first time in my life I filled out a form correctly. Needless to say, purchasing stuff online is always a trial for me.)

[the only highlight after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 1

Best. Commerical. Ever.

The first time I saw this, I didn’t think it was that good. But then I actually paid attention.

So pay close attention…

(Yes, I’ll be at Zend Conference this year. No, I won’t be drinking heavily else I’m liable to tell Keynote speaker, Joel on Software, what I really think of his software. Hint: not good. You should come! Someone needs to represent the the true spirit of the PHP world.)

Click here for the reason why this commercial rules.

Top this, Sean 🙂

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 8

Twitter stalk

My first twitterstalk.

When I woke up, just as I was heading out from McDonald’s, I noticed Scott Beale’s tweet about being at the only In ‘N Out in the city. That was just three blocks away from me.

I first met Scott when he showed up to the Hitachi Lunch 2.0 Web Expo last year. Ever since then, I run into him shooting his Canon 5D with a 24-105mm f/4L at events that I happen to stumble upon that are halfway interesting:

DSC_6753.JPG

Scott Beale, the Tony Soprano of the San Francisco scene
Varnish, South of Market, San Francisco, California

Nikon D3, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D, SB-800
1/80sec @ f/1.8, iso800, 50mm

(He’s gotten so used to his setup that you no longer notice it’s there anymore—and that’s a pretty big camera too.)

He was surprised that anyone he knew actually lived in the area. Scott was just heading from an event and I was late to one. (Apparently, according to someone at the Meetro party, I had a disco nap that went way over.)

Since I was late anyway, I bugged Scott about his recent appearance in a Wall Street Journal article on LOLcats. We also discussed Lunch 2.0, social networking, photography, and the insanity that is Fisherman’s Wharf.

There were a lot of funny miscommunications because we hang around in different circles and assumed we each knew the other’s peeps—his are the entire San Francisco art, culture and tech scene; mine are my imaginary friends.

Scott is a good person to know.

[tags]Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco, photography, Twitter, TwitterStalk, Laughing Squid, Scott Beale, nap, disco nap, LOLcats, Lunch 2.0, Wall Street Journal[/tags]

Posted on by tychay 6

Zivity nears launch

Zivity is social networking meets photo sharing meets erotica (or maybe just fine art and fashion). And they’re nearing launch.

The reason I like them (besides the fact that they sometimes invite this wallflower to their parties) is that they share royalties based on popularity with both their models and the photographers to take the pictures. That’s how it should be.

Interested in being a sweetheart or photographer?

Today I received an e-mail confirmation to their mailing list.

Zivity confirm page: Thanks for signing up, yo.

You’re welcome.

Rawr! 😀

Posted on by tychay 5

Your personality recharges your batteries

Nowadays, when I mention that I’m an introvert to someone, they can’t help but let out a short laugh. More than a couple people have called me a social butterfly recently.

…

My senior year in high school, a friend’s mother was having us play a charades game where you’re given a description of yourself and act it out as the other people in the church group tried to guess. Mine was wallflower. And maybe it’s a testament to how much of a wallflower I am when I say I had no idea what a wallflower was, let alone how to act it out.

I had this friend, J—, who had transferred in that year. He has that sort of natural good looks and handsome charm that girls just go for, but had the misfortune of being placed in our top math class.

(Oh sure, that’s a good thing if you wanted a 5 in your Calculus BC Advanced Placement exam, but it probably didn’t help the very much if you are a social animal like J—.)

I think we only became friends because one day in class I was really tired and started to rub my eyes in a manner he thought funny. My recovery was saying that this was an ancient oriental secret and he should start rubbing his eyes that way also and then he’d start getting better grades in the class. Sure, a side effect is that his eyes might change and his hair might darken like mine, but it’d be worth it.

[About J— and me at parties after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 11