Grizzly Pear

From the Golden Palace Supermarket in Bellaire.

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

1. Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920
2. Nosferatu 1922
3. Number 13 1922
4. Always Tell Your Wife 1923
5. The Pleasure Garden 1925
6. The Mountain Eagle 1926
7. Downhill 1927
8. Metropolis 1927
9. The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog 1927
10. The Ring 1927
11. Champagne 1928
12. Easy Virtue 1928
13. The Farmer’s Wife 1928
14. Blackmail 1929
15. Sound Test for Blackmail 1929
16. The Manxman 1929

1930

1. An Elastic Affair 1930
2. Elstree Calling 1930
3. Juno and the Paycock 1930
4. Murder! 1930
5. City Lights 1931
6. Mary 1931
7. Rich and Strange 1931
8. The Skin Game 1931
9. Number Seventeen 1932
10. Flying Down To Rio 1933
11. The Gay Divorcee 1934
12. The Man Who Knew Too Much 1934
13. Waltzes from Vienna 1934
14. Roberta 1935
15. The 39 Steps 1935
16. Top Hat 1935
17. Follow the Fleet 1936
18. Modern Times 1936
19. Sabotage 1936
20. Secret Agent 1936
21. Swing Time 1936
22. Shall We Dance? 1937
23. Snow White and Seven Dwarfs 1937
24. Young and Innocent 1937
25. Carefree 1938
26. The Lady Vanishes 1938
27. Jamaica Inn 1939
28. The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle 1939

1940

1. Fantasia 1940
2. Foreign Correspondent 1940
3. Rebecca 1940
4. Citizen Kane (w/ commentary) 1941
5. Mr. & Mrs. Smith 1941
6. Suspicion 1941
7. Casablanca 1942
8. Saboteur 1942
9. Shadow of a Doubt 1943
10. Aventure malgache 1944
11. Bon Voyage 1944
12. Laura 1944
13. Lifeboat 1944
14. The Fighting Generation 1944
15. Spellbound 1945
16. Watchtower Over Tomorrow 1945
17. Notorious 1946
18. The Paradine Case 1947
19. The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) 1949
20. Third Man 1949
21. Under Capricorn 1949

1950

1. Stage Fright 1950
2. Sunset Blvd. 1950
3. American in Paris 1951
4. Strangers on a Train 1951
5. Singing In the Rain 1952
6. I Confess 1953
7. Dial M for Murder 1954
8. Rear Window 1954
9. The Trouble with Harry 1955
10. To Catch a Thief 1955
11. The Man Who Knew Too Much 1956
12. The Wrong Man 1956
13. 12 Angry Men 1957
14. Vertigo 1958
15. North by Northwest 1959

1960

1. Psycho 1960
2. Manchurian Candidate 1962
3. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964
4. Goldfinger 1964
5. Marnie 1964
6. Good Bad and Ugly 1966
7. Torn Curtain 1966
8. Graduate 1967
9. Play Time 1967
10. 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968
11. Easy Rider 1969
12. Topaz 1969

1970

1. Dirty Harry 1971
2. Frenzy 1972
3. Enter the Dragon 1973
4. Exorcist 1973
5. Chinatown 1974
6. Jaws 1975
7. Monty Python and the Holy Grail 1975
8. Family Plot 1976
9. Taxi Driver 1976
10. Star Wars IV 1977
11. Big Sleep 1978
12. Alien 1979

1980

1. Raging Bull 1980
2. Star Wars V 1980
3. Das Boot 1981
4. Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981
5. ET the extra Terrestrial 1982
6. Rambo, First Blood 1982
7. Thing 1982
8. Tron 1982
9. Star Wars VI 1983
10. War Games 1983
11. Indiana Jones, and the Temple of Doom 1984
12. Aliens 1986
13. Big Trouble in Little China 1986
14. Blue Velvet 1986
15. Full Metal Jacket 1987
16. Raising Arizona 1987
17. Robocop 1987
18. Untouchables 1987
19. Bull Durham 1988
20. Die Hard 1988
21. They Live 1988
22. Indiana Jones, and the Last Crusade 1989

1990

1. Robocop 2 1990
2. Reservoir Dogs 1992
3. Groundhog Day 1993
4. Clerks 1994
5. Hoop Dreams 1994
6. Swingers 1996
7. Grosse Point Blank 1997
8. Cowboy Bebop 1998
9. American Movie 1999
10. Being John Malkovich 1999
11. Fight Club 1999
12. Ghengis Blues 1999
13. Goodfellas 1999
14. Matrix 1999
15. Office Space 1999
16. Run Lola Run 1999
17. Sixth Sense 1999

2000

1. Remember the Titans 2000
2. Turn It Up 2000
3. Ghosts of Mars 2001
4. Mean Machine 2001
5. Spirited Away 2001
6. The One 2001
7. Hero 2002
8. Red Faction II 2002
9. Spider-Man 1 2002
10. The Transporter 2002
11. Lost in Translation 2003
12. The Italian Job 2003
13. Alien Versus Predator 2004
14. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy 2004
15. Cellular 2004
16. Collateral 2004
17. Crash 2004
18. Donnie Darko 2004
19. Napoleon Dynamite 2004
20. Samurai Jack 2004
21. Shrek 2 2004
22. Spider-Man 2 2004
23. Transporter 2 2004
24. Batman Begins 2005
25. London 2005
26. Mirrormask 2005
27. Revolver 2005
28. Sin City 2005
29. The Pink Panther 2005
30. Chaos 2006
31. Clerks II 2006
32. Crank 2006
33. In the Name of The King a Dungeon Siege Tale 2007
34. Shrek 3 2007
35. War 2007
36. Be Kind Rewind 2008
37. King of Kong 2008
38. Rush Hour 3 2008
39. Synecdoche, New York 2008
40. The Bank Job 2008
41. Transporter 3 2008
42. 500 Days of Summer 2009
43. Crank: High Voltage 2009
44. Hangover 2009
45. Hurt Locker 2009
46. Up 2009

Remy Lidereau photographs via wrongdistance.com.

skittering across the sink,
a cockroach
bronzed and tanned

an early autumn breeze -
the sun rises
still damp of the summer

Black and white,
afternoon thunderstorms chasing a setting sun

He thought California was weak
“You ain’t living till its 80 and 80!”

expectant eyes
twitching noses
hungry bunnies

accidentally dropped,
an apple disappears
under a frenzy of teeth and fur

So I took my first test this Thursday. So at least six more to go (hopefully not seven). Before entering the testing center, I took a moment to listen to Daft Punk getting all pumped up. The testing center shares the complex with a few medical offices, and as I sat there I saw a guy being transported on a gurney. I don’t think it was an emergency, but it sure put things in perspective…

Jing’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, Jing is the big winner!

Kolaches all around!

I just had a nice dinner with Jing 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.

It is amazing how quickly time flies! I’ve decided (yet again) to try to structure my time a little bit more and taking a cue from Dave Winer’s Blogpost Friday I will try to publish more regularly.

For this week I’m gonna wrap up one loose end from last year.As all us folks in Houston will likely remember, Hurricane Ike rolled through here 51 weeks ago and since this is the last Friday before the anniversary, I should finally publish a couple little ditties I had written during the two weeks of non-electricity.

In retrospect, I think that Ike and Post-Ike was a good time, a memorable moment in life. Even though two weeks of Houston summer without juice is more than plenty, it was an interesting time where we actually got to interact with our friends more and just enjoy life because there really wasn’t much else to do. Of course I write this as someone without a mortgage or kids to worry about, but at least for those without major responsibilities or debts, I think it was a good experience to go through.

The next forty-nine weeks have not been nearly as memorable, but it has been fairly stress free. The big events have been earning less (working 30 hours a week), getting a SLR, uploading an online portfolio, becoming LEED certified, road tripping through New Orleans, and getting a car. But hey, I can’t complain, I’m pretty happy and while I keep procrastinating on taking my ARE’s, I feel that my life is getting a little more orderly day by day.

Then again, I also turned thirty this past May so I guess its time to get moving along and start up the second half (post-education) part of my life. Honestly, I’m pretty relaxed and chill where I’m at, so I can’t say I’m particularly excited about shaking things up. But, I am also a bit restless and I would like to move forward a bit and hopefully by next September I will have made some serious progress and hopefully be in a more settled situation.

I’m reasonably content with chalking up the past twelve months as slow prep work that has given meme some ideas, tools, and skills that can help me push forward for the next few years. I have always been annoyed by the fact that life always seems to be just about preparing for the next stage of itself, but in this case, I guess it is one to view this past post Ike year in a positive light. So that’s how I’ll spin it. Its been fun to relax after grad school and dabble in various little hobbies. That stage is over, I guess it’s time to get moving.

Gray skies, slight drizzle,
a morning walk on quiet streets and uprooted trees.

Silly Reporters
Stunned Pigeons
Soaked Cats
Pole Hugging Trees
I survIKEd!
Grizzlypear

I started with three, and then ended up aiming for 12 (to make a calendar), but the last four are kind of weak and I suspect that I’m totally missing some buildings….

Maravillas Gymnasium – absolute volumetric efficiency

Penzoil Place – Minimalist visual effect, works as a pedestrian and flying on the freeway (pains me to say it since I’m not a Johnson fan)

Berkeley Art Museum – Structural Gymnastics, gorgeous (though it is now breaking apart cause the cantilevers are too much!)

Chinese American Strip Mall – Raw Kitsch at its finest

some favorite typologies (not surprisingly all to do with food):

the Grungy Diner (solitude),

the French Cafe (community,

the Houston Dive Bar Patio (friends),

the Supermarket (Abundance).

And a last few…

1904 Blake, my old 200 sf apartment in Berkeley (glove to hand, apt to life) and similarly, my Grandfather’s house (999 E. Beacon)

St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church, Take it or leave it exterior, but the stark white interior with the stained glass is gorgeous (and because its not a total tourist trap, it is still medatative inside) and Ronchomp also.

Castelvecchio Museum and Brion Cemetery (Scarpa was meticulous in his detailing)

And finally, any garden or park that pulls you through the site – moments that promises more around the corner – collapsing and expanding space – as small as a highly designed chinese garden or as large as the vistas driving through the southwest on the blue highways.

oh and as for buildings I’ve workd on, both Villa Tramanto and Berkeley, and a couple big Victorians near Ashby in Berkeley were fun because they held the vestiges of a different era and lifestyle.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield

He’s got the most interesting analysis of whats going on in Iran. I don’t remember who recommended him, but he seems to have a much better feel for the dynamics of revolution then any of the talking heads out there.