With my gf off at a kid’s birthday party, I could get to a bunch of stuff on the list.

Yesterday I bought a new printer. I went and looked at a bunch of them and then zipped over to Rock Gallery where the owner let me use his computer for awhile so that I could look up reviews of what I’d just seen. I quickly realized that in the “cheap” category, no printer scores very highly. And while some of the new HP printers look attractive and received decent reviews, the memory of their crappy customer service is still fresh in my mind. Also fresh is the memory of how their software keeps crashing on my PC.

So in the end, I went for the Canon Pixma MP996. No fax, but print, scan and copy, WiFi and slots for memory cards. I was finally seduced by the fact that this also claims to scan photo negatives – when I’ll have time to do that Buddha only knows but then again, looks like I may have a lot of free time on my hands soon.

Set the thing up – one note is that I’d seen some warnings about how WiFi set-up was very kludgy on older models in this series. This is a relatively new release and obviously they’ve taken note of those reviews because the WiFi set-up was straightforward and easy. I go to print a test page and … bam! “no paper in tray!” Jeez, that’s just why I was looking to replace the HP, wasn’t it? But it was just that the paper cassette needed to be pushed in a millimeter or so more. Printed a word doc, printed a photo – both came out just fine indeed.

(Note – I really don’t want to toss the older printer on the trash heap. So here’s the deal – it’s an HP Photosmart 3310. It’s roughly 3 years old. It has a fairly full supply of most of the inks and it MIGHT be okay after factory servicing. So if you want an all-in-one printer/fax/scan/copier with WiFi for your very own, it’s yours for HK$100. It can be picked up in Sai Kung or pick-up can be arranged some nights in Wanchai. Just leave me a message here.)

Next, dealing with back-ups. Now that I’m no longer running my C: drive in RAID 1 mode, I needed an automated back-up utility. I’m trying out Cobian Back-up, which looks to pack quite a lot of features for freeware. I’ve now got daily incremental back-ups scheduled for the critical folders on my C: drive, going to an external RAID unit. I might later look for something that does disk imaging like Macrium Reflect. And I might later look to put a compressed version of the My Documents folder into the cloud – uncompressed it’s under 8 gigs. But for now, this will suffice.

Did not get to upgrading the MacBook to 10.6.1 (yes, there’s already a .1 release on Snow Leopard) or iTunes 9 yet but now I gotta get dressed and head out for Global Battle of the Bands. Tomorrow’s another day, innit?

I was thrilled to read yesterday that Roger Corman will be receiving an honorary Academy Award next year. I’ve been a fan of Corman’s for decades and consider him to be one of the most important people working in Hollywood for the past 50 years – as a director, producer, distributor and talent incubator. I had a contract to write a book about his career back in 1985 (and had agreement from Corman for participation) but I never completed it due to conflicting priorities.

As a director, Corman is perhaps best remembered for his series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations for American International Pictures in the 1960s, for the original Little Shop of Horrors in 1960, biker film The Wild Angels in 1966 and LSD film The Trip in 1967 (starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, with a script by Jack Nicholson). IMDB shows that he has directed 56 films, starting with Swamp Women in 1955 up through Frankenstein Unbound in 1990. Corman specialized in working fast and cheap – one of his films was shot in a single day, others in less than a week. His most interesting film as a director came in 1962 with The Intruder, starring a young William Shatner as a racist in the south trying to incite racial prejudice just as civil rights was starting to take hold around the country. It is the only Corman film not to make a profit – had it done so, it might have moved his career in a different direction. (His autobiography is titled, How I Made 100 Pictures in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime.)

IMDB lists Corman as producer of 386 films. And as a producer, both at AIP and, from 1970, at his own New World Productions, Corman gave breaks to so many people in Hollywood that a list of people who DIDN’T work for him would be shorter than the list of those who had. Those he helped include Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, John Sayles – the list just goes on and on.

Corman often gave these people a limited budget but a free hand. He wanted B pictures – films that combined explosions, car chases or t & a with a hint of a social message. The results included early films directed by many of those listed above and cult classics like Big Doll House, Women in Cages, Boxcar Bertha, The Big Bird Cage, TNT Jackson, Caged Heat, Big Bad Mama, Deathrace 2000, Hollywood Boulevard, Grand Theft Auto, Saint Jack, Rock & Roll High School, Deathstalker, Barbarian Queen – exploitation films all but look up any of them at IMDB and then be amazed at the amount of talent early in their careers in front of and behind the camera.

People who acted in films he directed early in their careers include Mike Connors, Dick Sargent, Lloyd Bridges, William Schallert, Peter Graves, Lee Van Cleef, Charles Bronson, Morey Amsterdam, Robert Vaughn, Jack Nicholson, screenwriter Robert Towne, Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd, Michael J. Pollard, Harrison Ford, Susan Strasberg, Dennis Hopper, Fabian, Talia Shire and the indefatigable Dick Miller, who was in almost every Corman film (and cast in many other films by Corman “film school graduates” as a good luck charm.

Other Corman stars included Vincent Price, Ray Milland, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, Patrick Magee, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., Don Rickles, Stewart Granger, Mickey Rooney, Jason Robards, George Segal, Glenn Ford, Shelley Winters, Robert De Niro, Ben Vereen, Cindy Williams, John Hurt, Raul Julia … the list just goes on and on.

These people often repaid him by giving him cameo roles in their later films – Corman can be seen in Godfather 2, The Howling, Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, Apollo 13, Looney Tunes Back in Action, Rachel Getting Married and others.

As a distributor in the 1970s, Corman brought over the works of many great European directors – Fellini, Truffaut, Bergman and others. He promoted these films in the US by creating new trailers that hid the fact that they were in a foreign language and made them look like racy exploitation films!

My favorite Corman story involves one of his early films, one about car racing. Along with directing, Corman was driving one of the cars in the final race sequence. He was supposed to stay in the lead until almost the end, then slow down and let the hero pass him to win. But when the did the shot, at the end Corman floored the accelerator and came in first. They asked him why he blew the shot and he replied, roughly, I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose just because some scripts says so.

He’s 83 years old now and it’s nice to see him get this kind of recognition for his contributions to the industry and the art.

Last night finally had a chance to go check out Jimy Graham playing live. (My profile of him is in the current issue of BC Magazine.) I’m very happy to tell you that this guy’s the real deal. I could only stay for the first set but it was a master class in blues and rock guitar, a professional guitar slinger at work, the kind of thing that you don’t get a chance to see or hear live in Hong Kong very often these days.

It’s a shame that there was no real advance promotion on this – I only found out about it the day before and Rock School put a sign in front of the bar the day of the gig. No cover charge and they had people on the street handing out coupons for free drinks, resulting in the most people I’ve seen in the bar since it opened. I suppose people came for the free drink but I think more than a few decided to stay after that because this was clearly a cut above the usual music choices you get in Wanchai.

I was kind of beat after a busy day so I only stayed for the first set – wish I had the energy to stay all night but my energy level’s still not completely back after being ill earlier this year.

Reminder that tonight’s the first heat in the Hong Kong edition of Global Battle of the Bands and I’m one of the judges. It kicks off at 8 at Cavern Club in Lan Kwai Fong and there are five bands competing tonight. Hope you can make it!

Tech-y note on the photos. Jimy said it was okay to use flash, and the shots above are all ones taken with flash. But I hate using a flash in these situations – aside from the fact that it’s terribly intrusive, I hate missing shots while waiting for the flash to recharge.

I shot a lot more photos without the flash at ISO 1600 – didn’t want to push higher than that although the relatively low noise on those shots tells me perhaps I should try next time. I went to shutter priority mode and had to go with 1/20th of a second to get anything – and clearly 1/20th still led to plenty of blurry shots. There’s some good ones in that batch but it will require a lot more time spent in Lightroom to make them presentable.

My lens is the Nikon 18-200mm which has a maximum aperture variable f/3.5-5.6 and with the varying focal lengths, most of my shots were in the f/4.5-f/5 range.

So now I’m thinking that Nikon’s got a 35mm (50mm equivalent) f/1.8 prime lens that’s selling locally for $1880 or less and that might be good for situations like this. Not that I should be spending money right now, but lenses can be as addictive as tattoos (maybe even more so).