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15 Facts About Net Neutrality – big infographic

Economic Liberty Under Threat From Affordable Housing – from Big Lychee (or Hemlock as most still refer to it):

The Post article is a reminder of how the Big Lychee, like Macau, is effectively being prostituted to the crooks and parasites who plunder China and need somewhere to stash their loot.  More than a third of new Hong Kong luxury properties went to Mainland buyers in the first half of the year, as did a smaller but rising share of cheaper homes. And what do they get in return for buying grotesquely overpriced living space from the tycoons? Hong Kong ID cards, courtesy of our government!

After years of throwing stones at each other, Roger Waters and David Gilmour appeared onstage singing four songs together at a benefit concert.  Years ago it would have just been a news item in Rolling Stone, now you can see some video of it online.

This is rather clever – a video/music parody of Lady Gaga’s and Beyonce’s “Telephone,” as a promotion for a company doing online corporate social games.

ISO comparison between 7 EVIL (electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens) cameras.  Perhaps it’s not fair to give away the results so let’s just say it further confirms my choice of the Sony NEX-5.

Speaking of images, click over here for a collection of photos of “Little Shu Qi,” Mavis Pan Shuang Shuang.

And another great strip in the What the Duck series.

That’s all for now!

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Quick Pix

First off, the manual that comes with the Sony NEX-5 is practically worthless.

Reason 1: I attach the flash (comes with the camera, not an $$$ extra), try to select auto flash mode, camera says that mode is not available in my current shooting mode, I select every other shooting mode, still seems to be the same, nothing in the manual that covers this.

Reason 2: Panorama mode – For in camera playback, you can either view the entire shot at once or there is an option to “play” it, to scroll across the image. I have not yet worked out how to get this “play” feature over to the computer. I can see a directory that has some very tiny video files in it along with some files with proprietary extensions and am presuming the data I want is here. I’ve installed the software that came with the camera but not in a mood to reboot the PC (sigh) so no chance to see if this is the “missing link” yet. Again, nothing in the manual even remotely addresses it.  (In case you’re wondering, the camera seems to delete the individual jpg shots that make up the final composite.)

I was planning on stopping off somewhere vaguely scenic on the way home to take some test shots but tonight was a “red” rain storm. In fact, driving was even worse than during a recent “black” storm. Visibility during most of the drive was horrendous – which didn’t stop some Einsteins, mostly in Mercedes or Alphards, from doing their usual 80 kph weaving in and out of traffic tricks. A tree came down on Sai Sha Road, blocking half the road and other sections of the road were this close to being flooded out.

Anyway, here’s a panorama shot that I took in the office today:

As always, click on the image to see the full-size version.  I’d like to emphasize that this was shot handheld.

Now a couple of other random shots of little consequence.  This cropped image of a tree at Cyberport I think shows how nice and sharp the NEX-5 and 16mm lens are.

And just one of those things, in this case a bit of street art, that I passed every day in Quarry Bay for 8 years and mostly took for granted but actually quite like:

The jpeg is unretouched except for cropping.

And now a photo of a completely different sort, one I didn’t shoot myself but took from here:

This is “young model forerunner” Vonnie Lui Hoi Yan at a press conference for an upcoming film, (ahem) 3D Sex and Zen.  It doesn’t take much imagination to guess what they’re using the 3D for.  Ms. Lui commented that she “was chosen as the Hong Kong bust goddess” at some event in Taiwan.

Which then brings to mind Taiwan actress Shu Qi.

Image taken from here, a report in which Aaron Kwok says, “Previously her Cantonese was not so fluent, so she always made words sound dirty.”  Yep.

Another recent item about Shu Qi caught my eye, one in which she was asked her opinion of pseudo-models such as Chrissie Chau.  (She approves.)  And someone asked her if she would shoot a “sexy photo album” and she responded she would “in my next life.”  It seems she hopes that everyone has forgotten that she first came to fame by posing fully nude at the age of 17 for a series of albums initially published in Taiwan (and still available on some newsstands in HK after dark).  And then did a few soft-core Cat III films before becoming one of the very few actresses in the region to cross over to more legit productions from this kind of start.

No point to any of the above, just felt like running a picture of Ms. Shu.

And here’s Mavis Pan Shuangshuang (yes, one can make at least one or two jokes about her name); she’s been tagged “Little Shu Qi” by the press although I don’t see anything little about her.  (Pic taken from here.)

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Catching up on links

Taken me 2 days (on and off, of course) to go through the thousands of bits and pieces that piled up in my RSS while I was away.  Here are some of the things that caught my eye.

One thing that Apple’s iPad has already succeeded in doing is killing off the $9.99 eBook.  Three publishers have now successfully forced Amazon to raise their prices – a move that I suspect will only serve to prevent wider adoption of eBooks but will not protect the physical book market in return.  The question is, if Apple was so successful in forcing record companies to price their e-albums at $9.99, why not do the same on books?  The answer seems to be that Apple’s sole concern here is to fuck Amazon in the ass.

Color touch screens coming to the Kindle later this year?

There are links and YouTube videos all over the place for Jon Stewart’s massive appearance on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor.  I guess it’s open to interpretation but my take on it is that Stewart beat O’Reilly into the ground and all but danced on his grave.  Some nifty quotes from Stewart

  • On Fox News:  Fox News is the most passionate and sells the clearest narrative of any news organization, if that’s how you’re still referring to it… Here’s the brilliance of Fox News.  What you have been able to do, you and Dr. Ailes, have been able to mainstream conservative talk radio.  Here is what Fox has done, through their cyclonic perpetual emotion machine, that is a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week … they’ve taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into a full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao.
  • On Iran’s nuclear program:  Thank you guys for ratcheting up the fear on this. Here’s what we can’t do.  Our strategy for battling terrorism can’t be that you overthrow governments and then make the United States military commit 150,000 troops to those lands until they can somehow stabilize the governments long enough so that you can prevent ten people from plotting destruction in a basement.
  • On holding terrorism trials in New York:  One of the valid concerns isn’t that it makes us a terrorist target and emboldens the enemy.  [BO - How do you know?] Because we’re already a terrorist target.  It’s better to have them go through a system where you can show the world that the American judicial system has the integrity to withstand even the most vile creatures.

Link 1, Link 2, Link 3 (which has the entire unedited interview), Link 4, Link 5, Link 6 (I may have been a bit sloppy and repeated a link or two)

From here, this one too funny not to share:

From the letters to the editor section in the SCMP, from Mark Peaker who lives, where else but on The Peak.  But which is funnier?  That a westerner doesn’t know proper English or that the paper couldn’t properly edit the letter before publication.  “I was not surprised to hear their collective tails of woe from their respective airlines.”  (Or perhaps all of his friends are marsupials.)

Comic books will look great on the iPad.  Agreed.  Magazines too – though I won’t be able to tear out the watch ads and bring them to Shenzhen to buy the knock-off version.  (Which reminds me, I was in this watch store in Mong Kok on Saturday – they had this limited edition Omega that I really love; I have the knock-off version.  The salesman comes over, starts telling me about the watch, I tell him, “Yeah I know” and show him my wrist.  “Ohhhh!”  “Nah, I bought it in Shenzhen!”  “Ahhhh!”   The watch sells for HK$39,600 and for a half a second I actually considered buying it.  Of course I didn’t.  I was looking for this new Casio watch from Japan, obviously much cheaper, no one had it yet.

Too hot not to share – Anne Hathaway in the new UK issue of GQ, from here.

Too tasty not to try?  Gonna try out this recipe for a Guinness-marinated steak sandwich soon.  And what looks like a dynamite fried chicken recipe here.  And a recipe for chili.

Speaking of food, UK newspaper the Telegraph reviews the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant in the world, Tim Ho Wan in Mong Kok.  Just a three hour wait for a table.

The Ultimate Guide to science fiction for February – books, movies, etc.

Complete list of nominations for the 2010 Razzie Awards.

Very un-Razzie, many Criterion DVDs are about to go out of print and are on sale while the existing supply lasts.

Monster bought HotJobs from Yahoo.

That guy in Ho Chung building a house over the only access road in the village has agreed to hold off for an unspecified period of time.  “Attempts to break the impasse, including a meeting on Tuesday between the residents and officials from seven government departments, have so far failed.”  Maybe that’s the problem, seven government departments at once each more interested in jockeying for position rather than solving the problem.

A web site streaming current TV episodes with no geo-blocking.  Probably won’t last long!

Get Drew Friedman’s amazing Kippy Spagenbusch print here, only 40 bucks.  There’s also a Facebook fan page for Kippy.  Of course I’m a member.

Okay, that’s probably more than enough!

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Golden Globes Indeed

Bad pun?  Sorry.  Hope you don’t mind me sharing this photo, which I nabbed from here.  Yes, it’s Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks, and if you hit that link there are a lot more photos for you to be distracted by.

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Saturday Stuffs

Just upgraded to WordPress 2.9.  Reportedly more than 500 bug fixes and enhancements.

And now, a vaguely marvelous compendium of the stuff that’s caught my eye so far this morning, in random order.  Warning, down towards the bottom of this post there’s a photo that some might consider somewhat NSFW.

First up, the NY Times’ Manohla Dargis on her favorite (and a few least favorite) films of 2009.   She mentions that Star Trek and Avatar “remain exceptions to the flashier, noisier, dumber rule of much of today’s mega-budget entertainment.”  Her favorites include Gomorrah, Tulpan, Summer Hours, Hurt Locker, Beaches of Agnes, Public Enemies, Beeswax, Ponyo, The Informant, Where the Wild Things Are, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Sun and, of course, Avatar.

She pulls even fewer punches in this interview.

On why so many romantic comedies are so terrible: One, the people making them have no fucking taste, two, they’re morons, three they’re insulting panderers who think they’re making movies for the great unwashed and that’s what they want. I love romantic movies. I absolutely do. But I literally don’t know what’s happening. I think it’s depressing that Judd Apatow makes the best romantic comedies and they’re about men.

Is Mila Kunis the thinking man’s Megan Fox?  Maybe “thinking man” isn’t the proper phrase here.  (Photo swiped from here.)

Click here if you wanna see a Lady Gaga video redone Sims-style. Someone’s got more free time on their hands than even me?

And from a Sim to the real thing, some new shots of Lady Gaga by David LaChapelle, swiped from here.

That’s one of the least-NSFW shots over there.  (And yes, she has reportedly had “them” done recently.)

My admiration for LaChapelle knows few bounds.  I love his saturated colors and the concepts he comes up with.  This Google image search reveals lots of his stuff.  How he conceives of this stuff much less how he executes what he sees in his head remains a mystery to me.

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2 for the guys

Hope any straight female or gay male visitors aren’t offended but it’s been awhile since I’ve posted any pics of this nature and two definitely caught my eye this morning.

Padma Lakshmi likes herself better naked.  As do we all, Padma.

padmapagesixgam2

And you can’t complain about the ads that PETA runs, can you?  They certainly get your attention, such as this new one featuring Joanna Krupa.

gallery_enlarged-1201_joanna_krupa_peta_00

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