adrian is rad

This is awesome:

For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon’s unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid “illegal restorers” set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building’s famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.

It reminds me somewhat of a higher art version of what I saw at the ‘tute’.

(via wax)

but I still laughed. Any dance based around the Tide To Go pen wins some points in my book.

Colin wiil (or should!) like the dance moves around 0:48 in.

Statistics lesson number 1, by me.

There’s a difference between percent and percentage points. People often get this wrong.

For example (bugmenot can help):

When it came to side effects, Effexor’s greatest liability was that it could cause hypertension, a side effect not shared by S.S.R.I.’s. Sussman showed us some data from the clinical trials, indicating that at lower doses, about 3 percent of patients taking Effexor had hypertension as compared with about 2 percent of patients assigned to a placebo. There was only a 1 percent difference between Effexor and placebo, he commented, and pointed out that treating high blood pressure might be a small price to pay for relief from depression.

Wrong. There was only 1 percentage point difference between the two.

3% is 50% more than 2%. (And 2% is 33% less than 3%). There is no form of comparison between the two of those percents that is only 1 percent.

(To the credit of the author, he points out that it can be seen as 50% more, though he doesn’t call Sussman’s version wrong.)

Despite it being near typhoon-like conditions outside now, it’s apparently going to be nice near Taroko this weekend and with only three weekends left, that’s good enough for me. I got a coworker to reserve a bed in the hostel (they don’t speak English–as I discovered last time I tried to call) and she’ll write out some things in Chinese for me. I’ve checked out the trains and route–for the more visually oriented I’ll take the train NE from Taipei to the coast and the down the coast to Hualien; the park is back up north a little bit around Tienhsiang–and will book tickets this evening. I’m planning on playing it by ear as far as local transport goes–either rent a scooter or take the bus + walk a lot. Apparently I’m fine to rent a scooter with an international driver’s permit (and if not, apparently the places there will rent scooters to just about anyone). It’s going to be chilly up in the gorge–I’m going to bring my yet-to-be-used hat and gloves.

Maybe this will go smoothly; I’m not expecting that though.

(note 1: I have a backlog of photo essays that I wanted to post. Here’s the oldest. )

(note 2: The lighting and social situation at the stadium were troublesome: the ring was brightly lit while the stands were dark. Taking photos of people didn’t seem to sit well with them and with the darkness, my camera used a secondary light to help focusing, so I had to switch to manual focusing and focus blind (by guessing the distance) much of the time while taking hip shots. Basically these aren’t all the best photos…)

(note 3: click to see bigger versions.)

Muay Thai is Thai Boxing. It involves punching, kicking, elbowing, kneeing and pretty much any other way to try to injure your opponent. It’s pretty violent. I saw a thing on TV on the science behind martial arts in movies with a panel of the top martial artists in various disciplines and found that a Thai Boxer could inflict the blow with the most force of any of them. His knee blow to your chest could pretty much instantly stop your heart. These are wiry and strong individuals.

When I was in Bangkok, I went to an event. Each night has a few rounds–mine had 9, with the welterweights being the heaviest of the day and in the 7th match. It’s well known that the boxing is a rip off; foreigners are charged somewhere between 3 and 10 times as much as locals to get in. They’re also highly encouraged to sit ring side, which isn’t all that much more expensive than the caged in 3rd tier. However, culturally, the most interesting thing going on is in that 3rd tier.

I made my way up to the third tier which smelled heavily of menthol eucalyptus, sweat, fruit and various drinks being sold and spilled all around.

When I got there, I found a spot and sat down. Fairly soon, a local began telling me that I didn’t want to sit there because everyone would be standing, shouting and betting during the matches. I told him I did want to sit there and that I’d stand when I had to. He told me I couldn’t sit there. I ignored this suggestion.

The prefight routines were highly ritualized: bowing to each other, bowing to their corners, circle punching slowly while walking in circles; high, sweeping knee lifts while walking around in circles and other similar activities.

(more…)

This logic puzzle is bugging me. I got a few steps in and now I’m stuck.

I’ve never been good at those logic puzzles. In fact, I’m probably the only person I know who was helped immensely by the GRE switching away from those. But maybe I’ll get better if I practice.

And today is November 26, 96 to be exact.

(The oddest part is that lunar calendar has been dropped in favor of the Western calendar, officially at least, but the Western years haven’t.)

I learned on Friday about the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. Pretty much immediately after I found that some of the movies I most wanted to see (”Darjeeling Limited”, I’m Not There, Persepolis) were either sold out or at times that I couldn’t go to. Doh!

Another one that I was psyched to see (Ki-Duk Kim made the amazing “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring”) is only showing in Korean with Chinese subtitles.

However! Not all is lost. I did go to see Steve Buscemi’s Interview last night and I bought a ticket for the Sigur Ros movie. I’m still undecided about whether to see This is England or not.

I wasn’t actually expecting a ton from Interview, as it seemed like a pretentious indie two-person character piece, but it turned out to be alright. It was pretty engaging and well-written and the ending wasn’t quite what I expected.

I also found out that Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is showing in at least one regular theater here (not as part of the film festival, that is) so maybe I’ll go see that in the next few weeks.

That’s what this old gentleman’s pink jacket said under a stitched Hello Kitty outline.

the Polamalu throwback jersey

or

the Hines Ward throwback jersey?

Polamalu is probably the player I’m most impressed with in terms of playing ability–he plays like a wild man–but I like the longevity and single-teamedness (10 years on the Steelers, stopped a contract stand-still by telling his agent that he wanted to retire with the Steelers) and constant smile of Ward.

life is so hard!

dear or, the whale t shirt,

sorry I dribbled cola on you. I am sometimes careless at ensuring all the soda goes into my mouth; this was one instance like that. I also hate to inform you of the following: you’re going to stay besmirched like that for a while. I just did laundry last night so the next cycle is probably 10, 14 days off. I’d love to wash just you, but you know how these things are: all the others would claim I’m playing favorites.

I’d like to thank you for being comfortable despite all of this.

thanks,
adrian

David Cross is brilliant in She’s the Man.

Japan is weird, a list:

1. Most restaurants have displays of their food made up of entirely plastic food
2. There is a neighborhood in Asakusa, Tokyo that is entirely restaurant supply places
3. The restaurant supply places are the suppliers for most of your fake foods
4. Within these fake food restaurant supply stores, you may purchase other oddities made to look like food, such as keyrings (I have an eel sushi key ring)
5. Among the oddities are fake food USB devices. Who needs a small, inexpensive USB flash drive when you can have a relatively expensive fake hamburger one

USB fake sushi:

USB fake hamburger:

Yoda was 900 years old and extremely wise, yet he wasn’t able to grasp basic English syntactical structure? I don’t buy it!

I don’t buy it! is a series in which I point out things I’m not buying.

made a good point: don’t worry about little stuff and everything is little.

I will talk about things that are Japan-related and things that are not Japan related. I had dreams of more well organized posts with photos and everything, but I’ll post now with possibly expanding on some of these topics later.

My ear is feeling (ie hearing) a bit better. I’ve started listening to ear buds again in limited (very quiet) contexts. First song back: “King of Pain”.

The rest of the Japan trip was pretty good.

I mean, it was great. It’s a crazy place. One coworker said something like it’s a very odd combination of a repressed/ conservative culture and a wild/ unashamed culture. Very strange.

Some of the stranger places included the hot bath that had a mildly electrified pool, the sushi place that required you to eat at least 7 dishes (of 2 pieces a piece) of mostly sushimi in less than 20 minutes, the Diago-ji temple that had a painting that I thought was a garden; either that, or it had a garden that was completely unreal in how beautiful and archetypal it was. They were also chanting in the part of the temple that’s at the top of the hill when we got there and I could hear it from maybe half a mile off. A strange beacon.

I’m not missing Thanksgiving. I mean, I’m not attending Thanksgiving and thus am missing it but Thanksgiving is such a non-event here that the only time I even think about it is when I talk to people in America. Also, I knew from May that I wouldn’t be doing Thanksgiving this year. I love Thanksgiving, but I’m prepared.

(Did you miss the Moon Festival this year? I didn’t; I participated.)

On the other hand, the prevalence of Christmas decorations, music and colder weather in Japan made it feel like mid-December, much close to when I would be leaving for the U.S. That caused many more pangs of homesickness.

During bouts of longing for America, it seems that any culture representing that will do, possibly with even the less sophisticated being better. No, I’m not talking about fast food; I’m talking about movies. Last night, I watched Must Love Dogs without shame; tonight may be 40 Days and 40 Nights. In Germany, I remember watching (possibly multiple) Freddie Prinze Jr movies. It’s crap.

I finished Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation last week. I’m not sure, but I think it’s racist. The book draws some distinction in various situations between pro-black and anti-white, but I think this book was possibly anti-white. For instance, the nomenclature was: Black, Latino, Asian, Korean (etc etc) and white.

Now I’m on to Chuck Klosterman’s Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, which is a book of Klosterman’s ridiculous pronouncements about culture, on everything from internet pornography to NBA basketball to Billy Joel. It’s entertaining, but I think I prefer his travel narrative, Killing Yourself to Live.

Sufjan’s having a contest in which you can win rights to one if his songs if you write the best original christmas song (which he then gets the rights to). I am thinking of something along the lines of a response song to a classic 1963 Christmas song. We’ll see if I can churn something out–I need to figure out how to do the instrumentation on this–maybe FruityLoops or something. My guitar through a built-in mic isn’t going to cut it.

The Steelers loss today was almost funny. It’s almost expected, the way the Steelers manage to botch the “easy” games. None of their three losses is even marginally excusable and if some columnist says otherwise, question his ability to analyze their games. On the other hand, they’ve been great in pretty much the rest of their games.

There is a baby crying down the hall. I hope this doesn’t continue. I don’t like crying babies.

On strange candies and confectionaries. Good: the two different Chocolate Pocky’s and Men’s Pocky, those weird mushroom-shaped chocolates that are sort of like Pocky, some Mentos (Fuji Apple, particularly and the Berry Blast and Sour mixes), mint Kit Kats, all Kinder chocolates. Interesting, but not great: Green Tea Meltykiss, those white + green tea chocolates, that incompressible Mentos that might have been cherry and also the strawberry and green apple ones, the mini-hamburger chocolates. Bad: apple Kit Kats.

Tokyo, in some ways, was everything I thought it’d be. Weird plastic food replicas and other products that don’t need to exist, bright lights, I mean seriously bright lights, tons of people, signs not quite in english.

We walked around the red-light district. Red was actually pretty poorly represented; there was a lot of yellow, actually. There were hotels with posted rates for ‘rest’ and ’stay’. Posters of half naked women on the street and posted rates for who knows what…. Pretty crazy, but I think I expected perhaps even crazier?

There were also parts that I didn’t expect at all. We’re staying in Taito City (I think that’s what it’s called). It’s quiet and quaint and more or less serene. There are small streets and it’s not super crowded. We walked to the zoo[1] which is a park that’s filled with green stuff.

[1] I can see the appeal of zoos and I think there are good ones and there are bad ones, but, is it that hard to put animals in reasonable sized areas rather than tiny cages that look like prisons? Even so, I was excited to see the okapis and pigmy hippopotomae.

Fall colors are out. It’s beautiful. The temples are green with moss. Archetypal japanese. Today we finally had some blue skies.

First Sanrio-brand purchase: pop up alarm clock.

Pocky is good. Hello Panda is good.

Tomorrow: Tokyo.

I’m leaving this afternoon for a week (or 9 days) in Japan with my friends Jesse and andyl. After I get back, I’ll have exactly one more month in Taiwan.

A couple weeks ago I went swimming. The next day my left ear felt a bit weird and my hearing felt muffled. I thought there was some water still in it. After a few days it still felt weird so I had assumed it had developed into a minor ear infection, “swimmer’s ear”.

After two weeks, I decided I should have it checked out. I’m going to be place next week where it’ll be even harder to go to a doctor, so with the help of some coworkers I went to a doctor this evening and he checked me out.

There’s no water, ear wax or ear infection in there. The doctor things it’s noise trauma. Basically (hopefully) short term partial hearing loss. (Ironically, I’d light-heartedly talked about thinking I was going deaf in my left ear because my ear buds were breaking about 3 weeks ago.) His instructions: no ear buds/ headphones and try to limit limit noise for a few days.

The short term is unpleasant: no ear buds at work (at night I can play music softly on speakers that I have) means no music and I don’t like being without music. It makes me antsy. I’m going to be on planes and trains for most of Friday, alone and that would be a particularly nice time to listen to some tunes. More than it being nice, at times I almost find it necessary. After a bad or long day, after a frustrating decision, when I need to drown out this foreign world or mitigate loneliness, music is often my first resort. It may not be the best thing to turn to but it’s certainly better than turning to the bottle. This is a bit distressing.

The longer term, the prospects, the possibilities, at least, are traumatizing. That there’s even a possibility of longer term hearing loss is scary. Music is a big part of my life and between being a college radio DJ and having a music blog it’s more like a vocation. That that might be endangered or altered permanently is not a prospect I look forward to.

Just to note, I’ve always been very careful about the volume of my music on earphones and other people who try my headphones often think I listen to music too softly. I wear ear plugs at concerts, even advocating them publicly. If there’s one probable culprit here it’s listening to music on the bus and/ or while walking along streets here. Both are quite noisy and can encourage a louder-than-healthy volume on ear buds.

I’m trying to transcribe an interview and I can’t get this right. Maybe someone can help: I’m looking for a car make or model that sounds like prevos, prevost, prebos, frebos or something like that. It’s most likely fast and expensive and probably glamorous. It would fit into this sentence:

You want to be in a Prebos* driving 150 miles per hour while people are shooting heroin.

I don’t think it’s “Enzo”–that’s too far from what it sounds like on the recording, though it does fit the description. Prevost make car carriers but not cars, from what I can tell. Anyone?

update: mp3. Listen for yourselves.

double update: from the source: Prevost, as in a motorcoach or band tour bus. I was wrong in thinking it was a fast car–just a fast tour bus I guess!

Australia is my new favorite country.

I was going to go to the “Chinese Taipei” vs Italy game in the Baseball World Cup today with a coworker but heavy rains all day forced the delay until November 12, which is when I’ll be in Japan. Doh!

I was looking forward to it because my coworkers had been telling be some stories about how baseball games in Taiwan are. Oh well.

Steelers beat the Ravens 38-7.

Roethlisberg had 5 touch downs…in the first half and ended up 13/16 for 209 yards, 5 TDs and no interceptions. That’s gotta do a lot for your quarterback rating…

Harrison seemed perhaps more impressive: 3.5 sacks, 2 force fumbles and 1 interception. Basically the defense was awesome overall–104 net yards was all they allowed. That’s pretty much amazing.

The running game had a hard time, it seems. Willie had a hard time (23 carries for 42 yards–this must be the first time in a long time that the team’s won without Willie getting a 100 yard game, right?), so they put in the bigger Najeh (11 caries for 34 yards) and also big Carey Davis (3 for 14 yards). Almost 100 yards in total.

Also not great was Ben getting injured. I don’t quite know what the deal is other than he came back and then left the game again, but hopefully he’s not injured longer-term.

Go Stillers. Hopefully they can figure out how to run against hard defenses and Ben’s okay.

The weekend in Kaohsiung was good.

Friday

High Speed Rail from Taipei to Zouying (outside Kaohsiung). It’s fast and smooth. I’m a fan. There was a mix up with the hotel about the shuttle and I ended up waiting at the station for 45 minutes and then taking a taxi. The hotel paid for it (their mix up).

Saturday

Breakfast. I’m not sure if I’d ever get used to traditional chinese breakfast. I had some toast. Then I walked to the ferry pier to Chijin island. The walk isn’t far but it crosses a bridge that doesn’t have a sidewalk. It wasn’t too busy and I’m alive.

Chijin’s a small community in a big city. Small houses, lots of bikes[1]. I like it. The temple near the ferry terminal is small but one of the nicest I’ve seen. Built in 1666 or something. Lots of nice detail. I sat outside and read for a while.

I walked up to the fort and lighthouse on the hill. Nice views obscured a bit by smog. On the main drag there are seafood stalls with the stuff still alive or freshly caught and on ice. I had soem fantastic mussels and shrimp. The mussels were among the best I’ve had–done in a similar style to 3 cup chicken [2].

I took the ferry back to the main island (Taiwan Island, that is) and walked back over the scary bridge to the hotel and took a break. After that I walked to the Tuntex Skytower and went to the observation deck. It’s an interesting building that’s like a stick figure person with no arms or head; there’s a gap at the bottom, basically. Between the Skytower and Taipei 101, I’m thinking that the Taiwanese do skyscrapers pretty well–they’re attractive.

From there I took a taxi across town to the Liouho Street Night Market. It’s bustling and big and fun. I got some weird and great food and did some people watching. I’ll post a separate photo essay on this.

The taxis from Skytower to Liouho and from Liouho back to the hotel were about $4 each. Why had I been walking so much?

Sunday

Struggled through breakfast again.

I went to mass at the Holy Rosary Cathedral, one of the oldest churches in Taiwan. Really beautiful. Mass is given in English by an Italian priest. I was wondering if the place would be half full. Catholics and English speakers aren’t exactly numerous around here, but it was packed. The answer: Filipinos, who often come to work as domestic workers, are very Catholic and often, I would guess, speak English better than Chinese.

Another thing that’s nicer about mass rather than just a walk around in beautiful old churches is the time to sit and absorb it. Holy Rosary is really nice. I went to mass in the Koelner Dom back in 2002. It was nice to sit there.

From there, I walked around, getting some papaya milk at the Kaohsiung Milk King and then sitting by Love River and reading for a bit.

A quick tour of Yancheng’s temples, lunch at the City of Steamed Glutinous Rice, and then I went back the hotel. They took me back to the train station.

I had dreams of the most efficient tourism route ever for this trip. I was doing pretty well. Lotus Lake, in Zouying is close to nothing…except the high speed rail station, so I’ll just go early, drop my bag in a locker and then walk around the lake, I thought. Brilliant plan, except for the fact that the HRS station doesn’t have lockers. The two things a train station should have–take note if you’re planning on building one–are trains and luggage lockers. So I ended up walking around the lake for a few hours with my fairly heavy bag. My knees are not happy.

The trip back was as smooth as the way there and the MRT connections once I got back to Taipei were fast, so I was back in my room ~22 minutes after I got off the train.

[1] There were a whole lot of bikes–I might have seen dozens–set up with bullhorn barns and a single gear. I’m a big fan of this style and I was happy to see so many of them in Kaohsiung.

[2] The best chicken you’ll ever taste, as made by Joy Restaurant in San Mateo. I’m now determined to make my own 3 cup chicken/ mussels.

They are showing two people playing go on TV. The lighting is dramatic, as is the intro music. It is…not exciting.

There are bars here in Kaohsiung that are all you can drink for a fixed price on weekends. I have not tried this.

The new least safest thing: a guy riding on a scooter. He’s using two hand and one foot. With the other foot he’s…pushing his girlfriend’s bicycle using the back peg. They’re both going about 30 mph. She’s not wearing a helmet.

— google.com ping statistics —
3371 packets transmitted, 1963 packets received, +36 duplicates, 41% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 220.423/3869.926/29006.648/4186.343 ms

Most of the time, my pings were in the 1 to 10 second range. 41% packet loss! Ridiculous!

Today was pretty good. I’m glad I came to Kaohsiung. More on that later.

You’re probably confused. I just posted another mixtape. Originally, the September mixtape was going to be delayed and the I was going to go right to October, skipping the Sept mix entirely. Well, when I was putting together October, I had too much music, by about a factor of 2, so the September mix was back on the table, albeit ridiculously delayed.

This is the October (October.2) 2007 mixtape. It’s more toward the acoustic side of things. For the straight up indie pop, make sure you get the September mixtape.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2007oct playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. I am really surprised sometimes that there is so much good music out there. It’s a mix of local and national, old favorites (Damien Jurado, Mark Eitzel) and new finds (N.Lannon, Seabear).

Adrian’s October (October.2) 2007 mix tape (rapidshare link [1])
(I’m trying this because hosting the zip was a significant bandwidth drain. Let me know your thoughts on it.)

As always this’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week), so grab it now.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) chose a mirror (or you can leave it) 4) input the number/ letters they show in the graphic into the box 5) click on “download via…”

As of now Google News is putting stories about the aftershocks of the earthquake at the Calaveras fault in the sports section. Nope, wrong San Jose earthquakes.