dennis yang dot com

Sweet. Tonight was the lunar eclipse. So frikkin’ cool. It was a little foggy, and it took me a little while to figure out how to really take pics of the moon properly… But, about 5 minutes before it hit total, the entire sky cleared up.. and I was able to get a few decent shots of the moon as it got eclipsed by the earth.. I started out with a large aperture, but then figured out that it was a lot better at f/8.0, and a pretty fast shutter, like around 1/30..

I put together a little montage of my best shots, but it’s not at good as this one.. But, for my first lunar eclipse shoot, I think it’s pretty decent…

All the pics are here.

Ok, I guess I should get to sleep now.

A few months ago, a fantastic project, the Panhandle Bandshell, was installed in the Panhandle here.. It’s made of recycled water bottles, car hoods, and computer parts, and it makes me smile every time I run, bike or drive by it.. The idea of it is to be a kind of community performance space — something to bring the neighborhood together with music.. That’s kind of nice. I’ve stopped by a few times now, and seen a few small performances here and there. Nothing too huge and spectacular, usually just a few people playing to a crowd of about a dozen or so people. It was funded by a generous grant by the SF Department of the Environment and the Black Rock Arts Foundation, of which I’m a happy sponsor.

I love community art — here in Hayes Valley, we were blessed with the temple for a few months in 2005.. I was sad when that went away, but now we have a funny little mini golf course… It’s little things like these that me smile. I really want to upholster a tree stump one of these days.

Anyway — so, the panhandle bandshell failed to get an extension on its permit, so on September 15th, it’s coming down. Neighbors complain that it’s never really used that much, except as a homeless sleep shelter. Um.. grrrr. This kind of thinking infuriates me — I mean, the bandshell did not create our homeless problem here in SF — that’s a completely different issue. But yah — it’s not used THAT much, so the noise complaint is kind of moot, but that said, let’s give it a chance at least during the REAL SF Summer (which everyone knows is September-October)..

WTF is up with these people and their assault on fun? Halloween is canceled in the Castro this year (ok, in all fairness the fun was killed by lame people, and not by the administrators).. At least they haven’t messed with Bay2Breakers (yet). But the Panhandle Bandshell seems like the exact kind of good, clean, community, musical fun that we should be promoting, no?

Anyway… as for what to do about this, I’m not quite sure. The extension was already denied on Thursday, so I guess I’ll be going this weekend to check out a few shows before it’s gone. Chicken John is running for mayor, and if his fundraiser is any sign, I think he understands the promotion of fun and art in this city. I think Gavin has done a pretty good job, but I’ll have to look into things more before I make a decision.

Argh. Stop making my fun city less fun you not fun people.

[Found at sfist]

keke. i love this guy.. he’s back.

[Thanks Marcy!]

For the past few weeks, my computer had been acting more and more sluggish with each day… and I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. I mean, yes, I usually have a ton of windows open, but I kind of need to with the amount of multi-tasking that I do…

I figured that the digital detritus was just building up from over two years of use and my laptop was just in need of a wipe and rebuild.. But, I don’t really have time to do that (nor do we have an IS dept to handle that kind of task)..

So, last night, after a night of sitting around, I awoke to find my laptop in a frozen catatonic state. Ugh. I did a hard reboot, and was horrified to find that it wouldn’t even start up anymore. I turned it off, booted into the IBM restore function, looked around a bit, and then restarted again, and then thankfully it started up again. But, sensing that whatever caused my laptop to zombie was still lurking around, I did a little digging around. My hard disk sure was frag’d crazy, but come on, that couldn’t be the cause of the problems…

I found that whenever I started up Firefox, it used like 208mb of memory… even with just one window open. Hmm.. that’s not quite right. Talking to Mike, his FF only uses like 80mb even when he has like 8 tabs open, so something is definitely not right.. Some googling came up with some fixes that just seemed too drastic to be the right fix, so I dug around my settings for a bit.. And then I found the culprit…

I had set the “Remember visited pages” setting to 999 days. Hmmmm.. could that be it? I mean.. Firefox couldn’t possibly be storing 999 days of my browsing history in memory, could it? Sure, I’ll give it a try… I remember that I changed that cuz it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I set it to 30 days.. and.. VOILA!! Memory usage is now down to 50mb.. Woooohoooo…

Seriously, that setting should come with some sort of warning or something… Anyway, hopefully this post will serve as a warning to others so that I’m not the only one that is shooting myself in the foot.

This should teach me a lesson not to be such a packrat… Speaking of which, I really need to clean out my closet.

So yah… There has been a ton of awesome music comin’ round town lately. Insane. Woohoo. Good stuff.

So my week of music started off with a FREE Chromeo show at Mezzanine… I figured it was a Monday night, so it wouldn’t be THAT crowded, despite there being over 3,000 people on the RSVP list.. I was wrong. Dana and I got to Mezzanine around 10:30pm, and we made it to the front of the line and then… DENIED. We were the NEXT people in, and they cut off capacity. Poop. That kinda sucked. But, at least I got a picture with the bouncer.

But, whatever.. cuz my week of music continued on Tuesday.. Jude joined me, and we headed to Z-Trip at the Independent. He’s touring with Gift of Gab and Aceyalone, and they apparently did the soundtrack to some video game. Z threw out a copy of the video game at the show, which hit me in the head. I don’t have an xbox 360, but at least I got a free game. Woo. In any case, Z-trip ROCKED the house. And I love the Independent. Such a good venue.

So yah.. I missed the Chromeo show on Monday… But… Marcy was on the list for the Thursday night show in LA.. Hmmm.. this.. just.. might.. work…. And.. I like road trips.. So… I headed down to LA. Woohoo. Chromeo was actually only just ok, but, the openers were quite fantastic, including the kids from the Low End Theory party that was usually at the Echoplex that night. And I got to hang out with Marcy. Super bonus happy fun time..

But wait, there’s more… Friday night, I had tickets to the Daft Punk show at the Greek theater in Berkeley… so yah, I drove back up to SF, just in time to join up with the party bus that Julia arranged.

Yah.. Daft Punk was off the hook.. The French duo was able to get the entire place up on their feet, and I’ve never been to such an energetic show there. Incredible. The visuals were absolutely amazing. Good times.

I took a little break over the weekend (who goes out on weekends anyway), and then the week of music came to a close on Monday… Matt Kenny had an extra ticket to the Smashing Pumpkins show at the Fillmore… The Pumpkins were playing something like 14 shows there, so I figured.. why not? I mean.. it was the super crazy week of fun music, afterall.

The Pumpkins played a 3.5 hour set. Yah.. that’s a long time, especially for ADD me. And honestly, not being a huge Pumpkins fan, I only recognized a few of the songs — although honestly, I think a lot of the stuff they played hardly anyone really knew. In the middle of the show, Billy gave a little speech about how this was a new band or something or other and that they were going to be moving forward. All I can say that is he is one tall dude. I mean, the guitar looks like a toy in his hands. Yah. I’m glad I saw them and all, it was a decent enough show, but yah.. once is enough (but not for Matt Kenny, who went like 6 times)…

And with that.. my baker’s week (8 days) of music came to an end. Yah.. good times. I like music. A lot.

burger + hot dog + cheese + bacon = SUPER BURGER CHEESY DOG.

Wow.

I am so making these at my next bbq.

[Thanks Joon!]

So Jason and I were discussing cars the other night, and we decided to start a lil’ top 5 meme.. Who knows if it’ll actually continue, or if it’ll die right here, but whatever, it’s fun.

He asked me, “if money were no object, what would my top 5 cars be?”

Jason posted his top 5: a 2006 Lotus Exige, 1991 Acura NSX, 1990 BMW e30 M3, 1998 Porsche 993 911 Turbo, and a Spoon Honda Fit race car.. Interesting… all great cars, it’s obvious that J wants speed & handling from his cars… Someone likes to drive fast.

Hmmmmm… so, without further adieu, here’s my list…

1. Lotus Exige 265E
   
   Yah, J has the 2006 Lotus Exige on his list. But, I want the Lotus Exige 265E. Why? the 265E runs on e85, so it produces 44 more bhp, and 70% less carbon dioxide emissions… So, I can go fast AND be nice(r) to the environment. Al Gore would be proud. That’s a lot of responsible get up and go.

   Also, it’s handy if you’re ever being chased by an Apache Helicopter..

   Damn, I want that car.
   

2. 1988 Camel Trophy Land Rover 110 and/or a 2008 Range Rover Sport
   
   I’ve always loved Land Rovers, especially the old Series ones.. They’re so bad ass looking, and you can do an engine rebuild in the middle of the African desert with only a 3/8″ wrench. The Defender is the last of the line of Land Rovers in that whole series, and while I do really like the Discovery, the distinct character brought on by the boxy lines died with the Defender. So, as long as we’re in the “money no object” category, I don’t want just *any* Defender.. I want the one that raced in the 1988 Camel Trophy race through Sulawesi.

   Ok, ok.. if I can’t find a 1988 Camel Land Rover in decent condition (since, as seen in this video, they sure did go through a lot of abuse), I’d settle for a brand new 2008 Range Rover Sport.. That thing has real offroad cred, AND you look bling’in rolling up in it. After all, it’s handy if you’re ever chased by a tank. (ed: I did not mean for this post to be a running homage to the best car show on TV, Top Gear, but I guess it’s kind of turning out that way..)

   Oh yah.. one last thing. For both the Rovers and the Lotus above, left-hand-drive please..
   

3. 1974 BMW 2002 Turbo
   
   So, originally I was going to put the 2002tii on my list (and actually, for this slot, I almost put an old Austin Mini Cooper too). I love the old 2002, and the tii is the most desirable.. But, since this is a “money is no object” list, I think I’ll go with the 1974 BMW 2002 Turbo.

   Only 1,672 of them were ever made, I believe it was only available in the classic Alpina White with the BMW blue and red decals (hot 70’s styleeee). I love that “TURBO” is written on the air dam in mirror-image, so that it proudly announces who it is as it zooms up behind you in the rear view mirror.

   HOLY CRAP!! There is one for sale on craigslist right now for $40k. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm…

   (sound of gears turning in my head)
   

4. 1966 Lincoln Continental Convertible
   
   Check it out.. an American car in my list. Woohoo. Kennedy was a fan of them, and the boys from Entourage can be seen in one in the opening titles of their show. The ‘66 Continental was a huge car (almost 19 feet long), a gas guzzler, and rode like a sofa on wheels. I love that it has 4 doors, 2 of which are suicide.. So frikkin’ cool.

   Aha.. craigslist strikes again.. Here’s one for sale for $23k…
   

5. 1991 BMW Alpina B10 Bi-Turbo
   
   Yes, yes.. I know.. I already have a Bimmer on the list, but I guess I just like them or something. I love the E34 M5, and the Alpina B10 Bi-Turbo was the fastest of that breed… So… yah, that’s what I’d like. 360hp in a four door sedan is quite a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and it’s awesome to be able to share that power with four friends.

   And, here’s a video… I don’t think it’s Top Gear, but the dude has a British accent, so it’s kinda like it..

So yah… that was a little difficult to come up with this list, but I think I’m pretty happy with it. I’ve got quite a range of cars for everything from the track, to the mountains, to roadtrips.. There are a ton more cars that I really love (like a Porsche 993 Carrera 4, an old 60’s Mustang, the EV1, an Audi S8, and a ‘97 RX7) , but these are my five.. for now, at least.

So, Barry hit 756 tonight..

When I heard about it, I checked it out at Yahoo! Sports, and saw…

I thought to myself… Whoa.. really? Yahoo! is gonna start the whole * thing with this one? Firing shots over the bow immediately.

Well, about 10 minutes later, I reload the page, and see:

Hmmmm.. I guess they thought again about stirring the controversy or something..

Just yesterday, there was an interesting article about how Barry has an unfair mechanical advantage due to the armor that he wears (granted, a little strange that it was published in Editor & Publisher)..

So yah.. I dunno how I feel about the whole steroid controversy and all.. But yah.. 756 is 756 more home runs than I’ve hit in the majors, so like.. congrats and stuff.

Update: Baseball Prospectus published an article rebutting the mechanical advantages that his armor gives him, but it’s behind a paywall. Lame.