Absurd Singularity

On our way into the city last weekend, we cut across the little corner park that we usually pass through to get to the PATH station. This time however, there was a row of pigeons sitting in a row on top of the fence. Have never seen them all lined up like that there before. Never seen them during the weekdays. They didn't even move when we walked by, passing like 3 or 4 feet away from them. Plus, the part of the fence they were perched on was directly over the feeding area that some local people had set up for the 4 or 5 stray cats in the area. These were some pretty bold birds I tell ya.

There's a cliff-front park (Hamilton Park) that runs parallel to the Hudson River in Weehawken that we usually drive by on the way to Mitsuwa. Never actually stopped to take a look until today. Thought I'd take the Sigma 70-200 out for a test run. While the view of Manhattan is quite nice and the park itself is pretty nice and clean (no dogs allowed), there weren't too many interesting things to take pics of unfortunately across the river. This telezoom isn't ideal for panaroma shots plus being there at around 2 in the afternoon gave the scene a rather bright, washed out cast.

It did have a war monument (Korean & Vietnam) there.

And a monument for the local fire department.

The park is quite popular with weddings as we often saw brides, grooms and bridesmaids stop off in the area for pictures. One such party showed up while I was there and I was tempted to try to surreptitiously snap some shots but that's rather hard to do when you have such a big honking lens in your hands.

Finally managed to make it over to the Central Park Zoo this weekend to test out the Sigma 70-200.

Not bad, not bad at all.

Visited Erin in her jewelry classroom cause she wanted some company as she was the only one there Friday night. Putzed around with the Sigma 24-70 lens.

Few more pics after the break...

For the most part I've been unimpressed by the ramen selection available in the NY/NJ area. Although it's not like I go out of my way to hunt down ramen places but nothing I've encountered so far has come close to Gomaichi greatness. Until now...

Mitsuwa in Edgewater has been undergoing alot of renovation lately in the food court area and a lot of new eateries have moved in. One of the places, named "Santoka" has the best ramen I've ever had in the area. Your taste may vary of course as Erin thinks they're too salty. They have 3 soup stocks: salt, shouyu and miso. I only like salt. And their char siu is quite superb, although a bit on the salty side as well. They also have a special char siu which as far as I can tell is a bit fattier and softer than their normal ones. Anyway, it's no Gomaichi char siu tan tan but it's very close. So until I can make my way back out to Hawaii again, Santoka will have to do. =)

If anyone has any ramen recommendations in the tri-state area, leave a comment and I'll check it out. =)

Erin came home the other day sporting this trifecta. A few months ago she had created version 1.0 of this ring which was made of silver and consisted of just one wedge. Apparently she thought it'd work better in bronze and created this new set. I'm not entirely sure they'd work well as rings. Possibly better as pendants. But it was amusing to see. And what she had to do to make them was pretty impressive as well. The curves she had to file into shape manually and individually by piece and each of the three were done separately even though the final product seem to fit together quite well.

Anyway, seems like she'll be doing some other food-themed items in the future.

Left the house at 6 this morning in an attempt to pick up an XBox 360. Figured it'd probably be like the PSP launch which wasn't overwhelming. Boy was I wrong. I must've hit 10 different stores between Hudson and Morris counties trying to find a place that wasn't already sold out between 6 and 8 am. Wasn't happening. It's not that there were tons of people (although there probably were but...), there just weren't enough systems. Some places had as few as 5 available. Most were around the 14-15 range. Only 2 places had more than 30. And the store managers were nice enough to let the people waiting know relatively early how many they had so the rest of the people could go search elsewhere or just go home. Hence the short lines.

Apparently a MS spokesperson said yesterday that they weren't intentionally restricting the number of units available for the launch. What a bunch of bull. If this wasn't intentional, then they're the most incompentent bunch of launch planners in the world.

Anyhoo, I don't really need an XBox 360 but figured it'd be fun to see what the launch festivities were like. And if I just happened to manage to lay my hands on one it wouldn't hurt either. But that was not to be. There were some child-doting soccer moms showing up at the Best Buy store right before the 9am opening time who were stunned that they were way too late. But obviously the lucky few who managed to lay their hands on these initial systems were mostly late high school/college students or young professionals.

[UPDATE - 11/23/05]: Maybe I'm not missing out on much after all as reports of wonky behavior are starting to permeate the web. On the other hand I'm having a blast with Nintendogs and Mario Kart DS.

When the Nintendo DS was released in the US, I bought one. When the Sony PSP was released months later, I bought one. And then sold the DS. A few months later, I have a friend's DS in my possession since it was just keeping the dust off his shelf. So I figured I'd write up a quick comparison / review of the two now that they've been out for awhile and have some better games available.

While browsing the web after Thanksgiving dinner reading up on Black Friday deals, noticed that CompUSA was opening at 11:59pm so decided to go take a look at the local store since it was only a 5 minute drive from my parent's house. Erin decided to tag along to keep an eye on my spending. =p So we arrived exactly at midnight and they were just letting people in. Parking lot was completely full so we parked in the McDonald's lot next door, taking the last spot there.

Inside, it was a bit of a madhouse. Most people had the sales flyer in hand and were going right for either the items they wanted or the really marked down items like the 200GB HD for $30 after rebates. Big queue in front of the glass HD case for that one. I wasn't looking for anything in particular so wandered around for a bit. By the time that I remembered that they were selling a relatively nice Logitech webcam for notebooks for $20 after rebate and found their webcam section, they were all gone. Erin picked up 3 packs of CD-Rs for $8 and I made my rounds around the aisles a few more times before stumbling into 3 more of the webcams that were displayed in a separate aisle that no one had noticed. Was going to take all 3 but since the price reduction was via rebate we could only do 2.

Then we proceeded to a checkout line where we had to wait for about an hour and a half before we actually got to the front of the line. It was f*ckin' awful. Combination of not enough checkout counters, slow workers, clueless customers, and reams of printouts for rebates. It was excruciating. We didn't make it home till a little before 2am.

Since we were at my parent's place for the holiday, Erin decided it'd be a good time to restock our supply of hand-made dumplings and wonton. Two sets of hands are much faster than one. And you can't beat home-made dumplings anyway. I snapped some shots with the Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens. I love this lens! Shot indoors in the afternoon with only ambient light from outside on a cloudy day and images still came out super clear. It's almost enough to make a man go all L-series prime. ;-p If I could only afford to pay a grand+ a lens. =p

Some more snaps after the break...

An article about anime in Fortune magazine? Wow, anime/manga sure has come a long way.

I find the recent fascination with the countup to the 1000th executed prisoner since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 to be a bit... odd. Who cares? It's not like the 1000th person wins a prize or something.

[UPDATE]: Looks like I spoke too soon. The 1000th person did win a prize.