Greg and Kat's blog

Facebook: not just for stalking anymore. It’s amazing the things you can learn while bumping around Facebook.

One of the things I recently learned was that the feather duster is the preferred implement for Chinese child whoopin’. (Apparently you hold the feathery-end and whop them with the stick part. The more you know.)

So having come across that new stereotype, I had to go hunting for others. Sure enough, I started to notice a trend among the many photos I had seen.

Here’s my new stereotype: Asian people take a lot of pictures of women standing beside flowers. [Most of the links below are to Facebook pictures, so your enjoyment of this post may be impaired by not being in the SFU network, or not having a Facebook account at all if you’re a complete loser, Eugene.]

Let’s start with some clear examples of the genre. We have Nicola in Hawaii and Jessica, a former 120 student, went to a tulip festival. That last one might be too easy to count.

I’m not sure that this one of Eunice can be included, she’s not much of a good-Asian-girl, but there are flowers in the background. Check.

Daniela, while not Asian herself, was in Thailand for her flowers-and-tree picture, so I’m counting it.

Suyoko inherited her obsession with the garden from her father (the Japanese half). There are also thousands of pictures of him with various plants hidden away somewhere.

On the family side, I have a picture of Pam in the back yard and one of their Ama. I’m sure I have seen a Kat-with-flowers picture, but can’t locate it at the moment. Kat’s experience is “we don’t want to waste the film on just the flowers… go stand beside the flowers so we can get a picture of them.”

Finally, just to show that it’s not an exclusively-Asian phenomenon, here’s Sara and some kind of flowering tree.

So, I took the plunge and moved my hosting from my computer behind a cable modem to a Dreamhost account. At US$8/mo (if you pay for 2 years) it’s pretty damned cheap for a full-featured hosting account.

If any of you notice any problems with this blog or the gallery, let me know. Everything should be faster (unless you’re in my house, then it will be slower) too.

By the way, if you want a Dreamhost account and follow this link to Dreamhost (or enter the promo code GREGBAKER01), you’ll use my promo code and get $40 off any hosting package. (I get stuff too, so I’m not being totally altruistic here.)

My new computer is up and running! Huzzah!

Hardware geekyness

Core 2 Duo E6600 (dual core 2.4GHz, 4MB L2), 2 × 400GB SATA2 drives, 2GB memory (Kingston low-latency DDR2). I went with an Intel D975XBX motherboard, after returning a faulty ASUS P5W DH Deluxe (and hearing that Jen returned two before the third one worked).

It’s really quiet, which was one of the goals. I’m a big fan of the Antec Sonata 2 case I got (already having owned an original Sonata). For example, the hard disks are mounted on little rubber spacers to damp vibration. The Antec case fans (one included, one I added) are huge and can be turned down so they run slow (and quiet).

The video card I got, the Asus EN7600GT met my three hard requirements: dual-DVI-out (if I get a second display), no fans (less noise), and an Nvidia chip (better Linux drivers). It’s not blazingly fast, but I don’t need a lot of 3D.

Software geekyness

Having been a long-time Debian user, I decided to try Ubuntu Linux this time around. I’ve got to say: it’s sliky-smooth and delicious. It’s got all the good parts of Debian, with a bunch more goodness rolled in. (Okay, the installation took a while, but that’s because I was trying to be clever and trick the installer into doing something it didn’t want to do. That was silly.)

I installed Beryl for some shiny desktop eye-candy. I’m sure I’ll get bored and turn off some parts eventually, but it’s pretty cool. If you’re interested, there are plenty of Beryl screencasts on Youtube (but none compelling enough that I wanted to link to that one).

So…

I’m using the new computer as my desktop now. The server stuff (this blog, my gallery, etc.) is still on the old computer. So, if the site is down for a bit over the next few days, it’s because I’m doing the switch over (inelegantly).

Hmmm… maybe this is the time to put the server stuff on a Dreamhost account. I have been meaning to do that. US$8 per month is pretty cheap, and the upstream on my cable modem isn’t all-that.

I believe I have mentioned my landlady before, but I’ll recap. I live in the downstairs apartment; she lives upstairs. She’s an old Chinese woman whose English is, at best, vaguely understandable. Her husband is dead and the kids have moved out, so she likes having somebody else living in the house.

Tonight, her computer did something unexpected and she asked if I could help her. I went upstairs and clicked “okay” in a dialog box. Then, she was feeling a little chatty, so I talked with her for a while.

Part way through the conversation, she was talking about her son growing up. Keep in mind that I only understand about every third word she says at the best of times. I still have no idea what she said, but what I heard was “The… uh… penis… up, down, up down, up down… he.. ah… hurt himself”. Again, that probably wasn’t what she said, but it’s what I got.

Has anybody else ever tried to keep a straight face with an old Chinese woman after she’s just brought up her son’s spontaneous erection injury? It’s about as difficult as you’d think.

The other choice quote was about some relative (didn’t catch which one–maybe a son in-law?): “in the mind… he a little bit slow.”

And, of course, her catch phrase: “I’m a little bit scared”. Bless her heart, she’s a little bit scared of everything: going outside, being in the house alone, going to China, having her granddaughters stay with her, … . The pronunciation (which I know because I’ve heard her say it probably 20 times) is something like “I a liddle beet scaaed.”

She’s really quite sweet. If she feels better about having me live downstairs, I’m kind of happy about that. Just as long as I don’t have to talk about her son’s penis again.

I have seen several of these on Facebook. “You know you go to UBC when…” “You know you’re from BC when…” “You know you’re Indian when…”

I can’t find an SFU one. So, I’m taking suggestions.

You know you go to SFU (Burnaby) when…

• you know how to get between any two points on campus on a rainy day without getting wet.
• you know that “a rainy day” is synonymous with “a day”.
• the people at Renaissance know your drink order before you say it.
• Parminder at Renaissance knows you by name.
• you longer wonder where floors 1-6 are.
• you can actually find the first floor in the AQ.
• you have even been stuck on the hill because of 1 inch of snow.
• you notice when people you don’t even know are studying in the wrong place, because they usually study over there [points].
• you have an opinion about the CFS… a STRONG opinion.
• heading for the bus stop, you look at your watch: if it’s 20 after, you kill ten minutes to wait out the bus rush.
• you have found yourself unable to remember significant parts of a Pub Night (or GIC Social).
• you have used a cafeteria tray to slide down the slopes near the gym after it snowed.
• “Purple Library Guy” doesn’t make you think of a lame superhero.
• … you know Purple Library Guy’s story.
• you can talk about “the Clan” without thinking about white hoods and torches.
• you are surprised when you meet your TA and they speak English.
• you ever decided not to take a course so you wouldn’t have to come to campus on Tuesdays.
• you know every takeout place that delivers to campus.
• you know several people that ride up the hill but would never do it yourself–that’s crazy.
• you have had an argument on the various merits of study locations on campus.
• you’d go to your prof’s office hours, if you could only find their office.
• you can walk from the Skytrain to the 145 stop with your eyes closed.
• it would never occur to you to ask “which one” when somebody refers to a “pub”.
• it’s going to take you seven years to finish your undergrad, but you’re okay with that.
• you have “gone swimming” in the pond in the AQ. Once. Never again.
• you have spent five minutes looking for your car in the parking lot before realizing you’re on the wrong level.

Okay, I’m out. Please add more in comments. More for inspiration.

Scalloped potatoes definitely a comfort food for me. As many know, potatoes were the unchallenged starch in my house. Pasta or rice could occasionally be served, as long as they were accompanied by potatoes in some form. At some point, I realized that it was conceptually possible to have an evening meal without a potato component. Somewhere in my heart, I still don’t feel it.

Kat’s family seems to be about the same way with rice. Noodles or potatoes? Fine, but get yourself some of the steamed rice to go with it.

Anyway… I had the foresight to have my mother write down her scalloped potato recipe at some point (from memory, naturally and it’s exactly what I remember). I made it for myself tonight.

• 4 baking potatoes, peeled and sliced
• butter
• flour
• salt & pepper
• milk

Most scalloped potato recipes call for first making a roux. Totally unnecessary. Cheese? Interferes with the potato flavour.

1. Set your oven to 325°F. Find a casserole dish somewhere in the 1.5–2 litre range. Butter the casserole dish generously (i.e. smear butter around with your fingers; there should be a few little butter goobers left around).
2. Lay down a layer of potato slices in the bottom of the dish. Sprinkle about 2 tbsp of flour. Salt and pepper.
3. Repeat until you get near the top of the dish. (Throw in a little more butter or some chopped onions if you feel the urge.) Finish with an un-topped potato layer. Give it a bit of a push down so everything settles.
4. Pour on milk until you can just see it around the edges (maybe 3/4 of the way up the dish).
5. Cover and throw in the oven. It can bubble-over: consider sliding a baking sheet under it.
6. Stir the whole thing around after an hour. (If it looks too wet, only half-cover it.) Cook until tender, 1.5–2 hours (total).

Eat it while it’s still screeching hot. Mmmmm… childhood.

I recently acquired a KingPANO panoramic tripod head. For those who don’t know, a panoramic head is a jig that forces your camera to rotate around the len’s nodal point, so you can rotate your camera and get images that can be stitched together nicely.

Basically, panoramas of far-away things are easy, since an inch or two of movement isn’t a big deal, but close-up panoramas are impossible without such a device. Have a look at the panorama I did at UNC. The far-away buildings are just fine, but the flowerbeds closer to the camera have awkward seams because of camera movement.

My first project with the pano head was a full 360×180° panorama in my office.

Since a few people have asked, and I have the pictures around, I thought I’d show what happens. First, the camera goes on the tripod, exposure, focus, and white-balance are set to manual (so they stay the same for all images). Then, I take a bunch of pictures (about 60 in this case, but that’s probably more overlap than necessary) like this:

Then, into a panorama-stitching program (Hugin for me). I usually scale everything 50% before hitting Hugin. I didn’t this time and my poor computer groaned under the stress.

Then comes the long (but somehow relaxing) process of identifying corresponding points in the pictures. That lets the program figure out each picture’s correct place in the panorama. Once that’s done, each picture is morphed into the right “shape” for the finished panorama:

Now, the individual images just have to be piled on top of each other for the finished panorama:

Finally, I get the finished panorama of my office (after some pain to remove the tripod and fill in the floor properly).

If I had kept the full resolution all the way though, the finished panorama would have been about 162 megapixels. The one you see on the link above is about 3.5% of that.