coolpix 990

coolpix 990, originally uploaded by Duc N. Ly.

Great Camera

Here's the link to some of the photos I took with this camera.

PhotoKina recently announced a slew of amazing new digital cameras, some known as micro 4/3, which is making Digital SLR smaller and smaller and pushing the mega pixel up and up. The good news is that the digital cameras of lower resolutions and slower shutter speed camera are on the used market for a very good price. I purchased this Nikon Coolpix E990 from Goodwill for $30. It take four AA batteries. The compact card and reader costs more. E990 has a magnesium body not plastic. In 2001, Time magazine awarded this model as the product of the year. It was the first 3. mega pixel under $1000. I’m amazed with the macro lens. It’s tricky to get it into macro mode but not impossible. The results are satisfactory. It picks up the fine hair line fiber caught between the nib gap. (I really need to clean this nib! The ink has corroded the once gold ring.) I also used the White Balance to measure the white surface to adjust to the typical white office lights. The camera performs well under low light interiors and had a soft tone without the flash.

I use this camera for macro photography. I don't need to attached anything else to it. The lens that comes with this camera is great for macro. The swivle helps to get the right perspective. Here's a series of the Seiko Sowa taken with the Coolpix 990: http://lexly87.blogspot.com/2009/06/seiko-sowa_05.html

Divisadero

A few words about the photograph. It's by Willi Ronis. He's a street photographer.

This book could have been two books. I felt that it was rushed to the end a bit. The pace picked up and became less poetic when it should have been more poetic as the later part of the book concentrates on Lucien the poet.
I was not disappointed. After The English Patient and In the Skin of the Lion, I read Anil's Ghost. That book wasn't as poetic. Divisadero is poetic but also high in concept without the accoutrement that goes with high conception. It begins with understanding the title of the novel. In the Skin of the Lion is also a title that suggests the craft of story telling but in Divisadero the suggestion of the craft of the story telling is carried out. In other words, it's not just a decoration but a device to tell a story. To witness this craft in action is quiet exciting. To explain a little bit what 'In the Skin of the Lion' means. It is a line taken from Gilgamesh. I imagine a group of people sitting around a fire at night and the skin of the lion is passed around from one person to the next. When you wear the skin, you have the podium, the floor, and it's your time to tell your story, to dazzle your audience. That's the craft of story telling. Divisadero, is a division of time, connection, and distance. It is through this perspective of distance that one can see clearer what has happen to those events that change one's life. It is as if one must assume the lion's perspective, be protected in this lion skin to tell this story and make sense of the Violence that Ann when through which tore the make-shift family apart. The high conception comes in the notion that the past and present can be entered through imagination and memory, the tools of a story teller. For Ann, she enters the skin of the lion in France, far away from her family back in California. She enters the story of Lucien the poet. It is from this safe place protected by the distance which is her lion skin to tell a story that is somewhat similar to her past circumstance.

Unbearable Lightness of Being

The character Tomas was born out of a situation.
Ever wonder how people meet? It's one of the questions asked of couples. Usually the answer is in a bar. While this is a short summation that would suffice for an answer, it is elaborated upon by the author who seems to bring into question coincidences and fortuities. Tomas's room at the hotel is number 6. She gets off at 6. He calls them the bird of fortuities. Milan uses the image of the birds flying down upon the shoulders of Saint Francis of Assisi. "A single metaphor can give birth to love." These are signs that bless the unions, the more the better. And to not notice such details is to miss out on one of the pleasures of life. It is a great romance. He is an unfaithful womanizer. She, Teraza, is a provincial girl, naive, almost a pure maiden. How is she able to capture his heart so thoroughly and yet be tortured at the same time by his infidelities? Milan talks about compassion and how heavy it weighs into the heart of Tomas. "for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes." He has compassion for Tereza. His lightness has left. His womanizing and his infidelities are his lightness. They are Tereza's heaviness. The characters make choices. And because they only have one life, this choice is difficult. "We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come." So Here is where Milan disagrees with the Eternal Return idea that says everything has already occur. Milan brings up Nietzsche's idea of the Eternal Return in the beginning. Some say that he spends the rest of the book defending this thesis. I think it's an academic outlook. And to come into the book with this perspective misses a lot of the other insights, insights into women, the heart, and relationship between the two. Fortunately, unlike life, one can re read a book.

Milan brings in Anna Karenina and looks at the symmetry of how Ann first met Vronsky at the train track. Someone was killed, run over by a train. The irony is that Anna commits suicide by throwing herself on a train track.

Tomas wrote about Oedipus Rex comparing Oedipex to the communist of his country.

Milan likes to bring up these references. His presence is always seems to be in the background of the narrative. So there are philosophical ponderings peppered through out the novel.

Genius Loci

Christian draws a lot on Heidegger’s essay 'Building, Thinking, and Dwells'. This essay is included in 'Basic Writings'.
Christian extracts certain passages such as the explanation of a bridge as a presence to draw together the two banks of a river much as a building will draw into different reference points of the landscape. In fact, it is the location of a building not it's points in space of a Cartitian grid that gives it place; the location and the reference to the surrounding landscape that is the main concern.
There has been a resurgence of phenomenology in architecture. Peter Zumthor and Steven Holl are two proponates of it.
Christian is a pioneer in drawing the cross discipline of philosophy into the architectural discussion. He was the first to talk about this.

In Praise of Shadows

Tadoa Ando recommends this book. There's a great introduction by Charles Moore. One of the basic human requirements is the need to dwell, and one of the central human acts is the act of inhabiting, of connecting ourselves, however temporarily, with a place on the planet which belongs to us, and to which we belong. - Charles Moore.

House Saga

Laurie Bertrand photographed a series of great vinettes of her and her husband's new home in South Dakota.
The set is accompanied by this quote: "Too often when we're buying or building a house we do not consider each room. We are carried away by one charming feature and are blind to details that will give us trouble later on." - Dorothy Draper

Aspinal Jewel Calf Pen Case

I've been looking for a pen case for my fountain pens. This item is good price and of great quality.
Aspinal Jewel Calf Pen Case

Here's a close up

Antonello Serio Man PE2009 02

Antonello Serio Man PE2009 02
Originally uploaded by Antonello Serio

Lately, I've been tired of having my mobile phone, wallet, keys, and mp3 players strapped on to me and cramping my jeans. The solution is to get a small shoulder bag to carry this all. Now our counter part in Europe have been doing this for a long time. I've been shopping around for a small man bag. This seems to hit the spot. I stumbled upon this gem in Flickr.com of all places. The bag is clean in design, understated, yet luxurious. I love the brown suade feel and the white contrasting shoulder strap in web canvase is racy. There are no bulky straps or details to get in the way. It's ver masculine. Antonello Serio is an Italian designer making beautiful fashion for men and women globally.

A Clock Work Orange

Drawing on the cover is by Robert Longo

Peter Zumthor

Zumthor just won the Pritzker Prize. This book reminds me of 'Basic Writings' by Martin Heidegger. There is an essay by Heidegger call "Building, Thinking, and Dwelling." I had a hint of the relation. Then I found a Wikipedia article that mentions Zumthor mirroring Heidegger.

Zumthor mentions the term “presence” of the materials in his work. I remember reading 'Building, Thinking, and Dwelling' and try to grasp Heidegger's meaning of the bridge as the beginning of a 'presence'.

Is Zumthor a senualist? In a sense he is but not the same as those that sprouted in the Roccoco period. Later Modernist such as Adolf Loos strip the ornamentation and the buildings became bare until it was cold. Zumthor seems to bring the warmth back with out all the ostentation. Architecture has always been about light, material, and sense. Zumthor finds innotive ways to let the material speak, or he treats the ordinary material into exterordinary ways. He seems to use material the way a writer uses words to compose a poem.

The English Patient

With bursts of warm light, Ondaatje illuminates the scene through poetic prose, rendering a tale of love and betrayal in times of war.

Book designed by Chip Kid. Photo by Cecil Berton.

Ikepod Sea Slug

http://www.yorktime.com/search?cid=70:sku=410


The vintage Seaslug.
Designer: Marc Newson
Marc began his design tinkering with a watch. In his teens, he started to study watch making. He's expanded to other products.
Here's an interview with Marc: http://www.watchismo.blogspot.com/search?q=marc+newson

Quantum of Solace Book

Pentagram has made a special edition of Ian Flemming's collection of Short Stories.

Never Let Me Go Book Review

I don't know how Ishiguro did it, but I felt like I had stumble upon a journal or a story written by Kathy H. The first impression is an intimacy with the story teller that I had not experience in a long time.

Objects have a special meaning in ‘Never Let Me Go’. The title is taken from the song by Judy Bridgewater, a fictional singer from the album Songs After Dark. It is in the cassette that Kathy bought at the Sales. This object came from the outside world. It is a reminder of the time Kathy experienced at Hailsham. The objects produce memories. The wooden pencil box is also imbued with mystery. Kathy mentions Tommy's favorite Ruby shirt.
The album has a woman smoking a cigarette. She had to hide it because smoking is forbidden for donors. It destroys organs. This is one of the ways that Kathy casually reveals the fact that they are donors. The books with smokers or smoking illustrations have been torn from the volume.

I like the fact that Madame selects the special art work for her gallery.

"I don't know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham ..."

I was asking myself this question of purpose and length of a life. On the one hand Kathy knows her purpose in life. On the other hand, she also will know when she will 'complete' her life. It reminds me of Blade Runner because the replicants have their own expiration dates to think of.

Tusting Bags

Tusting came over the border into Levenger's line up years ago. They make the popular Stanley, now updated Livingston bag. Levenger commission Tusting to make briefs that have an English tradition and look. Known as an angler's bag, these have become popular business briefs that are not so stiff and have an outdoors causualness about them. I own one. It is fully lined. The new leather smell is masculine.
Seirra Trading sells them on line.

Nooka

Nooka's story of a start up watch company. Watchismo has a profile on Nooka's start up. The dials bring a fresh perspective on tracking time. Futurist in style and concept, each creation presents a challenge to traditional horology.

Watch

Watch
Originally uploaded by Duc N. Ly

My Watch

Agenda Series

---------- ducly wrote :----------

I'm interested in your Agenda series.

can you tell me more about it?

Dear Ducly,

thank you for your email.

My agenda series are simply photographs of my own agendas, which I use since 2004. They are the result of my daily life, and they try to capture a part of my own memory.

It is the result of an obsession with understanding time as a concept and our relationship with it. We are in the middle of a transition in a world of new technology, where memory is captured differently (e.g. writing an email becomes stored in other ways within our memories than writing by hand, I would believe.) As a result the form of our traces are changing, as well as the archives of ourselves.

It seems important to me to capture this, as also an excuse to continue to produce.

All the Best

Aleksandar

related: www.flickr.com/photos/ducly/

tags: Moleskine, agenda, art concept, diaries, photograph

Fridge

I called Sears to come out to look at the Fridge. He told me to turn the freezer off and wait for the water line to thaw. This works. Apparently, the water line is close to the door panel. It is sealed in foam. If it was broken, they would have to replace the whole new door. My particular GE model door is not available because the manufacture have stop making it. So, after 15 minutes the water line works! The ice maker he said needed to be replaced too. But I did not get it replace. Last night, I heard the ice dropping into the box. So, it is also making ice! I'm excited.

It costs me $65 to have the repair guy come out.

The repair guy said that GE refrigerator is expensive to repair.

The parts and labor for freezer fix is $355.

D.E. Mays

portlandart.net/archives/2009/06/first_thursday_39.html

Portland Art selected to feature D.E. Mays for their First Thursday's pick. I first saw May's work at PDX contemporary in the Window display. I was in awe of their power to suggest architectural space. It was want I wanted to do. His work still influences me. I meet him at a solo exhibition at the Marylhurst Art Gym space. I'm glad to see his new drawings. They still have that simplicity and architectonic space to the compositions.