Walkabout NYC – May 2011

Inspired by Danny Choo‘s long running A Week in Tokyo series (possible NSFW link), I want to post an odd assortment of photos taken around NYC in the month of May. Instead of one off twitpics, a series of unrelated NYC photos makes for good juxtaposition.

NYC Subway Ad

Dorky yet amusing.

Kalbi from Shilla Ktown

You can never have too much Kalbi.

Vintage Bowling Set

I don’t remember what UWS furniture store this came from.

Red Mango Fulton St Grand Opening

More pay by the ounce yogurt shops is a good thing. The white peach yogurt I got was a bit too runny

Soul Daddy sauces

South St Seaport area – Soul Daddy of American’s Next Great Restaurant fame

Xiao Long Bao sauce stacks

So great, so far away. Nan Xiang Dumpling House in Flushing

Shaved Ice topped with Condensed Milk

As you can tell, I’m never one to shy away from blanket generalizations! Condensed milk goes great with everything! So does tapioca pearls, aloe vera, and bacon (though not necessarily all in the same dish)

Also in Flushing, at Ice Fire Land

Uniqlo Captain Jack Sparrow Shirt

The Disney hype machine is building up for the latest Pirate’s movie. This shirt was spotted at Uniqlo

Goomba hats

From the Nintendo World store, goomba merch

Bowser backpack

You guessed it, from the Nintendo World store. I’d buy this, but $50 is too much for a novelty backpack

TSL3 Afterparty

From the TSL3 afterparty, you can see Thorzain in the background with the adidas three stripes garb

Brown Butter with Candied Bacon on Brioche Cookie

Coolhaus in NYC. That is one seriously heavy dessert

Monopoly Graffiti

Representing the streets of NYC

Chelsea Market exit

The Chelsea Market is a great example of repurposing old buildings (but this isn’t new news)

Whole Foods - Columbus Circle

Looking down at the Whole Foods in the Time Warner Center

AHA Wall Street Run 3M 2011

Ran the 2011 Wall St 3M today.

This is my first NYRR event and it was well organized.

Issued T-Shirts & D-Tag

D-Tags are a nice way to track your time.

Starting Area - Greenwich Street

The wait for the race to start took longer than the actual race. Everyone assumed the worst – that it would rain at the 6:45p race start.

Post Finish Line - Apple Giveaway

If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that eating cold apples after running rocks.

Post Finish Line - Water Cups

After the finish line, there was water, pretzels, and apples. Also booths with free branded merch.

Post Finish Line - World Financial Center Plaza

Obligatory American Heart Association fundraising link. Not sure when the cutoff is, but someone said it goes through June.

Steve Jobs on Excuses

Steve Jobs by Getty

Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky:

Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn’t have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. “When you’re the janitor,” Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, “reasons matter.” He continues: “Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.” That “Rubicon,” he has said, “is crossed when you become a VP.

This makes sense.

A junior employee at the bottom of the chain of command (such as a janitor) can have a legitimate excuse for why something was not done. It’s plausible that the janitor does not have the authority to get the key he needs, so it is not the janitor’s fault.

Whereas a member of management (such as a VP) has no excuse. If the key is missing, the VP has authority to find the person with the key, force open the door, hire a locksmith, etc. The VP needs to problem solve and cannot explain away things that were not accomplished as the VP has sufficient authority to get it done.

It’s interesting to note that Jobs is quoted using the term ‘reason’ and not ‘excuse.’ The former being legitimate and the latter being a scapegoat. That is, the former is only available to people at the staff level who are not sufficiently authorized/empowered.

(via MacStories via HN)

MW3 Box Art: A Continuation of the Dude Standing with Gun

FPS games are not known for their creativity. Infinity Ward did a great job implementing perks & killstreaks that arguably improved or ruined the balance depending who you talk to. The box art of FPS blockbusters has not changed much.

For the record, I’ve enjoyed MW1 & MW2 extensively, but I’m not a fan of Treyarch’s CoD games.

Let’s take a look at the genre’s box art. The images below are copyright of Activision or EA, depending on the title.

possible Call of Duty: MW3 box art

Judging by the cover, the game looks pretty meh. Doesn’t matter though, since the CoD franchise sells gangbusters.

Call of Duy: MW2

This game has nukes, which is why everything is burning?

Call of Duty 4: MW

Judging by the cover again, nothing special. Gameplay is top-notch (G3 FTW)

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Here’s a CoD: Blops cover thrown in for comparison. It breaks the mold by not showing a full body visible soldier silhouette

possible Battlefield 3 box art

Evokes a futuristic feel. Looks cleaner than MW3’s cover. I’m not sure why MW3 & BF3 are competing over which cover guy is taking more damage

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Looks like the art designer had fun using clip art

Battlefield 2

Glad to see this soldier is not on fire. While not the best art design ever, this cover is at least clean & the version number is easily identifiable

Medal of Honor

Based on a real life soldier, Cowboy, this grayscale design is subtle and powerful. Too bad the franchise reboot wasn’t very solid?

The games above fit in the war FPS realism category. Other games in the FPS genre compete on aspects such as classes (think TF2, Brink), arcade mechanics (Bulletstorm) and super powers (Crysis 2).

Upcoming NYC Event: TSL3 After Party 5/15

Aiur Chef by Blizzard

From TeamLiquid:

Location: Break Bar and Billiards in New York City.
Address: 32-04b Broadway, Long Island City, NY 11106
Time and Date: Sunday, May 15th – 19:00 EST

Take the NQ uptown to Queens, get off at Broadway and walk one street southeast. Bar is located on the corner of Broadway and 32nd Street – Google Maps.

There is no RSVPing to this event. Break Bar holds 250 people. Yes, it’s in Queens, deal with it other borough residents!

*You must be at least 21 years of age to enter*

Some meta/random commentary about this post:

  • I’m posting this on my blog, because this is the kind of thing that *I* would love to find out about.
  • Using the Aiur Chef image since I’m rocking that on the battlenets version two point oh.
  • Patch 1.3.3, Y U NO LIKE PYLON RANGE?
  • Don’t really have a preference between Naniwa or Thorzain. Guess I’ll support Naniwa cuz he’s Brotossing it up.

Camera Design

This is what constitutes popular (good?) camera design today:

Olympus E-P1 digital pen

An obvious design throwback to the days of film cameras, but not very imaginative.

I’m of the firm belief that camera design as we know it today has tremendous room for change. Take the micro 4/3 standard that is mirrorless.  It’s what enables the E-P1 above to be significantly slimmer than a traditional DSLR and retain interchangeable lenses. Going slimmer is just one possible direction.

Below are some camera concepts that break away from “the standard camera” look (think Leica).

D5R Concept by Ned Mulka

This is a neat concept, but not super practical. Why go through all that body change without a number of obvious benefits? Still, +1 for daring to make a camera body that doesn’t conform to legacy design.

WVIL Concept by Artefact

The WVIL concept excites me a lot more. I think the future of professional cameras may involve wireless lenses syncing to a generic touchscreen (think Android phone, iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad). The WVIL concept is great, but why reinvent the wheel with a proprietary touchscreen when an off-the-shelf generic touchscreen suffices?

I can easily envision a world where a professional photographer has many wireless lenses (perhaps with a gorilla pod each) that are all controlled by a single iPad remotely. All a person would have to do is set up multiple wireless lenses before a sporting event starts. During the event, the lenses would (since this is the future we’re talking about) take continuous ultra high-definition video. The touchscreen controller would be used to monitor focus and other settings.

iPhone 4

Another trend in camera hardware is the disappearance of noticeable hardware. With smartphones packing incredibly better cameras (as in “decent enough”), it’s possible to get high quality photos without carrying around a point and shoot. The trend of nearly invisible camera hardware will only get better as phone cameras improve.

Dylan’s Candy Bar

With Dylan’s Candy Bar, the daughter of Ralph Lauren, Dylan, has her own candy shop in Midtown East. This shows doing one thing well is a good idea. I mean, candy is available at any convenience store, but nobody writes home about those.

5 lb Gummy Bears (top), Gummy Letters

Those 5 lb gummy bears are $40 each. Yes, that’s $40 each.

Chocolate Covered Gummy Bear

Chocolate covered… sure, why not?

Rainbow Peeps

Easter just passed, the Peeps are still on display.

Gummy Bacon

Strawberry flavored? Um, OK. Even though it’s gummy candy, it must feel fat to eat giant swabs of gummy bacon.

ICEE Candy

Nice! Who knew they made ICEE in chewy candy form?

Gumball Bath Tub

You probably don’t want to swim in that.

Jelly Belly soda

I’ll be honest, I was tempted to try some of the flavors. Green Apple is particularly tempting.

Birthday Cake Cupcake Cookies

These are so meta. It’s a cookie that tastes like birthday cakes. It’s a cupcake-cookie thing that tastes like cakes?

Gummy Chicken Feet

For those who can’t get enough during dim sum, you can have some for dessert.

There is No Such Thing as Perfect

If you’re into food, especially meals that you could never afford, there’s a great photo comparison of Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry & Per Se by TheFeast. The photos and accompanying captions do an excellent job of showing the similarities and differences between Keller’s Michelin 3 star restaurants.

Photo: Matt Duckor (TheFeast)

The sign that hangs in both of Keller’s restaurants reads:

When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about.

Replace the words ‘food’ and  ‘cooking’ with whatever subject matter you want. That is the recipe (sorry, had to) for success.

Uniqlo X Canon

Uniqlo rocks. I went there to return some stuff and ended up buying a graphic T while browsing. They have T-shirt collaborations with brands (such as MGS) that constantly cycle.

Naruto statue

While I enjoyed Naruto several years ago, I’m too old to be wearing Konoha merch.

EOS DSLR Body T-Shirt

They currently have a Corporate Collaboration theme for T-shirts. This includes brands like Canon, IBM, and Meiji.

EOS DSLR Parts T-Shirt

Not the sharpest shot, but this shows DSLR parts.

I didn’t end up buying either Canon shirt, even though Canon rocks. Maybe they could come out with a T-Shirt that has the DSLR (with a 70-200 please) & lens strap superimposed on it. Sort of like those tie shirts that are kind of cool, but not really.

Monster Hunter T-Shirt

As I mentioned, I picked up a T-shirt. I got this because it looks badass and I’d wear it in public. Plus, the games sell a metric ton in Japan, which is a plus.