busan international fireworks festival

i am the type of person that can get really concerned about things. though i go through my life mostly looking up i can experience moments of worry, moments that can keep me up at night watching action movies to stay distracted. i can settle into a life and start new very easily but fragments of doubt can shuffle up to me quickly and without notice. i was the kind of kid that was happy but also had the potential for unmatched levels of moroseness. despite my overall state of mental well being here in korea, i have spent a few nights wondering if i was doing all i could here. to offset creeping notions i spent this weekend in busan with friends for the international fireworks festival. sadly angela stayed in daegu due to a nasty sickness.


dongdaegu station

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the busan international fireworks is apparently a big deal in south korea. i hadn't really heard much about it and sort of assumed that when i did it was because i was just some westerner looking to appropriate some culture: with some "major" festival happening on a weekly basis around the country it can difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff: the onggi pottery show, for example, is coming up soon and is sure to be a hit. or not. but it sure is getting the shit advertised out of it. who knows? but when a foreigner hears of something like an International Fireworks Festival happening on the most popular beach in the country they sort of have to go. especially if they have awesome friends willing to put them up for free.


gwangalli beach, busan. before the crowds arrived in our area.

so ann, ryan, colin, kristen, sam, jesse and myself bought from a streetside vender a bunch of beach mats that look like the UV shields californians put in their parked cars: you know the type, foil on one side, vaguely padded, insulating. proud and feeling adventurous we took our newly acquired spacesuit material down to the beach. i was informed that there would be a lot of people there. what i wasn't ready for was the sheer amount of bodies. when i saw metallica many years ago i knew what i was signing up for. when i happily strolled into a crowd umpteen times larger and umpteen times more prone to exploding than that which was crammed into qwest field i was completely unprepared. we waded into the mob with another group of festival participants and got no further than 20 feet before we were utterly stuck in the quagmire. sam was up front and got thoroughly harassed and handled by a little old lady who seemed to have much more power than her hunched frame would have cared to admit. i was choking on my backpack and the five friends between us were beginning to lose their minds. the noise got louder and louder as those koreans behind us shouted to move forward and those in front of us shouted to move back. i cracked. screaming and panicked i turned around and tried to get back. more old ladies pushed me aside and i nearly fell over as the shoulder checks became increasingly violent. the last time i felt so enraged was 8 years ago when security guards didn't let me through the gates to see mudvayne. i thought those days were behind me but to my immediate horror they were staring me in the face, daring me to stand up straight and keep my knees from buckling.

eventually we all made it back out onto the street and were informed that down the beach a click we'd find a more open area. sure enough we found space to lay down our mats and then our bruised egos. it was 4:30pm. the fireworks wouldn't start for another three and a half hours.


close to show time, the space between individual mats becomes null

8:00. showtime.












from left: jesse, sam, kristen, colin, ann, ryan



so, am i doing all i can here? no. the answer is that simple. it will be impossible to do everything and get the sense of accomplishment that comes with living somewhere for years. i will never fully conquer south korea but as long as i make these efforts and spend time with friends and challenge myself there is no telling where the rewards end. maybe the notion of never being able to see everything is exactly what i need in my life, after all.And the rest of your post here

-e pics n' things!

gnarly.

i just ate three things i never would have imagined eating in one sitting:

quail eggs. they're exactly what they sound like - the hard shell has been picked off and the eggs hard-boiled.

mini sardines. these were the "dressing" for the quail eggs. in sesame oil and the size of a large sliver they were served in a big pot with the eggs.

black soup. the only other foodstuff that's as descriptive as this is hot ham water. soup. black as the devil's clogged toilet. viscous and chunky.

-e pics n' things!

bathroom etiquette and personal space and how the two are very closely related

though only a month and a half have passed since i began my fledgling teaching career i have already run full steam into several awkward moments with my students. dynamic korea is a place with infinitely different notions regarding personal space than most countries i've been to; i.e. there isn't much to be had.

the first came not long after i started at seopyeong. the one that caught me on my walk home after school as i was stalled in an intersection looking for a hotspot to download a podcast insisted on touching my arms. he was prattling on about something or other and due to my lame korean at the time (not to insinuate my korean has since magically turned conversational) i could not tell him that i didn't understand what on earth he was on about. i gestured to him with my arms folded in an X across my chest, universal hangul for "No." he kept smiling and chatting and brushing my arm hair and seemed pleased to finally be able to talk without being interrupted. this carried on for a minute or two before the old folks in the neighbor hood began looking. nay, staring. i felt sharp darts in my back: every time i pulled away from the young boy he clung on tighter, touching my arms and pulling my non-iPod hand down to hold. after feeling the snare of stares from surrounding koreans i finally had to be rude and walk away from the kid as he was in mid sentence. i can only imagine the headlines in the local hofs and restaurants, did you see that giant white man? did you see how close he was with that child? well, i never...

about two weeks ago i was caught in the bathroom between classes. classic rookie mistake. the equivalent in the marines is volunteering when Gunny asks for a private to check out what's up over that there hill. that private, everybody knows, never comes back. so i was caught at the urinal when a few 2nd and 3rd grade boys came running in. they all started shouting hello at me presumably because they all have amnesia and forgot they had already done so every other time they saw me that day. it's cute when you're not in the middle of a transaction that requires more quiet space than stage time. i made the second mistake of replying to them and out came a half-cocked hello. if Gunny had heard it he would've made me a stretcher bearer thinking i'd lost all my nerve and gone all gutless on him. they started screaming and when i waved at them to go away they all came and gathered round. what i'd forgotten is that in korea, and most asian countries, what i know in western cultures as the "GO AWAY" hand gesture is actually "COME HERE." if this were a movie an adult would have walked by just as i was waving them all to go away and i would have comically lost my job. eventually i actually shooed them away, though and all was right with the world.

and then there was last week in one of my after school classes. as i was handing out worksheets to be completed two young boys got in a scuffle which ended with boy A laying boy B out, cold cocking him once and then giving him a right hook before i had the chance to get in between. once he regained his composure boy B reached out his hand to shake on it to settle matter. boy A's refusal to meet halfway seemed only to strengthen the initial physical wounds by bruising B's dignity: kid gets beat up then wants to shake hands on forgiveness and is shut down. a sad sight indeed.

but today was perhaps the strangest thing to happen between me and a the kids. i found myself bursting for a trip to the squatters (if you don't know, they're exactly what they sound like) around 12:15. lunch time is 12:20. thinking i could fit it in like the invincible bank robber feels like he can get in just that one last perfect heist i made a dash for it. but lo, disaster struck. a few boys were already in the bathroom and they were, both tragically and hilariously, the same motley crew as the urinal incident just two weeks prior. enter: shouting hello. knowing better this time i only nodded at them and kept moving briskly across the always-wet bathroom tile-floor to the opposite wall to gather my hurried wad of toilet paper from the wall dispenser before seeking the haven of a stall. one boy's voice stood out and he was no longer saying hello but actually talking at me in hangul. the rest of the boys had gone silent. i resisted for as long as i could until, at the very last moment before entering the safe womb of the squatter i turned to see what he was saying.

what spread before me was a scene more majestic than the last supper. more powerful than turandot. more suggestive than a PG-13 rated teen sex romp. the boys, five in total, had constructed a scene of what they presumed my next few minutes to include. two were on either side of the one in the middle, the one that was trying to get my attention, wildly pointing at him while giving me giant little kid cheek-to-cheek smiles. the one in the middle was in the squat position pointing at me and squeezing out what little vocabulary was in his english arsenal: teacher! son sang nim! teacher dookie?!

not knowing what else to do (i wasn't going to tell him no! teacher no dookie! because that's a lie) i just turned and locked the door as quickly as i could. not moments later, just as my afternoon's events began to unfold, there was a rushed knocking at the stall door. it shook and little boys laughed. i forcefully told them to go away. but why would they? they have no idea what "go away" means. all they heard was the panicked cry of a rookie teacher at his most vulnerable. a stupendous feat of psychological warfare the boys had raged. but they weren't done.

the door in the stall behind me shut and this made me nervous. not two nights previous i was out with a couple guys and one had brought a story of elementary boys hellbent on keeping him company in the bathroom. i had to believe it was a myth and that my worst nightmare was not about to come true. i braced myself with the kind of fortitude one reserves for life's most trying moments and looked up and behind me. a boy was climbing over the stall and looking down into mine laughing and waving and shouting hello. with very few options available i began yelling at them. i rushed. i got out of the stall and the kid was still on top of the dividing wall laughing. i very strongly told him to get down and this he seemed to understand. his friends were laughing and they all crowded around the sink because it was right next to the door and it was my next stop. they watched me wash my hands as though it seemed strange that a white man would wash his hands in their sink.

i turned to them, hands dripping wet and not necessarily clean for lack of soap. they shouted hello and all ran off down the hall cheering about their victory, their conquering of a fragile giant. a foreigner in a strange land.

-e pics n' things!

the myriad difference between hospitals and clinics

well, it finally happened. today i went to a korean hospital for the first time. this, i guarantee you, is far less dramatic than it appears. here hospitals are called hospitals and clinics and walk-ins are called hospitals: there is zero differentiation between the two in discussion with koreans. you sort of realize you're not going to a hospital-proper when you're walking up a flight of stairs and a couple 13 year old girls in school uniforms are walking down, leaving their hagwon for the day.

after a lovely trip to neighboring gwangju, i managed to finally contract the epidemic that exists only in elementary schools. starting sunday morning i have felt like a dozen mice are running around inside my head. my nose won't stop running and it feels like my lungs are filled with soot. it doesn't matter if you teach at an isolated little town in the pacific northwest or a dingy metropolis on the other side of the world, you will get sick. this is why flu season starts. this is why doctors are rich and hated.

a note on the former. actually, a complete digression on the former: medicine here is cheap. and not cheap like insurance-cheap. i mean really cheap. i was resisting my co-teacher's attempts to get me in for a check up because i was afraid of the bill. i had seen angela go to the clinic and get treated for strep and she ended up paying about $80 USD for a pretty slick medicine drip (more on my costs later). as per usual, and being the cheap bastard that i am, it was difficult to get me to pay to pay for something i knew would just go away on its own in another few days. also i hate needles. they can just go sod off, thank you.

my co-teacher, mun su-eun (that's sue to you, by the by), finally got tired of watching me blow my sorry chapped nose and took me to a "hospital" today for a check-up. she asked if i had brought my insurance card and i told her that no, i wasn't planning on making a trip to the hospital today so i hadn't packed it with my lunchbag. "okay, no problem. just bring your ARC." from the time i entered the waiting room of the clinic, on the 2nd floor of a non-descript building on a non-descript street very close to where i live, to the time i was walking back out with a prescription notice in hand was less than the time it took for the battle scene on the bridge in mission impossible 3 to run. i was in and out in less than ten minutes and was informed that i wasn't as sick as everyone thought i was. it's tough to say i told you so sometimes. the doctor lady told me to take three and call her in the morning (actually quite literally), handed sue a bill and showed us the door. at the front counter i paid 3600won (just about $3.19 USD) and was out the door. there were no extended forms and liability waivers to fill out. there was no waiting for 20 minutes. dynamic korea comes through in a positive way here.

downstairs was the pharmacy. not across town like in the united states. apparently clinics and pharmacies work together in a federally-run health care system so that the crippled, or merely coughing, patient doesn't have to go on a vision quest halfway across the state to get their damned pills before collapsing in a heap on the side of the road due to exhaustion because they've run out of gas money and can't hitchhike because if they stuck out their thumb their crutches would fall out. i found this convenient. someone of more dire circumstance than myself might find this downright helpful. it took the people behind the counter less than 3 minutes to fill my prescription and for 9 doses of 3 pills each i paid 1700won ($1.50 USD). once again, no forms, no request of address, phone number, social security number, second piece of identification and the serial number of your first mountain bike. just in and out. later in the evening i would buy a pack of halls throat drops that cost more than my entire prescription.

as david sedaris so elequently put described his own habits while living in france, "now i can finally afford to be a hypochondriac."


...or maybe it's the air here?

-e pics n' things!

one of the best days/nights here: pt. I

to be in a country where everything is new and unusual it would be pretty special to have a day/night combo that would stand out. this is especially the case for me, a chronic optimist stuck in 5th gear because everything new seems to be, to quote a very special mexican friend, "really amazing. really, really amazing." jump for more...


\
nom.

so let's start with the andong mask festival. angela and i met up with good friends ann, ryan and kristan to take the 100km bus ride from here in daegu to andong. we started successfully enough by walking 15 minutes south to the subway, heading east for 20 minutes on the red line and then finally taking a 20 minute taxi ride north and west, effectively making a really nice looking circle around the busy part of the city. we found these directions and took them as read without doing any sort of research thus were led to spend 950won on the subway and 9000won for the cab. we ended up at the bukbu (literally "north area". buk: north. bu: area) terminal, a place only 10 minutes, and 3000won, north of my apartment by taxi.

the bus stations here seem to be easy to deal with. after being ruthlessly queue barged and cut-off a few times by citizens of dynamic korea i was able to walk up to the ticket counter and get two tickets to andong with relative ease. there are a lot of places in korea that look like they should not accept bank cards that do, the bukbu terminal being one of them. the tickets there were 6900won with buses leaving every 40 minutes. on a sidenote, there is something to be noted here about the architecture in south korea: while the city centers develop and become notably glassier, suburbs and outskirts become more and more derelict. many buildings here are eerily reminiscent of a time when this area, daegu specifically, sat on the precipice of the PROK war line. daegu was within the pusan perimeter so was never actually breeched by the communist forces in the korean war but was definitely under threat of siege or bombardment. the older buildings of the region reflect military architecture. most are grey tiled or concrete slab constructions, squat and void of any character.


angela enjoying some of the more edible snackyfairefoodz. can't go wrong with fried dough and sugar.

it seems the mask festival itself serves as a massive boon to the area's local market economy. as we approached the festival's center we had to walk through a huge row of vendors that were slinging wares and goods not often associated with traditional cultural events and celebrations. next to the fried dough/elephant ear/churro vendor was a booth selling tools and household hardware. a few booths down from them was a sale on cheaply constructed leather shoes. strings, electric wires and tattered canopies were strung every which way. pungent smells of wildly differing levels of appeal wafted in and out like listening to seven different versions of puccini's nessun dorma by a norwegian death metal band, sigur ros, 2PM, et. al: some were good, some were very, very bad. beware the fool that keeps walking while taking in a brainful of sweet dough smell because the boiling silkworms will sneak up on your blissfully unsuspecting olfactory receptors. it's like getting hit in the face by a 2x4. on fire. with a nail on one end. the end that his you, to be more exact.




a vendor selling bibimbap, a classic korean rice dish.



but there was a mask festival behind the thick curtain of strange korea fair food. a traditional mask festival that had a free beer wagon and a massive stage and a pop music concert replete with pyros and smoke. the grounds the festival was being held at appears to be a permanent installation. the shape of a stadium but about 10 times the size and without the bleacher seating, the andong mask festival was massive. there was a mask dance stage, vendors and mask making booths. the latter was probably the best part about the whole day for me. ann, ryan, kristan, ang and i bought a blank paper mache/cardstock mask for 3000won. with this we got a 5-color pack of floam, that stuff you had as a kid and always wanted to eat but if you had you would've died because the shit's probably more toxic than the columbia river near hanford.


raw materials.

the five of us were crowded around a small little workbench under an awning. the day was plesant and we spent an hour and a half on mask making and talking. i can't say i would have had a better time doing something else.


finished product.


playing in the bubbles area.



perhaps one of the strangest things we bore witness to over the course of the fantastic day was on the stage. the barbecued squid, the strange fair food, the green spiders the size of my palm, all of this was more or less expected. the day took a turn for the surreal, however, when we were in the main plaza area with our backs to the stage. i was procuring a cup of disgusting coffee while the other four stood in a circle contemplating our next move when we heard something, to understate the point, unexpected. not traditional korean chanting or pansori...



...but something totally different and, dare i say, perhaps not exactly the most true expression of the rich culture the land of choson has to offer. no, what we turned to see were korean elementary schoolers yodeling. i can't really offer any more explanation or vitriolic remarks to make that clever or, at a long shot, humorous. there was an oompa band consisting of a tuba, stand up bass and guitar, all played by the kids the same age.


stunned, i wandered away nursing my cup of wretched coffee.

more to come.

-e
pics n' things!

imprisonment in the real madrid camp

is this some elaborate commentary on why the Special One has some of the best attacking players in europe but insists on formatting his teams on defensive superiority? is this a metaphor for the underperformance of those attacking players over the last half-season's time - does mourihno have them locked away in their own brains?

or is it only funny because i like soccer and don't know spanish or portuguese or brazilian?

-e pics n' things!

seoul for chuseok

an excavated river in city center.




admiral lee.


guard at gyeongnambuk palace.




lovers locks at seoul tower.

-e pics n' things!

alien registry; the wall in my apartment

Eight business days after applying for my Alien Registration Card (and four business days after Ang), I have finally become a perfectly legal and partially contributing member of Korean society.* Considering the nuts and bolts of the application process and the complications that can arise unless it gets briskly taken care of:

The ARC is your lifeline during your stay in South Korea. It is the next best thing to a Korean passport we can get and we can only get it if we are working in country. I can only compare the importance of the ARC here with the (relative) non-importance of having something of the sort while in England: much more so. For example: during my five months in England I was able to get a phone and internet service (separate from the university's) without the UK-equivalent to the ARC. One day I stumbled into an O2 store and, 15 minutes later, stumbled back out with a phone and a buttload of minutes and texts. I've seen some forums that say you can have a pay-as-you-go phone with just a passport but those plans tend to be exorbitant in price and leave you feeling like a penniless husk at the end of each call. Some would say But Elliott, they're great if you don't use your phone much! This is something I would agree with but if you don't use your phone much you're going to be broke and unable to use your phone because you ran out of minutes trying to re-up. Also you can't re-up on weekends. Also there are apparently something like 17 million cellphone stores in the country of South Korea but only 2 deal with pay-as-you-go-plans and they're located nearer the DMZ than the 18 year old kids patrolling it.** So then, for all practical purposes no card, no phone.

The same goes for both internet and TV. You don't get either of them until you've received your ARC. In England you don't get TV (legally) until you've payed the licensing fee (it was something like 150gbp/annum when I was in country two years ago). Here in Korea the licensing fee supports the Educational Broadcasting System and the Korean Broadcasting System (both public programming) and will run about 30,000won - roughly $30 - per annum and is billed through the electricity fees your home or apartment accrues. Easy. Though it doesn't matter if you don't have an ARC.

And, for those of us stuck paying US bills while overseas, the fact that you can't start a new bank account until you receive Precious Card can be particularly worrying. EPIK, our recruiting agency and the overarching governing body for English language in country schools, signed Angela, me and about 700 other green teachers up with an account at Nong Hyup Bank. Seems perfectly fine until you realize that the account has been set up with your passport and you can't get paid until you set up an account with your ARC (because everything here works on direct deposit and your schools don't actually pay you money until they see that you're a legal registered alien and not just a rubbish collector living in the woods scraping off the good people's hard labours). Also Nong Hyup Bank doesn't give your money to banks overseas which means that you can't freely transfer money between Korea and the States. The only bank that Angela and I know of that does cheap, easy international funds transfers is KEB Bank and to set up an account there you need an ARC, a lowly official passport and E-22 working visa being insufficient and simply insulting, thank you very much.

So, the moral of the story: without your ARC you will find yourself between The ROK and a hard place.

-e

p.s. Playstation 3 consoles seem to be very expensive here so consider this a distress beacon: SHIP MINE NOW TO *message garbled*.

* The whole not paying taxes thing is a bit of a bonus, it must be said.
** I didn't have time to fact-check this one. Pure conjecture.

pics n' things!

a bit of south korea

angela with new friends jesse and samantha.


my classroom!


classic korea.


re: this is why you're fat: double dipped corn-dog with more distinct layering than the cross section of a doug fir with french fry batter. ah, yes, traditional korean fare. (thisiswhyyourefat)


downtown on a slow night.


gogo with ted and ang!

-e pics n' things!

the night sky in trout lake

since i just spent nearly five whole weeks in trout lake looking up at the night sky i feel a bit obligated to share with you some photos i took of it.



looking directly at the galactic center, here. sagittarius A* is about 26,000 light years away in the center of the picture.


ursa major.


trout lake school.


langfield falls with angela. not the night sky but still beautiful and quintessentially trout lake. pics n' things!

stowaways

in jeonju, south korea and missing my luggage.

-e pics n' things!

team ricky rides mt adams

and in a more tender ricky moment...



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team ricky goes tubing

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williams mine

as my departure date for korea draws inevitably closer, something i will miss, very definitely miss, will be the road riding here in the trout lake valley. it's not often that i get out on the road bike when i have the option to head to the mountains but since i'm without a mountain bike of my own it's what i have to work with.

i waited until yesterday evening around 6.30, when the air at home at 1200' was a nice 80 degrees. the ride into trout lake takes about 15 easy minutes. you wind up highway 141 and reach trout lake school, where i spent 2nd grade through senior year. about 160 kids still go here, K-12.

just past monte pearson's farm there is a fork in the road. to the left is the grocery store, the post office, the mt. adams ranger station/gifford pinchot national forest headquarters and, eventually, the 88 Road that can take you out to the gorgeous lewis river.

to the right is the south climb road, various snow parks and the 23 Road. my original plan was to take the 88 as far out as my desperately knacked legs wanted to and then, bravely, turn around and get back to town before dark. but, knowing that my brain is substantially less intelligent than my legs and lungs and wouldn't know a good stopping point from a hole in the wall, i decided to drift right and head for the 23 Road, directly north, staring up at the 12,226 foot summit of Mt Adams. williams mine, the first major summit of the 23 Road, would give me a definite stopping point and a place to rest my lung-twang before giving it the beans back down into the valley.

uphill, turn, uphill turn, uphill, uphill, 100' reprieve, uphill turn, etc., etc., etc. it didn't take long to begin hitting inversion layers and the full length zipper on my discover bicycles jersey was going up and down faster than wonka's great glass elevator. patches of deep, dark forest road were punctuated by little hot spots where sunlight was able to penetrate the canopy and it was here that i would end up regretting to wear even my Risky Business sunglasses: gnats only like to end up in cyclists faces, crammed into the corners of your eyes.

about 45 wheezing minutes later i was sitting at 4000 feet hacking up post-wisdom-tooth-removal-blood-clot and wishing i had not tried to fit in with the rest of the sophomores at evergreen by smoking that one cigarette about 5 years ago. the air was noticeably thinner and cooler here and i was urged by the arguably more sinister side of mt adams, the landslide/sulfur mine side, to get down the twisty 23 before the earth decided to rotate us any farther away from the sun.

i dipped into my pockets for a sweaty pack of little chocolate donuts that i had forgotten to pack and realized that i could probably make it to the country store in town before closing time.

so down i turned. on the way up i had come down what was then in my mind a pretty quick decent into a valley before climbing back out of it. i was taken around a hairpin left and into a long straight decent. as it was getting dark this decent troubled me: my leg-gah was much more apparent now that i had just stopped and started and a climb out sounded, well, really miserable. in fact each little reprieve i had on the way up was seeming like yet another climb out. but as soon as i turned down, all these concerns evaporated in a whiff of carbon. my TCR Alliance made quick work of the twists so was able to save my legs for the climbs that lay ahead. about two minutes later i came to the downhill hairpin left, now an uphill hairpin right. this signaled the end of the section i was concerned about - i hadn't even noticed it. so on and on the decent went: each turn dipping and leading me past the mileposts telling me i was getting indeed close back into the valley. but i didn't need those. my jersey that was zipped to my neck at the top was now plunging to my navel.

i saluted the "Leaving Gifford Pinchot National Forest" sign, knowing it very well could be the last time i would see this particular one for quite some time. to my right the trees opened up and a valley spread before me. the sun, just tucking itself behind the ridge, lit the area in an amber only these skies can produce. i smiled to myself, i laughed out loud and told the trout lake valley i loved her.

so from williams mine, 10 or 12 or 53 miles later and with more bugs in my grille than a long-haul trucker i rolled up to the store and grabbed only the essentials for the quick ride home south on the 141: hostess mini donuts, fig bars and a pound of spaghetti. less than 10 minutes home, all downhill. hands off the bars eating donuts and fig newtons.

next i'm going to head out the 88 Road to the lewis river.


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crazy but awesome.

"k time for my meeting
bye
scout says ruff
and moxie is waving
oh now he is hitting scout
frankie and ralphie are wrestling
and daisy and ella are grounding everyone
grk4rj4k4jgtjgt
that was from scount
scout
'sheesh mama, spell my name right'
herrow?"

5:19pm Angela is offline.

-e pics n' things!

tastings from different cultures.

a road safety advert from england ===>



snooki explains the differences between guidos and guidettes ===>



god, the differences...

-e pics n' things!

ipad ponderings

But there’s another reason why Apple created this new external process architecture for web content plugins in Snow Leopard: it was the only way they could ship Safari and the WebKit framework as 64-bit binaries. Flash Player is only available as a 32-bit binary. (This is true for other third-party web content plugins, like Silverlight, but Flash is the only one that ships as part of the system.) 64-bit apps cannot run 32-bit plugins. Apple doesn’t have the source code to Flash, so only Adobe can make Flash Player 64-bit compatible. They haven’t yet. So if Apple wanted Safari to be 64-bit in Snow Leopard (and they did), they needed to run 32-bit plugins like Flash in a separate process.

according to Apple's PR hack the majority of crash reports related to internet browsing actually sent to the techs from regular jack-offs involve plugin bombs: the flash programs freeze up the OS and your browser has no choice but to puke and die. if this is happening fairly commonly on higher powered laptops and desktops, how can we expect a phone or a tablet, with a fraction of the processing power of your 48-core tower, to run any smoother. and these little devices are, for the general public, purpose built for internet browsing when on the tube, on your couch or on your toilet. how sad would it be if your new $600 toy kept crashing everytime you tried to watch lenny loosejocks retrieve his beloved donga from the depths of some australian cave? pretty sad, really.

because it's a new apple product, the ipad has come under an intense firestorm of cosmically large pro-con lists. at least there are those out there still giving it the benefit of the doubt (i.e. the quote above, the link for which is below), unlike responses to recent microsoft releases - it seems if they were able to make their operating systems as reliable as their xbox 360s they might actually move some product. but, i suppose, they would require every Vista machine to have a little red LED somewhere visible and demoralizing. but i digress.

one of the major complaints against the ipad/phone/touch is the absence of that wonderful little internet plugin, Flash. this plugin runs most internet streaming video (read: most) so, for example, i can't watch much of footytube or play my lenny loosejocks walkabout game. sad stuff. this was my biggest complaint regarding the mobile iproducts but, after some help from angela, i actually learned what is behind much of this apple/flash debate.

here are some pretty cool articles (again, thx ang):

http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash (for the explanation of what is going on behind the ongoing apple/flash conflict)
http://kitsunenoir.com/2010/01/28/apples-new-ipad/ (a neat article just throwing out some interesting pro-pad points)

-e pics n' things!

fall city with the rude boyz

here are a couple snaps i took with my new g11 while riding with spencer, will, goudi and big ike at fall city.


spencer's kitchen/workshop


beers at the pump track


big ike


ill will.

-e pics n' things!

a sampling of images from the last few weeks

spencer and angela in ballard


best carnitas tacos at taqueria in hood river


shane and julie in hood river


at home in trout lake


brother gabe, aka doctor doolittle


brothers sherburne


back in bellingham

-e pics n' things!