First time at a Kogi BBQ truck... yummmmm..

I saw on Twitter that a Kogi BBQ truck would be in the neighborhood, so I decided to check it out.  It really was good.  Of course, I brought my camera along, since I always like to take pictures of people buying and eating food, wherever I am...  Our son had the Kobi dog, and my wife and I shared a short rib burrito and a spicy pork burrito.  Very delicious, we'll be going back for more next time they are around.  This is good stuff.  Last time I bought food from a truck was when I lived in Philadelphia, and I bought great cheesesteaks from a truck called Sophie's that routinely parked near the Penn campus.  I think the Kogi BBQ is probably a little healthier.

This whole truck food thing in LA looks pretty interesting, and I want to start learning more about it...

Nexus One in China, with China Mobile M-Zone

I am in China for a few days.  I brought along a borrowed Nexus One because I wanted to make sure it would work here before I bought one.  I am pleased to say that it worked fine.  I popped in my China Mobile SIM Card, turned it on, logged in to my Google account, and off I went.  Obviously the native Facebook app doesn't work because Facebook is still blocked, and the Twitter app I am using right now, Seismic, didn't work either, since Twitter is blocked as well.  GPS and Google Maps worked very nicely, with detailed road maps and well-labeled satellite imagery.  I haven't tried out the navigation, however.  I did turn out Google Latitude and my family back in the states had no trouble following my movements.

Overall, no problems to report.  If you are coming to China and have a Nexus One, by all means bring it.  Just make sure that if you do buy a prepaid SIM card for service from China Mobile or another provider, make sure it is one of the plans like M-Zone that includes data services.  Some of the more basic, no-frills plans do not include data services, even as an add-on.  If you do sign up for M-Zone or another plan, you should probably also sign up for a data plan.  M-Zone has data plans where you can sign up for different monthly quotas, like 20Mb/month or 50Mb/month, and they deduct some fairly small charge every month from your balance.  If you don't sign up for a data plan, you'll pay according to your traffic, which could drain you balance quickly.

One other nice thing about China mobile: at least in Beijing, they have fabulous English-language customer service via their help line, 10086.  Every time I have needed to reach them to go over something, I had someone on the line in seconds, and they were able to resolve my problem quickly.

One other thing: 3G service in Beijing seems spotty.  In some ways this may not be a bad thing.  Yesterday I was somewhere that had 3G service and the battery drained very quickly.  I'm not sure why, but someone else at the meeting who had a Nexus One said their battery also drained very quickly that day.  I went into the settings to force 2G service, hopefully this will give me some battery life.

In honor of Valentine's Day, my favorite pictures of roses...

In honor of Valentine's Day, I made up a slideshow of my favorite pictures of roses.  They are from my galleries of photos from the Rose Garden at Huntington Library in 2008 and at the Rose Garden in Hyde Park in in London in 2009.  You can also browse my favorite rose photos in a gallery.  Of course I bought my wife a bouquet of real roses, I didn't try go cheap and offer this slideshow as the virtual equivalent of a bouquet.

Google and Sogou Pinyin IME comparison on the Nexus One

A friend of mine lent me a Nexus One that I will try out for a few weeks.  I would like to buy one, but  before I do, I want to confirm it works in China with my China Mobile M-Zone service.  I will be going to Beijing later this month so will have an opportunity to swap in my SIM when I get there and see what happens.

One of the first things I did was install the Google Pinyin IME and Sogou Pinyin IME.  I activated both of them in Language and Keyboard but nothing seemed to be happening when I entered text.  I kept getting the usual Android keyboard.  Finally I saw somewhere on the net that pressing on the text entry field for a few seconds would bring up a selection menu for choosing the input method.  I don't think this was the case on the G1, the G1 used whatever keyboard was selected in Locate and Text.  Anyway once I found this out, I pressed on the text entry field on the screen for a little bit and sure enough a menu came up, giving me a choice between the Android keyboard, Google Pinyin IME, and Sogou Pinyin IME.  Being able to select input methods from the text entry field rather than the Settings is certainly a nice touch.  I have not previously tried the Google Pinyin IME so I will see how it compares with the Sogou Pinyin IME and report back in a few weeks.

UPDATE: I have been trying out Google Pinyin IME and Sogou Pinyin IME.  I will probably stick with Sogou.  The main difference between the versions I have on my Nexus is that while both of them allow for easy switching between Chinese and English input, only Sogou retains auto-completion for English language input.  Unless I am missing something, when you have Google Pinyin IME as the input method, there is no auto-complete or auto-correction on the English words you input.  I find that really slows things down.

One minor annoyance: by default Sogou when installed seems to have the key click sound turned on, so when you are typing, it is making annoying typewriter sounds.  That is easy enough to turn off in the settings.
Oh, one more thing: I just noticed that on the version of the Sogou IME that is now installed on my Nexus One, the menus are in English.  In earlier versions, they were all in Chinese.  That wasn't a problem for me, but might be for some.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE (23 July 2010): I tried out both Sogou and Google Pinyin IME on my Samsung Vibrant.  They both work.  The latest version of the Google Pinyin IME seems much improved.  And the amount of stuff that Sogou claimed to need access to was pretty creepy...  why does it need my contact list?  While Sogou seems to work, I just didn't understand why it needed access to so much, so in the end, I uninstalled and kept Google Pinyin IME.  I just wish someone would come up with a Swype-based pinyin or other Chinese IME.

Caribou, and the new track "Odessa"

Today I'll talk about music.  Specifically, I'll talk about one of my favorite artists, Caribou.  That is the name under which Dan Snaith records.  As with many of my recent posts, this has nothing to do with photography, but I feel like writing and I don't have any new photos to talk about.  I suppose I could write about how much I would like to buy a new camera, the Canon 5d MkII, but that isn't going to get anywhere.  So I'll talk about Dan Snaith aka Caribou and his music.

I bought my first CD by Caribou a few years back in Madison, Wisconsin.  I was visiting the university to give a talk and was killing time before a dinner with a visit to a CD store.  They had some CDs by Manitoba, which was the name Snaith was recording under at the time.  I had never heard of Snaith, or the band Manitoba, but since I went to elementary school in Winnipeg, and have family there, I was surprised and pleased that anyone would name a band after the province.  I was even more tickled to see that some of the track titles on one CD, Up in Flames, related to Canada.  For example, there was one track titled "Dundas, Ontario" and another titled "Brandon".  I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that it referred to Brandon, Manitoba, which I believe is the 2nd largest city in Manitoba.  I bought Up in Flames and Start Breaking My Heart.

I returned to my hotel room after dinner and listened to the CDs on my laptop and was blown away.  I had bought them mainly as a novelty, and wasn't sure what to expect.  I had some hopes since Canada produces a lot of talented musicians, some of whom hail from Winnipeg, or at least spend time there, but was prepared to be disappointed.  Well, I wasn't.  This was a completely unique, intricately layered sound that I couldn't compare to anything I had ever heard before.

Later, I bought Milk of Human Kindness and was even more pleased.  By this time, Snaith was recording as Caribou because of bizarre complications with the name Manitoba that you can read about on the web with a little searching.  This was just as creative and novel as Up in Flames and Start Breaking My Heart, but to my ears at least, tighter and more disciplined, the working of a maturing artist.  This was also something I could play for my wife.  Then came Andorra and I was even more hooked.  My favorite tracks on Andorra is probably "After Hours" for its intensive, relentless beat.

Around that time, I saw that Caribou was touring, and would play at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.  I talked my wife into going with me.  I had played Andorra for her so she was prepared, but this was still pretty new for her, since she is from Taiwan and tends toward honey-voiced romantic balladeers like Fei Yuqing (费玉清) and so forth. 

It was spectacular.   I had never been to a rock concert in such a small, intimate venue before.  I used to attend concerts in high school and college, but usually in stadiums, never in small clubs.  We were in the front row of balcony.  What made the strongest impression on me was the percussion.  It was loud.  Our ears rang for two days afterward, but it was incredibly tight.  Snaith and another percussionist were going at it and I just couldn't believe that two people could drum that loud and that fast, but remain completely tight.  It was amazing to me that such a small number of people could produce such an intricate sound.  Somehow I take it for granted listening to a CD, which I always assume reflects lots of studio work, but it was inspiring to see a live show like this where this small group was recreating the incredibly intricate sounds of the CD, live.  I loved it, and more importantly, my wife loved it, and added Caribou to her rotation along with her Taiwanese and HK pop ballads.

I was really pleased when I saw on Caribou's twitter feed that he had a new record called Swim coming out, and a track from it called "Odessa" was available.  I just listened to it at an entry at the Hero Hill site and once again, it's great.  It is a real departure from the sound on Andorra, which was an evolution of the sound on Milk of Human Kindness, which in turn was a real departure from the sound on "Up in Flames" and "Start Breaking My Heart".  For the first few seconds I thought about Beck's "Cellphone's Dead" and then afterward it opened up into an incredible and impossible to characterize mixture.  There are layers and layers of different sounds, that seem to always be on the verge of collapsing into chaos, but somehow it all works beautifully, and everything makes sense.  I'm really looking forward to the album, and hope Caribou comes through LA so we can see him again.

If you want to download and listen to Caribou's new track, check out his website.  Overall, it seems like these few months are good for album releases from some of the musicians that I like.  Monolake and Four Tet and The Field all came out with albums recently that are pretty good, Caribou has one on the way.  And I have this idea, perhaps incorrect, that Brad Mehldau and Thievery Corporation are at work on new albums.

One other neat thing about Caribou: he has a PhD in mathematics from Imperial College.  Indeed, he seems to come from a family of mathematicians.  If you search on Google Scholar, you can find what I assume is his dissertation.  I really admire anyone who starts out as an academic, but ends up doing something even more interesting.