A photo I took is on the official website of the Nobel Foundation. http://j.mp/bL8eIn

Oliver E. Williamson, the Edgar F. Kaiser Professor Emeritus of Business, Economics, and Law at the University of California, Berkeley, a pioneer in the multi-disciplinary field of transaction cost economics, and one of the world’s most cited economi…sts, is a winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

Full coverage by UC Berkeley News:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/10/12_nobel.shtml

Recommended: Star Trek

10 times better than The Next Generation series of movies. Finally we see again a Trek movie that doesn’t look like a two-hour TV episode.

Angels and Demons

No bad, better than Da Vinci Code in my opinion. The story is predictable without reading the novel, but I would say it still makes the cut as an entertaining thriller.

Sometimes pictures I shot get posted to websites other than my own. One such instance is Owen Ozier’s website. Yes that guy on the front page is Owen and I took that picture. Owen is a third year PhD student in Berkeley’s economics department, just as I am. Owen however has a much more diverse experience, in particular he has been conducting research in Kenya.

Every photographer should have one of these: Pantone Huey

Now my two monitors finally give me almost identical rendering.

Discovery Channel’s “How a lens is made”
After watching it you would appreciate how much effort has been put into the making of a lens.

I received a new pair of headphones–the 7th pair inside my room at this very moment–a pair of Sony MDR-7506. It’s expensive (US$99) but I have to say the difference with my other headphones is in the magnitude of night and day.

“To get a job done one needs the right tools”. You cannot expect the quality of DSLR from a prosumer; a cheap tripod could very well break and drop your pricey camera (yeah that happened on me). The same for video taking. What am I trying to say? I have expensive equipments coming in next week…

If you are a Star Trek fan–particularly for the original series–take a look at this site:
http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/
These people are crazy.

Lessons:
1. RAW is good.
2. City Hall is good for concert but bad for concert photography.

If anyone find themselves in disagreement with Camera Raw 3 on the optimal image settings for this set of photos please kindly let me know.

lessons:
1. NEVER EVER forget your bounce card or flash diffuser at home!
2. do not be too conservative in using your flash even if you forget your bound card
3. do not trust any lens you have never used even if it is an “L”.