In LA

Thanks to boingboing.net for bringing this video to my attention, and Jennifer 8 Lee for creating it (I think). I love it. I don’t know where the video was shot exactly, but it makes me miss the people of Beijing. There’s a nice cross-section of people and places in the video. Their good-natured reactions to the strange cookies are awesome.

Posted by email from Zachary’s posterous

Mount Muztagh Ata, Lake Karakul, and an animal bone (probably sheep, possibly yak). Shot in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region on 10/6/2006.

It has been a long time since I really set myself down in front of some inspiring subject matter and carefully composed some photos. Now that my new lenses have arrived, I have no excuse but to set out and attempt to make some art. As soon as my current slate of projects is complete, I’ve got a date with my Rebel XT.

A screenshot of me using the HWPen input method to write one of the more important Chinese phrases in my iPod Touch’s “Notes” application.

I have this installed and living just fine side-by-side with a Chinese pinyin input method, and it’s very easy to switch between pinyin, handwriting recognition, and the standard English keyboard.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Chinese, Chinese IME, Chinese Language, IME, iPhone, iPod, OS X, software

1. I moved to Beijing, China in March of 2007
2. While in China I did a number of things:
   1. Studied Mandarin Chinese
   2. Met a lot of very cool Chinese people (我很想你们, 我有机会的时候我应该要去中国访问你们).
   3. Worked on the first NBA produced Chinese television show (”NBA制造”, a sly title meaning “made in NBA”). Edited the initial promotional materials for the show and about half of the pilot episode.
   4. Worked on the film The Children of Huang Shi (黄石的孩子) in an IT role likely unique to productions in China, facilitating the lines of communication and data between the director and producers in China and the editors in Australia –not an easy task given China’s internet censorship and general network instability. While working on that film in a little town named Hengdian, I met a director, producer, and postproduction supervisor who were doing preproduction work on “The Forbidden Kingdom”. This led directly to my subsequent job.
   5. Worked on the film The Forbidden Kingdom (功夫之王) as second assistant editor. We built our editing suites into a room in the not-too-luxurious Yingdu Hotel in Hengdian (横店).
   6. After four months of work in Hengdian, shooting of The Forbidden Kingdom ended. Last September I and the other members of the editorial department were sent to Los Angeles to continue editing the film.
3. Editorial began working on the director’s cut of the film over in Studio City. Initially I was to be sent back to Beijing (to continue working on the film there) after one month, but one month in LA became two, then four, and then they ended up keeping me in LA for the duration. Somewhere in the middle of those 6 months of work in LA, I decided I might as well consider the U.S.A. my home base again.
4. I’m now finished with The Forbidden Kingdom and have gone on to a new job in the editorial department of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I’m living in Studio City, not far from Universal Studios.

An iPod Touch clone advertised on Facebook’s China network

Other notable iPod Touch clones are the Optimus Touch, the Tsinghua Tongfang PMC-V560 (apparently only costs $52), the Portronics/Onda VX858, and the Meizu M7.

Of course, these are all just lookalikes, I’d expect they lack the features that make the iPod Touch so appealing –great multitouch interface, high resolution, robust Unix OS, great email application, great web browser, etc. But it’s amusing to me to watch the number of Chinese iPod Touch clones increase.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, OS X

I find it interesting that the article is accompanied by two stills that appear to be from the panda sex video. One is a boring photo of the two pandas looking at each other from across a room. The other is of Qing Qing attacking Ha Lei, accompanied by the caption “Females commonly attack males after mating”.

These are strange choices for photos to accompany the article. The article is specifically about researchers showing this video to uninterested pandas in an effort to get them aroused. It should have been accompanied by photos of the researchers showing the video to pandas, a still of the pandas mating in the video, and (since the BBC obviously has the video of the pandas mating) they also should have posted the video to their website as a companion piece to the article. But that’s apparently not the way Western culture works. Violent photos are just fine, but photos of pandas actually engaged in mating (the horror) cannot be shown, and video –forget it.

Giant pandas mate rarely in captivity, and there are only a couple thousand of them left in the world. The entire video is newsworthy by any definition of the term. Who could be offended at a pair of pandas going at it?

Unlike the “Teaser Trailer”, this trailer concerns itself less with introducing the story and is more focused on imparting the feel of the film. There are tons of beautiful shots of scenery, action, Jackie Chan fighting Jet Li, Li Bing Bing being all hot and evil, Collin Chou looking devious, and Michael Angarano getting beaten up by just about everyone. In my opinion it’s more exciting than the teaser trailer, and given the amount of action in the film, a better representation of the film as well.

Yahoo’s “The Forbidden Kingdom” page also includes a countdown clock to the release date of the film. Right now it says 65 days, 21 hours, 15 minutes, and 55 seconds to go. Aiiiyaa!¹ How freaky to actually see how little time is left until release. I’m going to see that countdown clock in my fitful sleep tonight².

1. that’s Mandarin for “oy vey” [↩]
2. unless I can manage to disable my brain’s javascript interpreter [↩]