Happy Buddha

We're starting to get close to the holidays. Like last year, I ended up with a lot of vacation days to burn in December. So I scheduled every Monday off + the last week of the year. I usually spend this time meeting up with friends for meals. I kicked off this Holiday Food Fest today with Lewis for lunch at Happy Buddha. For pictures and restaurant details, please check out my previous posts:

- December 17, 2010 (Lunch)
- June 26, 2009 (Dinner)

Paris Baguette

Location: 136-20 38th Avenue, Flushing, NY
Cuisine: Chinese, Vegetarian
Phone: (718) 713-0404
Website: www.parisbaguetteusa.com
Prices: $5/person (Snack)
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 7
Service: 7
Value: 6
Environment: 5

Frequency: Unique

We probably hung out at Happy Buddha for over 2 hours just catching up since the last time I saw Lewis was when we had our little SCAD reunion in June. So we headed out to the food court in Queens Crossing even though the Happy Buddha staff wasn't rushing us. At Queens Crossing, I was looking for the organic coffee place that I normally buy from, but they closed down. Taiwanese chain, Kung Fu Tea will take its place soon.


So instead, we ended up in Korean chain, Paris Baguette... yup "Korean!" For some reason, Koreans like naming things "Paris." There were so many choices and a lot of pastries looked good. I was eyeing all the things that had cheese in them and then finally decided on a green tea w/ cream cheese bun. Both the bread and cheese filling were rich with flavor. They also had organic iced coffee like the place that closed down, although the price per portion was nearly double. Lewis had an iced tea that looked and tasted more like water.

The dining space is very tight and not well maintained. There were crumbs and grease all over the seats. I had to wipe it down before sitting down. The decor is nice, but impractical. They had lamps hanging down low enough that the average person needs to duck while walking around.

Happy Buddha

Location: 135-37 37th Avenue, Flushing, NY
Cuisine: Chinese, Vegetarian
Hours: DAILY (11am-10pm)
Phone: (718) 358-0079
Website: www.happybuddha.com
Prices: $10/person (Lunch)
Credit Cards: Cash only

Food: 7
Service: 8
Value: 7
Environment: 9

Frequency: All the Time

I had the day off today, so I spent most of the time catching up with Lewis who had been in Taiwan for 2 months. We ended up at Happy Buddha because it's the only Downtown Flushing restaurant Lewis can eat at, being a strict vegetarian. All ratings are still the same as my review from last year. I just changed the price for lunchtime. I don't think I ever ate there for lunch on a weekday because I thought the "Lunch Specials" section was new on the menu. Lewis had already tried all of them.


Many of the lunch specials looked good, but I wanted one of the fake meat items, so I picked the string beans w/ "pork ribs." It tasted pretty close to real meat as they simulated that red roast pork flavor. All lunch specials come with soup and rice. They have a brown rice option at no extra charge.

The overall service was good, but fluctuates depending on who serves you. We were served by a friendly waiter and the owner came to check on us a few times as well. Both were very polite. The woman at the front desk didn't seem as friendly. It took a bit too long to get us seated in an almost empty restaurant. She also didn't want to help a woman who walked in as we left also.

Macy's Cellar Bar & Grill

Location: 151 West 34th St., New York, NY 10001
Cuisine: American
Hours: SUN (12pm-6:30pm); MON-SAT (12pm-8:30pm)
Phone: (212) 868-3001
Website: www.patinagroup.com
Prices: $20/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 9
Service: 7
Value: 7
Environment: 8

Frequency: Unique

We had a small SCAD CSA (Chinese Student Association) reunion today because Cathy was visiting from her new home in China. It was exactly a year from her last visit. It was also the first time since we were in Savannah, that everyone was able to meet at the same time... me, Lewis & Ning. Usually when Cathy comes, Lewis & I are able to meet with her at the same time.

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Get your own

Cathy was staying in the Penn Station area, so she showed us a food court are in Macy's basement that none of is locals really knew about. I've only gone into Macy's a handful of times because it's always overcrowded and a hassle to walk around in. The Cellar Bar & Grill is a great find though. It's a nice, comfortable place with good generic American food. It wasn't that crowded, so we ate comfortably without rush.

The food was nothing exciting, but tasted great. Service was pretty good. Lewis' diet is always a challenge, but the waiter was very helpful in getting him the right ingredients. I thought the prices were a bit high, but at least the portions were large. $20/person is a bit on the high side considering none of us ordered drinks and Ella Nio's order was a kid's meal.

Cathy & Lu's Road Trip

I got a call from Cathy yesterday saying that she and her family were on a cross-country road trip and they would be in NYC today (for 3 days). Coincidentally, I had the day off as I always take the day after Father's Day. Lewis was also not working, so we were able to do a little SCAD reunion. Ning was missing though as she was heading out to Singapore.


We just spent the day catching up since it's been about 2 years since we last saw Cathy and over 10 since we last saw Lu.

Web Design w/ Pencils

I reached a point in one of my projects today where I had to start sketching out web designs. That's right... sketching with pencil and paper! I'm probably the only person in the office with a pencil and electric sharpener. Edward Kinney, one of my computer art professors at SCAD always said that an artist should never be at the computer without a plan in mind. Working things out on paper seems to be more effective. In front of a computer, there's too much exposure to automatic tools and filters. This leads to a tendency to jump ahead and work on details rather than the basic idea. Back then, we were learning electronic painting and animation, but this applies to web design as well.

We already had a bunch of pages figured out, but I ran across a page that was somewhere between a main menu and content page. If I had jumped straight to Photoshop to do the design, I'd be wasting time with what each page section looked like. On paper, I needed to figure out which layout would make the best use of the space. The details could be filled in with my imagination. I made two sketches and then easily picked the one that worked out the solution best. Tomorrow, I'll be all set to jump into the XHTML & CSS... not even going to the Photoshop step!

SCAD Reunion

Ning, Lewis & I were trying to get together around Chinese New Year, but had some conflicts until this weekend. It worked out well because it gave me something to look forward to after the holiday weekend. I usually Lewis every once in a while, but haven't seen Ning & Pascal in years... and never met their daughter, Ella Nio.


We decided to meet early, around 11am so we could walk around and catch up for a bit. We then headed to Happy Buddha for lunch which was a nice, comfortable place to get a healthy meal and not feel rushed.

MoMA

My Computer Art classmate from SCAD, Marco came to NYC from Germany on a business trip... his first in about 8 years! After a busy week, it was nice to be able to spend the day with him catching up on old times and the past few years. He was conveniently located in the Hampton Inn, literally next door to my apartment. We spent the day in the Midtown area because he wanted to check out one of the museums and an Apple store. The Museum of Modern Art was just a few avenues over and the Fifth Avenue Apple Store a few streets up from the museum. Most of the day was spent in MoMA. We were there from about 10:30am-3:30pm. Many of the works brought back memories of the art history classes we had. For more details on the works we saw, check out the Picasa album for detailed comments.

Note: Some of the comments in the Picasa album were from MoMA's descriptions. The more personal sounding ones were written by me.

Related: Museum of Modern Art, Pipilotti Rist, Fifth Avenue Apple Store

Gallery Expresso

Original Dates: 1993-1997

I started going to Starbucks to use their wireless connection just for a change of scenery. It's an interesting atmosphere too... one that takes me back to the college days.

I would go to Gallery Expresso all the time to study for an art history class or to work on sketches. I enjoyed that place for the environment. It was an artist's coffee house. The lighting was dim, but enough to read a book. They had wood floors and brick walls. It always reminded me of an Edgar Degas painting... same mood... same colors.

I just looked up the place on Google and 2 addresses came up. The one on 6 E. Liberty St. seems the the right location. I lived on Liberty after my freshman year and went a lot more often. The other address that came up was 234 Bull St. I remember clearly that it wasn't on Bull St., but this owns the URL... www.galleryexpresso.com. So it's also possible that they moved into a larger space. Maybe some day I'll find out if I ever go back!

$400 Monitors Through the Ages

This afternoon's project was swapping computer accessories between my room and the basement of my parents' house. I recently purchased a 24" Samsung LCD for my primary desktop system. I found this Online for about $400. When I think back to all of the monitors I've used through the years, I realized that I've always spent $400 on them.

MAG 17" CRT (1994 - 1998)
I had this one for most of my college years. It's hard to believe, but this was the best model at the time. I researched only the 17" models because there was a huge price jump at 19", the next size up. The 17" monitors were also sufficient for my 3-D and multimedia work. We often needed the 1280x1024 resolution for application interfaces, but the animations and interactive projects often had final dimensions of 720x480 or lower. This was one of the most durable monitors I've owned. After college, it was moved to my dad's office where it served another 5 or 6 years.

CTX 21" Flat CRT (1998 - 2008)
As systems and graphics cards got more powerful for the consumer, I had to upgrade to a larger monitor. With the rise of the Internet, it also became more common to have multiple windows open. A 1600x1200 resolution made multitasking more efficient. Th hi-res was also useful for my new duties... hi-res still graphics, photos, long pages of code, etc. The flat CRT also made a difference because there was no distortion. My research actually led me to a Sony model, but further searching revealed that CTX made one of the same specs as Sony for much less and it also had an integrated 4-port USB hub.

Samsung LCD (2008)
The CTX didn't actually die out yet, but it was starting to get blurry at 1600x1200 and the Samsung 24" was on sale for a limited time. Many time when I research monitors and LCD TVs, it leads me to Samsung. The best LCD monitors are probably the Dell Ultrasharp and Apple, but those are both very overpriced. The Samsungs have pretty good quality. I've been using a 17" one at work for about 3 years now. I needed a 24" model because I couldn't go lower than 1600x1200 if it was to replace the CTX 21" CRT. The new one goes up to 1920x1200. The wide format allows me to have 2 browser windows side-by-side + a side bar for my messenger applications. It also looks great for those 16:9 movies.

Note: Although I removed the CTX from my main system, it's not ready for the trash bin quite yet. I moved it to the basement system and have it set at 1280x1024, a resolution where the text is still readable.

Zipping Through the Ages

Original Dates: 1995-1997

I spent a good part of the afternoon reorganizing the hardware of my primary desktop system. That might sound strange, but believe me, it takes that long because there are tons of peripherals connected to this thing. I reassessed which devices were being used and decided to remove 2 things... a cradle for a Handspring Visor Pro that I no longer sync with this system... and an Iomega Firewire Zip 250. The Zip drive has always been on my main system in one form or another since 1995. Since I haven't really used it much in over 2 years, I finally removed it. With flash drives, portable 2.5" drives and DVR+Rs, the Zip is pretty much obsolete now. Here's a flashback to the Zip's glory days:

Speedy SCSI
The first model I owned was the SCSI Zip 100 (I still have this and it still works). We mostly used Mac systems in class, so we had no choice but to go with the less common SCSI interface. I had to buy a SCSI card for my PC at home. It was a little more expensive (than the Parallel Port Zip), but worth the money as the SCSI version was much faster. Like my classmates, I carried the drive around every day, connecting and disconnecting several times from my system and the school's computers. It was always reliable and never broke.

Dethroning the Champ
Before the Zip drive, people were using the bulky Syquest drives... which eventually evolved into the smaller EZDrive. The Zip quickly dethroned this competitor mainly because of the way it was constructed. The Zip was made mostly out of cheap plastic, but cleverly constructed in such a way that made it hard to break. The EZDrive basically tried to take a hard drive and recontruct it so that the "disc" portion would be removable. This resulted in a hi-speed, hi-capacity drive that would spin itself to death. They also couldn't take the shock of being in a backpack while walking because there were heavy metal parts enclosed by plastic.

Taking Over
After college, I converted my dad's office from using the clunky Iomega Bernoulli drives to the much more portable zips. Pretty much all of my friends had these too. Before CD-R's dropped in price, Zips really became a standard. I also upgraded to a Firewire Zip 250 when I got my new system. That was useful for transferring files from the office and backing up my work.

10 years later and we're now carrying GB thumb drives. In another 10 years, it's probably going to be even tinier TB drives!

Eclipse Evolution (Part 1)

Original Date: Spring 1994

I'm looking to post some entries about automotive performance, so I'll start by writing a bit about my own experience. This will be a series of flashbacks covering the evolution of my classic '94 Eclipse.

During my sophomore year in the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), I moved out of the dorms and into an apartment. So I needed a car to get around. My Dad's old 80's Chevy Celebrity wasn't going to cut it. It was on its last legs and probably wouldn't have survived a trip to Savannah. It was time for a new vehicle. Back then, I didn't know anything about cars. So my decision to go with the Eclipse was only based on the looks and the large number I saw on the street. I didn't know that I should've gone with the GSX trim, but lucked out and didn't get the base model! Back then I just needed something practical to get around and good looking because I'm an artist and believe that cars should also be sculptures!