9th Avenue Food Festival

Since the 9th Avenue Food Festival is just outside of my apartment, it's become an annual ritual for me. I even had a plan in mind this time around. My goals were to get the alligator sausage from the Cajun place, Kyotofu's green tea cupcake and finally get one of those Alien sculptures from Metal Park.


The weather forecast for today was rain and thunderstorms, but luckily it held out. It turned out to be great weather... cloudy, but comfortable temperatures.

Related: Delta Grill, Kyotofu, Metal Park, Frommer's Events

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!

New Tung Yi Fung

Location: 135-29 37th Ave., Flushing, NY, 11354
Cuisine: Chinese, seafood
Phone: (718) 886-8233
Prices: $15/person
Credit Cards: All major

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

Frequency: All the Time

I'm at Tung Yi Fung so often for family dinners that I could've sworn I reviewed it before. I searched this blog month by month and found that I didn't though... so here's the long overdue post. We went here for Mother's Day. Generally, my family likes this restaurant because every dish is good. You won't find anything special or exotic here. It just has the usual Chinese-American dishes, but everything is done so well. More details in the pics below:


Tung Yi Fung is an excellent value choice for family style dining. The portions are large for most dishes and don't really cost that much. It might be overkill for dinner for two though. It's also a comfortable place to eat because the space is huge for a Flushing restaurant. They also have 2 floors and the 2nd floor is nearly twice the size of the 1st.

Enchantment Prologue

We enjoyed the Memorial Weekend cruise on Queen Mary 2 so much last year that we're going to do it again this coming June. At first, I was looking at cruises to Alaska for Memorial Weekend, but it turns out that the Philippines cast won't be here until June. So It's going to be an early June cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Key West and Cozumel on the Royal Caribbean Enchantment of the Seas. It'll be interesting to ride on another ship after being on one of the World's largest. QM2 dwarfs Enchantment by about 200ft and outweighs it by almost 70,000 tons! Oddly enough though, Enchantment holds only 150 less passengers. I wonder if there will be enough elbow room for everyone!

Enchantment of the Seas Stats
Length: 990 ft
Weight: 80,700 gross tons
Passengers: 2,446
Top Speed: 22 knots

Related: Royal Caribbean, Frommers.com, Cruise Critic, Wikipedia

Interactive Yak

1) Goat brain curry, anyone? [click here]

2) Mango vs. Mango [click here]

3) Bryce says... [click here]

Himalayan Yak

Location: 72-20 Roosevelt Ave., Jackson Heights, NY
Cuisine: Tibetan, Nepali
Hours: SUN (5pm-8pm); MON-THU (11:30am-2:30pm, 5pm-9pm); FRI-SAT (11:30am-2:30pm, 5pm-10pm)
Phone: (718) 779-1119
Website: www.himalayanyakrestaurant.com
Prices: $31/person
Credit Cards: All major

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

Frequency: Unique

Last month, we got a preview of Himalayan Yak and planned on trying it this time around for Reinhard's Birthday.


I made a lot of jokes about yak meat and double yak burgers with cheese, but despite the name, they don't serve yak meat. They're an endangered species, so it would probably be illegal! A few of us got their early and we spent so much time flipping through the pages of the menu. It consisted of a lot of vegetarian dishes, Tibetan, Nepali, Indian and Chinese items. There were so many new dishes none of us have had before and we had a hard time deciding what to get. The waitress was helpful in explaining some of the dishes and even recommended certain ones for first timers. For more details on individual dishes, visit the Picasa album.

The decor is what stood out about Himalayan Yak. It's the most noticeable restaurant on this part of Roosevelt Ave. It's not just the facade either. The theme and craftsmanship carries over to the interior as well. Seating was comfortable and they had no problems seating a group of 8. We were probably OK without reservations, but I placed it just in case since it was our first time.

We have yet to circle back to a restaurant since we started these monthly gatherings, but this will be on the list. There are so many more things to try out. And we know that they can take a large party without rushing.

A Good Wrong Answer

Every Wednesday night, I participate in a volunteer tutoring program in the UWS. This year, my student is preparing for the biology & math regents tests. Most of his homework consists of regents-like multiple choice questions. He has a tendency to read quickly and rush through them, which results in choosing "a good wrong answer." Multiple choice tests are not designed to be as easy as they look. A wild guess gives you a 25% chance of getting the answer, but the difficulty increases when more than one answer looks appealing. As we're going over the homework, I have my student read the entire question. Then he attempts to choose the right answer. Whether or not he chooses correctly, I make him explain why he picked it just to make sure it wasn't at random. Then I make him explain why the other 3 were wrong. Often enough, some of the wrong answers were good ones... ones designed to lure students in.

I remember math class from the 7th grade. It was the first class of the day and I had Mr. Hoch as my teacher. He was the person that introduced me to the idea of "a good wrong answer." When we went over examples in class, after arriving at the answer to a problem, he would often ask, "what's a good wrong answer?" I thought that was a genius way of preparing students for multiple choice tests and it also truly shows which students grasps the concepts. In math and in life, it's just as good to know what the answer is as why the wrong ones are logically wrong.

Happy Easter

NY International Auto Show

I made it a point to go to the NY International Auto Show this year because it's been a while since the last time. So despite the rain, my longer-than-expected doctor's visit and train delays, I made it there at 1pm. It was crowded, but not as packed as past events (probably due to weather & the holiday weekend). The cars that were fenced off were easy to shoot. Thefully exposed ones were a little harder to get pictures of, but all I had to do was wait a few minutes until they cleared up.


The theme this year seemed to be hybrid and electric cars, but I went to get a closer look at all of the muscle car remakes... Shelby GT 500, Camaro SS, Challenger, etc. Most interesting of all was the Camaro exhibit because of the life-size Bumblebee replica from Transformers.

Click here for photos and details about each of the cars I looked at.

Related: NY Auto Show, Jacob Javits Center, Transformers Movie

Terminator: Season 1 (Blu-ray)

Story: 8
Action: 7
Acting: 7
FX: 8
Durability: 9
Special Features: 7
Blu-ray: 10

It's no surprise that this set was perfect in Blu-ray format. The original broadcast was in HD on Fox. What's surprising is the quality of a TV series that comes from a network station. I ended up watching the DVD version all the time and never got tired of it. So I raised the durability rating to a 9 from my original review. At 1080p, there are a lot of noticeable details. Naturally, all of the fx shots were very crisp. The work that went into endoskeletons and preserving the intricacies movie version were pretty clear. Dungeons and Dragons, half of which took place in the future was the best fx episode. It's filled with HKs, endos and big explosions.

Most of the actors were Blu-ray ready as well. Many translations end up displaying too much detail, but they were probably prepared on this set because of the HD broadcast. Lena Heady & Summer Glau look especially good. I'm not sure if it's natural or if they have the makeup department to thank.

There are very few TV series I own on DVD that I would re-purchase on Blue-ray, but Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is the best of them.