Zhanga: July 2009
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009 (11 comments)
Today was the longest solar eclipse until 2132. Although it lasted for over 6 minutes at some locations, from my rooftop in Wuhan totality was only about 2-3 minutes (edit: actually, our rooftop got just over 5 minutes). The entire eclipse lasted hours, though. The beauty of the few minutes of totality is incredible, and I didn't even get to really see it because of the thick cloud cover. Here are some pictures.
Luna takes a small bite of Sol:
A bigger bite:
The Sun is almost covered and is smiling:
All that remains is a sliver...
Totality! Actually, the view was about a thousand times more stunning with the naked eye, and even through the viewfinder, than these two pictures show.
Due to inexperience and general noobness, I missed one of the best parts, which is when the Sun first peeks out from behind the moon. Way overexposed, and I only had one chance at this:
The Sun reappears:
Though the view was amazing, the weather was no help. Look at the cloud cover...
The reader has permission to use these images anywhere as long as they remain unedited and attributed to me. (Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works.)
3:38AM
Saturday, July 11, 2009 (4 comments)
Yesterday, Handi's parents took me to paradise: one of those Chinese shopping centers with tons and tons of random computer and electronic stuff. This one had at least 10 floors of retail space! Unfortunately we didn't have much time so I just got a tripod, but I plan on being there Monday 8-5.
While I was buying the tripod, the lady was trying to sell me a Canon 24-70L lens (US$1300... yeah right). I told her I have a nice 17-70 lens that I like a lot, but according to her, the 24-70 can take wide-angle shots or something that my lens can't... which makes no sense. Then she started trying to tell me how great this lens is because its minimum aperture is f/16, and pointed out how these other lenses are worse because their minimum is f/32. f/32 is smaller, so any lens that can be set to f/32 can also do f/16, making the f/32 lens strictly better all else being equal. I think she assumed Handi's parents had lots of money on them and that we were stupid, so she went into sound-like-a-pro-to-confuse-the-noobs mode. I guess I can't blame her — I didn't understand a thing she was saying until she pulled out the book with numbers and English, at which point her cover was blown. I think she said telephoto somewhere, but I didn't figure it out until about the 5th time she said it. My Chinese is amazing.
On the way there, we (her parents & me) passed probably a dozen people trying to sell fake invoices. Supposedly these are used for tax evasion or something, I didn't really get it. As this was being explained to me, this little dude with a man-purse came up to us, looked left, then right, then pulled a Thinkpad about a fourth of the way out of his bag. He looked at me and said "电脑?" ("computer?") in about the sketchiest way imaginable. I cracked up and he ran off.
Speaking of theft, I got one of those prescreened credit card offers in the mail recently. In case you don't know, "prescreened" means the credit card company got some data about you (I think this includes FICO, but I forgot) from the credit agencies and knows your credit so they can offer you (from their perspective) an appropriate type of card. Well, this letter I got told me that I, too, can have a credit card even though my past history has been less than stellar and that I've failed to pay off past loans or whatever blahblahblah.
So I read the materials, since I'm always curious to see how slimy companies these days are. The biggest text was the 12.99% APR. For people with bad credit, that's really low, so I kept reading. Turns out there's a $95 "program fee," a $36 or something "setup fee," $8 or so monthly fee, etc etc. This was for a card with a $250 credit line (and probably $39 over-limit fee). Once you add all these fees up, once you get the card you already have $179 charged to the card, leaving $71 of credit to spend before going over the limit... on the first month!
If that's not predatory, I don't know what is. This is even worse than those payday loan places. I bet half their "customers" (aka victims) spend $50 on their card, realize they're about to go over, then try to pay it off for the next year, accruing untold amounts of interest. Even if paid in full in the first month, $179 of fees on $50 principal is 358% interest in one month — 4296% APR, or 8 billion percent effective annual rate (those sketchy payday loan places charge 500%ish APR, a few thousand% EAR).
Side rant: I'm pretty sure that in the past I've gotten an offer marketed specifically towards people who have declared bankruptcy in the recent past or have otherwise bad records. I hate credit agencies. When I buy a house, I'm going to be paying 15% on my mortgage because I'll somehow have "bad credit" despite being a good little econ major and always paying my bills on time.
10:38PM
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 (3 comments)
I arrived in China last night, about 24 hours ago. Of course the first thing I find out is that Facebook, Youtube, and parts of Flickr are blocked. Twitter is too, but nothing of value was lost there. Yeah my proxy works, but it's incredibly slow...
I took a picture of sunspots. Unfortunately, the sun was behind a light cloud and I was too lazy to wait for it to move out of the way, so the picture isn't very clear:
Earlier today, I had dinner with Handi's parents at one of those Chinese restaurants where you get a big room with the waitresses that constantly pour you tea whenever your cup hits 49% full (or 51% empty, if you prefer). I'll skip the details of the dinner itself, but I think it's worth noting that the TV in the background was playing the 41st episode of some show about the resistance against the Japanese in WW2. Some horse-mounted chick with a sword chopped up a bunch of Japanese cavalry. Historical accuracy was one of the goals of the show, I'm sure.
11:34AM
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