2005 November Archive at Vu Bui Blog

Archive for November, 2005

Being the first…

Published on November 29, 2005 in Photo. 0 Comments .

Lan, Aaron and I went to Venice Beach for some photo on Saturday afternoon, as usual much later than we had planned. Anyhow, when we got there the waves were awesome, there was a strong wind and the waves were crashing against the stone jetty thing. There was a little cement block out a ways, near the jetty and accessible when the waters would recede occasionally between crashes. Lan suggested that I go up there and take some pics. No one had ventured out there yet, but it didn’t seem life threatening, so I went on out.

Not a minute later there were followers, and by the time I left, there were a bunch of folks on the cement structure. It’s funny how people will do something as long as someone else goes first. “They didn’t die, so I won’t either.” I wonder how many people die thinking this…

The Right vs. the Easy

Published on November 22, 2005 in Text. 0 Comments .

I just got finished doing something really difficult but what I feel to have been very necessary. It’s entirely true, the easy thing and the right thing are rarely the same.

I hate hurting people… even in the most trivial ways. I’m just not cut out for it. I like to make people laugh… not cry. But I don’t have that luxury… of being able to always make people happy. I don’t think anyone really does. And to have to really hurt someone’s feelings… to make them really sad… even if only for a brief moment… it’s as though it’s more torture for me than for them… but I doubt that’s really true.

So now I have to sit here and feel guilty… but really that’s nothing new. I was raised Catholic.

Let’s Get Legal!

Published on November 22, 2005 in Text. 0 Comments .

I have decided that I won’t be using any more unlicensed music in my videos anymore. I don’t want to end up taking them all down if it gets noticed. Luckily not all of my videos feature music… and funny enough out of the 4 videos which I have music… 3 of them are from the Kill Bill vol. 1 soundtrack. That’s pretty funny… especially since I have tons of music to choose from and it wasn’t intentional at all. I didn’t even notice until after they were all done.

Anyhow, I’m trying to find legally shared music now, and I guess I’ll just have to start downloading… and hope that I get some stuff I really like. Using songs that I know and love is such a great way to make videos… but alas… I don’t think I’ll be doing it anymore.

Korean Cinema

Published on November 20, 2005 in Text. 0 Comments .

I have been watching a lot of Korean movies lately. Oldboy, 3-Iron, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring, Addicted and Shiri. Oldboy and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring were awesome, and 3-Iron was really good, too. Addicted was good, but Shiri sucked. Either way I am really enjoying Korean films. They are different from Hollywood films in some very refreshing ways. I will undoubtedly be watching lots more, and will probably delve into some Japanese and Hong Kong films as well. Actually I have seen tons of Hong Kong films, and some Japanese, too… but they were all of the action and kung fu variety.

I would recomment Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring to anyone and everyone, it is a beautiful film. Oldboy is also awesome, but not for the faint of heart. It is VERY extreme, and those with softer sensibilities might be literally horrified by some of its content… which is something I don’t agree with… but can’t deny exists.

RSS front page…

Published on November 19, 2005 in Text. 0 Comments .

I was trying to think of a nice way to redesign vubui.com to where I can easily direct people to my “important” content… and in an easily updated way. Since I upload my content through various channels right now… photos through Flickr, videos and text posts in Blogger… I want a way of bringing all of this together on the front page of my main site. So… after looking around, it looks like I need to either put up with ads (not gonna happen), pay a little money or learn a little Java script or something.

Since all my content is now shareable via RSS, this will probably work out well. I will have the newest photo from Flickr, the newest post from this blog, the newest video from Videonatomy, and the most recent Street Photography post. That should just about do it. Will it be good or will it be a mess? I guess I will have to try it to find out. Otherwise I guess it could just be a portal type page with links to the different content, but more prominent than it is now, with some sort of more graphical interface. I dunno. I want to have it figured out before I start the new job, though, so then I can just worry about new content, and that will probably be mostly photography. We’ll see.

Updating… fun.

Published on November 17, 2005 in Text. 0 Comments .

I am going through and updating vubui.com as much as I can, trying to somehow meld the blogs I have started into it without too much of an interface problem. I’d like to make it so that somehow if someone likes my videos they will also see that I do photography and mosey on over to see that. And if they like my photography they might check out some of the vids I’ve posted. And both of those people might also be interested in backpacking and mountainbiking and might check out some of the trips I’ve been on. I actually get a lot of traffic to my little trip reports… I am guessing most of them are looking for photos and descriptions of the places I had been to, since most of the hits come from search engines. My old host would tell me which search words were used to find the site, this one doesn’t. Oh well.

I put up a new banner on Videonatomy, but I am afraid that it’s too hard to read. I am also debating between the green I have up right now and the same thing with red. I think the red makes it easier to see.

Any suggestions?