Mokpo Panorama

I found an awesome little program called AutoStitch. It takes multiple photos and stitches them together into panoramas. Freaking awesome. Check out the site: AutoStitch.



I'm still trying to get hosting for the full picture... any ideas? Leave a comment!

Mokpo at Night

Here are a some shots of Mokpo taken around midnight. I was playing with the exposure settings on Rachel's digital camera and got lucky on a few of them.

Click each one for the large version.

William Gibson's Neuromancer

I stumbled upon an online copy of Neuromancer, a book I have read and reread several times. In fact, Rachel just finished her second trip through Gibson's neon dystopia, along with the remaining installments in the Sprawl Trilogy. If you've not heard of the book, considered the first "cyberpunk" novel, take a couple days and give it a shot. It's not very long, but it is very rewarding. You won't even need to read the other books from the trilogy, as Neuromancer is a self-contained story.

Read it here, online. Or save your eyes and buy the paper version here from the author's site.



(BTW: They're making it into a movie, but it's going to suck.)

La Musica!

For all my Italian-speaking friends...

Here's an oddity from Air. They're French, but don't hold that against them. On this set, they team up with Alessandro Baricco, Italian poet/writer, to tell some stories in the gunslinger vein. Says Vik Bansal, from MusicOHM,

City is a best-selling Italian book by Alessandro Baricco, "Italy's most famous contemporary writer", and City Reading, as the name implies, consists of the author reading passages from the book with original music by Air in the background.

The review is not the most complimentary, but I think the reviewer misses the point. These are songs for a drowsy Sunday afternoon, suitable as background while playing Scrabble. The music is sublimely mellow- hey, it's Air, after all- and the vocals are suitably subdued to match the drones, bleeps and fuzzy guitars. Anyways, I'll let you judge for yourself.

Here's the Box. Just hit the play button on the first track and they'll all play in order. Better yet, download the files and they'll play in Winamp (or whatever you use for Mp3's) without the annoying pauses between songs.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

One of Rachel's students told her it would rain for the next month or so. Hyperbole? That's what I thought, until I did some research. From Asianinfo.org:

The rainy season over Korea, the so-called changma season, continues for a month from late June until late July. A short period of rainfall comes in early September when the monsoon front retreats back from the north. This rain occurs over a period of 30-40 days in June through July at all points of South Korea... and accounts for more than 50% of annual precipitation at most stations... The southern coastal and its adjacent mountain regions have the largest amount of annual precipitation which is over 1,500 mm (60 inches).

So, a little math here: in one month we'll get half of the country's annual rainfall? That's just peachy.

But wait, there's more! According to Nations Encyclopedia,

From one to three mild typhoons normally strike the south in the early fall, with a severe one occurring every two or three years.

Rachel's reaction, minus the flash-flood of profanity, "I guess I'm not getting a bike until October."

Lovely Day (Tandem Bikes of Doom)

We had a great time on the tandem bikes on Sunday with Travis and Bella and their dog, Lola. Rachel put together the video below as proof of our enjoyment.

Expect more tandem bike videos as we may do this every Sunday, it was that much fun.


"Lovely Day" by Bill Withers.

Joanie, Don't You Worry

Well, we survived the tandem bikes. Rachel is still working on the video from our adventure, but here's the video of what happened after the bikes were returned to the rental place.


"It's the Same Old Drag" and "Joanie Don't You Worry" by The Apples in Stereo from New Magnetic Wonder.

Tandem Odyssey

Rachel has convinced me to join her on a rented tandem bike down at Peace Park. We'll ride for a couple hours and spend most of the time trying to avoid the hundreds of unpredictably swerving children on their rented bikes and roller-skates/blades, not to mention the toddlers just learning to walk, the teens who carom expertly in and out of the flow of traffic on foot or their own wheels, and distracted parents trying to keep tabs on all the action.

I am posting this in advance, so if I don't survive you'll know who to blame: RACHEL.

If I do survive, expect some awesome video!

Raffle at Peace Park and Drama in Hadang

It was a cloudy evening, but we decided to walk along the water at Peace Park anyway. Good thing, too, or we might have missed the big raffle. Here's some video:



A little later we walked down to Hadang for pizza and, while we were eating, were treated to a Korean version of Jerry Springer. A pair of shame-faced teen girls were standing in front of a clothing store next to the pizza parlor. Several adults surrounded them, talking into cell phones and looking nervous, angry or amused. Then, out of the blue, one of the adults- a woman in her 40's- produced a baseball bat and stepped menacingly toward the teens. The other adults wrestled the bat from her, while I watched and Rachel cursed her opposite-facing seat. There then ensued a long stand-off where the teens were crying, the adults looked unhappy and we continued eating. Finally, the Springer-scene broke up just as we finished the pizza, but we still had no clue what the hell it was all about.

***Bonus Footage: Here are some kids playing in the fountain in Hadang.***