I was late to practice due to unexpected complications at the dentist last night. Guo, Weeble, Little Mountain Pig and Teacher X were all there. I chatted with Teacher X a bit; he corrected me on my impression that the old student from last week had gotten out of dentistry; it turns out I got that wrong.

Teacher X told me about the 8 Points and left/right-right/left, which I found pretty useful. LM Pig practiced with me for while. He said it took him a long time before he could put his palms together behind his back. I can do this already, for some reason. He reminded me that we can incorporate tai-chi in everyday life. “Little Qin used to ask Master Yu why he was never seen practicing the forms,” he told me, though this was well before Pig’s time. “Master Yu said he was practicing all the way there, just by walking.”

As I was talking with Teacher X I realized that it is inevitably going to run into some problems; mainly, I can’t be sure what I should and should not communicate on here concerning what I’m learning, for similar reasons that I was discussing with Pig on Saturday. I’ve gotten some clues that it might be the best idea to relate everything we talk about on here. In fact, I started this account almost two years ago as more of an open notebook for recording my progress and stuff I’d learned, so not writing about everything feels a little strange. The only other option, really, would be to make this a private journal. I don’t know if I would have as much of an impetus to write in it in that case, even though I realize that hardly anyone reads it now.

I’ll have to think about this.

A while ago I wrote about how the Internet could eventually be combined with our physical reality in some fashion, overlaid so that our surroundings would basically gain all of the features of the Internet, including searchability and physical context-related information. At that point, a few mobile devices had GPS, but now that the new iPhone 3G is out and apparently selling like hotcakes, there are a slew of applications being made available these days that take advantage of the phone’s GPS to bring the virtual world of the Internet closer to our physical world. Basically, these devices know where you are (yes, I know it’s a scary thought, but I wonder if people might not be as frightened of this as it becomes more common), so information about everything around you is available through the device, a real-world Wikipedia: That interesting building across the street was built in 1903 and was the scene of a political assassination. There’s a tea house up this alley, but people say the Oolong is bit dodgy. Some got a really good picture of this empty house. There’s a squall moving in, we’d better get inside. That kind of thing.

Another aspect of this is that your phone not only knows about the physical world around you and your place in it, it will, through such (still rather sub-par) programs as Fire Eagle, Buddy Beacon, MyLoki, Britekite and the like, know where other people are, where they’ve been, even where they’re headed. This is a cool application, but I’m pretty sure I would lose a few friends when they see how I turn off my location beacon or hop on a bus as soon as they approach. Another strike against this will be not being able to send a text message I often send to people I’ve got appointments saying, “I’m almost there, just a few minutes!” when they can plainly see I’m still at home, in the bathtub, and I haven’t even scrubbed behind my ears.

Those little pixelated badges I’ve seen in the corners of a few websites recently confused me for a while. It turns out that they’re scannable QR codes that point your mobile device to a certain place on the Internet. Apparently they’re often used in Japan, and you can even make a badge to wear with such codes on it. If this kind of technology takes off, and it seems that businesses are designing these things into graphics, it will be another way the physical world is connected to the virtual.

Most of this interaction, so far, has been one-way, of the physical world being described and adjusted to by the virtual, but with the advent of 3D scanners, touch screens, interactive displays and even shape-shifting buildings, I wonder when and if the balance will tilt the other way, making the physical world “programmable” to a certain extent.

Every square foot of this planet has a history, whether people figure into it or not. Choose any street corner in your city and try to imagine all of the things that happened to all of the people standing in that very spot over the years. Now that we’re in a position to actually record these things and make them known, sooner or later a filter will be needed to deal with all of the massive amount of information that piles up. A good example of this is Panoramio on Google Earth: Eventually maps will be so covered in blue dots that you won’t be able to see the actual places unless you turn them off. Who will become the arbiter of such information? Who will decide what gets seen and what doesn’t? Now that’s the scary part, especially given the frightening, ongoing crackdown on personal photography in places like the US and UK, even as more and more CCTV cameras are put in place for the “official” version of the world. Give it 20 years, and the virtual world people have come to rely on overlaid onto and even able to change the physical world will be completely manipulable by those in control of the resources to do it. When that point comes, which reality will you believe?

There was a new student at the park last Wednesday, who turned out to be an old student of Teacher X’s from like ten years ago. He’s opened up a couple of dentist offices over the years, Teacher X told me. We practiced a bit, and he wore himself out trying to push me, and I wore myself out not being pushed. Not a great learning experience. A couple of weeks ago I finally managed to successfully turn aside one of Teacher X’s attacks, which made me pretty happy. Of course, all he had to do was push me in the other direction, and I went down. Oh well. Still: progress!

I went to practice on Saturday morning at CKS Hall because I needed the boost and to work out some kinks after a largely sleepless night. Due to endless construction on the concert hall, our group has moved to the opera hall across the square. I was surprised to see only one dancing student group. As I warmed up and went through form work, a group of young art students showed up with wooden boards and paper.

No-lose Guy and Mr. V were going at each other in freestyle tuishou, shoving each other around the veranda, as I talked with Teacher X about his latest interest in Gothic calligraphy. He told me that a drunken mainlander has been bothering the group at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall site where they practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Apparently he and Teacher X got into it a bit last week. “Little Mountain Pig had a talk with him,” Teacher X said.

A small group of people walked up the stairs about then. One of the group, a middle-aged Caucasian fellow, did some martial arts poses for the rest of the group, who were apparently Taiwanese. They took pictures, applauded and praised his prowess in English.

Little Mountain Pig showed up a bit later, and, surprisingly, gave me a rather in-depth lesson in the basics. The basic part isn’t a surprise, as he usually does that, but I wasn’t expecting him to get to into it. “You should be like a spring toy from the waist up,” he said, telling me not to rotate my body from the waist down so much (this is what the UPS Guy does too). “When you’re bent over in any direction,” -he bent backwards, forwards and to each side without really moving his legs- “Someone should be able to lay a table flat on top of you.” We practiced for a bit, and he provided an answer to the question of why Weeble was experimenting with not shoving people over as forcefully as he could last week. “Once you feel your opponent has nowhere to go, you can pull him back; you’ve both learned all you’re going to learn at that point,” he said. “If you’re really serious, though, you should be able to make your opponent jump back twice. This gives you an advantage in a fight, as he’s out and away from you, and you can plan your next move. One jump isn’t enough.” He also said it was more natural to keep your palms down when pushing. “The instinct is to turn your palms up, as you feel more in control, but as Master Zheng said, you should have hands everywhere, not just at the end of your arms.”

Pig has a similar yet different attitude about how one should view oneself in relation to other students. “You should see yourself as an expert,” he told me. “That way you’ll dare do things you wouldn’t otherwise try.” I told him about my view that I was the worst student in the class, so that I could be free to do anything without repercussions on any kind of reputation. “That works, too,” he said. “It basically means the same thing.”

After practice, when everyone else had left, we got to talking. He told me that the reason Little Qin hasn’t come to practice lately was because he was pissed off at L.M. Pig for teaching students who were outside our group. Apparently Little Qin takes the whole keeping-the-tradition-inside-the-family thing, and thought Pig was betraying Master Yang’s hard work in collecting such knowledge. So he told Pig they could talk about anything as long as it wasn’t about Tai-chi. “But everything is about Tai-chi, when you come down to it!” Pig told me. I get the feeling he regrets the rift between him and Little Qin.

When I pointed out that Little Qin himself has a blog on the subject, one that anyone can read, he said “That doesn’t matter; you can’t learn the essence of our style by reading about it. You have to be taught in person.”

“Someone once asked Master Yu if he was afraid that foreigners would steal all of his techniques,” Pig related. “Master Yu just laughed and said that would be very difficult, as so much of it needs to be seen through the context of Chinese culture and thought.” I couldn’t tell if this was what Pig himself believes. “You’ve got it, though, as you’re not really a foreigner,” he told me.

I’ve been skipping practice on Saturday mornings lately, due to other obligations. I hope to return to that when I have more time. I was first to the park last Wednesday, so I had some time to go through the sword form a few times before other students arrived. The new guy, Little Mountain Pig, Guo and Weeble seem to be the usual suspects lately. I did the empty-handed form after sword, which always feels strange because I need to remember to not project my focus beyond my hands as I do with the sword.

A group of badminton players tried to take over our space, but it turned out there was plenty of room for everyone. It was a bit distracting, however, as I also like badminton. I sat on the curb for a while, crushing leaves from the mystery plant. Guo literally ran away to find someone else to practice with, or perhaps I am reading too much into it. Maybe he reads this account and doesn’t like being described here. He and LMP both consider themselves high-level students, but when they practice together, LMP puts his hand on his head, as if he’s psychically trying to influence his opponent or something. He almost always pushes with one hand, testing the somehow inferior partner’s basic skills. The only time I’ve ever seen him really do tuishou was with Little Qin.

So it was up to us “lower-level” students, me and Weeble. It was hopeless, though, as Weeble, in a total reversal from last week, has reverted to his usual tense, “quick shove” style wrestling. He told me to push the skin, not the bones. It didn’t really work. Watching us, the badminton players laughed and aped our movements.

Teacher X said, “Your opponent creates your strategy with his energy. It’s like a triangle.” He stomped his foot. “That’s energy,” he said.

It’s been ages since I practiced. Last night I finally had some time to go to class in Yonghe. Another new guy was there, along with Guo, Weeble, Little Mountain Pig and Teacher X. Surpriginly, LMP was wearing shoes.

I loosened up and went through the empty-handed form, or what I remember of it, a few times. Then Weeble and I practiced. He’s realized that the only way that he can improve is by avoiding the sudden violent acts he used to spring on his opponents, which is a hopeful sign.

I was really tired and didn’t offer much resistance anyway. I then practiced with the new guy, whose name is Lai. Mostly I stood in front of him and waited for him to loose balance and fall over, but that’s the way it usually is at first.

When I’m resting, I always pick and crush some of the plant leaves on the border of the park, as I like their scent. I asked Weeble if it was mint, but he said no. Weeble works at a baozi stand, so he should know. If I find out what plant it is, I’d like to buy some for my place.

You’ve probably been there: you’ve stumbled across a new Flickr user. Maybe they added you as a contact, maybe you found their page from a link. You look at their snapshots and think: hmm…more mundane, boring shots. Not terrible, just very…ordinary. Then you notice that underneath each mediocre image are hundreds of comments, favorites and notes. They also have pages of glowing testimonials.

How does this happen? These people aren’t celebrities of any sort, but somehow thousands of people are fascinated by their pictures of the seaside, their cat and various flowers.

In all fairness, there are no doubt people out there who see my photography in a similar fashion (and some have been nice enough to tell me so in the comments section below). However, I’m not the only one to have noticed a distinct decline of quality photography in Flickr’s Explore feature. A couple of years ago it was a treasure trove of beautiful, meaningful, powerful shots. These days, it’s full of pets, kids and women. It was inevitable, though, when you consider the huge influx of people from places like Yahoo! after they purchased the site. I’ve come to the conclusion, unlike some others, that “success” on Flickr is actually becoming antithetical to the goal of achieving good photography.

Speaking of the pursuit of street photography, I recently re-read Chris Weeks’ 2006 downloadable book Street Photography for the Purist. It starts out in an interesting fashion, with forwards by photographers describing their view on the subject followed by examples of their work. Then comes Weeks’ actual writing in what seems like a stream-of-consciousness-fueled rant. Basically, it boils down to this:

Chris Weeks really doesn’t give a fuck what you think, because you don’t know. You. just. don’t. If you don’t use a non-digital rangefinder, preferably a Leica, with black-and-white film, just STFU. Because you don’t know, you neophyte. You probably don’t know what depth of field is. But Chris Weeks doesn’t care what you say or do or what you got on your SAT. He really, really doesn’t give a fuck.

The advice is conveyed in short sentences and phrases that are paragraphs unto themselves, so that a relatively small amount of words spans an entire book. Weeks’ photography is also featured, and I have to say, no matter how basic a writer the man is, he does take some nice shots. But I didn’t learn as much from the book as I had hoped to. Basically, I learned that I need to stop being hesitant to take people’s pictures.

It did, however, peak my interest in just what it’s like to use a rangefinder. I went down to the Leica store near the train station the other night and got to play around with some of their models, both film and digital rangefinders. The cameras seemed very large and blocky in my hands, and the focusing block in the middle of the tiny viewfinder seemed distracting and difficult to work, though I imagine eventually I’d get used to it. You have to hold the camera just so that your hand doesn’t block the view, and bring together the two tiny shadow images in the center of the frame at the point you want to focus, and then recompose the shot. With fast glass and a knowledge of lens dynamics you should be able to shoot from the hip, of course. The build, naturally, was as solid as the brand’s reputation.

I dug out an old Nikon FG body that I have from the old days, and was surprised at how good it felt in my hands. I’ve really missed the solidity, the texture and feel of the traditional cameras I used before the advent of digital forms. Even my 20D feels nothing like the old Nikon, which is also much better looking. That said, while the digital Leica looks retro, it still seemed unwieldy and oddly proportioned to me.

I took a few shots inside as well as on the street outside the store. The M8 is a nice camera, I suppose, if you can get the hang of it. There’s a great deal of debate on whether it’s a “real” Leica or not, but even the previously anti-digital Chris Weeks likes it, I found after Googling his opinion of Leica’s only digital M. At a price of over NT$160,000 for the camera and even more for each lens, there’s simply no way I could afford a single lens, much less the camera itself. I could swing a much-used Epson RD1, but a lens to go with it would still be out of reach. I could probably pick up a used film version for the cost of a couple of Canon 5Ds. But from my limited experience using the rangefinders, I simply can’t justify going into massive debt for the privilege of using a camera that I don’t even know I’ll end up getting used to, much less liking. It’s a great leap of faith. Yeah, I know all of the Great Masters of Yore used Leica rangefinders, but I have a hunch that if you gave a young Henri Cartier-Bresson a Canon point-and-shoot he’d still manage to come up with some pretty nice work. To me, Leicas are like Moleskine notebooks; great people did great things with them in the past, and they are fine tools for the job, but I don’t think not having them is a barrier to going said great things. If I had money to burn, sure, I’d buy one and see if I could get the hang of it. But I don’t.

I would like to investigate these aspects of street photography, though. Despite all of the cursing and insistence that he doesn’t care what I think because I just don’t know, man, and honestly I can flame him all I want because he’ll just delete my comments, etc.,Weeks’ book had a few interesting observations on the subject that aroused even more of an interest in the practice than I’d had before.

But getting back to the cameras themselves, DP Review has just added a new category to their camera review stats: pixel density, i.e. the number of pixels divided by the space they occupy. In other words, the higher pixel density you have, the greater chances that that point-and-shoot you bought with the huge yellow sticker trumpeting the fact that it has 12 MEGAPIXELS! is actually going to shoot crap pictures, especially in low light situations.

Will it work? I doubt it. In all honesty, it seems that consumers these days are so enamored of the megapixel myth that they will justify anything in order to keep believing it. Our standards of what constitutes good image quality have fallen over the past few years in deference to features like Face/Smile Recognition and My Sepia Vacation Mode. Photographers scour eBay in search of old Fuji F30s made before the company (and all the others) started cramming so many megapixels onto the tiny sensors that the IQ of today’s models is far inferior. Camera review sites mention IQ less and less, as if it’s an afterthought that photographers can do without.

And maybe they’re right, in a way. After all, what does saying “I’m a photographer” mean these days, when everyone is a photographer? It’s like saying “I wear shoes.” Perhaps that explains the need for a camera like the M8. It’s not just any shoe.

In any case, I hope to make more progress in my photographic endeavors, Leica-equipped or not. Luckily for me there are still some affordable cameras with decent image quality out there.

這一陣子慢慢習慣夏天又濕又熱的日子。 每當想好好安排時間， 想不到的意外會來把所有計劃中的程序打亂。 但其實， 我們生活不就在這些被打亂中的霎那而過嗎？

有個媒體想訪問我夢想是什么。 這問題可難，