Blog

Easter Parade 2008

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:05:51 GMT

Halloween Parade 2007

Mon, 5 Nov 2007 17:31:53 GMT

Here is the video that I made of this year's Village Halloween Parade. It has been taking place every Halloween for 34 years. Definately a must-see!

DanceSport Halloween Party

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:42:18 GMT

Photos

Videos:

Bloody Rumba

Addams Family Salsa

Michael "Frankenstein" Jackson

Strangers In The Night

Ghoul Salsa

Batman Hustle

Costume Contest

Octoberfest in Central Park

Mon, 8 Oct 2007 15:02:07 GMT

Mind-Reading Magic

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 22:09:43 GMT

Bellyqueen Performance

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:04:08 GMT

Today I went to a performance by the dance group Bellyqueen. A friend of mine Julia was part of this performance. This was an amazing show with some very talented dancers. As the name of the group suggests, the greatest part of the show consisted of bellydancing. The techique of the dancers was amazing. In addition to traditional bellydance moves, they also incorporated a lot of "popping" which is dancing that resembles a robot (or more like a wind-up doll in this case). The popping catalists of the group are Tiny Love and Hypno - one of the best popping dancers in New York. They had their own popping act in the show. The dancers moved totally in synch with the music and it sometimes appeared that they played the musical instruments with their bodies.

Another non-bellydance act was by an amazing dancer Arthur Gulkarov. In addition to great dancing he was able to do some unbelievable contortions with his arms.

Speaking of the music, it was really diverse. From James Bond theme, to Arabic, to drum solos. I wish I could videotape some of the dancing, but they prohibited any video or photo shooting during the performance. Click on the photo to see more photos taken after the performance.

Performer's Websites:
Bellyqueen
Arthur Gulkarov
Hypno
Tiny Love
Anasma
Julia Kulakova

History of St. Patrick's Day

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:04:23 GMT

St. Patrick's Day Parade
St. Patrick's Day Social

Sudoku Tutorial Videos

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 15:27:51 GMT

Lately I've been into playing Sudoku puzzle game on my Treo. Here are some videos explaining the rules and giving some tips and tricks on playing this game.

USA Dance Valentine's Day Social

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 07:27:37 GMT

Today Diane has enchanted Dance Chelsea dance studio with the Valentine's Spirit by organizing the Valentine's Day Social sponsored by the New York chapter of USA Dance.

Big fun was had by all. There was plenty of snacks including yummy cupcakes and drinks (non-alcoholic!). We played musical-chairs Tango, and a word puzzle. The winners got to take home a teddy bear. Birthday boy Joey got a special treat too!

History of Valentine's Day

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:09:47 GMT

Petroushka Ball 2007

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 05:09:15 GMT

Tonight we attended the 42nd annual Petroushka Ball held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. This is a charity ball benefitting the Russian Children's Welfare Society which raises money to help Russian disadvantaged children.

Photos

Russian Internet Radio

Sat, 3 Feb 2007 19:18:25 GMT

The following is the list of Russian Internet Radio Stations. Copy and paste the URL into your favorite music player. (Windows Media Player/iTunes - press CTRL-U, Winamp - press CTRL-O)

Music

Russaya Reklama http://212.48.125.69:8400
Russian Town http://38.96.148.22:8480
KaTeK.NET http://85.214.51.87:8128
Russian Fantasy http://85.25.134.43:8000
Radio Energy http://213.21.225.40:9000
ruMIX http://91.121.8.48:8112
Russian Power Radio http://217.172.178.128:8000
Luxus Radio http://84.16.235.66:8000
SanFM http://81.177.16.151:7032
Russian Radio NY http://66.109.28.155:8000
Russian Radio in Europe http://87.98.218.30:8080
ANYWAYNEWYORK http://24.185.154.8:8000
Radio Borneo (Voronesh) http://live.borneo.ru:8888/128

Viennese Opera Ball 2007

Fri, 2 Feb 2007 04:03:04 GMT

More info coming soon...

Excerpts from the Ball's program:

"My Sunny Valentine" Cabaret Show

Thu, 1 Feb 2007 23:38:06 GMT

Sunny Leigh Performs at the Triad Theater, Feb. 13

Cabaret artist Sunny Leigh will return to The Triad Theater for one romantic night only in
"My Sunny Valentine," Tuesday, February 13 at 7PM.

With "My Sunny Valentine," Leigh performs her sixth show at The Triad Theater (previous shows include: "Sunny Side Up I & II," "Wake Up And Live," "Sunny in Brasil," and "Sunny in Paris") with Sheldon Forrest as pianist and musical director.

Leigh will cover love songs in all genres: Richard Rodgers, Harry Warren, and Sammy Fain from the Great American Songbook; The Beatles, the Doors, Burt Bacharach and the Righteous Brothers from the worlds of pop and rock; Nina Simone and Patti Austin from the worlds of jazz and R&B; as well as selections from Kismet and Bizet's Carmen.

Joining Leigh will be ace rhythm players Trevor Allen on hollow-body electric bass and Adam Snyder (orchestral drummer for the Billy Joel/Twyla Tharp musical Movin' Out).

My Sunny Valentine is performed one night only: Tuesday, February 13 at 7pm at the Triad Theater (158 W. 72nd St., 2nd floor)--$15 Reservations may be made on www.triadnyc.com and advance tickets may be purchased at www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm

Software on my Treo

Thu, 1 Feb 2007 03:46:05 GMT

For some reason my Treo 700p smartphone started to skip music playback. After I hard-reset it and just installed Pocket Tunes 4.01 it was back to normal. So there must have been some conflict with some software that I installed. So going forward I am going to keep a log of what I install on my treo and when, so that in case this happens again, I'll know what software is the culprit.

Quadrille Ball 2007

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 02:19:08 GMT

The 47th annual Quadrille Ball took place at the Pierre Hotel today. I debuted in the ball in 2000 and was a member of the Junior Committee since then. This ball is one of the many charity balls that take place in Manhattan during the ball season which stars in October and ends in May of the subsequent year. But what sets this ball apart from the others is the Quadrille performance by the young people in their 20's. Prior to the performance at the ball they attend weekly rehearsals for about two and a half months during which they get to learn the 18th century court dance as well as socialize at the post-rehearsal parties. Everyone gets to know each other quite well and the night of the ball is the culmination of the good times had througout the rehearsals.

Past Quadrille Balls:
2006
2005
2004
2002
2001
2000

Quadrille Ball Official Website
Quadrille Performance Video
Format: Windows Media Real Media

Folk Dance Theatre Performance

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 04:58:43 GMT

Angi's Birthday Party

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 18:39:41 GMT

Angi rented out her favorite restaurant in New Rochelle to celebrate her birthday. We had some great food, drinks, singing, dancing, karaoke, performances and lots of laughs. Some of the party was captured on video to the right. Clayton managed to go out to the Moscow River to do some canoeing - watch Moscow Nights On The River video. Click on the picture below for photos:

Barry Manilow Concert

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 05:49:08 GMT

My co-worker Christine organized a trip to Barry Manilow's concert at the Madison Square Garden.

Photos

Apple iPhone and Steve Jobs' Keynote Speech at MacWorld 2007

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 23:29:59 GMT

Recently Apple announced their latest product - iPhone. It will not be available until June, but this video gives us a sneak preview of it being used by a human being instead of an animation on their website.

I think this is definately a pretty cool device. I already use a smartphone Treo 700p that can do pretty much everything that iPhone can plus a lot more since I have a choice of 1000s of apps I can install on the phone.

The new multi-touch screen interface is interesting, but I am a bit skeptical about it for several reasons:

How easy is it to type on the touch screen vs. the hard buttons on my Treo? Notice that the this video did not dwell on that. Apparently the phone has an auto-correct feature which guesses the words you mean to type, but how about entering passwords or web URLs which may not have the words from the dictionary?
The absense of dedicated buttons for common tasks sounds like a drawback to me. I love the ability to push a concrete button on my phone and go straight to the calendar, email, launch the music player or whatever I configure those buttons to do . On iPhone you have to do multiple taps on the touch screen to switch from one application to the other.
I have hundreds of contacts in my address book. On my Treo I can just type the first couple of letters of the person's last name or first name and the contact list narrows down to just the people who's first or last name starts with those letters. Based on this video, on iPhone I have to flick my finger through the entire list until I get to the contact that I want. That sounds like a major pain.

Also there was a clear cut of the video when the presenter was talking about browsing the web. Looks like you can "zoom in on [the webpage] and read it", but that would mean that you constantly have to scroll to read the text using your finger which is placed right on top of the page you're viewing. This is very inconvenient because the finger will block your view. I like the way my Treo renders the pages in an optimized way so that you have to just scroll up and down with the dedicated buttons below the screen.

Another gripe is the absense of external memory card slot. You're limited to 4GB and 8GB of internal memory. Wouldn't it be nice to pop in an SD card with some full-length movies on it? Or take the card out of your digital camera and stick it in the phone to view the photos on the nice 3.5 inch screen of the phone? Apple was never into making things modular. According to the hype, this phone will remove the need to carry two devices - an ipod and a cell phone. Hmm well not for the people who are used to 60 or 80 GB ipods.

Anyway, these are just my thought from what I can see from this little video. I may change my mind once I have this puppy in my hands.