Dec 9, 2005, 1:15 am 今天是星期四。1980年的12月8日是星期一。当时的电视台节目都到半夜就结束了；那天，12点左右，Monday Night Football节目还没完。死讯就是这个体育节目公布的。

A televised football game is a somewhat surreal venue to deliver the news bulletin that would shake a generation. Yet that is precisely what happened 25 years ago tonight when Howard Cosell spoke these words:

“This, we have to say it. Remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An Unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City. John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famouse perphaps of all of The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospial. Dead on arrival.”

- Rolando Pujol, The news bulletin was ‘unspeakable’ amNew York, Dec 8, 2005

“John Lennon”

我自己开始写歌不久，就第一次听到列侬的歌。磁带是经过反复翻录的，音质很差；这样就真的是听歌了。

你不能又听歌，又在那儿闲聊，——这就是当时听的时候的感受，并且像找到了依据似的暗自恨把我的歌当背景音乐的人；也许，对西方热爱列侬的人来说，对现在听列侬的人来说，甚至对现在的我来说，上面的感受作为一种结论有点可笑。>

John on the cover of IMAGINE

Recalling the Night He Held Lennon’s Still Heart

By COREY KILGANNON
Published: December 8, 2005

Even now, 25 years later, many John Lennon fans can vividly recall the helplessness and frustration they felt on Dec. 8, 1980, when the singer was shot outside the Dakota.

So can Dr. Stephan G. Lynn, who was running the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital that night. He felt Lennon’s death firsthand: He was the one who grasped Lennon’s heart, massaging it to try to force it to pump again. It never did.

“There was just nothing left to pump,” Dr. Lynn recalled in an interview. “There was so much damage to the major blood vessels leading from the heart” that his blood just leaked out.

Dr. Lynn, 58, is still an emergency physician at Roosevelt. He stood in the bustling emergency room in his scrubs one recent morning and recalled the night 25 years ago when the police carried in the singer. Lennon’s vital signs showed that he was already dead when he arrived at the emergency room, and after a 20-minute battle to resuscitate him, Dr. Lynn and two other doctors officially declared him dead.

“All the nurses broke out in tears, and most of us said, ‘What just happened here?’ ” Dr. Lynn said. “There was a sense we had all just witnessed a major event.”

That Dr. Lynn would have a bit part in history was not immediately apparent when he rushed to the emergency room that night. He had been called back to work to treat a man with three gunshot wounds to the chest. The patient had a pierced lung and no pulse. He was not breathing or moving and had lost a lot of blood. He was gaunt, and his hair was a mess. He was not wearing any glasses.

John Lennon wore no glasses

“When someone said it was John Lennon, I thought it was a bad joke,” Dr. Lynn said. “But then they found his ID in his pocket, and he had something like $1,000 in cash on him.”

Dr. Lynn recalls that he was too busy to let the news sink in. He and two other doctors cut open Lennon’s chest to find blood flooding his chest cavity. “The bullets were amazingly well-placed,” he said. “All the major blood vessels leaving the heart were a mush, and there was no way to fix it.”

Lennon was pronounced dead at 11:15 p.m.

Dr. Lynn was faced with the task of delivering the news to Yoko Ono.

“When I told her, she said: ‘You’re lying; it can’t be true. He’s not dead. I don’t believe you,’ ” he recalled. “She threw herself down on the floor and began banging her head on the ground. I was afraid we’d have a second patient. But after two minutes, she accepted it and asked me to delay announcing the news to the media for 20 minutes because her son Sean was home watching the news, and she wanted to tell him first.”

The commotion surrounding Lennon’s treatment at the hospital caught the attention of another patient, Alan J. Weiss, a producer for WABC-TV who was being treated for a head injury from a motorcycle accident. After seeing Ms. Ono and hearing the police talking about Lennon, Mr. Weiss called the station, which relayed the news to Howard Cosell, to announce during “Monday Night Football.” A thicket of reporters and fans gathered outside the hospital. Dr. Lynn walked out to them, blood spattered on his white coat, and told them that John Lennon had just been pronounced dead.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Dr. Stephan G. Lynn [center]
was running the emergency room
at Roosevelt Hospital
on Dec. 8, 1980, the night
John Lennon was fatally shot.

Asked how he felt at the time, Dr. Lynn, a longtime Beatles fan, replied stiffly that emergency doctors are taught not to feel but only to react to medical emergencies. He stifled a slight quiver and gave this clinical judgment: “I think the world would have been substantially different if we could have saved him.”

Then he excused himself and returned to his bustling emergency room.

- New York Times

Find the barcode on
your book’s cover and
scan it and get all
availabe information.

安替做了个程序，公德无量。

送给北京书多朋友的礼物

……
我是用VB .net 2003编的，很快就编好。我在中关村买了个220元的条形码红外读码器，配合我编的程序，扫一下，三秒钟，书的书名、作者、译者、出版单位、出版日期、类别、页数、内容简介都输入了数据库，以后你怎么查都随便你。那么抱一堆书过来连续扫，1000本书，顶多2个小时就全部搞定。

……
不懂程序的读者一定觉得很神秘，其实没什么的，我让程序做的事情就是，扫描进条形码，这是书籍的ISBN书号，如果是中文书，程序就自动联机某图书馆的图书在版编目查询页面，经过计算分析之后归类放到数据库。如果是外版书，就联机到相应国家的图书在版编目查询页面。为什么市面上那么多家庭图书管理程序没做这个功能呢？因为很简单，这些程序员从来家里的书就没有超过1000本过，他不知道真正的需求是什么。

……

- 安替博客, Dec 7, 2005

阿蔡，哪能啊？

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Subway 7 Train, NYC, by zeyez

关于公交劳资纠纷。

29日至今没有任何实质进展。我看了明天（5日）出版的Metro电子版，甚至没有这方面的任何报道。

29日报道的是MTA的财政状况。报道在我看来有点怪，把一篇背景材料当作主新闻稿来写了。作者也说是familiar figures，像是调侃，针对内容，也针对他自己的稿子吧。（也许报纸有必要为自己的形象做某种平衡，MTA老是不开口怎么办呢？）报道唯一“现在时态”的部分是说，MTA财政情况的话题是正和他们谈判的工会代表提起的；这个话题对于工会，may or may not help their cause。

MTA的状况差到什么程度以致工会无法达到目的呢？

Funding decline derails MTA

……
a rapid decline in state money for the MTA’s capital program, which not only covers service expansions but new equipment to keep the system running smoothly — trains, buses, signals, track, electrical cables and even security cameras.

As the state’s subsidy went down, the MTA had to increasingly rely on debt to save the day. For the new five-year period beginning in 2009, the MTA will have to borrow more than $9 billion, while the state sits out.

……
In the MTA’s 2006 budget, 57 percent of revenue comes from the farebox and tolls, and the authority will realize a surplus of $220 million. But once the MTA starts to deal with its growing debt burden, it projects ballooning deficits of $152 million in 2007, $797 million in 2008, and $934 million in 2009. Those figures already factor in a 5 percent increase in revenue from fares and tolls.

- Metro, Nov 29, 2005

对于这个话题，工会的人说：

“The MTA has a history of concealing facts and figures from the public and concealing the true state of its affairs,”… “The MTA reported a negative balance as of just a year ago, and they currently have a surplus in excess of a billion dollars.”

- Metro, Nov 29, 2005

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Northern Blvd, Little Neck, NYC, by zeyez

我用Photoshop近十年，却几乎没有色彩和电子色彩的知识，因为造图时并真的不需要。直到差不多三年前要对扫描的照片进行校色了，以为可以凭借聪明和直觉来做，才知道不行。当然，这么说有个更大的背景：自从我开始拍照，基本上就不想再造图了，也没有欲望往照片上添加味道；所以我必须学会对扫描图进行校色，使它们看起来物理上正常，没有添过味道。

幸运的是，我（偶然地）开始得很正确，——尽管到现在还不顺利。

我从大艺 Daee-d开始，看他们怎么校扫描的美女图，看他们摘引的和自撰的理论文字。他们的校色判断、步骤、效果，都令我惊讶。我看得很粗，所以有些他们能做到的，我始终做不到。但我终于知道了一些起码的东西。

1

最早用的工具是Color Balance，辅以Hue/Saturation。

先把图转成LAB模式，在全色观察模式下，用Level单独调节Lightness通道，以此完成图像亮度的调节。然后在高光部、阴影部和中调部分别找到一个观测点，用Color Balance调节，使三个点各自的R、G、B值相等。向人炫耀的时候，我会说我是看着Info面板的数据调校色彩的。

用这套工具用了一年多，动作上是熟练了，但效果并不理想，很多图的问题很严重。回想起来，当时用Hue/Saturation的时候，就是Color Balance失败的时候。这不是工具问题，是眼睛问题。有时候，只有在（基于同一原理的）另一个工具下，你才会看到、才能去思考另一些现象。

2

接下来的一年多，我使用Level和它的采样吸管。

用采样吸管的工作速度，以及采样一瞬间的图像变化，非常令人兴奋。随着眼睛的熟练，大部分图我都可以处理得飞快，就象在执行Action。但不管怎么熟练，我总是隐隐觉得用采样吸管点击——尤其是中调吸管——是在玩运气。

其实早在我看大艺的时候，色影无忌上就有谈色彩和校色的文章了，在数码暗房和扫描仪和图像处理里，有理论有实践。不记得当时是否去看过，反正最后是网上搜到了大艺。前两个月无聊，把Maxxum的一篇文章，几年了还活着的帖子，看了一下。Snap。不绕一圈是不会有现在的感受的。

3

从上一卷开始，我开始用Maxxum的方法，据说是吃校色饭的人的方法。还是一个Level，但不是用采样吸管，而是纯粹观察和调节三个通道的直方图Histogram。

初试时，看着直方图密集的高高低低无所适从，到这一卷，已经能观察直方图的细节了。

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In the item
About the Levels dialog box,
Adobe Help Center

我前面说“幸运的是我开始得很正确”，这个开始就是“中性灰”概念。上面说的三个阶段、三套工具，都是围绕这个概念；虽然最后一种直方图方法，我已经不再直接指定中性灰。前两种方法（以及使用中的不顺利）训练了我的眼睛，逼我去思考“染色”和“像不像”等问题。

顺便报告一下我发现了Adobe在Photoshop帮助文件里的一个错误。

相信极少有人会去看这个页，因为太简单了。也正因为简单，我猜测会不会从Photoshop 2.x起，这个页就是错的。哈哈哈。

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Little Neck Pkwy, Little Neck, NYC, by zeyez

昨天夜里下过雪了。这是纽约市里第一场雪吧。前一阵住在Long Island的人说下过很薄的一次雪。

不太想雪天拍照。

以前有一阵不喜欢太阳天拍，加上有一阵的周末常阴天，平时又只能傍晚下班后拍，所以似乎是把阳光戒了。

又过了一阵，有朋友在电话里约我出去拍照，说是阴天。我说看阴天都看烦了。不过，我并没有像戒阳光似的戒过阴天。

其实我一直（相对别人而言）不太介意天气，很多时候连光线是不是足够也不介意；现在（也很长时间了）更是没有天气这回事了。就现在常拍的对象而言，它们出现在阴天还晴天，对我来说是一样的。在扫描校色的时候，我会技术性地努力正确还原阴天或晴天。如果阴天或晴天对看照片的人有作用，可能是很自然的事情，但不是我期待或预设的。

曾经的戒阳光，我想，其实是看到光影怕了。就是说，有一阵，在阳光下，我总是先看到好看的难看的光影，以及作为作料的其他一些小物件。现在雪天不想拍，大概是看到大片好看难看的白色和一些小作料怕了。

也许我该出门试试，看我能不能不看到这些白色。

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Sunny and Cloudy, Northern Blvd, Little Neck, NYC, by zeyez

说到阴晴，以前在上海虽然不太留意天气光线，到纽约后，还是觉得它的光线有点怪。很多我的所谓阴天照片，并不是阴天拍的；在Manhattan，街道窄，楼的密度高，即使是大晴天，“阴天区域”还是很多。而在比较开阔的地方，比如Manhattan之外的区，常常会阳光灿烂和乌云密布同现，四季都有。再有一个怪，主要还是在Manhattan，玻璃幕墙的反射，会给背阴处投下亮度怪怪的阳光。