As I was walking along Broadway between 42nd and 41st streets to meet Joanna to go shopping for my Grand Canyon trip, I saw an amazing sight of bleeding and bruised people in cages on the sidewalk. This was a demonstration of tortures that the Chinese government is subjecting the practitioners of Falun Dafa - a spiritual self healing practice similar to yoga. Click here for more photos.

Being helped by a salesperson at Paragon store as I am shopping for the supplies for the upcoming 9-day Grand Canyon trip. This is going to be first time when I will be isolated from civilization for that long and will not be able to do all the things that I do on daily basis, like surf the web.

I was taking a nap before attending the next day of the New York Salsa Congress and was woken up by screaming sirens of what seemed to be hundreds of emergency vehicles. Also I heard some strange roaring sound. I thought another terrorist attack happened and half-a-sleep I looked outside the window to see what was happening. I saw a bunch of motocycles zooming through the interecection outside of my apartment building. They were coming and coming and coming... This continued for something like 10-15 minutes!
As I looked to the left along 8th avenue, I saw the gridlock for several blocks. The pissed of drivers were honking to relieve their stress as they were waiting for the traffic directors to allow them to go through the green light. After watching the news I found out that this was a procession of more than 1,2000 motorcycles to honor the victims of the World Trade Center Attack. Here is the official press release from Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Later on my way to the Salsa Congress, I saw a bunch of those motorcycles parked on 53rd street.

Videos were unavailable for the last two days because I forgot to pay for my webhost. I have made the payment and the videos are back on line. Enjoy!

How would you like to get on a ride like this? Sure beats any roller coaster doesn't it?

Well the truth is that this photo is just one example of the submissions to the Photoshop Contest run on the website worth1000.com. Too bad. I'd love to go on this ride. Here are some interesting photos of animals. Now I am no longer surprized looking at the pictures in Inquirer.

More Info in the Software Blog

More info in the Dance Blog.

Good news for music lovers using Microsoft Windows. I am one of them. At the end of July, NullSoft released a new version of WinAmp - 5.04. With this version they have included two additional choices in Streaming Media section of the Media Library. You now can stream a collection of songs and music video clips that are stored on the WinAmp servers. I think most artists in that collection are affiliated with Time Warner since NullSoft is owned by it. In any case, the collection is quite big. There are currently almost 1000 songs and more than 1700 videos. The cool thing is you can efficiently search for streaming songs and videos the same way as you can search for your local media stored on your hard disk. Meaning, you can filter by genre, an artist within that genre and by a keyword which is searched within the artist name and song name. Together with hundreds of streaming radio and TV stations which are also integrated into WinAmp, I hardly even need to listen to my own music collection.

Download the latest version of WinAmp here

SIZZLINGCROTCH: man
SIZZLINGCROTCH: I cant cancel an AOL subscription online
JakeD409: try to do it over the phone
SIZZLINGCROTCH: no cuz they ask for the screenname

Check out the video clips that demonstrate some choreographed freestyle DDR dancing.

Tribute to Clayton at his going away party.

Photos

Videos (Latest version of RealPlayer required.)
Make sure you watch them with sound.
Related Links
Clayton's and James' dance performance

More info in the Dance Blog.

Photos taken at the weekly Monday night Hustle party at DanceSport.

The Skype team has finally announced the ability to make a phone call to a regular phone in addition to PC to PC calls. Oh, and that phone can be anywhere in the world! They call this feature SkypeOut. The rates on average are about 2 cents per minute!!! Here is the complete rates list. I've tried it and it works great.

Now all we have to have is SkypeIn...

The weather is getting pretty hot so it's time to cool off at the beach. Click here for information on how to get to Long Island beaches by train from Penn Station.

Today my friends and I took a train to Long Beach and we got there in an hour from Penn Station. This was ultra convenient! Whenever I drove to the beach, it would always take more than an hour and many times I would get stuck in traffic and be frustrated. This trip was very relaxing. The train seats were comfortable. I think it's time to sell my car...

Those of you who cannot see the fireworks, make your own here.

Summer Restaurant Week
June 21-25 & June 28-July 2

I was being sizzled on the frying pan at Pier 63 Spice Summer Festival. Actually there were hardly any people that showed up at the opening night of the weekly event. I was there until about 10:30 PM. So far it looks like Monday is not a good day for a night out dancing.

Good thing that they did not charge you to go on the pier. You only had to pay if you wanted to get on the dancefloor. So it was nice to hang out on the pier for a bit and enjoy the views of the river at night and get some fresh air.

Do you live in New York City and wake up to the noise of the car alarms in the middle of the night? If you don't enjoy that, go to this webpage and fax the petition at the bottom. This form makes it easy to show your support for ridding our streets of this noise pollution. The hearing is June 10th.