I was browsing the net on my daily rounds when I suddenly had an epiphany: one of my friends looked like a Hollywood celebrity.
Here, I'll let you decide:
Hola everyone, and velkom to a very dusty blog *koff koff*
Anyway, just to mention this: I've been playing a real paper and pencil (P&P) Dungeons and Dragons campaign with a few friends for the past few months, and we have reached up to level 3! Yes, our characters are still alive and in the current campaign, we are delving deeper into an old abandoned keep to prevent a cult from opening a rift to the Shadowfell (just consider it as another badass dimension with badass things that will cause bad things to happen if they come over into our dimension).
Here's the definition of what is D&D straight from the horse's mouth.
Here's the definition from Wikipedia.
OK, basically we role-play our characters, making them do actions that will affect things in the game world, e.g. talking to other characters, asking information from non-player characters (NPCs) and beating the crap out of monsters or bad guys that get in our way.
Here's some shots of our current campaign:
OK, maybe not so dramatic, but...
ooh, another update, finally.
I took my 100mm macro lens out for a bit of fun in the sun today, but unfortunately it was during one of the hottest time of the day (around 12 or was it 1 p.m.).
I was also conducting an experiment to see if the silicon gels that I bought can be recycled to get rid of the moisture that it absorbed so I could use it again. The results were positive: these gels CAN be recycled, but you need lots of heat.
What I did was to put them into a clear plastic container and put them on top of a car when the sun is out. You know how hot car hoods can be when exposed to tropical sunlight, right?:
They originally come in blue colour (dry) but they will turn pink when they absorb moisture. Here's a shot of wet and dry silicon gels:
Alrighty, back to our main story, I was lurking around the garden in the middle of the day and this is what happened:
Lets have a closer look:
Some orchids:
And some funky flower:
The day was quite windy, so I had to use the flash to freeze the flowers and plants in place. Hope you enjoyed that. I'll see what else can be shot in another instalment.
Alrighty then, time to dust off the blog and put up a new post *kofkof*
Attended a beach outing on Sunday (yesterday) with a bunch of friends from CSP. The scheduled time was 10 a.m. at Beach 2, Tg. Aru. As usual, almost everyone turned up 2 hours late. By that time, the drinks were getting warm and the sun was doing a beatdown on anyone foolish enough to wander onto the white / brown sandy beaches.
It was a pot-luck affair, everyone bringing a bit of stuff to share. I contributed 5 bottles of drinks (total 7.5 litres of liquids), Bev also brought about 4 bottles of stuff too, Ed brought homemade hinava that was properly cured and doesn't smell like the raw fish that it is :D Zack brought some mee baked into the shape of a cake? I can't remember what the others brought, but everyone managed to fill their larder.
Unfortunately the sky started to rain around 1 p.m. and I had to go off early to attend a meeting grrrrrr...
But wait, there's more -->
After the meeting, I managed to drag Ashley to the beach with me, even though it was still raining. We then rejoined the bunch of people trying to enjoy the beach despite bouts of intermittent rain. Me, I got to do some shooting, along with Ed and Jack, with some pretty victims heh heh heh...
Frisbee!!!
We even had some eyeball fun:
And Clerence brought his guitar, which we all used as a prop (oh yeah, we also tried singing, using it as an accompaniment but I think it brought even more rain)
And I leave you with one of my favourites of the day:
Ah, everyone seems to be getting married these days...
First it was Ah Ket, in May:
Then James and Jenny in June but only had their Sabah dinner in July since they're based in KL:
They are starting on another journey though life, together with each other through thick and thin waist lines and that sort of thing :P
Anyway, congrats to all of them, and may they live happily ever after. (Well, hopefully at least more than 90% of the time)
I attended a photography workshop conducted by Sir George Yong from Jofanna Bridal, who also happens to be a member of ClickStartPlay.com.
He was assisted by Radzie and Alvin, both seasoned photogs. Radzie was in charge of herding the Canon users, while Alvin had to babysit the Nikon and miscellaneous camera brand users during the exercises. (Just joking ya :D no whips were involved...)
So, the first part of the workshop was getting the new users up to speed on how a digital camera works. Stuff like ISO, aperture, shutter speed and similar stuff was explained by George (henceforth to be known as Joj because I'm too lazy to type his actual name) in basic layman's terms. 
We were also encouraged to ask questions if we didn't understand any of the things that were explained.
There were many ooohs and aaahhh moments when he showed us his work shooting couples getting married. There was also a short practical session to try to drive home the lessons into our thick skulls.
Some shots from his multi-coloured walls:
This wall was supposed to be neutral exposure, where we had to set the metering so that it was at zero.
Then we had to shoot at someone in front of the white wall:
Yeah the topic on the wall says it all :D
Then we had to shoot at a dark wall:
Hear no Evil
Speak no evil
Snort no evil???
Then there was a small break where we tried to finish off more meehoon that was leftover from lunch, and also the sandwiches and cakes.
Therefore we ate.
After the break, the topic got a bit deeper as now we are treading on the philosophy of photography. OK, maybe not THAAAAT deep lah... More stuff like how to communicate with your subjects. How to direct your models and so on.
Here we have some pointers on how to pose a guy:
Then how to pose a girl:
Then we had some live-fire exercises outside along the corridor:
After finishing outside, while Joj was still trying to herd the last of the enthusiastic participants back into the lecture venue, I sneaked a shot of one of Joj's dresses near the window:
Part of Joj's dress? I don't wanna really find out... *swt*
After finishing off the workshop, we all had a group photo session using both Nikon and Canon's wireless flash mumbo-jumbo, plus a lone Nissin thrown into the mix LOL
We were supposed to go do some shooting after the lecture part was done, but since it was raining cats and dogs, almost everyone opted to stay in the shop. Some left when the rain was not too heavy but quite a number stayed and made some cool portrait shots using multiple flash setup.
And there was a shopping cart that thought it was a car and tried to reverse away and got stuck in the middle of the road near CKS:
Actually it was the super strong wind that caused that LOL
All in all it was a fun workshop, hope Joj does another one soon.
Aloha!
Past couple of weeks have been busy, and I seem to have been neglecting my baby (the 400D heh heh).
Anyhow, I managed to snap a few things using the 100mm Macro. This lens is nice and sharp! Although it does suffer from a bit of chromatic aberration (I think that's when you see weird colour fringes around bright objects). Not really noticeable unless you view the pictures at 100%.
OK, here are more victims of the 100mm:
First up, a hairy looking thing?
which is actually a piece of velcro:
and is this someone's fence?
Nope. it's just a row of staples:
Welcome to the world of the tiny.
Muahahahahahahaha!!!!!
I attended a workshop on improvisation called "Intro to Improv" last week.
More incriminating photos later...
And they're here:
I'll get to the labelling if I'm not too lazy again...
Welcome back... no I haven't been KO-ed this whole while, but it does feel that way since I have nothing interesting to blog about.
OK to cut to the chase: I just got myself a Canon 100mm Macro lens. So for the next few posts, you'll probably be seeing shots of tiny stuff from around my house :D
OK, my first live subject was this spider which I found just hanging around (more like sitting pretty) on a door at my place of work. Luckily I had this lens with me and my flash while I was covering an event, so... heh heh heh this was my first live subject.
I didn't really get many shots of this fellow, since it was kinda high, and I had to shoot upwards. The good thing was, it was facing down, so I was able to see its "face".
Depth of field for this lens is kinda narrow (most, if not all macro lenses are like this), so in order to get something sharp, you'll have to shoot at f/11 or even f/16. At these apertures, lighting becomes a problem, so you really need a flash or two to help light up your subject. Canon does sell the macro ring light MR-14EX but it costs a BOMB!
OK, Now pokai oledi... :(
