Chucky's Demented Thoughts

My journey with discrete graphic cards

2011-10-20T00:56:00.001+08:00

Picture taken from Gigabyte.my

For PC gamers all over the world, one of the most important components of their gaming rig would be their graphic card. This is the component that is tasked to crunch the numbers and convert them into images that can be displayed using a monitor. If the card is powerful enough, it allows the gamer to increase the graphics details to make the game look better (more eye candy).

A discrete graphics card is an add-on card that is attached to the motherboard, as opposed to an integrated graphics controller you get on most low-medium end motherboards.

My first taste of better graphics came in the form of a Voodoo 2 that I bought along with my PC while I was still in university. Lets see if I can recall the graphic cards that I have used so far:

Voodoo 2 (lets start with this 16 MB of RAM goodness).
Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 440 (a whopping 64MB RAM, or was it 32?).
Nvidia Geforce 6800GS (256MB RAM).
Nvidia Geforce 6800GS in SLI mode (I think I cooked these cards to death in my poorly ventilated casing).
Nvidia GeForce 7200 as a stopgap measure because both the 6800s were unstable.
ATI Radeon HD3850 (512MB RAM) from another friend trying to clear off stuff.
and lastly, I am currently using an Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 (1GB RAM).

So far, the GTX 560 from Gigabyte ( the one pictured above is the Ti version, mine is non-Ti) has been a dream to play with, most of the games can be set to maximum detail and are still very much playable (on a 1680 x 1050 pixels monitor). According to reviews, this card can go up to full HD (1920x1080) for gaming and it can still be more than capable of serving most gamers, but I don't have a monitor that is large enough to do that kind of testing.

Lets see how long this will last me.

If only Diablo 3 came out sooner grrrr....

Twilight: New Moon

2011-08-01T23:23:00.000+08:00

Today marks the 1st day of fasting for Muslims this year. Yes, Hari Raya is 1 month away, so happy fasting to all my Muslim friends and family members, wherever you are.

Anyway, the title of this post is in reference to what I viewed today when I returned home from work. The sun had already set and the bulan sabit (crescent moon) was hanging in the sky near the hill that has the RTM transmission tower. So I grabbed my trusty camera and the longest lens I could find, and snapped a few shots. Getting a nice angle was a pain, since there were so many TV antennae and telephone wires crisscrossing my view. After running in and out, climbing a car or 2, I finally got a no-so-bad shooting angle from a bedroom window upstairs.

By the time I got to my vantage point, most of the light had faded from the dusk sky. And this was the least sucky photo I could find.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that photo, and if you came in here expecting some kind of movie or book review of a certain vampire fantasy franchise, I'm sorry but you just got...

Blur blur fellow

2011-06-23T18:20:00.000+08:00

Hi and welcome to a ranting post.

I've been getting missed calls and stupid SMSes from a mobile phone number for the past few weeks that has left me feeling very annoyed. The missed calls I didn't answer, because they usually end before I could answer the phone. The SMSes were usually addressed to someone named Nor, and the SMSes seem to be asking to want to know this "Nor" better.

This afternoon, the guy decided to send an MMS to me with his mug, possibly trying to impress this "Nor". See below:

The picture seems to be taken in some kinda workshop. After I received this MMS from him, I tried calling this number, but no one answered. Then I tried sending an SMS telling this fellow that I was not who he thought I was, and hopefully it got through, since he did send a "sorry" SMS after that.

So, for those guys who want to get a girl's number, please make sure it is the correct number before you show up at your first date and end up meeting with someone bigger and hairier than you (and his friends).

Cheers

Dead lens walking

2011-06-13T02:16:00.000+08:00

Haiya...

I brought my problematic Canon EF-S 18-55mm lens to a camera shop on Sunday to see what's wrong with it.

The technician said that there's some internal problem with the aperture, and to service it might cost around RM300 or more, since the spare part for this particular lens is very expensive, compared to the newer IS version of this lens. So I decided to look at other options, probably sourcing a 2nd hand lens to replace this one.

The only incident that I think could have damaged the lens would be during Hobbycon 2010, I forgot which day it was, but there was one day when I took my camera out of my bag, and was fiddling with it, but it slipped out of my hand and bumped onto the table, which was about a one-foot drop. I immediately switched it on and made a few test shots that time, and it seemed to be functioning well.

It only had major a major malfunction when I took it to Kuching after Hobbycon. During that time, it was spotty, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Luckily I brought along my 28mm F/1.8 along on that trip, or else I wouldn't be able to snap anymore photos. During the rest of the trip, it didn't seem to be malfunctioning, so I just let it be.

The problem manifests itself when I select an aperture that is smaller than the maximum aperture for that particular focal length. For example, the maximum aperture at 18mm is f/3.5, so if i were to set the aperture to f4.0 or above and shoot, the lens would crap out and my camera would complain, saying that there's no communication between the lens and the camera body. Initially I tried all the "clean contacts with eraser" methods but it still would not solve the problem, hence the visit to the camera shop.

Anyway, I'll have to see where I can source for a replacement for this lens, since I was planning to sell it off with my old camera body.

Loot from students

2011-06-13T01:50:00.000+08:00

Here's another post after a long break. First of all, let me show you what's new:

Isn't she a beauty? The curves, the colours, the... hey waidaminute, I was referring to the photo frame! The girl's photo came with the frame, so don't get any ideas.

The photo frame was part of the Teacher's Day Loot I received last month (ya, slowpoke me). The rest are shown below:

There's a card, 2 bookmarks, a notepad, a face towel and of course, the photo frame above. The smaller loot came in the small brown gift bag above. O wait, I think they came separately, but I stuffed them all into the same bag because I was trying to shoot people during the occasion.

Toy car

2011-04-11T01:55:00.000+08:00

Hi there all, I've been distracted by so many things these past few months, I almost forgot how to blog :P

Jesting aside, I needed to take my camera for a bit of exercise, so I shot this:

It's not much, but at least I clicked my camera shutter a few times LOL.

By the way, look at all the dust on it, sheesh...

Lights in library

2011-03-02T19:09:00.002+08:00

Was testing the work camera , trying to shoot at a dark place and whaddayaknow, this turned up:

Strange lights were seen in this picture... could they be trying to communicate?

or maybe they lurk the interwebs too much...

Stranger things have happened elsewhere too...

Borneo Headhunter's Hat 2011

2011-03-01T01:33:00.003+08:00

Greetings blog lurkers. It has been a busy month for me, hence the lack of any updates thus far, so to make it up to all 17 people who are following me, let me help you test your internet connection by posting up a whole lot of photos, heh heh heh...

I had the opportunity to shoot an international sporting event last Saturday: the Borneo Headhunter's Hat tournament which was held in La Salle secondary school's playing field.

It's an Ultimate Frisbee tournament organised by a bunch of Ultimate Frisbee enthusiasts here in KK, and you can read more about it here. The wrap up can be found here.

Newspaper (online version) can be found here.

The participants were supposed to play while wearing wigs, but the tropical weather plus super hot sunshine was not conducive for that, so everyone just played normally.

Here was a participant trying to get wiggy with it.

There was super athleticism displayed by everyone, from the flying leaps to the lung-busting runs trying to chase after a flying disc :D

There were some injuries though, but nothing too serious that the first aid administrators couldn't handle on the field.

Bah, I'll just let the pictures do the talking, but be warned: loading the page may be slow for those with bad internet connections.

Read more after the jump:

oh wait, you've already seen this one heh heh...

And here's to Jaco and his team for organising a fine tournament.

Chinese New Year 2011

2011-02-07T02:06:00.000+08:00

Happy Chinese New Year (Rabbit-yummy)!

So the main question is: how many kgs have you gained this past week? Not that it matters, heh heh...

I didn't do much this year, just visited some people's open house, ate lots of nice stuff and experimented with the video function of my Canon 60D.

First of all, I went to Jna's tarping session at her house on the 1st day of CNY.

I also went to Sakuya's open house on the 2nd day of CNY, and there was MADness there as well. I brought along my friend's Mad Magazine board game and had a few people play it. We all laughed until we split our sides, had headaches and even had tears coming from more than one person during the session:

Hope you all had an enjoyable holiday.

Streamyx OK Pt. 2?

2011-02-03T15:25:00.000+08:00

We had a TM tech come and change the wiring from the post to the house today (yeah, Chinese New Year 1st day) and the connection seems to be a lot better now. He came yesterday and did some diagnostics, but I guess he couldn't find anyone to change it, so he came today.

After changing the cable, he did another ping test to the server, and it seemed to be muuuuch better. Yesterday's ping was around 1700+ ms, and after changing the cable: 57+ ms.

I'll need to keep the connection on for another day or so, to see if there are any more complications.

Finally my downloads are back to maximum speeds again (for now) - yay!

Streamyx OK?

2011-01-27T17:54:00.001+08:00

Alright, I switched off my modem this morning on my way to work after leaving it on for the weekend. Results from the weekend: no disconnection at all since Saturday, and today is Thursday, so around 5 or was it 6 days without disconnection.

Now, having just switched on the modem after returning from work (around 5:30pm), it seems to be fine, and I hope it is fine. I think they (TM) tried calling me today, but I was unable to answer my phone in time before it got routed to voicemail. I just hope they were calling to tell me that all is well with my connection.

The next test is tonight, when I will power cycle my modem and see what happens, whether I can get a proper connection again.

Update:
OK, connection sux, experiment yielded expected results.
Conclusion: Need to keep modem on for the whole night.

Streamyx still not OK 2

2011-01-25T22:20:00.000+08:00

OK, since the last post, I didn't switch off the Linksys modem router for the whole weekend, and it didn't disconnect at all (once it got an IP on Saturday morning). It was still the same IP the last time I checked. But tomorrow I'm gonna try and do a reboot when I get home and see what happens.

streamyx still not OK

2011-01-22T01:18:00.000+08:00

I tried to switch off the modem for the day, and only switched it on when I returned from work at around 6pm, 21 Jan 2011. Connection was unstable, and kept disconnecting like crazy, unlike the previous day where it was almost rock solid.

Now I'm gonna keep the modem on for the whole weekend and see what happens. I'm hoping to keep the modem on until Tuesday to see the turnout.

On another note, I actually got an IP with the ending of zero, which I thought was unuseable. But it seems to be valid, for a little while at least. I thought zero was kinda reserved or something?

Oh well, need to complain again, since the promised date of resolution has passed.

Streamyx ok or not?

2011-01-18T14:26:00.001+08:00

Flashback:
Went to TM Point on 28 Dec 2010 to register a billing dispute, 'cos I'm not gonna pay for something that is not up to standard. Showed the customer service personnel my SMS from the technician stating the problems would be resolved by the 16th of Jan (2011), then got a bit drenched going back to the car.

Current day:
Line seemed to be OK on Monday, 17 Jan and right now, 18 Jan - able to connect without any hiccups.

No sign of disconnection so far.

I wonder can do KF or not tonight? LOL!

Update:
Connection was a disaster. Kept disconnecting every few minutes. Sometimes it stays connected for 10-15 minutes, but it would still disconnect. Couldn't play anything online properly, haven't even got my Internet things done.

I have a feeling my line is still massively congested.

Hobbycon 2010 Day 2

2010-12-29T14:53:00.001+08:00

OK everyone, here's the batch of photos for the 2nd day of HobbyCon 2010 (12 Dec).

An early Pedobear attack:

Cupcakes from Boutique Cupcakes

Red eyed monster in cupcake booth :P

L62 band performing live at the venue:

After all tha madness, some of us had dinner at Tenom Kopi Station whateverthenamewas on the 1st floor.

Hobbycon 2010 Day 1

2010-12-13T03:02:00.001+08:00

The Season of Hobbycon has come and gone. All of the photos have been posted up in Facebook, but if you are really lazy to click on each and every photo to view them, you can just click on Read More to have all of them load up at once.

These are the photos that were taken on the 11th day of December 2010 (the 1st day).

Anyway, please click on the Read More link to see the rest of the photos. Since it will jam up your Internet connection as soon as you click it, this is your only warning LOL.

This year, the management provided partitions for the booths so there would be a bit more privacy, and also allows the participants to hang up stuff they want to display.

Here is Hangmen trying to counter-snipe this sniper...

What's with the toothpick and sign I wonder...

A singing Risa Hawkeye?

Mesmerised by Guitar Heroes:

Team Day Dreamers at their booth:

More singers, too bad I can't understand a word they're singing, since it's all from Japanese animes.

Random cosplaye- I mean ohai Irene!

Hanfmen in full gear attempting to debrief the audience, but I can't make out much (must be the mouth cover)

Guy from Area 21 Paintball (I think) giving the lowdown on what is Paintball

OK, here's a scary Space Marine (TM) giving everyone the evil eye (or maybe he's squinting because he's not wearing glasses?) LOL

Cute ~~Scary~~ cosplayer in schoolgirl uniform but watch out for that scythe she carries.

Fara, one of the organisers of Hobbycon trying to see any loose ends that need tying...

Shadow!

Yes, talk to the hand.

L62 singing up a storm (go Clay go!)

Lady Gagas?

A militant Pedobear trying to eliminate some loli protectors I think...

Same Pedobear in his natural environment:

Sister of Battle St. Celestine making a big entrance

Those wings are NOT small.

Grey Knight Terminator trying to look for Cyberdyne T-800 model, but unfortunately there were none.

You can usually measure how successful a costume is by the size of the horde surrounding it, plus the photogs trying to shoot:

I have no idea what's got into those two *facepalm*

Pedobear trying to increase his range?

You know who you are...

More action at the Team Day Dreamers booth

Cosplayers waiting around the stage for the individual cosplay competition.

I didn't manage to shoot every participant but here are some of them:

Full Metal Alchemist?

Wonder Woman

And the booths that were participating:

The horde:

Winners of the Cosplay competition 1st, 2nd and 3rd place (solo category)

Cosplayers, participants and volunteers taking the stage for photoshoot.

Resting at a booth trying to read comics:

I think he just swallowed something...

You also know who you are :P

Testing 28mm lens heh heh. Massy, it's calling you...

The elusive Toy Toy

This one has auto camera tracking software installed:

The wall full of drawings by various artists as well as members of the public.

U MAD?

Here's some interesting parts of the wall

Mr. AKS and Rob Kuma

And this photo sums it all up:

orz

Streamyx troubles part dunno what oledi

2010-12-11T02:56:00.000+08:00

This is just to remind myself of the condition of my Internet line. Tried to log in at around 7pm or maybe slightly before, but modem cannot connect. Modem log keeps showing the connection attempts but not succeeding - sometimes even showing an authentication failed error. Gave up and had dinner.

After dinner, went to check up on connection status, and it seems to have connected. I'm not sure when, but connection was established during dinnertime. Line was pretty slow up until around 10pm something, my guess is that the congestion started to ease up during that time.

Managed to play some online game without interruptions until the weeeeeeee hours. At least the connection did not drop during the heavy rain and wind we're having right now.

Alright, need to sleep, bcos Hobbycon is in 8 hours time (more or less).

Streamyx troubles part 2

2010-11-27T00:57:00.000+08:00

OK, this is just to increase blog post count, as if it makes any difference, and also to highlight to you what happens when the connection decides to play hide and seek:

This is my modem's log. As you can see, the connection will die plenty of times in a span of a few hours. Tonight was quite bad, but not as bad as before the TM techs did some repairs a few days ago. Before that, the connection will die EVERY FEW MINUTES when it rains! I still don't know why rainy weather should make my connection die. WHY???

Right now, surfing is fine, but good luck if I want to play any online games.

Streamyx troubles

2010-11-24T21:34:00.000+08:00

Greetings humans...

Warning: long wall of text ahead.

I haven't been updating here because of Streamyx troubles that has been brewing for the past few months. First signs of trouble was about 3 months ago (around August / September) when the Internet seemed a bit sluggish, but I brushed that off as congestion problem. It seemed to get worse and worse until around the end of October, I couldn't even log in.

Made a call to TM's help line around the 5th or 6th of October, and they tried to sort it out on their end, but problem still persisted. A couple of days later the call centre people called up again to see if the problem was fixed, but alas nothing was done.

A few days after that (or was it the following week) a TM technician finally called up to say there was a fault with my connection and he did some repairs, but unfortunately, the problems still persisted. He also mentioned he's gonna transfer my line to another area to ease the congestion. Another problem he mentioned was that they had a fault in the connection hub or whatchamacallit and that may be resolved by the end of the month. Oh great, almost 1 month of Internet starvation I thought to myself. He added that I could probably get some kind of rebate from TM because of this problem. In the meantime, the call centre people kept checking on me to ask about the connection, but all I can say is that the connection sux (not in those words, mind you).

Sometime last weekend, another technician called up to ask me about my connection again, and I mentioned all that was mentioned before. This time, he said that this problem is not an isolated problem, but quite a number of people around my area also complained of slow internet connection. The technicians were also waiting for some kind of equipment that will only arrive maybe in the 1st week of December (ugh...) and the repairs might only be done mid December. I asked about the rebate in my bill, and he said I'll have to take it up with the TM Point people in Tanjung Aru Plaza (WTF? It's not automatic? They don't communicate with each other?).

As of today, the connection seems to be more stable, meaning it didn't crap out when it rains. I did receive a call from the call centre people today informing me about some repairs that the technicians have made. This time it seems the repairs were a bit more effective. According to my modem log, my modem hasn't disconnected ever since I switched on the modem a few hours ago. Let's hope it gets better soon.

TL;DR:
I have crappy Internet for few months which killed my blogging mood, TM technicians finally did some effective repairs (I think) recently. Hope my connection improves.

Lens stabilisation using another tripod

2010-09-28T00:37:00.000+08:00

Greetings and salutations.

Some of you may own cameras or lenses that have stabilisation, but sometimes, that may not be enough when taking certain photos.

My dilemma started when I got myself a macro lens that weighed almost as heavy as the camera itself. When I mount my DSLR camera equipped with this lens on to my flimsy tripod, it is not very stable, since the lens will be pulling the camera forward and downward. This particular lens (Canon EF 100mm macro) has a space to add a tripod collar, which will shift the centre of gravity a bit further forward to better balance the lens, but it costs almost as much as a flashgun *facepalm*.

I'm bringing this up because when I mount it on my rickety tripod and take a snap, the motion of the mirror inside the camera actually makes the whole camera shake. This is sometimes known as "mirror slap". If you happen to be shooting objects using long exposure, you will most likely end up with slightly blur images caused by this "mirror slap".

So, in order to overcome this problem, I had to find a way to prevent the mirror from shaking up my whole camera. Then it hit me: why not use something like a bipod, that's what they use for the M60 machine guns, right? (Photo from www.warboats.org)

Now I experimented with some tripods I had around the house, none were really successful, but the following setup did help me to get some proper photos of the previous post. Here's how it looks like:

Another look:

Yeah, the tip of the lens is resting on another tripod, which is resting on the edge of my bed. The little white thing on top of my Gorillapod is actually an eraser:

I drilled a little hole in the middle to accommodate the tripod's screw. And of course, the white background you saw in the previous post is actually a big piece of cardboard.

With this setup, I can easily set whatever shutter speed I want without worry of mirror slap vibration messing up my shots. Although you do need to be careful when moving around because the whole thing is actually a very delicate balancing act. One wrong move and you might knock your camera to the ground *gulp*.

So cheapskates everywhere, do be careful when balancing this.

Here's another macro shot to end this long winded post:

Yeah, this figurine is about 5.5 cm long - as you can deduce from the cutting mat's lines.

Thanks for reading.

Macro fun - razors

2010-09-27T02:21:00.002+08:00

Hi all, and welcome back to another edition of the dusty blog *koff koff*.

As a guy, I've been using razors for quite a number of years, but not all razors are built the same. Some razors can whisk off your facial hair and leave baby smooth skin behind, while others leave much to be desired when it comes to product satisfaction.

Today I'm gonna take a quick peek at two razors that I've used: both are disposable razors, but one is a generic brandless razor, while the other one comes from a popular razor manufacturer.

Now why would I want to compare these two razors? Well, I had the unfortunate "privilege" of using the crummy brandless razor and it made me feel like I was trying to shave using a dull Bowie knife. I thought to myself: what's the difference between the two? They both feel sharp, but why does one perform better than the other? So I decided to photograph them.

Also gives me an excuse to do some macro shooting :D

Here we have the two contenders:
On the left, the brandless razor, and on the right, the branded razor.

They both have twin blades, as well as a lubricated strip on top, but the branded razor has a trick up its sleeve: a pivoting head - so it follows the contour of your face while you shave.

Lets have a closer look:

Nothing unusual about it, but let's take a REALLY closer look:

We can see some imperfections on the plastic on the left razor, and the clean plastic on the right razor.

Here's another shot of the blades:

As I mentioned earlier, using the branded razor is a joy, while using the brandless razor can only be described as an exercise in self-torture. I think it has something to do with the angle of the blades, as well as the distance of the blades from the plastic housing to the skin. The blades on the branded razor feels like they want to come out and cut something, while the brandless razor's blades seem a bit stunted :P

So there you have it folks. If you want to enjoy shaving, avoid getting some cheap brandless razors that will make you cry, no matter how much lube you use.

On another note, I'll show you my kludge on lens stabilisation using two tripods in the next update :D

La Salle Dinner 2010

2010-08-22T16:08:00.001+08:00

I attended the 49th iteration of La Salle's annual dinner this year, along with Edgar. This year, the dinner was held in the new Star City Convention Centre (Star City was known previously as Kompleks Asia City).

The air conditioning there was super cold, most likely because the place was new, and it was a rainy evening.

This year, the guest of honour was Y.B. Tuan Donald Peter Mojuntin.

I wasn't really interested in "covering" this event... I was more interested in the food :P So everything you see was shot from my table. As luck would have it, it was one of the tables next to the stage, which was a curse and a blessing. The good thing was: we had an unobstructed view of the stage. The bad thing: we were seated right in front of the damn loudspeakers!

Here's the menu:

Four Hot and Cold Combination (Jellyfish or was it seaweed, and some fish sticks)
Shark's fin soup with crab meat (I don't think they use real shark's fins anymore)
Roasted chicken (standard fare)
Fish with Sliced Mango (Fish fillet with mango, but some of the thicker pieces were not cooked thoroughly)
Prawn with Tomato Paste (Normal prawn cooked with tomato sauce, but hard to eat, because we didn't want to use our fingers, as there was no lime bowl to wash our hands with)
Fried rice with Chicken Floss
Black Mushroom with Broccoli (basically just veggies)
Honeydew Sago drink (cold)
(and free chinese tea)

OK, never mind all that... here's a shot of everyone singing the school rally:

There were around 70-80 tables, I think for this year's dinner. Some of the La Sallians:

There was beer on sale, and some of the proceeds from the beer sales went to the school Alumni. Corkage per table was RM50.00 (for those who brought their own booze). I didn't drink anything alcoholic, because I had a dull headache the whole day and I didn't want to aggravate it further.

Anyway, if I recall correctly, class of 1975 had the most number of new Lifetime Members registered this year, and class of 1982 walked away with both the largest turnout by number of attendees, as well as largest turnout by percentage. But don't quote me on that, better wait for official sources because my brain was frozen and throbbing the whole night, it might have recorded things differently :P

Rise, o blog of mine

2010-08-03T00:36:00.000+08:00

Hi there, I'll just be brief.

Last week was a hectic week for me, having a D&D session on Friday night, then going to the Japanese Cultural Night in Universiti Malaysia Sabah on Saturday night, followed by some Alien Swarm gaming session on Sunday night.

I'm still processing the photos that I took during the Japanese Cultural Night, so ~~pedo~~bear with me, since I hadn't had enough time to post-process everything.

I'll post up a humongous post when everything is done.

Whenever it gets done :P

Music Fest 2010 at The Tip of Borneo

2010-07-14T01:38:00.001+08:00

Let's see how to begin...

We had a little road trip up to Kudat on the 3rd of July 2010 to catch the music festival which was held at the Tip Of Borneo (actually Simpang Mengayau). The plan was: go to Kudat on Saturday (3rd July), catch the musical performance in the evening, spend the night in Kudat (since I'm not keen to drive down to KK in the dark) then return to Kota Kinabalu the following day.

The day started by me picking up Daniel and Pol to go grab breakfast at McDonald's in town. There we met up with another two people who were going with us: Shariff and DaSaru. There were another 4 people on this trip, but they were having breakfast elsewhere.

Long story short: we made our way to Kudat town in around 3 hours of non-stop driving from KK to Kudat. I didn't stop at Kota Belud nor Kota Marudu since we were fine, but by the time we reached Kudat, my body was starting to get a bit stiff.

Here, we've checked into the hotel (Hotel Grace Garden) in Kudat, and we're waiting for Lt. Danial Maran so we could go grab lunch.

Yes, we had lunch at 3pm.

After lunch, we strolled around the esplanade, snapping photos of the surrounding area:

Err...this was also supposed to be artistic :P

Around 4 something, we decided to make our move to Simpang Mengayau for the music fest. I took the road that was still not completed. It still had a little gravel stretch, but that didn't prove much trouble for the Invader heh heh.

We made it to the place with some time to spare, but the number of cars at the venue told us that finding parking would not be an easy matter. We actually parked somewhere downhill, and used some rocks to wedge the tyres to prevent rolling.

Anyway, here's a view of the audience seating:

Notice the umbrellas and assorted things held up to shield themselves from the sun? Yes, the audience was facing the setting inferno we call the sun.

The music fest had a lot of guests, most notably Datuk Masidi Manjun, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment, Sabah. Wait, I think his ministry had a hand in organising this gig...

The MC for the performance ( I forgot his name...)

Then I spotted this little scene while I was trying to look for my friends:

A wedding couple picked this spot to do their photoshoot :D

Anyway, as a warm up performance, Roger Wang, accompanied by a 5 piece band (including himself) started the ball rolling.

This is Roger:

A few more VIPs also came:

And on with the show:

They seemed to like it, especially the grinning one.

Tourists, both domestic and foreign also came for the performance.

After the performance finished at around 7 pm (it was only a 2 hour show), a few of us went to the rocky outcrop to see the tip of Borneo.

Some even had personal face time with the tip of Borneo...

Later, we made our way back to our hotel, but this time I followed the buses, which took the other road back to Kudat. This time it was all smooth, with no gravel.

The next morning, we all had breakfast together at one of the coffee shops near our hotel. While waiting for the food to arrive, I passed my lens to Mr. Cubex to try, but all he did was fondle it a bit; he didn't even put it on his sister's camera to test.

Maslight, sister of cubex was even worse. She wouldn't even want to touch the lens, fearing that it will drive her to the ends of her sanity (or something like that...)

Fin.

KK Jazz Festival 2010

2010-06-20T17:44:00.001+08:00

Hi Ho, another slowpoke post from me.
I attended the 2010 edition of the Kota Kinabalu Jazz Festival last Friday, thanks to a complimentary pass (heh heh).
I only attended the 1st day of the fest, with the following acts:
Day 1:

Fingerstyle – Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
Kidz – Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
Sabah RTM Combo – Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
Island Jazz Connection – Penang, Malaysia
"Surprise" appearance by Atilia, KL
Amir Yussof & Roots – Kuala Lumpur / Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

Anyway, Friday night was a rainy night. When I reached the venue (covered tennis court, Sutera Harbour) it was raining cats, dogs and elephants. Here are some shots I made of that night. Mind you, I was trying to enjoy the music, and not covering the event, since there were already a few dozen people with cameras clicking away that night (and also because no one asked me to do any covering - LOL).

Enough rambling, on with the pics:

The 2 Emcees:

I think this was Kidz:

Sabah RTM Combo

Island Jazz Connection:

Are you not entertained?

Atilia:

Atilia and some people she managed to pull on stage:

Amir Yussof & Roots

Feedback! There's not enough feedback!

His guitar's on fire!

And cooling down after a hot set.

Raining in KK again

2010-06-14T15:35:00.000+08:00

Hai, the weather these few months have been like this:

SUPER HOT in the mornings, then

RAINING CATS, DOGS AND ELEPHANTS in the afternoons.

An interesting thing you can do in Google Earth is to view the cloud cover over any respective area. The "Clouds" setting is somewhere inside the "Weather" category in the lower left, so you can toggle it on or off to save on the amount of detail the program has to load for you.

I'm not sure how up-to-date is the cloud data, it could be minutes / hours behind time, but it does give you a pretty general idea on what is hanging over your head.

This screencap from Google Earth shows that the east coast of Sabah is under heavy cloud cover, but the west coast (Kota Kinabalu) only has a sprinkling of clouds. I just captured this image a few minutes ago while the cats, dogs and elephants are raining down on Kota Kinabalu (my location), so I'm pretty sure this cloud cover image is a bit behind time.

So, get ready your brollies and dry clothes.

Salvage crappy shots

2010-05-24T00:29:00.001+08:00

Notice sometimes how your digital camera's white balance is not so smart (my way of saying it is f***ing stupid) when you take the shot, and you happen to have a nice shot, just that the colour is a bit off? Well, you can try and salvage it using photo editing tools like Adobe photoshop, GIMP, Picasa etc... to try to get the colour you want, or you can always chicken out and convert it into black and white LOL.

I'm not saying that people who choose to convert their shots into black and white are Gallus gallus domesticus. It is a valid technique because sometime we're sick of looking at colour photos and we just want to see the shapes on the object and not be distracted by the colour.

On that matter, I'll leave you with this photo. I'm gonna call it Happy Diner, unless you can think of a better caption for it :D

P.S. I always liked her hair, it's so shiny :D

Bird strike, and I am not a pilot

2010-05-21T00:12:00.000+08:00

I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business when a bird decided to go one-on-one with the window pane at my office. Result: Window 1, bird 0. Luckily it didn't come back for round 2.

I still can't figure out why the bird just whacked into the window. Was it confused? Was it chasing after it's dinner? Was it sick? Was it a suicide dive bomber?

Anyway, it did leave a mark on the window:

When is a pirate not a pirate?

2010-05-19T21:25:00.001+08:00

Hi there boys and girls, here's the first instalment of The Daily Lulz - stuff that I find funny or deserving of a *facepalm* award.

First, lets look at this excerpt from a local newspaper (which was published on Wednesday, 12 May 2010)
Here's the original article.

The main thing that caught my eye is the byline which states: "Naval commander says culprits are not pirates but sea robbers".

OK, when you think of pirates, what do they do? Don't they rob people at sea? The naval commander goes on to say that:

...the incidents off Sandakan were not the work of pirates.

"There is no piracy in our waters unlike in the peninsula - they are only sea robberies," ... "piracy and sea robberies have two different meanings - the people have been quoted wrongly."

The article does not mention anything about the commander clarifying the "misquote", nor offering an explanation on the difference between a pirate and a sea robber.

Some of the definitions of a Pirate from the web did return statements such as: "someone who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without having a commission from any sovereign nation".

Does anyone know how to differentiate between the two? Does it have something to do with the size of the target, or what? Ayam confused...

Teacher's Day gift

2010-05-18T01:24:00.000+08:00

Got this last week from a few students that were (I'm guessing) giving them out to all the teachers in the school.

Chocolate chip cookies, and I think it was home made. Quite tasty, and managed to stave off starvation with it on Sunday morning. There were actually 2 cookies in the package. I ate one on Sunday, and... I think the other one is in the fridge.

Not forgetting: happy feast day of St. John Babtist De La Salle, patron saint of teachers (supposed to be 15 May, but oh well...)

Midnight Umbrella

2010-04-27T01:45:00.003+08:00

You might wonder what the heck I've been drinking to come up with the title of this post, but believe me, it was only water!

Bah, a few friends and I got together to experiment with some remotely triggered flashes and the biggest umbrella I could get my hands on: one of those golf umbrellas given out by BP last time. So, we wanted to emulate one of the pictures that Sakuya found off the internet, where the person was sitting down, holding an umbrella in a dark area, and the only illumination was from the flash bouncing off the underside of the umbrella.

Without further ado, I'll post up some shots to show you the result from our blood, sweat and gears:

Since we were shooting in an empty basketball court behind some houses, there was bound to be some stray light coming from the surrounding houses, and one set of lights had a sinister resemblance to a well-known predator:

More pictures will be uploaded soon...
(Click on the Read More link to err... read more)

Joanna's surprise birthday celebration

2010-04-26T00:58:00.001+08:00

This was cooked up a few days ago by a whole bunch of CSPians to give Joanna a surprise birthday party under the pretext of playing computer games (heh heh heh). Her birthday was not due for another few days, but we decided to celebrate it a bit earlier.

While the birthday girl was busy playing L4D2, the cake was brought in.

Just pictures:

Birthday girl blowing out the candles:

First present was a....

pak zham kai bi

chuuu before opening present

what is it?

shiny dark bracelet:

ok, she's doing the T_T oledi:

some kinda charm?

And the most dangerous thing of all: THE BIRTHDAY CAKE! (Courtesy of Nex)
The calories per serving were probably OVER NAIN THAUSAAAAND!

Abu explaining why there was no Sisters Of Battle anthem playing while the cake was brought in.

Awesome girl with awesome cake:

eating awesome spaghetti with awesome sauce:

and all of that will go to your paha!

Low voltage

2010-04-16T02:25:00.000+08:00

How's the weather in your area? Well, here in KK it's hot and wet (at least we're getting rain). But that's not what I want to blog about.

My house and a few houses around my housing area (my, that's a lot of houses) have been experiencing low power supply for the past few weeks. You can see it by the dim lights and the constantly flickering fluorescent lights that try in vain to fire up. Even some of the street lights cannot even reach ignition point.

So I was curious and decided to whip out my multimeter and take a reading of the power supply. I had to use my camera's flash because my room light refused to turn on due to the low voltage:

Waw, only 180 volts, no wonder the lights can't turn on. Usually it's between 220-240 volts. Luckily we still had some incandescent lights in the house, but they were quite dim, as if we set a dimmer on them.

There has been quite a number of power disruptions around the city, I guess it is because the power supply is being taxed to its limit? Or is there an alien invasion going on and they're slowly assimilating the infrastructure... LOL

Belated birthday post

2010-03-30T23:59:00.002+08:00

Hello readers, I just had a not-so-surprise party at Secret Recipe Warisan Square (opposite Center Point) with a bunch of friends.

I'm too tired to write much, just that I would like to thank all of the attendees for making it an interesting bash, with all the chicken cordon bleu and all. Oh yeah, the cake was awesome too!

Here's some pics of loot I got:

A card signed by everyone, a postcard from Flanegan, and a polaroid of everyone, except Shariff.

Here's a close up of the polaroid:

Testing new toy

2010-03-20T23:59:00.001+08:00

Good day, everyone.

As some of you may know, I recently purchased a Canon EF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM lens from a friend. This was the top of the line 70-200mm lens from Canon, until the Canon EF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM Mark II was announced a couple of months ago.

So what's a guy to do with a new toy? Well, I need to test it out, and it so happens I managed to get the lens in time for a surprise ~~buttse~~ errm, birthday party for Julian, which was held in Just Wargame. Shoot shoot shoot I did, and also some Lauya poison was successfully spread among a few people (you know who you are heh heh).

There were some Warhammer 40,000 fanatics painting their miniatures today, so I shot them while waiting for the surprise party to commence.

The contrast in the next picture was compromised by the flare caused by the light entering from the store front:

I just wanted to capture the T-shirt:

I think Sakuya (the heavily poisoned Arnab) shot the next few:

Except for this one. The heavily poisoned Arnab returned the camera, so I snapped this before she asked for the poison again.

Now back to liang moi hunting taim...

The birthday boy himself: Sotong

I think this next photo was shot by John (looking for liang moi ah...)

Wait, these two are not liang mois...

OK lah, I was also looking for liang zhais

This next photo was the only photo I brightened, all the rest were resized and/or cropped from the JPGs straight out of my ancient dinosaur of a Canon 400D.

It was a good exercise in getting to know the lens, but I still need moar practice.

Warhammer 40000 at Just Wargame

2010-03-16T22:33:00.001+08:00

Alrighty then... for all you Warhammer 40,000 nuts out there (specifically in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah), a shop catering to this hobby has just been drop-podded on to Karamunsing Capitol (next to Komplex Karamunsing). Called Just Wargame, it offers games, miniatures painting lessons, books and more, hence it is poised to become the command centre for this game here in KK, after the initial squad died of old age many years ago.

Here's a mug shot of the owner, Oliver:

For the uninitiated, Warhammer 40,000 is a turn-based strategy game where 2 or more armies (represented by using miniatures) try to kill each other, or win a preset objective on the battlefield (usually a large table adorned with specially built terrain and models). For more in-depth explanation, please use a search engine of your choice to dig up the relevant information, thank you.

Here's a bunch of Smurfs, I mean Ultramarines, one of the many companies of Space Marines in this game:

A normal game usually has an army point limit, meaning you can only include units into your army up to a certain limit, for example 2000 points. Each unit or squads is worth a number of points, so if the game is a 2000pt game, then your army can have units that add up to not more than 2000 points.

Last Sunday, a Warhammer 40,000: Apocalypse game was run from 1 p.m. until the cut-off time of 6 p.m. The main difference between an Apocalypse game and a normal game is that the Apocalypse game has no point limit. You can bring your WHOLE collection of Warhammer miniatures and lay them out on the battlefield. This doesn't mean the player who has fewer minis will be at a disadvantage. No, the total points for each army will still need to be known, and the one with less points will be given extra resources to balance out the playing field.

So, the players came out in full force:

and so did their minis:

This bunch of yellow space marines (nicknamed the DiGi Marines) were most unfortunate, because almost everyone was picking on them:

Even papa Nurgle came for a walkabout:

For the report on the battle, please click here.

Here's the first hand account of the battle from the commander of the yellow space marines, koby.

Hope to be seeing ya, heh heh heh heh...

Good staples, bad staples

2010-03-12T00:55:00.001+08:00

Have you ever had the opportunity to staple lots of things together? For example assignments, homework, reports, et cetera? How many times did the trusty stapler jam on you while you had to meet that deadline?

One, twice, three time a lady...

Oops, brain malfunction again. Anyway, before you start to curse the stapler for those jammed staples you had to dig out, have you thought about the quality of the staple itself? Not all staples are made equal. I give you exhibit A:

See the staples on the left? Those are staples that came from a not-so-high-quality brand. Yes they are cheap, so now you know WHY they are cheap: it would seem that they did not spend much money on quality control. First of all, the staple magazine (err... I don't now what to call that row of staples) is misaligned. Secondly, the glue that they used to hold that row together is quite weak. so if you knock that magazine hard enough, it will start to crumble and fall apart, sending staples falling to their doom... (and also wasting staples).

The office denizens where I work have had to endure the agony of using those kinds of staples, and I can tell you the lost production caused by jammed staplers is not worth the few Ringgit saved by buying cheap staples. I marked the staples above to make sure I did not accidentally use them.

Here's another look at the staples:

See? They're not even the same height! Another thing that caught my attention was that the packaging for the staples are quite similar, right down to the placement of certain words and colour. Are they trying to confuse the consumers?

So, if you are buying staples, do take a closer look at the staples. Oh ya, the staples on the right are from Max (and no, I am not paid by them to mention their name, move along...).

My pics were used in where?

2010-03-09T21:18:00.002+08:00

Good day readers.

I was going through my photobucket stats when I saw quite a lot of my pics were being referenced by a website in the Czech Republic (I think, since the Top Level Domain ending was .cz).

So, I hopped over like a rabbit in a waistcoat, lo and behold, my pictures were staring back at me as if they did something wrong...

Google translated page is here.

My first reaction was: OK, maybe someone liked the photos so much they posted some of them. But when I scrolled through the whole post, the person hijacked most of the photos from this post of mine.

I scanned the page a few times, and did not see any link tracking back to my blog post. So I can only assume this was done by a little girl or a pedo who likes to grab photos without authorisation or acknowledgement.

So, does anyone know how to speak Czech?

Update (23/03/2010) : Seems that after one of my cosplayer friends posted a comment on that particular blog post demanding that they get rid of the offending post, the blog owner did comply with the request. So at least I can say the person(s) is gracious enough to do as requested.

Slowpoke day and retarded drivers

2010-03-02T22:49:00.000+08:00

Hai, today I shall rant about slowpoke drivers.

While on my way back to work, I had to end up behind a lorry carrying lots of gas cylinders going towards Lido. I can understand this guy's case, since he's carrying heavy and unstable stuff, and he happens to be on the RIGHT lane going at 40km/h, sure, who wouldn't understand? Not much beef here.

But then, while going home after work, I had to meet 2 (yes, TWO) slowpokes on the road. First there was the slow driver, going between 30-40 km/h on the KK High School road (2 lane road; one coming, one going). OK so that is kinda close to a residential area, but there's no car in front of you for the next 100 metres or so! Can't you at least mozy up to 50 or 60 km/h ?

After exiting that stranglehold road, the driver above moved off to the fast lane on the main road and went on his/her way, I had to be stuck behind another slowpoke, also going 40-50 km/h on the main road. I didn't want to waste fuel trying to overtake the person because my turning was coming up and the returns of investing so much fuel for that short bit of overtaking would not be enough to justify the expenditure, so I just said to myself: "relax and reach home", which I did in one piece, thankfully.

So this brings me to this last dumb@$$ driver which I luckily didn't bump into in KK. I was returning home after doing some errands in town and was turning at a roundabout, when suddenly a red Kenari flashed past in front of me from the road on the LEFT. As you drivers out there should know, in Malaysia (where we drive on the left side of the road), you should always give way to the cars coming from the RIGHT, but this dumb@$$ didn't seem to even slow down when approaching the roundabout. Luckily I was not accelerating any faster or else that driver would have crashed into the left of my car.

Anyway, thank God nobody was hurt today. Just remember readers, be careful when on the road, for you do not know when dumb luck or dumb@$$-ness will strike...

Happy placeholder

2010-03-02T00:43:00.000+08:00

Happy new year (Gregorian calendar), Happy Chinese New Year, Happy Lent (which is more about penance, not happiness) and Happy Chap Goh Mei (which just passed on Sunday).

This blog is rusting, just like my brain.

I'm almost done with the HobbyCon 2009 photos, so bear with me a little longer...

I dunno why, but I feel like I'm stuck in a rut. Going back and forth, back and forth but ultimately not moving anywhere at all.

Is it time for a change? But how? Brain transplants haven't been perfected yet, so I can't change that part.

Maybe a change of scenery, or maybe it's just because my body needs endorphins? Who knows unless they analyse my blood and tell me what's missing?

Oh well, time to sleep.

And oh yeah, I think my blood rusts more than my brain, since it has a higher iron content.

Jack's BBQ party

2010-01-24T19:12:00.000+08:00

Jack invited us over to his place for a BBQ last Friday, and THIS is what happened:

Sorry, no other shots of other places bcos my camera was on a tripod the entire night.

Hobbycon 2009 Day 1 part 1

2009-12-15T21:20:00.000+08:00

Oh nuts, it's already Tuesday and I'm still in the middle of editing the Day 1 pictures *swt*

OK, the first part will be about the preparation photos and stuff, and part 2 should contain more of the events (Cosplay competition). Photos will be uploaded when they're ready.

Are you ready for Hobbycon 2009?

2009-12-12T00:01:00.001+08:00

Hobbycon 2009 is upon us, where are we to run? LOL

OK, if you have nothing better to do and are wondering what is Hobbycon all about, just drop by Citymall Kota Kinabalu on 12 and 13 (today and Sunday) to find out.

Or else you will blur-blur sotong...

Hawt pixels, anyone?

2009-11-14T00:41:00.003+08:00

Has any one tried taking long exposure photos using a digital camera? Some of you do, and some people prefer to use film :P

Anyway, the thing I want to bring up today was the issue of hot pixels. These manifest themselves as bright spots in your digital photo. Most of the time, they are not noticeable because they blend into the subject, but in certain situations, they can be quite obvious.

Take for example this photo below:

The picture above has been sanitised for your protection LOL, ok, I went and cloned out all the obvious spots. But lets look at another picture:

Yeah, the flare in the middle was caused by a passing car, but did you notice the little spots of light under the street lamp, or the one under the red/green flare? Lets take a closer look:

The photo above is a 100% crop from the 2nd photo. Notice the white spots? Those are pixels on my camera's sensor that are malfunctioning. It reads higher than the proper amount of light, therefore it reports that it is being blasted by 1.21 gigawatts of light, and turned white (lol)

This is most noticeable when you set the exposure duration to a vey long time (several seconds or more). For the shots above, my camera was set to 30 seconds exposure.

According to what I've read on the Internet, this is quite common to all cameras. No, this is not the same as noise that you see when you use high ISO. These are actually pixels on your sensor that is not working properly.

What do you do when you find out that you have hot pixels in your photo? Well, you have several choices:

Clone it out using photo editing tools
Ignore them if they're not too conspicuous
Switch on noise reduction mode (if your camera has this function)
Use film :P

So, what would you do?

Missing twin?

2009-10-13T01:47:00.002+08:00

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:

Exhibit 1: Hilary Swank

and my friend Bev:

Exhibit 2: Bev

Maybe it's the killer smile, or the eyes, or both? I dunno...

Dungeons and Dragons

2009-09-22T22:59:00.000+08:00

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:

Now all I have to do is to level up my character to level 3, which means I get to pick another encounter power :D

Sabah Bloggers Gathering 2009 is upon us!

2009-08-27T16:23:00.001+08:00

OK, maybe not so dramatic, but...

Anyhow - this year's gathering will be in Imperial Hotel again, on the 31st of October so for those people who want to attend, just click on the little banner on the left or on the one above to get them details :D

Sunday macro fun

2009-08-23T23:40:00.004+08:00

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.

Beach outing

2009-08-17T00:48:00.003+08:00

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:

Mid year weddings

2009-08-03T01:33:00.003+08:00

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)

CSP photography workshop

2009-07-19T23:04:00.003+08:00

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.

More macro attempts

2009-07-14T00:26:00.004+08:00

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!!!!!

Intro to Improv

2009-07-01T01:22:00.002+08:00

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...

First victim of new lens

2009-06-21T00:18:00.005+08:00

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... :(

Happy Pesta Kaamatan

2009-05-30T01:53:00.005+08:00

Yay, the end of May is nigh, that means Pesta Kaamatan is right around the corner!

Wait, as I'm typing this, it's already the 30th day of May, so we actually bumped into and ran over Kaamatan?

FYI, the peoples of Sarawak will have their harvest festival on 1st and 2nd of June, right after Sabah's. So this year, Sabahans will only get Monday off (to replace the holiday falling on Sunday), whereas the Sarawakians only need to return to work on Wedneday, since Monday and Tuesday are holidays for them. Oh well...

Anyway, we had a fun time playing FoF on Jack's computer during the BBQ and then there was the discussion about CSI: Miami's Horatio Caine's shade-wearing skills which ended up with most of us doing this:

(Note: Person in the picture is NOT Horatio Caine)
Anyway, just wanna wish everyone Happy Harvest Festival.

Gothic Lolita outing

2009-05-03T02:40:00.005+08:00

Hi ya boys and girls, there was a mini gothic / lolita outing yesterday (Saturday) at 1Borneo, organised by some of the CSP members.

We met up at Dome cafe, and proceeded to several areas around 1Borneo. The order of the day was to eat, drink and be merry in loli heh heh. I'll just let the pictures do the talking:

A failed panning shot:

The rest of the pictures below were not shot in 1Borneo, but in one of the CSP member's house:

Changed this to sepia and got rid of a few distractions from the background:

And the dog also wanted a piece of the action:

Random pictures will be posted here if I'm not too lazy to process them...
OK, random pictures time:

Nikon T-shirt with Nikon cam:

Will you pet me?

Warehouse shooting

2009-04-19T23:59:00.003+08:00

Hello boys and girls, and velkom to another edition of a shooting spree :D

OK lah, I only joined a photoshoot today, no guns involved, only some Canons heh heh...

MSJ photography organised a photoshoot with the theme "Warehouse shoot" where we went and shoot at some warehouses at the KK port area. The shoot was scheduled for 3.30 pm. Anyway, here's some of the shots:

For those who love bokeh:

What the???

What a cute pose...

Somehow the red bricks on the right were kind of distracting, so I converted it into black and white...

and it seemed to turn out better...

Had to do some lightening on the face, because it was kinda in the shadow:

Luckily there were no ants crawling around the fence...

This shot reminds me of the Afghan Girl photo by Steve McCurry:

After that we went off to Jesselton Point to shoot some moar, but by that time everyone was quite tired from all the shooting previously.
And so with this I finish my post:

Crazy hot and cold weather

2009-04-14T22:52:00.004+08:00

How's your sweating lately? If you have been melting every time you walk out to your front gate, you're not the only one. The temperature was up to almost 33° Celsius, and this was at night!

On the same day, it started pouring in the afternoon, so I whipped out ye not-so-olde camera and shot the rain coming down off the awning:

The weather is crazy I tell you!

Earth Hour at Nexus Resort Karambunai

2009-04-11T16:13:00.005+08:00

Earth hour was two weeks ago, and only know then I'm posting up some shots from that day :P

I was contacted by a representative of this resort to help shoot the activities that they conducted in conjunction with Earth Hour. If you want to know more about Earth Hour, just click here.

Anyway, I managed to get to the place at around 6:40 pm, since Earth Hour starts around 8:30 p.m. For Earth Hour, all participating parties switched off their lights for one hour to use less energy and to give awareness to the coming energy crisis. OK, maybe I'm getting a bit melodramatic here, but just click on the link above, that should set you straight :D

OK, the plan was to have a bonfire on the beach and do some cultural dances around the fire for the guests, and to get the guests involved with the activities, but heaven decided to keep the resort from releasing more CO₂ into the atmosphere by having a super heavy tropical storm greet us before the activities. So all the activities had to be done in the lobby of the resort.

The activities involved cultural dances, notably the Magunatip (I hope the spelling is correct) and a 3 piece live band. It's picture time:

The 3-piece band:

Murut warriors looking for targets:

There were some water droplets in the frame that was caught by my flash in this next picture, because the place was raining cats and dogs and there was quite a strong wind blowing the rain in to the lobby:

Getting the guests involved in the Magunatip:

More guests enjoying the singalong:

All in all it was a sweaty experience, since I had to run around all over the place to shoot.

Oh before I forget, this is how it looked like when the lights went out (shot from a hotel room on the 5th floor):

Bad parking

2009-04-11T15:25:00.003+08:00

Don't you just hate it when some drivers parked their car incorrectly? Especially when it comes to parking bay spaces in shopping malls. I'll let the pictures do the talking below:

This was taken a few weeks ago... We had to inch really close to the other vehicle because the rear of our vehicle was sticking out of the parking space...

Anthony Lai obituary

2009-03-29T17:30:00.005+08:00

Uncle Anthony (On Tong) passed away on Friday, 27 March 2009 at Damai Specialist Centre at 11.15 a.m. Funeral services will be at 12 noon 30 March 2009 at Fook Lu Siew funeral parlour (room 2D) mile 2 Tuaran Road and thereafter to Tamalang Silou Cemetery, Inanam for burial.

May his soul rest in peace.

CUBE photo contest

2009-03-23T01:28:00.003+08:00

I went for the Cube Restaurant and Wine Lounge photo contest last Thursday (19 March).

The Cube restaurant is located in City Mall (for those who don't know, it's at the left hand corner as soon as you turn into City Mall). The interesting thing about this restaurant is that it is a nightmare for photographers!!! (The ceiling is black, and the lighting is kinda dim) OK, just joking lah, it has a cosy atmosphere to kick back and relax.

OK, back to the main story: we were invited to participate in this photo contest by ~~silvertongue~~ I mean Silverhand (actually Julian bugged me into joining). So after work, I rushed home, grabbed a quick shower and my camera gear and headed to Cube.

So I reached there slightly before 6pm, and a few other photographers were already assembled there. The proprietress, Mei was friendly and accommodating to all of us as we shuffled around her restaurant trying to shoot her food :P

We had to shoot the Cube signature dishes as well as the models, because they were wearing some clothes sponsored by... errr... I'll get back to you on that. Heh heh. Moving on...

Edit: The clothes were provided by Samantha, another shop also located in City Mall.

I came to Cube on a previous visit, and noted the lack of a white ceiling (hence the photographer's nightmare) and brought along a little prop to help:

Photo credit to Gerry.

We had to shoot the food and drinks:

The signature dish above, was actually another one ordered by a restaurant patron, but since it looked better than the sample that we had earlier, we shot hers instead LOL.

So after shooing away all the photographers from her dinner, she finally managed to tuck into her food with gusto!

Another Life video

2009-03-17T21:28:00.004+08:00

I'm just putting this up so that I can find the videos again. Aspect ratio is a bit off, so just think of it as viewing a 4:3 video on widescreen with stretching :D

Video was shot in the middle of last year, and the premier was in December last year. Movie was made by Shaz (or I usually refer to him as The Director) using a host of local talent. Mostly working on the cheap (or for peanuts) :P

Pictars can be found here

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Speakers back online

2009-03-06T22:40:00.002+08:00

This is the first bit of good news for this year: my creative speakers that died 2 years ago has been resurrected, thanks to a relative :D

The initial diagnosis was that the power brick died, but after sending it in to my uncle for a closer look, my uncle's bro-in-law found a short inside the subwoofer that caused a fuse inside the power brick to melt, thus rendering the brick--> a brick. LOL!

Now I can hear those zombies running from behind me in 5.1 glory...

Bad year rising

2009-03-01T11:08:00.002+08:00

Ahh... 2009 what a lousy start to the year this has been. I've been plagued with health problems and lotsa stress (are they related? I dunno...) since the beginning of this year.

Hope it doesn't get any worse than it is...

Faces of Guitar Heroes?

2009-02-18T23:53:00.002+08:00

This is a very late post, since the events described here happened during Chinese New Year (almost 1 month ago, heh heh).

A whole bunch of us went to Jack's house for his open house, and what greeted us? Rock band!!! (Well, actually some documentary, but nevermind...)

Here's what you get when people have aspirations of becoming a rock guitar star (yes, this is serious business!):

Some of the songs were scary to play...

Grandma out of hospital

2009-01-27T11:08:00.000+08:00

OK, some good news for the new year: my grandma is out of the hospital and back at my uncle's place. She went out two days ago, or was it 3... anyway, we went to visit her yesterday (1st day of the Chinese New Year) and she looked fine.

Grandma admitted

2009-01-15T08:15:00.003+08:00

Grandma was admitted to DSC about 2 days ago, after suffering a mild stroke.

Now she drifts in and out of lucidity.

Welcome 2009

2009-01-02T01:15:00.001+08:00

It is already the 2nd day of 2009.

Wishing Su San & Chee Kuang congratulations on your wedding yesterday, hope you like your gift :D

Congrats Gokula and Mohana

2008-12-17T00:51:00.003+08:00

I just came back from KL, attending Gokula's wedding in PJ. He got hitched to Mohana (a very lovely lass, tall too!) last Sunday, 14th December in a traditional Indian wedding ceremony in the morning, which was then followed by a lavish dinner reception at night.

Here's some sniper shots I made during the ceremony in the wedding hall:

Congrats to the lovely couple:

Here's their walk-in part of the ceremony:

Look at the horde of photographers, official and unofficial:

Washing of the feet:

There was even a "kolam" at the entrance of the wedding hall:

Later that night, we attended the dinner at a nice hotel, and during the bride and groom's entrance, they were escorted in by a pair of bagpipe players! I kid you not! Too bad I didn't shoot them...

The newlywed pouring the champagne:

Gokul giving his maiden speech as the bridegroom:

All in all it was a grand occasion, and I managed to meet up with a few old friends from university. The only downside is: they keep asking me when's my turn... :P

Another Life movie premier

2008-12-12T23:59:00.001+08:00

Today was the premier of the movie Another Life that was shot earlier this year starring the CSPians.

It was supposed to be a funny story about an average Joe named Haikal who experiences mysterious changes in his life, all of which is tied to a strange rock that he bought at a 2nd hand items shop.

Anyway, hope it gets published soon :D on youtube :P

HobbyCon 2008 Day 2

2008-12-08T00:10:00.003+08:00

Group pictures first:
Sorry for the lousy version, this is the one with the most people inside. Earlier ones don't have everyone, and even this one pun missing some booth owners :P

HobbyCon 2008 Day 1

2008-12-08T00:05:00.004+08:00

Welcome to HobbyCon 2008

Oh boy where do I start? OK, since you all need the group photos, so that's the ones I will process out heh heh...

Click on the thumbnail pictures for the larger version:

Here's the group photos for day one. Pictures of Cosplayers will be forthcoming.

Update:

Here's the president himself: Mr Cubex.

Some of the maids getting ready for maid cafe:

One of the maid's pointy stick:

Moar maids:

Mika and Massy:

A few people admiring the comic strips:

Nerdpride's army also made an appearance:

Hangmen warily eyeing a young member of the crowd, heh heh:

There were many booths taking part in HobbyCon 2008, among them was the 1/6 figurines booth as shown above, then there were others like:

The Gempak/ Team DayDreamers comic booth:

IT Station:

Carcasean (specialising in board games):

Magic: The Gathering tournament (not really a booth per se)

A maid cafe:

Gamer Concept (demonstrating the Sony PS2, among other things)

and Moe Yumi figurine stall (these were just for demo, from a private collector's collection), but they were selling other cute figurines:

will update this later... now i must zzzzzz....

HobbyCon 2008 preparation

2008-12-05T23:59:00.004+08:00

I went to Kompleks Asia City today to help out the pre-HobbyCon setup. The setup crew did have to wait a while for the tables and chairs to arrive because the management could only release the said furniture at around 8pm. Fortunately the tables and chairs arrived before that, so work started a bit earlier.

Here's some more volunteers setting up a display rack:

So hope to see you there on 6th and 7th December 2008 at Kompleks Asia City, the middle part, you can't miss it :D

For the birds - 3

2008-11-29T18:17:00.002+08:00

Alas, it was not meant to be...

Sad to say that all the birds have gone to bird heaven. Cause of death: unknown. Probable cause: overfeeding, but this is just a theory.

Final score:
Death 4 - birds 0.

For the birds - 2

2008-11-11T21:11:00.003+08:00

Small update on the health of the four little birds... erm I mean three little birds that are left. One of them was missing when my mom went to feed them this morning (or was it afternoon). We suspect the cat must have grabbed the smallest one from the cage when it was on the floor of the cage or it was a Houdini species( but most probably the former) because shortly after, my mom found a cat lurking around the garden area.

You see, the smallest one was kinda sickly these couple of days and we don't really know what happened to it. We think it may have been the ants trying to bite it to death every night and its legs can't really bend. It seems to be stretched out for some unknown reason. Anyway it is gone now, probably inside some cat roaming the neighbourhood.

Now if only the rest of its siblings learned how to eat by themselves...

For the birds

2008-11-10T01:46:00.002+08:00

It's been a busy few weeks... so this will be a quick update.

My mom rescued a nest of birds that was blown down by the strong wind about more than a week ago and has taken up the task of taking care of them. Here's how they looked like last week on the first day my mom found them:

There's one dominant one, two middle ones and one kinda underdeveloped one. The underdeveloped one is struggling right now, and we're not sure it can survive until maturity. The rest of the other siblings seem to be OK. We'll just have to see what happens in a few weeks time.

Here's how they look like today:

Jade's Halloween Night of Mayhem

2008-10-30T01:09:00.005+08:00

Jade is gonna have a Halloween bash on 31 October, with the theme "Night of Mayhem". So dress up as your favourite ghoul or monster and stand a chance to win something on that night!

Start Time: Friday, October 31, 2008 at 7:00pm
End Time: Saturday, November 1, 2008 at 2:00am
Location: 3-1-1, Block 3, 1st Floor, Api-Api Centre
Street: Jalan Centre Point
City/Town: Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

A bit of info regarding the poster above, heh heh...
Model: ki-chan
Shot by me
Makeup by Jofanna Bridal
Special poster effects by bobidom and mars
Special thanks to dias and Edgar and err... siapa lagi... I forgot
Moar photos by Edgar here.

H-factor

2008-10-27T02:00:00.002+08:00

Yes, lil old me attended the H-factor Creative Youth Workshop that was held in Pan Pacific, Sutera Harbour Resort yesterday. The workshop was scheduled for 10:30am to 6:00 pm, but of course it started a bit later than scheduled.

More info in the link above.

It was a workshop that had speakers such as Hannah Tan, Hans Isaac, Reymee (of Innuendo fame), David Lai (couldn't make it today), Fellest Yan, Joey Khor, Harith Iskander, Serena C and Pietro to talk about their respective industries.

No photos of the goings on right now, as the organisers banned everyone from taking photos during the workshop, as they had their official photographer and videographer to capture the moments, so if you are looking for photos of the event, please try the link above.

Side note: the local media was allocated front row seats, but I wasn't sure if they were allowed to take photos or not, since some of the ushers did request one of the media members to stop taking photos early in the workshop. Why can't the local media take and use their own photos, since they were allocated front row seats? They could have just stayed where they were and snapped, and it wouldn't have hampered the view of the other participants that were packed like sardines at the back by much.

All in all it was fun, but I did leave with a slight bitter after-taste in my mouth.

Must have been the fish...

Fake movie poster

2008-10-23T00:28:00.005+08:00

I just got bored one day and came up with this idea: Hey, why not design a movie poster for the short movie that I helped out in earlier this year? I scoured my collection of photos from that period and came up with almost nothing. Yes, I was too busy helping out that I didn't shoot many of the scenes using my DSLR. What to do? I had to run a few ideas through my brain for a few days and this is the result:

Please don't flame me, as this was my first attempt to simulate a movie poster. Sorry Joj :D And no, it's not a horror movie...

Breakfast at Green Park Cafe

2008-10-19T23:37:00.005+08:00

I didn't really have breakfast there, since I ate earlier in the morning after attending church service. I only ordered barley water, and shot a few photos,(nothing nice :P ) but here's one that I like:

Eyeball courtesy of Bev

The owner of the eyeball and the rest of the CSPians:

More stuff here.

I'll be seeing you...

Happy birthday RinaCat and Robin

2008-09-29T02:14:00.004+08:00

Went for a "surprise" birthday party celebrating Rinacat and Robin's birthday. Lots of photos, lots of food (paid by ourselves) and lots of noise.

The party was held at New York New York, 1 Borneo at 7 p.m. Combined guests were close to 40 people, I think.

Photos will be uploaded as soon as I can process them. In the meantime, I'm going nuts with the number of photos in my HDD that I have to process. Pic related:

OK, here's some pictahs, haven't done uploading nor editing all of them...

The birthday girl:

and the birthday boy:

were all gathered in a veeeery long table:

While they were eating...

they were laughing (I dunno why...)

Nolah, just kidding heh heh...

More party goers:

More pictahs coming soon.

Canon Talk 2008 part 3

2008-09-26T00:00:00.003+08:00

Alright folks, here's the last of the pictures that are worth posting. You can find PART 1 here and PART 2 here. The rest of the shots were ruined because of user error :P Lots of mis-focused pictures, but oh well, it is a learning experience.

OK, after the photoshoot, there was lunch in the hall, and the non-fasting ones dug in like hungry horses :D

Later, there was a portrait demo using the 1D(something) Mark III and the 50D, plus a showcase of the printer that can "print life-size pictures", the model number which escapes my mind.

Anyway, here's the model that was engaged for the portrait shoot:

and with the printout:

Canon Talk 2008 part 2

2008-09-21T23:57:00.002+08:00

This is a post continuing from part 1.

Part 3 can be found here.

OK, here's more of what went down at STAR during the Canon EOS Experience Seminar: more model pics...

The white balance needs some work, I'll try fix them when I have more time :P

And here's part of the horde of photogs that surrounded the two lovely ladies:

Canon Talk 2008 part 1

2008-09-21T21:41:00.003+08:00

Hi there boys and girls, here's another edition of Canon's ~~brainwashing~~ I mean promotional talk, held at the Shangri-La's Tanjung Aru Resort (STAR) today. I got to know about this talk from fellow blogger bananakk's blog.

You can skip to part 2 and part 3 if you like :D

I attended one about 2 years ago, the results of which you can see here. The talk was conducted by Mr. Kaz Chua and Mr. Teoh Peng Kee.

Mr. Teoh:

Mr. Kaz:

It started off with the registration at 8 a.m. with breakfast being served in the garden, and the talk followed shortly.

Firstly, Mr. Kaz showed the audience some of his shots made using the Canon 1Ds MIII (I think) and 50D in his trip to China. The photos were nice, very nice...

Anyway, after the session by Mr. Kaz, next Mr Teoh stepped up to explain a bit more about the EOS system. After that, heh heh heh was the event that everyone was waiting for: the model shootout in the garden. Three models were provided, and here's a preview of things to come:

See you in Part 2.

Take High Dynamic Range Photographs - wikiHow

2008-09-17T03:00:00.000+08:00

Here's an interesting piece of information:
Take High Dynamic Range Photographs - wikiHow

Another Canon talk coming

2008-09-11T22:23:00.002+08:00

There is another Canon Roadshow / Seminar / Talk / whateveryoucallit coming to KK on the 21st of September, at the Grand Ballroom, Shangri-La's Tanjung Aru Resort & Spa.

More details can get from here.

Heh heh heh...

Time to charge them batteries...

Loli outing

2008-08-30T22:08:00.005+08:00

No, I didn't dress up as a French maid and go prancing around the streets of KK, but my friends did, and these are the results:

If you are new to this kinda fashion, this is called Lolita fashion. Nothing to do with the novel by Vladimir Nabakov, this fashion originated from Japan. Don't ask me more about this phenomenon, just google for it :D

Update:
Here's another shot from above, but in a cooler environment, heh heh...

So many budu drivers

2008-08-27T17:50:00.005+08:00

Why is it today I met so many strange drivers on the road?

Scene 1:
While waiting at the junction in the left lane that says "Give way" (you know, the triangle was painted on the road) a car in front of me was waiting for the traffic light to turn green then he/she will move. C'mon lah, it was a beri jalan lane, so if there's no traffic, you can go out. After waiting more than 10 seconds for the guy to move, someone behind me decided to sound the horn to move, and luckily he/she did move out of the junction after that.

Scene 2:
While waiting at another traffic light, the car in front of me was slowly drifting back!!! I thought the driver would have realised her car was drifting, or that the car would settle into a depression on the road but NOOOOO.... it came closer, and closer...Until I estimate there was about a foot left of clearance, then I sounded my horn. Well, she stopped her car in time, or else I would have to reverse. Luckily there was no car behind me at the time.

Scene 3:
While turning into a junction (a right turn), some gasshole decided to overtake me from the LEFT! Ya, sure you have the momentum, but that is plain dangerous driving! I can't remember what make of car it was, but I think it was a maroon Unser.

Oh well, that's my rant for today.

How have you been driving lately?

Banana Moth

2008-08-25T20:59:00.005+08:00

My parents found this in our back garden the other day (a few weeks ago actually) but I haven't had time to blorg about it.

According to my folks, this is a banana moth, quite partial to banana trees. And I can tell you this thing is huge! The wingspan is probably more than 15cm (ya, longer than your school ruler).

Here's a shot of it without flash:

And here's one with flash:

This guy was just sitting there while I was fiddling with my camera and tripod, not to mention 1/2 kg of flashes.

I wish I had a real macro lens... so I can actually go closer than this: (this was cropped)

Next item: macro lens?

P.S. All these shots were made using the kit lens, which goes to show that the kit lens of the Canon 400D is not that bad, if you know how to use it :D

Sabahan Bloggers Gathering funny pics

2008-08-06T00:05:00.002+08:00

Good day gentlemen and ladies, this is your blogger speaking :D

Alrighty then, after I was done with the event pics, now is the time for the foolhardy pictures. This is what happens when there are too many digital cameras around heh heh...

Double KO (ya, we shot each other):

I don't wanna let go!!!

Tiger Knee!!!

Fo' shizzle!

Nya nya nya nya nya!!!

And saving the best for last:

Lets have another one!!! And next time we should probably have some games...