!yvaN ehT nioJ

Many do not know this, but on the 16th of August 2006, I was actually in the United States of America.

Joining me were colleagues, including smashpOp.

Clockwise from top-left: The journey to Westport, Port Klang; the USS Enterprise, the world’s oldest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier; hangar entrance; the companion ships.

Gee Todd, kinda nifty, y’think?

Clockwise from top-left: Pilots are given codenames, like “Shag”; these guys get “Dirt” and “Sticky”; plane ol’ hangar round; sign of the times.

Aircraft carriers are rushed to the scene, because quite simply, planes would not have enough fuel to be immediately deported to a situation.

Clockwise from top-left: What reaction would you give to eight nuclear reactors?; this was also where Top Gun was shot; nosing around; the walk down from the flight deck.

In other unrelated pictures on the same day, while waiting for the bus to take us in with security clearance, we spotted this naturally-cooled lorry…

…and had time for panning shots, too.

Oh, and a morning sun, much earlier.

Tag Race

1 Reply

13th July, 2006, some Tamiya racecar circuit in One Utama.

Toyota Scion xB! The ultimate pimpin’ box car!

Set your shutter speed to 1/30th of a second to get this panning shot. Or just zoom all the way in, set your EV to +2 and ISO to 50 or 80 for similiar effect.

Suzuki Swift!

1/20th of a second, 140mm focal length (at 35mm equivalent) to get this panning shot.

Do-riff-too!

And now, to pad this blog entry.

Oh Joy, you tagged me!

AWESOME PEOPLE I WANNA MEET:
– Davina Goh, because she comes to mind first when I think of awesome.
– Suzanne Lee, so I can molest… her camera.
– Keanu Reeves, because they say I look like him, and I’d like to take a picture with him to find out.
– the Angel Of Death, because I want to borrow his scythe. I could think of a thousand uses for a scythe!

THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT:
– oxygen, because you need that to start a fire.
– my Nokia N70, who provides me companionship on those long journeys.
– my clothes, it helps me from being jumped on by swarms of nubile girls.
– rock and roll, because I love rock and roll.

I WISH I COULD:
– avoid coming to friends’ minds when they are doing blog memes and have to pick friends to tag
– cut down this meme from 5 items to 4. Oh well, I took the liberty of doing that already.
– walk over and tell people how I feel.
– clear the backlog of stuff I have to blog about.

SONGS THAT I THINK ARE AWESOME: (For once, 5 is not enough.)
– Queen – Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy
– Incubus – Summer Romance
– Prince – Sexy MF
– The Doors – Light My Fire (has Jim Morrison ever come to you in a dream?)

I WANT:
– chicks such that people would tell me to get a room. 😀
– to do only things that will improve or contribute to the wellness and progression of society (or self, at least…)
– to be your backdoor man. (Damn those naked men coming to you in dreams!)
– to rearrange the order of some of the questions in this meme. Oh well, did that already.

HOW I SEE MYSELF IN 10 YEARS:
– through a mirror?
– looking ten years older.
– acting ten years older (or at least, the more desirable attributes of that age…)
– writing 2016 on dates, and not 2015.

RANDOM FACTS:
– I don’t roll over and sleep.
– My right sideburn grows faster than my left, and my beard gravitates to my right sideburn.
– I don’t block people on MSN.
– The Nile in Egypt is the longest river in the world.

MISCONCEPTIONS:
– I smoke. (The tainted teeth are a result of Teh Tarik.)
– I am a druggie. (The stoned look is a result of lack of sleep, updating my blog in hopes of entertaining all you bored people.)
– I have the height of a NBA basketball player. (My face just looks tall.)
– I have a big camera. (I’m often sighted with a friend’s camera, be it Tarquin’s or Jacintha’s or Shaz’s or Asyraf’s.)

I TAG:
– whoever I can catch. I’m going to count to 5 and start chasing!

Rainbows And Polarizers

3 Replies

Time for some long-procrastinated camera geeking.

So it was a hot drive down to Ampang, when I tried to capture the light distortion from the sizzling heat by putting a polarizer filter in front of my camera.

And whoa, what did I see? Rainbows!

Turns out that sunlight, which then reflects off coated surfaces on a car’s glass, is polarized…

…and when it comes through the polarizer filter, some wavelengths are cut off, causing the rainbow effect. However, it varies between car; a Perodua Rusa’s rainbow patterns are like grilles. This was shot from smashpOp‘s Proton Gen.2; you can see the coating’s effect on the sky, but it is most obvious against other cars.

What if you don’t have a coated window? What if you’re not shooting from inside a vehicle? Simple. Cut a piece of plastic from a plastic microwaveable box and tuck it in front of the polarizer filter.

And so, you can still shoot rainbows!

You may think that thick plastic may lower image quality, but it does fine, adding a soft diffuse effect to this picture (no color or levels adjustments made, to show the effect.)

Same goes for this dreamy evening.

An even more interesting idea would be to use a polarizer to shoot real rainbows; the effect of the rainbow might be maximized, or striped, depending on the angle. I can’t wait to find out.

OBsession artSCENE

1 Reply

This following entry is copied from my Xfresh article. Without pictures, though.

What: Anak Bulan Di Kampong Wa’ Hassan
Where: Pentas 2, Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Center
When: 20-23 Sept @ 8.30pm and 23-24 Sept @ 3pm
How Much: RM25 and RM10 (students, disabled & senior citizens); you can get tickets at KLPac (03-4047 9000 / tickets@klpac.com) or The Actors Studio @ Bangsar Shopping Center (03-2094 9400 / tickets@theactorsstudio.com.my)
Who: Writer: Alfian bin Sa’at, Director & Performer: Gene Sha Rudyn

More details here.

Gene Sha Rudyn plays all the characters in this play; various people seen in a Kampung. The kampung is slowly being destroyed, but the play does not talk too much about that; instead, he paints a colorful picture of a merry kampung, with all its characters.

I’ve never lived in a kampung, yet from what I’ve seen on TV, read in Lat cartoons, I could relate. He effortlessly alternates between an Indian ice-cream seller and a Chinese minimart owner in a heated argument. He pokes fun of stereotypes (for example, in that scene, he points at a Malay guy, who is just looking and not doing anything.)

Gene also switches from characters instantaneously and effortlessly. I wondered how the lighting director could keep up with it. He also had very consistent voice imitations. There was also trademark Malay humor; for example, in one scene he puts on a most serious face and goes “Aku menangis, tapi dia tak nampak, pasal hujan lebat.”

Despite the easily accessible entertainment value, there were deeper themes and messages; one gripping scene has him crying, playing a homosexual man who was kicked out of his village because of his sexual preference.

Rating: 9/10

And now, for other pimpage!

What: A Malaysian Affair: A Tapestry Of Malaysian Songs
Where: The Actors Studio, Bangsar Shopping Center
When: 6th-7th October (8:30pm) and 8th October (3:00pm)
How Much: RM30 and RM40 (adult); RM25 and RM35 (12 years and below) + RM2 (Axcess Charge)
Who: The Young KL Singers

Oh, and there are lucky draw prizes on all 3 shows; holiday packages for 2 sponsored by Berjaya Hotels & Resorts worth up to RM4

21 Inches Of Love

8 Replies

So I got myself a 21″ Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitor. Most specifically, an IBM 6558 P202, a 21″ behemoth running at 1600×1200 resolution at 85 hertz. Multiply 1200 by 85 hz to get its maximum vertical refresh rate; 102 khz.

LCD Rant

No, it’s not a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) monitor. I hate current LCDs in the market, as the technology has not matured. The Dell 17″ LCDs I use at the office are very comfortable and look good, but they run at a slow 16ms update rate (thus being useless for games). The Samsung 17″ LCDs in the office, meanwhile, run faster at 12ms, but no matter how I adjusted the moire and patterns, I could never get consistent sharpness or a comfortable view. 19″ LCDs can reach 1440×900, while 17″ LCDs max out at 1280×1024 resolution. A 17″ CRT does 1024×768, which is lower… but most 19″ CRTs do 1600×1200 at 85hz (except Samsungs), and some even allow 2048×1536 at 60hz! A 21″ CRT usually has the same pixel clock and thus, same resolutions, just at a bigger scale.

I also had to keep adjusting the Samsung LCD’s brightness (when I had to use it at the office). It would be uncomfortably dim one moment and bright the next, so I had to adjust it about… each hour. I love Samsung CRTs, just not Samsung LCDs.

I see dead pixels.

LCDs are sold with a warning that says that as a part of the manufacturing process, a few pixels may be dead, meaning they stay a certain color no matter what you’re looking at. Unless there are seven dead pixels (or worse, 1%, which is 13 thousand pixels on a 1280×1024 display), you can’t get it replaced under warranty.

CRT manufacturers don’t chicken out.

L C Death

Cherrie‘s Dell laptop’s LCD died after one year of extensive usage. Edrei‘s Toshiba laptop’s LCD died after 2.5 years of extensive usage. I don’t know if this will happen to desktop LCDs too, but hey, I’ve had my good Samsung CRT for 5 years already.

Buying an LCD is not an investment for the future. I’d stay with my CRT, and buy an LCD later if it gets cheaper and better than CRTs.

Color And Gamma

CRTs also have accurate color and gamma. A major annoyance (going from my 5-years-and-20-days-old Samsung SyncMaster 750s CRT to the Dell LCD at work) is how the Dell tends to brighten the shadows, especially dark mids, giving the picture a dry, desaturated look. The Dell is already at minimum brightness, and the Samsung, its maximum brightness!

The upper picture is an example of what I’d see on a CRT; the lower one is on a LCD. It brings out the ugly compression of JPG, which doesn’t look so nice in the shadows.

NVidia’s Display Optimization Wizard helps you to set the correct color and gamma for your monitor. In my Samsung’s case, it was 70% brightness. However, if I was to Photoshop pictures to follow my Samsung’s brightness, it would be so much brighter on another CRT (on an unbranded Medion 17″ CRT, 0% brightness was my Samsung’s 100%, and 0% brightness on the Dell LCD was still much brighter than my Samsung’s 100%. But NVidia says that everything should be darker, really.)

Brightness Correction

And so, I left my Samsung at 100% brightness, and adjust gamma in Photoshop to look slightly dark (but with detail hidden in darker mids). It wouldn’t turn out so bad on the Dell. Meanwhile, on the Dell, I had to brighten the mids just a bit. If you noticed, my latest pictures all have blacker shadows; darker mids bring stronger color and more saturation, and pictures with a lot of darks also have smaller filesizes using JPG compression.

Price Wise

A 19″ CRT is also the same price as a 17″ LCD, and does better resolution, doesn’t mess with your colors, better gamma, and is better for games too. My computer table is the same size; we’ve always had space for CRTs until recently, so why are you all complaining about space?

P.S. I got mine secondhand. It had defocusing towards the left and right of the screen, so I got a discount, whee! The defocusing was quite annoying at 1600×1200 when reading small text, so I bumped up the font sizes for everything. (Well give it a break, it was 7 years old.) I could afford to do so at such a resolution! For games and movies, the defocusing didn’t matter, since we only pay attention to the middle of the screen. Watching a DVD full-screen has never been so visceral on a computer before! Also, such high resolution means that the DVD doesn’t look sharp enough for the screen!

Why’d I get it?
The Medion 17″ monitor, after fixing, had the same problem again. So I put it aside, moved the Samsung 17″ monitor from the primary computer (on the right) to the secondary computer (on the left), and the IBM 21″ to the primary computer. The last time I had two monitors of different sizes was in November 2002, with a shitty Princeton EO950 19″ CRT. Click here to see a 17″ versus a 19″. 😀

One Minute Short

Ambitschin’

12 Replies

Recent events have led to a wake up call. A good blow to the head.

If you asked me 5 days ago where I saw myself in 5 years from now, I wouldn’t know. Heck, I hated those ambition-type questions to the core, me being a laidback hippie, a voluntary honorary red ant. Is everybody supposed to be a managing director at the age of 25? I like hands-on programming. I don’t want to be giving orders to subordinates, who I feel would not do the job the way I want it. John Carmack has always been a hardcore programmer for id Software, despite co-owning it! His dedication and passion is what kept their game engines top-notch.

Move Out
I plan to move out of my parents’ house sometime.

I’ve never given it thought. I’ve never thought that I should, or that I would. Until recently.

Just like in Failure To Launch, there really isn’t a reason to move out. I do not hate my parents. I’m not inseparable from them either. I come home just to sleep, use the computer, fix the computer, provide free ASTRO for my family (it’s a company perk) and eat dinner. Sometimes. My Nokia N70‘s alarm clock is more annoying than previous Nokias I’ve had, but I am still coming back after gigs at 2am and sleeping right through the alarm. That’s where family comes in. The human alarm clock.

I don’t need to move out. I don’t get cigarette withdrawal symptoms at home. I don’t get the munchies. (I don’t smoke or do weed.) I don’t have a curfew. They’ve never said that I can’t bring girls into my room but I don’t, because I am shyyy. 😮

I was never forced to live independently before, since I went to college at Informatics KL, which was very near the Ampang Park LRT station. Perhaps, if I was studying Game Design in Multimedia University, Melacca (and then Cyberjaya) I’d be forced to experience it. Perhaps, if I came to the Klang Valley to study, from say Ipoh, I’d be forced to.

At this point, being forced to go for National Service would be good for me. It teaches kids to be independent! It really isn’t about learning how to fire guns. It’s about getting some muscles, a bit of a tan, and watching your back as you pick up the soap.

Where To?

Preferably somewhere in the middle of everything, like KL Sentral or Bangsar. Of course, both areas are prime property, so Seputeh, Brickfields and Kerinchi are cheaper options.

Oh, and it would have to be next to an LRT station, so even schoolgirls can come to my place… and play with my Transformers and watch me play guitar. I’m a private person and only do private performances, unless under inhibition-inhibiting substances.

Getting Around

I love the LRT and fully support it. It’s too bad people aren’t patient enough to live with it. A banged up car, and the cost of banging it back into shape, could be half a Kancil. Plus I could park anywhere without worrying. I wouldn’t put my junk in the backseat.

But really, do I need a car?

NO.

I am one of those people who can live with long bus rides. I’ve got my phone and loads of Symbian games. I’ve got my pen and paper and a Rubik’s Cube. I’ve always got something to mentally occupy myself with.

I just want a car so I can pick up chicks.

…and maybe come home late after clubbing in some place where taxis exorbitantly charge RM50 just to exit Subang/Sunway. But then, I shouldn’t be drinking and driving, so… do you see the irony here?

If I got married, I’d rather she drive while I take the bus. I might have a car, but it’s a matter of having a choice. (Like KL Commuter, a blog about public transportation in Malaysia, says.)

I’d hate myself the moment I find myself unable to ride the LRT.

Saving Up?

Since I’m so good at starting things and not finishing them, I shall exercise the policy of buying a functional item and then not upgrading it. For example, I was getting restless with my (sister’s) acoustic guitar, and wanted a lickable butterscotch Ibanez GSA 370-QM AM electric guitar badly. Just as I had the money for it, I failed for the first time in college. Plans were delayed, and the itch subsided.

Similiarly, I have a Canon Powershot A520, a functional geek camera with manual features. The itch is currently high to get a digital SLR… but I’ve a feeling that that too, will pass. I already have one item of camera. That cash could go to the car.

“Dad, I’m gonna move out. Can you buy me a Kancil?”

That’s not the point. Complete, true independence is the point.

…of course, provisions will be made for a gradual transition, but I will do as much as I am able to.

Food

I ~~can’t~~ ~~don’t know how to~~ haven’t tried to cook, but I have a whole lot of hair that I can afford to lose, by eating a carton of instant cup noodle. I’m used to my family’s kitchen mishaps, so if my cooking sucked I’d be pretty used to it. 😀

Drinks

I’m still at the age where I enjoy just having a sober conversation at a mamak compared to having a sober conversation in the smoky nethers of a pub or bistro. Alcohol is great, yeah, but just like food it goes in and goes out. Starbucks, too. Yeah, so I’m not big on coffee or alcohol. You could say that I haven’t cultivated such cultured tastes… but I should be thankful I don’t have such costly preferences. Ramli Burger anytime!

Changes, Plans

Self-preparation is the plan.

But first, I need to start practising as if I was independent at home, while I save up.

Cut Off Alarming Dependence

Tune myself to the alarm. It will be unavoidable that I will lack sleep. If I sleep at 2am, I’d only wake up automatically 8 hours later. However, there have been occurences where I remind myself before I sleep that the batteries are charging downstairs… and when I wake up, I actually remember to look for them. I set three alarms 15 minutes apart, and the jackpot’s on the third.

When I move, my room will be a mark of minimalism. Wardrobe in a box, the rest of my junk in a box, sofabed, computer table, office chair, fan (air-cond gives me the sniffles) and a toilet.

I felt that this blog entry would’ve been better written last night, since all the points were running in my head all day, but I decided to get off my lazy ass and clean up my room. How would I live the minimalist concept if I had heaps of boxes and papers around?

Thanks Ms. B. and best friend for helping me come to this realization. I’ve been such a dependent person for so long. (And shameless and stupid too.) I just don’t know where to hide my face in shame.

Rocking 4 Hope

Tarty

1 Reply

Pineapples tarts are heaven.

Pineapples appear on pizzas, but kids pull them from their cheese beds and toss them aside.

Pineapples appear in fruit punch, but kids drink the punch, leaving the pineapples behind.

Pineapple tarts, however, are always a hit.

It’s like pineapples were created by God to decorate fruit baskets and make pineapple tarts.

Pardon this picture-less post, I’m unable to connect to my FTP server at the moment.

Moonshaped

4 Replies

What: Moonshine, a homemade acoustic show
Who: Tempered Mental, Kluk Kluk Adventure, One Buck Short, Pete Teo, Kohl
When: 9:30pm, 14th September 2006
Where: Laundry Bar, The Curve
How much: Free, but you’ll get thirsty cheering for the hard-rocking bands and drooling at the chicks

More details here.

I also went for The Shape Of Things, as a reviewer for Xfresh.

I’ve already written about it here, so let the pictures do the talking.

Proper drama in a play, for once! After all those philosophical meaningful thought-provoking plays come this, a play whose meanings do not need a toilet seating to understand. Do you go to plays to watch them orate puzzles… or perform and be entertained? A lot of meaning was obvious, though deeper thoughts might reveal more. Was the surprise twist at the end out of spite?

Eve plans to deface a painting, and the nerdy security guard Adam tries to stop her. While the play was about love, there was a underlining parallel reference to art, like in lines like:
“When Picasso took a shit, he didn’t call it art. He knew the difference. That’s what made him Picasso.”

Maybe he’d be able to, with such a rifle (shown outside, in set designer Jia Wei’s garage clearance.

Meanwhile, Eve breaks Adam in. Conversation is natural and not staged, with proper dynamics and pacing. Phew. Some of the other plays I’d seen were like 10-minute grindcore songs. (Grindcore songs are under 2 minutes for good reason.)

Kinky with cameras.

However, while she managed to shape him into a good-looking, confident man, she failed to control his loyalty. On the plus side, she successfully changed a man… while on the minus side, he went to the woods with his roommate’s fiancee.

While the drama may seem exaggerated, we probably know someone who has gone through that.

Some, myself included, may be able to relate to some of the characters in the play at any one time. There was also Two Inch Paperheart, who played U2-like background music in between scenes.

Glaring Notebook

Pressed For Words

!yvaN ehT nioJ

Tag Race

Rainbows And Polarizers

OBsession artSCENE

21 Inches Of Love

One Minute Short

Ambitschin’

Rocking 4 Hope

Tarty

Moonshaped

More details here.