Warning: Robosexual pr0n follows.

My new baby, who can fit in my pocket…

The Nokia N70.

From left: The Nokia 3315 was the first phone I bought with my own money; the Nokia 3350 was my second; the Nokia N70, third.

Opera on EDGE. No, I do not have 3G, being on DiGi… but it still beats being the poster girl for EDGE and GPRS and not having one’s phone set up for it. 😛 (I did set it up and now we can send MMS messages!)

Flanked by two Nokia 6680s and a Nokia 6280. I could’ve gotten the 6680, but imagine the wowness if I went up to those two and said, “Hey! I have the same phone as both of you! Now what?”

The rear camera pumps out 1600×1200 (2 megapixels) with a shutter speed from 1/15 to 1/2000, ISO 64 to ISO 500, fixed aperture at F3.2 and focus on infinity. The front camera doesn’t record EXIF data and is fixed at F3.5. Note the flare, which showed as a green light. Pictures were only resized; not sharpened.

The infrared response is similiar to my Canon Powershot A520’s; 10 stops slower than normal.

There is always that flare-like stain. Perhaps I should clean my infrared filter.

And now, for a meme! You must do it if you have had more phones than I ever had. Here are my phones, in order:

1. Nokia 1640 (March 2001 to perhaps April 2001) – passed on from my mother, the size of a current Nokia Communicator. I lost it in college. I was sitting cross-legged in the hall, waiting for class; we then found out that class was cancelled. I noticed that it was missing (curse those short-pocketed hip-hop-wannabe cargo pants) and returned to the scene, where I found the unopened white Mentos stick that was also in that pocket. Dammit, the Mentos would’ve been worth more! I went to the college office; somebody picked up in a noisy area. It was the numbers inside that was more important. And dammit, why’d my father have to misunderstand and terminate instead of suspend my number. It was a beautiful number, with much more catchiness than my current one.
2. Nokia 2140 (perhaps April 2001 to May 2001) – passed on from my aunt who then passed it to my mother, the same size. Another classic brick phone, perfect for canine homicide.
3. Siemens C30 (perhaps June 2001 to June 2002) – passed on from my father from a promotion. I discovered my Ah Beng roots (or maybe it was college.) I got myself a transparent casing to parade this in its red-lighted glory.
4. Nokia 3315 (June 2002 to December 2002) – I bought this, picking it over the Nokia 3350. Silly choice.
5. Nokia 3350 (December 2002 to April 2006) – This was technically superior, with 150 numbers phone memory, WAP and more keys. It was also the first Nokia to have disco lights that blink to the ringtone. If it had blue lights it would’ve been the first proper pre-modified Ah Beng phone. It had really slow Snake 2, too, even at its fastest difficulty.
6. Nokia N70 (April 2006 to now) – scroll up for pr0n.

(And here ends the meme. See, I made it easy for you.)

I initially thought it was a more corporate phone, with its stylings on the serious brushed metal side. Nope, it was an all-rounder – it already had loads of applications on the Symbian Series 60 platform. Radio, music player, calendar, photo editor (with crop, brightness etc.), Opera browser, and all localized network operator settings already preinstalled. So yeah, I could already choose Diginet to connect to the Internet. I did not really have to install much more – I could even browse the phone and card memory using Nokia PC Suite via Bluetooth. Yep, a (dual voltage reduced-size multimedia card) card reader via Bluetooth.

Bluetooth was a hassle at the office computer, but at home it worked perfectly. Weird.

I also organized all my applications into folders, because it was fun.

The stereo headset was awesome. You know it’s good when you listen to music and discover little notes and sounds you’ve never heard in the song before. I copied Eric Johnson – A Song For Life into it, and the bright, sparkly notes flowed from left and right, like a waterfall, splashing in the center. Orgasmic!

Needless to say, I shall bring a tissue whenever I put these earphones on.

The first time I answered a phone call, I was awed by the stereoness of the human voice. It was coming from all directions! I was shy to answer the booming voice outside my head.

Cons? It was laggy. Starting up took 50 seconds or more. Applications took a while to load. The sliding lens cover at the back was loose, and if you held it by just the cover it felt like it would jump out of my hand.

And yes, it can be such a dastardly distraction, when I was waxing lyrical and obsessing over the phone in real life instead of paying attention to anything else.

So people have been asking what surgical procedure I performed on the camera my good ol’ schoolmate Bernard donated to me to make it come up with funky infrared pictures. This is what I did:

From left to right, top to bottom:

• The Fujifilm Digital Q1, before operation.
• The front.
• I opened four screws in the back, and I pried the front cover open. (Don’t touch the big capacitor; it still stores a big electric charge, used for your camera’s flash.)
• I opened more layers until I reached the back, where the LCD screen was, and the final screws which held the infrared cut filter in place.
• From the front. Note the black thing in the middle; that holds the infrared cut filter.
• The 1/2″ CMOS, exposed! (Don’t let dust get on this.)
• I tried to push out the infrared cut filter.
• A handy Philips screwdriver, the infrared cut filter and the back plate, in infrared.

Left: Two negatives in front of the lens to block out normal light, and a few layers of negatives on the flash; right: opened, for ‘mixed mode‘ where it gets infrared and normal light.

From left to right, top to bottom: (All shots unedited, just resized.)

• My first expression when I assembled it back, and it worked! It could see infrared light.
• Okay, this picture was from before; the camera could never focus properly, being a fixed focus camera with a macro range of 60-120cm.
• The ‘mixed mode‘ lets in natural colors and a good dose of infrared.
• Infrared only, but because I removed the infrared cut filter, the camera became shortsighted!
• I bumped into Asyraf Lee at KLCC during this fashion show, and he hinted at what infrared photography could do…
• …which wasn’t true. Plus my camera couldn’t focus that far, so yeah, it would take very specific lighting and heat conditions to do what he said infrared photography could do.

Well, at least somebody said, “Hey, I don’t remember wearing that top…”

So uh… does anybody know anybody who knows how to cut glass to specific dimensions? I’ll pay to have my camera have good focus range… or, I could salvage the manual focus lens on my infrared webcam and put it on the camera! (The infrared cut filter holder is not the same size, so some hacking and superglue might be necessary…)

So Bernard had one of these babies lying around. The Fujifilm Q1, a 2 megapixel camera. He’d never used it, and for good reason too; it was a lousy camera with pictures that looked like they came out of a webcam. And yes, it does have a webcam function as well. Or maybe it’s a webcam with digital camera functions.

Its macro mode was 60-120cm! That would account for all arm-held camwhoring. However, I then realized why my Fujifilm A202 had less shaky pictures compared to my later Canon Powershot A400 – its maximum shutter speed was 1/15th of a second, compared to the A400’s 1 second.

And here it is, with a Hoya R72 filter handheld; it automatically selects ISO200 (or ISO100 depending on brightness) with a fixed aperture of F3.5. It also has a fixed focus from 120cm to infinity. This was at 1/15th of a second, no post-processing, just resize.

In comparison, the Canon Powershot A520 needs a bit more than 1/4th of a second to get approximately the same exposure. However, the trees are brighter than the sky here; this could be because of wind giving the leaves motion blur. A histogram cannot be compared directly, because the Canon Powershot A520 captures a wider picture. However, it can be said that the Q1 is two stops more sensitive to IR light, and if the A520 would become 10 stops slower in shutter speed with the infrared filter on, then the Q1 would drop 8 stops.

And maybe, after operating on the Q1 to make it fully infrared sensitive like my webcam, I will buy an xD card for it, if I like the pictures. Hopefully, removing the IR cut filter won’t make it lose that much focus (not that it was ever good at that anyway.) At least the flash seems to give some infrared illumination, so I could use it in the dark, but not in macro, as flash cannot be enabled in macro. The xD card can then spur my lust for the Fujifilm F30, an upcoming point-and-shoot with good noise performance, going up to a digital SLR’s ISO3200.

So Asian Hottest Blogger nominee, Agent Ching and I went to KL Performing Arts Centre one Sunday to watch The Homecoming, a twisted play about a man who brings his wife to meet his dysfunctional family. There’s real actual kissing on stage, so if you’ve never seen it in a play, this would be the chance. Plus, Loo Jia-Wei is hot.

We then adjourned to the swings in Sentul Park for some camwhoring but uploading that, I leave for later. We found out too late that Kenny Sia was in the vicinity too! By then, he was already in The Curve, so out of lack of dinner plans we decided to steal his. Dinner plans I mean, not dinner.

We also knew that he was with Jasiminne, so we rushed over to see how hot she was. Neither of us had commented on her blog nor linked to her, so we could still pretend to not know who she is.

But the truth is, we bloggers are also professional stalkers researchers. I recently discovered that non-bloggers are getting just as skilled in research, so HELLO THERE! Here’s a cookie for you!

Upon meeting them amidst borders made of bookshelves in Borders, Kenny said, “Hello Cheesie!” and they hugged. He then said, “Hello Albert.” While it may be presumptuous to assume that nobody reads my blog, I did feel a pang of pride being… recognized by a big man with big coconuts.

Then, Jasiminne said “Hello Cheesie!” and they hugged. She then turned to me and said “Hello peacock!” Damn shy I tell you. She’d only know that nickname if she researched, and she said she preferred the original color, when it was freshly metallic blue, which would mean further research into my archives. *gasp*

I know my statistics! Most of you don’t read my archives, and don’t bother clicking when I link to older posts!

However, to reveal such technical tracerouting is monologuing of sorts already, and I shall attempt to stop revealing my methods, lest bloggers around assume that I have done my research when I haven’t. Being acknowledged by a famous blogger gives you a sense of accomplishment, because it means you have become famous in your own right. And damn, I’ve become old and grandfatherly. I’ve already started telling people how I met Minishorts before she even had a domain, or how Paul Tan and I used to sleep stay overnight at the office singing Californication.

I also know six CLEO Bachelors this year, of which I have two phone numbers.

I think I’ve been reading too much Lainie (who is now linked), hence the jumpy paragraphing style.

Anyway, how do I jump back to the original intended mood of my post, which was based on these pictures?

“I should win the Asian Hottest Blogger award!”
“But you’re not even in it!”

Me with that rare pimp smile.

Jason, Cherrie, Rames and I went to KFC for lunch. We did not talk about what we wanted to eat, but we all ended up ordering the exact same thing! We all paid exactly RM8.61, for a two-piece chicken value meal with Pepsi. All Original Recipe flavored. A working-class meal.

Three of Rames’ colleagues then bumped into us at KFC, and they sat at the table beside us. They ordered a two-piece chicken meal too, except they all chose Hot & Spicy flavor! The same happened for another bunch of distant colleagues from the IT department; they had Hot & Spicy.

And now, for some random photographically-techie pictures.

Okay, so I didn’t have time to prime the shot, but I think it turned out pretty well.

Jason, Jenifur and I were out of pictures to take at Fathima’s (behind Bangsar LRT station) so I meddled with spoons. Somehow, the artistic intended individualism did not carry through, but I reckon I could use this idea again.

This was between Bangsar LRT and Fathima’s. Again, there could be better composition but I couldn’t figure it out. Yeah, go ahead, steal my idea and make it better.

Closing time, One Utama.

Fill-in flash is what happens when you choose shutter priority or manual exposure mode, and turn on the flash. It flashes, then exposes for a while, leaving the background to expose.

This is another example of fill-in flash; this time, I jumped with the camera. How did I get that distance? By hooking it on a tripod, and holding the tripod by its legs!

I tried doing those jump shots as popularized by Jason, but ended up like this. I also like this picture because it makes me look fat.