I took my A900, Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5(D) and HVL-F20AM flash to Werner’s. At ISO3200 I could get the mood of the party despite this flash sounding rather diminutive at a guide number of 20 meters ISO100.
Werner’s, at the corner of Changkat Bukit Bintang.
’twas Mariana’s birthday!
The bounced HVL-F20AM provided sufficient light, if you know how to use it – high ISO, slow shutter and bright aperture lets the flash breathe.
I carried it in the LCS-WR1AM wrap – look ma no camera bags!
This dude pulled off the slow-sync spin effect well. (Most people do it horribly amateurishly!) Here’s one to him as a tribute.
Jump to smashpOp who is looking all prepped up for a stock photo. ‘cept, of course, that stock photos must carry no branding…
Yet another. Join our team!
Korean food from above!
CK, the guy who used to sit to my right. Credit to Joshua, if I remember correctly, for taking this shot.
Pinkpau and Nazrul share a loving moment in Delicious.
Isn’t she so cute and pocketable?
Martian greeting fail. The ring finger sticks to the pinky!
My colleague pulling off a Mike Patton.
Sorry girls, he’s married!
CK again.
Aznin looking lovely!
This picture of Jenifer always cracks me up, and then makes me hungry!
Random street shots from many dates, in no particular order.
Jammin’ down in Bukit Jalil after the Manchester United friendly match.
From Masjid Jamek STAR LRT I caught this view. They were promoting the Burger King pepper stacker. Sadly, all these gimmicks are becoming smaller, and sadly McDonalds is doing the same to its Prosperity Burger.
In case I forget what I look like, I’ll take a picture.
I waited a very long time for crows to fly past. Sadly, the big formation didn’t fly by.
You know, this one (shot another day).
Or even this, a floating plastic bag!
The car could use a spray job in front.
Down the road was Johnny Number 5, ready to catch any graffiti artists!
What a colorful concrete mess.
Set the sun.
Where’s papa?
Where’s papa and mama?
In front of the Malaysian Association For The Blind down in Brickfields.
Wei-Ling Gallery is quite an interesting structure – each level is just built off the wall.
Nothing quite like concrete though.
Lonely seats watch a main road in Wangsa Maju.
I love the night ambient colors.
Interestingly, only the third shot used my favorite Zeiss 135mm F1.8; the rest were done with the diminutive Minolta 50mm F1.4, Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan and Sigma 17-35mm F2.8-4 EX (there is no mistaking one focal length for the other.)
6th August 2009: Down in Velvet Underground, Zouk was TimeOut KL’s Comedy Night! Yes, I braved re-entering Zouk. Here’s Matt the emcee!
Chi Ho, ex-schoolmate, and one of the funniest! His expressions, and ability to make fun of himself, and the flavor of humor (which was a fair bit wittier and clever) makes him a favorite.
Seriously man, his face itself has a kind of disarray which makes you laugh. Which works great with his self-referencing jokes.
Japaneeese in the crowd!
Nick crouches. Being a newbie however, he did as newbies did… eventually tanking.
Oliver Peters, who is funny.
Here he looks like an Indian Jesus. He then lost his hair!
Jimmy North took the stage! (And I was thinking it was a janitor’s shirt – I didn’t realize that his name was really Jim.)
…but as newbies do, they fail to note that stand-up comedy is, unfortunately, very formulaic.
You can’t be an activist and tell jokes at the same time; true comedians are able to bypass all inner boundaries and beliefs, and stuff you wouldn’t talk about, and make fun of everybody as well as yourself. It’s the courage of being able to do so, and the courage to defend oneself against a heckler (and make a joke out of it) that will win the crowd. Once the comedian acquires the skill of heckler defense, he/she is on the yellow brick road to success!
Of course, keep the crowd interested. You can’t take too long telling a story before the joke comes. Only people I saw able to do that were Douglas Lim and Harith Iskander but their stories came much later (and they probably had the crowd knowing they would deliver at the end, so they waited).
Finally, being able to string related jokes for extreme stomach-hurting combos is always a bonus.
Kavin ended the show. He was good. He’s related to Andrew Netto, which makes me wonder if comedy runs in the family.
Urbanattic at Capsquare, before they added a distracting skyline wallpaper, 8th May 2009.
An interesting setup, is where the pool table is…
…as I can get this angle!
The result being this.
Anyway, it was Free To Fall…
…an all-girl band from Klang.
I love how consistent the lights at Capsquare are.
One of them is Samuel Oh’s sister.
I just realized that this crop is rather eerie…
From the back, there is a glass pane; unfortunately you can no longer shoot from that angle.
And then, for the main highlight of the night…
…a slight variation of the lineup of The Ramanados! Here’s Darren Ashley Thomas of Bus Company (Samuel Oh’s band) playing bass.
Of course, you must have the gregarious Gregory Ramanado on vocals and energy distribution.
The band plays the funk and soul, and he takes that and turns it to human form.
A more Extreme moment sans long hair.
They played a lot of Red Hot Chili Peppers songs! I was loving it. Scar Tissue in the first set, and Around The World, Californication and Dani California in the last set.
This is the Blackbird Fly, a 35mm-film-format TLR, which unfortunately does not have a lovely ground-glass focusing microprism from the top – instead you have to use zone focusing (with a helpful icon showing how many people you can fit in the picture.)
It is also plastic, for the Lomo enthusiasts.
(Shot with the Minolta 50mm F1.4.)
In Russia everything is red.
Darth Vader is well equipped against H1N1, and he probably Force-choked Kanye for those shades.
Well I’ll be. Chad Smith bald, John Frusciante messing up on the chorus but ultimately pulling off The Bee Gees!
Oh no John Frusciante really did quit the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
He says that the big rock band stuff doesn’t appeal to him anymore. You could already see in the Poland 2007 videos that he didn’t seem to be as smiley and happy to be rocking out until the solos. I am very sad to hear this as I still preferred the Red Hot Chili Peppers to John Frusciante’s solo music. It is said that he will be replaced by Josh Klinghoffer, who has been playing second guitar (also spotted in the Poland 2007 videos.)
When I quit the band, over a year ago, we were on an indefinite hiatus. There was no drama or anger involved, and the other guys were very understanding. They are supportive of my doing whatever makes me happy and that goes both ways.
To put it simply, my musical interests have led me in a different direction. Upon rejoining, and throughout my time in the band, I was very excited about exploring the musical possibilities inherent in a rock band, and doing so with those people in particular. A couple of years ago, I began to feel that same excitement again, but this time it was about making a different kind of music, alone, and being my own engineer.
I really love the band and what we did. I understand and value that my work with them means a lot to many people, but I have to follow my interests. For me, art has never been something done out of a sense of duty. It is something I do because it is really fun, exciting, and interesting. Over the last 12 years, I have changed, as a person and artist, to such a degree that to do further work along the lines I did with the band would be to go against my own nature. There was no choice involved in this decision. I simply have to be what I am, and have to do what I must do.
Sending love and gratitude to you all.
🙂
By the way, I’ve also fixed a bug where you might not have been able to comment. Just discovered it today – send me a text message or drop an email if you do encounter problems yo!
In Pentas 1, this long-missing band from Penang made a glorious comeback.
My favorite shoe-gazing post-rock space-rock band, Damn Dirty Apes! I say this even compared to international shoegazers.
Pentas 1 was filled up with people who clapped after every symphony of built-up noise. Most were new songs, though Allied Run, Rebel Scum and In Tents from their last album Ape Kill Ape were also played. Sadly, none of the classics from Valve State Dreams.
Rewind to 21st June 2009, for the Fete De La Musique! Traditionally done on the longest day of the year but stretched to fit the weekend. Here’s Bus Company!
Here’s Darren and Janice, Paramore fans!
The Fete De La Musique was held at two locations this year – Telawi Street Bistro was one of them. Here’s Bluestankers…
…who did an awesome job of covering Cream – Strange Brew and Cream – Crossroads.
An Honest Mistake, honest to goodness hard-rockin’ emo.
Guest vocals with Nick Davis.
Shiny pedals! Sorry to hear about the theft Darren, hope the cops manage to catch the thief!
Darren is also in Army Of Three, a harder band.
There was a point in my life where I wanted an Ibanez with a Floyd-Rose-like double-locking-tremolo bridge.
Yo yo yo yo!
Man, they got their own T-shirts, too…
Tony Leo Selvaraj with a lovely Musicman.
His lovely fans! He did a fantastic cover of Modjo – Lady.
Then came The Padangs!
They do the kind of screamo I enjoy. Thumping synchronized drums and bass and chugging riffs!
That day I felt like only bringing my Sunpak PF20XD flash so everything is pretty much direct, or bounced up using the PC Sync cable. Though the blue image below is from another flash – this is all one exposure!
Pasca Tragedy, who is all too familiar – I think they were on the Youth ’09 Battle Of The Bands. They did a cover of Nightwish – Nemo which gives you a good idea what they play.
Then came older rock with Minotaur & The Labyrinth – the classic proto-punk Iggy Pop And The Stooges – Search And Destroy was one such cover.
This looks like a style I should explore more often, having long neglected it.
Eve Oh goes OH! (Yes, she wears a very cool T-shirt.)
Then, I headed to La Bodega Bangsar, where the other stage was, and while I missed George‘s performance, I got to catch Cent M…
…who was doing reggae rap, FULLTIME!
Freestyle.
I headed back to Telawi Street Bistro, and caught The Textbooks.
The Metaphor was symphonic instrumental-like pop-rock without the soft and hard bits.
Hello Tomas!
Another cool T-shirt and their T-shirt-selling agent. (Yes, I still want to get one!)
Mustard. Always interesting to see strings and keyboards played by the same person, one way band member consolidation can happen.
And I’m back! Back into computer geekdom. I bought a new system (old system went to my brother). I am now able to play current games with decent framerates (not that I even played current games to begin with.) I am now able to export RAW files in 25 seconds or less (and load them in 4 seconds!)
AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 Ghz (always been an AMD fan; was always buying mid-range until realizing my bottleneck in processing RAW was just CPU speed)
Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P (for the 3 year warranty)
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5770 PCI-E 1GB GDDR5
Kingston 2GB PC1333 DDR3 ValueRAM (always bought ValueRAM, and I can add more real cheap)
Kingston V Series SSDNow! 64GB Solid State Drive (the faster V+ series and brand new 40GB wasn’t out in Lowyat Plaza yet – I don’t understand why, given that it is an amazing bargain at RM450!)
Windows 7 Home Premium Retail Box (because it comes with 32-bit and 64-bit installation CDs)
LG 22x Super Multi DVD Rewriter
Going for an i7 would cost 1.5 times more for 1.5 times the power. However, I need to set a limit based on my budget instead of maxing out with a 4 CPU (16 core) 16GB RAM 4 SATA SSD RAID setup! This all just passed the RM3K mark by a little bit.
I retained the following:
1TB Western Digital 7200 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive
A4Tech BatteryFree Mouse
A4Tech keyboard
IBM P202 20″ CRT monitor (you name me an LCD monitor which has accurate gamma and good out-of-box microtuning for under RM1000)
Windows 7 is really fun, and not just because I “loved” the Windows 7 launch party idea (hey, you get a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate for hosting a party, why not?)
But hey, really, I am trying to learn how to mouse my way around, being a keyboard speed freak. I usually make my Windows XP look like Windows 98, so I decided to get with the times and see what Windows 7 had to offer. So I am loving the Pin to taskbar function.
I have changed the screen resolution to 800×600 to take this screenshot – every program you load, gets its icon shown in the taskbar. If you load multiple instances, they get grouped under the same icon. However if you love that program enough you can right-click on it and Pin it there. So when you close it, its shortcut will stay there (like Quick Launch.)
So in order from left to right, you can see that Firefox, WinAmp, Notepad, Photoshop CS4 and IE8 are open. You can also see that these are the programs I would most likely have, open, most of the time, and the icons remind me what I need to do on the computer anyway! Major, major productivity boost.
A very cool thing about programs that are integrated with Windows 7 is, that its progress bars show on the icon – that green bar on the IE8 icon for example is showing me how far is my Firefox 3.6 Beta going. 😀 Seriously though, I love that feature on Explorer, being able to know how long file transfers take.
Of course, not everything was rosy – when I picked up my system they had installed the 32-bit version of Windows 7 even though my system was fully supporting 64-bit. So I spent time installing the 64-bit version and discovered that ultimately, it was still Windows, and some Google work was needed (like Expanding Files stuck on 0% for a few minutes… on a SATA SSD!)
I also had a flickering menu/items bug with the Microsoft Games which I still could not resolve with the latest ATI drivers. I also had some permission issues with FretsOnFire (a reinstall would obviously help, since it’s picky about files from my old hard disk.)
I ran Quake 3 /timedemo 1 with four.dm_68 in Windows 7 32-bit and got 899.5 FPS! Then I tried it in Windows 7 64-bit and got a black screen. Had to blindly type /quit in the console. Then I downloaded ioQuake3 and got 274.4 FPS.
I’m taking a leisurely drive through Need For Speed: Shift and man is it difficult! Drift is annoying as heck the way the new gameplay is. It is however amazing to see people in crowds waving flags, and the tarmac and tires getting bumpmaps!
Meanwhile RawTherapee 2.4 RC2 is zipping through with all the maximum possible corrections I use at 25 seconds export (still not as amazing as the Sony W laptop supercomputer I’ve tried) but if I disabled NR and Shadow/Highlights (they just make tacky HDR anyway) it goes down to 15 seconds on 24 megapixel RAW files from the Sony Alpha 900.
