Monthly Archives: December 2005

A Long December

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Alright, here comes the final barrage of rock-related pictures, from December. I also break the 1 megabyte limit on this one. (Okay, so Counting Crows annoys me.)

3rd December 2005, Homegrown Finale concert, Sunway Amphitheatre


Rahul of One Buck Short with his pretty new guitar.


Republic Of Brickfields do their thing, with a happy crowd. I was standing behind, and on a stairway. To get the rest of the shots, I used a digital zoom of 2.2x (2272/1024) at 1024×768, for a total zoom of 4x optical times 2.2x digital = 8.9x. (I could go 14x if I was at 640×480, but I didn’t need to.) I was in Manual exposure mode, no flash, ISO 50 (it was possible, because there were spotlights), on F5.6 (that was the brightest aperture I could get at full 4x optical zoom) and varied my shutter speed between 1/40 to 1/60 seconds. It was quite necessary, as in Auto or Program mode, it would want to expose at 1 second, which would be too slow, and you’d just get a nice smudgy multicolored blur of rock stars. Digital cameras, even digital SLRs, are not smart enough to figure that the rock stars are already being bombarded with lights, and the cameras want to expose long enough to show the background. So if you think you’re gonna buy a digital SLR and get fantastic shots immediately on Auto, you’d be wrong.

Anyway, for those of you without shutter speed settings, you can just set your EV to -2 to get a similiar effect. Even cheap digicams have this feature, go read the manual, yo. Still too blurry? Crank the ISO up to 400.

It majorly annoys me when people want to get an SLR because they think it will solve their problems. Yes it’s all that, but they don’t even know their own digital camera well enough. Go learn about shutter and aperture and ISO and EV. Google it. If you’re lazy, the least you could do is pick up tips from my blog. I can do this with a RM900 camera, and a little Photoshop.


Trippy.


Oops, I forgot to turn off trippy mode for the intense Syahrul of Love Me Butch.


RAWR that’s more like it. Proper emo from the man himself. Few bands can sing emo without being off tune, and Syahrul pulls it off effortlessly.


ANGER RAGE POWER.


He’s so damn photogenic he is eating up your bandwidth now.


Yeah. Screw you black-nailed, black-eyelined, underwear-showing emo kids. This is the real thing.


Ham of Seven Collar T-Shirt has a funny posture, but it’s cool.


Duan gets a sneeze…


…and passes it on to Adam of Dragon Red, who is instead singing Superpreacher for Deja Voodoo Spells.


Yep, Rithan is not breaking a sweat, shredding away.


DJ Uno of Pop Shuvit on the decks, yo.

In case you’re wondering, yes, they did vote to smash the guitar. It was, of course, a cheap Pyramid Stratocaster clone.

4th December 2005, Dragon Red album launch, Midvalley Convention Center

This time around, I was sitting nearer, so I used 1600×1200, with a digital zoom of 1.42x, making a 5.6x total zoom, F5.6, ISO 50, no flash, and shutter speeds from 1/15 to 1/60 seconds.


Melina of Tempered Mental. They had bright, colorful spotlights for this one, and I was thankful for that.


This was where the stage was set up.


I think she looks good in red.


Hanafi playing for Estranged. He is also the temporary guitarist for Tempered Mental.


KLG Squad, rappers, yo.


Ean, the host. Damn, I love the spotlights, it makes every picture look much more dramatic.


The Bantus Capoeira Malaysia group. I don’t know what the connection was with Dragon Red, but heck.


AAA! Do not flash me! (Capoeira is way cooler taken without flash, at slower shutter speeds.)


Like so.


Fear the Brazilian guy with dreads, for he flies!


Yep, he’s coming for you.


Beware the malodorous foot.


Oh wait, he was wearing shoes.


“Hey that ain’t fair! Are you tripping me?”


Girls can join the fun too!


YYYEEEAAAHHH. You can tell that he’s enjoying every bit of it.


“Uh, I think we’re One Buck Short…”


Maybe they could grab some spare change from this breakdancer.


Or this guy, who will flip over three friends for you.


I suspect the little dude has some change. Yeah it’s Adam’s stage buddy.


Tech, guest rapper on Kehendak Naluri, raps like he got the munchies.


Goodbye, ev’rybody, I’ve got to go.

17th December 2005, Rock The World 6, Merdeka Stadium


I took a picture of the crowd, and the only guy who looked at me was the one you were supposed to spot. Where’s Syefri? (He has a full account of all the bands, go read his blog and buy his T-shirt. There are also more pictures at Jenifur‘s blog.)

Now this, this was far from the stage (we didn’t get media passes this time), so I cranked digital zoom to 3.55x at 640×480 for a total of 14x zoom. ISO 50, F5.6, and shutter speeds from 1/250 to 1/400 seconds.


As Yi Jian, Syefri, stim-girl and I stepped into Merdeka Stadium, we were greeted with a familiar rock anthem. Well, familiar to me, anyway. Faith No More – Be Aggressive! They then played Evidence, Easy and Digging The Grave. I was overjoyed! Finally, someone out there acknowledged this band who somewhat pioneered nu-metal and rap-metal, by playing them to the biggest (and only) rock concert (with more than 4 acts) in Malaysia! I should’ve went up to that guy and told him he had a nice shirt. 😀


Mr. Harooon was the usual emcee.


Alda of Cosmic Funk Express funks out the bass.


However, Zack takes the cake with two guitars, played simultaneously! Sadly, their set started with technical difficulty at the worse possible point – the roaring guitar solo introduction. The guitar could only be heard in the second half of the song. 🙁


“Hey man, you gotta show me how you do that shiiit.”


Frequency Cannon‘s bassist is loving the big stage.


Like, yo, yo yo!


“Damn, it’s hot today.”


“Thank God for the mist.”


Rithan rips out solos again, for Deja Voodoo Spells.


This time however, I spot their secret weapon – two people on keyboards! (That explains why they sound more properly produced, even on stage.)


Radhi of OAG, oo-oo-oo-OO.


People were getting tired, so…


“Let’s smash this guitar!” And so, he did. Again, this guitar is a cheap Pyramid. Do not be fooled!


Who says rock concerts can’t be cool(ed)?


We eventually retired with the crowd, for the harder bands in the night, and to float in space with Furniture, and sing along to Seven Collar T-Shirt. (This was taken at 7:30pm with a 15 second exposure.)

I didn’t bother with taking pictures because it was too dark and we were sitting too far away. It was time to just do what you should do at a rock concert – rock out.

Was it worth it? Most definitely. RM20 for 17 bands of all genres (pop to ska to metalcore, even a visiting by thrash-metal-in-major-key The Pilgrims, The Killers-like The Times and Kaiser Chiefs-like (reborn) A.C.A.B.) with an actual moshpit! (Unlike those moshpits in regular gigs with only 4 people!)

Death Metal

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Master of the slave
Was the name he gave
You’re magnetic and full of potential
But you’ve spun dizzily into your grave

Soon, all our memories became heavy metal.

A dozen a dime
A dozen years time
It doesn’t seem right
It doesn’t see the light

Soon, all our memories became heavy metal.

It wasn’t enough that I tried to get you back
You played dead and I needed a hack
So I searched around for the cure but you were still black
And now everything is blank, what a wreck!

Soon, all our memories became heavy metal.

Hmmm. I can’t write poems like I did back in college.


Look ma, no jumpers! (Yes, these pictures are so very much related.)


So old-school, the jumpers are on the underside of the hard disk!

Anyway, in summary, I plugged this 127MB Quantum ProDrive ELS into my left-side computer and couldn’t get it to detect. I plugged in the other three hard disks, (a Quantum Corona 4.3GB, Quantum Fireball 5.1GB, Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40GB) with it detecting one of them only once. Moved jumpers about, and from then on, the display did not show, and the speaker did not beep. Moved RAM position. I dug up my Radeon DVI adapter to try the other display to no avail. I even dug up my 3dfx Voodoo3 PCI!

I haven’t been this frustrated, and yet I am feeling strangely fine.

Gunned. Damn!

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you, and instead of putting loads of pictures of happy people at parties over the last 3 days, I decided to be different and put pictures of one of my birthday presents.


Guess which plane isn’t so plain.


Space-age carrier versus unidentified aircraft.


But wait, it’s a robot in disguise!


Meet Saviour Gundam, ZGMF-X23S, 1/144 scale model High Grade Gundam Seed-24.


If you’re not convinced that he’s a handsome bastard, here’s a closeup.


Ah, my other birthday presents are getting jealous. Meet (the belated) Bionicle Toa Hordika Vakama! (Don’t ask me who comes up with these names.)


Size does matter, and the Japanese warrior is no match for the German giant.


Transformers Alternators Silverstreak takes revenge for the Japanese (yeah the Alternators are American, but he transforms into a Japanese car.)


Saviour Gundam takes his position in the hall of heroes with the tiny, Gundam-feel Transformers Robot Masters Star Saber.

Do I like it? Majorly so! He’s even red for the occasion, ho ho ho. He even transforms, yo! I never knew how much detail went into a Gundam, or how many pieces were needed to ensure articulation and prevent it from being hollow. My only gripes were the fists, that needed to be disassembled to remove the gun.

Tag Lag

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In the spirit of killing procrastination, I shall do the damn blog memes I was tagged ages ago. One, from Alda:

10 years ago I was:
I was 12 years and 4 days old. I think we still started our school semester in December, so it was one of those rare birthdays on a schoolday.

5 years ago I was:
I was 17, and was on my 5th day of working at Xfresh. Yes, we worked Saturdays then.

1 year ago I was:
I was 21 and getting over the Rock The World neckaches.

Yesterday I was:
Passing the flu to everyone in the office who wanted an MC. Eventually made an exit in the afternoon with the intention of sleeping.

5 snacks I enjoy:
1) Mamee Monster Snack (20 sen joy!)
2) Lays Salt & Vinegar chips (they’re so strong, you simply cannot finish them in one go, which makes it a lot more worth it.)
3) Ear Biscuits (a Chinese delicacy)
3) Ear Biscuits filled with brown paste (I am not sure how to differentiate them, but it’s also a Chinese delicacy)
5) Twisties Chickadees (it seems less salty than other snacks)

5 songs I know all the words to:
Oh, what the heck, I don’t know the lyrics to most of my 24 GB of songs. I mean, I could sing along to it, but out of nothing, and in sequence, I probably could not.

5 things I would do with a 100 Million:
1) Invent a time machine, buy loads of tin and raw materials that cost a lot more back then, and sell it.
2) Make Africa a self-contained ecosystem with food for everyone.
3) Make the only sexually transmitted disease left infertility/impotence. Hence, we could all screw around but we’d never have kids. Want kids? Adopt an African.
4) Buy Bill Gates’ garage.
5) Buy the RIAA and make people aware of different types of music.

5 bad habits:
1) Freeloading!
2) Mining of the nasal and auditory passages
3) Not looking into the eyes of the person who is talking to me, especially if that person has big, engaging pupils
4) Making socially inept first impressions
5) Procrastinating

5 biggest joys:
1) Getting my full scholarship (oh wait, did I even sound joyed?)
2) Making my computers work, by some fluke
3) Uh… getting recognized from my blog, or from the scene
4) Paying all my dues and buying all that is needed to buy for the month
5) Finishing a collection of whatever it is I was collecting, be it computers, toys, guitars, cameras

5 favourite toys:
1) Transformers!
2) Zoids
3) Lego
4) Rubik’s Cubes and other puzzles
5) Well, basically any toy that can take on a few forms, or be assembled.

5 things I would never wear:
1) Eyeliner. It’s all real, you emo punk wannabes!
2) Foundation. I am but too fair!
3) Brown contact lenses. My eyes are already brown.
4) A tongue ring. I like spicy food!
5) A nose ring. I have a sensitive nose!

5 favorite TV shows: (I don’t watch much TV.)
1) The Simpsons
2) Futurama
3) Seinfeld
4) Frasier
5) Whose Line Is It Anyway?

5 fictional characters I would date:
1) Lana Lang, Smallville
2) The Pevensie sisters when they grew older, Chronicles Of Narnia (I couldn’t make out who was who but they were hot!)
3) Invisible Girl from Fantastic Four the movie
4) Orked from Sepet
5) Ruby of ATI Technologies

5 people I tag:
Refer to question above.

How much cash do you have on you today?
RM300, but I owe some people, so I gotta be paying up.

What word rhymes with “test?”
Rest. Zzzzz.

Favourite plant?
Wallflowers

Who is the fourth person on your missed call list on your cell phone?
My father (I was testing his phone.)

What is the main ringtone on your cell phone?
Led Zeppelin – Stairway To Heaven, the most overplayed song at a guitar shop, ever.

What shirt are you wearing?
The Incubus – A Crow Left Of The Murder T-shirt that I bought from Syefri because he found that it could not fit him.

Do you label yourself?
Whenever I get my hands on a labeller! 😀

Brand of shoes you’re currently wearing?
My free Nikes. 🙂

Bright or dark room?
I like somewhere in between, nearer to dark.

What were you doing at midnight last night?
Blogging.

What was the last text message you received on your cell phone?
Stim-girl telling me some not-very-stim news.

Do you ever click on “pop ups” or banners?
Only when I�m looking for pages with lots of pop-ups. 😉

What’s a saying that you say a lot?
“Ooo, what�s that?”

Who told you they love you last?
I can�t remember who last asked me for a favor.

Last furry thing you touched?
The fluff on my Santa hat.

How many drugs have you done in the past three days?
5 different types, for sore throat, fever, cold, antibiotics and good old cough drops. 😀

How many rolls of film do you need to get developed?
I�m digital, baby. I�d wanna buy a new roll, expose and develop for my project; an infrared lamp.

Favorite age you have been so far?
21!

Your worst enemy?
Procrastination.

What is your current desktop picture?
This!

What was the last thing you said to someone?
“Okay we swap positions now?”

If you have to choose between 1

Heads Up

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Sometimes, drowsiness from medication can be inspiring. Here goes, more pictures of varying public approval!


“I’m spinning around, move out of my way…”


Don’t focus on the lights!


Turn off the orientation sensor on your camera for a new gravity.


This one-of-a-kind retractable Christmas tree was found in the avant-garde Avenue K.


Next to it was a stairway.


I left the buildings in the picture to show you that this was not taken from an aeroplane.


Now they, they were born to fly.


A moon at 8 am!


Of course, the obligatory infrared picture, taken at the same time. Yes, that is the moon.


While at it, I might as well clear off my old infrared gems. Flares look funky.


Paramount Gardens.


Sunway Pyramid again. Nope, the sun wasn’t falling; note the direction of light on the dome.


Trouble abrewing.


Yep, clouds and trees reflect on lakes in infrared! What cute clouds, too.


This was done using the same CPL/red/LPL trick. Infrared is distinctively tinted blue.


Alright, enough trippiness. Time to sit down and have iced lemon tea.

Tooting Two Too

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I am going to blog, in girly form, what I got over Sunday and on my birthday (which was not Sunday).

Coolermaster 430W power supply: To replace my old one, where my GeForce 6600GT was complaining of lack of juice.
Pleomax 1600dpi laser mouse: To replace my trusty A4Tech wireless optical mouse. Higher dots per inch means higher sensitivity. Five mouse buttons baby! Interestingly, the 4th and 5th were automatically Forward and Back in Internet Explorer. Configured correctly, I could play racing games with just the mouse! Sadly, it has the same problem as cheap optical mice – lifting it up until 2cm from the table/mousepad will cause the cursor to run wildly. This means you can’t lift your mouse to turn rapidly!
Maxtor 300GB PATA hard disk with 16MB cache: One of those rarities. No more struggling with compressing pictures and videos, and uninstalling games!
LG 16xDVD, 52x32x52 combo drive: Now my siblings can watch DVDs on the other computer (which we affectionately name “the left-side computer“.)

All plugged in, the formerly unstable computer, affectionately named “the right-side computer” gave noisy interference, and ran a memory test up till about 128MB (the number varied every time) and hung. Switching memory banks quickly rectified this.

I haven’t blogged about computers and guitars so long, people seem to have forgot that yes, I can play the guitar.

Check out Laynie‘s hilarious account of what happened when we met for lunch, with her not knowing I was older that day.

Presents, in no order, and anonymously done to protect the identities of those who gave weird presents, and to prevent all of you from mooching up to those who gave good presents:
A Tower Records CD case, Lords Of Dogtown movie soundtrack CD, Christmas tree star (huh?), 1/144 HG Grade Gundam, 25th Anniversary Rubik’s Cube, a blinking phone accessory, nice-smelling candles (when blackouts occur at least our home will smell the nicest!), a Casio digital watch with auto-reset countdown timer, five alarms, moon position, tides, compass, etcetera (much more sophisticated than my previous one, yay), company to Rock The World 6 and a ride home.

Did I forget something?

Did you forget something?

Beer Dance

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What’s up with bragging about being able to drink more?

I consider it a curse.

I am proud of my low alcohol tolerance high alcohol efficiency. One beer is enough to get a buzz, and if I drink it fast enough, I’ll get a minimal high. I’ve only had three beers maximum, and I don’t intend to discover what my limit is by me being reminded what dinner looks like after it has taken a tour of my stomach.

I can get drunk faster and cheaper!

So boohoo if you can guzzle ten beers and not feel a thing. What is there to prove? Three beers or ten beers still register on the breathalyzer. If you want to drink to pretend to be drunk so you can molest people and get away with it, why waste money getting wasted?

Then there are the alcohol elitists who think beer tastes bad. Water doesn’t taste that great either. The point is not to savor it, but to drink it like water, to get the high. (On a different tangent, smoking to look cool is not cool; please justify yourselves with better reasons, like saying it relieves your stress or something.)

Also, what’s with clubbing and dancing, but only with alcohol? Are people unable to dance without alcohol? (I find this incredibly lame.) Are people only able to dance to songs they’ve seen before on MTV, and thus know the dance steps for? (I find this incredibly lame.) Do people even get the idea of dance?

I dance because I can feel the music and enjoy it, not because I want to show people that I know my dance steps.

Knows Block

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“Albyyy darling can you do me a favor?”
“Er, yes, since you did write me a testimonial…”
“Hey can you add this person on MSN?”
“Er, why?”
“Just add him, to see if he’s online.”
“I’m not going to add him just to see if he blocked you…”
“Aiyah, just add him, then block him…”
“I don’t block people. Besides, he might Google me and since I am easily Googled, it will ruin my reputation. You know I’m famous, riiight? Just make a new email address and add him!”

It’s true, I have noone on my block list. However people have added me with unfamiliar email addresses. I have never seen them online. Does this mean that someone suspected me of blocking them, and then asked their friend to add me?

Plastic And Stretched

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(Montage of three different pictures.)

Are you feeling plasticky and stretched?

This would be the only good use for an LCD screen – the light is polarized. Transparent stretched plastic then turns it about, causing funky rainbows… but you need a polarizer in front of your camera to capture this. (The LCD screen was white, with the polarizer turned so the white background became as dark as possible.)

Here’s something for the photographically adventurous – articles from the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences. Check out his flatbed scanner-turned digital camera, high speed photography, strip photography, infra… oh wait, that sounds normal already.

The scanner idea would be awesome if implemented correctly, because with an A4-size 1200 dots-per-inch scanner, you could get a 14031×9921 size scan, or a 139 megapixel camera.

After Rocktoberfest

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November 2005 was a month full of gigs, so I’ll cram as many pictures as possible in under 600 KB, baby.

11th November: The Low Enders, or the bassists’ gig, part two (part one was the guitar shredders’.)


Clockwise from top-left: Daphne and Alda look merry; Alda doesn’t know how to turn off the video camera’s demo mode; Adam of Dragon Red enters a air-guitar competition and does a parody of Amil, his bandmate, complete with his expressions; he also shredded and threw in the Dimebag Darrell spider walk.


Clockwise from top-left: Serious business with AJ of Pop Shuvit, playing alone with his loop effect, major coolness as he builds a drum beat, adds basslines, then solos over it; Nakim and his secret weapon (the band); his bandmate, also on bass; Alda, representing Cosmic Funk Express. A joke: How do we get Cosmic Funk Express’ basslines to overpower Zack‘s guitar shredding? Hand Zack the bass.


After all that, the three bassists (and Jimmy of Tempered Mental) come together, to play… Come Together. The audience sings along, but they never got to the chorus. AJ and Nakim stole the limelight, with AJ doing jazzy lines as well as the melody, while Alda tried cutting in with his bass overdrive but failed.


12th November: Tracy‘s This Is Acoustics! Part II gig was at the same place as Part I, with about the same people, and about the same songs. Sorry! They did sound familiar despite only hearing them once. Well, at least they were memorable!


Clockwise from top-left: Christie King; Tony Leo the soulful church boy; Max Lim the guy who wrote a song about a broken guitar; Tracy Wong the piano player who turned Alicia Keys in half a year; Ian Chow the guy with the booming voice who doesn’t need a mike, Suk Yin.


17th November: Tempered Mental (featuring Zack on guitar) played at Backyard Pub, Sri Hartamas. I don’t quite fancy my camera’s night mode, but it does give cool effects when used appropriately, like these ghosts. 😀


Left: Before them was a macho tattooed man… on a Yamaha EZ-AG! Yup, the stringless beginner’s guitar, which lights up to show you where to fret. Middle: Zack on Cosmic Funk Express plays so fast he traverses time. Right: Zack shows us how to tap.


20th November, La Bodega KL: Top: Rhapsody, a jazzy R&B band, uh… jazzes the place. Powerful vocals with a strangely familiar but not overused tonal quality. Middle: Lucy In The Loo, on stage. Bottom: The Sofa Sessions; you gotta love the bassist’s lines. Plus they played a cover of Red Hot Chili Peppers – Soul To Squeeze, which in my opinion was the ultimate RHCP bassline song. Ariff nailed the solo (minus guitar slide) and the vocals.


Left: Billy Corgan meets Kurt Cobain, in this dude’s Nirvana cover. Right: Kevin strums to a happy acoustic-loving audience.


23rd November: KLue Upfront at Zouk promised free flow for VIPs. No free flow. No VIP area either. Noone stopped me from going upstairs, where I took a picture of Architecture In Helsinki, described by many as an avant garde rock band with 8 members and countless instruments.


The closest I could liken it to anything I knew was probably an emo-voiced Mr. Bungle. They had catchy, dancy hooks, but they changed it too often for us to enjoy it. So boohoo, to you progressive wannabes. Only when they turned the tables over to Twilight Action Girl did I feel the party started.

A privileged few would have ever seen me dance, but this one dude took the cake.

“Dude, are you on pills? You gotta stop that shit man.”
“Dude, I’m clean. I don’t smoke or pop pills… heck, I’ve never smoked weed!”
“WHAAA? DUDE! You are missing out on some good sheeet man!”

No, I do not look like a druggie when I dance. I look like a druggie all the time, dammit. 🙁 His friend calls me the crazy dancing dude.


25th November: The Stickman’s Blitz ends the artistic series, which had the guitar shredders and bass players before. Here, John Thomas is called up from the audience for a drum solo.


Drinking games! Jimmy: “I’ll just have my beer while waiting for you guys to start, okay?”


Left to right: Alex Ang of Velvet Tones; Ainol of Deja Voodoo Spells; Jimmy of Tempered Mental. All three bands played before this, but Ainol couldn’t help but burst into drum solo when Deja Voodoo Spells played Jimi Hendrix – Fire. A bit too early.


They jumped about in their seats and danced, swapping drum thrones on the way. Jimmy rapped. Ainol did a tribal beat ala Safri Duo, reggae and lion dance, among other things – it was clear he was the uber-entertainer.


26th November: I don’t even know the name of this gig, but Khai was in it, and he heard that girls dig faceless guys, so he went on stage blind for Y2K.


Clockwise from top-left: Warve gets a rapper; Dragon Red featuring Roshan of K-Town Clan (before that, they did a cover of One Buck Short, with Adam making a parody of Mooky, hilarious!); Throne Away, superb emo band with new Jagger-swagger vocalist and tapping-solo, chord-playing bass player; Milla, some kind of emo metal.

What, you’ve got broadband and expect December pictures as well?