Monthly Archives: January 2006

Transformotion

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I have always, always wanted to do stop-motion. I used to draw animated strips of people running, stickmen fighting and transforming into something else on the edges of textbooks.

Part of this desire to animate was satiated in 1999 to 2000, where I made quite a few Transformer plugin player models for Quake 2.

It wasn’t until I watched Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit that I dug out the old tripod Fazri donated to me, a flourescent table lamp, a poster, and a guitar to use as a hard surface.


Transformers Alternator Meister test animation
(requires Macromedia Flash plugin)

I set it to Manual exposure mode, 1/20 seconds, F3.5, auto focus, ISO 50, custom white balance set to the poster. When I zoomed in one step I compensated by slowing the shutter speed by 1/3 stops.

Pardon the camera shake; I put the tripod (which was broken and could only be extended once) on my bed. If I had a taller tripod I could place it on a stable floor and zoom in (thus cutting out the background as well!) Pardon the off-center part – when the first leg transforms, it is suspended in mid-air, with my finger holding it up (I had to Photoshop it out in one frame.) Pardon the bad angle, I should’ve used a storyboard. The storyboard would also help me plan the transformation properly. Also, trying to make him step backwards was a lot more challenging than I thought.

The gun also suddenly appears, out of my laziness and to retain the stop-motion ethic, which is to avoid Photoshop and computer graphics at all times. 😛

I took 45 minutes to shoot all the frames, which I figure was pretty fast. The hard part would be planning it; when I am free I will do a properly directed stop-motion transform, complete with angle changes to highlight different parts of the animation. I’d probably need to get a frosted glass panel and place another lamp underneath, so I get rid of the shadows and make it seem like he’s transforming in mid-air when he’s just lying on glass.

To convert all frames to Macromedia Flash format, I used Adobe ImageReady CS2. I don’t know if it’s just CS2 that makes editing anything very, very slow, e.g. crop and resize, that I didn’t bother with levels and other image enhancing.

Yeah yeah I am aware that this is quite badly done, but I’m doing it as a proof-of-concept and to perhaps inspire those of you with more time to do it.

Stereotypical Pictures

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Again, I am too braindead to blog about serious stuff, so:


First off, pimpage for Syefri who has a new web domain. Here he is pictured giving a speech about his evil plan of planting goats to cause arrest.


Frustration.


The light at the end of the tunnel.


The obligatory infrared shot; hot charcoal glows of infrared. This was taken without any filters.


An obligatory long-exposure shot, with the help of the circular-linear-wannabe-neutral-density filter.


An obligatory overexposed shot. Guess what this is!


Midvalley’s Dome provides very nice spot lighting.


The obligatory cloud shot; this one looking like a Chinese painting.


Free as a bird, just beware the shells of men.


Damn, it looks like a stamp template.


More stamps.


Six against one.


One Utama’s pool center near GSC provides extra balls. (We went to get the 8 and 14 ball and put the extra balls in.) In our next game, we had TWO 8s and 14s! This meant that someone accidentally put in two extra balls, screwing up the pool table’s mechanism (which I suppose will stop dispensing once it has rolled out 16 balls, even if there are more inside.)


Oh, and Rudy is the man. He survived this. I hopped over to his Christmas party, and he went, “ah finally someone with a camera!” I promptly forgot to take pictures of people. It was then that my secret resolution was to take more pictures of people. So if you see me, let me take your picture!


Who says cats are lazy? This one had a limp and walked all over the house.


It’s that time of the month again, when you can whip out your camera and take pictures of the moon. This was taken at 7:15pm!


And here’s a proper night moon. It has been in the sky since Friday the 13th until the time of writing!

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

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…is a classic. Superb gags, inside jokes, references to other movies, very clever puns, Simpsons-like text that only appears on-screen for a split second, cute bunnies, perfect comic timing (and expression, especially on Gromit’s face) make this a movie I’d watch again and again.

I hereby steal from IMDB’s quotes from the movie:

Lord Victor Quartermaine: [Quartermaine’s hairpiece has been sucked up in the bunvacc] I want…
[lowers voice]
Lord Victor Quartermaine: …toupee.
Wallace: Oh, yes, of course. We take cheques or cash.
Lord Victor Quartermaine: No, you idiot. My hair is in there.
Wallace: Oh, no, only rabbits in there. I think you’ll find the hare is a much larger creature.

I initially watched it intending to analyze the stop-motion technique, but the storyline was so compelling that I just watched it as it was.

And for those who like cheese, well, this movie is full of it. Wallace’s bookshelf, for example, has “Brie Encounter

Generally January One

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I am braindead and so I present to you pictures. Serious. I will blog about the Police Rights workshop I attended soon. I will blog about many things. But first, pictures, because that side of my brain was still working.


Assembly Point – where it’s legal to have an assembly, because there is a sign!


Man, those are some stoned monkeys.


I took a cab to Robson Heights, and ended up on the wrong side, but I stopped here to take pictures anyway. Thank goodness for that diversion, or else I would be feeding mosquitoes in LostGenSpace, where the workshop was held.


Waterfalls are captured with long exposures and small apertures, e.g. 15 seconds and F8. A tripod, or in this case, a rock, was used to stabilize the picture. I also used my circular-linear-wannabe-neutral-density filter to prevent it from being overexposed.


Photoshop was then used to counter the blue tint of my not-so-neutral density filter. (Neutral meaning it does not change the color of the picture.)


I know not the meaning, but I want the good luck it is supposed to bring. Now to buy 4D.


The polarizers also come in handy; you’d otherwise see huge white reflections in the pond.


They reach dry land where they bask and stone.


“Man, time goes by so fast these days, eh young snapper?”


Check out the rock-hard shell. It even looks like a rock! Oh wait, it’s a rock. Toadally.


Basking outdoors. He is, technically, outdoors anyway.


Thus began the walk up the hilly roads of Robson Heights.


To a spooky looking bungalow where I would be mosquito feed again.


I met Lainie there. For lunch break I walked alone as she was engrossed in deep, headache-inducing conversation.


I walked past the legendary Brickfields Police Station, where the hardcore-punk-mistaken-as-black-metal kids were taken to on New Year’s Eve. The workshop taught us how to deal with police and what our rights were. These people weren’t given their rights, yo.


I landed in Nagas, this fancy-looking mamak opposite the police station.


The tandoori chicken was like no other. Fluffy, fresh chicken and naan bread. Mmm. The next time I’m hungry in KL Sentral, I will walk here.


It is said that teh tarik should not be consumed from a glass.


Take it straight from the source, yo. (I’m not dissing teh tarik; I love it, but I can’t have too much of it.)


A drunk fan was spotted opposite the police station! (Note the Chivas Regal bottle in an open box.)

Pimpage And Linkage 2006

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Sorry for the late update, I was busy categorizing every blog entry. Travelling is about my escapades in town, often with conversations with people. If I classify an entry under Jokes, I am trying to make it obvious that it was a joke, parody or was in sarcasm. Lyrics are my modified lyrics from ages go. Poems cover sonnets, poems, and little ditties I wrote. Love is, you know, love. Music is about the many rock gigs I go to, or musical theory geeking, or guitar geeking. Geek is where I get technical, with computers or anything else. Toys cover my many Transformers and other toys (and there are loads more to come). Pictures are for those who tire of my lengthy text. Rants are for negative, angsty banter. And for everything else, there’s General.

Alright, pimpage and linkage time!

1) Mystery Wolf
She kicks ass. Besides taking many hours of sleep from me sometime back in 2003-2005, she also plays guitar and is all-out rock chick with metal in her blood and metal on her skin. I also someday hope to rape the Canon 350D she uses for her photos before she leaves for Perth again. She also introduced me to my current webhost.

2) Cheesie
This pretty lady is pretty cheesy. She has her own religion, so you could call her a Goddess. If her cult told me to put the toilet seat down… I would. She’s funny (and more importantly, cheesy). (Picture pimpage is only because she’d pimp me as well.)

3) Foong Jin
She’s the pretty intellectual-looking librarian chick with the demure charm. She’s got wit and biting logic, and girl power.

4) Joeybear
She has so many pictures and multi-colored text I almost never took the time to read them. Still, the fact that she changed my link and picture, and that my name starts with A, would mean I get a constant stream of linkage from her. Thanks be to this shameless camwhore, who links to many pretty ladies (who I hope, also click on her links. In order.)

5) Cheneille
From angst to alienation and insecurity, she covers such teenage feelings without going gothic and uncomprehensible. But negativity is just a part of her writing which compels, as she is blur-looking as heck in real life.

6) Strizzt
This quiet, almost phantom-like telephasing being rarely ever shows her presence. Yet, we associate her with many big blog things in Malaysia. A post-modernistic poetic way of writing about things (pardon the possible misusage, I am not well-read) makes for very engaging reads about, like Seinfeld says, nothing.

7) Becky
Food, boobs, orgasms, conversations, chicks, parties, sex, and loads of pictures. Oh and a webmistress who looks like Joss Stone. Despite such happening blog entries, one must not be mislead – her entries do carry a lot of weight. (Please don’t kill me for a baaad pun, I still want to meet your chick friends!)

8) Leech
She’s well versed with the subject of stalkers, and makes a most interesting conversationalist ever. Also one of the rare classic-styled camwhores. You want an opinion? Read it anywhere. You want an opinion, fun to read? Read it here.

9) Elaine
Elaine is a riot. She is a camwhore, too, and I dig her posture. She also has the most zany conversation-transcriptions ever, and laugh-out-loud wit. She also influenced her family to camwhore with her. I am not sure if that is a good thing.

10) Hyrza
Okay, so I haven’t been reading her, but she’s linked me for ages and I’ve linked her for ages and she’s changed my link and she gets a paragraph.

11) Doey
Hey man, help Yvonne raise money for her surgery. Buy her T-shirt! It’s got a funky design, I know, because I bought one. She’s a budding writer and a real sweetheart.

12) Reta
Hot hot hot chick. Sot sot sot chick. Reta is cartoony in real-life, despite her seemingly emo posts. A naturally photogenic camwhore who does not employ much tricks to look good. Because she looks good in real life, baby. Plus she leaves kooky comments in blogs. 😀

13) Lex
Ah, Lex, Lex. My long-time blog commentor. She can wake anybody up with her uh… peppy, cheerful voice. Youthful rants are to be found in her blog.

14) Ed
Ed is my long-time geek buddy, and weathered ear. One of the few padawans to have mastered the Rubik’s Cube, CSS, HTML, Firefox and WordPress (okay, so I didn’t teach him Firefox or WordPress). Read him for some dramatic dramatization, because a storm’s brewing.

15) YK
Funny, and a musical dictionary. Also my Transformer-collecting buddy. Blogs about the bitter side of love sometimes, but it’s nothing you’ve never heard in a song. Or have you?

16) Syefri
My rock-gig buddy! He has also tried to get me to buy stuff online. He has a cool afro, and the most cool sayings which may not make sense and may be said just because saying it is damn cool. Like a Jamaican.

17) xen0s
My driving-school buddy! He has turned from a guitar-wielding metalhead to a drumstick-drumming jazz cat. He still hasn’t had any luck with girls. Go give him a click. Because jazz drummers are sexy, yo.

18) Smashpop
My casual-photography buddy! Jason blogs about food, food and food. And then maybe he takes very skilfully cropped, framed, vibrant shots of anything else he sees. At that rate, I guess it’s not a sin for him to be a camwhore too. Because he can make himself look good.

19) Dustyhawk
My miscellaneous-geek buddy! He likes anime and girls. He likes speaking in third person. He likes overly geek-speaking. He is also an otai (old-timer) and you may find fame by joining his Bloggersphere.

20) LIONEL.blogs
The guy, to this day, who introduced me to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). It’s the reason why my page appears to load fast; there were no tables used in the HTML! He is also one of those who follow the classical definition of a blogger.

21) The Silent Room
My technical-photography buddy! We geek out with cameras, and make interesting special effects. He’s also an artist who draws his own comic strips, and often has biting, directed, angry entries and yet has constructive criticism in them.

22) DJ Phuturecybersonique
My coding/hardware buddy! We geek out about hardware, programming, music and performing arts among other things. He’s also funny, and I stole the idea of linking everything I could back to to my old posts from him. He also inspired me to code my own blog. He is awesome. He is 1337.

Yeah yeah I know I said 10, but I meant to be generous and pimp/link everybody who linked to my new URL. (As of time of writing anyway.)

P.S. I’ve only not met 2 of them.

And finally, because Michelle says that quoting this would make me look cool:

“You’ve officially been PIMPED!”

Glaring Notebook Reborn

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Surprise!

Welcome to my new blog.

Or rather, my blog, reborn.

After years of sitting on Brinkster (since December 2000, using it to test scripts for Xfresh), I finally got round to finish coding my blog. Yes, I am not powered by WordPress. This programmer ethic was inspired by DJCS, the walking-talking-DNS-server and uber geek, who also coded his own blog.

You’ll notice some new features, like categories (I’m not done putting blog entries in categories; I’ll announce when it’s done), a new skin, Cubed, that is now default, replacing the 17-month-reigning Trained. (Yep, no more staring at people sitting on the LRT.)

Yes, you can still change skins, if you miss looking at people sitting on the LRT.

Or, if you miss me, you can come sit with me on the LRT. If there are seats available, and no more deserving people to sit in them.

What was the idea/theme/motif behind Cubed?

I just wanted to shock people. Make people go, whoa. Make people realize that hey, this is not the same site anymore. It does not have a default black background. No, it does not have anything to do with the black metal incident; I’ve always wanted to make my next one a colorful one.

As for the left-side image, it’s inspired by my love for Rubik’s Cubes. Somehow, I accidentally made the lines grey instead of black, and that’s where the sketch-like cube came from. The font was picked because it could not be held seriously; same with the colors. The rainbow was a last-minute addition, and the dithered pattern effect was made by saving the image as a 16-color GIF file, not through Photoshop. I liked the effect, as it was reminiscent of good old Windows 3.1 and 640×480 at 16-color VGA displays (or 320×240 at 256-color VGA displays.) Meanwhile, the font was more 70’s retro, making a mishmash that would never have happened in 1993.

The preface text on the sidebar did not need a background; it miraculously could be read across the screen. 😀

Yeah, just so you all know I’m not always serious even though I was born with a serious face, yo.

You can still add a comment with your email address, and the email address would come out jumbled to spambots, but clickable to humans. You don’t need to type a subject anymore (well it’s been that way for a while anyway.) There’s also a calendar view at the bottom, where you can view blog entries by the month or year.

As for other horribly-named blog terms like permalink, trackback and pinging, well… experiment with the Replies link at the bottom of each entry.

Give me more life stories!

I started a website in 1998 under XOOM.COM, as it was known then, to host my Quake 2 plugin-player models. My first ever URL? http://members.xoom.com/albnok. It did not have ads then! It was then bought over by NBCi.COM. Around that time too, I registered for a free domain name under NameZero.com (it was either that or the only other competitor then).

So, about 5 years before this, I had http://www.albnok.com/.

That domain died, and I started blogging in December 2001. Other than me and DJCS, I haven’t a clue who else has such a long contiguous stretch of blog entries on one server, one system. TV Smith perhaps? Paul had dozens of subdirectories, subdomains and domains before arriving at his current one, but I am not able to access his archives, so yeah.

Okay, so I’ve been sitting on this for much longer than I expected. Much, much, much longer. Ever since the days anybody wondered where I suddenly got so much bandwidth to upload so many pictures (Brinkster only has 30 MB of space), I have been using my webspace secretly. 😀

I’ve also put the links out on the side, in this Cubed skin at least. Because I took the trouble to update them, you should too!

My blog address was not:
http://www16.brinkster.com/albnok
It was officially:
http://www.xfresh.com/albert (but if you link me as the former I would still be happy to be linked.)
It is now:
http://www.glaringnotebook.com

The first ten people to change my link to the new one will get a free paragraph each, with me explaining why I linked to you, what I like about your blog and why you people should go to your blog. What are you waiting for? Free linkage and pimpage!

Prove Your Metal

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So you might have read the metalhead on the street claim that their music is positive in statements in the newspapers. What exactly do they mean?

Let me take a few examples:

Heavy Metal:
Black Sabbath – War Pigs
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor

Go do yourselves a favor and listen to it online, through online streaming sites or other methods. You will find it to sound very, very old and classic-rock like. Except that classic rock sings about love, and less worldly topics.

Power/speed metal:
Stratovarius – Eagleheart
Heart of an eagle
He flies through the rainbow
Into a new world and finds the sun
Spreading his wings
Above all the sorrows
The glory of Eagleheart

This is also the cheesiest sounding of all metal – high-pitched vocal singalongs, no screaming, no growling, and lots of very classical elvish-sounding guitar solos. Girls will dig Nightwish, which is like Evanescence but more operatic.

Thrash Metal:
Metallica – One
Fed through the tube that sticks in me
Just like a wartime novelty
Tied to machines that make me be
Cut this life off from me

This is also an easy-to-find song and video; it won a Grammy for Best Metal Performance.

Yes, it does touch on the sensitive subject of suicide, and *gasp* euthanasia, and war again. However, watch the video, and you will see why – the protagonist, as a young boy, is told “for democracy, any man would give his only begotten son”. He is sent off to war and is hit by a grenade and is left a shell of himself, paralyzed from the neck down. Stuck in the ward, he cannot sleep, traumatized by the events. He then uses Morse Code to signal to the doctors that he does not want to live anymore. Whether or not the doctors did anything we don’t know, but it cuts to a funeral hymn.

Death Metal:
Death – Mentally Blind
You see your vision and no one else’s
Your every word filled with sarcasm
Crucify people with invisible knowledge
Verbal destruction with each compulsion
We will see where you go
The future for you is nowhere
Every minute a cliche of your kind
Too much to say from a person with no respect
Your accusations you will regret
From the mentally blind come ideas that are poison
Take away the power, a shallow person you will find

Death metal is pounding, and heavier than thrash, but one of the identifying factors is heavily growled vocals. Those are not voices of Satan! It is merely the style. Go read around. Go educate yourself. I’m already helping out here. I don’t have the following songs, but these can be Googled nevertheless:

Death – Living Monstrosity:
Living monstrosity
A freak for life they’ll always be
Never knowing love or hate
Only pain the drug creates

(Oh look, an anti-drug song!)

Death – Without Judgement:
Guilty until proven innocent
We condemn your soul and fate
Never mind the possibilities
Too busy for logic or to calculate

Anddd Death – Spiritual Healing:
Blinded by the twisted ways you live
Kill for religion, will the Lord forgive?
Idiocy has stricken your mind
A real-life hell you will find

If anything, Death‘s lyrics are merely championing that you should not blindly accept the false teachings of others. In other words, don’t be stupid.

I will not deny that black metal is morbid, rhymes in occult, and talks about crushing skulls, or that Pantera has violent lyrics, or that Death has a song called Mutilation. However, read beyond the sound, and you will find some very intelligent lyrics.

I’d like to give as much detail as possible, but I don’t have any black metal songs. The hardest I have is just by the band Death, and I don’t listen to them a lot.

Now let’s look at rappers, who champion free sex, drugs and alcohol.

Nelly – Ride Wit Me:
If you wanna go and get high wit me
Smoke an L in the back with the Benz

Let me spell L out for you. LSD. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. A drug that creates illusions and vivid daydreams.

50 Cent – In Da Club:
You can find me in the club, bottle full of Bud
Mama, I got that X, if you into takin’ drugs
I’m into having sex, I ain’t into making love
So come give me a hug if you into getting rubbed

X is also E which is also Esctasy. A Bud is a Budweiser, a brand of beer. These hip hop songs are being played on the radio and being sung along by girls and boys, underaged alike!

I have been to many underground gigs on the more urban rock side, and have never seen somebody smoking a joint publicly. I have never seen anybody having sex in a rock gig either. Look for these things in nightclubs, people.

The more heavy the music played, the less girls you’d find.

Why are there so few venues to have rock gigs as opposed to hiphop/R&B gigs? Venues complain that the rockers don’t drink; this is especially so with the Malay crowds. Hiphop and R&B is more profitable. Don’t assume that there’s debauchery there, either – there will be more in a dangdut club.

One Of One

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Instead of listing what I did this year (which is basically sleep, eat, play guitar and blog so far), or listing what I did last year, I’ll list what I did in the past few New Years.

1st January 2001: This would be the last year I’d celebrate it at home.
1st January 2002: I was in the office with Paul and Joey. We did a three-way handshake to usher the new year.
1st January 2003: Rock The World 3 was held in a parking lot near KLCC. At midnight, Emmett of Butterfingers was on stage. “Oh. Fireworks.” His expression was timeless; we were expecting it to come minutes later! After all that, I proudly walked to Ampang Park, instead of KLCC, avoiding the Malaysian Book Of Records’ largest human sandwich.
1st January 2004: Trent, Ed, Jasmine and I walked back and forth a few times from Bintang Walk to KLCC. We were in front of Haagen Dazs in Lot 10 when the countdown happened. Being in such a crowd, with everybody spraying each other with foam sprays and giving everybody a free hair coloring in the spirit of Sungei Wang fashion, and feeling like puking after smelling all that spray – now that was a moment (or a few hours) worth experiencing at least once in your life.
1st January 2005: A tsunami had just struck, so we Malaysians were not encouraged to celebrate. Gigs were cancelled, and celebration was muted. Shaz and I were at his collegemate’s place in Bangsar, where I first tried shisha, and tested out my newly acquired Canon Powershot A400.
1st January 2006: Over the hills and far away, I was at Shelley‘s balcony in Cheras, watching the fireworks. I took pictures, but they were disappointing and shall come in a later post.