Gundam 00 Ends...

Finally after 2 long years, Gundam 00 comes to an end with 2 seasons of 25 episodes each... I've mentioned in my previous post before, i wasnt a Gundam fan until this series came along and well, it really is much better than a lot of anime/cartoons out there...

if you have the time, go and watch it.. HAHA.. and the video i posted is the 2nd end song of season 2 with the very tragic couple in the series..

Perfume: The story of a Murderer

As you can infer, i've downloaded some movies into my hard drive and watching them bit by bit like chinese drama when i'm free. So my latest indulgence is in this story about a gifted young man who turned into a murderer in order to capture his dream in a tiny bottle of perfume. initially i wasnt very keen to watch it (actually i have a lot of movies in my hard drive which i'm lazy/no interest to watch) but after the first few minutes, it proved to be not a bad choice. better than lame-bo. it is very interesting especially how they film the concept of a scent when you really dont smell anything in front of your screen. haha.

good show. 7/10

Lame-Bo

Alrite it's been a while since i updated on movies. i've watched quite a few but i was just lazy to write anything about them. stuff like Red Cliff 2, Bolt, and seriously, i just forgot about the rest of it... some of them are good, some are not too bad, but this is one of the films that i must write about.

It's the one show with the one man hero who had popularized the whole army movie thing, inspired games and commando-type films all over the world. i didnt catch it when it came out in 2008 and you know what? THANK GOD I DIDN'T! This is film is sooo sucky, it is right at the bottom of all hierarchy. seriously, it doesnt even score 1 out of 10. You can actually count how many WORDS Mr Rambo talked in the movie and the rest is just mindless crap killings. i can do it if i have the guns also. please save yourself the torture and never borrow such a low class film ever. BTW i heard that Legend of Chun Li is worse.

this movie has earned itself a grand score of 0/10. great.

Margaritaville

To be honest, South Park has got the best sense of humor out there. 

Margaritaville proves it all.

Go and watch ppl.. season 13 episode 3. i think is the best episode of south park ever. for those who dont know yet, south park is back on season 13~! 

Back From LalaLand

Hi all i've finally managed to clumber back to sunny Singapore. Though in my very humble and honest opinion, Sungai Besar is a much more sunny place. BUT, it was a good rest nonetheless and i've rejuvenated myself, albeit gaining a few spots on my body and well, starting to feel like a fish being scaled off daily. 

When i first thought of going back, there at the back of my mind i wanted to take nice pictures by the not-so-nice seaside (consists of mud and sand and... more mud and sand) i also wanted to take my mum's little piece of land called the garden, which in a few years time, has blossomed to become a tiny tropical rainforest. ALAS! i forgot to bring the charger for the camera's battery o.O 

Well, not to fret, since there are of course photo shops in Sungai Besar, to help the local develop photos of course. Upon checking, they have NEVER seen a canon DSLR battery before. well... o.O 

which ultimately leaves me with only a few pictures that i manage to salvage with about half the battery life. In fact there is a second battery, which i left here in sunny Singapore. THAT is how smart ppl can get when they are infected with chicken pox. enjoy the pics though =)

This is none other than one of my mum's multitude of plants. i dunno what is its name. just like we all dunno what's the names of those trees in the tropical rainforest. it just looks nice.

Another fruit and AH HA! it's called 'LIM KIM' in hakka i dunno wad it's called in other languages. someone enlighten me.

Being a fishing village, of course Sungai Besar will have a seaside. it's just how nice the seaside can be. Well, not very nice. i've taken this shot to purposely make the silhoutte stood out.

One of my favorite pics from salvaging the remaining juice of the battery. it's the stilts that some of the chalets are on.

Also one of my favorite pics. a crane was resting on top of the log. but too bad the lens is really not far enough even at 200mm it still appears to be so small.

P/S btw i really didnt expect Sungai Besar to turn up on wiki. wiki rawks =D

Holiday Ending Soon

Finally, after a tortuous 1-1/2 weeks i'm finally going back soon. to be honest, it was only tortuous at the beginning of the ordeal. 

CANNOT SCRATCH! ITCHY! FEVER! 

after that, they slowly dry up to be scales on your body and on top of that, you get to eat good food (fishes everyday), get to sleep for 12 hours daily, get to take photos at the beach, get to use the computer to read manga and watch gundam, and best of all, even get paid... and now i'm going back soon. God is good =)

well, even going back wont be so bad coz there appeared to be cheap air tix from KL to SING so decided to get it since it's once in a lifetime it can get so cheap.. so i'll be back soon peeps. !! 

MUAHAHAHAHA! 

Poxy Update!

i'm currently recovering well in a small town eating rice with steam fishes and vege everyday. yes i know it seems like i've retreated into a reclusive villa of some sort but please do not think that having chicken pox is having fun at my age T_T apparently a lot of ppl does not know that you will be hospitalised if you get chicken pox at the age of 30. and it is fatal. 

hopefully i will be back to my computer to update soon...  

GREAT NEWS!

i'm down with chicken pox (not confirm but i have small, watery red dots over my body, mild fever for about 2 days or so AND I HAVE NOT HAD CHICKEN POX IN MY LIFE). Confirming with doctor tomorrow... horrible nite tonite... i can so predict. 

now should i be happy or should i be anxious? -.-

I'm SICK!

Quote: "i'm surprised our body dont fall sick from it.." (2009, Moses on his previous post!)

zZz

Caleb One Month Old

Last week i had the opportunity to attend a baby shower (not really shower larh but probably means the same thing) of Deacon Lim's little son named Caleb. He is such an adorable boy he covered his ears while sleeping because we all uncle aunties are making too much of a noise.. SOO cute!!! 

as time went on sooo many ppl brought their little toddlers along to the baby shower and it was very happening indeed. Only posted some picture because as enthusiastic as i am about taking pics, i'm still as lazy as ever to go wait for it to upload *since i've already uploaded it in one million other websites*. 

But overall it was a very busy day last Sunday. And as i'm posting this, just out of a sudden random rant, i think Singapore is experiencing equatorial style winter today. it may not be winter tomorrow but today sure is super cold. island wide raining for the whole morning + afternoon + evening. weather's gone wonky. 

anyways, here are some pics. 

The mums/mums-2-b taking pics with the star of the day. He just keeps on sleeping and sleeping and sleeping... like me! 

not to forget, we also have another little boy who turned 16 months? normally when he's in church in the cry room, he's not as active as he was that day so seizing this golden opportunity i snapped some shots of him :) btw he just learned the cute 'O-ohhh'! haha

and here's my favourite picture of the day, which was taken earlier that day when we sat down to have a sip in the hot weather. Hot?! yar.. it was summer on sunday, winter on monday. i'm surprised our body dont fall sick from it.. 

High Dynamic Range Imaging

To be honest, when i first heard HDR it has nothing to do with photography. or digital imaging. it had to do with games. Yes and until today, the most realistic games like Crysis and Far Cry 2 uses HDRI in their graphics engine to create that kind of surreal environment that you see in games.

And after reading some chunks of material on the net (i thought i was damn difficult to do), i decided to try it out myself. yes i know i look like i'm damn free but it's all well planned ok. i'm preparing myself for the aussie trip so i can shoot nice pics over there, IF i get to borrow the SLR over... 

Anyways, during my orchard trip as some of you might have seen on facebook, i managed to take some pictures of the supreme court and some skyline using the auto exposure bracketing feature of the camera to get 3 pictures with 3 different exposures together. Merge them in photoshop and walla! here are some pics.. click to enlarge it is damn sharp. 

This is the old supreme court of Singapore.. which in my honest opinion, looks much nicer than the stupid new disc structure. That's why i didnt even bother taking its picture tho it's just next door.. 

The skyline of Singapore as seen from clarke quay. the HDR makes it almost surreal, emphasizing the dramatic sky and saturating the color so vivid it looks like a painting. i hope to catch the opera house in action during my trip.. HAHA.. !!

there you go. HDR makes up wonderful images tho i think that i still have loads to learn as an amateur.. 

New Template!!!

Yeap, i'm officially satisfied with my new template.. it is nice, chio and just fabulous. Credits goes to the following:

Bloggerbuster.com

repeatxy.com

deviantart.com

for providing tips, tricks and images so that this template can be custom made :) 

The Power of RAW!

Since bitten by that bug, i've been taking some pics here and there. As we all know, digital imaging software is also progressing by the light years together with the cameras that are produced. To be honest, even with all that geekiness in me, i dont really play with photoshop or paintshop pro or wadsoeva. Yes i did play with them quite some time ago (proof of my geekiness) but i never really liked them because

1) Their program is laggy and huge AND COMPLICATED. 

2) I'm too lazy. 

3) My picture look worse than when it is unedited. Which is usually the case for me and it has been sceptical for me since i touched those program. 

So since i was bitten by that bug now, i figured i shall just check out what they do normally to make pictures look nicer.. they say that curiosity kills the cat.. BUT i'm not a cat... at the very max, i can only be a mosquito due to my name but not a cat.. so curiosity crept in. And lo and behold, i discovered something called the RAW format. how noob of me. 

Here is a picture of a pretty girl in a nicely diffused background with nice colours and all. Normally i would just look at it and go, wow! quite a nice picture.. but then if it is blown up to quite a bigger size, things would be different. and from my crappy experience with digital imaging, this would probably be the best image that the camera can produce and any altering will lead to grains, noise and those ugly stuff that makes your picture worse. 

So after reading a bunch of material regarding histograms, tonal range and blah blah blah, i decided to try it out myself by shooting RAW formats on the SLR. They always say that RAW can preserve this larh, that larh and result in lossless color correction etc etc. i always take them with a pinch of salt because my eyes tell me that JPEG looks as good as the RAW that i shoot when i look into the LCD. And if i do anything to the image on processing, things will go wrong.. 

Initially when i blow up the picture in my screen it really does look a tad uninspiring. When it is still small like above it can look quite alrite and acceptable but when blown to about 5R size there's a distinct warmish color cast and the whole picture just look flat. So after tweaking with the white balance, tonal range and the exposure, together with some curves adjustments, i got the shock of my life...

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I couldnt believe my eyes actually until i click another button to compare them both... well in my honest (even though noob) opinion i really think the latter picture looks more striking in colors, and with better contrast and exposure. so THAT is how RAW format can do. and there you have it.. even a noob photographer like me can do something like that without using photoshop.. just some basic color correction and exposure adjustments... how cool is that.. 

Singapore Student Kills Self After Stabbing Professor

Suddenly, it seems like there's a lot of interesting news in sunny Singapore. More relevantly, the student involved is an Indo in NTU who, i presume, got fedup with his prof and decided to pull a stunt on him.. 

Btw the picture above is from a series of bunny suicide comics by Andy Riley which is morbidly hilarious.. 

How Ridiculous Can It Be?!

To be struck by lightning in the midst of all those tall buildings?! The Merlion sure is suay... 

Photography Bug

They call it the photography bug..  when i was young, there was something called the film camera. the SLR for film is smaller, lighter and less complicated BUT the films costs a hell lot. And you cant see what you've taken..

so for that simple reason, i cant afford to buy any camera. or any film for that matter. until one day this thing call digital camera popped out. so i promptly *actually i got it much later* got myself a small little camera the size of my wallet. at first it was quite fun pointing and shooting here and there. but then, when i got to travel a bit more it kinda disappointed me coz the pics doesnt turn out the way i want it to.. and i was too lazy to find out how to make it turn out i want it to.. 

well, up until last year when i got to try something bigger. it was scepticism at first coz 1) i've never used one before. 2) it probably will just produce that sort of dull flat pictures even with the perfect angle and so on.. 

ah ha! that's when i was quite a bit surprised because of how nice the pics turn out when photographed in indoor lighting. that sparked off something so after a few months later, i figured that i'd go online and read a bit about aperture and shutter speed. which is not a good idea because this bug is now bugging me like mad. 

Just nice that my dear fren has his SLR on the free, because of busy FYP (ah ha!) and stuff so i got to borrow it for a while to take some pics.. which is also not a good idea because now the bug's growing bigger. 

oh well, i shall just take some nice pics *in my opinion* from now and post some if i've got the time... haha! 

p/s: btw if you havent noticed, the blog skin has changed... with the help of some tips and tricks online... i will tune it a bit more on the days to come so stay posted =D and go download this if you havent to see the nice fonts!!