Saturday, November 22, 2008

A gift for my birthday

This year I got one of the best present ever from Jin, a Canon 50mm f1.4 prime lens as I mentioned earlier. Although not exactly a surprise because we have already discussed about the purchase few days earlier, it has still more than made my day :))

It may not be as sharp as the 100mm f2.8 but it produces some of the best bokeh I have ever seen.

Today we went to Mandurah with Jin for a "photo session" and undoubtly it is a superb lens for portraiture, producing reasonably sharp images even at the maximum aperture of f1.4. In my opinion, the Canon 100mm f2.8 is still the best medium telephoto lens for portrait work but I think this little baby is pretty close to it. Well at least with this little prime, I don't have to walk back 10m or so for a full body shot :)

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Coffee Break!







"The bad news is that the All Ords fell by 200 points. The good news is that I didn't know there were 200 points left." - Compareshares.com.au :))

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Lake Monger Reserve

Today was just another typical non-eventful day, having to work yesterday and again tomorrow, the weekend just wasn't long enough by any standard. Jin was struggling with curtain in the morning (yes, she is making new curtains for our lounge room) while I was trying to filter through news from the rotten financial markets around the globe to find any sign of reprieve. While all this is bad news for those average investors stubborn enough to hold on to their investment portfolio they started some 6 years ago, subsequent drops in interest rates from our reserved bank is much welcomed by most of us mortgage holders. Which means that at last, we can breath a little easier and I might not have to wait too long for my next camera upgrade...I am looking at may be a 50D next year sometime :))

Anyhow, we decided to go out for a walk in the afternoon. After all, today's weather was too nice for us to be locked up at home anyway. After I dropped something to my brother in Wembly Down, we went to the nearby Lake Monger Reserve. I haven't been to the reserve since I finished my college and I was totally stunned by how tranquil and beautiful the surrounding areas are. Luscious greens with scores of wild birds and black swams, it is just awesome!

Yorkshire Pudding

Yorkshire pudding is a dish that originated in Yorkshire but attained wider popularity. It is made from batter and most often served with roast beef, chicken, or any meal in which there is gravy served with it, or on its own. Gravy is often served alongside. It is often claimed that the purpose of the dish was to provide a cheap way to fill the diners - the Yorkshire pudding being much cheaper than the other constituents of the meal - thus stretching a lesser amount of the more expensive ingredients as the Yorkshire pudding was traditionally served first. (Source: Wikipedia)

Well, I guess it serves a similar purpose to rice or potatoes but to my surprise, they actually taste quite nice! Here is the recipe which I used to prepare ours last night :) The more complicated part was to get our roast beef done, which nearly cought fire in our oven hehe!

We had the puddings with roast beef, served with creamy mashed potatoes and steamed cauliflower with tons of gravy....yum!!!

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Big Gun No Brain

Video game turned movie or movie turned video game, I couldn't really think of any truely successful incarnations except may be Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. Max Payne is one of the latest video game turned movie title that hit our big screen lately.

I am a big fan of Max Payne game series and the use of "bullet-time" in the gameplay was nothing short of revolutionary at the time! This was also one of the main reason why I had convinced Jin to watch it with me a couple days ago. To cut a long story short, the movie definitely wasn't worth any cents of your hard earned $15 and the 100mins in life that you will never get back!

The movie is a little "too dark" to my taste and all the characters inside, including Max Payne have failed to connect with the audience in my opinion. At the end, I couldn't care less about what actually happened to any of them. The movie is not only lack of substance but also blatantly boring right through till the end.

The plot is fairly simple, Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) is cop who is still trying to get over the death of his wife and baby while investigating several murders, while Mona Sax (Mila Kunis) costars as an assassin desperate for her own revenge of her sister. However, it's not all bad, the movie still manages to pull out some rather impressive visual effects and mindless big gun fires!

My advice - safe the $15 bucks. If you haven't played the game before, go and get yourself a copy of Max Payne or Max Payne 2 which should only cost you a couple of dollars by now :)