Avatar

I can tell you right now, there is no better movie to wrap up 2009 then this blockbuster movie from James Cameron - Avatar!

You know when you go to watch a movie that is all hyped up, where almost everyone; critics or critics-wannabe alike, all said it's a bloody good movie, quite often you will leave the movie in disappointment because of your high expectation for it. Fortunately, this is not the case, James Cameron delivers a movie that is both original and spellbinding. If you haven't already watch this movie, do yourself a favor, go to watch it in 3d and your eyes will thank you for it. So stop reading this spoiler and get your butt into the movie!

Avatar is set in the year 2154 and takes place on a moon-like planet called Pandora where humans or rather, "evil" RDA corporation trying to mine a precious mineral. The only problem is, na'vi, a clan of feline-looking native humanoids is in their way and they are refusing to move. The science division of RDA, headed by Grace (Sigourney Weaver) created avatars, genetically engineered human-na'vi hybrids, to study the mysterious tribe. Jake (Sam Worthington) is recruited to replace his murdered twin brother and take the role of an avatar to infiltrate the na'vi. While studying them, Sam slowly falls in love with the princess of the na'vi clan, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). The story takes you through one of the most engaging and beautiful journey of Jake and Neytiri, and how they eventually fall in love.

However, when Jake fails to convince the clan to move away from their Hometree, where the greatest deposit of the precious mineral is, all hell breaks loose. The human forces, headed by Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) starts to attack the Hometree and killing many na'vis along the way. Jake takes the na'vi side and starts to lead the na'vi to counter attack the humans. The main story is very simple and it reminds me of the movies like The Last Samurai. However, all the characters are so brilliant portrayed in the movie and they are so engaging...yes, did I mention engaging? ....emotionally engaging...it's simply beautiful! Although the movie has its sad bits but do not worry, na'vis believe in fairytale and the ending is a fairytale ending too :)

I give it a 4.9 out of 5! I hope James Cameron will continue to make the two sequels he promises lol!

2012

Have you got a billion euro to spare or two? Because that is how much you have to pay to reserve a seat to live beyond 2012!

From the director that brought you "Independence Day" and "The Day after Tomorrow", 2012 brought disaster movie to a new height! Everything is epic in this movie and almost everything is destroyed beyond imagination and to an epic proportion. The movie started a little bit slow but I was at the edge of my seat for most part of the movie.

As giant tsunamis and earthquakes escalate around the world, the rich and famous secretly embarking on their secret journeys to some giant heavy-duty ships in China while ordinary citizens of the world just go about their normal lives, seemingly oblivious of what lies ahead.

The dialogues and logic might be a little thin but I am a junkie for disaster flicks, so there are plenty to satisfy my craze and more than enough to compensate for the shortcomings.

It may not be as good as "The Day after Tomorrow", may be a bit cheesy at point and down right silly but it was a perfect movie for a mindless Friday night!

I give it a 3/5!

Big Brother is here!

Yesterday I got my long awaited Canon 580exii, the Canon flagship flash accessory. Compared to my old 430ex, the biggest noticeable difference is its size and weight, and of course, the build quality. Do doubt this is a Canon professional flash unit built for tough life ahead. It has a metal footing at the bottom and all the switches, buttons and covers are water sealed. Of course, the only part that is not water-sealed when fitted onto my current cameras is the hot-shoe footing, which is only available on Canon 1d Mark III or newer. Well, not that I am going to shoot in the shower or anything like that, but I suppose it is nice to know :)

It is also a lot more quieter than 430ex and in my brief experiment last night, a hell lot stronger and faster. Not that 430ex is inadequate my any mean, I love my 430ex for its compact size but when you have flash modifier fitted on, such as a diffuser; or bouncing off higher roof, 430ex in some situations, could be a little under-powered.

Just another year...

Not only a year is approaching the end, I suddenly found myself a year older as well. Well, actually I have stop counting since I clocked past 30 and I virtually lost count since (intentionally of course)! This year, we had a great dinner at Saowanee's Place in North Perth, not only a local award winning Thai restaurant, but also a kitchen headed by Dao, Jin's long time friend from tafe. We had an enticing entrée followed by paw paw salad, red beef curry, red duck curry with rambutan, beef salad and concluded with a marvelous mud cake from Cafe Mozart. Not only I am getting older a year, I think I also put on another kilo onto my expanding waist line too lol!

Eating and taking picture at the same time would be a skill worth learning :) Here is David with his new baby, a brand new Canon 7D with 50mm f1.4.

Thank you Dao, Lisa, David, Benna and my dearest Jin for the wonderful night.

유부초밥

Originally from Japan, 유부초밥 (yu-bu-cho-bab) is a Korean version of Inari sushi which basically is vinegar-ed rice stuffed in fried marinated tofu skin.

The steamed rice is mixed with a boiled mixture made of vinegar, sugar, salt and kelp (for flavouring only, removed before mixing with rice). The rice is then mixed with the rest of the ingredients which consist of
finely diced carrot, beef, crab meat and furikake.

This was my dinner and will be my lunch tomorrow at work :)

Hartland Camera Repairs

I am a person that always expect things to turn out the worse way possible, you can call me pessimistic but I think it has its advantages. Well, if things do turn out the bad way, at least I am not surprised :) Our trip to Europe was fantastic in many ways, but we also had a few hiccups along the way. My beloved camera 50D was one of them! Well, simply it just decided to pack up on my first shot in London! What could be worse? I felt like loosing my eyes!

The good news is, I returned it to Hartland Camera Repairs in Northbridge as soon as we came back and it was sent over to NSW for a warranty repair. To my surprise, I received an SMS from the Hartland Camera Repairs in about a week saying that my 50D had been repaired and was ready to be collected! What really surprises me is, there was no charge for the service, not even the postage and handling, not a cent! Well, it did state on the Canon's warranty card that Canon Australia is not responsible for any associated cost of postage and handling.

Thank you Hartland Camera Repairs! By the way, they are Nikon authorised service agent too, so you know where you should go for your next camera service! Service with a smile!

Escargot

Finally I got to eat snails! :) Actually I have tried a few variant of cooked snails before in various places but this by far I think is the best. Jin didn't quite like it because she reckoned it was a touch too oily or cheesy for her.

They look like your typical garden snails, hymm...I wonder how they will taste like lol! The restaurant that we had this was called George V on the famed Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Unfortunately, the main dish that I ordered, a steak burger, was virtually uncooked and tasteless. To add insult to the injury, I was charged 7 euro for a small glass of orange juice! I missed Hungry Jack or Burger King all of a sudden then lol!

Second "L" glass

I have most of my focal range covered now that I have got my long awaited general purpose lens, the Canon EF 24-70mm f2.8L. For a while, I was torn between the 24-70 and 24-105 but at the end, I decided to go for the slightly bigger brother. This lens has been around for for sometime now and is probably one of the most used general purpose "L" glass on the market despite weighing close to 1 kg. I have never tried the 24-105 before but from what I read online, these two are fairly similar, optically however, most people agree 24-70 has the edge and also not forgetting, it's a full-stop quicker. Going down from f4 to f2.8 means doubling the amount of light hitting camera sensor at any particular shutter speed. This coupled with high ISO could mean getting sharp images of moving objects, for example humans in low light, or blurred mess/ghosts unless that's your intention :) There is another difference between the 2 though, the 24-70 is unfortunately lack of image stabilizer (IS) but I guess if there is one, it will only land bigger blow to my hip pocket lol!

I did a rough test and the images shot are very good, sharpness and contrast are definitely better compare to those of EFS 17-85mm IS. However, it still doesn't beat my favourite prime, the mighty Canon 50mm f1.4 stopping down to f2.8!

If you need more info about this marvelous lens, click here!

Back to Reality

A two-weeks-and-a-bit was just too short for a trip to Europe. We spent 2 weeks in 3 cities and we were still running out of time, how those tours can do the whole Europe in a month is beyond me! We did have a few problems and hiccups along the way but overall, the whole trip was very enjoyable.

Will we go back? Of course we will, especially to Rome, I love the city. Our opinions were divided on Paris, no offense but most Parisians won't too friendly to us while we were there. They seem to have a chip on their shoulder and those subways were just filthy! Seeing beyond that, Paris is a beautiful city in its own right and as Jin said, a very romantic city :)

London to me is very similar to Melbourne, very clean and fashionable city. Chinatown is an absolute hit and the "dimsum" that could be sampled there is top-notch! All the musical performances are residents there and two thumbs up for the Lion King show, absolutely brilliant!

No doubt I will write more about our trip in my next few entries and perhaps more later, and may be some things to do and not to do there :)

Where has the time gone?

It's been more than a month since my last entry into my blog but the problem is, it felt like last week I just updated it. Am I going nuts or what? One good thing is, we are just one more week of sleeps away from our European trip!!

I know I am a little bit too late but for those who are here and didn't realise that yesterday us Chinese celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival; well, happy belated Mid-Autumn Festival to everyone! ...btw, my brother is one of them lol! We were planning to have some mooncakes last night but we just couldn't stomach them after having 8 pizzas at Little Caesars in Mundaring for dinner (they were 7 of us btw...so kinda not too bad hehe!)

So here it is, we are having one for breakfast!!

An afternoon stroll in Freo

Kaiser Baas USB HDTV

As we don't watch a lot of TV shows, I tend not to spend (waste) too much on a digital set top box and yes, we still use analog tvs :) We bought a $99 DGTEC hd tv tuner about couple years ago for our bedroom and it lasted just that. So I decided to try something different (and even cheaper) this time round, a USB tv tuner for my bedroom pc. It was an amazing piece of technology I think for the price I paid for it at Harvey Norman. It is made by an OZ company who makes digital photo frames :) This USB stick is capable 1080i display and it allows typical PVR features such as schedule recording with EPG and time-shift for those emergency toilet breaks. It comes with a copy of PowerCinema 5 by Cyberlink which is rather pleasant to use. Setting up the device is a no-brainer, fully plug and play on XP and Vista. However, I was a little disappointed with the remote controller provided, the remote only works at direct line-of-sight only and I mean direct!! So if you plug this thingy at the back of your computer, the remote will have no use at all. Luckily my Logitech diNovo Mini never let me down :)

Logitech VX Nano Mouse

Got this little mouse today for my netbook. Well, the mouse is not really of nano size but the receiver is so remarkably small that you soon will forget that it is even there! Some might say that most of the new notebooks nowadays are equiped with bluetooth technology, wouldn't a BT mouse make more sense? The answer is yes of course but there is a big downside to it, BT mouse is usually less responsive and often lag behind. Logitech claims that the 2xAAA batteries inside can last up to one year (only if you remember to hit the tiny "off" button underneath the mouse when not in use I guess). Overall, the mouse feels solid and it even comes with a carrying pouch!

Love him or hate him

I've always been a great follower of Ken Rockwell's blog and a fan of his style of writing. Personally I don't know what sort of photographer he is or how good he is, but what I do love about him is his dry sense of humour. His collection of photos in his galleries are hardly inspirational to me but again, I hate to judge a book by its cover. He is just a regular guy who loves to write stuff about himself, his life and photographic equipments, just like most of us do on our blogs, except on a much, much, much and much bigger scale. Unfortunately, I do believe he has more haters around the world then people who like him.

Tonight I came across one of his page which was written a while back and I thought it was quite interesting. Check it out here - The Seven Levels of Photographers! While I don't agree with everything he said, but he did make a few valid points though.

"Bad rich amateurs think fuzzy B/W images of poor poeple are art" - Ken Rockwell :))

If you got more free time and would like to learn more about making great photos, here is another great page - How to Make Great Photographs. I have not undertaken any photography courses in the past and I am glad Ken is able to share his experience with us and help me to be a better photographer.

White Beauty

Got this from Harvey Norman last week, a vaio P series netbook (VGN P13GHW). It was their last display model and hence, we got a fairly good discount from them. It looks like a sport car on steroid, it is "beautiful"!

Yes...look without essence some might say, well, frankly I don't give a rat about what others said. The look alone is enough to justify the premium price although it has slower atom cpu, smaller hd and running on Vista, which slows it down further :)

Well, after all I am not intend to play game on it. The main reason I bought it is to travel with it so I can have occassional internet access and a place to save all my photos, and for that, this baby fits my criteria perfectly....and it can even fit into my pocket! All I need now is some spare batteries to go with it lol!

Update 26/7/9: This amazing netbook is great for watching movies/trailers in real HD on the go (720p/1080p) provided you use the correct software and codecs. For smooth HD playback, the best software to use is the Cyerlink PowerDVD 8 or Windows Media Classic HC (open source) with PowerDVD's playback filter. Playback using WMP is choppy and virtually unwatchable. I am also able to overclock this tiny Atom Z520 using setFSB from 1.33Ghz to 1.6Ghz without any problem, although I am struggling to find any real world improvement with it :)

USS George Washington (CVN73)

This Giant US Navy aircraft carrier was docked 3km off Fremantle Port this week and we were lucky to come across it on our way to Cottlesloe today.











Here are some facts about this amazing nuclear-powered carrier:
Displacement: Approximately 101,000 long tons
Length: 332.8m
Flight Deck Area: 4.5acres
Power: 2x nuclear reactors that permit the carrier to steam for almost 18 years before refueling
Range: Virtually unlimited! (I need a car with nuclear reactor!)
Speed: About 56+km/hr
Number of aircrafts: 75
Propellers: 4x five-bladed brass propellers weighing 30,000kg each
Anchors: Two, each weighing 30,000kg as well
Meals: 7 galleys serving 18,000 meals daily
Water distiller: 15,000L fresh water daily
Crew accommodations: 6,250

The first is teenage boy's wet dream, the sequel is just masturbation.

Well, there is nothing "naughty" about the stuff that I wrote here today. The above is a direct quotation from a critic from the Scorecard Review about the second installment of the Transformer: The Revenge of the Fallen. A quick check of the tomatometer, at 20%, it is considered by most movie critics around the globe as a utter disaster or a blockbuster flop. Well, I beg to think otherwise. True, the plot is getting thinner and the humour has grown a little tired but I still love those giant robots, those massive explosions and it's no doubt on par with the first. If you like the first Transformer movie, I think you are going to love this one. And guess what? In the packed movie theatre on last Tuesday night, I could confidently said Megan Fox was still the hottest chick in that room! Perhaps the biggest drawback about this second movie is that it is a tad too long, in fact, if it was about 30-60 minutes shorter, it would have been a perfect movie...yawn :)

Backfocus...a real pain!

Back focus is when the focus point or the focal plane is behind of the focus point where you originally intended. I first noticed this issue with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4, especially with the aperture wide open. Although taking close-up shots, it is not much of a problem but as the distance between the subject and the camera increases, the back focus problem worsens. Mucking around with the autofocus/microadjustment setting of my camera improves the situation slightly but the problem is never fully resolved. Hence, AF with the 50mm is unfortunately a hit or miss affair most of the time. With the Canon EF 70-200mm, it consistantly front-focus for some reason, luckily by adjusting the autofocus/microadjustment setting to +5, it fixed the issue all together...or as far as I can see anyway.

These shots were taken on Sunday in Perth during a lazy afternoon stroll. Despite the unpredictable weather and sporadic downpour, there were still plenty of shoppers around for the end of yet another financial year sale.

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

As I mentioned in my previous post, I brought this lens to Lisa & Tim's wedding for a test drive. I was very worried because firstly, this is a new lens that I have no experience using it with and secondly, Lisa slammed the title of their wedding photographer on me!

Well, I shot roughly 80% of my photos on the day with this lens and the results were stunning to say the least. It is a fairly fast lens and coupled with 2nd generation image stabilizer from Canon, it has made indoor/available light photography a breeze and a joy to use. I manage to get decent images even at shutter speed of around 1/10th of a second at 200mm and that's amazing. It definitely blew the conventional shutter speed rule of 1/focal length to pieces! The zoom ring is easy to use and very well dampened. During zooming and focusing, the length of the lens does not change, in fact, nothing physically changes outside the lens and it is also impossible to get lens creep.

There is already so much great thing being said about this lens on the net, I don't think there is anything left for me to add. There are only 2 things left on my wish list, Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L (waiting for IS version) and Canon 5D MarkIII(?) :)

Meet my new family member :)

I remember when I first bought my first digital slr, the Canon 400D back in 2006, it came with a "twin lens" kit. They were the Canon EF 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 and 70-300mm f4-5.6 and I thought they were all I need :) Was I wrong, or may be I am just getting greedier, collecting lenses are just so addictive hehe!

Today I added the 7th member to my growing family of lenses, the Canon EF 70-200mm f2.8L IS. This is an important milestone for me because I have never own any L-lens before and that also means the most expensive investment thus far. I can't really write much about this lens at the moment because I haven't got chance to use it outside yet due to the appalling weather today. However, I am going take it alone for my first mission tomorrow, a wedding to photograph! I did take a few shots indoor at home and I must say, it's money well spent! AF is fast and virtually silent and boy, this baby is sharp even at f2.8. From the few sample shots I have taken, the AF was spot on!

I was tossing between the IS and the non-IS version but I think I have made the right decision to go with the IS despite being some $700 more. Why? My left hand was starting to shake after holding the lens up shooting for less than 10mins :) The lens itself weighs a hefty 1.57kg and although it doesn't sound like much, but try to hold it up to your head with the camera attached for a few minute and you will know what I mean. All I can say is, it is a serious piece of equipment and I truely love it!

Paper Cactus

The last of the set :) Have a fantastic weekend my friends!

Paper Cactus

This is the second one, the third one is coming :)










p/s taken with bounced light vs without (previous post)

Paper Cactus

Jin made this one from paper the other night, I thought it was rather amazing :)

Addicted to Coffee

One for me, one for her :)

Today is only Wednesday but you know it is a "long week" when it feels like a Thursday or even Friday today! Work was pretty flat out in the past couple of days following the long weekend and I think I am just about to have enough!

Now.....
wonder how I make those patterns on my coffee? Well, I am pretty new at this as well but I don't mind to share it with you if you are interested. First, you will need an espresso machine with a steam wand of course. Don't have to be a fancy one because mine isn't. Start with really cold milk in a stainless steel jug filled to about 1/3 full. Colder milk allows you to "stretch" the milk a little bit longer without "burning" the milk.

Start with the steam wand's tip just breaking the surface of the milk. This will help draw in more air into the milk and you know you are doing the right thing when you hear the occassional "hissing" sound. Be careful not to add too much volume to your milk, about 10-20% is sufficient I think. After that, lower the steam wand slightly into the milk and continue "whip" the milk around the jug with the steam until the jug is too hot for you hold in your hands. Turn off the steam but keep the milk moving in the jug to avoid separation of foam from milk. Pour about 2/3 of the milk gently toward the centre of your espresso shot in your cup, then start from the outer edge, swaying the milk from side to side while drawing the jug towards you. Then pour the reminder in a straight line back towards the outer edge.

What I have found is that you have to pour the milk gently but fast enough (but not too fast) to prevent the foam from leaving behind in the jug. Too much foam is no good, and nor does too little. It's all about striking the balance and to achieve that, keep drinking coffee and practicing every single damned day!! :)

At 10mm, things starting to look rather amazing!

Actually I was more interesting in getting the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS but Jin was trying to convince me into buying an ultra wide-angle lens first before our Europe trip this coming Spring. After reading what Ken Rockwell has said about the Sigma 10-20mm, I was a bit skeptical at first but after handling and trying on the lens at the Cameraland, I bought it without a second thought! It was indeed a very well-built lens with decent optic and quite a lot cheaper to my original choice, the Canon 10-22mm. What's more, the lens came with a free hood and a well-padded carrying bag for starter! The lens is fairly sharp at 10mm even wide open, CA is very minimal and barrel distortion is well controlled, something that I really hate at the widest end of my Canon 17-85mm. It uses standard 77mm filter.

As for the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS, well that will have to wait a little longer, may be just before we go to Europe (duty-free)...just may be... :)

Another cup?

Actually in this one I kinda cheated a little bit. Because the coffee grind that I used was not dark enough, I actually dusted my espresso shot with some cocoa powder first before I pour the milk. I quite like the effect and the milk foam actually tastes quite good as well!

For latte art, the rounded base coffee cup supposed to be the best because it allows milk foam to produce better swirls with the coffee shot....well, a decent set of coffee cups is certainly on my shopping list next time :)

My very own Rosetta :)

Well, it might not look like much but it meant a lot to me for the countless practice pours that I have done in the past 2 weeks. I know I still have a very long way to go to make a decent pour but for now, this would do for me :)

Have a great weekend everyone!

p/s: My favourite grind at the moment is the Bin 75 hazelnut from Gloria Jean. It's a very mild roast with a hint of hazelnut, simply superb. And best of all, you can get them is Woolies or Coles!

Have we a match?

Hymm...what do you reckon Wayne? :)

A Wedding

I wonder where the groom was getting all the hair from LOL!

Noisy or Shaky

Recently, I have been told that the iso I used for some of my shots were too high. Well, unless you are a brain surgoen or a guy who sleeps with tripod/monopod, camera shakes as a result of less than ideal shooting situation is always a big hurdle, even with IS/VR activated. Without any sort of image stabilization, I would always try to shoot at shutter speed of at least 1/60, preferably 1/100 or higher to double sure that my day would not be ruined by my shaky hands. I would trade a shaky shot for a noisy one any day and the world is never perfect anyway! But that is just my opinion :)





Lately I have worked a lot with the 50mm f/1.4 and what I have found is with the aperture wide open (1.4-1.8), images produced are very soft with a fair amount of bokeh chromatic abberation. Stopping down to f/2.8 or narrower produces much better results but increases the depth of field for portaiture work. Shooting landscape with the 50mm prime presents a bigger challenge as I found out during our trip to Sydney and Melbourne. During the whole trip, I sticked to my beloved 50mm prime while Jin has the zoom lens. Using f/13 and above produces softer images somehow when viewed at 100%. But of course, these situations vary with different lenses, some expensive zoom lens I believe are pretty sharp wide open but then I will have to save more money to find that out :P

A fun evening with a bunch of old friends

After gobbled up 6 pizzas from out favourite pizza heaven, Little Ceasars in Mundaring, we went for a quick photo session around South Perth. Unfortunately, the sun has set by the time we got there and the dwindling light did not help us at all. As a result of higher iso and the use of flash, the shots turned up very grainy and some, unnaturally exposed. Shooting portait is still very new for both me and Wayne, and a lot still need to be learnt. I guess I am probably better suited for flowers and insects photography lol!

Big car, small on comfort

You would think a big car will be more comfortable on a long journey, well, our rental car during our stay in Eastern States was quite the contrary. I know I know, before you say anything, a big fat Ford Falcon station wagon was indeed an overkill for only 2 of us with a couple of luggage and not truely an environmental friendly to travel I might add. But here is the fact, this big ass car is not the most comfortable way for a long journey and a total shocker around city traffic! The driver's seat lumbar support is way too high for my back and I don't consider myself to be a short person the last time I check. Every time I put my foot on the accelerator, it constantly reminded me that I was driving a fat car because it is just too sluggish given that it has a 4 litre V6 in the bonnet. Last but not least, the gear stick is a tad too far for my liking, luckily it is an automatic. However, I did find one rather pleasant surprise though, despite the engine size, it is actually quite economical to drive....or may be the fuel over there was cheaper at the time :)

Only a life lived for others is worth living

I couldn't even remember what was the last movie I wrote about in my blog. Not that I haven't watched any since then but none of them are really good enough for me to write about. I did come across some horribly bad, ill-conceived movies though, and a few good examples are the Babylon A.D. , Max Payne and The Day the Earth Stood Still - nearly 5 hours of my life wasted because of these three movies!

Well, finally I have a movie that's worth talking about - Ghost Town. Starring British comedian/producer Ricky Gervais as a dentist Dr Bertram Pincus who was discribed by his co-worker as "a f***ing prick", who absolutely loathed human race and had zero social skill. He gained the ability to communicate with the dead after momentarily dying during a blotched colonoscopy. Dr P was forced to mend his anti-social ways when he found himself haunted by ghosts who had unfinished businesses in the living world, including the suave Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear), who remains concerned for the future of his attactive but slightly eccentric Egyptologist wife (Tea Leoni). This romantic comedy is a total stand out from those typical romantic "Hugh Grant" style chic flicks.

It's not the type of "laughing out loud" comedy but it was just so brilliantly made! 4.5 stars from me. Big thank you to Karen for recommending this movie :)

p/s for a LOL comedy, you can't go past Death at a Funeral, it's an instant classic!

Amazing pluggin for PS

I discovered a new pluggin for PS last night while surfing through one of my flickr buddy's photostream. It is capable of creating some amazing high quality artwork from a few clicks of your mouse. Check it out if you are interested!

Short journey to the East

It was a great break from our regular routine and although it was just a short trip, we felt truely relaxed and readied to face the world again! The main reason for the unexpected trip was a fine example of a bureauocratic red tape - the renewal of Jin's Korean passport. Because there is no Korean consulate here in Perth (apparently there was one before??) and also, according to Korean embassy - for security reason, she was not allowed to post her old passport to either Canberra or Sydney, so the only way to renew her existing passport was to go to there herself.

However, my reason to tag along was purely to get away from my otherwise, boring work-eat-sleep routine! In the next few weeks or even months, I will start to post more and more photos from our trip either here or on my Flickr page. We brought 2 slr cameras with us this time, one for me and of course, another for Jin to train up so we are ready for our next round of big holiday photo shoot :) We have between us, 26Gb in total of raw files to sieve through and that will keep me busy for a long time. Jin has been busy posting heaps of shots on her blog too, you can visit her blog here but unfortunately, it's only available in Korean :)

(Thank you Derrick for the email)

Heading off for a break!

I am having a couple of weeks off starting today! Couldn't believe the last time I had a holiday was back in January last year and that's just way too long... Although we have a fairly good holiday planned for later this year but don't really think I can survive that long though... so see you guys in a week and a bit :)

Not quite a long weekend :(

Well, for most people, this weekend is a long weekend but poor me, I will have to work tomorrow. I know I know, this is nothing compared to my poorer friend Wayne who has to work both Sunday and Monday, that would really suck big time hehe! We were back at Kings Park earlier this evening for another WASO concert, this time with Human Nature. Well, actually it was just a rehearsal for the actual concert that will be taking place at the same venue on Saturday and Sunday :) ...so it was free!

Have a great long weekend guys!

Time out

"Individually, we're limited in how much we can accomplish. But when we join forces, there is no limit to how much we can fail to achieve." - compareshares.com.au

A Gift...

A belated happy Valentine's day everyone! These three shots basically summarized what we did yesterday :) We spent most of our evening at the King's Park, the beautiful waso (West Australian Symphony Orchestra) concert as our background music, lots of food to feast on (ahem...KFC!) and a bottle of cool classic white to keep us going, what more could we ask for? hehe!

The weather wasn't the best though with sporadic spit and threatening cloud, but at the end it turned out to be a great night.

We decided to head down to South Perth on our way back just to remind ourselves how beautiful Perth really is!

(nb last shot - f/11, 15sec, 50mm, iso250, giant wooden pole as monopod :))

Harmony 785

With 5 remote controllers littered around our coffee table, I think it's about time I do something about it. Using multiple remotes is not only cumbersome, but also a little frustrating if you happen to misplace one of them.

Well, not anymore with this clever product from Logitech. The Harmony 785 comes with a docking station which charges the remote when it's not in use. Setting up the remote controller was a breeze with the software package enclosed. All I need to do was list out all the model numbers of devices that I wanted to be controlled by it and the software did the rest by downloading the neccesary codes onto the remote. It also has the ability to "learn" new IR funtions from existing remotes via the software. The harmony 785 has a built-in motion sensor which activate the screen and all the buttons whenever the remote is picked up.

The remote has a small colour LCD screen that will help you navigate through different devices and "activities" installed on the remote. Devices are grouped under various "activities" and by selecting the particular activity, it will turn on all neccessary devices needed to launch the activity while turning off other components that are not needed. For instance, by selecting "Watch DVD" on the menu, the remote will turn on the TV, AV receiver and DVD player with the push of a button. Because it has the ability to "learn", it can be set to control virtually everything that has remote in the house, including the air-conditioning unit, heating as well as my media PC!