Toy Story 3

I couldn't believe 11 years have gone by since the release of the Toy Story 2! Usually the reason for releasing sequels to a successful movie is to capitalise on the success of the original movie and more often that not, sequels are usually, to put it simply, bad. Of course there are a few exceptions and certainly Toy Story 3 is one of them. In fact, out of the 3 "stories", the last one could be simply the best of them all!

If there is a Noble price for consistently putting out brilliant computer animated movies, it has got to go to the folks at Pixar. It's witty, inventive, creative, funny and choked full of emotions! It can make you laugh and it can put tears in your eyes too. The show simply glued me to the seat and kept me begging for more like a little child!

I am not going to go into the detail of the movie, but if you haven't already watch it, you don't know what you are missing out this year guys! I love Pixar!

Sienna Lodge

We went for a short trip down to Yallingup for a couple of nights last weekend and it was fantastic. We stayed at the Sienna Lodge, situated at the corner of Cave Road and Canal Rock Road, nestled amongst the wine growing region of Margaret River. The accommodation was surprisingly good and, I might add, different but in a good way. It was so rustic and beautiful! Talking about good taste, the room even came with a bottle of complimentary wine produced right here at the Sienna Estate. That Momentum Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 07 by the way was pretty easy to drink and very fruity, great for novice wine drinkers like us :)

Unfortunately, both Sienna Restaurant and Cellar were closed until further notice (I really hope they will reopen again), and it's a fairly long drive to basically anyway, I strongly recommend anyone who decided to stay at the lodge to prepare plenty of food before hand or load yourself with tons of instant cup noodle, like us just in case you feel like munching away in the middle of night lol! Apart from that, it's a great place to relax even for a weekend and it's only a short drive to Canal Rock where you can enjoy spectacular sunset every evening!

I will post more photos at my PhotoBlog.

Good Bye Joey

Our dear pet rabbit, Joey died yesterday. It was indeed a truly sad moment for us...rest in peace our dear companion :(

Kick Ass

It's been a while since I have watched such a hilarious and crass movie as Kick Ass. The movie centered around Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a regular high school teenager who has nothing much going on in life. He has only a couple of good friends and his high school sweetheart thinks he is gay. Dave wants to spice up his life by being a superhero like Spiderman or Batman, the only trouble is he has no superpower at all, not even one single piece of fancy weapon. He is only armed with a green dive suit which he bought online and a great deal of courage/stupidity. Lucky for him, there are two others who have the same idea but actually know what they are doing.

Damon Macready a k a Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his even more violent and dangerous daughter Mindy Macready a k a Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) are vigilantes who work hard to stamp out Frank D’Amico Frank D’Amic, the top criminal boss in town.

I reckon it is a fairly good movie which will give you plenty to laugh about!

FlexTT5 x2

I couldn't believe how fast this shipment actually arrived from Hong Kong, thumbs up to those guys at DigitalRev, they are indeed the best in the game!

At the moment, I can't really write anything about these PocketWizards because I haven't got a chance to try them out yet. But at first glance, these are indeed serious toys (tools) that are very well constructed. I can't wait to try them out soon!

Poppo Korean & Japanese Restaurant

Well, as expected, we didn't go to the ANZAC dawn service as previously planned because we just couldn't bring ourselves out of bed that early in the morning :P As a matter of fact, we woke up around 10am in the morning, that means we also missed the ANZAC parade in the city this morning! In the end, we decided to head down to city anyway to find something to eat. First we decided on dimsum but as we found out later, most dimsum places had literally queues long enough to put Saturday nightclubs to shame! Actually, we were surprised that most of the shops and cafes in Perth were shut today??! Anyway, we ended up in a tiny Korean/Japanese restaurant on Barrack Street called Poppo. We ordered a fried tofu (tempura tofu) as starter followed by our mains. Jin ordered a sashimi rice (something like seafood bibimbap) and I had a tempuro prawn don. Overall, the serving size was very reasonable and the food standard was on par with those of more expensive restaurants. But the most importantly, the total bill only came to under $30!

Meet Joel Salom

Went to Fremantle on last Friday to check out the street events during the Fremantle Arts Festival 2010 but it proved to be a rather futile effort as I got the dates all messed up. It turned out that the event was actually scheduled for the next three days! We were going to go yesterday but we ran out of time (woke up too late to be precise). Fortunately, we managed to get our act together and made it back down to Fremantle this afternoon. It was a very family orientated event and we had a fantastic time down there. There were so many great shows by so many talented local and international artists, performers and comedians. However, I dare to say the show by Joel Salom was the best out of the lots. He is a great comedian, musician and a brilliant juggler, and his little robot dog (Erik) act is hilarious. Here are some of the shots I took during his performance, more photos to come on my photoblog soon!

Playing with lights

I am not really a big fan of flash photography, the reason I am saying that is probably because I totally suck at it, and I am. Last night I decided to get two of my flash guns and experimented on Jin in our lounge room. The first one was placed slightly to the right about a meter behind Jin and the second one was pointed towards a wall on her left. I quite like the results :) The three shots below were taken with 3 different flash ratios. I think I am starting to like it! Time to hunt for a bunch of PocketWizards lol!

Welcoming the Little Brother

Finally, this little brother of Canon has joined our ever growing Canon family. At first glance, the G11 definitely does not look like a typical point-and-shoot (pns) camera. With metal and composite construction, it is also much heavier than most typical 5x compact cameras out there, and the built quality is excellent. There are plenty of controls on top of the camera and I think the most useful one being the ISO dial. Comparing to G10, G11 still sports the same sensor size but with reduced resolution in order to improve image noise control. As this is the very first G-series compact I have ever own, I am unable to provide you with any comparison between them but from what I read online, it certainly works in favor of G11. Jin will bring this little baby for a test drive later and hopefully able to come back with some sample images to post.

From my brief experience with it last night, the only fault that I can find with the G11 is the tiny little viewfinder at the top. The VF is too small for my liking and I find it really hard to compose images through it.

Copyright of humans

Well, this is the second day of my do-nothing week, a break from my otherwise stress ridden, life-degrading and boring work life. Well, not exactly do-nothing as such, I did go out and do some grocery shopping, mowed the lawn and cleaned up my front garden this morning before the weather got too hot. Tomorrow unfortunately need to go back to work for a few hours in the afternoon but I am really looking forward to the dinner with a few friends coming over tomorrow night.

Now where were we....oh yes, for those of you who love taking photos of people in the street, or anywhere for that matter, have you ever wonder about your rights as a photographer? Have you ever wonder your action of taking photos of people (or buildings, statues or display of arts such as the sculpture by the sea) infringes any copyrights at all?

Well, I have been asked a few times because of my itchy trigger finger and I have also been told off a few times for doing just that. Well, I have done lots of reading this afternoon and I am glad to find out it is indeed perfectly legal to photograph anyone, with or without their consent (within certain limitations of course) in Australia, under the current Australian laws. Better reading here. However, in a few countries like France, publication of unauthorized photos (including on personal blogs/websites) is strictly prohibited although candid shots in public areas are not illegal.

Photography is not (yet) a crime!