Holidays aren...
» Written on February 19, 2007 at 3:43 AM «
When you’re coughing worse than a guy who’s been chain-smoking cigarettes all his life. Add a raging, intermittent fever and the decidedly uncomfortable constriction of my airways, and you’ve basically just about encompassed my symptoms for the past few days, ever since I walked home in that goddamn Thursday rain.
Not to mention the green sputum that comes up every hour or so. That stuff is fucking disgusting, ranking just below putrid sewage on the grossness scale. It’s like coughing up hairballs, only with less hair and more pain.
What could possibly have made all of this worse, of course, is the fact that it would inconceivably strike just as I get an extended break off school hours. But hey, look on the bright side, at least I’m not dead, right?
Right. Of course, that’d be conveniently overlooking the small fact that all of this pointless debacle could have been avoided, had our tutor decided not go all PMS on us that fateful Thursday and kept us back until the rain started. Thanks a lot. For an extra 15 minutes of nothing does seem like a good trade for barely being able to inhale gases that some would say are critical to survival.
This, of course, has meant the inevitable abstinence from all the New Year treats and goodies, something which I would have forgone without (much) complaint, had it not been for the fact that I would still need to visit relatives.
I will say this, here and now: I am apprehensive towards family reunions. They are, quite simply, a mere excuse for the older generation to make exhibitions of themselves, and for the younger (read: really young) generation to make, ah, bigger exhibitions of themselves.
I think I’ve just derived a new English idiom right there.
It’s not all bad, of course. Especially when you consider the kind of loot I’m getting here: my mom practically plopped 500 out of nowhere, which is actually quite astonishing, considering she still owes me around 4 grand, thanks to a certain bet we had. (Since I don’t think I wrote about it, basically, she bought 4 packs of cheese, which is, to say, a lot. I bet with her my entire savings, times ten, that she, or for that matter, the entire family wouldn’t be able to finish it within the week, and she accepted. Naturally, she lost. I mean, really, how in hell did she think she would win!?) I might just trim off the 500 from the main course.
And, of course, the loot doesn’t end there. Oh no.
Let’s have a bit of background, though. My father’s side of the family has always been slightly less financially generous in their distribution of tax-free dough, but I guess I can’t really complain since it is free cash, sans the attached strings. My mother’s side, on the other hand, gives out cash like it grows on trees. Seriously, it’s almost frightening the way they distribute those red packets, it’s almost like watching a free flow of ale and rum on board the Black Pearl or something.
This year saw a slight dip in earnings collected, but with the recent increase in our local Goods and Services Tax (GST), that was to have been expected. I do, however, have abundant capital to attempt a purchase of a new workstation, something that could have unprecedented consequences. ATi or NVIDIA? Intel or AMD?
Choices, choices. At least, that’s assuming my mom doesn’t snatch up all of my hongbaos and dump them into my bank account, all the while cackling like the evil witch or something.
That debit card sounds really good right about now. I still have about half a month to go before I reach the rank of eligibility, though.
Anyway, the D50 has had a little workout over the festivities, of course, and you can view the album filled with joy and, well, I guess all you can really find in photos of holidays is joy.
Of course, while walking with my family to dinner at a restaurant over at our local park, chance would have it that there were some water skiers over at the lake nearby, and chance would have it that I would have my telephoto lens with me.
So I tried something different. ‘Panning‘, as they call it. I didn’t actually have the chance to do this before, I think, since every action-oriented event I’ve covered so far hasn’t exactly involved smooth, fluid, and most importantly, predictable movement.
You can see the results here: naturally about 30 or so were dropped into bins meant for recycling. One result I particularly liked is now also available in my Flickr photostream. No, don’t trouble yourself, just scroll down.
There was another shot that I think I nailed, but this one was done at 300mm (my lens’ maximum focal length), so, I don’t know, it’s cooler?
Anyway, I’m also working on the Implacable font, and right now, I’m down to the hinting and the kerning left on the to-do list. So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll stop here, finish the job, and get a good night’s rest in the vain hope of waking up tomorrow to find my health completely restored.
Just in time for school, of course.
Well, this is ce...
» Written on February 2, 2007 at 9:02 PM «
I haven’t actually made good on my promise to bring a second update forthcoming, but as I will now lamely attempt to rationalize and explain, it was unavoidable, though I consider it still unforgivable. I’ll get to that later. First, let’s go back to where I was; the Asean Football Championship match between Singapore and Thailand. For those of you twiddling your thumbs over your keyboard in lands spanning the globe out of Asia (Or South-east Asia, for that matter) will probably have no idea what I’m talking about.
Let’s begin, shall we?
I promptly arrived at the train station nearest to the stadium to meet up with two pals who were also going to the match at around 1830 hours. The place, as I had predicted, was already filling up, with red-clad supporters around the area being told to wait outside the station instead of clamouring about inside. Linus and Lester (yeah, twins) eventually arrived, albeit slightly late, upon which we went to grab ourselves a quick dinner and promptly hopped into Linus’s dad’s car (His dad came down to give us a lift) for a quick drive off to the stadium.
Once we got there, problems ensued with water bottles and such (we’re not allowed to bring them into the stadium as they’re worried about them being used as ‘missiles’ against the players), but I managed to sneak in 2 bottles to avoid the exorbitant cost of the mineral water that they were selling there. (2 fucking dollars for a cup of water is a fucking rip-off, and they should be ashamed of themselves for so blatantly selling out) This was the last-ever match that would be played at the National Stadium, however, and I guess I thought it’d be an interesting experience. Naturally, my bag had the D50 in it, along with my telephoto and brand-new flash unit. I opted not to bring along a tripod or my kit lens, both to relieve weight and to see just how fantastic my 50mm prime lens was.
The match, well, if you read the news reports, you’d know that it didn’t exactly go very well, though my country still managed to squeeze a favourable result in the end. 2 – 1, through a controversially-awarded penalty and after a dramatic walk-out by the Thai players, which still kind of pisses me off. So much for being professional players from a vibrant and wonderful culture.
The match supporters (yes, my own country’s flesh and blood-filled scumbags), on the other hand, are really the highlight of my experience, and when I say highlight, understand that in actuality, they’re actually quite fucking amazing in terms of managing to almost piss the living daylights out of me. It’s really disgusting, almost revolting to watch them at work. Spiff seems to think otherwise, but he’s crazy, so I guess that’s a moot point right there.
Anyway, they were really fucked up. Throughout the whole match, they were basically chanting vulgarities without regard for others who might actually want to watch a match and not a racial slur contest. And I’m not exaggerating; the whole fucking stadium was chanting along, booing at just about fucking everything, the Thai players, the referee, heck, even the Singaporean players were booed at. It seemed as if whenever the ball wasn’t in motion, the supporters would immediately interpret that as time-wasting and start yelling all sorts of stuff that I refuse to reproduce in written or typed format. Basically, understand that it was a very, very nauseating experience for me, and I had half a mind at times to just walk out of the stadium. Especially when things like biscuits, crumbs of bread and even fucking water started raining down from above. For fuck’s sake, I have a camera! Is there some sort of rule, perhaps, where things thrown would somehow give your team an advantage?
Even more ironic is the fact that when the supporters booed the Thais while they were singing their national anthem (Seriously, what the fuck? They should have just opened fire on any fucking retard who dared open his goddamn mouth while the players were singing their national anthem), I was thinking, well, at least they’ll shut the fuck up when singing our own anthem. Guess what? When it was our turn, it was all I could to stop myself from laughing as I watched countless grown men and women falter at singing our very own national anthem, forgetting lines, phrases and even the damn tune, in their ownfucking language.
Honestly, I could understand if you don’t sing your national anthem because you forgot how to. I can’t understand how you manage to distort a single song of pride into a complete farce, as if it were something you sing along to at a karaoke. It was both amusing and saddening to actually witness. In fact (and I quote), “How do you sing the anthem again arh?” (sic)
Sometimes I wish my D50 could record audio to go along with its pixels. At least I got to give my telephoto a workout, and it was interesting, to say the least, how it performed under the weak lighting conditions. While I perhaps don’t have stop-motion shots, I did manage to capture a few gems.
Such as this one.
Anyway, for the full album of shots, it also marks something significant; I’m switching from Photobucket to CNET’s Webshots for my event photo dump., which I’ve been planning to do so for some time. Yes, their downloadable software looks like a piece of crap, but at least it offers me a much better and quicker way to batch-upload my photos, so I guess it’s not all bad. It’ll make my uploading and photo management much, much easier, in any case, and Photobucket has gone to hell anyway, even with their recent overhaul of their website. I’m not sure if I’ll be re-uploading all my previous albums over to Webshots though; I would really like to, but I doubt I’ll have the time or patience to.
You may have heard that Adobe Lightroom has finally gone commercial, out of its beta stage, and as such, I expect that this will be the last album I process with said application, unless I somehow manage to get my hands on it. Truth be told, I can’t really see what new stuff they’ve added to the application for commercial release, but I guess a product is a product. At the moment, my beta license hasn’t expired yet, but I expect Adobe to pull the plug pretty soon.
And while I’m on the subject of photos here, my Flickr webstream has finally hit the 100 mark, which I thought I never would hit before shutting my account down. This also brings the thought of ordering some Moo mini cards back into my head.
Also, Flickr hacks are fun. Observe.
I think I’ll have a lot more on my plate in the days to come. Also, remember Processing and Scriptographer? I’m going to be working on that pretty soon, as soon as I get my own knowledge of its Java functions up to scratch.
And as for why this post was delayed and still seems lacking in terms of its promised content, let’s just say that Friday wasn’t a very good day for me thanks to an incompetent education system, and that I have two tests on Monday and Tuesday, followed by a class test prepared so lovingly by our Chemistry tutor, who appears to think that anyone who didn’t manage to score an A or B grade can handle a fuckload of additional work.
Discoveries
» Written on December 15, 2006 at 7:02 AM «
I know I haven’t really been making use of my tools, as my now-unused icon suite suggests I should. But today is a day for discoveries!
Pixologic’s home page has recently gotten a makeover (OK, maybe like a few months ago, but I’m only talking about it now, so whatever) and with it, their plugins section has finally gotten much more legible. I got myself a new Zketchpad!
Along with a host of other plugins. Now, you’ll all remember me as a RAM enthusiast, so obviously I didn’t get the “all-in-one” bundle, but I think the ones I scraped, almost flea-market esque, will do for the moment.
Oh, and did I mention I saw Chiff off at the airport before he ventured on his trip to China, and destruction?
The 101st Post
» Written on December 14, 2006 at 8:54 AM «
Has to contain something special. Unfortunately, the drought of pictures embedded in thus posts will have to endure for this particular anniversary; I haven’t gotten the pictures of the recent chalet uploaded to my hard drive yet, and even if I had, there’s the arduous process of post-production, or, as the kiddies refer to nowadays, Photo-shopping. As if such a term is worthy of what I’m about to perform on those pixels.
Ahem.
So, anyway, the chalet was kind of better than my class chalet (mainly because my tuition teacher planned it out much better), and the addition of more than 2 people who knew how to cook stuff over a grill of charcoal helped. Wine was also a highlight of the event, though I touched none of such liquids vile. I actually dislike alcohol and any foodstuff that so much as contains it for seasoning.
Don’t ask why. I just don’t like the sensation of feeling my throat burning, as if it were entering our planet’s atmosphere at speeds unspeakable.
So anyway, a foosball competition was to have been the highlight of the event. Was. The delivery service that was supposed to deliver such a delight never came, and in the end, I had to go along with my teacher to get another foosball table from his office. All the way in a van (that his friend so kindly provided for our use) that was through rain and sleet.
Such is the nature of a mere game that would induce such enthusiasm.
In the end, the table broke after repeated, ah, roughage by over-drunk zealots. Such idiocy was to my great discomfort, and secretly my heart broke as the 3-man rod did. Though I was playing on the other side and won the last goal just before it failed, it hurts no less.
Not an ounce less.
Anyway, as always, I left early, this time thanks to a lift from my mom who stayed up late sorely for that purpose. Props to her for once. I was actually planning on taking the shuttle bus back until she insisted. Oh well.
I was actually prepared this time for boredom, with my arsenal of the D50 (naturally), my laptop, and my PSP with a plethora of titles, varied, and all with Game Sharing. Thankfully, the company proved entertaining enough (though some were slightly out of my league in terms of intellect and disposition, names shall remain unknown) to prove my weapons unneeded. For once.
Anyway, big props to my tuition teacher for hosting such an event (free food is always good), and I expect to have the pictures up soon. Stay tuned.
And in other news, my sister still has not received the T-shirt I designed for her. I emailed Zazzle about such atrocity unforgiven, and the reply so far has been basically to “be patient”. So, we’ll see. They’re already about a week behind their promised delivery time, and I place great emphasis on punctuality.
We’ll see.
In the meantime, I suppose this post doesn’t exactly befit such a status of 101st, but hey, I’m no Airborne Ranger.
Helping Others I...
» Written on December 2, 2006 at 4:48 AM «
Or so it seems.
If you will kindly make your way over to my class’s official blog, you will see thus. A brand, spanking-new layout, along with a party hat for the upcoming season of joy. (Albeit shamelessly stolen from Nick La’s works) How ironic, then, it would perhaps seem, that I’ve been working on upgrading layouts everywhere else except for here.
Patience. Good things come to those who wait.
I’ve also actually learnt a lot about designing templates in CSS after working on both the layouts for Hard Life and the new class blog layout. Both templates, incidentally, are W3C verified valid templates (before the idiosyncrasies caused by Blogger’s markup, of course) and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank both reisio and noobbot from the irc.freenode.net #web IRC channel, whose assistance rendered was, suffice to say, much appreciated as much as it was awesome.
And tomorrow is the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon, which my tuition teacher will be taking part in, wearing a certain shirt design. See, it all comes together in the end! I will, of course, be there with my D50 and 70 – 300, and hopefully by this time tomorrow the last piece of the jigsaw will fall into place.
(By the way, if you viewed the blog template and thought it seemed odd, you’re either colourblind, or using IE6. Go ahead and upgrade to version 7. It’s not hard.)
Right now, I need to wake up at 3.30 a.m. in the morning if I want to catch the shuttle bus to the event (our trains only start at 6, and the event itself starts at 6), so I do believe I will need my beauty rest. No worries, I can think in my dreams about the brand-spanking new layout that will soon grace this domain of the net.
Variable-width, no less.
I may just stop with the quotes next time since they keep messing with the CSS
Interesting Happ...
» Written on November 10, 2006 at 7:53 AM «
Have indeed occurred in my vicinity.
I have only just returned from a 2 day, 2 night class chalet, held at the Aloha Changi branch of chalets which are worth about a 45-minute trip from the comforts of my home. Or 30 if I run. Not to imply that I spent the night at a small, cramped terror house, of course; the last bus leaving the compound back to the safe confines of civilization departs promptly at 2145 hrs every evening.
Those of you who have actually been following the sad tale of my life may wonder, at this point, as to why I actually turned up for the chalet in the first place at all, and for two whole days, at that. The answer, as I will say, is the same as why I chose to design that T-shirt for my tuition class as well, even though it was unappreciated by most in the end, it served my purpose: to ensure that I could continue living within that shell you call a human body.