Suffice to say, I’m out of the course, and the past 2 weeks back at my former depot have been, well, normal, I guess. What else is there to say?

I already posted a few of my initial grabs on Flickr, if you’ve actually kept up with this. I’m personally disappointed with most of the things I did during the race, especially with regard to my preparation (my battery actually died out on the second night, what the fuck) and my lack of enthusiasm with regard to thinking up new techniques (especially after a couple of hours) but overall I think I managed to get a pretty decent collection of photos to demonstrate my prowness at panning.

Even while trapped behind a steel cage. No, before you ask, there was absolutely nowhere to get a good, unobstructed view of the track itself without spending the additional dough for a press pass. Fuck that.

Anyway, I haven’t really gotten around to working on the photos just yet (Incidentally, this event holds my record for the ‘most photos ever for a single event’, with a total of 761 photos imported into Lightroom over a span of 3 days. It only makes me shudder when I imagine how many times I must have actually hit the shutter release, considering my habit of whacking the delete button right after every shot), as I’ve mostly been entertaining a friend with his delusions grandeur at Day of Defeat, a modification for Half-Life which ought to have been buried twelve feet under about 5 years ago.

Don’t even ask me why I actually agreed to play the damn thing with him. Actually, come to think of it, I just re-installed Guild Wars. Maybe I’m a sucker for punishment. Can you imagine logging into a vast, expansive world big enough to rival ours, only to find that its population is a mere shadow of its former self, and that your own guild, an organization large enough to make Mafians shiver in their loafers, has rotted away, the bones of its skeletal structure decaying along with the rest of the game world?

So many commas in that last fragment, but it had to be said.

In any case, I’m going to dump a few shots that I took between races. These are exclusive (unless you count me posting them on the Penny-Arcade forums) to this post, and should suffice to fill this update with content of some sort until I either get my other photos sorted out or get cracking on my new MIDI keyboard.

You’ll notice a complete absence of cars, or anything motorsports-related, for that matter. I felt it was important not to pollute this post with an overabundance of panning photography. That will come later.

For now, though, it’s time for some more Day of Defeat before the day beckons again tomorrow.

I’ve been drafted for a Bionix driving course for quite some time now, and tomorrow marks its beginning. What I didn’t know was that this course would also include the Operator Maintenance course, adding an additional 2 unwanted weeks of staying in my army premises. Totalling 4 horrific weeks of learning how to work the various parts and wheels of the Bionix Armoured Fighting Vehicle.

I wouldn’t be so pissed off if I wasn’t already driving the fucking thing almost every day that I’m in camp and hard at work. Seriously, I could probably drive the thing without a ground guide and have zero problems whatsoever. It sure as hell is easier to handle than the Bronco.

But ho! I shall not spend my last free night musing over such unhappy prospects. Instead, I shall feast over sushi, sashimi and tempura udon (which I already have), play Team Fortress 2 until my eyes pop out from mario_kart (I’m currently trying to stop the retinal bleed) and now, work on updating this section of the interweb with my recent endeavours, amateurish though they might be.

First up: I’m pretty sure anyone who actually reads this will remember my recent purchase of a Axiom 49 keyboard. It’s not hard for me to remember at all, at least; every time I wake up in the morning and see the interweaving rows of black and white keys I remember that that particular piece of hardware basically chews through one-and-a-quart’s month’s worth of my salary.

And even though my salary is pretty meagre (fuck the army), it’s still saying something. Anyway, I got another short piece, this time with a little more guitar and electric guitar instead of wholesale techno, and I’m pretty meh about it, which is better than bleah, I guess? You decide.

Download What the hell and take the plunge. If I do delete that file from the directory one of these days, I have got to remember to redirect the link here.

Next: I’ve been working on a new photo series, sort of inspired by various photography threads I’ve been reading all over the Internet, most notably the Penny Arcade’s offering. Most of these involve crazy lighting on my part or other, but I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve been doing so far, and so I’m going to dump two previews of what I’ve come up with, sans post-production of any sort.

That’s actually apple juice, if you were wondering. With awesome aloe vera bits inside. I’m pretty much using the SC-28 to provide side lighting instead of using standard bounce flash techniques here.

Yes, that is Ken Masters. Yes, I know the background sucks. I’m working on getting a real one ready, but you see theconcept behind it, right?

You can see some previews of my other tests on flickr, though I’m not uploading the ‘alternate’ shot that I have. Honestly, I don’t even know why I’m doing this, but it’s pretty fun to work around with what I can do with a single subject and a multitude of SD cards.

This is probably going to have to wait until the weekend when I actually book out and finish playing with Burnout Paradise, though. Goddamn pointless courses.

That is, for as long as we actively enjoy our newfound luxury. Then we get thirsty/hungry, head on over to the nearest cafe, take out our wallets and oh shit - we realize, all too late, that our choices come with hefty price tags.

But what the hell, we’re all going to die in the end anyway, and we might as well die happy, right?

Enter the M-Audio Axiom 49. The MIDI keyboard to end all MIDI keyboards.

Ok, not really, but in my case, on the scale of extravagance from 1 to 10, this ranks about a 25. For reference, my PS3 and 24″ HDTV monitor rank about a 15.

(Non-audiophiles may want to have a tab on Wikipedia ready, since it’s a little late and I’m not going to waste extra time explaining some technical jargon in the rest of this post.)

I was actually looking around for a new MIDI keyboard ever since I had finally decided that my old Creative Prodikeys DM just wasn’t the kind of keyboard that I was going to stubbornly stick with for my (admittedly amateurish) audio work, and had settled on several choice alternatives, including contenders from all over such as E-MU, M-Audio, Yamaha and even Casio. (Yes, I know there are a billion more manufucturers out there, but when it comes to music/audio, I’m not exactly what you’d call inexperienced. I’m of a far lower caste.)

I decided, last Friday, to head on over to the local music store and see what they had for offer. In my mind, I had kind of settled on M-Audio’s Oxygen lineup, specifically the Oxygen 49.

So imagine the waves of annoyance that swept through me when the salesman proclaimed that the Oxygen series defunct and ‘antiquated’, suggesting instead several other ‘newer’ models, which, he failed to mention, were significantly more expensive than the Oxy49’s MSRP. I was about to up and blow the joint, so to speak, when my mom pipped up about M-Audio’s other offerings (Incidentally, my mom and sis are pretty decent with a piano; the same can’t be said for me or my dad).

Which was when she suggested that I get the Axiom 49. Like, she’d be paying and all.

I was like, what, I don’t need all those functions and shit and that’s semi-weighted keys and I prefer synth action and wait you’re the one paying

Standard pitch and mod wheel controls, along with a fuckton of other shit I don't even know how to use.

Four hundread and eighty dollars, Singaporean, yes siree. With ASIO4all drivers and my SB Audigy (yes, it’s shitty, but at least I’m not using onboard sound) I’ve managed to get the lantency of the keyboard down to around 3 miliseconds with 144 samples at a 48khz sample rate using Reason 4.

It’s like playing a dream, and my fingers are like the nightmare that you wake up from. It’s like yin meets yang, and yang kicks the stuffing out of yin because his name just ain’t as cool.

49 keys, as the name implies. 480 bucks, as the look suggests.

The keyboard itself uses semi-weighted keys (which my mom hates for some reason) which means that while it’s not as light to the touch as synth-action keys are, they have some manner of resistance to them, and feel a little more comfortable to those who are used to playing on piano grande. Since I don’t even have formal piano training, they feel pretty damn good to me.

The 8 drum pads, 8 rotary knobs and 9 track sliders are pretty fucking sweet, but honestly, I think so far I’ve only gotten to using about 3 of the track sliders and maybe used the drum pads to test some beats; I don’t think I’ll be doing live performances anytime soon, so I literally don’t know what I’ll do with the other controls. Especially the programmable buttons. I haven’t even figured out what half the other buttons do yet.

So far, I’ve pretty much gotten accustomed to the feel of the keyboard over the past 3 days, and even though there are quite a few grumbles over how M-Audio seems to be handling its Vista 64-bit driver development, I’m happy to say that I plugged the Axiom in and started assigning controls in Reason 4 with no real problems (apart from not being able to assign the Record button without getting an assignment conflict with the mod wheel) or bugs.

And I haven’t just been playing Mary had a little lamb, either. I even came up with something!

Folk Beat

I actually didn’t intend for it to be a remix at first; but while I was deciding on how best to flesh out the song I loaded up a sampler with piano soundfonts and started playing around. Then I decided to play some old tunes that I had remembered from my classes and suddenly it hit me that this would sound fucking awesome if I could fit it in.

And so I did. I’m actually working on it some more, and I may make it a full-length piece instead of leaving it as a short test. But for now, I think 3 days of playing around with this is quite enough. I’m going back to attacking my aural senses with gunshots and explosions for a while. Keeping things fresh and all that.

That’s not saying much, of course, considering most peoples’ imagination could be compared to that of a black hole. Thank goodness that there are some of us left who do not suffer this disability, this disease that seems to be spreading around the artistic community these days, showing itself to be most prevalent within the Singapore army.

Yes, that was a terribly random statement. That does not make it any less false.

Anyway, I’ve neglected to update as of recent times, owing to the fact that I’ve been working on a couple of projects, some of which are still currently undergoing (I’m quite the busy man here, ain’t I?), some of which have been ongoing since the beginning of time and probably won’t be finished even when the end rolls around and one project which is finally nearing completion.

I kind of like the way they look like flowers growing into the sky.

There certainly was a lot more variety to these.

Before I delve entirely into my techno-wizardry babble, though, I’d like to elaborate more on the Singapore Fireworks Festival which I had the pleasure of attending before having to run 21 fucking kilometres the following morning.

I attended the final day of the fireworks festival, which was pretty much a first for me, as I’ve been limiting my fireworks captures to much more publicized events such as the End of Year celebrations, or most recently, the National Day celebrations. The crowd turnout wasn’t as insane as it was for either of the other two events, which, I suppose, comes with the fact that the Fireworks Festival isn’t exactly advertised as a party event, not to mention the relatively heavy rain that accompanied the event. There were quite a number of tripods set up all around me, though, when I arrived.

This was, incidentally, my first time shooting in really wet weather, and I learned a couple of things from the experience. More importantly, I got some pretty shots out of it, which is kind of the point of any event in which a camera is involved.

Also, that you can never have enough plastic bags to act as insulators from watery death.

The kind of trails that only a long exposure can produce.

Fireworks! It was raining, hence the nice blurry spots on the shot.

I was pretty pleased with the display, which isn’t saying much, seeing as I’m not really a fireworks connoisseur of sorts. In fact, I think I’ve probably witnessed less than ten live fireworks demonstrations in my life to date. I know, I need to get out more, go fuck yourselves, et cetera.

At any rate, the display was a lot better than our National Day fireworks managed to offer, which got me to thinking: if the fucking French can overcome their le suck and put on a show better than what the entire of the Ministry of Defence can manage with their ginormous amount of funds, why the hell are we even still dumping so much of our public funds into this colossal maw of wastage?

I suppose that wastage of funds on my country’s National Day celebrations is kind of chipping off the top of the iceberg, but it still grates away at my soul whenever I hear someone gushing over how fucking awesome National Day was and how they wish they could go again just to view the fireworks over the Marina Bay floating platform because oh they are so goddamn pretty.

It makes me feel like planting roundhouses into their mouths. Such as illustrated below, as a design for a T-shirt.

An initial test design for the shirt which was rejected.

Long story short, I recently met some guy in the army through another friend of mine who needs a new design for his organization’s T-shirt, and, if I have my way with him, a new design for their website as well.

For those of you who actually know what I’m talking about, this guy is pretty serious. He’s pretty much a kickboxer, being formally trained in Wushu Shanshou, Muay Thai and oddly, enough, Taekwondo (he’s actually a black belt in that last one), not to mention including weapons training such as nunchaku, guan dao and the traditional Chinese sword, jian.

I’ve had the opportunity to talk to him about various philosophies of martial arts on more than a couple of occasions, and it’s pretty refreshing to hear his perspective on games that warp realistic combat into something that involves a mere joystick and a couple of face buttons.

Anyway, his reaction to the first design (which I had actually based on his reaction to an image I showed him) was pretty positive, but he wanted the design to fit his organization’s style of fighting more, which, in artistic terms, meant less clothing, more muscle. Additionally, he wanted something a little less about flashy kicks and more about unforgiving knees.

I aim to please.

The almost-finished design.

Yes, by the way, both designs are 100% vector brushwork using standard stock Illustrator brushes, and I have to say, I’m really starting to like working with vectors more in Illustrator than with pixels in Photoshop, even with the added flexibility that Photoshop provides. The feel of getting a brush stroke right with the Wacom tablet in Illustrator is something that Photoshop can’t even come close to emulating. It’s something, I’ll tell you that.

A close up of the detail of the vector brushwork.

I have to add a couple of things that will make it more identifiable to be affiliated with his organization, but for all intents and purposes, this will be the finalized version of the design. It actually started out as just that guy on the right, but he wanted an opposing character to help the shirt look more ‘cool’.

Personally, I prefer just having the guy on the right without the sparring partner, but it’s his call. Also, I’m pretty happy that I managed to keep the colour palette down to six colours, which should help immensely should he choose to silkscreen print the shirts, as they’re going to be worn while they conduct their relentless sparring against each other.

I’m planning to do a ‘making of’ write-up on the design in the future, so watch for that soon. In the meantime, I’m going to wrap this up and get working on some other stuff which I’ve been puting off for a while.

I’ll be back with more delicious content as soon as I can get my hands off my PS3 controller, I swear.

To me, it speaks of the ability to run/jog/walk a long distance. Just that, nothing more. For what else does it signify, really? It’s a fucking marathon, not a judge imperious, watching over your every step and making a assertion of your traits.

Whatever the perceptions (mine or others), the 21 kilometre Army Half-Marathon event took place earlier today, the gruelling run being started at around 6.30 a.m., which, in Army Time™ means that I had to report at the fall-in area at 5.30 a.m..

Trust me, it looked completely different while I was running.

Considering the fact that I was up till 1 or so last night thanks to the Singapore Fireworks Festival (of which certain samples are now in my Flickr photostream), this was a pretty tall order.

I reported, half-asleep, to the Singapore Padang, where loudspeakers eliminated any chance that I had of catching up on my rest with a quick snooze before the actual run. Having not trained for the period of time since my Bronco Driving Course began, I was, shall we say, fatalistic about my chances of actually meeting a predefined time for getting an extra day off work: two hours and forty-five minutes.

The race pretty much played out like the Standard Chartered Marathon that I had attended previously as a photographer for my tuition teacher: the standard blocking at the start, the annoying-as-hell loudspeakers, the stampedes at the various water checkpoints along the route, hell, even the running route was almost step-for-step with the SCM’s half-marathon event.

About the only difference was that the Army wasted no effort in pulling out as many obtrusive-as-hell signboards as they could, along with hiring the worst singers I have ever heard. And I listen to a lot of shitty music, by the way. The fact that they were mostly all rappers didn’t help, either.

I was a little perplexed, I will admit, when I finally reached the 16km point and realized I still had about an hour to go before even hitting the 2:30 mark. I honestly did not think I would make it that far, that fast without stopping for a drink, a snack and a fucking overnight stay in the Ritz.

So pure, so white, so clean.

I decided to walk the rest of the way, and made the finishing line with a nice, comfortable timing of two hours and seventeen minutes (Actually, I think I made 2:16, but let’s be safe here), probably a timing I shouldn’t be hoping to achieve again.

Considering I got this short on sleep and fitness, though, I’m pretty pleased, though my legs tell me otherwise. Well. They’ve pretty much recovered by now, but what’s more important is the fact that I didn’t really feel that breathless throughout the entire run. Which means that I’ve finally reached the point where my legs will die before my lungs explode.

Which means my asthma is now irrelevant. Which, in itself, is a victory far sweeter than any stupid marathon could ever hope to provide me with.

Excuse me while I now celebrate by stuffing myself with all manner of junk foods (especially potato chips) and end up needing 100% oxygen by the next morning. Victory!

Oh, and I am so proud of my shoes. They’ve served me well indeed. Any pair of shoes that lasts a marathon deserves an honourable mention, at the very least. They should start stamping medals for shoes that take this kind of bullshit abuse and refuse to tear apart on your smelly, stinking flat feet.

Seriously.

I understand completely if you have no idea what I’m babbling about at this point. Suffice to say, it’s a neat little piece of equipment that will allow me to connect my flashgun to my camera remotely via a wired link, enabling me to fire the flashgun from completely independent angles and distances.

Oh yes, D70/80/200/whatever users, don’t think I can’t hear your sniggers. So I neither have wireless flash operation with my D50 nor high-speed flash sync controls, sure. I’ll take my single command dial control any day of the week over dual command dial bullshit.

A hotshoe extension cable provides new avenues and techniques for lighting.

A test shot which goes back to my roots.

Anyway, buying it along with a Sigma 17-70mm f2.8/4.5 sure put a dent in my wallet, but I’m pretty much ecstatic at this point, and really, sometimes that’s all that really matters, right?

I’ve mentioned my purchase before, of course, but right now I’m talking about it in greater detail, so I hope you’ll allow a completely batshit crazy insane young man this one dalliance.

My old 18-55mm f4/5.6 kit lens has indeed served me exceptionally well over the course of the past 2 years of my ownership and I am immensely grateful for it. I’ve managed shots I thought impossible and taken images that took my own breath away with it, even as I expanded my collection of camera gear to include a telephoto and a 50mm f1.8 prime. I used it at events, product shots and even my random shit, though my prime steadily grew in its influence due to its faster capabilities and overall better quality.

These were the golden days of sorts, when I had assumed that these 3 lenses would be all that I would ever need for the present, knowing in the back of my mind that this unstable triumvirate would never last longer than a couple of photography events.

Oh, I managed. I avoided manual focus with the kit lens, opting for my prime when such situations called for tricky focusing. I started using auto-focus more often, preparing my camera to switch between lenses with little to no unnecessary delay in terms of transition. It worked, for a while at least.

Another test shot which hints at my innate love for architecture.

But then, try as I might, one fine day, I noted that I just couldn’t stand the lens creep that had begun to present itself as a fairly major problem with the lens. Compound this with the fact that the kit lens’ focusing ring doesn’t exactly have a large turning angle, and you can imagine what I have to go through every time I want to manually focus with that lens.

It’s time to move on. Enter the Sigma.

We were in Parkway Parade when we happened to chance upon one of these.

At almost 3 times the weight of my original kit lens, it’s a beast, with a whopping 72mm filter diameter to match. Understandable, though, given it’s f2.8 rating when wide open at 17mm, qualifying it somewhat as a wide-angle lens at that particular focal length, something I was taking into account when deciding what exactly would replace my gradually aging kit lens.

Incidentally, I was seriously considering getting the 24-70mm f2.8 instead of this, but the store I went to didn’t have it available, and while I’m pretty ok when it comes to patience, I’m also pretty fucking crazy when it comes to impulse purchases.

My sister insisted I take this shot.

The lens focuses rather nicely, with AF noise not being much of an issue, although I’d heard reports to the contrary on that matter. Maybe I’m just insensitive after being exposed to about ten kukrimillion gunshots in my childhood alone. The focusing ring is pleasantly tensioned, neither too hard nor too loose to turn, and it’s not overly sensitive either.

Not a minute later, we ran into yet another of these road devils.

I took it out and around for some test shots, and was immediately surprised by the crisp results, even when wide open at f2.8. The whole twist-clockwise-to-zoom method, which is completely opposite to to that of all lenses I’ve worked with does grate on my nerves a little, but with enough practise, I think I’ll be able to manage. It’s pretty worth it for the kind of shots I’m getting.

I have tried panning with the new lens, and though the added weight is not really a problem (I’ve done that a million times over with my telephoto), the oddity of feeling the weight but not having the range does unsettle me a little. I suppose I’m a little too used to going all out at 300mm, though.

I’ve been reading up on studio lighting recently (yes, I’ve read through Strobist for like the fifth time running now) thanks to my new purchases, and while I’m not about to head out for some white umbrellas and 500-watt bulbs, I do find some of these set-ups intriguing, to say the least. But I will, most likely, be concentrating on my upcoming F1 event before settling on anything else.

My sister decided to pick up some snacks from Breadtalk, a local bun chain.

In closing, though, it’s a pretty sweet lens, and even though the hole in my wallet is going to take a while to mend, I’m somehow strangely satisfied about the whole thing. I suspect this feeling, akin to elation of sorts, will end very shortly once I realize I’m out of cash to get Street Fighter IV when Capcom finally decides to stop dicking around and release it. Or Tekken 6, for that matter.