Archive | 2007

Royal Selangor Pewter Autumn Season Launch Party

Posted September 25, 2007 at 4:46 pm in Parties & Gatherings, Photography

Yah I’m typically late in posting this, due to changing PC and not processing the pictures all…and being a lazy bum etc etc.

Any way, a friend of ours invited us to the Autumn season launch party for Royal Selangor Pewter at their visitor center in Setapak.

So I thought why not, especially with the funky Turkish theme of the Autumn stuff, belly dancers and so on it should be interesting!

You can check out the Autumn Release here.

And well I have to say it rocked, it’s one the best organised ‘corporate’ type parties I’ve been too with a seamless integration of the new ranges of pewter into the environment.

It was also sponsored by Bombay Sapphire, so plenty of booze! Nice funky disco house music too, beautifully lit, good food and nice atmosphere. It was a surprisingly enjoyable night out for a launch!

Party

The food was great with kebabs, houmous and various Turkish type desserts.

Turkish Desserts

And freshly sliced roast lamb with gravy….man that was good.

Roast Lamb

More from:

Suanie – royal selangor’s autumn ‘07 collection launch partayyy!!
Fireangel – The Royal Selangor Autumn Launch Party

You can view the full set on Flickr here:

Royal Selangor Pewter – Aug 2007

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Lessons to learn in life

Posted September 20, 2007 at 4:38 pm in Serious Issues

Apologies for the late update today…some lessons to learn in life.

1) Look where what you driving over rather than just driving, there might be something sharp on the road.

2) If you hear any funny noises stop your car and check it out, because you might have a big piece of metal stuck in your tyre.

Metal Tyre

3) Always make sure you have the right tools to change your tyre, don’t rely on the crappy wrench that Proton provides because it’ll snap before it loosens the hydraulically tightened wheel nuts.

4) Always make sure your spare tyre has adequate air in it..because if you get a flat and your spare is also flat, it’s somewhat annoying, especially when you have to drive up the NKVE at 40km/h looking for a petrol station to pump your tyre up

I call him Bobby Big Tyre

Bobby Big Tyre

Correctly inflated to 37psi 🙂

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Ronald Jenkees Rocks the Keyboard – GENIUS!

Posted September 18, 2007 at 4:32 pm in Music

Man Ronald Jenkees totally rocks the keyboard and as a matter of fact he totally rocks the Internets too. If you don’t know who is he, you need to find out.

ALL YOUR MUSICS ARE BELONG TO RONALD!

“Hello Youtubes! I got a beat right now, and I feel like it’s on FIRE”

Ronald Jenkees

He’s a Youtube musical phenomena, you can check out his Youtube channel here:

Ronald Jenkees on Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/ronaldjenkees (Over 7000 YouTube subscribers)

He’s basically taken Youtube and some parts of the Internet by storm with his funky keyboard based solos, totally produced form his own home with just a Korg Triton and a PC loaded with FL Studio.

Ronald IS a musical genius.

He’s been putting his stuff out Youtube for quite a while and more recently in MP3 format, you can buy his MP3’s at his site here:

Ronald Jenkees Music Store

But he recently released his real self-titled physical album, so I bought one of those! $17 USD payable via Paypal including P+P.

You can buy one here:

Ronald Jenkees CD Store

I support this guy fully as he’s no scam artist, no one is taking a big cut of his pie, he’s writing, producing, playing, marketing and distributing his own music. That gets my utmost respect.

I don’t even know what his style is, something like electro funk rap with some remixed like Rocky and Canon in D.

The CD just came in the post yesterday and I’ve been listening to it all day, Track #1, #10 and the 56k Rap totally rock my socks.

Ronald Jenkees and Me

And yes this is the first physical music CD I’ve bought for about 5-6 years, respect to Ronald! It took about 12 days to come and was well packaged!

This is not an advertorial, paid for or sponsored in any way, I didn’t get his CD for free, I paid for it with my own money..

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I’d love some Banana Leaf Rice RIGHT NOW

Posted September 18, 2007 at 4:29 pm in Food/Eating, Photography

Yeah!

Banana Leaf Rice at Kanna

That’s some good shit right there, yes it is.

The mutton curry there is really nice, hmmmmmm

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Ah!..sausages and computers.

Posted September 14, 2007 at 4:28 pm in General Nonsense, Internet & Tech

Ok so I went and bought the stuff yesterday, they didn’t have the motherboard so I got a slightly more expensive one – still Asus though.

The Asus P5K-V!

I had some problems with it….it kept freaking out when I plugged the CD-ROM or the HDD’s in, the BIOS kept breaking up and showing weird patterns on the screen. I thought my power supply might have been lacking juice, but it turns out I just needed to let it run for a while.

Plus the BIOS on the motherboard didn’t fully understand the chip I was using as the E6750 Core 2 Duo is a very new CPU. After letting it run for a while and updating the BIOS to the latest version – no more problems!

Corsair RAM was out of stock too, so Kingston it was. I got everything else I wanted though, but the speakers were on back-order too.

I went off to Digital Mall and managed to find a set though (Logitech Z-2300) for RM565. Heavy monsters they are.

They are apparently the best 2.1 speakers you can get (THX certified).

My old 5.1 set weren’t really giving me the sound I wanted, they served me well when I used them for watching DVDs though.

I’ve lost my fascination with 5.1 speakers and having to tweak them to get the sound right, they just don’t have the kick of a nice 2.1 set either.

I briefly tested the speakers and they are LOUD and crisp, I haven’t given them a full run though. I’ll update more soon with pictures.

I managed to install the OS on SATA drives without any problems too which was a nice surprise as last time I tried it totally failed and I had to fall back to the OS on a PATA drive.

Other than that it looks ready to go, I can’t wait to get some stuff installed and test the speed of processing some big fat RAW files.

I’ve got a lot of pics to process but I just couldnt be bothered to do a lot of them as it was too slow, let’s hope that changes now!

As for the sausages part, I went to the new Bavarian Beerhaus in The Curve and had the sausage platter, man that was a killer, I haven’t eaten so much for ages, my body complained like hell..I got home and passed out straight after work.

And woke up at 1am, now my body clock is completely screwed, oh well at least it’s the weekend.

Time to go home and sort out my new PC!

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Time to Build a New Computer and My Nikon D70s Returns..

Posted September 13, 2007 at 4:25 pm in Internet & Tech

Definitely time to build a new computer, now I process a lot of NEF/RAW files from my camera…I spend half of my time waiting for loading and filters to run.

It’s a reasonable length I’ve been using this setup too, I find 18 months to be a regular upgrade cycle for the core components of my setup (cpu/mobo/ram/gpu).

So this is what I’m going for this time:

Intel C2D 2.66G (6750) = RM669
Asus P5B-E = RM558
Corsair 667 DDR2 x3 (148) = RM444
Seagate 320GB x 2 = (270) = RM540
Asus 256MB EN8600GT = RM488
Logitech – Z-2300 – RM599

Total = RM3298

Seems decent enough to me, at least I might be able to process my RAW files in comfort 🙂

What do you think?

This computer is having some problems too, USB is decidedly dodgy…it can’t detect external HDD’s any more, only thumbdrives. It has problems with my phone too.

The onboard LAN card is dead too after a lightning strike that fried my modem…

Ah well, I’ll negate the risk of that happening in the future by using USB wireless now, suck that Mr. Lightning!

Good news recently about my Nikon D70s that got stolen too, Nikon found it, a dealer sent it in for service and I’d black-listed the serial number…so they called me. I went to the Sergeant that I made the original report with and he confiscated the camera and is making a follow-up investigation now. Will keep you all updated.

And we won the war on Utopia…yeah I just started playing, more about that later too 🙂

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StarCeleb @ Bed

Posted September 12, 2007 at 4:22 pm in Parties & Gatherings, Photography

So I went to Bed with 60 glamarous young people on Saturday night, lucky me eh? Hardy-hardee-haa indeed.

It was hot, sweaty and tiring indeed.

Paparazzi at Bed

It was certainly a learning experience, interesting to be Paparazzi style for a night – it’s quite challenging in a sea of flash heads and elbows to get a decent angle.

Plus inside the club was smoky, hot, packed and very dark – not ideal conditions for photography!

Was good to meet some of the contestants too.

I’ll post more about it soon…not that anyone will comment anyway..

BASTARDS! (That’s for both my male and female readers so there’s no confusion or shouts of inequality).

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Hannah Tan Private Session for Album Launch at Mardi Gras (1-Utama) with Vince Chong

Posted September 11, 2007 at 4:11 pm in Parties & Gatherings, Photography

So last week a couple of friends and I headed off to the new club at 1-Utama (Mardi Gras) to check out a private live session from our local star Hannah Tan commemorating her new album launch apparently.

The place was pretty packed, and we got there a bit late, but thankfully I managed to sneak to the front and get some shots in. I started out with a wide lens (17-50mm f/2.8) but it was too wide and not fast enough even open all the way at f/2.8.

So I switched to my 50mm f/1.4 which gave me enough light at f/1.8 and was about the right focal length!

She had back-up dancers, vocalists and a full band (with Alda on bass), it was pretty cool!

Lead Guitarist

This guy was rapping too.

Rapper/Dancer

The lights were tough for photography, changing every second or so to a completely different colour…sometimes the same picture would have 2-3 colour casts. It surely made for interesting ambiance though.

Hannah Tan at Mardi Gras

I chose to use the available light rather than blasting it all away with high powered flashwork.

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Movie Review – Zodiac – Gripping!

Posted September 10, 2007 at 9:50 am in Movies

Zodiac

As a serial killer terrifies the San Francisco Bay Area and taunts police with his ciphers and letters, investigators in four jurisdictions search for the murderer. The case will become an obsession for four men as their lives and careers are built and destroyed by the endless trail of clues.

This is a movie that quite a few people have been talking about, many have mentioned it’s well worth a watch. It wasn’t hyped that much over here, but it did catch my eye, especially seen as though it had a decent cast and was based on a true story. It should be interesting at the very least.

It turns out it was better than expected, it’s stormed straight into the top 250 at IMDB at #244 with a score of 8.0/10! Very rarely do movies get above 7.8 or so, I expect it will drop a little as time passes though and it’s position will stabilize.

It’s a very well made movie and although it’s long at around 2.5 hours, it doesn’t feel long. It holds the suspense, pace and interest all the way through. The direction and character buildings are excellent.

Both Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal play their somewhat obsessive characters very well.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal

I’ve been a fan of Jake Gyllenhaal since I saw Jarhead and before that Donnie Darko, I can’t say he’s disappointed me since then.

It’s a very well put together movie, which leaves you guessing as to who is who, what’s the motive, what is happening and how it’s going to end.

The inter-relationships and changing situations of various characters make it very interesting.

It’s definitely worth a watch, sorry to rate another movie highly….but there’s been a crop of great movies lately, all of which have entered the IMDB coveted top 250, which says something right? Even though I feel IMDB is a little over-rated nowdays.

Flixster is an excellent Web 2.0 alternative built with a social networking aspect…anyway that’s off topic.

Go watch Zodiac, it’s worth it.

I give it a fascinating 8.5/10.

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The Shaolin Botol Susu Diffuser (Plastic Milk Bottle) For 1:1 Macro Photography!

Posted September 7, 2007 at 1:25 am in Photography

Someone said I should patent it so I can become a millionaire and have a massive house like Gary Fong?

Anyway rather than buy an expensive R1C1 Macro Ring Light…..I thought I’d adapt my existing SB-800 to suite my macro taking needs. I got the original idea from Lord-V over on Flickr.

He has all kinds of cool stuff he DIY’s himself, he uses mostly Coke Can diffusers now though.

Basically what I wanted is a ‘device’ that spread the light evenly and softly across the area where my Tamon SP90 focuses and extends to during 1:1 macro shooting, I scouted around for a while for bottles and found the ideal bottle. A milk bottle!

If you want to do something similar you’ll need:

1) A plastic bottle
2) Kitchen Foil
3) Kitchen Towel
4) Double sided sticky tape or glue
5) Normal Tape
6) A sharp knife

That’s all! Less than 10 bucks as you probably have some of it already.

I decided to use this bottle as I could have the top extend our further than the bottom to cast the light downwards onto my subject, so the first thing I did was hack the top out where the handle and the opening were.

Exit Point

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