Wonder how many people remember this anime called "God Mars"? I certainly did not remember it by that name. But when I saw this in HLJ, there was no mistaking the small robot near the end of the page "GAIA". I sort of the remember the anime was about some kid that could control the robots, and when GAIA came flying to him he would be suck up into the center part of the chest. Brought back some memories, although the first feeling was whether i got the budget for it. (It cost about 220+USD). It consists of the 5 robots + GAIA who can be combined to form God Mars. Can't wait to see how much it would cost in Singapore. Think those cut throat dealers in such toys would proabaly put it at around 350 - 400 SGD.

GAIA the hero's main robot

Internet and Firewall page

Similary if you are using VMWare player and using the NAT/Host only network settings you might find that you might be unable to ping the host pc. Go to "Internet and Firewall" on the home page of the Sercurity Center and select "Configure" and then at the "Firewall" portion select "Advanced...", on the left side you should see an option named "Trusted and Banned IPs", put the network that you want to allow into the list and ur vm should be able to ping your host.



So if you are using Dell and having the McAfree Sercurity Center software, you might want to take note of the above

Saw this amazing guy who builds half size panzer tank! Check it out it even has a working air cannon.

Wonder if we are able to do something like that in singapore, wonder how many permits we need and how many agency's approval before we can get it on the road.

Links
mLive.com page

Well old pc (an Athlon XP 2600 1GB) was getting really unstable after the fan failed. With an auto shut down setting of 70C in the bios, the pc was shutting every 10-20 mins. Not a really usable scenario.

So i tried under clocking by about half, that makes it about 1300+Mhz, temperatures were climbing to about 70C then went down and stabilised about 56C.

So finally deciding to spend the money (which i don't have much of since i am preparing for my wedding), decided to head down to Dell to get one of their customised PCs, I did not go for the Sim Lim PC option as buying parts from all over the place and having to grapple with multiple warranties wasn't too appealing to me.

What did i get from Dell?

1. Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad Processor Q6600
   
2. Pre-Loaded Genuine Windows Vista(R) Home Premium OEM Version
3. 3GB (2X1GB/2x512MB) NECC Dual Channel DDR2 667MHz SDRAM Memory
4. 320GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive with Native Command Queuing
5. 16X DVD+/-RW with Dual Layer Write Capabilities
6. 256MB PCIe(TM)x16 NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) 8600GT w/TV-Out & Dual DVI

A promising image management software much like Picasa or Lightroom. Best of all it's open source. Amazing what one can do wth Netbeans

Links
Original Site
Linux.com review

Read this morning yesterday's "My Paper" about some motorist suggesting that the Traffic Police allows motorist the flexibility to go through the crossing when there is no pedestrian. (i.e when the pedestrian crossing light is green and the traffic one is red). And in today's "My Paper" a reader commented that that is very dangerous and what is more important a person's life or a person's time.

Now my own observation of how things stand. There are 2 kinds of scenarios, One is where the road is straight, not at a junction and the other is where there is a junction.

I think his reasoning applies to a straight road kind of crossing where there is the possibility that no one could be crossing and his light is red and the pedestrian side is green. I think currently the traffic light allows more time for traffic then for pedestrian. So in a sense he is already given more priority (since he pays road tax and I don't).


Next is the one where there is a junction, where there is a possibility for cars turning right that their side of the light is green and the pedestrain side is also green. This i think its where drivers should be more cautious. During morning rush hour, on many occasions while pedestrians are still crossing, drivers at the slighest gap available will try to drive through. This applies both to cars and motorcycles, with motorcycles more likely to do so.

I had a rather bad experience around the Singapore Flyer on Saturday. On the above map, the location marked by a flower is where a junction with a pedestrian crossing happened to be. So the light went green both the the pedestrian side as well as the traffic side. So me and my gf was trying to cross when the lights went green. And suddenly all the cars sprint to pass in front of me and my gf. There was this driver on the extreme left hand side who stopped but he looked at me as if I own him lots of money, then he looked right and saw the pedestrian light was also green. I think that crossing was rarely used and so drivers are used to just turn and go. With the Singapore Flyer there and some upcoming developments in that area, it seems like sooner or later if the drivers are not paying attention, an accident is just waiting to happen. Perhaps a look into allowing the pedestrian crossing light to light first then followed by the traffic lights will help?

This makes me wonder why all these drivers are so anxious, are they sending someone sick to the hospitals, then our health minister might want to look into more hospitals since every morning there are so many sick cases.

I think ultimately it's the drivers that need to realised that they are not the only users of the road; just like people who cycle must realise that perhaps sometimes they can give way to pedestrians walking on the pavements. scarce country.

I have been pondering over this question for some time, ever since my dear old computer's cpu fan died on me.

Currently it's working fine with a few exceptions. I set the motherboard to shutdown at 70C and the only time I have been able to get that to happen is when i try to start more than one app at a time(staring Firefox and Outlook together always shutdowns down the pc). So if i just take things slowly it should be ok for now.

So now the big question is ... do i get a Laptop or a desktop...

Below I come out with some Pros and Cons for Desktop vs Laptop

Laptop
Pros :

1. Uses less power (more green)
2. Portable (although i already have another laptop with my gf)
3. I will get two screens! (Together with my 22" that i already have)
   

Cons:

1. Harder to upgrade (most likely change only the ram and harddisk)

Desktop
Pros

1. Most powerful
2. Easier to upgrade
3. Take effective use of my 22" monitor

Cons

1. Bulkier
2. Not so Green

What do you guys think ?

On Tuesday, I went for my photo shoot. Boy was it an interesting experience. We arrived about 10am, the make-up artist started make-up for the missus first. Well it took some time (haha roughly about 2 hrs?). The make-up artist also put some foundation and also do up my hair a bit.

I thought my hair looks a bit high and a bit weird since i dont really style my hair at all, but my dear one looks fabulous that day.

So we started the photo shoot, I don't have the pictures as we haven go choose yet. But i won't post the pictures anyway, give those who are coming to the wedding a surprise.

So the studio shoot was mostly about sticking out your neck and looking down and smiling a lot. And basically trying to follow the photographer's instructions.

We ended the shoot about 4pm, while i went to buy nuggets for our dinner (Eat finger food won't mess up the make-up too much). Our outdoor shoot was probably more fun, we took photos between trees (where there are ants), sit down on floors, kick water, try to run along the beach, throw flowers and hold balloons. And all these time trying to stick out your neck haha (Let me explain why you stick out you neck lah, its to reduce the "double chin" effect that you might have).

Finally ended everything about 7-8pm. To be honest with you guys it was fun, its not normally that you get to wear nice clothes and take photos outside, and to be doing it with the one you love makes it all the more special.

So for those who are planning to go for such a shoot probably some things you might want to think about.

1. Think of what type of a shoot you like (Indoor or more outdoorsy)
2. Look up some pictures from the bridal saloon, or from other sources and think of what type of place you like to go. (Trees, lallang fields, beach)
   
3. Casual shoot?
4. Props (Balloons, toys)

And most importantly pray for good weather, a beautiful sunset. (mine was half half type of sunset lah) and enjoy yourself.

wiki.is provides free Devi Wiki hosting.

Simple to setup, just provide a name for your wiki and an email address to mail the admin info to you and your done!

The UI is quite friendly and the you don't really have to mess with markup language like in MediaWiki. Still playing around with it though.

From the webpage seems like you will be able to do some sort of mashups with google and yahoo.

The free version provides up to 100megs of space while the pro version gives you 10 gigs and cost 10USD a month.

Links
Comparison between Free and Pro

Read in the Straits Times (Lifestyle) today that parents are leaving their kids at book stores while they go and do their shopping, facial etc etc etc, and its increasing prevalent during the school holidays that are happening now.

I don't really think that the phenomenon is only restricted to the book stores, I think Toy shops, or even the toy section of many department stores are also becoming mini kids drop off.

If you read the article, you will see that the store workers sometimes need to entertain to these kids (like having to bring them to toilet, some even did it in the store), some destroy books, some take sticker books; tear out the stickers stick them nicely in the book for the next person to buy so he/she no need to stick anymore (what a mouthful haha).

I mean is it that hard just to spend a week with your kid while he/she is free from school? Is it that urgent that the parents have to do their "important" stuff that week. Have we become so busy that they can't spend time with their kids when they go out together? It's just plain weird to me.

Like going to a department store, shouldn't the parent also spend sometime in the toy section to see what the child likes nowadays, see what his interests are?(Besides playing computer games and reading comics).


Anyway I am no parent (as of now), but I do hope that when I have time to go out with my kid I will not leave him/her alone someplace so that I can enjoy myself. But rather I would want him to enjoy himself/herself.

Well my CPU fan's condition not too good, its starts on and off and I am worried that my CPU would get fried. Tried playing around with the switch, sometimes can hear the fan spin up after sometime it would spin down again.

Think its time to get a new PC ? This one has been with me for sometime liao (Athlon 2600+ 1GBDDR Ram).

Think will go and see some Dell models (Currently interested in the Dell 530), see whether can get one without a monitor cause I already have a 22" Lcd liao.. Haha pray that my CPU can survive till then.

Lots of data to bring over also.. hiah.... My so called bonus some would be spent on the CPU liao.. hiah...

Continued...

In Genting there are only a few things that you can do; Casino, Theme Park, A bit of shopping, watch a movie, eat.

Casino
There are I think 2 casinos in Genting, the main difference is the size of it. As we reached Genting quite early in the morning, our rooms were not ready yet and most of the shops were not open so there was really not much you could do there except eat and play at the casino.

I have never been to a Casino in my life so far, so it was an interesting experience. The first thing that i noticed were that the people working at the tables were generally quite young. And apparently in Genting they provide accommodation for people who works there so they can cut down on the commute to work (its about an hour just trying to get down from the hill).

That made me think about the IR that Singapore is going to have in a few years time, will it be staffed by mostly young adults? There is no doubt that the IR industry is going to take off in a big way in Singapore (Just look at the courses that keep appearing in the newspapers that advertise diplomas in IR management). Food
Well there is a quite a variety of food here from fast food (Mac, KFC, Burger King) to slow food (Food courts, Kenny Rogers etc) and coffee places (Starbucks, Coffee Bean). Quite a lot of stuff available here.

There is a mushroom farm, located about 15 mins walk down the hill, from First World go out towards the bus terminal and just follow the road down hill, u will see a cluster a zinc roof houses, that is where the Mushroom Farm is. Alternatively, the farm does have transport avaliable, think you need to call ahead to book it, pick up at First World hotel.

The food there is typical "Zhi Cha" with the exception that they do have quite a variety of mushroom dishes. They also sell mushrooms like the straw mushroom, oyster mushroom etc. Food is not bad, and cheap. But the climb up is quite tiring though. You can get a ride u the hill just wait outside the restaurant there should be a mini van that could take u up for free.

Theme Park
During the period we were there, we were plague by small pockets of rain now and then. The queue for the rides were long (We were there on a sat), they do have some interesting rides like the vertical drop kind, a superman kind of ride where u lie horizontally like a superman and you feel like you are flying (sort of like a roller coaster), roller coasters (2 of them) and lots of kiddy rides too.

Overall Genting was probably a nice place to go, but the limited activity you can do there makes for a short stay there probably not more then 2nights or it could get really boring.

Last weekend (29 Feb 08 to 2 Mar 08), my friends (4 of them) and my wife to be friends (3 of them), all nine of us went to Genting Highlands for some R and R.

We booked from Transtar opting for their "Premium" service bus, basically 24 seats, single deck to Genting and 33? seats double deck on the way back.

So the day arrived, I prepared by trying not to drink any tea or coffee and trying to keep water to a minimum (There are no toilets on the bus and its a seven hour trip).

Anyway I was abit worried that the customs check might take abit long due to the escaped prisoner Mas Selamat.

So the 9 of us set off at 1030pm for Genting, the bus was comfortable, better then some airline economy seats that I have been on. And as expected, the customs point at Singapore was jammed. We took about 2 hours just to get past the check point.

We stopped over at Yong Peng at about 2:30am for a small break and reached Genting about 6-7am in the morning, about 1 1/2 hr later then schedule (the schedule was to reach at about 5:30am).

On the way up to Genting, u can really start to appreciate Singapore roads, the streets were mostly unlighted and on the winding road up, there were no lights and u can see the oncoming lights of the cars whizzing by.

To be continued...

Just today there has been news of someone wearing belts with buckles looking like a Knuckle duster being arrested and charged in court, although the charges were eventually dropped, I think there is a need to inform people in Singapore on what scheduled weapons are.

As extracted from the Singapore Statutes.

SCHEDULED WEAPONS

1. Any knife, sometimes known as a flick knife, which has a blade which opens automatically by hand pressure applied to a button, spring or other device in or attached to the handle of the knife.

2. Any knife, sometimes known as a gravity knife, which has a blade which is released from the handle or sheath thereof by the force of gravity or the application of centrifugal force and which, when released, is locked in place by means of a button, spring, lever or other device.

3. Any whip manufactured from bicycle or motor cycle chains or from any similar kind of chainwork.

4. All kinds of knuckledusters.

5. Any blade or other instrument attached to or forming part of a bicycle pump, metal-pipe or stick, and concealed therein, which is capable of being used for cutting or stabbing.

6. Any sword, machete or parang, axe, sickle, bearing scraper, spear, bayonet, iron rod, and the nancha-ku (segments of wood or metal joined by a chain, leather strap or cord).

So I think that's why Swiss Army Knives and Multi tools are exempted since they don't have a mechanism for flipping the blade out.

Below are some links to new stories and the Singapore Statutes.

Links
Harsher penalties and fines for scheduled weapons in S'pore (The Electric New Paper)
Singapore Statutes (Look under Corrosive and Explosive Substances and Offensive Weapons Act)

Found it off a link in Wikipedia while reading about mainframes. Looking at this video, for those who studied some form of computing will remember their lecturers telling them about the good old days where they use punch cards and teletypes.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Quite a good blog post, describes my job very well and yes, I do not fix computers at work.

http://www.jonandnic.com/topics/ravings/embracing-my-inner-geek-part-2-the-job

From Valleywag.com

http://valleywag.com/351915/the-10-most-memorable-tech-super-bowl-ads

History Greatest Gadgets
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/02/historys-greate.html

Happy birthday to Lego,Happy birthday to Lego ...

Lego turns 50 today! I think many of us will have fond memories of those small bricks and panels where if we have enough we could built almost whatever we wanted. Never mind if they are a mishmash of different colors cause we don't have enough of the correct color. They were still fun to play around. When a new idea comes, all the bricks are undone and a new creation is born again.

I still have some of the Theme sets like Sabre Island from Lego Pirates and a Camouflaged Output from the Castle Series from Lego

Legos were certainly loads of fun. I hope kids nowadays still play with Lego though.. much better than some computer games and certainly environmentally friendlier.

Haha I still hanker for some Lego though, espcially those from the Star Wars range, if someone is kind enough a Mindstorms NXT kits would be nice !

Links
Gizmodo (Has a graphical timeline for Lego)
International Lego User Group Network

Well this morning was a tiring morning.. as with all Saturday mornings, the first things of the morning was spent on vacuuming the floor and mopping it.

The next part was the dismemberment of my fathers bed, changing from his current Queen size to a single bed, so out came my trusty Leatherman Pulse and took it apart. Then came the brining out of the seperate parts so that the cleaners can come remove it. Then came the cleaning up, taking out things from a book shelf, moving the book shelf back in the room, fixing up the new bed, changing the bed sheet. And finally all was done.

Totally shack out man...

Anyway my latest Youtube fetish revolves around watching Survivorman ! However today after work, i looking forward to watching another episode of it, they were all taken down liao!

Just a small intro, Survivorman is this guy call Les Stroud, who goes to places like the swamp, desert and so on and tries to survive with what he has (which is usually very little) for seven days.

The interesting thing is that he has no camera crew so he to carry about 20kg of camera equipment so that he can film himself. He usually tries out some new survival equipment like wire saw, flint and so on.

Think i may need to buy the DVD from ebay, since i really can't find the show in shops in Singapore. I surfed around and found that it probably cost around 28USD shipping included.

Anyway for those who are reading this, if you guys saw the dvd anywhere leave me a note will ya!

A interesting video about how 3 guys and a video cam in 4 days recreate a Normandy Beach Landing.

Link to the actual post: Here

Cool Youtube video showing using Nintendo's wiiremote to do head tracking.



Links
Johnny Lee (The guy in the video)
Managed Library for WII Remote

Although i should be blogging about the new year, i feel i should just share this tool for people who uses Emacs.

In a short line, it adds Color Themes to ur Emacs editor, sometimes it's abit hard to customize emacs such that you get the colors that are most pleasing to your eyes, with this its abit easier since they have about 50 color themes inside for you to choose from, when u are done just add it to your .emacs file

Links
Color Theme Website
Emacs Wiki Color Theme

It's the new year and boy was it a busy one, entered the Eye e City photography competition and was totally tired out liao... walked around the whole day trying to document something interesting for 2008. Anyway now finally back at home, will wait for tomorrow to chose the photos to submit... Blog about my experience when i have rest and recovered haha....

My birthday has just passed, well nothing happened really except being sick, specifically i had a sore throat that was quite irritating, you know the kind where even if you swallow it's painful and you keep drinking water because your throat is irritated and you keep going toilet because you keep drinking water. Yeah that's the kind of sore throat i had. That night couldn't even sleep well. It was that bad.

Anyway the only thing moderately exciting was that my mop/brush decided to have kids again! Haha you must be wondering what the hell I am talking about. Because my mop is kept is a moist environment and the handle was made of wood, so after some time it started growing mushrooms/fungus. At first it was one, so just removed it and continue using, on my birthday when i went to use the mop i found not one but three new "babies"!

If u are thinking of embeddig your Flickr Albums in your blogs or webpages the below two links should help!

http://paulstamatiou.com/2005/11/19/how-to-quickie-embedded-flickr-slideshows/

http://idgettr.com/

Found this link that if u pass in a Singapore Postal Code, it will generate a Lat and Long of the location.

http://www.best.sg/mash/sggeocoder.jsp#

I am trying to do some mashup with this, GoogleCalendar and Virtual Earth to plot out places that you need to visit for your appointments.

Anyone knows a free JSP/Servlet hoster?

Well it was sort of a quiet chirstmas for me this year like every other year haha did nothing really exciting.

Last saturday went to Orchard to take pictures of the light up along the road, somehow didn't feel too chirsmassy to me. For the facade of most buildings, the decorations were merely strings of lights hanging around. Although i didn't walk very far, only from Orchard MRT to the end of Takashimaya (It was drizzling that day). Somehow the decorations seems moody to me.

Monday was Christmas Eve (Yeah !) Went to work and watched a movie (The Brother's Grimm) as part of the waste time efforts of the welfare commitee. Anyway the show was not too bad.

Well for christmas my dear dear gave me a can of Jelly Beans and guess what ? A Jelly Bean Dispenser ! You know like the 'Tikam Tikam' Machine where u put in a coin and turn a lever. Yeah looks cool, haha i try to take some pictures and post here.

Some details on the land survey origin in singapore.

http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/teaching/origin.html

Hey guys/gals, i switched to using Feedburner to monitor details about my blog. So please use the link at my "Sites" link to the RSS Feed for my site. So you guys (and gals) will always know when something new is at my blog.

For those who don't really know what RSS is about check out the link and check out Google Reader for a good RSS reader.

Thanks!

For those who use Google Calendar and Google Map there is a Where column, where you are able to put in the address and use Google Map to find the location. But for us in Sunny Singapore, it dosen't seem to work too well, you can't just put "Esplanade" and it gives you the Singapore Esplanade so how?

There are a few ways to make it work better.

• Put the word Singapore behind the location name,
  
• For example "Esplanade Singapore"
• If you are using Street Address like "123 Jalan Kayu #12-1209 Singapore 123456" Just take the first part and append Singapore to the back of it.
• For example "123 Jalan Kayu Singapore"
• If you put the whole thing in Google Maps can't find it.
  
• Go to StreetDirectory.com and search for the location and copy the lat and long into the address field. Remember to remove the two words Lat and Long.
  
• For example "1.234 103.456"
  

Wonder whether should i get this pair of ear phones? Active Noise Cancelling at 39SGD which is quite cheap.

I usually travel via MRT (Or the subway/underground) and on the bus, and so sometimes i crank the volume really loud because of the ambient noise (train moving, traffic). And i wonder how good these are at canceling out these ambient noise.

At Amazon out of 27 ,9 gives 5 stars, 10 4Stars, 5 3stars, 1 2stars and 2 1Stars.

I did some research and found out how active noise canceling works, basically besides a speaker, they have a microphone on the headset which listens to external sounds and the ciruitry generates a 180 degree out of phase signal that cancels it.

Seems like these ear phones are worth a shot.

Link
Creative Store
PC Mag Review In the page there is a link to a webcast where they talked about the various noise cancelling headphones on the market
Good Gear Guide
How stuff works - Noise Cancelling Headphones

Just watched this lovable movie with my fiancee yesterday. Well the main gist is that there is a girl (Giselle) and a Prince (Edward) who are suppose to meet each other and have a happy ever after, however as usual there is an evil queen who is also the step mother of Edward who plots to get rid of her so that she can still be queen.

Without giving away too much somehow she manages to come to New York, and meet with a Lawyer Robert and his daughter Morgan who takes her in. Edward and Pip comes along to find her and bring her back. And of course the evil Queen does makes an appearance to stop them all.

Overall the show is a typical Disney movie (think along the lines of Cinderella and Sleeping beauty) where there are talking animals/animals seem to do housework/happy endings but in this show there are certain interesting differences.

There is a great musical number in the park which reminds me of when i was at Hong Kong Disney land where they had a street parade going on and all these people are dancing and singing.

Credit has to be given to Amy Adams (Giselle) and James Marsden (Edward)for they way they portray chracters out of a fairy tale. Unfortunately Patrick Dempsey who played the "real" life character of Robert Phillip was abit too dead, even when he is in danger of being thrown off/ eaten by a dragon wasn't too convincing.

Overall a good movie to watch but i think people of my age might find it a bit too childish. Hey I'm a child at heart !

Links:
IMDB Listing
Enchanted Official Movie Site
Singapore Enchanted Movie Site (They have a MV of Carrie Underwood singing the theme song)

A picture of me running to the finishing point snapped by my friend BingQiang. I am the one in the black orange shirt

Current State
Feeling: Tired but good
Legs: Tired

Next Goal: Army Half Marathon 21km

It's currently 4:21am in the morning as I am writing this, been awake since 3:55 making breakfast (haha 2 pieces of ham and 2 pieces of bread).

Current State:
Awakeness Level :Slightly Awake
Eaten: True
Legs: Feels ok
Hair: Messy
Teeth: Brushed

Plan
Plan to leave house: 4:45am
Bus Leaving: 5:30am
Time to flag off: 7:15am

Book Review

First some background.
I have been involve in 2 projects so far at my current workplace, the first i wasn't involve to completion as i was transferred out to the next project where i managed to see it out all the way through to the deployment phase.

During the deployment, many problems occurred, things like system not performing as we thought it will be, missing segments that were not coded (and no body noticed it). During deployment we had no fixed building system for the new code that was written and we had to come out with our own scripts to build and deploy. And the deployment system wasn't too well thought out and throughly tested only adds to the pain.

And now the book...

Some of the advice in the books are probably known to seasoned developers,project leads, but what i think the value of the book probably lies in those who just came out of school. Unfortunately (at least during my time) in school, the modules in University were mostly related to the grammar and syntax of programming languages and how netmask works, there weren't much subjects related to actual programming problems/project problems that you might face when you are actually out there working on a real life project, like managing requirements, ensuring you have a good build, design patterns, source code control practices and so on.. (Think you guys can probably think of a few more).

Probably couldn't really blame the lecturers though.. In a school envrionment, it's probably quite sterile and the professors themselves are out of touch.

It brings you from what tools (CI tools, feature tracking, bug tracking) that you should have to project techniques (code reviews, the list). They propose a way of doing developement (Tracer Bullet developement) and ends with a section on common problems and how to fix them(Legacy code, testing untestable code, feature creep).

The book can be considered easy reading as compared to a regular boring computer realated book and the author not only shows the problem but also the solution and how to monitor it. It has something for developers, leads and managers

"Don't take conventional wisdom as kind of scared cow. Sometimes, conventional wisdom can also be conventional stupidity. We started where we started from because of going against conventional stupidity. If it doesn't work, attack it"

Muhammad Yunas
Nodel Laureate, Founder of the Grameen bank
Extracted from Today, November 3rd 2007

Found this link http://www.diyplanner.com where they have different templates for making planners, they have templates for A5, A4, Filofax size planners.

They also give tips on how to print and what equipment u need for making your own planners.

My good friend sent me this link, it compares the language u use to what type of car it is!

Enjoy!

P.S I use Java and C# in my work!

http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~mvanier/hacking/rants/cars.html

I Failed !!! haha took my first IPPT after i left the service and i failed. Chinup lack one and run halfway stitching like crazy liao so i stopped.

And i got 11 pts before i run liao so if i pass running i partial failure... Think all the ot and coming home late abit hard to train.

Think must start thinking of running and exercising in the morning and evening for the next few month before my ippt window closes....

Well my fiancee will be going for her US attachment tomorrow, hope that she will have a nice time and fun there.

But somehow can't fight the feeling of sadness that she is going away (even though its only a month). Haha think i'm just a sentimental guy. For the past few years that we are together, we were at most separated by a phone call or a sms away (except for the few times where i went sailing and she was the one back here), now i am the one being left at home. Well a first time for everything.

Hope that you will have a nice trip there dear and come back safely !

Why?!? basically Java spoils u for the amount of Open Sourced libraries/programs that help you in your coding.

I can't imagine coding with out anything from Apache (commons, axis2,tomcat), or database without hibernate (ok .NET has their own version), light weight db for testing (HSQLDB), Spring (Dependency Injection, Hibernate Transaction management), XML Mapping (Castor) and so on ..

In my current project, we are doing the project with the server end being implemented in Java and we require interoperability with .Net and Java clients. The approach we have taken is to use a XML to represent the POJO or PONO that is used as a base entity object to set attributes and also for hibernate to persist into the database, so we looked around for some library or solution that will allow us to do so.

Looking around the internet found a article that used XSD to convert from a .NET to XML and to JAVA solution. It uses .Net XmlSerializer that can use a XSD to save .Net objects to XML and Java has Castor that could read from a XML and the XSD .

But i find the solution not very elegant as u need to use XSD, which i find a pain to read (haha i am no XSD expert), and i quite like Castor's XML mapping format. So in the end for .Net we do manual parsing using XmlReader to convert from the XML to .Net objects.

Then i began to think what if my java stuff needs to talk to a php, python or any other language that does classes using XML? would it be good to have a coverter for all these languges and also a code generator to generate the require entity or plain objects from the XML mapping defination? That's why i started a project to write a simple Marshaller and Unmarshaller (in Castor's terms) to perform the same thing for .Net (Since i am using .Net and Java) and probably think about how to make the mapping suitable for other languages that need to transfer simple objects for data representation and storage.

Just some facts about our nation on National Day on our Nation's birthday

1. Majulah Singapura
Written by Encik Zubir Said, unveiled on December 3, 1959, together with the national flag and the coat of arms, on the steps of City Hall at the installation of the new head of state, the Yang di-Pertuan Negara, Encik Yusof Bin Ishak. Upon Singapore's independence in 1965, "Majulah Singapura" was adopted as the republic's national anthem, (Source Wikipedia)

He also wrote the children day song Semoga Bahagia.

2. Singapore Pledge
The National Pledge was written by Sinnathamby Rajaratnam (Minister for Foreign Affairs) in 1966 shortly after Singapore's independence

http://infopedia.nlb.gov.sg/articles/SIP_84_2004-12-13.html

3. Area
Singapore is about 270sq milies and about 1.444% of it is water

4. Population
Total : 4,483.9
Singapore Residents: 3,608.5

Hmm what other intersting things about singapore, u would like to know/share?

Links:
Statistics Singapore
Wikipedia

Hey all attend my first Software Developer type of Conference at the Sun Developer Days, although its a lot of fun (with free cds, free with Duke, free food, free t-shirt).

They talks were particularly interesting especially the techie types, for the sales type, i wasn't too interested, especially the one from Oracle who was trying to get people interested in something called Oracle Webcenter but i was quite distracted by his rapid marching around the stage and his droning voice and his overly complicated slides.

Nice things to note for Java fans,

Java 7 is looking better and better with more constructs and hopefully they will finalise and adopt something that looks like C# property types.

Phobos: U can take it as Javascript for the Server side (imagine writing servlets in JS, no need for compilation and rapid testing and depolyment)

Netbeans: Quite a bit of time was spent on how Netbeans can help u in ur developement, impressive was the GUI editor for Netbeans, looks faster and easier then handwriting ur own GUI code.

Found this cool website that teaches u how to embed a Google map into ur blog. hmm still trying to see what to do with it

http://koti.mbnet.fi/ojalesa/tutor/maphowtoblogger.html

Just found this website (Think it was featured on Slashdot). Mini Episodes of old show, the condense a 1/2hour-1hour show into 6 minutes, Perfect for the very busy singaporeans. Hmm maybe Mediacorp might consider doing this to some of their shows?

http://www.myspace.com/minisodenetwork

Wao, Micheal Bay's Tranformer was great, watched it at Cathay AMK Hub on Sunday. But first before talking about Transformers lets talk about the journey to watch it.

The Journey Begins
On Saturday tried GV website, keep saying busy so couldnt really get tickets, if i was lucky i was able to get as far as selecting the seats but that's about it, the next page where your are suppose to confirm and pay never did appear, GV should think about their ticketing website, cause when the demand is high it never seems to be able to cope. So didnt get to watch it on Sat.

Sun, tired GV but also busy so tried Cathay, wao fast immediately was able to book tickets and so went to watch but.... At the booking counter the queue was longer than that of the buying queue.!??!?!! Queued up about 20mins just to get tics, if i was not there earlier i could have missed the starting of the movie!

Transformers
Now finally to the brief review, it was a great movie!! Although the movie didn't really looked like anything from my youth, but i think i agree with Micheal Bay that if it looked like the old Tranformers they will probably looked weird and out of place, the story was good but i think the ending could be abit better (It ended too abruptly for my taste). But the characters looked cool. Megatron looked really evil. All in all a good show.

Simpsons
Now i think this will be the next big movie if the movie is as good as the trailer that i saw. It was simply hilarious, just go to youtude and type "simpson spider pig" or "simpson movie trailer" to see what i mean.

Last weekend was a busy weekend, there was the PC Show and a friends ROM.


Lets talk about the PC Show, got me self a Prolink Wireless Desktop set with Keyboard, mouse, Prolink Webcam and a Acer laptop.

The Prolink Desktop set is the one using the 2.4ghz band with 16 channel hopping so u get less interference, the mouse and keyboard all have extra keys to help u. For example the mouse has a back and forward button for web browser use. The mouse also has a button for switching between 800dpi and 1600 dpi modes. I generally find the mouse quite comfortable to use (I have big hands) and i so far have no problems with it. They keyboard i haven used much as i still have my MS Keyboard attached to my computer. The keyboard keys' height is shorter than my MS Keyboard but overall feel is still ok, i like the volume control (looks like a wheel). Overall i find it a reasonable buy at 59$.

I also got a Prolink Webcam, the PC9000. The webcam cost $12 well for the price u shouldn't really expect too much, it has a mic built in so its great for doing video conferencing and stuff but the real downer is the webcam it self, if u are like me living in a HDB flat where u most likely have flourecent lighting in ur house, u will find the webcam's picture to be generally dark, even after u tweaked the exposure settings, this webcam is only meant to be use for a bright and sunny room in the day. Spend some money get something better from logitech or genius or creative. U get what u paid for.

Well for the laptop, as all last days of PC Shows or Comexs go usually vendors will slash price or ive more freebie or do both on the last day, surprising i didnt find too many vendors slashing prices on the last day. But Acer was probably one of the big slashers, most of their laptops were going for 200$ below the first day price and they even added another GB of ram for some models. So i got one specs are :
Core 2 Duo1.64MHZ,
2 GB ram (After free GB),
Geforce 7600/7700 with 128MB
and 120MB harddisk

All for 1598. Its preloaded with VISTA seems ok to use, except i prefer the older "Start" where the program are easier to select and the button bigger too, and the "power" button instead of shutting down outs it in hibernate mode, u gotta go to the > button to shutdown. Not very intutive. Haven try to configure it .

As for the ROM haha lets leave it for the next posting...

Found this website Watches in Space http://digilander.libero.it/generalresearch/main.html which shows the watches that NASA cleared for Outside the orbiter/on the moon and within the Orbiter. Interesting that a G-Shock was within the list of watches that are approved for within the orbiter.

Came across this blog, GMT+9 while surfing around and saw his entry on how he found his old casio watch in his drawer.

I think most of us when we were young owned a casio watch at one time or another, i think even for many of us now we are probably wearing a Casio G-Shock as our daily watch or have one lying around somewhere.

I still remember my first casio watch, it was a small thin black caiso watch (come to think of it, it seems more like a ladies watch) with no water resist capbabilities what so ever. It was gone when i tried to see how water unresist it was by dropping it in to a pail of water.

My second one was a Casio Databank, u know those watches where you can save your friends telephone numbers, mine was one without the key pads so i gotta use the left and right buttons to input the number manually.

My third one was one of those illuminator models, round sports watch which survive pass my army time.

My lastest one is a blue G-Shock which my girl friend (Wife to be gave me)

I sort of remember that in my dads room there was an old casio lcd watch lying around so here it is, Model B613W with date and time, water resist and thats abt it.

Could find much info on it, the closest i can find was a Model B612W here. And it seems like the collectbility is quite low but who cares ! This watch seems to be going strong

You guys know what’s the problem with customs? The main problem is that it is open to interpretation, background and experiences of the person who interprets it. It is not written like the word of law and thus as time goes by with the march of time, customs change and but not everyone knows of the changes.

Best example I had this morning was with weddings, I think most of u guys who read this probably know I am getting married sometime next year and I fully empathized with people who have been through it, for those who have been through it I salute you, for you surely must have great perseverance and strength plus a great deal of negotiating skills. For how do u do what u want and what ur parents think it’s the right thing plus inputs from the future in laws?

To make it short, my mum has certain ideas of what is the correct way and my future in laws has a certain idea. And now I am having problems trying to reconcile it. And to make things even more interesting they are from the same dialect group (and they already have different ideas, can't imagine if both sides are from different dialect groups). Chinese weddings are terrible stuff, haha that’s why u shouldn't get married more than once, the planning will kill you, and if u survived they should give all a Medal of Perseverance and Courage!

Hmm probably we should have something written in black and white like the Singapore Laws for Weddings so that people can refer and say what is the right thing or wrong thing with regards to certain things. The ambiguity is certainly not a good thing.

After reading the above book, "Journey through Genius" by William Dunham i realised that when i was studying as a kid, i took a lot of stuff at face value esp math.

I mean how many of us knows how to prove that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180? or the how important was the Pythagoras theorem and how to prove it. Probably that why most kids in singapore dont really like math that much is that they just see it as some weird formula that they are made to remember and remember the type of questions are that use it. A lot of the how and why is lost.

"Journey through Genius" takes us on a tour of the more important theorems in math, and even though i have only finished the first two chapters, I find the readings easy and the theorems selected are easy to understand by those with at least a secondary school education.

I only wonder at what point in the book will my aging brain be unable to understand what was written...

Tired Tired Tired....

Nope this post is not going to be gross or EEEEEEE haha. Rather i went with my dear, to Engaged Encounter, a catholic church run Marriage Preperation Course or (MPC) as it is known in Singapore.

It starts on a Friday evening and end on a Sunday late afternoon or evening. Well so wat do we do there? Lets just say i cant divulge too much due to the vow of secrecy that the weekend organisers made all of us take. So as not to spoil the fun for the rest of the people.

To be honest i wasnt too keen as nowwhere it is stated what they were doing during the 2 days ++ that we were suppose to be there. But after being there i found it a useful course for learning about marriage life what are the challenges and so on. And the way the disucssion with ur partner is being conducted is quite novel.

You might think that u have talked frankly with ur future wife/husband on many of the issues that u might enounter and belive that love will conquer all ur difficulties but sometimes life is not so simple afterall.

So i will definately encourge all couples who are taking the next step to seriously consider taking some MPC in one form or another so as to be better prepare urself for the next big step in ur life together.

Anyway abit about the history can be found here. And the singapore website is here.

Found this on youtube, its a BBC documentary on Lomography. It talks about how it started from one guy in Vienna who got the Lomo LCA and how they form the Lomography society. Interesting piece of history about Lomography.

7Parts in Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd-fufbjeo0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH4Hu-YN2qU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN6OttpMss4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwt9I5THXLA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFcdtHItiBU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWyZD0AWyx8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjV2qCmiBwQ

This guy actually built a Ferrari!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQenBjDPUaA

First Post of 2007, what should i talk about?

Well i had a great start to the year, i was over in Hong Kong from the 29th Dec to 2 Jan. Definately the weather was sooooo much better, walking around in tempreatures of 15C to 20C with no rain around definately much better than Singapore's rainy weather. And to top that off my gf gave me a surprise on the plane to HK.

Disneyland was great! U really feel like u are transported to another realm the moment u step it. Sounds of "Someday my prince will come" (Haha is that correct?) greeted us when we step off the train. The place was fantastic, for those that will be going there all should try the "SPACE MOUNTAIN" ride! Its a indoor roller coaster in the dark. Imagine u can't see where u are going so u never know what u are going to expect. And the interior lighting was great the moment u go up u see a ceiling of stars and lights flashing all throughout the ride. Definately must try try !!

Well thats all for my first post of the year.

Legs mostly aching now as i wrote this, why u may ask because i ran in the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon !. Haha nope i not so garang that i ran the whoel 42km, i only run in th 10km section haha me puny weakling! Okies next time i try do better lah.

But its quite a high running in such a event with so many people running with u trying to complete not matter what the timing is, u'll see all sorts of people, old and young, daddy's pushing their baby's pram as they run, people putting their childs picture on the back of their shirts and i even saw a cat women and spider man running too.

Anyway did the 10km in abt 1h 09min not any fantastic timing (haha fantastic if u consider that i mostly ran 4km for training). But this run has made me want to do other runs (Mizuno, NB Real Run ..)in order to better my timing for 10km, maybe someday i will run the marathon (people laughing in the background).

But must really hand it to the organizers for putting toilets every 1 to 2km or so and the people who supported the runners all the way by shouting encouring words and making noise with their clappers and what not.

So anyone wants to put on their running shoes and join me ?

Food for thought... Today attended a workshop titled "Systems Thinking", for all of u guys (and gals included) can check out then entry in wikipedia where it gives an overview.

The thing that got me thinking about was whether what we are doing now (or have done) is perhaps the best way to go about solving our own or perhaps work problems? Have we really reflect on what is the actual issue or are we having a knee jerk reaction to what's going on.

Haha bit chim right! Maybe just to give an example, if many people are leaving the education service give more pay to keep them. If child not paying attention in class, blame the child (or parents or ...), or if see many crockroaches, take out bygon and kill them and if still see somemore still take out bygon and kill them. If tooth ache, go dentist for filling/ pull out tooth.

Morale of the story,

1. Teachers may be leaving not because of lower pay but becuase instead of teaching they are perhaps doing more admin work? And therefore they are disllusioned.
   
2. Crockroaches appearing more often might mean an infestation, perhaps better to find out where they are coming from and kill at the source.
3. If it is a toothache, perhaps u didn't brush properly in the begining so if u go for a filling/pull out, it might still happen to another tooth

Don't just give a knee jerk/quick fix to the problem when it might come back and haunt u. Even if u can't really solve the problem at the very source, but u can still make a change however small at where u can influence.

Just some food for thought...

Recently just took up a black and white printing course at SAFRA, in order to "graduate" need to submit 4 prints, so these days looking around for subjects to shoot in B&W. And what better than to go to a jamming session with rock musicans playing instruments and hopping around!

So that was why my gf and i was at the Esplanade open air theatre watching the next installment of Mosiac Jam where musicians from the local clubs come together and jam.

At the same time i was trying a new film,Ilford's Delta 3200(ok the film is not that young but for me its the first time i was shooting with it). The light conditions wasn't so good, so i waited for the show to start, i took a spot meter reading from the musicians face while they were playing and its abt 1/90 @ f2.8 for iso 6400.

So as they play, i shoot away, the results are at my flickr site. Too bad for the slight drizzle at the end though..

From the photo.net forums, seems like DDX will give the best grain for the speed so i decided to develope it in DDX, 1l cost $28 from Ruby, whao abit expensive though. I develope for abt 11mins @22c. The results were good grain was ok tone was good. Good developer for use with Delta 3200.

Wa another month has past since my last post, judging by how often i post, i think i can rename my blog to "Stephen's Once a Month Rant".

Anyway the purpose today is to talk about golf, eversince i changed my job seems like easier to meet up with my golfing kakis to play golf more often, usually we play at Executive Golf course at Mandai area. But last saturday we tried a new course, the Royal Tanglin Golf Course located at 130 Minden Rd (Just opposite the Singapore Botanical Gardens).

Its a nine hole course all par 3, average abt 80-90m per hole, longest abt 110m. When we first reached there, the people running the course said that we probably only need a P,S,Putter and should be good to go. Haha as lousy golfers we are, we took along a 7 since we aren't too good at it.

The hole emphasizes on a lot of short game skills, the fairways are narrow, the greens are small, and sand bunkers are usually around the greens. So being the lousy golfers that I am, I had a hard time just trying to get on the green since its quite small, thats why short game skills are crucial on this course. The number 5 is probably the toughest.

But amazingly, my golfing kakis and i concluded that this is probably the more fun course that we played so far(The other being executive). Not a lot of people play, the grass is well maintained, quiet, and quite nice beautiful in fact.

The cost for 9 holes is $20 SGD, there are not washing points for ur clubs and shoes, toilet gotta cross the road to a place marked as Dempsy's Hut, but the challange and the well maintained course makes it worthwhile.

Anyway for those who dosen't have much space on ur c: drive, these are somethings u can do.

1. Clear ur windows restore points, jus keep the most recent one (Just be v-sure before u do something like that). I saved abt 600meg

2. Move ur windows update files, they are usually store in ur c:\windows and are named $NT.... . If u can't find them, they might be hidden go to 'Tools"->"Folder options" and then "view", Sekect show hidden files and directory. Delete them if u are quite sure u wont roll back the updates or just shift them to some where else, when u need them just copy back to ur windows directory.

Whao its been almost a month since i last posted, shows how boring my life is anyway.

Today being teachers day celebration in most of school in singapore, and i being a nice student (haha... long time ago), took leave and met up with some of my Sunday morning breakfast club friends to visit my Secondary school teacher, Mrs Tan. Its been 10yrs since i left Holy Innocents High... feel like old man liaoz....

After went down to Comex 2006 at the expo to look around for some Blank Cd and Dvds, well most of the prices of Cd and Dvd Rs differ by most 1-2 dollars so u decide whether the difference matters to u, Memory card prices generally are cheaper (Saw a Kingston 1 Gig SD for 29).

Most of the Major brands are represented, Creative, Mac and so on.... even Headphones manufacturer are there like Sennheiser and Audio Technica.

Lots of speakers are there cheap too $20 bucks can get u 2 10watts speakers and a woofer. (Probably its time to change my almost 8years Altec Lansing Speakers that i am begining to find wanting after the comex visit).

This years exhibition took up like 3 halls in expo, and as promised in the papers the walkways are bigger. Although i went during the afternoon, there was already quite a crowd there, so for those that are going on Sat or Sun, think no matter how big they make the walkway it gonna be crowded as usual.

Remember i told u guys that i was interviewed for comments on the NEL breakdown, well they published my face haha. Anyway they got my age wrong though... see if u can find it!

Monday Blues haha feel like sleeping more at home, but gotta work if not where all my ice cream and mac come from... But to top it off while going off the NEL line was down from Harbourfront to Clarke Quay.

Apparantly it was already down a few hours before i end work. Luckily there was a shuttle service to bring all the affected commuters from the affected MRT stations to Dobby Gaut where the NEL was still functioning. Overall i think that the situation was handled quite well. (Except that it took roughly 1hr extra from my normal time).

Haha most interested was that when i reach Dobby Gaut, a jounalist from Zaobao interviewed me while a photographer was snapping away, must see tomorrow papers got me anot haha...

A week has passed since i started work, so far so good. Just felt that the office is a bit quite though unlike my former job where people talking, equipment noise was quite prevalant. Haha seemed to miss my old job liao.

Enjoy

http://www.cpr.demon.nl/prog_plotf.html

Isn't it a wonder what a nice bed can do to u, been to a chalet over the weekend and stayed for 2 nights. Haha intend to wake up and do some morning photography, haha the nice bed kept me from waking up at the correct time.

Second Morning, managed to wake up and walk around the beach abit, lots of tents on the beach , families just waking up and stiring, kids and couples walking on the beach and dads and sons fishing. A familiar sight on any of Singapore's beaches during the weekends. This is our version of camping in the outdoors in land scarce singapore, a getaway from the the tall buildings and bright lights.

Go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenphotos/ for more photos

Bonfire 2006 was part of the Singapore Arts Festival, there were 3 performances by different groups, i managed to catch the singapore group (Firefiles). Quite a cool show, it was like Mortal Kombat and they were performing to Kitaro music from the Kojiki album i think, Enjoy the photos. They are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenphotos/

On the 22nd day that i am jobless, I went out for a night time shoot at the Esplanade with my gf who met me after her project work. Just took my tripod and my D70 with the kit lens.

Set of pictures (haha only 2) taken yesterday while i was at home looking from my bedroom window.

The moon as seen yesterday from my window.

Its official i have been jobless for 7 days! haha nope I am not here to talk about the joys of being jobless haha, rather i'm going to talk about a photographic exhibition that i went to just this evening.

Month of Photography in Singapore was started in 2002 and this year it is held together with the Singapore Arts fest. To start off was "Early Works" by Henri Cartier Bresson. My friend who is one of the local photgraphers exhibiting gave me an invite to the opening, the exhibition was not too bad, it even included a video documentary on HCB.

It was only spoilt by people talking too loudly when a speaker was giving an intro to Henri Cartier Bresson, think because most of the people there are from some bank and business types. And the other thing is there were too many people, haha think the people who attended the opening were more interested in the Champange and Red wine that was being served.

Go down to the HCB exhibition at the Arts House and also support our local photographers, their exhibition is at City Room@ Basheer,Bras Basah Complex, 4th floor 8th June to 13th August. My friend (Teo Chee Sern) slot is from 3Aug to 13Aug.

Singapore Arts Festival - Visual Arts
Month of Photography Official Site

Been through 2 interviews, hai... think no chance one. Well another one tomorrow, lets pray for the best.

Well the important thing i feel is to keep your spirits up during job hunting don't start getting too depressed that's bad. Do your job hunt but also at the same time plan some time to do the things that you probably don't have time for.

Anyway to occupy my time, i have been working on a Mindmap software for the Pocket PC. Still got quite a few more stages to go before it can work minimally though. Can already add some nodes to it, move the nodes around. Implement a file saving routine and some edit and delete functions and i think it can be used (abit in a quite ugly way). On the left is what it looks like. Also have been trying to do up my photography website to put some of my portfolio on it. And i am attending my school St John Camp from this sat to next tue.

For those looking for a free mindmapping software for the PC, there is quite a good one call FreeMind. It runs on Java so u need to have the Java runtime in your PC, it's portable; so u can run it on Linux and Mac. It offers auto formating and the nodes readjust themselves automatically, pretty good piece of software highly recommend if you need a mind mapping software. Remember to download the one with all the plugins so that you can export to PDF, HTML even.

8 Days till I am officially jobless, any Kang tao !?!?!

Wao got a phone call today asking me for an interview. Haha first job interview that I ever had wonder how it would turn out.

Time to recount my experiences after recharging, after waking up at 6am in the morning and ending the day when i reach home about 12. All i can say that being a wedding photographer is not such an easy task. He being entrusted to capture the days events so that the people involve can look back and enjoy and if possible capture the side of the wedding that the couple did not see, that's quite a big job considering that he cannot fail in his task. haha so remember pls take pity on the person who dares to take on this big challenge!

After the experience i find that the Wedding day photographer gotta have these skills.
1. Be very prepared -> Lots of Backup equipment (Flash, body, batteries), make sure that you know how to operate the backup equipment if it is different from your main camera.

2. Knowledge of the whole wedding procedure -> to be able to advise and also to preposition for the best shot as the wedding happens.

3. Be confident and assertive -> So u can direct the couple positively, sometimes they also might not have a clue as to what is going on :) !!

4. Next is to see and read as much as possible -> Look at other photographers photos and read relavant books (I will list some that i found useful later), to get new ideas and have better technical skills.

Main problems that i encountered.
1. Flash photography
You need to know your flash techniques well, like when to use bounce flash and when to put on ur bounce card or Omni bounce. Anyway i was using only my SB600, therefore guide number is low, with a more powerful flash, some of the below symptoms might not happen.

Omni Bounce, the shadows were very harsh but at indoors due to the low ceilings of HDB flats with lots of surfaces to bounce the light off, it tends to light up the whole area quite evenly.

Bounce card, When possible try to use bounce flash instead, but HDB flats tend not to have a flat ceiling (usually there is a beam running across somewhere) so need to take note on the bounce angle. If blocked use a bounce card, which usually diffuses the light so that shadows are not harshed but take note of big groups, the light fall off at the edges may be quite significant, and if the bride and groom are wearing white there may be premature flash cutoff (Either A or TTL) due to the white clothing reflecting more light and so generally the scene may be under exposed.

2. Lens Focusing
Remeber if u are not using a Parfocal Lens, you will need to focus after u compose your shot, if not your focus will not be correct. Only some lens from Canon and Tokina are Parfocal. Don't remember any lens from Nikon being Parfocal but i could be wrong. But no matter what the case is "After u compose the shot, then Focus". I''ve got quite a few shots the focus wasn't quite spot on.

3. Group Photos
Remember that the Chinese families are quite big and some although there are less and less 3 room flats around in Singapore, they are still around. U will need at least a 28mm (35mm equiv or 18mm for Digital 1.5 crop) lens to shoot (just barely as i found out). And trying to get all of them sharp is also a big problem.

I've read this book "Group Portrait Photography Handbook" By Bill Hurtner about a week before the shoot, it contain tips on how to shoot big groups and how to arrange them too. Although I read the older version the new one should be just as good, anyway the link is below for u guys to check it out.

Basically the main thing is to ensure that your subject is in your plane of focus, thus it is important to get you subjects close together (front and back rows) to ensure that they fall within your plane of focus.

Anyway for it was fun, although i wasn't paid but it was good experience and probably i will try to find somemore unpaid jobs. Its always happy to take pictures of happy people !

Went on my first wedding yesterday, boy it was tiring... ran around from place to place haha still tired even now. haha gotta go back to slp liao.... will post more about the wedding later and the lessons that i have learnt.... till then... slp tite.

Anyway for those of my friends who don't know i will be officially jobless on the 1st of June so got any Kangtao pls feel free to contact me ah!! (sljm at singnet.coms.g)

Quite free for kopi nowadays so feel free to call me up too (But not too expensive kopi ah, must budget)

Woke up early one morning and decided to go for a sunrise shoot at punggol park. Too bad there were too much low lying clouds and so didn't get any of the "Normal" sunrise shots with the big big orange glow coming out from the trees. But as the time passes, the sun begin emerging from the clouds and i spend the next half hour or so taking a few shots and enjoying the morning.

Introduction
I spent a day in Port Blair in Feb. Lets start with some geography and some brief history about Port Blair first; Port Blair is located in the Andamans and Nicobar islands between Thailand and Mainland India. The British were the first to formerly surveyed the place and during WWII the Japanese took over the Island and use it as a forward observation base. When India declared independence in 1947, the island was merged with the Indian mainland. For a more historical information u can look at here.

Transport
There are buses, taxis and small taxis that are like Thailand's TUK TUK. I mainly took the Tuk tuk around the city. They are relatively cheaper usually costing not more that 20-30rps. Although there is a meter in the Tuk Tuk but so far i have not seen it working, therefore u need to work out the cost of the ride before going off.

Celluar Jail
The Celluar Jail was built as a prison to house political prisioner during the British rule of India. It was called "Celluar" because each prisoner has their own cell , and thus were housed seperately. The design of the jail was spread out from the center with 7 "wings" outwards like a star with 7 points. Out of the original 7 wings only 3 remains to this day.

The entry fee is 5rps and add another 10rps if u want to shoot pictures. This pricing system where there is a seperate fee for shooting pictures in the facility is common in India (I encounter this at the submarine museum in Vizag, see my later post on Visakapatnam).

New Lighthouse Restaurant
Just outside the Celluar Jail is a restaurant that looks like a tiny lighthouse; all I can say is that is probably the best Indian restaurant that I have eaten in Port Blair. The food is good but be expected to wait up to 20-40mins for your meal to come. Prices for Tandoori Chicken depends on the size of the chicken, for a whole chicken expect to pay up to 300rps. They also offer a limited western and chinese menu.

Devastation of the tsunami
Next to the restaurant, remanants of a amusement park ravaged by the tsunami can be seen. The stone seats are broken, the ferris wheel is in a state of disrepair and the ticket booth seems trapped in time as it displays a calendar dated "2004 Dec". The Year and the month of the tsunami.

Well that concludes the short time i had in Port Blair.....

For more photos of my trip u can visit my website at www.geocities.com/stephenleephoto

It's been a long time since i updated my blog, well so here's the update! I've been to India (Port Blair and Visakapatnam) and Bangkok in the 2 months that i've been gone from this site and i intend to share my travel experience and do some sort of a Lonely planet guide thing.

So stay tune okies!

Just to share some pictures that i found after looking through my archive, can anyone guess where this is ?

Well it's has been long since i last been down to Chinatown during the Chinese New Year season. So I decided to go down today and take some pics.