I saw: Japanese Story
27/06/2004
Ok, Japanese Story wasn’t really what I was expecting
A departure from my usual mode of operation, I did absolutely no research on this movie, saw no trailers, I didn’t even know who was in it. All I knew was that the character(s) said “Hai” a lot (from reading Monkeywanker’s blog) and that last weekend it was #10 on the local box office takings list. Some idea huh.
So when the movie opened, and all the references to Australia – like the landscape, the production company, and Toni Collette’s name – appeared, I started to wonder if I was in the right theatre.
I like movies like this. I like it that there is no over the top point to make, I also like it when it’s more social commentary than moral of the story. I enjoyed it, it was poignant. It was sorta like Lost in Translation, the way that there’s no like fanfare, heroics or Hollywood treatment but just human interaction and emotion. It’s an honest story. Of course half the time I wondered what the point was. But in the end, it’s a better representation of life.
I enjoyed the movie. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a prime dvd candidate. I guess without the feelgood factor, it’s not something I’d like to replay just to get 20 minutes of simulated happiness.
Do the Lomo-motion with me
26/06/2004
Yes, I’m going a little wild here with the Photoshop-ing
Last batch for today, I promise. Been seeing the Lomo Effect used on some of my favourite phlogs, so I decided to give it a whirl today.
Check it out:
Before the Lomo Effect
After the Lomo Effect
That was fun! So many possibilities. Looks like I’ll be doing a lot more post processing from now on. It seems that colours, or the lack of it, can make so many of my bland shots that much more interesting.
Monochromous
25/06/2004
How monochrome can monochrome be?
I used to think black and white was just black and white. Then a couple weeks ago, I saw a really nice cover on a Practical Photography magazine – it was a close up of an eye, in black and white. Inspired, I bought it hoping I could get some ideas on how these people do it. I got more – tips!
So here’s what I tried.
This is the original photo
We took that at Chinatown 2 weeks ago, and I’ve been itching to convert that to monochrome.
Atttempt 1 – Channel Mixer
To find the Channel Mixer, go to Image > Adjustments > Channel mixer. Check the monochrome box. You can mix and match the colours until you’re satisfied. I forgot exactly what I had, but it was something like 80 red, 30 green, and 5 blue.
Atttempt 2 – Desaturate
This was the quick and dirty option. Go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.
Atttempt 3 – Lab Colour
According to the mag, this is similar to the Grayscale method of conversion, and produces crisp results. Ok. If they say so. For this, go to Image > Mode > Lab colour. Click on the channels palette and select Lightness. The other 3 channels will go invisible. Then go to Image > Mode > Grayscale.
So anyway. If you want, have a go. Personally, I like using the Channel Mixer, the results were a bit more dramatic, and it was more fun to play around with. The results of the other 2 options was a little flat. Well, let me know what you think.
I read: Coraline by Neil Gaiman
25/06/2004
It’s hard to describe Coraline
It’s a children’s book – but I don’t think a kid under 3 would quite get it. I could be wrong, the kids these days seem to start with an IQ of 130 out of the womb or something. But you’d let a kid read Roald Dahl, I think the kid can read Coraline. It’s kinda like that.
It’s interesting, I like the themes in the book, and what the protagonist Coraline embodies. It’s an intelligent girl, curious, spunky and really a typical kid. She gets thrown into a strange situation and she doesn’t lose her compassion. I really like the character. It’s really nice that he wrote about a normal kid, without heaps of supernatural powers, with just courage and good sense.
It’s not a terribly complex book, it was short, and I got the paperback with few pictures. Still I enjoyed it immensely, and I can’t wait till my niece grows old enough to appreciate it. Till then, the book is mine.
Iron Chef and Snoop Dawg
24/06/2004
The recent revival of The Iron Chef Series on Channel 5
Has got KF so excited that he records every episode every day (since we discovered it was showing), edits out the commercials, re-renders it, then saves it for when I get back so we can watch it commercial-free. It’s been great so far, they’re mostly episodes I’ve never seen, though they’re from the later seasons (the ones with Morimoto as Iron Chef Japanese and Sakai as Iron Chef French). I used to like Morimoto the best, cos he’s got Nobu sense of humour. But then he started to get a little boring. Now my favourite is Iron Chef Chinese, Chen Kenichi, but I really can’t say I’d eat the stuff he cooks. Sichuan is really not my thing.
There was an interesting theme the other day: new potatos from Nagasaki. The challenger was a (then) 25 year old food stylist and musician, Kentaro, the son of a well known chef who took on Chen Kenichi and won. I love potatoes. And the irony was that when Chen competed against Kentaro’s mother, the theme ingredient was potatos too. Older, bigger ones from Hokkaido. That was a nice match.
And of snooping
Yes, I couldn’t resist and went back onto Friendster to snoop yet again. And as if that wasn’t enough, I went back onto Orkut to snoop even more – and that’s really where more stuff happens because of the community element. Now – you’d think being the offspring of Google and sibling of Gmail, they could really let you search/sort/filter your head off around your communities right? Like I’d really like to know how many people in my communities overlap. So at least the next time I meet some of them at work, there’s one more option I could have to talk about, next to the weather.
But it’s amazing how many people change their photos, or their profiles, with such frequency and discipline. Damn, I need one of those.
*Gripe*
I seem to say this every Wednesday night/Thursday morning, but here goes. CSI Miami sucks, and if there’s only 1 reason, it’s because David Caruso is such a wannabe! Get over those over-the-top NYPD Blue heroics!
Thinking about better times
This was one of the few meals I didn’t enjoy
There is so little to look forward to at work. So here’s a shot from when I wasn’t working. All being busy does is distract you from your current discontentment. When it’s over, and you take a breather – with each breath you sink lower, until you were exactly where you were 3 weeks back, when you were bored and decided to sit on your work so that it’d avalanche later, and maybe for a moment, you’d feel some respite from the lack of motivation.
Here’s to a night of fine dreaming, and hopefully Thursday flits quicker and Friday breezes by. We’ll need it, with all that Sumatran forest fire smoke.
It’s the Summer Solstice
21/06/2004
So how did you spend the longest day in the year?
I spent most of it sleeping, unfortunately. Dreaming of this time last year when I was at my nice long annual (and really tough on the pocket) vacation, attending a wedding. Am looking forward to my next vacation (which will revolve around another wedding, which means – free food).
Caught the flu from my wee-zy nephew
He’s primary culprit this time cos he sneezed right in my face. At that point all the Vit C in the world wouldn’t have helped with the goup on my face. Ah well. That put me out most of the weekend and today.
For the Technobengs
Went to Funan on Saturday to try to grab some lunch and a walk that might make me feel better. It was fun, a new extension that housed Royal Sporting House (why won’t they just shut down into oblivion?) and a super large South Asia Computer was opened. Some new stores were also spotted, like Chamoxa – which was at Sim Lim – where I spotted this cool PC casing for all those technobengs who frequent and run those Sim Lim stores. I’ve an axe to grind with them, they always give me the evil eye.
Sounds like a greeting they’d shoot to each other, doesn’t it?
Also poked around the the Apple Store, but felt all dirty after a while and beat a hasty retreat.
Further proof that life is a comedy
Is when all week when you’re stuck at work, the skies are a perfect azure – the way clear skies are – and the light is great; come weekends, when you really have the luxury, the skies are cloudy and gray.
Nonetheless, this morning when KF woke me up at half past nine with an invitation to breakfast at McDonald’s, it was an opportunity too good to pass up, so we went to Boat Quay for some morning crud.
After breakfast, we went to UOB Plaza – there’s a viewing gallery on the 37th floor that’s open to the public – for some snaps.
The bumboats are resting now, but they’ll be busier tonight
It was good fun, I bought an adapter and teleconverter lens for my A80 earlier in the year, and this is probably the second time I’m really using it. I also got to use my new polarizer lens today.
Looks like the restaurant touts are taking a rest too
The only problem with living in Singapore is the weather. Otherwise, this place would be perfect. But I suppose this is life.
Long Days
18/06/2004
The last couple of days was particularly long
With the product launching, my procrastination catching up with me, and a bunch of boo-boos that snowballed into a heap that won’t stop.
Anyway, what you really need in a situation like that is 4 drops of lavender in the diffuser.
Tiny little sacs of pure relaxation
I keep a small bowl of lavender in the office, just cos it looks nice. It’s cool to just peek at them up close, they’re such a pretty colour. I bought a bag of this for tea, but it tastes a little too soapy for my taste.
Going the way of the behemoth
16/06/2004
Yahoo! Announces “New and Improved” Yahoo! Mail, Introduces Major Increase in Storage Space, Makes 50 Million Additional E-Mail Addresses Available
Tuesday June 15, 7:55 am ET
Yahoo! Mail Gets a New Look and Feel, Continues Robust Security and Commitment to Privacy, Filters More Than 95 Percent of Spam
SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–June 15, 2004– Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO – News), a leading global Internet company, today unveiled a new and improved Yahoo! Mail (http://mail.yahoo.com), the No. 1 e-mail service in the country, measured both by reach(1) and by the percentage of people who identify Yahoo! as their primary personal e-mail account(2). Yahoo! is leveraging years of customer insight with key innovations to deliver a product that responds precisely to what consumers want and need in an e-mail service.
Yahoo! is introducing a number of exciting enhancements to Yahoo! Mail including a major increase in storage space for both free and premium users. Free e-mail subscribers will automatically be upgraded to 100-megabytes of storage, 25 times more than the prior free offering. Premium customers, including subscribers to SBC Yahoo! Dial and DSL, will have virtually unlimited storage at 2-gigabytes, far in excess of any major e-mail service and 200 times the amount offered by most other Internet service providers. All users will benefit from the new design and improved search capabilities, and graphical ads will be removed from Yahoo! Mail Plus and SBC Yahoo! Mail, all of which make Yahoo! Mail easier and faster than ever. Additionally, the company is opening up more than 50 million Yahoo! IDs, giving consumers more address options for their e-mail accounts.
The company is focused on continually innovating and improving Yahoo! Mail, and a number of additional product enhancements are expected to follow in the coming months.
“Our unique experience as an e-mail pioneer and innovator in the communications space – coupled with insights gleaned from our tens of millions of loyal customers – helps ensure we are delivering the best e-mail product possible,” said Brad Garlinghouse, vice president, Communications Products, Yahoo! Inc. “With the new Yahoo! Mail, consumers won’t have to think about mailbox size. When they judge webmail value, they’ll continue to look at all the things that make Yahoo! Mail No. 1 – including privacy practices, superior spam and virus protection, and integrated calendaring and alerts.”
Yahoo! Mail: No.1 and Now Better Than Ever
The overall goal of the improvements are to extend Yahoo!’s position as the market’s leading e-mail product – which means adding useful new features, while maintaining and even improving the experience for the company’s millions of loyal e-mail customers. Key elements of the new features being introduced today include:
Streamlined design – Although still comfortably familiar, the new look of Yahoo! Mail is easier than ever to use. Yahoo! has developed an even cleaner design that allows consumers to quickly and easily read and compose e-mail while eliminating graphical ads for premium users entirely.
Increased storage & message attachment size – Leveraging consumer insights around what users want and need, Yahoo! has introduced new storage levels. Yahoo! inboxes now allow message sizes up to 10-megabytes, and 100-megabyte mailboxes for free users and virtually unlimited storage for premium customers with 2-gigabyte mailboxes. The new mail storage sizes follow last year’s changes to Yahoo! Photos, when the company began to offer unlimited free storage for photo files.
Faster search – Yahoo! Mail inboxes are easier than ever to manage, thanks to even better search capabilities at faster speeds.
More account names – Yahoo! is releasing more than 50 million Yahoo! IDs allowing consumers more freedom to pick the Yahoo! e-mail ID that best suits them. These Yahoo! IDs include a number of highly sought after names that have been dormant for many years and are just now being put back into circulation.
Safer, More Secure Inboxes
These enhancements supplement Yahoo!’s industry leading virus and spam protection. Protecting people’s inboxes has been a key priority – and as a result, Yahoo! Mail automatically scans e-mail attachments to help protect consumers from viruses and consistently filters more than 95 percent of spam(3) thanks to SpamGuard, Yahoo!’s proprietary spam filtering system.
“We know that the longer a consumer has an email account, the more likely they are to be targets for unwanted e-mail, which is why we are constantly fine tuning our spam controls to tighten the noose around the necks of spammers,” continued Garlinghouse. “We don’t think consumers should or will accept an e-mail experience that degrades over time. Yahoo! Mail enjoys high regard among tens of millions of long-standing and loyal customers and we think that is thanks in part to our unending vigilance in protecting their inboxes.”
About Yahoo! Mail
Launched in October 1997, Yahoo! Mail (http://mail.yahoo.com) is one of the Web’s largest, most popular free e-mail providers. Yahoo! Mail helps people stay in touch at home, at work or while traveling for business or pleasure. Yahoo! Mail is fully integrated with Yahoo!’s many other popular services to make it easy to access all the Internet services people need. Yahoo! Mail has received a variety of prominent industry accolades including “Best Free E-Mail” for three years by PC World, and CNET Editors’ Choice awards.
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading provider of comprehensive online products and services to consumers and businesses worldwide. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and the most trafficked Internet destination worldwide. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo!’s global network includes 25 world properties and is available in 13 languages.
(1) Nielsen//NetRatings, May 2004
(2) IPSOS-Insight, Sept 2003
(3) Internal Yahoo! data
Fantastic Friday
12/06/2004
It was a fabulous Friday
During lunch, CL, DP and I headed to Chinatown for some beef noodles and photo taking. It was good fun, we braved the scorching heat for blue skies and fascinating architecture.
We walked from Far East Square, then went over to Club Street and then South Bridge Road. Along the way I caught some familiar sights, since KF and I just went for another photo shoot around the same area some nights back.
Window to the world
I like the shot of the window, and I think I’ll try to convert that to black and white using some techniques I read in a magazine.
Then – surprise!
After we got back to the office, I received an SMS from a close friend. She said she just delivered a baby boy, and both her son and she was doing great. I replied to tell her I didn’t even know she was expecting a baby, but that I was really happy for her.
Has it been so long?
Swinging!
In the evening KF and I went to our first performance at the Esplanade, thanks to my friend Sue who not only provided us with a place to stay when we visited LA – twice – but also sent us the tickets because she was out of the country and couldn’t make it.
It was the Count Basie Orchestra and it was divine. The Esplanade is such a nice place – it’s so pristine on the inside, and the Concert Hall was a sight to behold. I would’ve taken photos, but they didn’t allow any photography. I’m glad I caught the performance, it’s one of those things you need to savour to really feel alive. Or at least that’s what I think. When Butch Miles, the drummer did his solo – Drum Thing – it was like for that 4 minutes life was described in those drumbeats and it was such a lovely journey. I particularly enjoyed the version of Skylark they performed with singer Byron Murrell.
Even Mr Weird-Dance-Music-Lover Chang enjoyed the performance. I was a little skeptical that he might like it, since he doesn’t listen to jazz or anything that pre-dates ’80s music, but he came out of it also feeling an emotional response to the music, which was fantastic. I think it’s the whole point of watching a live performance.
I can’t say much about the acoustics of the concert hall, it sounded great, not too amplified and distorted. But then again, I won’t really be able to tell, so perhaps ignorance really is bliss.
Parting shot – Duck Feet
