Just played my guitar. Well, strummed it somewhat, heh, not terribly good at it.

Cooked dinner for friends tonight, some simple dishes. It was nice, somehow enjoy cooking and people enjoying their meal, you feel that you can give people some happiness at times. Heh, had durians for dessert, and I haven’t had those for a while. It’s really strange that when you cook, you don’t feel like eating much after that. I guess one of the reasons is that your senses have grown accustomed to the smells and tastes that things that usually make you hungry don’t work as well when you finally sit down to eat.

Today at work, the fruitman delivered lychees and longans. Heh, typically Asian fruits and it’s not familiar like a peach or plum (to the locals anyway). Haven’t had those in a while too and they tasted refreshing. There is a different kind of sweetness to it and it has a more sophisticated flavour. Heh, could just stuff myself with fruits and call it a meal (as I did when cherries were in season).

These are simple things, and at times, all you need to let go of the world and all its worries. It is, about being contented.

Heh, really not a day of things going well. Lousy Firefox shortcut key ate my blogpost. Well, at least I only spent 5 minutes typing it. Of things not going well, I bought a new hard disk for backup purposes today. Plugged it in and tried to format it while running World of Warcraft. Stupid PC flaked while that was going on, and now I can’t seem to be able to format the drive. Have a few ideas on what I can do, but I’d prefer not to have to try them out now. Running a diagnostic tool on the drive from a Linux shell now, hence no PC access for me. Fortunately, I have a spare laptop and I just needed to wipe the dust off it (a considerable amount of dust) to get back into business while waiting for the test to finish. Heh, what would I do without a piece of equipment that connects to the Internet these days.

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So time flies, as this site is already 3 years old. Heh, happy birthday to it I guess. I was contemplating moving this site to a new host, as they charged way less than what I was currently paying and was going to move it on the very last day of my subscription. Then my current provider called up and my mom told me the deal they were offering. It was slightly more than half of what I used to pay, and still a bit more expensive than what I was going to change to, but in the end, the hassle saved from migrating the site was worth the extra bit of cash. So this site goes on without any technical glitches and here I am blogging some more. Heh (and I press the save post button so that I don’t accidentally wipe out what I’ve typed so far).

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Hmm, so what other worldly things are bothering me? Not terribly much I guess. Work was just so tiring this week. You don’t get physically exhausted, but mentally, you just feel like you need a break at times. Not the kind of person to complain, nor would I dwell on issues. Sometimes you have things around you that you have no control over. You can only stay calm, and do as much as you can, and hopefully, things will sort themselves out. Heh, it may not sort itself out smoothly, but you just try your best, and be contented to know that you did as much as you could have done.

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And Saturday is almost gone. Boy, the weekends disappear real quick.

As per the usual, been busy with a lot of things, and sleeping patterns are a little out of sync.

Was talking to my mom a little earlier on in the week and eventhough I knew that Chinese New Year was coming, it just didn’t feel very much like it. Here in Melbourne, there are no decorations, no CNY songs broadcasted on the radio, no tangerines on sale (or any of the other CNY produce) and there isn’t the sweltering heat associated with the weeks before CNY.

Heh, I guess it feels a little different, last year by now I was already back home, and spending plenty of time with family enjoying the festivities. This year it’s just work and socialising. I’ve also been busy reading, reading and doing more reading.

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Warning: camera jargon ahead.

Been reading about cameras, in particular, whether my Nikon D70 is worthy of an upgrade to a D80 or a D200. I’ve looked through forums, read opinions and everyone has their own idea on what they think is best. It’s not to say that my D70 is a crappy photographer’s tool, and far from it, but I’ve learnt that I could benefit from various improvements like a larger viewfinder (to see if things were in focus or not) and a larger LCD display (to see if things were in focus or not, heh), the RGB histogram of the new cameras, and better high ISO output. ISO800 on the D70 looks acceptable, and even ISO1600 is useable for 4 x 6″ prints, but the amount of detail lost due to noise (and the noise reducing algorithms) make it less than ideal. Heh, one solution would be to get a nice f/2.8 lens (say the 17-35 or 17-55 DX) but either lens would cost the price of the camera on its own.

With reading about cameras, I’ve opened myself to more possibilities, and having ignored anything from the Canon camp before this, find that they produce a stunning array of glass useful for lots of situations. Nikon has less glass and the lack of a full frame body has made some of their stellar glass less appealing. A Canon 5D paired with the 24-70 f/2.8 lens (the lens employed at my brother’s wedding) is wide enough to capture events in a room yet having enough zoom to just get up close to a specific topic). Heh, eversince my brother’s wedding, it’s been on my mind to take up wedding photography as a serious job opportunity sometime down the future (albeit, a very long, long time down the future).

Back to the D80 and D200. Both have nearly identical functions and come out with the same quality of output in pictures (apparently, I’ll take people’s word for it) so it’s like 80% of the camera for 60% of the price (I didn’t calculate it but it’s somewhere along those lines). Why pay more for something that churns out the same quality? After more reading and thinking, I guess the overriding reason to pay more is for the handling. This is the subjective bit that not many people covered. You can access the same controls, but with more flicks to get to the controls you want, but I’ve found that I’ve lost quite a few pictures, just because I was fumbling around trying to get the right controls for the moment. There have also been times when I’ve screwed up pictures because I forgot to reset certain settings, making the colours go funny or losing detail due to not turning down the ISO setting in broad daylight.

Anyway, shopping for a new camera is just an idea at the moment (an affordable but not very necessary upgrade at the moment, heh). The D70 works well under normal lighting conditions, and produces very dandy photos. It’s the low light situations I find it a little less than ideal. Better glass would help, but even then, your mileage may vary. The D200 is a higher end professional camera that takes pictures all the same, but the conveniences built in means you have less chance of messing it up. Heh.

Oh, then there’s the Fujifilm S5 Pro (another thing I dug out reading about stuff). Heh, wedding photographer dream camera (for what it can do anyway), but that’s something to discuss for another time.

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Heh, only 2 more days to the weekend. Just want to catch up with personal hobbies then.