It’s been a non productive weekend. Didn’t do much, and my sleeping patterns are all out of sync again. Only managed to get out to grab some groceries and noticed the willow trees starting to bloom. I have only seen Will grab a picture of that tomorrow.

Nothing much else going on other than my tech stuff. Downloaded the latest beta version of Ubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron) to test out on my computer and this free source software rocks.

It generally works and there’s very little configuration you need to start with. Just needed to pick out the wireless connection and I was surfing the Internet in no time. Due to licensing agreements, video/audio codecs are not installed by default, so after playing with the Synaptic Manager, I managed to get some of those items installed.

Ubuntu and the Xandros based Linux on the Eee PC are both Debian based, so the framework for how it works is pretty similar. There is this coolness getting things done via a command terminal, where you just type in stuff and things get installed. It reminds me of the days I was doing Application Environments in Uni, and we had to use the Bash script environment to get things done. Those were fond memories, heh, and it’s geeky but fun.

It’s still quiet a steep learning curve with Linux as the way things are arranged are different and although I understand the concepts behind it, I’m just whacking at it at the moment and hoping something works.

One thing I do like about it is the optionality of things. You can really tweak Linux to have things running in the background to your heart’s desire. You can have weather reports, time zones and various other goodies configured to run on your desktop to keep you updated. Ubuntu is also snappier than Windows (feels that way) and I noticed it doesn’t hit the swap file unless it absolutely needs to. This is good for my hard drive, and Windows is annoying when it starts indexing stuff for me when I don’t need it.

Linux is fun to dabble around with, but unfortunately I don’t know it well enough to play PC games on it. Sure you could emulate games via WINE but performance would be splotchy at best. The other things that I really require are Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. GIMP is not a replacement as I don’t really know how to use it and there are so many features it doesn’t quite have. A Lightroom equivalent is non existent as I write this.

Heh, will continue playing with Linux just so I can ween myself off Windows slowly. Microsoft is just finding more and more ways to charge money for its software and as my computing needs become simpler (email, online chatting, surfing the web, audio/visual experiences) I find myself depending less and less on what they have to offer.

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The other geeky stuff I have been going on at was learning a different programming language. I was trialling Ruby before this, and lately I’ve started dabbling in Python. Both are high level languages which run on the fly, meaning no compiling to machine code to get it to run. It’s also cleaner to code for and I really want to learn these things for use in other day to day stuff like file manipulation or log generation. There are plenty of things I could automate on my computer but I’ve never had the imagination to go try it out.

My experience with Java over the last few months is helping a little, but not by much. I’m still not quite sure how I graduated from University when there were subjects that required programming. Unfortunately, I can say I’m good at modifying code to make it suit my needs more than I am good at writing stuff from scratch.

Heh. I’m sure that no one in my reading audience would have read to this point and still be awake. I do find it fascinating to tinker with stuff, and there’s few who would be able to discuss these things with me. I just need to note it down to remind myself I still enjoy doing these things.

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On a side note, I managed to type this lengthy piece on the Eee PC. The small keyboard or screen doesn’t hinder me too much. It really is useful as a working platform and you can get used to it.

The sun was bright yesterday, making it a good day to go out I decided. Checked out the Bronx Zoo website and yesterday was the last day tickets were cheaper than the usual seasons. Last day of winter (which reminds me, it’s spring now!) and last day to charge lower prices.

So I quickly packed my gear and decided to look at animals. The subway ride to the zoo was pretty straightforward, but even on the express route (skipping quite a number of stops), it still took me about an hour from the World Trade Centre station to go north pass Manhattan Island into the Bronx. Heh, one of the things I like about the New York subway is that it is very efficient most of the time and relatively inexpensive. A ride like that only costs $2.

Got to the zoo and started wandering around looking for animals. As some animals are from warmer regions, it was expected that not all of them were on show. It was cold in the day, but maybe because it was the sun, I had no problems holding my camera for prolonged periods at a time. I was just happily wandering around and snapping animals as I saw them. I remember my experience at the Melbourne Zoo and with lesser knowledge, took pretty decent photos that day. I now recall it was a cloudy day, hence the giant softbox effect on the animals. On a bright and sunny day yesterday, it was a little difficult to take proper pictures. I had no issues with the availability of light, but the sun was like a giant spotlight, and cast harsh shadows on the animals, making the dynamic range difficult to capture. Heh, the D300 performed pretty well under those conditions, and you think shooting weddings would be a nightmare, try going in and out of buildings from super bright to super dark, and changing your camera settings to accommodate. I was in a rush at the time, so I could have spent some time underexposing some shots from what the meter took. When you are already fumbling trying to frame the animal, you don’t have too much time to tweak the exposure settings, so all I could do was dial the exposure compensation up and down and hoped for the best.

Heh, there are plenty of animals to see in the Bronx Zoo and the 265 acres is quite large that my feet felt sore after returning home yesterday. I’d reckon a full day with lunch planned in would give you about adequate time to just see everything. The animals are largely aware of humans with their curious stares looking on at them. I was at the tiger display and one of them was just snoozing beside the window pane, oblivious to the onlookers and being paparazzied by tourists. I chuckled at some comments when people were aiming their cameras and said ‘Waiiiiiiiiiitt, don’t go yet’. I doubt animals understand what it means to stay still. Heh, so having a DSLR here is an obvious bonus, as you just point and let the autofocus system track the animal as you click away.

So here are some of my favourite pictures from the day’s outing. Definitely a place to go during summer to see all the animals when they don’t shy away from the cold.

The peacock was beautiful and the feathers did glow in the sunlight.

This was taken literally seconds before he just rolled on his side and went to sleep. *snore*

I remember this story in primary school, where one chef cooked a bird for the emperor and it smelled so good he took off one of the drumsticks. The emperor was quizzical and asking where the other leg was. The chef, fearful of his life, brought the emperor to see some flamingos and true enough, they were standing with one foot. So the chef kept his head and always got to savour one drumstick everytime he cooked the bird for the emperor. Heh, or so the story goes.

This is my trusty umbrella, which I purchased for $3 at a convenience store almost 10 months ago. It’s quite battered now with the umbrella skeleton coming off the fabric but it has served me very well.

The umbrella is just a metaphor at the moment of how life is. No matter how much it rains and how wet it gets, you will always be dry under the umbrella. Well, at least the top part of you will be. I guess I’d like to escape from the work environment a bit as almost everyone at work is just a little edgy with how the financial markets are performing at the moment. Even my colleagues in Melbourne are overworked, and just burnt out dealing with the Mount Everest worth of work waiting for them each day. This is not a case of leaving your work at your desk but with the power of the Internet now, the work follows you home, either with your Blackberry, or just external email access from your home computer. It’s not fun, and I know it.

I have brief moments of relaxing when chatting with friends online, and it really does help to alleviate all the tension, when it just feels like doom and gloom all around you. Heh, so the Internet is an amazing thing and I only started using it in 1998 in high school. It has evolved a lot since then and it’s kind of indispensable these days, as you need it to get work done. It’s like a giant encyclopedia at your finger tips, very useful for all kinds of work or if you just need inspiration. It’s a bottomless repository of information I feel.

Anyway, just trying to detach myself from everything else, I’ve been looking through the iTunes store as well as Amazon’s music store. Again I go about how amazing technology is, I can preview music, sample what I like, and if I really like it, just reach for that credit card and a minute or two later, you have purchased and downloaded a song from an album without needing to download all the tracks from it. This is a far cry from the time I used to visit bricks and mortar music shops and just pick up a CD based on a singer/band I like and you have to wade through all the music, whether you liked it or not. A music CD in Australia used to cost $30 and now I can get one song for 89 cents, or if I liked the entire album, around $8. There is a big gap in pricing and of course, you get the physical media as well as the nice packaging with pictures. Heh, I used to keep items in pristine condition and as your collection grows, they seem to be like a commodity and you worry less and less about things until finally when you tire with the music, you just leave it lost in a pile somewhere. I know I still have those cassette tapes and CDs from the early 90′s of Chinese/Canto pop sitting in a drawer in my room in KL. Heh, a lot of money went into those tapes, and they sit there collecting dust now, but the entertainment of music was truly worth it (I should have learnt to listen to the radio instead).

I’m just constantly amazed at the creative ways people find methods to market their wares and this online music downloading service is really a very efficient way to do business. Australia is still backward in the sense that telecommunications networks are still very behind most developed countries and it’s expensive to use the networks there.

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At times, I’m very happy just sitting in front of the computer listening to music, oblivious to all else. It helps to keep things in perspective.