Monthly Archives: May 2009

Filling My Quota

★ Posted on at 06:58 pm ★

at the other end of the rainbow

This was during the trip to Sydney, when we were taking the ferry back from Manly Beach to Circular Quay. It was late afternoon and there was a light shower of rain. Experience tells me that a rainbow would pop up and sure enough, it did. This is one of the rare times where I’ve seen the end of it though. Heh, where’s my pot of gold?

* * *

There is a trend in posts, when if you don’t see many in the month, it means I’ve been busy doing other things. If you do see many posts, it means I’ve just been idling at home, a lot. Heh, so this post is more of a filler to keep the archives looking even.

* * *

Just grabbed a Nikon 50mm f/1.2 AIS off eBay. It was a lens I have been intrigued with since I was in NYC. Back then, B&H Photo were selling this lens second hand for about USD$550. Since then I’ve missed several opportunities to procure this lens in Melbourne. I got it at a bargain price of AUD$381 (no shipping costs by the seller!) as the lens was misadvertised as an AI lens. There is an online database that lists all the serial numbers of Nikon lenses and I am pretty sure the lens I got is the AIS version (9 vs 7 aperture diaphragm blades, for a rounder bokeh).

Haven’t played around with it much yet, but intend to try the lens to take some portraits. Will try it out when I get back from Ballarat.

* * *

Been a little bit more conscious of my waistline of late. Heh, when I was still working in my previous job, it was an hour a day of walking 5 days a week to get to work. These days I just drive and I don’t think I spend more than 15 minutes walking each day, and that’s mainly to and from the carpark! I guess the reason I’ve put on more weight of late is my current liking for different kinds of beer, wine and whiskey. Alcohol, as you know, is flammable, and is a source of energy, hence it stores itself in your body and converts to fat. I don’t binge drink, but enjoy the complexities of flavours that go with various drinks, which makes me want to sample many more varieties of drinks.

Just waiting for the weekend to come by now.

Oh the Usual

★ Posted on at 08:02 pm ★

flowers at the rocks

Decided to post something bright. Took a reasonable amount of pictures while I was in Sydney and it’s only recently I’ve finished editing the pictures. The Rocks is near Circular Quay, which is where you can take a ferry to the various places in Sydney like Manly Beach, Balmain or Bondi Beach. You can also see the Tower Bridge and the Sydney Opera House nearby.

* * *

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Heh, I just don’t seem to get enough time to do everything I want to do. Off to Ballarat for a conference on Thursday and Friday. Need to get up early to drive west to Ballarat. Heh, the conference organisers decided to skimp on the cost of accommodation, hence the need for attendees to either pay for the previous night’s accommodation, or go early the day itself. It starts at 9am, so I’d need to be up around 6-ish to get ready to go.

* * *

Finally got round to installing Windows 7 on my spare PC (I have too many spare PC’s at the moment, heh). So far the experience is been pretty good. It does boot up faster than previous versions of Windows, although this is negated by the fact that it takes a lifetime for the PC to go through the BIOS boot process.

Didn’t time the install as I left it and went out. Like that you can trial the installation and just paste in the CD key, as opposed to requiring it during the Windows XP install. I also didn’t have to install a single driver, and got the full resolution of my 24″ monitor, which is a first for Windows (for me anyway, not sure if Vista started this trend). Plugged in my printer and it detected it straight away, installing the necessary drivers on the fly. I did have to install software for my Pantone Huey screen calibrator, but since it’s not a generic piece of equipment, I didn’t expect it to automatically work. UAC has been toned down somewhat, I don’t find it as annoying as before and I’ve installed quite a number of applications already.

I like the new Libraries function, where you have files differentiated by documents, music or pictures. You can just link a folder to the library and you get quick access to your media files, which I find very handy. There’s also all the eye candy, like auto changing wallpapers that blend in and out. Nice to have but not overly important.

Heh, operating systems have matured plenty since Windows 3.11 when I first started dabbling with PCs. These days, as long as I can get things done quickly, it doesn’t really matter what operating system I’m using (incidentally, typing this in Ubuntu, which I haven’t evolved beyond simple tasks like email, web surfing and instant messaging).

* * *

Oh, and Manchester United has won the Premiership a third year in the row. Sure their players cost around 20 to 30 million pounds each, even the bench looks that expensive, but if players don’t gel, they can’t beat opponents. Heh, just looking forward to the Champion’s League final next week. As much as these two sides are potent in attack, it’d be pure suicide to just push forward. One can still hope the match will end 5-4, but I’m just happy to watch a few more matches of soccer before the draught until August before it all starts again.

* * *

Yeap, just the usual things keeping me occupied. Happy to be busy anyway.

Mobile Blogging

★ Posted on at 12:21 pm ★

Heh, I think tech has come a long way since I started this website in 2004. Banging out this post on my mobile phone now and the QWERTY keyboard on it makes the experience quite pleasant. Definitely not the 70-80 wpm I get from a regular keyboard, but adequate enough.

I just recently acquired a Nokia E71 as a replacement to my aging and not quite spectacular Nokia 6120 classic. First impressions of the phone have been mainly positive. The battery life is much better now and I can get some heavy use from the phone before needing to recharge it. Phone reception is also excellent, where before I needed to stick my ear next to the window before I could speak clearly with anyone.

The phone has a variety of functions like GPS so I don’t get lost no more. There is also a tool to track the distance you travelled, which is used for exercise routines. That’s pretty neat to me.

The phone is pretty much a geek’s phone though, as not all things are apparent and it requires little fiddling to get some things working right. It’s just not as intuitive as an iPhone where you can sync apps and stuff through iTunes. Here you have 101 ways to so one thing so it may take a while to figure it out.

Tweaked my website with a plugin for an interface to blog from my mobile. Heh, I probably won’t do this often as it still requires a fair amount of effort to put through a post. It does give me ideas as to what I can do with it though. Will be exploring all that soon enough.