Monthly Archives: November 2011

It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect

★ Posted on at 12:40 pm ★

Grabbed a shot of Alfie using my iPhone. Sometimes you get great light just pulling up some blinds and letting light through the window. Heh, he always has sort of a smiley face about him.

* * *

So I finally submitted the photo book to be printed a few days ago, and it should arrive hopefully before the end of next week. I can’t seem to get excited over small wins these days. Heh, it was something I needed to get done and I finally did it.

I am really needing that push to be free and let go. There is this burning desire to just go shoot photographs of people so I can bring my craft to the next level. I am not trying hard enough nor am I focused enough in devising plans to fulfil that desire.

There’s a whole bunch of stuff I need to get done.

I’ve written it down. That super high level header that doesn’t tell you how to implement it.

I am going to pick one task. I am going to do it until I can look at it no longer. Then I’m going to pick another task and repeat the same actions.

It’s the last day of November. Hopefully before 2011 finishes, I’d have done the things I’ve set out to do.

Prodding

★ Posted on at 01:20 pm ★

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One of the large paintings of water lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie in France by Claude Monet.

* * *

So the Europe photo book is nearing completion. It’s a long an arduous process, going through the photos first, selecting the ones to be put into the book, and then doing the layout for the book. Trying out Indesign for the layout instead of Blurb’s Booksmart software. The learning curve is on the steep side and I’ve been having start stop moments with the program but have finally decided on a few standard page layouts and getting all the photos in. It’s the usual case of procrastination that you just need to prod yourself along so that you end up doing something.

* * *

Have also been reminded by others on other things I need to be doing, so my brain’s clockwork is starting to shift into gear and work out the details. Heh, I’ve learned to finesse on details of late, but that’s also caused my productivity to dip. I’m not sure whether I’m happier churning out better quality work but less of it. The mind is still of the habit of quick wins, but I’ve also learned that while you must ship whatever you are doing, you still need to ensure that the quality is entirely up to your satisfaction before you do it. That is also a fine balance which I’m starting to figure out.

* * *

Heh, the focus has been on photo editing and layout for the new site, so I haven’t been taking many pictures of late. I still need to clear out my memory cards from the wedding shoot, which is a reminder for me to do something else. Haven’t been 100% of late, with some aches and congestion, I’m just pumping myself with meds until it all clears up. The flu has been masked by having hay fever and since I’m not keen on being totally out of commission, it’s better to start mending the body now.

Tech Rant

★ Posted on at 08:14 am ★

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Revisiting the photos from my Europe trip. This is outside the Louvre museum and you don’t see the long queue already waiting patiently for the doors to open at 9am. It was raining quite a bit while we were there, some unusual weather for the French summer, but then again, weather’s pretty unusual these days.

* * *

Just read about the Google Galaxy Nexus review on the Verge, a new gadget review site run by the people who were previously at Engadget. A year ago, I’d be happily soaking in all stuff new on tech. I still do these days but I seem more reluctant to embrace new stuff now only because of a lack of time.

The Galaxy Nexus is a curious phone. I like my iPhone 4 and am quite satisfied with it, plus I’ve already invested a little in the iOS ecosystem like productivity apps and games, plus I’m wondering whether the massive 4.65″ screen (relative to the 3.5″ iPhone screen) is a good idea for my pocket.

Then again, it’s just me being curious to try things out (I’ve played with the Nexus S and find it a bit sluggish) so it’s probably something that might happen when I get a new mobile plan later next year.

* * *

The graphics card on my PC finally died. Seems to make sense in hindsight, as it was a pretty unstable mess, and I sort of suspected that the card was returned to the shop (it was the last unit) and it seemed to crash a lot until finally when I was having a game of Starcraft 2 with a friend that I started seeing weird polygons and the whole screen just turned blank. Restarted the PC, it looked fine until it tried to boot into Windows and when you try to start rendering Aero and all the nice effects, the card just flaked and spat the dummy.

So I went and got myself a new card. The product lines are slightly different today as there used to be the budget cards, the mid range cards and the high end cards. The one I have seems to sit in the middle of the latter two and I plugged it into my system with no issues whatsoever. Downloaded the drivers and everything was good as new. Then for the first time in my life, I was able to max out every setting in the games I tried and everything was smooth. No micro stutters, gorgeous details in games and it brought out a little excitement for me in gaming again.

Heh, today’s games run fine on current hardware only because the console market is still dominating sales and corporations that always look to maximise the bottom line will cater for these markets. Lots of games today are built with the console version in mind and make a parallel port to the PC version. Today’s consoles are fairly antiquated in terms of technology, with the Playstation 3 and XBox 360 already more than 3 years old, so any modern card today can render the games pretty darn well, at least up to a resolution of 1920 pixels across. If you are lucky enough to have a 30″ display, you’d be needing two of the cards I bought in Crossfire just to keep up with the pixel pushing.

* * *

The year is coming to a close, so things are slowing down a bit. I have a pile of stuff to do, so I need to kick my own butt and find the motivation to do it. Haven’t really had a chance to be expressive about anything of late. Time to move on.