Nothing more to see here, move along.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Christmas Accommodation
It is customary for my university halls to indiscriminately kick everybody out during Christmas term break. Most fortunately, my coursemates in Raleigh Park nearby offered me a place to stay over the holidays.
It doesn't look like much, but for an entire month, this was my bedroom, study room, dining room, and (of course) living room.
Holidays are such fun.
It doesn't look like much, but for an entire month, this was my bedroom, study room, dining room, and (of course) living room.
Holidays are such fun.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Fun with DSLR Photography
Back before the holidays, I had the privilege of having my own DSLR to play with, even if it's actually just a one-week loan from my uni's Photography Society.
The camera is a Nikon D200, which ranks at the low-end among Nikon's high-end range of DSLRs. Released in 2005, it's also a little old, nevertheless it looked, felt and weighed like a sturdy piece of machinery. And of course, using it was an absolute blast. There's nothing quite like the characteristic, almost addictive "ch-kak!" of its shutter noise*, knowing that the very best of optical and electronic engineering are working hard at my disposal to provide images of quality no mere point-and-shoot camera could physically achieve.
* I should also add that it's completely natural, unlike the gimmicky kind that every single point-and-shoot/phone camera on the planet feebly emulates using their cheap speakers.
Compared to my Panasonic Lumix, the transition is akin to going from a Proton Saga to a Mercedes*. Mmm, classy.
* An SLR McLaren, perhaps? ;)
Anyway, here's an interesting experience I had during my time spent with this thing. While walking around the campus lake taking photos of the scenery and wildlife, I stopped in the middle of a short stone bridge over the lake to look around, when a squirrel emerged from the woods nearby. At first I wanted to move in for some closer shots, but I didn't need to -- turns out the squirrel was investigating me! It even voluntarily came within half a meter of my feet.
Photographing the squirrel was no easy task. Not only was it twitching and zipping around, the sheer weight of the camera alone made it difficult to hold still during exposure. No, the lens had no vibration reduction. But the camera's 5 frames/second shooting rate did give me a fighting chance.
Eventually, everything went right for just once, resulting in the following shot. In fact out of over 300 pictures I've taken with this camera in a week (and discarding about 80% of them), this is my #1 favourite.
Granted, it still ends up getting 0wned by this picture, but I guess it's not bad for someone who has never changed a DSLR lens before. :P
The camera is a Nikon D200, which ranks at the low-end among Nikon's high-end range of DSLRs. Released in 2005, it's also a little old, nevertheless it looked, felt and weighed like a sturdy piece of machinery. And of course, using it was an absolute blast. There's nothing quite like the characteristic, almost addictive "ch-kak!" of its shutter noise*, knowing that the very best of optical and electronic engineering are working hard at my disposal to provide images of quality no mere point-and-shoot camera could physically achieve.
* I should also add that it's completely natural, unlike the gimmicky kind that every single point-and-shoot/phone camera on the planet feebly emulates using their cheap speakers.
Compared to my Panasonic Lumix, the transition is akin to going from a Proton Saga to a Mercedes*. Mmm, classy.
* An SLR McLaren, perhaps? ;)
Anyway, here's an interesting experience I had during my time spent with this thing. While walking around the campus lake taking photos of the scenery and wildlife, I stopped in the middle of a short stone bridge over the lake to look around, when a squirrel emerged from the woods nearby. At first I wanted to move in for some closer shots, but I didn't need to -- turns out the squirrel was investigating me! It even voluntarily came within half a meter of my feet.
Photographing the squirrel was no easy task. Not only was it twitching and zipping around, the sheer weight of the camera alone made it difficult to hold still during exposure. No, the lens had no vibration reduction. But the camera's 5 frames/second shooting rate did give me a fighting chance.
Eventually, everything went right for just once, resulting in the following shot. In fact out of over 300 pictures I've taken with this camera in a week (and discarding about 80% of them), this is my #1 favourite.
Granted, it still ends up getting 0wned by this picture, but I guess it's not bad for someone who has never changed a DSLR lens before. :P
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Christmas in Birmingham
Sitting in a Holiday Inn hotel room watching TV. That's what my roommate and I have been doing for almost the entire length of Christmas day. Even lunch consisted of a combination of food packed from Nottingham and pastries we grabbed from a very crowded Tesco the day before. Dinner however, was...ironic, to say the least.
Back in Malaysia, Christmas isn't that big a deal so you'd still find most of the essential facilities e.g. restaurants and shopping centres open. Unlike here, where the city essentially turns into a ghost town other than the odd Asian or two (e.g. us) roaming the streets. Anyway, back home I would've celebrated Christmas by following relatives out to some Italian restaurant and stuffing myself with Western food.
But here in the West, nothing was open. Nothing except a handful of shops in Chinatown. And among these shops was a Malaysian restaurant (literally named "Malaysian Delight") where I had my Christmas dinner of this year. Where I stuffed myself with...this stuff.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Back in Malaysia, Christmas isn't that big a deal so you'd still find most of the essential facilities e.g. restaurants and shopping centres open. Unlike here, where the city essentially turns into a ghost town other than the odd Asian or two (e.g. us) roaming the streets. Anyway, back home I would've celebrated Christmas by following relatives out to some Italian restaurant and stuffing myself with Western food.
But here in the West, nothing was open. Nothing except a handful of shops in Chinatown. And among these shops was a Malaysian restaurant (literally named "Malaysian Delight") where I had my Christmas dinner of this year. Where I stuffed myself with...this stuff.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
on Windows 7 and its pricing
Microsoft has been giving me reasons to improve my opinion of it lately, firstly and most profoundly with Windows 7. Having painstakingly procured (hint: involving a 30kbps SFTP connection all the way back home...oh the pain!) and tested it on an Asus Eee PC, I have to say it is a huge step in the right direction. It's essentially a leaner, quicker, friendlier Vista, with the same bells and whistles but an order of magnitude easier to actually use to one's benefit.
The single best improvement of all has to be the taskbar. Even though its concept hasn't changed since the days of Windows 95, it has now been given a makeover that's revolutionary, yet intuitive enough to pick up again within minutes. I'm almost certain it was designed with heavy multitaskers like myself in mind - it just works so darn well, apart from the anemic Intel Atom processor only just managing to keep up with all my tasks. I intend to finally retire Windows XP as my desktop's main OS and replace it with this one as soon as I get home.
It's good enough in fact, that I was considering forking out part of my student (read: miniscule) budget to get a copy for myself. On the other hand, it was available to me at a student (read: cheap) price of £30, as I was told by a fine gentleman in a certain IRC chatroom. So, the deal was looking pretty sweet.
But if the sweetness of a deal is inversely proportional to the price of the item being sold, then this deal just got divided by zero.
Apparently, Microsoft thinks so highly of us geeks in the scientific academia that they created the MSDNAA (Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance) which offers to students pretty much their entire line of current software products, including Windows 7, for a very special price. And it wasn't too long ago that my university announced via mass e-mail spammage that the program was open to students in the School of Computer Science and Faculty of Engineering (that's me!). For those of you who speed-read through the last two paragraphs (and to drive the point home for those of you who didn't :P), try taking a guess what this very special price is.
University life kicks ass.
The single best improvement of all has to be the taskbar. Even though its concept hasn't changed since the days of Windows 95, it has now been given a makeover that's revolutionary, yet intuitive enough to pick up again within minutes. I'm almost certain it was designed with heavy multitaskers like myself in mind - it just works so darn well, apart from the anemic Intel Atom processor only just managing to keep up with all my tasks. I intend to finally retire Windows XP as my desktop's main OS and replace it with this one as soon as I get home.
It's good enough in fact, that I was considering forking out part of my student (read: miniscule) budget to get a copy for myself. On the other hand, it was available to me at a student (read: cheap) price of £30, as I was told by a fine gentleman in a certain IRC chatroom. So, the deal was looking pretty sweet.
But if the sweetness of a deal is inversely proportional to the price of the item being sold, then this deal just got divided by zero.
Apparently, Microsoft thinks so highly of us geeks in the scientific academia that they created the MSDNAA (Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance) which offers to students pretty much their entire line of current software products, including Windows 7, for a very special price. And it wasn't too long ago that my university announced via mass e-mail spammage that the program was open to students in the School of Computer Science and Faculty of Engineering (that's me!). For those of you who speed-read through the last two paragraphs (and to drive the point home for those of you who didn't :P), try taking a guess what this very special price is.
University life kicks ass.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Being a mere student on a constantly tight budget, it's not very often that I consider purchasing an original copy of any PC game, especially when there are much ahem cheaper alternatives around.
But MW2 was one of them. After the awesomeness that was the first Call of Duty, and then Modern Warfare ('All Ghillied Up' anyone?), MW2 certainly looked promising based on the video previews of its single player campaign alone. Also, now that I've grown bored of Counter-Strike: Source I did feel like taking up a new serious, realistic multiplayer FPS. If you watch the video below and feel your heart rate go up then you know what I mean.
(N.B. Team Fortress 2, although loads of fun, is not realistic.)
Yet, the end of the video highlights one of several potential problems brought up by this official announcement. The summary:
1. No server listing, instead you get a matchmaking system not unlike those in console games. (Though honestly I don't see any reason console games shouldn't have server lists too.)
2. No dedicated servers, meaning a much higher chance of running into amateur admins and general chaos. Think Halo Trial.
3. No mod support.
I won't jump to conclusions and claim that MW2 multiplayer is completely botched, but I for one do not want to have my immersion broken by a "Host Migration" event every 10 minutes.
So, bad move by Infinity Ward? Seems likely, but I'll just have to wait and see.
But MW2 was one of them. After the awesomeness that was the first Call of Duty, and then Modern Warfare ('All Ghillied Up' anyone?), MW2 certainly looked promising based on the video previews of its single player campaign alone. Also, now that I've grown bored of Counter-Strike: Source I did feel like taking up a new serious, realistic multiplayer FPS. If you watch the video below and feel your heart rate go up then you know what I mean.
(N.B. Team Fortress 2, although loads of fun, is not realistic.)
Yet, the end of the video highlights one of several potential problems brought up by this official announcement. The summary:
1. No server listing, instead you get a matchmaking system not unlike those in console games. (Though honestly I don't see any reason console games shouldn't have server lists too.)
2. No dedicated servers, meaning a much higher chance of running into amateur admins and general chaos. Think Halo Trial.
3. No mod support.
I won't jump to conclusions and claim that MW2 multiplayer is completely botched, but I for one do not want to have my immersion broken by a "Host Migration" event every 10 minutes.
So, bad move by Infinity Ward? Seems likely, but I'll just have to wait and see.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Awesome Penguin Sighting
Now that I'm reasonably settled into life in a university half a world away from home, I'll do my best to catch up on some notable events of the past few weeks. This is about the flight here.
The aircraft was a Boeing 747-400 operated by Malaysia Airlines. Despite a capacity that earned it its Jumbo Jet moniker, the flight was "100% full" according to the check-in attendant. Also, we fellow travellers (in this case my mum and her former classmate) were split up, myself ending up in between 2 European gentlemen.
Now once upon a time, I managed to play one PC game for about 12 hours from the beginning until the final cinematic of the single player campaign, pausing only for meal breaks and the occasional calls of nature. That game was Halo: Combat Evolved (and while I'm on that subject, screw Microsoft for completely ditching the PC platform with their Halo series. Some example they're setting for their Games for Windows initiative.) But that doesn't top this flight, which took 13 hours.
To give you an idea of how long that is, I'll just list out all the stuff/content I went through during the flight:
It was powered by Linux!!!
The aircraft was a Boeing 747-400 operated by Malaysia Airlines. Despite a capacity that earned it its Jumbo Jet moniker, the flight was "100% full" according to the check-in attendant. Also, we fellow travellers (in this case my mum and her former classmate) were split up, myself ending up in between 2 European gentlemen.
Now once upon a time, I managed to play one PC game for about 12 hours from the beginning until the final cinematic of the single player campaign, pausing only for meal breaks and the occasional calls of nature. That game was Halo: Combat Evolved (and while I'm on that subject, screw Microsoft for completely ditching the PC platform with their Halo series. Some example they're setting for their Games for Windows initiative.) But that doesn't top this flight, which took 13 hours.
To give you an idea of how long that is, I'll just list out all the stuff/content I went through during the flight:
- Lunch - Marbled beef. Yum.
- 2 House episodes - Typical stuff featuring Dr. House being a hilarious bastard, semi-accurate medical jargon, and drama.
- Michael Jackson: Unmaksed - Not the book, just a documentary about the life and illustrious career of a legend.
- All in-seat magazines
- 1 Reader's Digest issue
- The Sniper (神枪手) - Boring. Nonlinear storytelling bordering on confusing. Villain's psychotic hallucinations kinda cool. Actual sniping goes against every shooter game I've ever played. As for what little special effects there were: Come on, The Matrix was released ten years ago!
- The Big Bang Theory (2 eps) - Is it bad that I can understand the tall guy? :(
- Dinner - Garoupa fish
- The Incredibles - Interrupted halfway by the landing, but I already know it's fully awesome because it's made by Pixar. :D
It was powered by Linux!!!
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