Behind the scenes - how a blog entry is produced here

The headquarters. It's a mess, but everything's where I want them to be. A cosy place where I spend hour after hour with not just work, but also play and music and everything else do-able on a computer.



Most pictures on this blog are done by my camera phone, a Sony Ericsson k750i. It has this 2 megapixel camera with autofocus that can do really nice photos in bright light, but quality suffers whenever it's dark, or when artificial lighting is used.



For everything else, and shots from home, a 4 -megapixel Canon Powershot A520 with a ton of manual modes to satisfy the photographer in me. Having grown up learning on manual film SLRs, I'd feel somewhat disabled when I don't have these manual features handy. Sadly, the camera is getting erratic lately, and keeps on complaining that the batteries are low on power despite them being quite OK actually.



I use MyPhoneExplorer, a third-party program for syncing with Sony Ericsson phones. I download the photos onto my computer via Bluetooth.



It's sorta slow, taking about 20 seconds per 400KB photo. I also sync my photos from the Canon, using either USB (slower) or the card reader on the notebook itself.

I drag them all into Photoshop. Some photos need major cropping and rework on colour balance and brightness and contrast levels. However, most are quite alright and I use a macro I did up myself to fine-tune the levels automatically, resize to an acceptable resolution, sharpen the photo and save it as JPEG all at once.





Next I use Imageshack toolbar to upload all the photos at once, then copy over the links from Imageshack to Blogger.

I add the text, publish the blog and I'm done. This is the workflow I've finally settled on after lots of fumbling aroudn with the various programs and websites. Efficient, eh?

Friday

More photos, less words, more haste, less waste eh? Here it goes.

Friday, and it continues from just after the morning run. Went to Parkway Parade.

Along the way, tried to keep Mario from dying on my DS in New Super Mario Bros, but alas, a stupid misestimation here, a silly move there and more lives gone! The sweet thing about the DS is that when you play a DS game, get interrupted halfway and have to pause for extended periods, all you have to do is to shut the cover of the DS (doesn't work for GBA games) and it goes into suspend mode a la notebook PCs.

More photos, less words, more haste, less waste. So. Just the highlights.

Sakuraya Fish Market. In short, you choose what you want from the fridge and the chef will slice it up and add the radish shreds and wasabi at the side. I swear the chef has gotta be a noob because the sashimi slices were so incredibly thick. I'm becoming a food snob, yeah.



Maguro - that's tuna in sashimi-speak - on the left. Definitely much better than the stuff they usually have on sushi in supermakets. Salmon - that's salmon in English - on the right. But then, salmon still tastes better. The wasabi's good and sweet.



Obligatory chopstick photo. Soft, streaky and tasty.



Cold Storage. Weird drink. Engrish? The problem is that many of the plants and herbs found in asia don't have common English-language names, so you just gotta do with literal translations of the Chinese name, no matter how absurd-sounding. They do have scientific names too, but that's an equally bad choice for a name when people can hardly pronounce or remember it.

Decided to screw the afternoon lesson anyway. The project's in a mess, I've heard from classmates by SMS, and I really didn't feel like getting into the mess together with them. I'm gonna become so guilty for it but but,

Walked into a candy/snacks/etc store near Parkway Parade, and pardon my cliches, but we were like children in a candy store, running around, sharing our own experiences of what's hot and what's not. That shop really almost has everything you can think of yeah, all the childhood snacks. It's freaking uncanny how Ryan and I like such similar things!

Bought a stash for Mr Black, who we are visiting in hospital later.



Park Mall, and just strolled aimlessly, ogling at expensive furniture and me wondering what makes expensive furniture so expensive. This Santa's really asking for something to be shuffed up there. If I'm not wrong, this is the rough position that American doctors prefer to use to examine the rectum.



Plaza Singapura. Shared a bratwurst hotdog with Ferret. Tasty stuff!

RushedtogetabasketfromDaisotoholdallthesnacksweboughtforMrBlack. But couldn't find one, so Ferret decided on a mesh cloth bag that has an uncanny resemblance to netting underwear. Rushed to fill up the bag with the snacks on the MRT along the way. And in no time it was Novena MRT already.

Met twinkie and well, I dunno what's been troubling her lately, but I sure wish I can do something about it!

Mr Black's transferred to the general ortho ward already, which is A Very Good Thing. 12B to boot. High floor, great view of the city (all the B wards have the best view). He's alot better now. Well enough for us to wheel him down to Starbucks! Jenson, who was visiting him earlier, tagged along too.



Had a drink there, left quickly though, Mr Black's got a visitor to attend to and being downstairs for too long's tiring. Wheeled him back up, and yes, I'm like totally fumbling and bumbling trying to help him transfer to the bed from the wheelchair and all. Um, I really oughta be better than that eh?

Parted ways with Mr Black and Jenson and twinkie (she's rushing a report, reminds me of how I had to rush my mother-of-a-report for Jan 3 earlier).

There's this Hong Kong Cafe opposite the road and Ferret's been fanciing some Yuan Yang coffee/tea mix and the baked rice. The food's quite good, but according to Ferret, not as impressive as the branch in East Coast. Some food porn.



Fried squid rings. Too garlicky for my tastes, but it's really not bad. Lighting's bad (The automatic white balance couldn't get any decent colours and none of the preset white balance settings worked well.)



Baked spagetthi with chicken and Portugese sauce. What's Portugese sauce? Apparently it's this sauce that tastes sorta like those Japanese curry that's sweet rather than hot.



Dessert - Mango 'Show Hand' (Engrish?) It's mango ice-cream plus mango pudding plus mango bits and syrup. Really, how can this NOT taste good?



French toast. Really crispy and all. Lovely. But to be honest, I prefer the more eggy homemade type rather than the deep-fried, oily+crispy Hong-Kong styled one. However, this goes really well soaked in the faux-honey they have there.

Oops it started raining yet again. Stopped shortly after that though.

Felt reallyreally full after the meal. Went to the bus-stop, and camwhored shamelessly. My idea for Ryan and I to do up avatar photos for STOMP forums, with the same pose and same background. Decided on Death Note's L as the pose, and the bus stop as a convenient background. It took 2 SE k750 camera phones, many many attempts, lots of time and concentration, before we got photos that matched reasonably well. Had to do some major colour balancing and cropping on Photoshop to get the photos to match well too.

I'm not into whoring my photo on the blog, but since my photo is shamelessly posted on the forums, and that most readers already know how I look, and that my photo's easily available in at least 3 blogs I link, I guess there's no harm in showing my face . Finally.

On the left is Ryan, on the right is me. Some say we look alike in a certain way, some say we don't at all. You decide. Personally, it's not like I mind either way, but it's fun yeah.



Great day (didn't regret skipping the pesky lecture and the depressing group tutorial-turned-awry in school today) and here's me, signing off on a happy note!

Part 2 coming up tomorrow (oh wait it IS tomorrow already), when Ryan and I will be present at an ice-cream tasting meet and a dinner with other STOMPers!

Thursday

School equally crappy and I'm wondering why I'm there in the first place.

Spent the 1.5 hour SPSS (some computerised statistics management program) training session MSNing Charles (classmate in same SPSS session), Fadz (about Electrico concert and seating in the UCC) and bozo (he's back in NZ safe and sound), posting on STOMP and lurking in VR Forums all at once. Oh did I mention, a teeny weeny bit of SPSS too. And replying to a couple of messages on the phone too. Multitasking at its best.

Day ended early so took the bus to Funan where one of Zeke's favourite game shop - Gamescore - is. After lots of mulling (yep, I am ueberly indecisive) I chose my DS lite casing. Foam casing seems too tight and the strap doesn't look secure, the big bulky ones are out of the question, so the 'Compact Pouch' it is. How about colour? Black looks cool and mean, but the white/grey matches my DS lite better and looks a little more cheerful. So white/grey it is. $15. They just ran out of stock of Elite Beat Agents though. Arrrrrgh!

Some porn.










I can imagine someone who would be majorly offended by this advert. I don't see the big deal though. They chose vegetarianism. But they ain't got no right to bitch about people disagreeing with them.



On the way back. And met my aunt in the bus. Typical awkward silences when together with relatives and no other family member around, so it ended up in some sparse chat about school ('when are you exams?'), my brother's birthday and the delicious Oreo cake and stuff. Thank goodness for TV Mobile to ease the awkward silence.





Rain. Depressing. Just feel like hiding in the comfort of my room, with Pokemon FireRed and STOMP and the internet on my trusty notebook PC.

Spent the night trying to keep cheerful online, conked out. Fitful sleep. Woke up. Went for a run (Wiseman there again).

And here I am. Raring to meet up with Ferret and Ryan for sashimi! Happy happy Mcfly blaring on the speakers to try to push away the numbness I feel.

I like school. NOT!

It's one of those days where I leave school at 6.30pm, feeling even stupider than at 9am of the same day.

Lectures I learnt nothing from. Surely did put in some major time in New York Nights and Astropop, 2 games which I've recently added to my phone.

Sure I did catch up with friends and all, sure, it wasn't all bad. But but. What's the point of going to school only to attend lectures about things I already know and a project group discussion that was just a big mess?

And being held up to 6.30pm because of that meant a bus ride through the crowded peak-hour traffic, which only left me more time to feel crappy about myself. Everything's sorta... pointless. What if I try harder to prove myself? What if I put in my everything? Probably doesn't matter anyway.

Don't mind me, I just had to rant.



Nursing a bad headache now. And and nose has been blocked and sounding like a turbocharger for about a week already. I trust that my trusty immune system takes care of it and nips it in the bud. My immune system hardly disappoints me.

Nintendo DS

Ever since I've read about the release of the Nintendo DS lite, I was toying with the idea of getting one, especially when I read about the fun Zeke got out of it, way back then. At that time, it was cheaper than the DS, it was smaller (one main gripe about the original DS was its hefty size, which made many people stick with the Gameboy Advance SP instead), and all the good games were coming up.

It's about a couple of months ago, when I started toying with the idea more and more seriously. Was posting in STOMP forums regarding the DS vs the Playstation Portable (PSP) and in the process, sorta figured out that I DO want a DS. The PSP may be more technically-advanced, it may be a super-duper multimedia device, but what made me choose the DS is that you simply can't get that kind of gameplay you get on a DS elsewhere.

Where else do you tap a stylus on the screen to the beat of a song? Where else do you get games with 2 screens? Where else do you get you get your Mario/Zelda/Pokemon fix? Only the DS it seems. The games on the PSP may be great but I can't help but to have the 'I've already played something like this on the Playstation or PC before' feeling.

Ryan's getting a DS too, cool huh, so decided to get them at the same time. The nice thing about having friends with a DS is that the DS has various wireless link-up modes, depending on game. You can:

1. Link up with another DS (or more) in the vicinity with the same game and battle against each other
2. Link up with another DS (or more) without the game you have (host), have the other DS (client) load the game off yours, and battle! (However, options are usually limited on the client side)
3. Play on the Internet via your wireless router (only some games)

Back to the story. Met up with Ryan in Kinokuniya in Bugis, Heading to Sim Lim later. There was this 20% discount offer but I didn't see anything I really want.



It's highly recommended, but upon going home and looking through sample pages, it's not quite my cup of tea.



A novel consisting of letters between estranged husband-and-wife in the aftermath of having their son become a vicious murderer at age 15. But not too keen on reading such a long novel for now.

Went to Sim Lim. With LOTS of difficulty comparing prices, looking for all the games (can't find Elite Beat Agents anywhere), scouting for promotions, calculating what's the best deal, mulling over the various colours, we finally came to a decision. The white DS. Turquoise (that blue-green colour never fails to impress me. Except Bianchi's idea of making it look more like a snot-green) would have been great, but hardly anywhere sells it, and those places don't exactly have good bargains. Heck, i'd just paste a couple of stickers on it to personalise it. White goes best with stickers and decals, at least. After several trips up and down the whole place, finally got the white one (black's sorta too mean-looking, and the blue simply isn't the purple-blue they did the GBA SP in that I liked).

Hung around a little more at Bugis junction, got a drink, bought pastries for family from Four Leaves (taste was disappointing except the brownies, to be honest.)

Too eager to twiddle with shiny new DS, so I unpacked it right in the middle of the MRT carriage and fired up New Super Mario Bros! And 5 minutes into playing, this kid in the MRT came in and exclaimed that I was playing the same game as him! Took a peek and saw his white DS. Lovely. Smiled and told him I just bought it (it's an excuse to be totally newbie at the game. I was like still trying to figure out the controls and all, and he was literally staring at my screen.)
Cute!

On the way back and met neighbour on the bus. She said that Charlotte's Web the movie is quite good, despite lukewarm reviews. Oops I haven't even started on the book. Back home, and some product camwhoring. Oh did I mention the other game I bought is Pokemon FireRed. It's a GBA game but the DS can play all GBA games using the other game slot. Played a little of Pokemon Red (old Gameboy Colour version, circa 1998) on emulator and it was mildly fun, though the dated graphics and slowness of the emulator made me give up on it. FireRed is a nice remake done in better colours, and from first impressions it's quite true to the style of Red.







Oh I got this Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 GBA cartridge lying around. Picked it off a footpath long long ago (2 years?). Someone must've dropped it or something. Plugged it in, but sadly it didn't register.

Time to bring out the contact cleaner spray and a cotton bud! This is the age-old trick used to revive wonky RAM and PCI slots in computers, game cartridges and slots and scratchy headphone jacks and plugs.

Spray a little of the contact cleaner spray on the cotton bud, then scrub the hell outta the golden contacts in the cartridge's inside.





Leave it to dry until you don't smell the cleaning spray. Plug cartridge in and viola! Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2! Sadly, it plays and feels exactly like the version I had played on the Playstation, so I'm not too keen on playing it again.

Played minigames on the New Super Mario Bros cartridge - they have a ton of stylus-based minigames on it so that cartridge's a really good deal. Slowly saw my scores drop from each try of the game to another, and realised I was really sleepy.

And asleep, I was.



Oh and on the same day my normally-thrifty parents bought this really cool vacuum cleaner that doesn't use conventional bags or filters but a air cyclone inside to get rid of the dust. It has lotsa funky buttons and doodads and handles really nicely. And sucks (as in, suction, not 'gee this sucks') really powerfully. And most importantly, not as noisy as the old one! Dyson's this really funky British vacuum cleaner manufacturer. And despite the high price, many people just can't get enough of it, including at least 1 rock star who loves to gush about his 3 Dysons even though he wasn't paid to do so.

Inclusion/exclusion criteria for linking

Well, there's alot of bloggers that want to be linked. There's alot of bloggers I want to link too. But there's only so many links I can put. Surely I can't just dump a whole list there and not do some QC, for I'd want the readers of my blog to be guaranteed a blog of decent standard when they click on a link.

So there, I have to delete some links, add in new ones. No offense to anyone, but those I remove, they don't fufill my criteria I use to determine what makes a blog that's suitable for linking.

Inclusion criteria:
1. Blogs that I love to read
2. Blogs that mention me (yeah, I'm a sucker for attention)

Exclusion criteria:
1. Blogs that are hardly updated
2. Blogs with background music (I really do not want my own music interrupted by low-quality clips of songs I don't fancy)
3. Blogs with horrible templates. You know, those with fancy schmamy frames where you gotta click on some inconspicuous corner to access the different parts.
4. Blogs that don't use readable English. '2dAe I wEn oRcHaRd lolx~~~ cRowd siA!'
5. Blogs that give me a bad taste in my mouth after reading them. Those hate/angst/bitching blogs usually.

(Note that even good friends of mine don't get linked if their blog don't meet the criteria. That includes you, CH, you don't update often enough!)

Well, even if you're not on the list, rest assured I have all your blogs bookmarked and syndicated (via Atom feed) so yep, I do read them regularly.

2007 - Countdown at Vivo City

31st December 2006. Hell, I'd do away with the grandmother tales and go on straight to the meaty meaty meat. Here's the content, heavily summarised.

Short quick run at Bishan Park. Evil radioactive spider in bright green and a silvery spine - you really should see it, it's brighter green than most any insect you see and shiny like metal. Totally freaky.

And it crawled onto my arm.

And I tried to shake it off. But it clung onto me. Because the spiderweb was stuck to me. Took a few jumps and hops and wild flaying of arms before I'm safe.

Gee, am I turning into Spiderman anytime soon?


Met up with Richie. At the last minute. He's gonna fly off back to NZ really soon. Vivocity is incredibly crowded. Maybe it ain't too good an idea afterall.


After major harassment by security. Had to queue up and get searched ("men on this side, women on this side please") and Richie got his water bottle confiscated. And finally, a lousy chop on the left hand as if to deem me safe for slaughter.



Why is there half a lamppost in the water?


Decided to bail out early. The place's sorta lame, the people are pushy and nasty, drinks are ridiculously expensive, and does one really have to be in the crowd to countdown? No. So we bailed out. Stupid place.



A view of the Sentosa bridge. Hanged around the shops, until we decided to go to the supermarket to get a beer each. But before that, hung around the gift and toy shops. Almost went to Action City, but that was where I got recognised the other time with Ryan as people from STOMP forums, so I dragged Richie outta it.



Asuka. Upskirt. I've oficially got an Asuka fetish now.



More upskirts.



Someone stole the expensive watches from Sincere watches a la Thomas Crown Affair!



Beer. Countdown. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, goodbye cruel 2006.



Alcohol kicking in. Feeling the buzz. I think we got sorta high. The memory's a blur. I remember deciding to greet the bored staff at the MRT station happy new year. I remember racing up the stairs next to the escalator with Richie, against the people crowding up the escalators, then me, feeling totally woozy at the top.

I remember laughing at crazy stuff. I remember sending out some weird SMSes to friends. But I don't remember the details. Gee I don't even dare to think of the details.

High. Laughing at everything. I'm not totally drunk, just high, but weird thing is, how did just 1 can of strong beer do that much to me? It's weird.

But well, it's good memories, that is very nice, I like!