Glimpses

Canon 300D, EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 18mm, 1/60s, f/11, ISO 100
Half-and-half: Trees and pillars in their natural habitat.



Canon 300D, EF 50mm f/1.8 lens @ 50mm, 1/125s, f/1.8, ISO 200
Caffeine and the internet were made for each other. Who would've thought? One's a drug, and the other's a... drug.



Canon 300D, EF 50mm f/1.8 lens @ 50mm, 1/60s, f/1.8, ISO 200
A tome, an attitude, and a job description, all in one. Pictured with supporting cast.



Canon 300D, EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 41mm, 1/20s, f/5, ISO 400
Streetlamp chic - like my shades?

Technical tribulation

beeds: i typed in the url and i get page not found.
i load up said page in my browser. it works.
beeds: can you print that page for me?
me: why don't i get you set up on your own machine so you can do it yourself?
both walk to beeds' machine.
beeds: see, i typed it in and it says page not found.
me: that's because the url is case sensitive. you need to change the small 'r', 'p' and 's' to capitals.
beeds: ok.
i head back to my desk. beeds follows.
beeds: can you print that page for me?
me: ...

I haven't had to deal with this level of intelligence for a while. Yet another sobering experience.

Morning musuko ja nai

Morning son I am not
But I had to get up early this morning and brave the rush-hour traffic. A sobering reminder of the benefits of flexi-time.

The light is best at dawn
So I missed sunrise. But the not-so-early morning sunlight is nice to shoot in anyway.


Shophouses and skyscrapers

Early to bed and early to rise
Makes me get hungry, corny and wise(-cracking). I've heard that it's important to start your day with a good breakfast. Soft white bread with kaya spread and thick slabs of chilled butter probably doesn't make a good breakfast. But I'm not keen on runny eggs or oily bee hoon in the morning, so bread will have to do.


Legs!

The Happy Fun Omnibus

Followed a /. story comment to this gem about Computer Stupidities. Enjoy.

Foundation of knowledge

Rising high

Found this photo while rummaging through last year's pics. The structure being built is a chunk of the new National Library building next to Bras Basah Complex. It's grown quite a bit since then, promising to become a behemoth of steel and glass when it's done.

Public libraries have undergone a dramatic and effective makeover - it's now hip and happening to chill out at the library, complete with comfy coffee bars and reading lounges. Watch out, Borders?

The comfort zone is a frightening thing

On workday mornings, when J doesn't feel like tackling the traffic, she gets me to drive to my office, after which she'll take over and drive to her own workplace. The route takes us down the East Coast Parkway and into the city, through several ERP gantries (automated time-sensitive toll gates).

This morning, I was in the driver's seat, doing battle with the daily rash of annoying vehicles in slow traffic. Just meters away from the first gantry, J remembered with a start that she had removed the cashcard from the car's transponder unit the day before.

Fumbling frantically with the piece of plastic, realization struck: I wouldn't be quick enough to stuff the card in the slot before passing under the gantry unless I slammed on the brakes.

I didn't.

The transponder beeped angrily, just seconds before the cashcard clicked in. I was too late.

We'd added this plastic protector thing to the IVU that's meant to conceal the presence of your cashcard. It supposedly deters itchy-handed opportunists from smashing your window for the cashcard, although I think it's absolutely silly -- since by simply having it on you practically declare to the world that you have a cashcard worth snatching in there.

This morning, I'd assumed that the cashcard was already in there.

First offender's fine amounts to ten bucks plus whatever toll amount was being charged at the time. But if I'd braked suddenly to settle the cashcard instead -- at best, the driver right behind would have to e-brake or swerve to avoid kissing my ass, causing a ripple reaction back through hundreds of cars. More likely, it would have caused a chain collision, with me at the head of it.

A $10-odd fine is really a small price to pay. It will serve as a reminder to both of us to check carefully next time.

You know you're getting older when...

... something on your desk that you've been frantically searching for in the last few days stares you in the face after you've given up looking.

... you start thinking about your bank account in terms of how long it will last if you lose your job, instead of how many new gadgets to get.

... ride comfort is as important as torque.

... hobby equipment is justified as "investments" instead of "cool stuff", and costs a whole ton more than it used to.

... your colleagues start talking about "biological clocks".

Google musings

Google is striking deep into the walled garden territory with its latest offering - its new Groups version 2 Beta platform seems to be a direct challenge to community stalwarts Yahoo! Groups and MSN Groups.

The new service seeks to differentiate itself from competitors by integrating its original form, a product of search technology and acquired USENET provider DejaNews, together with user-controlled discussion platform capabilities.

This is a logical extension of its content acquisition strategy that assimilated Blogger, and Google consequently obtained a wellspring of content that stems from the blogging phenomenom. What better content to collect than the content your own users show interest in creating?

Google's strategy is elegant, and at the same time terrifying for its competitors. The only real currency in the online space at this time is users. Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and other major portals have worked tirelessly to build their "walled gardens" - attempting to keep their users in their own sphere of control as far as possible by providing as much relevant content as possible. Yet, frighteningly, a service that directs its users ever out of its own domain is instead growing, and growing strong, in that same measure of wealth.

With the introduction of the new GMail service, and consequently being able to tag users with a persistent identifier, it seems like natural progression to develop more community applications to further personalize the Google experience.

Unifying Google's user applications would be the next logical step. Blogger, Groups, GMail and Orkut are currently separate entities, at least from an identifiable-user perspective - each system requires its own account authentication. Bringing them all together under one single login has its own implications, but should not be viewed as being too different from what the other major portals are already doing, and I believe both the company and users will stand to benefit.

Orkut appears to be the bastard child in the stable right now - as a concept and technology, fascinating; but its value seems to be limited unless user relationships can be integrated with other services that will benefit from community/friend-friend interaction.

Google's brain trust appears to be paying dividends. Secretive? Who cares? I'm eager to see what this company has in store for us in the future; hopefully being listed on the public market will not kill its innovative streak.

Keeping up with the Bloggies

I got a little annoyed with the My Yahoo! RSS module which refused to show recent headlines from certain blogspot feeds, especially my own.

So I searched around and found SharpReader, a free-as-in-beer RSS feed reader. Not drop-dead gorgeous, but it does what I want so far. Requires the .NET Framework installed, ~30MB download from Windows Update. No installer, just unzip to an empty folder and run the program directly (and pull a shortcut while you're browsing the folder).

The other free (as in beer) newsreaders seem to have been abandoned somewhere upstream, but if you're using a decently-featured one, do let me know.

Now if I could just get my other blog reads to publish their own site feeds...

Eat your own dog food, they said

So they set up a pedestal for Page and Brin. (Google bought Blogger sometime back, in case you've been holed out in your cliffside armageddon shelter since Dec '99.)

It's an informal way of communicating with users, and it sure beats spamming the hell out of them - those who want to read it will read it, and those who don't remain blissfully ignorant. Microsoft has something along those lines in play as well. Just a matter of time before the brighter companies get their own channels started up. Think "open-door concept".

What I'd really like to see on Google's blog are opinions posted by and attributed to people working there, not the anonymous company-entity news/PR spiel that they have running in the first couple of posts. Then again, if they'd hire me to unplug overheating lava lamps in the Tokyo office, I wouldn't care all that much about who posts what. ;]

Edit: Apparently a post on Google's blog was significantly edited to remove a comment about Indian outsourcing. Prudent, considering the uproar over GMail's privacy issues when it was announced.

Pick of the night

Of all the photos I took in Tokyo, this is one of my favourites. I don't even know why. Not like it's spectacularly sharp or anything, quite the opposite in fact.

Nevertheless.


Roadside stall in Shinjuku, Tokyo

Shinjuku, especially this area just outside one of the entrances to the JR Railway Station, is a constant flow of people going about their jobs, or in search of food and drink, or entertainment, or just trying to catch the train home. It's almost 11pm now on a winter night, and most places are closed for the night. Here at the counter of a roadside stall, a few salarymen eat and chat and relax, oblivious to the passers-by. One of many such islands that provide sustanence and refuge from the day's work and the night's chill breeze.

Blazing headache

Haven't had one like this in a while. Ouch. Been nagging since the afternoon. Coffee didn't help; it's probably not another migraine attack then.

Gonna try and sleep it off. Hope it clears overnight.

Ergh.

Meal madness

As the ads on My Yahoo! have been proclaiming for the past month or so, May 9th is Mother's Day, <brent>AKA</brent>, Yet Another Day In The Stable Of Commercially-Marketable Days. Except that this one, along with Father's and Teacher's and Children's, isn't recognized as an official holiday, denying the workforce of yet another excuse for a day off.

Many bright people have caught on to the fact that Mother's Day is indeed a commercially-exploited day, and arrange to have their celebrations the day or night before. Many brighter restauranteurs have subsequently gotten wind of this grand plan of theirs, and have arranged for prices to be raised for the whole weekend in honour of the occasion, creating special menus at ridiculous markups featuring the same selection of food as available on non-celebratory days. And so the same bright people are snagged along with the clueless, by the net that global marketing has worked so deviously over decades to create.

We could not escape no matter how hard we tried. Mom was so happy at lunch today at the Bar and Billiards Room (Saturday seafood buffet, $45++ per head), you'd have to wear sunglasses in case she beamed your way.

At 2pm, my brother-in-law (edit: the older one), procrastinator that he is, asked J to find a venue for dinner tonight with my in-laws, which she unquestioningly got down to doing. (While not quite having agreed to do it yet, either. The arrogance of assuming that she'll definitely help out annoys me greatly! Grrrr. I absolutely detest being handed last-minute requests.) By that time, most of the restaurants she called were already full. One place had a table available for 7:30pm but it was gone when we rang ten minutes later - they had an 8:30pm table, $250++ Mother's Day set menu only, take it or leave it. So we left it.

We eventually wrangled a booking out of Lei Garden at Orchard Shopping Centre, #2 in the Lei Garden hierarchy (CHJIMES > Orchard Shopping Centre > Orchard Plaza). Gotta see how that goes, traffic tonight is probably going to be a bitch.

In other news
As promised, I loaned my 300D with kit lens to the other brother-in-law for his US trip; he departs tomorrow morning and will be back on the 21st. No camera for two weeks.. sob!

Attended the first of eight (maybe more?) photography lessons with Stanley last night. Interesting, he covered quite a bit of photographic basics, unearthing gems of knowledge that caught most of us by surprise. No practical stuff yet though - all theory.

Fortunately for me, next week's lesson won't involve equipment at all, so the timing of the camera return falls in place neatly. I may not have to borrow G's camera after all. :)

As for holiday plans, J says July might be a better time, and I agree - we'd skip the school holiday period. Still haven't decided on this one. Stay tuned.

Whoops, time for dinner. Out for now.

Traveloguette: Tsukiji Fish Market

Thought I'd put up some of the photos from my Dec '03 trip. This installment features some shots from the famous Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo. All photos unedited save for resizing (no cropping either, was too lazy).

Having woken up late (6am) that morning, we took the Oedo subway line to Tsukijishijo station. After a few minutes of confusion, we spotted several people wearing rubber boots and pulling trolleys, and followed them towards the fish market. Through the dim, spotlit aisles we walked, headed for the tuna auctions at the far end of the compound.


Don't mind us, we're just tourists

The sun had yet to peek over the horizon, but it quickly became apparent that we'd already missed most of the fresh tuna auction action. We did manage to find some frozen tuna auctions still underway, though.

In rubber boots and jockey caps, nylon jackets and cargo pants, hopeful buyers thronged the room, inspecting tuna cutaways with their picks and hooks, jotting down for bidding the numbers painted in red on each prospective carcass.


Barely enough to go around


Now hear this...

In the above shot, one of many auctioneers holding court. Bouncing animatedly up and down on a small stand, he called out tuna numbers to the crowd of waiting buyers. By that time (6:50am) many of the better fish had already been sold, loaded on the ubiquitous market trolley-cart, and hauled away.


Wait for fish?

As we made our way out of the auction area and back through the market, several stallowners were busy preparing their wares - fish and eel, crab and abalone, oyster and sea urchin, and more. In one stall, three men were discussing how to make the next cut in a big, juicy chunk of tuna, while the center man stood ready holding the large chopping knife used to slice the fish.


Too much to the right again?


It takes a delicate hand, you know

Once out of the fish market area, we had to stay alert as trolley-carts and vans zipped past in a seemingly unending stream of motorized traffic, reckless and swift. The carts slipped around obstacles effortlessly, narrowly avoiding collisions, drivers accustomed to the routine.


King of the market road

With help from Frommers, we located a small, crowded sushi-bar restaurant called Sushi Dai, nestled along one of the shophouse rows across from the fish market. Not too pricy, and the fish was oh-so-fresh! What better way to end a visit to Tsukiji than with a sushi breakfast? :)

Sasser sedition

I'm at J's cousin's place right now, after a harrowing session of tech support. As to be expected, the Sasser worm struck, and struck hard. It's a stroke of luck that the XP system updates had already been downloaded and were ready to install; else I'd be running late into the night trying to fend off new worm attacks.

As it happens, more than one virus was resident, along with various adware/spyware/malware nasties. IE was (and still is) totally b0rked, it won't load a single thing. I had to do a manual FTP to the mozilla.org site and download/install Firefox 0.8, at least that's working. Grabbed a fresh copy of Ad-aware, which blew away another 276 lingering creeps. Flushed the Netsky virus too. NAV subscription has expired, so goodness knows how many other menaces are lurking under the hood.

The system looks stable enough so far, but without a functioning IE, a lot of other stuff doesn't work properly (like Y! Messenger Beta's installer, Windows Update, et al. fehh). One of us will have to swing by later with the standard firefighting kit and attempt a repair. Some other day.

Urrgh. Bloody malware. Bloody viruses. Get a Mac!

Sleeping like a...

They who complete the saying above have not themselves experienced parenthood before, decry several bleary-eyed friends. This package, though, was delivered joyfully two nights ago:


I am! Your pride, joy and cause of insomnia, all in one :)

Congratulations, auntiez :)

Weekend wrap-up: photos and journeys

For the last couple of months, I've been taking the camera along almost everywhere I go. J has gotten used to it (or at least, gotten tired of complaining about it), but she still tries to avoid having her picture taken. Lately, she's been giving me split-second funny-face poses, then tsk-tsks me for being too slow when I miss the shot. But I do manage to catch some on occasion. :)

Trigger-happy
Spent some time this weekend visiting old friends and taking photos of their baby girl. And their two cats. I wouldn't mind keeping a cat or two at home, I kinda like 'em. But the furniture will suffer, and so will J, whose fear of animals hasn't lessened quite enough yet.


My remote!


Don't bug me now, Survivor is on


Who are you and what do you want?


I'll be good, mummy, just feed me

Wanderlust, wander lost
Another friend recently returned from a 7-day tour of Hokkaido with his wife, and stopped by our place today with photos and some souvenirs. Their trip included a short stopover in Tokyo because of the internal flight transfer, so we'd recommended a number of food joints to try in Tokyo.

I had passed him a shopfront photo of a tempura restaurant in Shinjuku, called Tsunahachi (tsu·na·ha·chi), along with an annotated map pinpointing its location, since I knew there would not be any English signage along the way. Apparently, he'd forgotten about the photograph, and the couple, confused and disoriented, had walked straight past the restaurant. They then entered a fast-food joint to ask for directions, and someone there, even more confused, pointed them in the wrong direction!

Eventually, after some backtracking and reorientation, they did find the restaurant in time to enjoy a good tempura lunch, before rushing to catch the flight home.

After looking through their photos, J and I are itching to go back to Japan again (third time in twelve months? oh yeahhh), and definitely to Hokkaido. This time we're thinking of abandoning our usual free-and-easy mode, and take a guided tour instead - hoping that not having to plan will translate to a more enjoyable break.

Come to think of it, I haven't been on a beginning-to-end guided tour for more than a decade. Might be a good time to do one.