Fab desktop fun

Yahoo! recently announced the purchase of Konfabulator, and released a completely free version to the public, which we've been fiddling around with for the last couple of days. It's like putting a layer over your desktop, on which you can add useful (and some useless) mini-applications called widgets. Works on both Mac and Windows.

I have several active widgets on my desktop at the moment - a calendar widget, an analog clock widget, a stock ticker widget, a floating "where is it?" search box configured for quick access to Yahoo! Search, and a picture frame that pulls new photos from the main flickr photostream every minute or so.

Still looking for a good RSS reader widget. I found several in the widget gallery but none of them seem to do what I want. Guess I could look into modifying one of the existing widgets, but that's only if I can find the time. Maybe next month.

Blogging 001 - Spelig iz opshunl

The latter part of qoomonster's latest entry is a list of "things people should know if they want to blog". Point #5 in particular struck a nasty chord:

The one thing missing from most blog publishing tools are a spell- and grammar- check

Not that I'm bothered about the occasional grammatical mistake or language error, but when someone's blog/email/comment turns into an SMS/l33t-fest, it gets annoying to say the least. In this day and age, we have the choice and convenience of online dictionaries like Merriam-Webster Online and Dictionary.com. Do everyone a favour and use them often. If you use FireFox or SlickRun, create a keyword shortcut - it saves tons of time.

Besides, you can still go wrong with a spelling checker.

Amoy Street Hawker Centre

Had cze char for dinner at Amoy Street Hawker Centre at this stall named Quan Ji, which Mom insists that she'd brought me to before. Must have been too long ago for me to remember, since I didn't have any kind of impression whatsoever. Anyway.

Ordered four dishes - san lao he, kai lan, pai guat wong and prawn-paste chicken, all of which were fairly nicely done. Photos of everything except the kai lan:



Spotted while waiting: Two old men and their two friendly beers, Guinness and Tiger.

Reunion at twelve

davin, originally uploaded by varf.

Our old JC choir gang had a reunion of sorts on Saturday. It was meant to be a send-off party for one of our number who'd be departing on a 10-month overseas stint with UNICEF, but mainly we just had a good time, catching up with one another on family and personal developments over the past twelve years since our graduation.

The kid in the photo is the son of one of our altos. Despite the lack of same-generation company, he had a fun time being passed around by the numerous uncles and miss/mrs/ms/messrs, and playing with the tripod that we used while taking some group photos for memories' sake.

Random rants

On reckless roadsters:

There's this yellow Lambo with a single-digit 7 plate that frequents the stretch of ECP between Marine Parade and the Bayshore exit, whose driving ego justifies the typical bloody-rich-bugger-thinks-hes-the-king-of-the-road response from lesser drivers such as we. I had the extreme displeasure of having to brake hard for him as he cut into my lane without warning, several times; irate as he straddled both my lane and the next, blocking everyone else behind him; fuming as he tore along the road shoulder, engine screaming, to overtake a red Japanese car that had dared filter across his hundred-metre-long lane presence.

Obviously, the daft sod couldn't afford to install signal lamps after working out the cost of his jet fuel.


On pathetic produce:

We used to like the pies from Don's, Your Personal Pie Club, but the Shepherd's that we had today was downright awful. Over-spiced and over-potatoed, the filling was so peppery that I gave up after the second taste and dumped the whole pie. Granted that it was purchased on Friday and oven reheated today, but two days don't turn a pie into a pepper pot. At least their quarter Chicken pie was decent.

J's Shepherd's are soooo much better, her pies keep for at least a week in the fridge and still turn out nice after reheating. Can't beat the homemade stuff.


On draggy downloads:

Had to set up the in-law's printer this morning, and the driver download from HP was crawling at a mere 2.4K/s. It took an age to download a 5+ megabyte driver, during which my brother-in-law stepped out to buy lunch, and had already returned by the time the installation was done.

And here I am now, staring at the 39-megabyte HP Inkjet installer download for OSX that's been going on for the past three hours and has one whole hour left to go. F'ggin' A.

Of passing and the past

Had a pretty rough week at work with crazy deadlines and numerous interruptions, but at least some relief came in the form of a friendly game of foosball with the ESPN folks on Thursday night. (How 'friendly' a 4v4 round-robin competition with 16 games to be played can be is left to your imagination; all I can say is that one game against the motor mouth in particular was especially gratifying.)

I reached home that same night to hear that one of my grand-aunts had passed away earlier that afternoon.

While I wasn't particularly close to her side of the family, that all-familiar sense of loss struck me all the same.

The news brought back memories of the departure of my grandmother, some eight (seven? nine? my memory is failing me) years ago. Grandfather often used to say that she came back to visit him in his sleep, until he, too, departed, five years ago on this very day. I miss them both.

At the wake tonight, I was sad and subdued. Paid my last respects, offered some incense, sat down for a while with the rest of my relatives. It felt kind of odd for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we were the embodiment of CNY relatives - we'd only get to see each other during the annual Chinese New Year visiting routine, so meeting up at a wake seemed slightly out of context. And secondly, most of them were having a good time - well ok, not good good, but certainly not wailing-weepy - catching up with the rest, cracking NKF jokes, peanut jokes, jokes about grandparents and old folks; the latter mainly coming from the grandparents and old folks themselves.

After a while I felt absolutely silly about feeling solemn and serious. You just can't keep a straight face with these old folks going heartily at it (and at each other, and everyone around). And that's when I realized that the beauty of a wake is not in the mourning of the deceased; it's in the celebration of the life that they led, of the strength of family support, and of the support of those around and close to them.

And then I left the wake, still feeling a bit sad, but not so subdued, not so solemn. And walked away with a smile.

I will miss my grand-aunt's gentle kindness, her warm smile, her green bean snacks and kueh pai tee that we'd always look forward to during Chinese New Year. May she rest in peace.

Locked

locked
Originally uploaded by varf.

Took a photo of the rear of a truck parked near the office this morning, before heading to the usual haunt for breakfast.

I've been trying to get up earlier for work in the morning, beating the 8am ERP timing consistently for almost the whole of last week. Missed it yesterday because we went to have breakfast at Boss' stall in bizad, and today simply because we overslept a little. I ended up paying a hefty $2.50 on both occasions for entering the downtown zone just after 8:30 am.

The extra undisturbed office time in the morning is working out great - I can concentrate better since there aren't too many background (and in-my-face) distractions until later in the day. Especially since it's getting harder and harder to find uninterrupted stretches of concentration time due to the ever-increasing number of meetings, ad-hoc requests and shoulder taps.

Can't believe I'm actually becoming a morning-type person-thingie after all these lazy years. Will horrors never cease?

Kyoto JR Station

kyoto station in mono
Originally uploaded by varf.

One of my favourites from the holiday photos. This is a section of the busy Kyoto Station, whose design attracted its fair share of supporters as well as critics.

Rainy afternoon

rainy afternoon
Originally uploaded by varf.

Shot from yesterday.

Curiously enough

A couple of old friends also marked their wedding anniversaries in this past week or so, though our respective weddings occured in different years.

Come to think of it, just a few years ago (I forgot how many, but should be either two or three) around this time of the year, I'd attended what seemed like a continuous stream of seven weekend weddings, of which three were scheduled for the same weekend. Even better, the two weddings that fell on the same day were held at the same hotel and in the very same ballroom - a lunch wedding followed by a dinner wedding!

July is probably a good month for getting hitched, or at least it seems that way for the folks that I know. :)

Afternoon date

J and I took the afternoon off today to mark our fourth year together as husband and wife, wandering leisurely around Paragon and Takashimaya between lunch at Chikuyotei (unagi and tempura), tea at Shimbashi Soba (anmitsu daily dessert set), and dinner at Imperial Treasure Nan Bei Restaurant (cantonese roast duck and pan-fried sea bass).

We spent some time browsing the Straits Times 160th Anniversary photo exhibition in Paragon, admiring the images, exploring and recalling memories of past events - both happy and tragic - that had been dutifully recorded by the paper's photographers throughout the years.

J bought me a brownie from The Brownie Factory, one of the newer stalls in Taka's food basement. It's the gooey-chewy kind which I used to love as a kid in the States, and this one didn't taste bad at all, but stuff like that never seems to be as good as one remembers. (I guess it's near-impossible to compete with a treasured memory.)

We made a round through the food festival at the Ngee Ann City event hall after that. There's quite a selection of food in the aisles, ranging from delicate Kyoto sweets to hot spicy Korean kimchi, from mustard-dipped frankfurters to prata-rolled sausages, from refreshingly-cool ice kachang and chendol to sinful-looking, fat-free Italian gelato. Survived without buying anything, although we were sorely tempted on many counts!

Happy anniversary, J. I trust you enjoyed our day as much as I did.

Revenge of the mugged

Sometimes when the decorating bug hits, the decorated hit back.

As for someone who was asking around the office for her mug, well, post-it victim #2 had this to say:



See the whole series from this morning starting at the first pic, with some notes added courtesy of the now-reversed decorator and decoratee roles.

Just another day at the office

Wantunn and I found ourselves playing an extended game of post-it-hide-and-seek this morning after a freak cubicle-decoration storm struck overnight, similar to how glutton's desk was hit yesterday. It wasn't quite as comprehensively decked out as this office, but it did take me a while to discover that my water mug had also gone missing.

A nerf gun showdown with the perpetrator eventually forced out enough clues to locate the missing mug, but not until after a whole lot of ribbing and nerfing had been administered, inducing a steady stream of guilty giggles.


The post-it perp posing pretty, last seen in the company of victim #2 who stands at about 6 feet tall and is known to possess a pair of seriously sharp scissors.

Robatayaki Magome

On our last night in Osaka during our Japan holiday in May, we asked the hotel concierge for robatayaki recommendations, and they made a booking for us at this place called Magome 炉ばた焼 馬籠, a cosy eatery nestled along a stretch under the train tracks near the Hankyuu Umeda station (阪急線梅田駅). We found the place eventually after a bit of hunting around in the rain, thanks in part to our sketchy understanding of the concierge's directions.

(Click here for a map and a picture of the prominent "力" logo to look out for.)



As the sign proclaimed, every menu item cost ¥300 (sometimes ¥300 x2 units for the larger items). Over the next two hours or so, the five of us stuffed ourselves silly to the seat-rocking bass counterpoint of trains rumbling overhead, racking up more than sixty ¥300-units of food and beverages. Very satisfactory!



See all of the dinner photos here.

Pro at work

Last night, we attended the wedding dinner of a long-time family friend of J's, at the Conrad. Expecting bad traffic due to the NDP rehearsal road closures, we drove to the hotel early, and spent some time strolling around Suntec before dinner.



The photographer for the day sported a short pale-blond ponytail, a pair of dark blue Oakleys perched atop his crown, and an outdoors sportsman's sunglass-protected sunburn. Dressed in a black polo tee and jeans, and fully decked out in a Lowepro S&F harness with an entire array of pouches around his waist, he went about his job quite efficiently, always preparing ahead - pulling up a chair in front of the stage to shoot the champagne pouring, getting the next table to start forming up for the group photo before going back to shoot the previous table.

Equipment-wise, he employed a Canon EOS 1D, a 5XX-series flash with omnibounce, and mostly swapped between a 16-35L and a mid-range L zoom which I couldn't identify. He'd use this interesting cross-hand grab - left hand wrapping around the front of the camera to grip his right hand, lens resting on his forearm - to support the camera for longer-zoom shots.

Interesting. I could learn from that.

Backstroke of the West

Wantunn sent me this absolutely priceless screencap collection of bad translations. See it even if you haven't watched the movie yet.

Freespace frenzy

While ploughing through a whole chunk of '04 photos, I attempted to be ruthless and discard photos that didn't make the cut, but that failed rather miserably. It wasn't difficult to be self-critical - I knew how bad most of those 'saved' photos were - but somehow I'd still hesitate to delete them, wondering if I'd regret not being able to see those pics again in future.

I did pick out a couple of photos that I'd long since forgotten about, though. Here's one:



So much for cutting down on the volume. Making two copies of each DVD-R, I ended up with a total of ten discs just for 2004.

The painful bit isn't that the DVD-Rs are expensive. In fact, they're getting a lot cheaper now - I just paid $54 for 50 pieces of Fujifilm 8x DVD-Rs (made by Taiyo Yuden in Japan, according to the store's boss).

No, the painful bit is that my setup takes about 30 minutes to perform the write-verify cycle for each disc, during which I can either (1) surf the web, (2) watch anime with really choppy playback, or (3) read a book. Out of which I usually end up doing (2), which just goes to show how much of a sucker I am for punishment.

The good news is that I now have another twenty-odd gigabytes of free space available for photos and processing, and it'll take a couple of months at least before I get hit by the space crunch again. Probably.

DVD writer + external enclosure = warm fuzzy feeling

Not wanting to face the pain of not being able to cut DVDs at will again, I decided to pick up this nameless, brandless enclosure that could fit my Plextor PX-708A DVD writer (salvaged from the now-dead PC), $85 from MacLink at Sim Lim Square.



The first DVD backup disc burned OK without a hitch; the second has just finished writing cleanly and I'm watching as the verification stage progress bar chugs along.

I can back up my photos again. I feel a little more secure now.

Skies

A series of sky shots taken during the ROM shoot:








And a kind-of self portrait:

Wet wedding

No, it didn't rain, thankfully.

But shooting Saturday's ROM ceremony involved getting knee-deep into the pool. Which my silly cousin completely (and conveniently!) forgot to mention.

So there I was, clad in Shirt-and-Jeans™ and dress shoes, waiting for the hotel lift when the other photographer asked me: "Did you bring shorts? We might have to go into the pool to take photos."

Say what!?



After taking a look for myself, I quickly called J and got her to rush a pair of shorts down to the hotel. I guess it always pays to recon the event beforehand, but this one caught me totally off-guard. >.<

Here are the links to view the gallery or slideshow directly.

Update: In my haste to get this posted I left out a couple of things:

- The Justice of Peace that they engaged was the same one that J and I engaged to do our wedding solemnization;
- She was late for our wedding solemnization by almost an hour (caught in a traffic jam coming back from the airport); and
- She was late for this one as well (got lost on the way to the hotel).

The light would have been beautiful if it had started on time. But crap happens. :/

Oh the frustration

I haven't shut my iMac down for so long that I'd forgotten where the power button was.

It all began with the harddisk running out of space thanks to heavy photo activity. While trying back up the photos from my cousin's ROM yesterday, I killed no less than six DVD-Rs and one DVD+R, all of which failed to write properly.

The error codes and messages returned were varied - bad media, verification failure, tracking servo failure. And the last one implied some kind of hardware problem. Some frantic searching suggested that drive overheating could be the culprit, quite likely given that the iMac is almost never off.

So I shut it down for a couple of hours' break this afternoon, and am now attempting the backup again. So far so good - the DVD-R is already in the verification stage. Hopefully it doesn't bail out like earlier.

Now I'm really tempted to invest in a good external firewire DVD writer.

Colour shift

I wanted to shift to the new blogger templates sometime back because of the built-in commenting features and less wonky layout, but I'd put it off every time probably due to sheer reluctance to migrate my sidebar links and extras.

The flickr itch finally drove me to do it, just because I wanted to include the funky-looking flickr badge on the sidebar at the right.

No thanks to qoomonster and her new flickr addiction, now it looks like I might actually cave in and spend once more on online photo storage. Bleah.

I won't be using Haloscan for commenting anymore with this new template, but it was a great free ride while it lasted. Thanks, Haloscan.

Crackle

Spotted today.

Pizza spizza

I brought J to Spizza at Club Street once for dinner with a couple of friends. Ever since then she's been a convert; no more sucky Pizza Hut/Canadian Pizza nonsense for her!

Since J had several one-free-medium-pizza vouchers for the Spizza outlet at Harbourfront, we went there for dinner tonight (and for last Friday's dinner too). The voucher needs to be handed over to the staff before our order is placed, but it seems kind of silly because we'd get another voucher right back when we ask for the check!

J's favourite Spizza-pizza is currently the Victoria (minus chilli, plus olives). I find myself liking that combination too, but I've yet to settle on a personal favourite. Thus far I've tried the Juliana, Helena and Ginna (somehow I always pronouce this one a la siginah :P). I'm itching to try the eggs-and-black-truffle pizza and the pizza with fresh salmon, whose names I don't recall at the moment. Perhaps soon - we still have vouchers.

Picky picky

I used to not like doing any manipulation on my photos past some minor adjustments like auto-levels, cropping and resizing. These days it seems like I hardly put up any photo without tweaking the colours here, or the curves there.

Maybe I'm getting more picky about what I produce, or maybe I'm becoming addicted to photo adjustment.

Maybe I'm simply desperate to make horrible pictures look passible.

Maybe I just suck.

Whatever.

Spent a lot of Life-Between-Work time in the past week adjusting photos from a wedding that I helped cover two Sundays ago. Although I did manage to squeeze time in to process a few more holiday photos from the Osaka Kaiyukan and vicinity: