My childhood idol, Micheal Jackson has been taken away, going back into arms of god. I liked his music, his style and his talent except his beliefs. I think he should’t have went for all those ‘modification’ to his physical self but still, I think I just like his music and talent.

(Taken from yahoo.com)

Rest well. May your music continue to live and you always be in our hearts. <3

Came upon a website that shared how to take good pictures with just a camera phone.

1). Know your camera
Check the spec – make sure it can do what you want it to do

2). Always use the flash in poor light
No matter how poor the flash is!

3). Stand extremely still (hold your breath when taking pictures)

4). Get close to your subject
2 feet or so for maximum sharpness

5). Use the highest resolution possible
don’t worry about the size fo your picture if it’s quality you value

6). Avoid the digital zoom
Use optical by all means, but stay away from digital zooms

7). Use White Balance
Experiment with your phone’s options. Incandescent is good for poor visibility

8). Use Night mode
If your camera has a night mode setting, use it, even in cloudy rather than night conditions. Use it in combination with incandescent white balance setting for optimum quality

9). Use Spot photometry
Use it in conditions of uneven lighting – if you want to highlight the light areas more, focus on the light, but at the expense of the shadows. And vice versa, of course!

10). Make sure your lens is clean!

Source: http://mobilementalism.com/quick-summary-of-tips/

Singaporeans sure love to complain, and ofcourse that includes me. Hop on the wagon with the crowd and demand for more. Besides, I’ve been with m1 for more than 10years and we deserve better than those who only came for 2-4years BUT to providers, they will love the 2-4years customers so much because they have spent their salary on it using the 3G and HSPA services. On the other hand, I’ve only been using the student plan so they chose to neglect me? Although my contributions weren’t as much as compared to those customers, at least I had tried to stay with the provider for so long.

With the strong competition and bad economy, everyone is reducing their spending power and that includes me. M1 isnt looking forward to old customers I guess; they’re looking for new.

So whats with loyalty to providers? NAH. To them, we just come and go. Thats how sad providers treat loyal customers.

Starhub and Singtel, on the other hand, is really keeping loyal customers and attracting new customers. I remember receiving a $150 voucher from Starhub despite not subscribing to their mobile services but their CableTV(well, before Singtel introduced their MIO TV, there was only CableTV in Singapore).

Singtel also sent their loyal customers vouchers once the 20months of contract is over.

M1 has only sent me 2 vouchers so far with $50 and $100 vouchers. For those customers more than 10years of loyalty, they should have improvise something better and extraordinary.

Starhub, Im not really saying you’re good. Your cableTV got no recontract plans and that sucks. I’ve been waiting to recontract for free gifts (they only give free gifts to new customers!) but to no avail. Time to reflect too.

With here, I will send in my screenshot about my second complain to M1 about their poor customer service attitude and hopefully I will get a positive answer.

The reason why we had to watch this concert is because there were rumours spreading around on the Internet that Nichole (the main lead singer) might be leaving the Pussycat Dolls(PCD) for her solo career but a google search indicated that the rumour is untrue and she will not leave the PCD.

And if you notice from my pictures below, yeah 1 of the babe, Jessica didnt perform because she wasnt feeling well (once again, rumours?)  Im not sure about that but the concert didn’t seem COMPLETE as they lack of a person and the gaps between the team, there always seem to have a room for 1.

I would have enjoyed the concert if the people around me and my dearest would stand up and groove to the music and being the first 5rows at the front, we know we shouldnt stand up and block the view of the audiences behind.  The other areas seem more lively than ours for sure, and music is really regardless of age; I saw a family with 40s/50s grandma walking in, and grooving!

To make our day better, class95 fm DJs, Glenn Ong and Jean Danker were just sitting right infront of us =) JD’s really pretty and so is Glenn, and his tatoo!

See the full flickr sets here!

You don’t always get a chance to take photos in a robe, besides we had to pay to rent it, so why not make the full use out of it?  Thus we used the robe for some shoots in my dearest house (its not a studio!) Adjusted the white balance to suit her wall and the pictures came out well =), uncompared to real studio ofcourse, I don’t have softbox nor reflectors. 

These pics were taken with canon 400D, 50mm F1.8 prime lens with Sigma EF500.

Since we were working at chinatown (very near to central), I had my dslr with me and we had to walk over to clarke quay for an errand in Liang Court, she decides that I should be a model for just 5minutes and let her shoot.

Okay this is a really ‘expired’ blog post but my girl wants me to talk about it.  Its been quite some time ever since we went sentosa together for a swim/tan so we took an ‘off’ day just for it; there are lesser people on weekdays and the beach won’t be as congested or crowded what..

And ofcourse, phototaking is my girl’s forte; she’s more than a narcisstis.  I used to be like that too until I became over-aware of gaining public’s unwanted attention.

So here’s the photos:

Alright.  The pic above looks edited?  Ofcourse!  I won’t show people my belly BUT my gf didn’t consult me when she uploading my ‘big-beer-belly’ photo.

Another photo that went through my tedious photoshopping:

And the below is me without photoshop (from my dear’s blog)

And the following is how we’ve enjoyed our weekday =)

Then we went to Teoheng for our KTV session, just for the both of us and reached back home late and tired but it was definitely an unusual outdoor day!

Im been forcing on my brains for the very little bits of juices for web design for the past few days and realised that web design is totally different from web development.  Being proficient in web programming doesn’t make me a pro web designer.  I’ve got 3 freelance projects on hand and I wld rather code php/mysql than html/css/psd.  Allow me to share this:

1. PHP/MYSQL is straightforward.  If you don’t get the results from the database, just keep troubleshoot
2. Its design-less.  I dont need to do color charts or layout design.  Its just the output.
3. Javascript is a bonus, not a must (to me).  Some users might disable their javascript and cripple the functions, thus it will defeat my backend purpose (although the real-time update is really cool)

Now, as a part-time web designer:

1. Colors are important.  It brings the users attention!
2. Typography.  Font family, size and emphasis!
3. Layout to place your contents and navigation.  It must be as user friendly and intuitive as possible!
4. Navigations are crucial too.  They define the user’s experience.
5. Pictures speak a thousand words.  Get the pictures right!
6. Gradiency with web2.0!  Layout graphics tend to look more cooler in gradient.

Web developer usually dont look at the front-end side.  They don’t work much with graphics and layout and may not design as better as designers but at least they’re well-versed in codings!

This article is written as of my experience as a free-lance web designer in a cosmetic company.  Many web enthusiasts may disagree with what I had say but its really what I felt.  Time to get back to brainstorm for better designs!

If you’re a Singaporean and the word Ultimatum sounds unfamiliar to you, perhaps you should try to watch some local dramas some time. Yes, I agree there isn’t much nice shows by the locals BUT, this show is different. Remember ‘the unbeatables’ decades back when you were still having your pacifier or still swimming around, then you wouldn’t really recall it. That kind of drama is what we always want and something not always delivered to us. The ‘golden path’ was another drama that can make me go home just to watch that 1 hour every weekday.

Thanks to I-Weekly, I went with my dearest baby girl to queue at the front of the stage so that we can capture good shots of the casts. start drooling girls!

Random event before the ultimatum cast

Introduction to the ultimatum!

TAY PING HUI with his smirks. 

 
Another collage of Tay Ping Hui (he sure loves to smirk!)

FELICIA CHIN. so cute!

FELICIA! sweet.

ELVIN! cute and handsome..

And we managed to have a hand-shaking session with the casts which was totally not in our plans initially.  my girl wanted to shake fann’s hand so badly and I can’t resist Felicia either. Hahaha.. 

PS: it is indeed my lucky day today. Imagine after wasted $10 on the UFO catcher, today I managed to recuperate my losses by winning 2 softtoys with just $4 at the UFO catches. I love these machines, at times.

Took this picture of Singapore’s cityscape on Singapore Flyer with 3 different exposures and combined with photomatix (no manual editing) I like the clouds and city line. the floating platform can be seen as well..