Battlestar Galactica (Re-imagined)

I don't really enjoy watching TV series as I find most of them draggy. I like films or movies which is I could just spend 2 to 3 hrs to watch and digest. Another main reason for not watching TV is the commercials (damn I hate them!!!) So it was a blessing when I got my new Creative Vision W. Most of the movies are in DVD and I need more stuff to watch. So I managed to get Battlestar Galactica Season 1 and was blown away! Great story and acting. Highly recommend it. I just finished Season 3 and am now waiting for the last season which will air in America late this year. Hope its as good as the 2nd season.

Cylon rules!!!

Little Eating Machine

None other than my baby girl. Hehe. She's getting fat from all the milk and semi-solids. She likes to try new stuff and every time she see us eats, she wants part of it. A bit worrying though is that she does not concentrate that well. Likes to wander off and play and stop eating before coming back for more. I read up about it and I think my wife has it too (more on that later)... so naturally I am a bit worried. Anyway, most of the kids here are a bit hyperactive, so I may be a bit paranoia about it. Still, the best way to actually help ADD (no cure for this) is to recognize the problem and help them to develop the correct skill sets before reaching their adulthood.

Rain Rain Rain!!!

Sorry for not writing as much. I have been spending most of my time with my baby girl. Now its really fun to intereact with her. She likes to mimic both me and my wife's gestures and sound. Can't really talk yet and having difficulty to understand some simple instructions. But she is progressing quite well. hehe.. Her hand eye coordination is improving every day, we let her play some simple "Put things in a plastic bag" Game and she could do it very well each time.

The rainy season is here by the way and it had rained for the pass 4 days. Today at least got some sun so managed to quickly sun our bedsheets. Its cool here but quite moody from the overcast weather. Will be taking more photos and videos of baby and upload it for all to see.. Until then.. ciao..

Some update

Its great to be back in Thailand! But the weather here quite jialat. Everyday rain or cloudy. Not hot and humid but a bit moody feeling.

Anyway, here's a video of girl girl playing foot ball... hehehe more to come soon.

3434

That's the Licence number for my Taxi I booked for tomorrow's trip to Budget Terminal.  Time really flies and I have came back to Singapore for 2 months (actually less as I came back on the 22nd).   Anyway, wanted to write one little entry before I leave the Land of Smiles at 6.35am.  Wa Pian, bad thing about flying budget is their timing all quite screwy.  So I have to get up at 4am and booked the Taxi at 4.20am

Should reach Chiang Mai at 8.35am.  Clearing immigration and checkpoint should take an hour.  This time, Tiger airways actually allow booking of seats.  So I took the 3rd row.  hehehe This will let me get off the plane earlier and get into the front of immigration queue. 

Once out of the airport, have to quickly grab a cab and head to Arcade Bus Terminal to get my bus tix.  Which should be the 12pm as it's the last bus for the morning.  If I missed that, jia lat liao, have to wait till 3pm for the next one.  So far have not missed once so hopefully no delays. 

If I managed to get the 12pm bus, I should reach Maesai at 5pm (at most).  15min ride on Swang Tiao and I will hit home sweet home with wify and girl girl.... hehehe... long day ahead.

The Return

Think most of you already knew that I will be flying back on Monday. This is the longest period of time I have been away from my wife and baby. Anyway, I saw on the Skype that girl girl can walk on her own liao. Pretty fast actually as my mum said it took me 2 years before I could walk properly. So I guess on Monday, she will be standing there with mummy waiting for me. Hehe ... Really waiting for that moment.

Of course I am also a bit worried about her reaction. That time when I was away for a month, she saw me and cried. Think she recognises me but might feel unhappy or even angry for not being with her most of the time.

Another thing to note is that exchange rate for baht is all time low :(. Now SGD$1 can only change 21.8baht. That's almost 2 baht difference. Which means I changed $1k SGD, I lost 2000baht difference (really quite a lot). Hope the situation gets better when I return.

Anyway, I plan to stay there for at least 2 months before I return for Singapore. I still need to complete my coming RT for the next workyear. So I guess I will be back in Sep or Oct for another 2 months.

The Real Transformers

The movie is a trash but this clip from youtube is not.  Have to say these jokers are really ONz... hahaha

I like the Starscream and Optimus Prime.  At least this is more entertaining than the movie.

 

Multiple Exposures

I saw this great idea of film exhanging program in clubsnap forum and decided to give a try. I asked my photography friend from SLCC (the school I am teaching in now) to complete a roll of film without telling me the subjects he took. I then reload the film on my camera and shoot again to see what effects we could achieve.

Surprisingly, we could get 6 pretty good shots from the 36 exposures. Pretty fun. hehe.. Click on the album below to take a look.

Multiple Exposures

Trashy Transformers

I watched the highly anticipated and over-hyped Transformers the action movie last night at Tampines. Before I even decide to watch this flick, I already prepared myself by lowering my expectation of this movie. Director Michael Bay is infamous for creating something shallow and meaningless. Nevertheless, watching cars transforming into robots in CGIs should be cool right?

How wrong. After the first 2 transformation of the machines to robots, I find the CGI missed the point. Instead of showing a still frame of how a car transforms into a robot, the stupid camera rotates and pans while the transformation is in progress. Its like trying hard to "morph" rather than transform. Also missing is the traditional transformation sound that I used to get in the G1 cartoon(think I only heard it twice). Sucks big time. Prime also looks stupid with a mouth. Bumble Bee can't speak for the whole movie until the end where suddenly he could speak for no apparent reasons. I don't even want to talk about Megatron...

Well, at least it should be at least "entertaining" to watch all the action and mayhem right? Wrong again, the action is pretty boring with a lot of "you can guess" what will happen sequences. Nothing new. (Think Die Hard 4.0 might be better). My friend actually felt like sleeping at the ending action sequence. Trust me, its "that" predictable.

Final score 2/5 stars. 2 stars because they did hire Peter Cullen (orginal voice actor of Prime in G1) for the voice of Optimus Prime. Other than that, nothing nostalgic is worth mentioning in this trash.

More Zen!!

I want to write more about my new Zen Vision W. Hehe. Wanted to give a review about this little gadget. First, its really has a great screen. 16:9 aspect ratio really helps in viewing movies. And it also have the ability to stretch the video to fill up the screen if necessary. Pretty cool feature. Battery last quite long, about 5 hours (a bit more as the box gave 4.5 hours)

Sound quality with my Shure E2G headphones are excellent. I watched part of Snakes on a Plane on a bus heading to my school and enjoyed every minute of it.

Plugging this baby into a computer is easy with Vista. As it is using MTP (M$ Transfer Protocol), I could easily transfer file by dragging and dropping in Explorer (only in Windows system). For my MACbook Pro, I used XNJB. A free software and I could make it mount easily on my MAC too!!! Yeah!!

The software provided by Creative is simple and easy to use. Files that needs conversion will actually be prompted and you could choose to re-code it to a playable format.

Most files actually play. There are some that don't, especially those that are AC3(5.1) encoded. Copying from VCD is also not a hassle as the player supports VCD's dat format. I copied my friend's Ultraman Mebius and Ultraman brothers and watched it without any issues.

So far so good, but here's the ugly part. First, the screen is a dust or finger print magnet. One touch and you get smudge so a screen protector is absolutely necessary. The silicon skin is also magnet to dust and so is the bloody pouch. Pouch is too small and its made of velvet. :( No no to dusty environment. Another major thing is VOB files from DVD does not work and it requires ripping and conversion. Which means all my current DVD library needs to be encoded.

I tried encoding with some third party software and most of them took ages to convert. And its not easy to encode in DivX or Xvid. So you would end up encoding it in mpeg or VCD. Which means quality suffers and file sizes bigger.

The player also has a CF card slot which allows you to back up the CF card. Buy now and creative is giving a free SD/MS/XD card converter for those using other media. VERY useful for me as a photographer. For those interested, beware! You can't play videos or pictures from the card directly, you need to import it into the Zen's hard drive before you can play.

All in all, a good player that met my expectations and actually performed even better than I expected. Not recommended if you are not sure of where to get videos. (IF you plan to rip DVD, forget about this device). If you have a good collection of VCDs or divx/Xvid. Yes, its definitely a good buy. My only complain now is why in the world I go buy the 30Gig version??!!! Should have add 100 more for the 60Gig.... 4/5 stars

*Updates. Forgot to mention you could hooked this up to your TV with the supplied AV cables. I re-watched Hot Fuzz with my Family that night and quality is as good as DVD. Too bad no AC3 audio but good enough for me already :)

Movie on the Move

 I just bought a Zen Vision W and I am in awe with it.  I could play most of my downloaded videos in divx and Xvids and the screen is damn clear.  Just loaded some movies like Snakes on the Plane and Hot Fuzz on the player and its playing very well.  I also bought this for the memory card backup feature.  As you do know I shoot with CF cards and this little bugger has a CF compartment to import all my photos into the 30GB drive.

Very happy with it and still trying out the new toy.  :)