In One Day

Whether we realized it or not, time never waits for anyone. Look away, you will lost seconds. Hold your breath, you will lost minutes. Close your eyes, you will lost hours. Play with facebook ? you'd probably lost more than all that combine. :D. Time is seemed to past us by faster by the year. Hence in one day, we might not even recall all the subtle things that had happen throughout of the day. Why not photograph it ?

Terence's brand new umbrella. Redeemed from credit card points. Pretty cool and cute SPCA themed and sending the right message with the "Be Kind to Animal" motto.

 
Always feel glad that my mum always cook my lunch. Its easier than go outside and trying to think what should I eat again today ?


The traffic here is nothing compared to KL rush hour jam. Still, keeping a cool head is vital.


Weather have been unfavorable for the past 3 days. My shoes check in to the office on monday and only manage to check out today. Safe to say, the rain is making me fatter.


Before you know it, the sun sets at 6.40 onwards. After all that, 40 minute is all we get to allocate on the jog.


Cheers. ^_^

Exposure For Background Brighter Than Foreground

It must be frustrating at time when that ultra expensive camera still fails to render a scene with the proper exposure. It may be easy to always blame the camera for faulty metering and much easier to just think that upgrading to an even higher end camera body will solve your own inadequacy. At best always try read the camera manual and learn all the function and feature of your camera first before actually go out and pressing the shutter button like there is no tomorrow. Being ignorant by nature is one thing, being ignorant by choice is also known as procrastinating.

On cases like a background that is much brighter than the foreground, using Spot Metering tends to give you a correct exposure under such situation.

 
But I used Spot Metering, why the photo still came out dark ?

Spot Metering covers around 3.8% of the viewfinder and is usually a circle just outside the middle focus point. As indicated in the photo above, spot metering cover the meter reading of that red outline circle and not the one that is covering the active focus point (denoted by a red triangle). Spot metering always stay smack in the middle, meaning if you want to meter a subject correctly and still maintain a rule of thirds, you will need to do an exposure lock (using the *) and recompose the shot.

Properly exposed subject.

This should help remedy those after session discussion with your other half on why she did a variety of funny pose for the camera and yet the photos came out all dark dark.


No more missing that decisive moment. eh ? :D

 

Using Wibiya Without Adding HTML Gadget On Blogspot

If you are using the default installer on the wibiya website for its widget on your blogspot blog, it will add a HTML/Javascript Gadget into your blog to execute and run the widget when your page load. This may not seem favorable because the HTML gadget will leave a header with the wibiya wording but with an empty body (Not esthetically pleasing).

Its better to embed the code without a HTML/Javascript gadget as the Wibiya widget only shows a visualized component that are attached at the bottom and not inside the body of the gadget.

Go into the Blogger Dashboard and to the Design tab. Locate something similar on your template a bar like this (below).

Locate the wibiya widget and click Edit


Copy the content source and click remove to remove the HTML gadget.


Paste it on a notepad


Click to the Edit Template tab


Copy the code from the notepad and paste it into the template just before the closing tag of the body </body>.

Click save and your good to go.

In case you get some error something about malformed XML or something no matching end tag. Do the following.


Locate back the wibiya source code that you paste in and look for a closing tag </script> and removed it. The reason is that the opening <script> may have already been closed when the script got terminated with a /> before even reaching the </script> code.

Click Save Template and your good to go.


No more "defects" gadget on your blog. :) Cheers.

Phottix Wired Remote Control

Bought a Phottix wired remote control from Shashinki (an online store) a couple of weeks ago for RM 25. Didn't have time to test it out as work seem to dominate my life as of late. Which explains a flurry of photo on places to eat as of late rather that the usual photography thing. I hope to get started on some photoshop tutorial soon (as soon as I learn it .. hehe). I had the wired remote contol before but that was for the 400D which I bundle together for Eric. Kinda frustrating that different camera model need different remote cable release, wonder why they just can't make all using the same standard (like ISO lo.). Phottix did a great job packaging this camera accessories. In fact it was so great that I have no idea how to open the packaging without going medieval with it.

Phottix packaging ... brings out the barbarian in all of us. ^_^

Nicely built. The plastic smells great too. A camera remote comes in 2 type, wired and wireless. Wireless version comes in 2 flavor which is the Infra Red (IR) and also the Radio Signal type. Won't be discussing much on this, until I buy the IR version on my next online shopping list. The wired version is essential when you need to make full use of the camera's Bulb mode. In case you didn't know, you can use the Bulb mode only in Manual mode. The wired remote control allows you to hold the shutter longer than the stated 30 second without inducing a camera shake. Perfect if you want to photograph stars moving on the sky or even long shutter photograph such as the light trails from cars or even lightning.

Here is a example taken on a F2.8 at 4 second shutter. Beside a remote cable release, you will also need a sturdy tripod to fully utilized long shutter photography.

My Chicken Restaurant

Tabuan Plaza is fast becoming the "it" place to be much like how the 101 commercial centre and also Jalan Song have become. People throng these places for one thing, which is the food and probably also for the atmosphere. There is one inherent problem with Tabuan Plaza and that is the lack of parking space available which are rather annoying. It was after church this morning that we came by the place and one place that caught my attention is the My Chicken restaurant. Not because of the colorful interior and exterior design, but probably because it sounded like "Mai Chicken" in hokkien.

We didn't know what to expect of this place but suprised that there is a so called promotion of buying a XL chicken burger (didn't know the name) and free one set of 2 piece chicken, 1 bun and french fries and a cup of drink thing (again, didn't know the name).

There are some flies around and one seemingly disgruntle worker not too happy to clean up the table (not ours, someone else's table)






Buy this set and .... free the set below. All for RM 12.90, a spanking deal. or is it ?





This burger is quite delicious but a bit too much on the meaty side (terlalu banyak isi, susah nak makan habis)




The fried chicken meat is okay too but ...

The chicken is not fully cooked! .. Yuck.

The portion of the food is quite a lot and we find ourselves struggling to finish both plates. Perhaps we weren't that hungry but more towards thirsty because singing hymn of praise for 45 minute straight does take some effort too. An effort that we both gladly obliged.

 

Open Air Market

A very long week at the office (which happens to continue all the way to this week), took some "chiak hong" time off with Joanna for some fresh soya bean at the open air market. Long time didn't come here and the place still remains the same. The soya bean is as good as ever and its only RM 1.00. A great deal.

Speaking of great deal ... check out Salt N Pepper on the Sushi King RM 2 Bonanza goodies.

   

Chicago 7

When I think about Michael Jordan, I think about the windy city, Chicago. When I think about slim sized burger, I think about Chicago 7. Not entirely a bad thing, the burger actually tastes pretty decent. I enjoy coming here because there aren't many people here. No long queues, quiet place with good music selection (in the context of only 1 horrific rap song out of 10 songs played) and reasonably priced menu. These are the criteria that we usually look for when finding a place to dine outside.

  


Kids friendly theme.


Cleanliness is top notch. No more greasy ketchup laced french fries leftover on the chair scenario here.


Did I mention that I love the Tokina 11-16mm ? I think I did. I love this lens!


I believe Joanna was singing "Minum milo, anda jadi sihat dan kuat ..." while drinking this. okay ... maybe not.


Taste great, shame about the portion though. This probably rank third in my all time favorite delicious burger list. second had to be McD's quarter pounder and finally still standing firm in number one, the heavenly pork chop burger that I had at Macau. It's that awesome!


She said it's quite nice. I'm not a fan of fish meat (except smoked Salmon) so can't comment.




The blackcurrent quite tasteless.


I'm glad she is happy with the food.






It's priceless indeed.

Thanks for reading. Until the next update. Jeng Jeng Jeng.