Heroes – Graphic Novels

Chanced on this link in wiki, graphic novels in PDFs with extra stories not seen on TV. (ya ya, jo and i are fans)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Heroes_graphic_novels

Wes

Plant talk

Meet Rosemary & Basil

I’ve been pretty busy lately but I didn’t actually think it was that bad until this morning when I saw Kar Wai walking to our plants with a bowl of water and telling them, “Hello my plant buddies, here’s some water coz your mistress is too busy to feed you.”

Really, it’s not the plants. It’s the fact my husband is talking to the plants …about me.
Jo

Printer died again – Update 4Aug

The Epson 2100 just went kaput. again. Not a good time, especially when I was printing some B&W stuff to show people. What is God trying to teach me?

… that I will need to get a new printer now?

heh heh heh

Update 2Aug: Discussed with the missus, we are getting the Epson 3800, no choice coz in the long run the new Epson will be better for B&W printing anyway. It also comes with nearly 46euros x 9 cartridges worth of ink so price difference btw this and the other option of Epson 2400 works out to be <150 euros. Also found out that things bought under company is VAT deductable, so it turns out that we are getting it cheaper than Spore price. Sweet.

Update 4Aug: New printer is coming in this morning. woohoo! The funny thing is that the 2100 just came back to life again. lol.

sighz. dono whether to laugh or to cry. it’s ok lah, got lotsa ink for the 2100 to go through.

Wes

Photosynth – Sum of its parts

Ee-Guan told me about this software last year but I didn’t take a serious look until I chanced on the demo… totally amazing. I dono how to describe this… it’s way bigger than photography as we know it.

Jaw-dropping photosynth video

Live Labs blog on Photosynth

Wes

Powerbook 1999-2007

Had a MSN conversation with a friend this morning, here’s the edited version.

Lip Sin: “So, what are you up to today?”

Wesley: “Funny you asked. It’s about the most impossible thing you could imagine me doing”

Lip Sin: “You cleaning the house? shaving your head? “

Wesley: “No.”

Lip Sin: “Going for a diet?”

Wesley: “Nope. I am transferring all my stuff from the Mac Powerbook to the PC.”

Lip Sin: “NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What are you doing?? Everybody is going the other way round.”

I told him that it was an inevitable thing, I simply didn’t need the Powerbook anymore. I didn’t need the portability and clients wanted to see printed portfolios, not images on a laptop. Jo, who’s doing more design work, has been coming over to the PC to work on CS2. The Powerbook was reduced to leisure stuff… Veoh, email and surfing. It was kinda sad, I remember holding my 1st ever Apple product in 1999, the Lombard G3 Powerbook. The mainboard got fried in 2002 after months of RAW proc… We also went through a white iBook, flowerpower iMac, 17inch Powerbook, dualG5 (bless you Heng for taking care of her).

Once Jo has her work stabilized on the PC with OpenOffice (it’s free!), Thunderbird (transferring emails and addy was a pain) and MSN on the PC (transferring the emoticons was a bigger pain), we will let the Powerbook go on Craiglist. The only missing link is FinalCut, we’ll work that one out somehow. ;-)

Wes

Scary stuff

Was downloading stuff from the CF card to the PC when I noticed one or two shots missing. I went ‘eh?’, but never mind, maybe I deleted them and forgot. A wee bit later, I realize a few other really important shots were missing. So I double checked the card and PC, turns out that the 2GB Lexar 80x was almost full despite having only 99 shots registered (it’s usually ~200ish). I used ImageRescue 2 and managed to retrieve some important shots but also tried an updated version of a favorite prog called DataRescue PhotoRescue, long name it is.

ImageRescue had less images retrieved, but some of the images had blank black spaces. Not usable. I paid the US$19 upgrade fee and got PhotoRescue 3.0 to retrieve 99.5% images fully intact.

Thank goodness for these Belgians. Mac and PC versions are available.

I got in touch with the Lexar supplier in Spore, it’s a 1-to-1 update for the 80x cards (older series). Nice. To be fair, I have used the new Lexar 2GB 133x cards on a few occasions, and they don’t have issues.

Wes

No Macs in Monte Carlo

I was in Monte Carlo for work on Thursday. Earlier, when I was informed about the location, I had check the world map to find out where it was. So uninformed I am. Alors, Monte Carlo is a district within the Principality of Monaco.

Anyways, did the work on Thursday and had some free time to walk around the place. The harbor was filled with lots of luxury boats, etc. This place is really like what the brochures/movies say it is. And the streets were filled to the max with tourists, saw/heard Chinese and Hong Kong tourists too, tonnes of them. I don’t think native Monaco folks were hanging around much. Even the taxi drivers I met were not from Monaco. I tried visiting a casino but had to pay entrance fees. bleh. Also tried looking for McDonalds and found out…

that are no Macs in Monte Carlo!! on noes!!

Sooo, I settled on a 5euro kebab-wrap-thing, at least it was fresh. Saw a lot of glam cars, Porsches, Rolls Royces, Lamborghinis, etc. Apparently, some of these cars can be rented on per/day basis.

The Bentley that stopped traffic
And talking about glam cars, some guy parked outside the hotel and left his car keys inside the car. The hotel chaps and police tried to assist for about 2 hours coz he parked sideways and blocked most of the traffic flow.

In the end, they had to break the small side window to get the keys. Bentley glass is super tokong and it took more than 1/2 hour. Poor guy car.

Leica Lady
I also had the chance to work with a french lady photographer, she had a M8 and a R/digitalback. I was like ‘wow’, coz she could manage the combined weight, those babies are heavy. I damaged my back many years ago with heavy equipment and I am particularly careful about heavy loads. I asked her why she switched to digital, she said that BW material were getting harder to come by, it was also very expensive to get good BW prints in Paris. She also mentioned that she liked the manual focus. Perhaps using a Leica was a bridge for her… connecting the the old and new world. During the middle of the shoot, she had a problem with the M8, it had stopped working for a while. But near the end, it mysteriously started working again.

E-Check in
I had a great experience at Nice airport this afternoon. The taxi driver got me there way before my flight and I saw the signboard saying my flight was delayed by an hour. Sianz… ne’mmind. For the fun of it, I did an e-check in at a self service terminal and found out that an option for an earlier flight was available. I tried it and voila! I ended up waiting only 15min to board the flight. woohoo! Thank God, it was a nice end to the day. When I took the cab back to our street, I couldn’t help feeling a bit out of sorts even though I was away for only 1.5 days.

Wes

Hail

Ok, modify point 6 of my last blog entry. Bring a REALLY strong umbrella coz today, we didn’t just have rain. We had hail!!!!

I love Paris in the summer……..

Jo

Summer Hols in Paris

We’ve had lots people come by Paris for the summer. Mainly for holidays. And at this time of the year, Paris is PACKED with tourists. So if you are planning to come, here’s some stuff we found to be good tourist info.

1. Merci is not pronounced Mercy. And folks here normally say, “Merci bien” not “Merci beaucoup”. Merci beaucoup is like wah, thank you very very very much.

2. “Pardon” is used more than “excusez-moi” when you want someone to let you pass, or if they are blocking your way. KW and I used to say “desole” like how in English we say “sorry”. That’s like wah, I’m so so so so sorry.

3. When you go to a restaurant, catch the waiter’s eye. Whatever you do, don’t wave your hand and say, “excuse me” loudly. You’re asking to be served last.

4. For beef lovers, “steak tartare” is raw minced beef. Yup, it’s served raw and cold. Don’t believe, watch Mr. Bean. We’ve seen lots people turn green when their order is served, try to do do the mind-over-matter thing, take 2 mouths of it and give up.

5. For water, ask for “un verre de l’eau” rather than ask for water coz they will give you bottled water that costs about 5 euros!

6. Bring an umbrella. Weather is unpredictable here so it can suddenly rain. Really. We kenna a lot of times already.

7. Walls are thin. The rest is self-explanatory.

8. All shops (including supermarkets) are closed on Sundays. LV is open Sundays though coz they say LV is a cultural place. Ha.

9. Museums are free first sunday of each month and closed on Tuesdays.

10. Forget about going up eiffel tower in summer if you cannot be bothered to queue for hours. Yes, hours.

11. Book your hotels reeeeeaaaally early. In summer, it’s packed coz of discount prices.

12. In the metro, if you are sitting near the doors, stand up when the carriage gets packed. Otherwise, you get killer stares.

13. RER and metro are different. RERs are trains that go into the suburbs and through central Paris. Metros serve only only central Paris. You can switch from metro to RER but you pay more for RERs.

14. Always keep your ticket on you even though you don’t need it once you pass the gentry when you go into the station. There are frequent checks and although they usually let tourists go, a nasty officer can fine you up to 40 euros for not having a ticket.

15. It’s cheap to get air tickets to come into Paris end July/Aug. Coz that time of the year, Paris is a ghost town. You’d just be a tourist staring at other tourists.

16. Added by Wes: Some shops only take chipped (or EMV) credit cards. If you don’t have one, it’s cash terms. So get your credit cards updated if it’s not chipped.

17. Added by Wes: Most Parisiens do speak English – some good, some broken. Smile like crazy and go “parle vous anglais?” and they will try a leeetle english because you’ll look a tad silly. It works for me.

Jo

Betta than crack

Went for meal with friends and had the creme brulée for dessert.

It was mindblowing.

I couldn’t speak for about a minute after the 1st few spoons. Really.

The flavors made their way up to my head and lingered. I zoned out and the restaurant chatter faded away. It brought me to creme brulée land. A friend actually video-ed me, I must have looked like a drug addict then. haha. Quite close to having a religious experience (although the Tiong Bahru Chwee Kuay came pretty close on 1st try). I’ve got a sweet tooth and I had creme brulée couple of times at different places, but this stuff is in its own category. The egg-iness taste is there and creme seemed to have more than 3 or 4 distinct flavors. Jo’s posing the spoon for the photo, so nice.

The place is called A La Tete D’or. Near Chatelet Metro.

Wes