Close Encounter with a Superstar

Well, it's not really close. It was like 10 to 15 meters away but it was the closest I have ever been from an international superstar.

On my way home from work, I stopped by Plaza Singapura to buy some stuff for our new apartment and guess who was also there - JACKIE CHAN! He was there to promote his new movie, Shinjuku Incident.


Sorry, I only had my camera phone at the time.



They all talked in Chinese. I didn't understand a thing! Haha!

Earth Hour at the Esplanade Park

The Esplanade Park was already crowded when we arrived at around 7PM. Student performers in their colorful costumes, Boy Scouts, families, couples, and supporters clad in their black Earth Hour t-shirts gathered to witness the Central Business District turn its lights off to vote for Earth against global warming. The place was alive with music, ice cream vendors on the sidelines, groups on their picnic mats, children playing in the park, and wonderful performances on stage. At around 7:30, the WWF mascot arrived on a bike and the crowd became more excited with the arrival of Singapore's Earth Hour Celebrity Ambassador, Nadya Hutagalung. DJs from Gold 90.5 FM took on the stage and led the countdown. Finally, when the lights went off at 8:30, acoustic performers wowed us with their music as we enjoyed the night in candlelight under the stars.


Here's a video of the CBD as it turned off its lights. It's not synchronized like I originally imagined it to be though.



Power used in the event was generated from biofuel using recycled cooking oil.

"We did not inherit the Earth from our parents. We borrowed it from our children."

Countdown to Earth Hour

In less than two days, the world will have its first global election between Earth and global warming. Whose side will you be on?

To vote for Earth, switch off your lights for one hour on Saturday, March 28, 8:30-9:30 PM local time. For more info, visit http://www.earthhour.org and find out what's happening in your local area.

To my friends in Singapore, there will be a candlelight picnic and concert with Singapore's Earth Hour Celebrity Ambassador, Nadya Hutagalung (one of the first VJs on MTV Asia), at the Esplanade Park.

Make your stand against climate change. See you there!

Chrome Video

I'd like to share this short video from Google Japan. It expresses the very reason I choose Chrome as my browser - its large real estate and clutter-free User Interface.



Aside from that, I also like that each browser tab is launched as a separate process so when one tab crashes, the others stay alive.

10Km SubUrban Run

Discipline, determination, and endurance - the three qualities of a runner. Do I have these in me? Well, I don't know and I really don't care. All I want is to earn the finisher's medal and to have fun.

Last week, the SubUrban Run was held. It was the first running event in Singapore with the "Two-in-a-team" category. For days, my friend sent invitations for someone to be his running partner. I wanted to join but I also had my hesitations. It was going to be on the day after we will transfer to a new apartment and I'm sure I'd be tired. Aside from that, I'm also not sure if I can finish 10 kilometers. I might give up in the middle of the race and cause disappointment to my friend. That was until I saw a picture of the finisher's medal. Where do I register? :D

Two weeks before the race, we registered as "The Running Smart Cards". Two weeks of training, two weeks of waiting. Finally, the big day came and we finished the 10-km route in 1 hour 17 minutes and 51 seconds. Not bad for a first-timer. :)

Festival of Colours

Exactly two weeks after Ash Wednesday, the Indian community in the office celebrated the Festival of Colours or Holi. They brought some native Indian snacks and invited everyone to gather but before you can partake, you have to allow them to put some colored powder on your face. To the non-Indians, they were nice enough to just put a thumb-sized mark on the forehead but to themselves, they dabbed quite a handful on their foreheads, cheeks, and noses. Some even reached the neck. One fellow Cebuano put three stripes on both his cheeks and he looked like he was celebrating the Sinulog. In India, Holi is a non-working holiday and people go to the streets and color just anybody they meet. To them, it's a day of craziness and uninhibited fun.


IndiaExpress tells about the origin and significance of Holi:

Holi - the festival of colours

As the brief spring warms the landscape, northern India cuts loose for a day of hijinx and general hilarity.

The festival of Holi is celebrated on the day after the full moon in early March every year.

Originally a festival to celebrate good harvests and fertility of the land, Holi is now a symbolic commemmoration of a legend from Hindu Mythology. The story centres around an arrogant king who resents his son Prahlada worshipping Lord Vishnu. He attempts to kill his son but fails each time. Finally, the king's sister Holika who is said to be immune to burning, sits with the boy in a huge fire. However, the prince Prahlada emerges unscathed, while his aunt burns to death. Holi commemorates this event from mythology, and huge bonfires are burnt on the eve of Holi as its symbolic representation.

This exuberant festival is also associated with the immortal love of Krishna and Radha, and hence, Holi is spread over 16 days in Vrindavan as well as Mathura - the two cities with which Lord Krishna shared a deep affiliation. Apart from the usual fun with coloured powder and water, Holi is marked by vibrant processions which are accompanied by folk songs, dances and a general sense of abandoned vitality.

Today Holi is an excuse for Indians to shed inhibitions and caste differences for a day of spring fever and Big Fun. Teenagers spend the day flirting and misbehaving in the streets, adults extend the hand of peace, and everyone chases everyone else around, throwing brightly colored powder (gulal) and water over each other.

The festival's preamble begins on the night of the full moon. Bonfires are lit on street corners to cleanse the air of evil spirits and bad vibes, and to symbolize the destruction of the wicked Holika, for whom the festival was named. The following morning, the streets fill with people running, shouting, giggling and splashing. Marijuana-based bhang and thandai add to the uninhibited atmosphere.

Promptly at noon, the craziness comes to an end and everyone heads to either the river or the bathtub, then inside to relax the day away and partake of candies. In the afternoon an exhausted and contented silence falls over India. Although Holi is observed all over the north, it's celebrated with special joy and zest at Mathura, Vrindavan, Nandgaon, and Barsnar. These towns once housed the divine Krishna.

Each area celebrates Holi differently; the Bhil tribesmen of western Madhya Pradesh, who've retained many of their pre-Hindu customs, celebrate holi in a unique way. In rural Maharashtra State, where the festival is known as Rangapanchami it is celebrated with dancing and singing. In the towns of Rajasthan — especially Jaisalmer — the music's great, and clouds of pink, green, and turquoise powder fill the air. The grounds of Jaisalmer's Mandir Palace are turned into chaos, with dances, folk songs, and colored-powder confusion.

Hotlink Schmutzlink

For reasons which I don't care to find out, Hotlink Files deleted all my files without prior warning. I had to go through the whole process of searching for and registering to a suitable file hosting service AGAIN, not to mention editing the css and blog template to reflect the new location. This time, I'm using FileDEN and I hope this won't happen again.

All for the love of Lightbox.

1, 2, 3, Smile!

I recently attended the Fundamental Cyber-shot Handling course at the Sony Digital Workshop and being a fundamental course, it covered the very basic of basics in digital photography. Some of the topics can even be found in the camera manual. There were also some that I already learned during my days with Dolon. Two points, however, were completely new to me.


Tele and Wide

Ever wondered what the 'T' and 'W' on the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons stand for? 'T' is for Tele and 'W' is for Wide. Tele meaning your camera is closing in on a particular subject and Wide meaning it's covering a wide area. This also means that the more you zoom in, the narrower your camera's field of vision becomes. Look at the samples below:


For the first picture, I was about 3 meters away from Sephiroth and zoomed in (Tele) while in the second picture, I moved closer and zoomed out (Wide) so Sephiroth would roughly be the same size as in the first one. You'll notice that in the second picture, since a wider area was captured, more of the background can be seen.

So the next time you want to take those close-ups, move closer to your subject. Don't be lazy and just zoom in unless there's really nothing worth taking in the background.


Slow Sync

This is a flash mode that Dolon didn't have. Normally, your camera's shutter opens when the flash goes off and closes immediately afterwards. In slow sync mode, the shutter waits for a few more seconds before closing. This is to allow the image sensor to take in more light. This is good for taking portraits in low light conditions because it helps in also capturing the background. By design, a camera's flash is never meant to illuminate the background. In normal flash mode, you would only capture the subject and darkness behind it.


Since the shutter is slow in this mode, it is advisable to use a tripod and to tell your subject to move only when you say so.

Another Reason to Hate Microsoft

I have been using Chrome since I started this blog and I didn't really feel the need to check with other browsers. I thought everything's dandy until I suddenly had the urge to use IE7. There it was - Operation aborted - while the page was loading. What the ****? Firefox seems to be okay. Safari too. I don't know about Opera though. So I did some tracing and found out that the problem is with the javascript for Lightbox. Apparently, IE7 has an issue with 'domready'. IE bug? I'm pretty sure it is.

This did the trick. At the last line of the Lightbox script, I replaced

• window.addEvent('domready', Lightbox.init.bind(Lightbox));

with

• window.addEvent('load', Lightbox.init.bind(Lightbox));

If only my favorite games could run on Linux (Blizzard, can you hear me?!), I would have been using Ubuntu by now. I miss Tux. T_T