Archive for June, 2009

Wednesday Clicks

June 25, 2009

…….that is posted on a Thursday.

So I got carried away with work yesterday and totally forgot that it was Wednesday. After being carried away, I ended up being so excited over catching Transformers 2 that the movie ended so late and I just got back. Yesterday, I went for dinner with a bunch of crazy photographers (so crazy that they can even make balloon dolls for you) at Delicious at Midvalley. Me, being me, driving all the way from Cyberjaya, I ended up taking photos with my trusty iPhone instead. But today is not about EatFest, today it is about Clicks, and by clicks I mean my usual list of interesting links.

  • Check out this gallery of amazing photos that was taken with a camera phone! This further elaborate on my that it is the photographer behind the camera that makes the pictures (I said this during my workshop last Saturday).
  • With so much hype about the government wanting to keep a register of bloggers, some say that bloggers are killing journalist. I beg to differ and so does this article.
  • Want to know how much Twitter has grown? If you don’t know what is Twitter, just join Twitter.com and add me in @markleo82
  • Has the law finally caught up with Rapidshare?
  • Check out this huge debate on what went on at Matt’s Adobe Lightroom post. Very interesting and great arguments from both sides. The story originated from a guy who wrote a nifty little program that when you enter in a Flickr image, it will calculate out and create a Lightroom preset to achieve that effect. Some say it is stealing but some say that it isn’t because no one can copyright Adobe Lightroom settings. If that is the case, no one can use +10 Saturation, + 20 vivid and vignette.
  • Become a better photographer through the critique of others. What can I say, the title of that article says it all. Which was why I implemented what I have learned from Louis Pang’s workshop and did a simple critique session for the workshop which I held recently as well.
  • Check out this interview with Landscape Photography Legend Art Wolfe at Digital Photography School. Here is the link to Part 1 and Part 2 of the interview.

A brief Wednesday Clicks this week but watch out for this space, I have a whole new blog revamp coming up soon and no, I didn’t do it myself. So it is going to look way awesome!

Clean Desk Day

June 22, 2009

Alright, after @theBackPackr tweeted about today being a clean desk day and after he has reminded us again today with a blog post about it, I figured to myself, why shouldn’t I clear my desk as well? I would pretty much say that my desk at work is fairly easy to clean. Its my desk at home which is the nightmare!

Workstation at work

Workstation at work

A quick description on what is on my desk, I have my laptop sitting on a laptop dock. It is connected to a mouse and keyboard which I use most of the time. The keyboard was a hand-me-down keyboard which I received when I moved places in the office. As you can see, my desk is pretty small which makes it easier for me to clean as well. I have an IP Phone next to me and a mini fan which I bought for myself because it is so friggin hot here.

Here are some more close up of my desk to show how messy the wires and cables can be!

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Mini fan with messy cables

The mini fan is my life saver sometimes but it can be rather noisy as well.

Super messy cables including laptop lock

Super messy cables including laptop lock

The IP phone has a network cable connected to it and another one connected outwards towards my docking station. There is also a laptop lock for

After a quick organising and cable management, voila, this is what happened to my desk.

Cleaned desk

Cleaned desk

Doesn’t look like much but mind you, the documents are all stored in the cabinet! Took me 3 seconds to stuff everything in there. I was seriously so amazed because of my super organizational skills.

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Mini fan revisited

After careful thought and consideration and weighing various techniques and options, the best solution I came up with the mini fan was to tie the wire with a cable tie. It took me a strenuous 5 seconds to tie it up. Talk about hard work and quick thinking strategy.

Less clutter behind the laptop

Less clutter behind the laptop

At the end of the day, I get a cleaner desk where I can throw more documents on the next day especially after a meeting and get my feet tangled up because I love to cross my legs when I am at my desk due to the dangling cables.

This is where all my cables went to!

This is where all my cables went to!

So I would love to encourage everyone to spend a little time to clean up their desk, preferbly on Monday. With that you have 4 more days of the week to mess it up again in order for you to clean up your desk again next Monday. I think I shall start a trend, #MessyDeskFridays.

 Conducting a Basic Photography Workshop

Yup, as the title says, I will be conducting a workshop this Saturday on basic photography at my company’s office in KLCC. I think it will be an exciting and interesting event so I definitely need to beef up my slides a bit more to ensure that I can help them visually see the effects when tinkering with their cameras.

The great thing about it was that I was totally overwhelmed with the response. I had initally told them that a small crowd of 30 participants would be perfect including a couple of mentors. So the email went out company wide and within a couple hours, all seats were taken up. I am totally surprised by the overwhelming response (there is even a waiting list) so to be extremely honest, I feel to pressure to need to ensure that the workshop is a huge success.

I started working on the slides on my flight to Los Angeles as well as when I was waiting for my flight. From what I can see now, there is a lot more for me to improve as well as making sure I put into practice what I learned from reading my Presentation Zen book.

Now I feel a little nervous but I definitely want to help everyone learn about the wonderful beauty of the world of photography. Wish me luck everyone!

Wednesday Clicks

June 17, 2009

Its Wednesday today and you know what that means, more interesting links out! I have for one thing learned recently that it takes friggin a lot of discipline to work and study at the same time. Anyway, before I skew off even more, let’s check out what is new this week.

  • I know everyone is waiting for the iPhone 3.0 OS to be release for their iPhones. Well this isn’t really a link but here are some links to some new applications which will be launched as well. Tweetdeck for the iPhone (YAY!) and MapQuest is releasing their alternative software to the GoogleMaps.
  • I posted in last week’s Wednesday Clicks about a video which theBackPackr created for the McDonald’s competition to win the iPhone. Guess what? They won the challenge and are now proud parents of the iPhone 3G.
  • There are rumours of a leaked press material for the upcoming Nikon D300s. I am not too sure myself if it might be real.
  • If you wanted to know more about Adobe Lightroom and how to maximise your workflow, Jon Low, a professional wedding photographer of IdealWedding has just the right answer for you. Thanks so much for sharing Jon!
  • Check out Timothy Tiah’s blog post on his holiday to Phuket. For those of you who are curious on just who Tim is, he is one of the founders of NuffNang which is a blog advertising network. One of the reason why it’s up on this week’s WC is that there is an interesting link in his blog post I found, it was in regards to a travel agency which handled his trip, PYOTravel.Com. I checked out the site and it definitely has very cheap prices. Site booked marked.

Before I finish this post, I would like to remind you that there are 3 ways you can eat “pan mee”.

The first way, which is the most common one is to eat it in the form of a noodle soup.
 Wednesday Clicks
Image source: Eating Asia

The second way is to eat it in the form of dry noodles with an accompanying bowl of soup.
 Wednesday Clicks
Image source: Eating Asia

The third way, which I think this new restaurant is trying to revolutionize, is to eat it frozen.
chilly Wednesday Clicks
Dang, chilly “pan mee”, do you top it up with ice cream?

Anyway, this is another branch of super kitchen’s chilli pan mee which is located in SS2, near Ang Kee restaurant and further down from Kayu Nasi Kandar behind Lim Mee Yoke restaurant.

I am still so excited about how ShootFest turned out to be that I spent an entire night making this slideshow. Well I was a little tired from studying and I managed to complete my book already but the crunch time is here and I needed to release some steam so I started on my mini project. After making my previous slideshow here, I thought lets make another slideshow for ShootFest.

And here are the results.

For best results, press “play” and then followed by “pause“. Wait for the video to be fully buffered and then watch it :)

Do let me know what you think of the slideshow by commenting in the comments section ok? At least I can get some feedback on my slideshow making skills.

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