Nigel Barker’s Workshop in KL

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Mark

If you have noticed my posts lately, I haven’t been for any photography workshops for a while already and not because I have stopped learning but I am a little more selective in what I want to learn and also pursue a new area in photography as well. When I received an email via WPPM that Nigel Barker was having a workshop here in Malaysia, the very first thought that came to my mind was, “Who in the world is Nigel Barker”.

Of course, thanks to Munz who was next to me at that time, she told me who he was!

Anyway, for those of you who still don’t know who he is, Nigel is a judge on Tyra Bank’s reality show called “America’s Next Top Model” which he does on top of other stuff as well. But most importantly, he was a photographer. A good portrait and landscape photographer as well, stronger in the field of portraiture in my opinion.

And the next thing I noticed was that it was not his workshop but more like a 1-day seminar. He had a workshop in Langkawi but it was held during the weekday and it fell during the same time I was away in Chicago hence it didn’t really suit me (ok, the price was the main deterring factor as I knew I couldn’t afford if ).

Held at the Ritz Carlton in KL, I left my apartment late as it was a Sunday morning and I knew that traffic would be clear. I was right, I reached there within 15 minutes. Making my way to the conference room, I bumped into familiar faces at the conference such as Johann Sopiee, Patrick Low, Jim Liaw, Ning Liaw, Matt Marzuki, Eric Ooi, Fiona Lim and many more. Of course I made new friends such as Chen WS and Darren Chang as well.

Due to my super efficient “just in time” manner in which I arrived at the location just 10 minutes before the start time and I was seated all the way behind together with Fiona. What was shared wasn’t the usual technical mumbo jumbo which you might have heard from workshops. It was about Nigel’s life, his experiences and what he does now that inspires us all to be better photographers and to also see that there are things to life that are a lot more worth it than just money alone.

Overall, this conference had one of the best food served! Ritz Carlton provided yummy and delicious food while lunch was at Shook! at Starhill. The amount of food there was amazing and I definitely overate especially on the soft shelled crabs and risotto.

My only feedback to the organizers is that I did wish that the project screen on which Nigel shared his photos and presentation were projected to the back and not just on the TV at the front. Also it would be good that the photos which Nigel shot during the conference could be projected up as well.

On a last note, I managed to help Fiona win one of the three lucky draw prizes by calling out her number. Talk about freaky.

Unleash the Lion

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Mark

Last night as I was trying to fight the after effects of jet lag (thanks to my 28-hour door to door journey from Chicago to KL), I saw that Steve Jobs has indeed released Lion and it was available in it’s new form which was a downloadable update via the App Store. I am for one, am glad that the update came in the form of the App Store and it was easily downloadable. All I needed to do was fire up my Unifi connection and then download the package.

Now this was a huge difference from my experience about two weeks back when my home PC decided to die on me after a good 6 years (yes, the motherboard failed on me) and I decided to rebuild a whole new PC. Together with that set up, I bought a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and the whole process of installing everything again took a good long day. What I didn’t mention was that the guy at Compu-Zone was trying to figure out why the DVD writer driver couldn’t be detected. After troubleshooting almost every component in the PC, the fault laid with the power supply.

What I am trying to point out is that, even with my old Macbook Pro 2008 model, the whole installation was fast and easy. It took me around 20-30 minutes to download Lion, and another 20 minutes to install it over my existing Snow Leopard installation. At the end of the day, I was very impressed and more so impressed by the price tag. USD$29,90 for the entire Operating System. I just paid like RM400 for my copy of Windows 7 and yet Apple has done it again with it’s low price.

By the time the installation was completed, I managed to fiddle around with the new OS and the two most impressive thing that I enjoyed was Launchpad and Mission Control. Definitely a good way or sorting out my Apps, previously I would always curse trying to find out apps which I installed but totally forgotten about. Unfortunately for me as well, I can’t utilize multi gestures due to the fact that my Macbook Pro was made in the dinosaur ages hence that is one thing I have yet to experience.

Perhaps a new Macbook Air might do the trick but as much as I would love one of those, I really can’t justify the need for one.

Get The Fruit Outta Here!

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Mark

About 10 years ago, I graduated from college and I was completely blessed that I managed to get into a twinning program which brought me to the University of Sheffield for 3 wonderful years. During one of those 4 years which I spent trying to figure out electronics engineering, I took a summer vacation to visit BK in Melbourne and Sydney. It was during that trip that I actually discovered this store called Boost. After forking out a huge AUS$5 or maybe it costs more, I was wondering why in the world would someone pay so much for a cup of juice.

Fast forward it 8 years and here I am together with a bunch of food bloggers at a small 400 sq feet, just at the edge of Food Republic in Pavillion. Yes, I was at a small gathering together with the owners of Boost Juice Malaysia, Nick and Soraya. Now, you would be wondering how in the world did I end up there. It definitely does sound a little random especially for a guy who has been blogging about photography and more recently a little bit more about Volkswagen and cars.

I shall leave that answer till the end of this post.

So what has this got to do about the title of this post as well as what in the world do I do with fruits? I will come back to that in a bit.

So here we are, about 10 of us, squeezed into an already packed location called Pavillion at the Boost stall located at the lower ground section. There were plenty of food bloggers who knew each other from the food blogging community I guess, of course I recognized a couple of them such as Horng and Suanie. If I am not mistaken, I met them the last time I attended a ShutterAsia gathering.

At this time we were given the history of how Boost started up here especially with Nick and Soraya both being ex-Accenturians (a name I guess to coin Accenture alumni). At the same time, we were of course offered plenty of samples while we were having a chat.

Samples such as their wonderful muesli bars, gym junkie, mango magic, blueberry blast and the watermelon lychee crush, were served to us. There are two distinct differences between some of the juices available, one of them which had a heavier taste was those that has yoghurt blended in them (yoghurt imported from Australia!) and a very nice revitalizing drink would be the crushes.

Best of all, I really do enjoy drinking Boost juices whenever I have the change because I know that they have absolutely zero added sugar and I can have them as a meal replacement. I guess this is my healthy side trying to lose a bit of weight here and there. I am definitely contemplating seeing if I can go on a Boost diet and see how much weight I can lose.

So, what is “Get The Fruit Outta Here“?

It is their current competition after “Whats your name game” and it is very simple. Just buy a Boost juice from any of their stalls and you will receive a Boost Boarding pass. This Boarding pass will provide you with an instant win prize (you need to scratch a part off to redeem it) and it also puts you in the running to win more prizes such as flights to Australia, London and Paris!

You can check out more about the competition here as well as submit your boarding pass entries. Hope you all get a chance to win some amazing prizes

Remember to do it quick as the competition will end soon!

At the end of the session, I managed to capture a group photo of everyone who attended the session.

And no, we didn’t eat yong tau foo for dinner.

p.s. See if you can catch anyone familiar in that photo

Ron95 versus Ron97

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Mark

Now ever since our wonderful government has decided to remove any sort of subsidies for our petrol, I have resorted to using Ron95 but as most other people, I get the question (sometimes) on what is the difference between the two fuels.

Personally on my car, I can definitely feel the difference in terms of power after swapping from Ron97 to Ron95. This is for the VW Golf but when I was driving my old FD1 Civic, I really couldn’t tell any difference.

Perhaps this video could help us all understand the difference a little bit more.

Even with the lack of power, I still choose Ron95 mainly because of the cost of fuel now. Heck, the 10sen reduction still proves that Ron97 is rather expensive especially for people who drive far distances on a daily basis.

But heck, I am definitely tempted to try out a couple of tanks of Ron97 and bring the car for a dyno test to see the difference.

Since we are also checking out some YouTube videos, check this out. Happened during the Sepang GT last weekend

Saving Cash with iMessage

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Mark

Saw this bit of news on MacRumors, ever since the WWDC keynote event where Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and others were announced by good old Steve Jobs, one of the new features of iOS 5 did manage to catch my eye.

Image source – MacRumours

One of these new features within iOS is iMessage which is Apple’s own messaging service for it’s own devices. Built in to messages itself, what iOS 5 now will do is to check if the recipient of your message is using an iOS device and then sends it via iMessage instead of the usual SMS channel.

I guess this is Apple’s official answer to RIM’s Blackberry messenger, WhatsApp and other messaging service. I do hope that there are other features such as group chats and all but as much as I like this to work, we all still have friends who don’t use iOS and rely on Blackberries and Android.

What it does allow us to do is to save a bit of cash instead of sending SMS out, and I really do like it’s transparency feature where you only need to access messages instead of launching a separate app such as WhatsApp.

Can’t wait for these new goodies to be available especially since I promised munz that I would get her an iPhone 5 and I definitely do need to upgrade my current MacbookPro. So far rumours have it is that the next model will sport a whole new casing design. Will probably wait for that. Also another feature which I am really looking forward to, is syncing iOS devices via Wi-fi.

Credit – MacRumors

Unibrace UB Underbody Brace Review

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Mark

Update: Had an issue with my theme earlier. Apparently the permission settings for the stylesheets were screwed up (no idea how that happened). I hope everyone can see the blog now

So what is a Unibrace? I am sure you might have heard of the brand Ultra Racing especially since locally they have been advertising extremely agressive. Anyway, just like Ultra Racing which sells anti-roll bars as well as many type of other bars (except for chocolate bars), Unibrace is another manufacturer which provides braces for Volkswagen cars.

Bruce Levin, an architect, product designer, and principal of Studiolevin in San Francisco, California, USA, is the designer of UNIbrace products. A long time Volkwagen enthusiast, Bruce has owned two MkII GTI’s, a MkIV GTI 337, and currently drives a MkIV .:R32. UNIbrace was started as an effort to combine the highest quality product design and fabrication, the love of the grassroots VW community, and on and off track spirited driving.

At the moment, there are two braces available for the Volkswagen Golf MkVI, Scirocco and the Golf MkV, the XB rear brace and the UB underbody brace. The XB rear brace is fitted at the boot of the Golf, right behind the back seats while the UB underbody brace, replaces the two stock metal plates as shown below.

product xb eng Unibrace UB Underbody Brace Review
Above – XB Rear Brace

See more images of the XB Rear Brace being fitted here.

(Above) The car originally comes with the two metal pieces. Looks rather flimsy and after removing them, they are actually flimsy.

Why I say that these metals look flimsy (I know they are!), look at some of the issues you might encounter with these stock braces.

(Image above obtained from Ryou’s Modshop)

The bars above have already rusted! And this was on a less than a year old VW Scirocco. Imagine the horror especially if you take a corner and these braces break out.

This is where the UB underbody brace comes in. It replaces the stock two metal braces with a single large piece of brace (comes in two colours, red or black). Having a single piece to brace your car is a lot better than having two because you get the forces from the front and the rear to be distributed evenly across through the brace.

Also, red is a totally awesome colour! Didn’t you know that red parts add additional horsepower to the car? Installation is fairly easy, all you need is to jack your car up and then remove the stock bars and then replace it back again with the Unibrace. I understand that for the Scirocco models, you might need a different set of screws for the Unibrace.

The brace comes in at a total weight of around 3kg and what it does do is to help stiffen up your drive especially when taking corners. So for those of you who are looking for braces to replace your Volkswagen’s stock braces, these Unibraces are the right solution for you.

Personally, the Golf Mk6 1.4 TSI cars do come on the softer side compared to its older brother (the GTI) hence having these braces would definitely help improve the handling of your car. Of course the best option would be to use both the cross brace (XB) and the underbody brace (UB) together. Overall, I would recommend this product to those of you who like to take corners at quite fast speeds or if you regularly go for track days.

Also, they are rather rare here in Malaysia but head over to Ryou’s Modshop here (or search for Ryou’s Modshop in Facebook) to order one. The Unibrace FAQ is also available here about ordering and shipping as well as costs.

First Attempt at Shooting some Volkswagen Golfs

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Mark

Okay, I have been procrastinating this for quite a bit but when the opportunity arose for a quick shoot at night, I thought let’s go for it! Completely unprepared, I prepped my gears and head off, into the night, where I had totally NO idea on how to shoot cars at night.

First of all, I had to thank Kar Heng for organizing the quick shoot and for Jack Tan who has tonnes of experience shooting cars. Kar Heng as well for lending us his car, even though he was half drunk (*wink*).

So shooting at night, first thing I had in mind was cool lighting. Then when I arrived at the first location, totally lacking of ambient lighting as well as I don’t have any sort of external lighting. I didn’t have a tripod and a shutter release cable. Man, there is so much I got to learn when it comes to shooting cars at night. My bag ended up as my “tripod” and I had to use the timer function to ensure that there isn’t any camera shake.

Funny thing was that I needed to get a lower angle in order to capture the reflection but any lower and I would have grass blocking the frame. Definitely was a hard thing to navigate in the complete darkness. Even the curious fisherman onlooker was wondering what the heck we were doing. Note to self, get a tripod, a good one which can go to an extreme low angle. Note to self, bring a torch light especially for night shoots to navigate around dark areas.

After realizing that it might be a lost cause, I quickly took a last shot of the twin cars before heading off to another location, where we wouldn’t be disturbed as well as have more ambient lighting. Too many cars were coming about and we had to move our cars a couple of times to allow them through.

At first I started out using the natural light from the street lights but it seemed to not illuminate the car enough. So after that, Jack recommended that we tried mixing both natural light and torch lights and flashes. Didn’t seemed to have enough kick though. After that we then decided to try out putting the car in complete darkness and then tried a little bit of light painting. That resulted in the images below.

At the end of the night, I learned lots of valuable lessons. Definitely would want to try shooting more as well as put more effort into planning. I think I will aim for an early morning shoot as well as shoot during sunset. Once I managed to get those done, I should also consider trying out automotive photography in the studio as well and finally to tackle the night shoot once more!

Verdict: Not entirely too satisfied but definitely room for lots of improvement!

What the heck do I do with the 1Malaysia email?

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Mark

highlight1 What the heck do I do with the 1Malaysia email?

After countless of announcements, twists and turns, the 1Malaysia email project which was at first announced as a national initiative but then changed to a private initiative, to me it seemed like it was going to be another waste of time, and money, and perhaps my sanity as well. So here is what I actually think about the initiative.

So our Prime Minister has declared that it is a fully private initiative and no public funds will be used for this project. Great, what I am more concerned is that, how much are they going to charge the government for the service and would those rates be competitive compared to other service providers. Why this is important? Because I pay taxes and I don’t want the government to use my tax money on useless initiatives which does not benefit any of the rakyat.

Then came this article on TMI.

KUALA LUMPUR, April 26 — Those signing up for the controversial 1 Malaysia email service will have to sign up by buying a USB-biometric device sold by Tricubes Berhad or go to any National Registration Department office to get their myemail.my account activated, the company said today.
Tricubes chief executive officer Khairun Zainal Mokhtar said users get a basic account for free but will have to pay if they want their mails to be more “secure” with encryption

So from a free email for everyone, we need to buy a USB biometric device sold by them (apparently to make it more secure) and then pay an additional fee to make it secure. And then they say they want to charge the government RM0.50 for each email sent. Now seriously, RM0.50 for each email sent? Are you kidding me? Worse of all, if they just spammed email to email accounts which are incorrect, will the government be charged for those as well?

diagram1 What the heck do I do with the 1Malaysia email?

With all these extra charges, it really is just a waste of time and money and I personally see no benefit at all that it can provide to me. In all fairness, here are some of the promises they provided.

myemail works just like regular email and more. Get notices, news and replies from government agencies directly to your MyEmail inbox. You never have to sign up for another email account ever!
With 25GB of storage you can store documents, photos, etc. online in the cloud and finding emails is easy with the built in search tool.
Create, edit and save Microsoft® Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents using yourmyemail id. Access those documents anywhere by using your browser.
You don’t need to learn anything new. Send, receive and save emails securely usingmyemail, just like you would with regular email.

And after all of these complaints and rants on our social networks, it is finally said and reported that Tricubes is relying on this project or it will be delisted from Bursa. There we go, the real truth behind a company that is fighting to stay in Bursa by offering “free” emails to Malaysians. Why is it required that they have to come up with the 1Malaysia email to stay listed?

title What the heck do I do with the 1Malaysia email?

Their target is to achieve a sign up rate of 5.4 million users within 6 months. That is quite a large target and frankly, I wouldn’t want to sign up for it as well as I would deter everyone I know from signing up with the email service. But then again, everyone I do know are smart enough not to sign up for it.

It’s not just about the integrity of the whole project and why suddenly you get extra charges such as USB devices as well as paying for additional security, its also about the technology behind it and the stuff that they offer. Personally I have stopped using my Hotmail emails mainly because I hate the cluttered layout of the Hotmail web interface. Secondly, my Gmail is so integrated with the other tools within the Gmail suite that I wouldn’t bother creating another email account on top of all the other email accounts I already have.

Seriously, I think Tricubes can come out with a better idea and service to provide in order to stay afloat in Bursa especially since they spent so much cash on R&D.

Also to note that this initiative is meant to enhance the delivery of public services. In all logical thinking, as a member of the public, I perceive that public services is enhanced through efficient means and puts less stress on the public. In short terms, this should equate to less waiting time for the public, less queues, less paperwork and red tape, quick turnaround time and many other ways to enhance the delivery service. With all of the more convenient ways I can think of, using and adding on another burden of another email account is NOT convenient for the user.

I have to think of another password to remember for this new 1Malaysia account mainly because if I use the same password as other email accounts, it wouldn’t be secure anymore
I have to consider PAYING EXTRA just to get a more secure connection
I have to bring around the USB Biometric device, I probably have to buy another one at some exorbitant fee should I misplace mine or if it gets stolen
I have no guarantee’s on the performance of the email since I just clicked on http://www.myemail.my and after 5 minutes, the site hasn’t loaded yet.
If I changed my email to this email, I have to tell everyone, resubscribe my newsletters and update various websites/forums/groups with my new email address. Doesn’t seem so convenient for me.

Anyway I leave it up to you to decide on whether it will be beneficial or more convenient for you by using myemail.my. Personally, I would definitely perceive better delivery of public services if they were to use my email address which I have already stated in so many government forms. I am sure the government can channel their funds to focus more on ways to make our lives better and convenient.

Finally, it has been launched!

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Mark

Update: Thanks Adrian for the heads up! Got a YouTube video of the VW Beetle New York launch now added into the post!

In one of my previous posts, I showed the teaser advertisement for the upcoming VW Beetle. In case you all might not have heard or have been in touch in the latest automotive news, VW has launched the new Beetle throughout the world in an MTV style launch.

Check out the updated advertisement below.

It still looks pretty much the same as the teaser but of course, watch out for the ending

For more information about the VW Beetle launch, see the press release here. Or you can view the official launch in New York below.

Aching feet and what nots

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Mark

I have been trying to nurse a sore foot for the past couple of weeks and everytime I feel like it is recovering, the pain keeps returning. Of course, trying to not walk or use my feet as much as I can, I have been hindered in that recovery process mainly because of work as well as circumstances.

The first one was that my client has moved to a new spanking office building. Due to this move, work has been hectic (packing stuff up and searching for a parking space). Thankfully we managed to get an alternative parking but it required a 400m walk (distance based on Google Map’s estimation) between the car park and the new office building. The rain didn’t help early this morning as well and the path ways were filled with sand and stone hence using a roller bag wasn’t the best idea as well. I probably will swap it back for a backpack again.

The second circumstance is just the nature of my work, in the office we are constantly reminded about safety issues and good healthy office exercises that we need in order to break our rhythm of just sitting at the desk the whole day. Thanks to this, I grew a habit of not filling up my water bottle and coffee mug to the brim and usually just take 1/3 of my bottle to force myself to take a 5 minute break to get more water and walk about and stretch.

The third circumstance required me to shoot a wedding yesterday. Now a full day of walking, crouching and moving around really needed me to down a couple of painkillers but thank God that I managed to survive through the day.Also without the care of my loving wife, I don’t think I would have survived the whole week!

Now I am just nursing a pair of sore feet and I am dreading the walk back to the carpark to head to another meeting in Cyberjaya till the wee hours of the night.

Of course, my weekend wasn’t as interesting as these fellows here. I actually caught wind of this first on Facebook when someone “liked” this Facebook fan page. This led to a couple of other blog posts about the event here, here and here. Oh well, I hope that the organizers should definitely up their game because if you do a simple Google Search, the same organiser, Expose Media, also organised a horrible race back in 2010. So from bad mouthing emcee, to plain unprofessional crew members to just plain hooliganism, I guess I am glad that I didn’t participate in this run.I think I shall stick to my Maha PowerEx batteries as well instead of Energizer ones (for more obvious reasons of course).

Then there was the Sarawak State Elections at which the results didn’t surprise me one bit. Frankly with all the spin doctoring by both sides of the media, I really don’t know who is speaking the truth. The one thing I know is that DAP is definitely making in-roads and they have actually had a fantastic result from the state elections. I guess that their actions on running Penang must have rubbed off on our eastern states.

Also thanks to good friends who taught me the importance of locking the gate to your house all the time even if you were going for a quick walk or errand. The same group of friends also introduced me to a new sinful food, fried bittergout with salted egg. Damn awesome!

Mark Leo Dot Net

Loving all things photography, tech, gadgets, Apple and cars

Category Archives: Personal