If you would have noticed that the advertisements on my site are mostly via Nuffnang and to be honest, I have been secretly using them exclusively for my little site which has been evolving around from a photography centric to something part of what life is for me at the moment.

So I received an email from Nuffnang that this 31st of August, in collaboration with our nation’s national day, we will also be celebrating their 6th Blog Day! This is an excerpt of their email below.

On Blog Day, bloggers will post a recommendation of 6 new blogs, and this way, everyone will find themselves discovering new, previously unknown blogs thanks to the viral effect of social media. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Here are some of the blogs which I would like to recommend. If you asked me this last year, I would totally list out 6 photography related blogs but in this time of my life, there are of course certain other interests in my life lately.

1) Stories.my 

Stories.my is a wedding and portrait photography blog which is mainly contributed by Grace Tan (and on some rare occasions Johan and me) whom I shoot with and frankly, I really do like how she write blog posts about each and every wedding she covers as well as the ones that I cover as well.

2) Whatadrive.blogspot.com

I started reading up on automotive blogs lately and of course you would have noticed that I have been blogging about cars lately as well. How I came about this was through various links and chanced upon Loki’s blog. What actually made me come back again was his Nissan R33 GT-R rebuild project. Back in the UK, I have always been a fan of “Pimp My Ride” where they would slowly change a really old car and transform it into something new. Going through that journey with the owner themselves was a real treat for me because not only do I learn a little bit more about performance cars, I also learn that the automotive industry is really huge, and complicated as well.

3) k3v’s Modlog

I met Kevin when I bought my 17″ Denver rims from him. After checking out the various VW Forums as well as joining the VW groups, Kevin is one of the few who blogs about his car modifications. He drives a VW Golf GTI Mk5 and it is currently on a Stage 3. I liked how he has documented his journey from Stage 1 all the way to Stage 3 recently with images of the hardware he has installed as well as the dyno charts to show the results of the modifications. Definitely a good read for those who are interested in getting a 2nd hand Golf GTI Mk5 and modding it for a great weekend car.

4) Autodetailer.co

A month ago while I was attending Nigel Barker’s photography workshop in KL, I manage to meet the man behind Autodetailer.co, Darren Chang. Tagged as the most advanced auto detailing center in Malaysia, I have been following Darren’s blog and see how he actually transform cars into showroom quality conditions as well as restoration projects. He makes car washing and cleaning into an art form and the amount of detail that they put into each and every job is truly amazing. And to boot it off, Darren is an amazing photographer as well and I love that he has  studio incorporated into his detailing center at Jaya One to help him capture images of the cars he details and offer customers an album of their cars.

5) Presentation Zen

Part of my work is to give presentations for clients and constantly I have been trying to figure out how can I present technical areas without the need to make my audience fall asleep. I have always been admiring the kind of slides which Steve Job’s uses for his keynote speeches and how I can incorporate those type of designs into my day-to-day work. Then I was introduced to this book written by Garr Reynolds and it was called, “Presentation Zen“. After reading his book, I follow Garr’s continuous update and ideologies through his blog.

6) Duarte Blog

If you have ever watched Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth“, one of the things which really made an impact to me was the slides he used to explain about global warming and the effects it has done on earth. Guess who made those slides? Nancy Duarte’s team was on the project to design those slides to bring forward a very important point, global warming. Ever since I found out about that, I started following her blog and it has given me plenty of tips on how to run successful teleconferences (something I do very often) as well as virtual presentations. Her books also does give a good insight on how can you tailor your presentations and her focus is very much on both the visual and design aspects of your communication medium as well as how you communicate and put forward your points.

=================================================================

So here are the 6 blogs I would definitely want to recommend to everyone out there for Blog Day! Selamat Hari Raya everyone and have a great Merdeka Day! For those of you travelling back from your hometowns, drive safe!