|
| Am officially moving to a new blog cause its too hard to edit the design on Xanga. Find me at zaishao.wordpress.com.
Cheers Xanga. It was good while it lasted.
| | |
| Wanted to take a silhouette shot of a bird perched on top of a Lamp
post but as I walked closer, the bird was startled off. Fine. So I just
shot the lamp post. Funky lighting caused by the weird twilight colors
should produce something interesting. Suddenly a bird shot through the
viewfinder and I rushed to take the photo! When I looked at the LCD,
the bird was so small that all I saw was a black blob. Imagine the
delight I got when I uploaded the photo and saw the bird in exquisite
de(tail)! Hola, here is the shot full monty (without editing)!
This is the portion magnified. It looks so graceful in flight. It also has a darn long tail like the phoenix in Harry Potter. Can someone tell me what kind of bird is this? I would love to know. I was on 1600 ISO when I took the shot so it looks a little grainy when zoomed up close. Good that I happened to be on 1600 as that allowed me to max out the shutter speed and capture the bird in motion.
 | | |
|
 Taken while waiting for Lifeng ... my fledging entry into the world of photography. Simple colors of red, green and a muted blue taken with a Rebel XT with the kit lens. Incidentally, the Pizza guy was delivering pizza to Lifeng's Brother. Cheer me on. Its not easy blowing 1/3 of my fortunes on a hobby.   Sick Dizzy in a cone. Seems the same though, sleeping the whole day and night. Resident Garfield.  My new National Geographic Camera Bag! Love it! Slightly expensive but worth the money in my opinion. Photoshoped this picture to bring out the texture of the bag. Picked up the technique at this amazing site.  My cousin Ethan! So oblivious to anything. | | |
| I have always been a fantasy book buff. Pure good old fashion magic, swords, gods, creatures kind of fantasy. My parents had a very very worn copy of Melaine Rawn's Stronghold, Book 1 of the Dragonstar Series, in their library when I still in primary school. Back in the day of boxy, clumsy computers with 8 mhz of processing power and SBC 5 / 8, what could a kid do to entertain himself? Tired of running around, catching spiders (Yes, I did catch them when I was younger, probably explains the terrible phobia I have now), I picked up the book and started thumbing through it. Memory gets hazy. It was a long time ago. I cannot recall whether my.... 8 (maybe 9 or 10 years??) old brain could handle the content, understand the weight of the words or the emotions that laid beneath them.
I graduated to classics like Eddings, Margeret Weis & Tracy Hickman, Anne McCaffery, Piers Anthony, Raymond E Fiest through the simple expedience of weekly trips to the library (thank you mom / dad!). Then I moved onto lesser known authors, with varying levels of success. Particularly good ones like Kate Elliot, Mercedes Lackey, Mickey Zucker Reichert come to mind. The rest, well, fade into oblivion. Took a brief foray into Science Fiction which held almost the same appeal as fantasy. Journeyed into the future with brilliant minds like Arthur C Clarke, Orson Scott Card, Issac Asimov, Peter Hamilton.
In recent years, I have noticed a slight maturing of taste. A sign of growing up (or at least I like to think so). Simple reads no longer satisfy me. Its all black or white. Plot runs in a linear fashion, predictable, often cluminating with great great finality. The villan is a dark fell creature holed up on top of a tower with no agenda other than creating chaos which presumably would usher in the end of days. Hero is fair, digustingly innocent, and wholeheartedly good. Spoon feeding at its worst with lines like "He chuckled evilly, rubbing his hands together in glee" (or something to that effect). I mean, come on! I had to control the sudden urge to throw the book away. Pity I cant recall the author's name, Sarah something I think.
I crave complexity. I desire no solutions. I need grays and all the colors inbetween.
| | |
| I was browsing through my old entries and felt a sudden pang of nostalgia for the good old university days. The entries full of angst and exasperation at day after mind numbing days of studying, full of silly epiphanies mapped out my entire university days in such vivid detail that I was almost thrust back into the good ol' university days. Ok, I know I didnt post much but what I did post (usually about events strong enough to get my fingers moving) was enough to bring back a fair amount.
So, revelation in hand, I made the resolution to post at least once a week! yay! fans of my website (i know you are out there) rejoice! The posts would stay clear of criticizing the government (lesson rammed down the Singaporean Bloggers throat from the Philip Yeo vs Chen Jiahao episode) or of criticizing work related stuff (just plain common sense) or of delving too much into my personal life (no big loss for most of you guys). So whats left, random thoughts, musings, superficial events? I have no clue myself.
| | |
|
