My Camera 12:26 PM, MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 2006 I mentioned in my previous blog that I don't have my camera with me. Yes, I've been separated from my camera for a while now (about 2 months). I missed it at a party at Joe's place (where he brought snow from the mountains in a truck, etc.) Currently, Sally claims to have it with her and hopefully, I'll be able to salvage it this weekend. PS: And my costume at the Chinese New Year Party was.... guess! PERMALINK | 4 COMMENT(S)

Chinese New Year Parties 12:10 PM, SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 2006 Friday, Tootoo organized a huge Chinese New Year dress-up party at her place. Close to 60 people showed up and crowded in the kitchen (where the food was). I took Ashley with me to the party. It was a good opportunity to catch up on friends that I've lost contact with. And with music and dancing, the party was a big hit. Last night, John and Nian invited me over for a Chinese New Year Dinner at their place. And I got to see Sugar and Pepper. They're still shy, but much better than before. After the dinner, John, his friends - Tom & Junhua - and I played some Halo2. It was good to go back to some mindless shooting! PS: I don't have my camera with me and that's the reason for the lack of photo updates. PERMALINK | 5 COMMENT(S)

Stupid Seattle Weather 8:48 PM, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2006 The sun was out in the morning and I woke up saying to myself "I'm going to ride today!" And I ride my motorcycle to work with the sun shining; warm weather and blue skies. The goodness lasts for about 2 hours and then it starts pouring again. 8:00PM. Time for me to return home. It's raining outside. 8:15PM. The rain isn't abating. 8:30PM. I decide to leave anyways... Bad idea! The rain was cold and was stinging on my skin as I rode on the freeway. Also, the helmet's visor got fogged and I could barely see anything in front of me. So, I follow the tail-lights of the car in front of me. Soon, there was no one in front of me and I had to open the visor to see. Now, I have the cold rain on my face and stinging. Great! When I finally got back home (being extremely lucky to get back home in one piece) I was numb with cold and totally drenched. Thank you Seattle, for such wonderful weather. PERMALINK | 9 COMMENT(S)

Sparkle goes live 9:06 PM, MONDAY, JANUARY 23, 2006 Here's Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer, available for download and evaluation. This product packages the Text Editor that I've been working on for the last 2 years. Click the link to register and download and try it out yourself. PERMALINK | 1 COMMENT(S)

Irony 6:06 PM, SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 2006 Two weeks after Jessie writes about Conquering Fear, she decides to go and put her theory to test. The result? She twists her knee and is now walking around in crutches. PS: We felt sorry for her for a short while and then it was just funny to see her in crutches, and we couldn't help laughing our butts off. PERMALINK | 2 COMMENT(S)

Underarm bowling in Cricket 1:42 AM, SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 2006 Pap has a video blog showing a ball bowled underarm in international cricket. When I first saw this video, I couldn't believe what I saw. I would have thought it was a No Ball. But the umpire didn't call it and much to my amazement, the ball was counted. So, I did a little searching on the web and found out that this incident happened in 1981 with New Zealand batting and Australia fielding. Until that game, there was no law preventing a bowler from bowling an underarm delivery. So, when New Zealand had one delivery left and 7 runs to win, the Australian captain, Greg Chappell, decided not to take any chances and ordered his brother, Trevor Chappell to bowl an underarm ball. This caused much uproar from the New Zealand fans, including the then Prime Minister of New Zealand, Rob Muldoon. And so, following that incident, the International Cricket Council (ICC) decided to ban underarm bowling. Also, according to Wikipedia, that ball was technically a no-ball, because Australia had one too many fielders outside the field restriction line. PERMALINK | 2 COMMENT(S)

Instant Messenger Etiquette 5:36 PM, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2006 John Kennedy has a wonderful article on Instant Messenger Etiquette. Good read for everyone that even rarely uses IM. PERMALINK | 1 COMMENT(S)

Healthiest foods on the planet 10:47 AM, FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2006 This website has a list of the 29 healthiest foods on the planet. It's actually surprising that I find a lot of my favorites in there. PERMALINK | 5 COMMENT(S)

25 days and counting 11:25 PM, THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 2006 In Seattle, it's the 25th straight day of rain and the forecast is that this time, there's a good chance of breaking the record of 33 days set in 1953. Here's the full story. PERMALINK | 2 COMMENT(S)

Myth Buster 9:24 AM, TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2006 Ever heard humans use only 10% of their brain? Well, I did when I was a kid and even remember making some resolutions to double that percentage (never figured out how, though). Come to think of it, that was a myth after all. Humans actually use most of their brain, even while sleeping, as revealed by this study. PERMALINK | 1 COMMENT(S)

One helluva party 1:34 PM, SUNDAY, JANUARY 08, 2006 Last night's party was just great. Great turnaround, good food and drinks, lots of singing and a little bit of dancing too. It started at 7:00PM and kept going till 2:00AM this morning. Soo had brought her Karaoke machine and we made sure nobody left the party without singing at least one song (exception is Rey - man, he was stubborn). We even got to play the famous "couch game" which was hilarious. (Kudos to Sameh whose strategical play led the guys' team to victory) Mineko made an attempt to get everyone to dance but for lack of space that didn't quite take off. And oh, Christine wore her pink saree to the party. PERMALINK | 3 COMMENT(S)

Photo Post-processing 6:34 PM, SATURDAY, JANUARY 07, 2006 A lot of people have asked about the photos I post on my site. I hope this will answer most of their questions. I use a Sony DSC-F717 to shoot the pictures. It's a pretty old camera that I bought about 3 years ago. When I bought, it used to be the top of the line amateur camera, but now, there're way better ones in the market. For the most part, I stick to the Auto settings, but every once in a while, I experiment with the Shutter speed and Aperture settings. I always take pictures at the highest resolutions and sometimes if it's an important picture, I store the picture uncompressed. Once back home, I pick the pictures that have come well (or can be corrected) and discard the rest. Pictures that are blurry or have focus problems cannot be corrected. However, dark pictures or pictures with poor/over lighting can almost always be corrected using software. I never post pictures on the site without post-processing them. By post-processing, I mean adjusting the lighting, levels and saturation of the picture using photo-editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop or my favorite, the new Microsoft Image Suite. It's possible to make mediocre looking photos look really nice by appropriate post-processing techniques. For example, remember the Daisy picture I posted before? Here's a comparison of the picture before post-processing and after post-processing. This picture was taken in my office with the beige wall as a background. However with proper lighting and level adjustments, it was possible to remove the background completely and also make the colors more vibrant. PERMALINK | 1 COMMENT(S)

10:17 AM, THURSDAY, JANUARY 05, 2006 PERMALINK | 5 COMMENT(S)

It's HERE! 9:07 PM, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 04, 2006 It's finally here! 43 days 22 hours late. But what matters is, it's here!!!!!!!!! PERMALINK | 4 COMMENT(S)

Are you running Windows? 9:19 AM, TUESDAY, JANUARY 03, 2006 If you are running Windows, please do the following to protect your machine from the recent security hole. 1. Click Start->Run 2. Type regsvr32 -u %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll and then click OK 3. Restart your machine. This will disable the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, and you won't be able to view your pictures using the built-in picture viewer. However, it will keep your computer safe from attacks until a patch is released. To reverse this change, simply follow the same steps as above but type regsvr32 %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll instead. PERMALINK | 2 COMMENT(S)

Srini and Vetri in town 6:24 AM, TUESDAY, JANUARY 03, 2006 I had my college buddies, Srini and Vetri visit me from San Francisco, over the holidays. And that was really refreshing. Ravi and Hema were playing hosts for the most part and we all got to go out a lot, even with the rain pouring down all thru last week. We skiied, tubed, played mini-golf, watched movies and for the most part, yapped away late into the night. Now that they got a strong dose of Seattle's Winter, I'm expecting them back for summer. PERMALINK | 4 COMMENT(S)

Happy New Year! 12:44 AM, SUNDAY, JANUARY 01, 2006 Happy New Year everyone! Obligatory Tidbit: 2006 has factors 2, 17 and 59 that are respectively, the 1st, 7th and the 17th prime numbers. PERMALINK | 5 COMMENT(S)