facebook week

one week to vacation leave!

we are getting our AWS after all. and it’s time to grapple with the decision to spend or save. i would very much like to buy a desktop (as an interim solution until we get our own place to put a spanking new imac) or … a ps3.

i need want a desktop for photoshop/games. i also want a ps3 caz it has got awesome games and i dun wanna waste my lcd tv. i also think that i have plenty of excuses.

speaking of games, the facebook games are driving me crazy. managing 3 different games is c.r.a.z.y. no thanks to joyce being out of town for a week and i have to stand in to ‘make sure things are in order’. that means preserving the wealth accumulated thus far, not antagonizing customers and making sure that crops dun die out. i decided to do neither of those and revamped her entire white tiled restaurant.

yeah man! beat that, joyce! i’m a better cafe owner than u. hahaha. pls come back soon and take over everything.

worcell battery

in view of the fact that joyce will be going to oz with our s90, we thought that it would be a good idea to purchase an additional battery for the camera as a 100% backup.

i seriously have no idea where to get official canon batteries and even if i did, i’m pretty sure they are expensive. from my experience with joyce’s camera, third party batteries seem to last longer than OEM ones. (yes, i did not even bother to get one for my dslr)

so there goes $21.80 and took the plunge with a third party version from worcell.

ordered it yesterday and got it thru my mail today. efficient!

May explode if disposed in fire

err… doesn’t that happen to all batteries? well, if it makes me feel any better, they claimed that it’s made in japan and there’s 1-yr warranty too.

we’re going to chicago

since we had too much time on hand, we strolled to esplanade in hope of getting tickets for chicago next year. bad experience suggests that if we procrastinated, we would live to regret – either with the bad seats or the prospects of not even having one.

the online booking didn’t cut either because the seats were chosen by the damned system (which insists that the corner seat was the ‘best seat’). anyhoo, we thought it would be better to talk to a live person at the box office who could probably overwrite the system assignment.

been a long time since we walked this underground gallery. they had this interesting exhibits where everything is cut out from paper. of course, it was a good time to take the s90 for a real testdrive

this is damn tiny but it worked well using macro mode. nice warm lighting but i decided not to adjust the white balance for warm ‘feel’.

so the guys at the box office can work wonders. given the option of the ground floor foyer seats and the circle seats, we settled for the latter albeit second row. what a pity that the first row circle seat were only left with the corner ones – that’s pretty fast.

so 10% discount and 100+ bucks poorer (including the unnecessary $3 ticketing fee)… but i had it coming all along.

sunday brunch @ prego’s

nothing beats a long weekend in the midst of a long month. no thanks to my grand plan of conserving leave.

as a reward, we decided to go for a sunday brunch at prego’s every other lunch plans failed to materialize.

well, they still serve bread but the whole loaf of it. i vaguely remember they used to serve breadsticks instead.

i do find the olive oil bottle interesting because not only does it contain the olive oil, there’s a vial within it that holds the vinegar as well.

she had the marinara.

and i had the vongole, as usual. btw, only the light menu was available caz the sunday brunch buffet was still ongoing.

i guess we should do this more often. things going slowly and simply hanging out somewhere is oh-so-therapeutic – i hate weekday lunches at work. i dun even remember the last time i chewed on food for more than 5 seconds.

polaroid pogo printer

got myself this new toy together with 100 pieces of photo paper. the idea is to print the best and most memorable shots esp. for travelling – scarcity makes you less trigger happy. this neat device prints on demand either by pict bridge or bluetooth.

just load it up, let it read the barcode that comes with the paper and we are good to go.

i have decided to pict bridge it since i dun have any good photos in my phone to try the bluetooth function. i highly doubt the quality from handphone would be any good. i tried to bluetooth from my pc but it doesn’t seem to work – suspect it only works with mobile phones. shucks.

the print quality is not fantastic but alright. i think will fare better with outdoor shot, with less obvious noise. would be fun to bring it along to the next gathering or something… but the paper is $$. :(

delivered!

yet another delivery has arrived this morning! 4 days from usa caz of weekend.

of course, the bigger box belongs to charlene with her ‘toys’ from bewild.com (oooh…) and mine’s from amazon.

i would really appreciate if amazon could use a smaller box since the contents required only half the box space, i could save loads on shipping.

delighting you always

ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! got the sms from canon yesterday so i thought might as well go collect my camera today. i’m now a happier but poorer man. thumbs up for the nice carrier, and also for the pretty lady who attended to me, better than the one last week.

here are some shots of the powershot s90. form factor is pretty good, now that i had a good look at it. definitely better that the previous powershots. so ixus users might wanna consider the swtich. the ring around the lens is for users to configure i.e. zoom, iso, white balance and so on…

the lcd screen is really big in my opinion. this is of course important when reviewing photos and of course, something’s gotta give… which is the lack of view finder. that’s pretty fine caz we dun really use it anyway.

the rotating dial at the right side is also configurable. personally, i like it despite some comments saying that it is too loose. using Av mode, its faster to adjust the aperture that way compared to the rotating ring which clicks with every stop you turn.

the flash pops up on the left hand side once u select flash, and retracts once u disable the flash. i’m not too sure if you can push it down, dun dare risk it anyway. but its more intuitive to push it down than to access some menu to retract it. one thing i noticed is that, with a pns camera, u hold the edges on either sides. if you activate the flash, it will pop up where your fingers are holding… so i guess some caution is required.

sometimes, i mix up the ring function button and the on/off button. the shutter release is depressed i.e. slightly recessed and loose (haven’t had issues with half-pressing yet though) as well. a bigger, protruding button would have been good.

overall, the performance is great. for dslr users, i think its a good companion leh. and who says pns cannot get nice bokeh? this is taken at wide, 28mm f/2.0. oh yea, the performance under poor light is also quite good, din on the lights or whatsoever even though the skies were gloomy.

the next shot is take at its longest, at f/4.9. in my opinion, foodies will like this camera under the macro mode. can get nice bokeh, the white balance is also adjustable and shots are sharp. and yes, the live view will show the effects of your adjustments real time. that means to say, your shots are unlikely to go wrong as you can almost always get the correct f-stop or shutter or white balance.

the camera comes with a strap, case, battery and a 8gb SDHC card. for some reason, its not lexar this time round, some malaysian brand (i think) called ‘pen drive’. the strap is not adjustable either, cannot fit to wrist.

you can see a demo video here . hmmm… looks like roy’s in it or did i see wrongly?

and all that jazz

got this in my mail today. missed it once caz of ‘a’ levels (i think)… but never again! we are so gonna book it and catch it…

… and it’s the only legit way to watch ladies prancing around in lingerie, with your gf’s full approval. sounds a bit early to book but i’m afraid these things get sold out pretty fast. book it here.