The lesser kind of apathy would be the “oh, it’s not that big a deal, don’t need to bother”, or the “it’s working as it is, nobody’s complaining, so just leave it as it is”.

I think it reflects a highly self-centered ethos, where, as long as something does not impact you directly, you don’t care, you shrug it off.

But then again, it could just be because they are against what I deem is good for them, what I think they should know. And maybe I shouldn’t be in such a hurry to press my views onto others.

Oh, and I’m gonna start a photoblog…Words are often unwieldy..

• no control over how my photos are displayed (standard flickr layout, and if you scroll down there’s tens of mostly useless “I like that!” ego rubbing comments. Not that it’s bad that people appreciate your work, but, well, I think my ego’s blown up enough, thankyou)
• like Garret mentioned, the weirdass groups stuff going on

After DeviantArt went through all the political turmoil, it’s been a different place, post-Jark. I find that the administration takes itself too seriously, the community is rather strange, and the explosion of the site into the mainstream just brings with it a whole bunch of crap. The company behind it is really going commercial now, what with raising $3.5 million USD of funding from DivX, blah blah, etc. I’m just so disillusioned with it now.

I still have an account though, and a long long time ago, there was a meetup. See if you can spot me.

I need to regain myself. Or rather, re-claim.

I finally, finally got my 18-70mm Nikon. Obligatory gearhead photos of it soon.

Some really weird obscure arty diy geeky stuff - a 3d scanner diy-ed with lego and milk.

Gay shit:

Body…wanna feel my body?
Body…such a thrill my body
Body…wanna touch my body?
Body…it’s too much my body
Check it out my body, body.
Don’t you doubt my body, body.
talkin’ bout my body, body,
check it out my body…

Body, its so hot, my body,
Body, love to pop my body,
Body, love to please my body,
Body, don’t you tease my body,
Body, you’ll adore my body,
Body, come explore my body,
Body, made by God, my body,
Body, it’s so good, my body

Macho, macho man
I’ve got to be, a macho man
Macho, macho man
I’ve got to be a macho!

It’s really funny!

Ha ha.

It’s a pretty funny strip, with an emphasis on photography.

Holidays?

Spent the last three days on an interesting project that got nixed eventually though.

I don’t even know what I have next block, which is like, next week. Apparently the school uploaded the timetable, then retracted it for some strange reason.

The rest of the time is my usual doing-things-but-never-really-getting-anything-done-ness. I’ve resolved to get more things done though. The theme for the rest of this week is uncluttering.

I’m very unhappy with the textual hierarchy on this blog. I want something that doesn’t get in the way of the content and photos, yet has enough structure to see things through.

Clutter

Something I’ve got to admit to myself is that I will miss out stuff, that there is so much information I should just chill and absorb what I can, not attempt to suck everything up. I seem to have this compulsion to not let things slip through, and this often works against me.

Information. It’s everywhere! Just within the internet alone:

I’ve got

• url files in several folders
• terribly messy Firefox bookmarks with folders where I dumped entire windows of tabs
• several files worth of past bookmarks (some are as messy as my current ones)

My objective is to neaten up this bunch to

• sites I visit often in my bookmarks bar
• archived interesting stuff in del.icio.us
• feeds in Google Reader (although I have too many subscriptions already!)

My Google Reader has ~860+ unread items in 85 subscriptions. I want to tone this down, but I spend way too much time in Google Reader. And it gets worse when some posts are link-dense, I click through and never stop. RSS Zero is my ideal, and for now I want to tame some of the feeds that

• aren’t that valuable (I’ve got some that are really cool, but do not really contribute to important knowledge)
• have too many posts, till they get annoying (the problem, again, is that they’re pretty good/interesting information that I don’t want to miss out on)
• are idle/dead

My Gmail’s in a sort of mess as well, with many unread messages and a cluttered Inbox. That’s about it for the internet. Oh and I’ve got maybe 100 tabs open in Firefox now, it’s taking up 600MB of ram and using about 20% of my CPU all the time. Gotta cull that too.
I’ve also got a bunch of music (20GB) that I’ve yet to integrate into my library, some CDs I’ve yet to rip, and I want to tidy up the library big time. (I can get pretty anal with tagging/genres, the belief being that if I want to keep all my music in a central database, it jolly well be really neat and accessible)

Oh, and why the hell do I have 30gigs worth of Podcasts! It’s all good, but isn’t that too much space! TED is taking up most of it though, 7gigs. I like having actual video files, for my perusal offline, and I don’t trust streaming video generally. What if YouTube goes away one day?

And that’s just the computer.

Don’t get me started on my room.

Time to work on a bunch of personal “want-tos”, including the theme for this damn blog.

Hejin showed me this. Power. I always thought Dick was a wimp of sorts. Seems that I was wrong.

(no, not referring to blogging)

Well. Chee Yong has his “you are the creator, you make the artwork (photo)” theory, which I think pretty much sums up why photography is art. Great paintings aren’t found on brushes, so neither are great photographs on lenses or cameras. (KR for that, he’s got a bunch of stuff on the “theory” part of photography, although he’s a gearhead still)

John Nack has a take on this: most pictures suck, even for photographers. A bunch of interesting tidbits in the comments, including:

Somebody once was watching a famous photographer sort through his negatives. He was amazed the photographer could flick a 35mm neg clear across the room, smack into the trash can, without looking up from his light table. “Practice…

Well, Mr Chow also said that if you have a bunch of trash shots, it’s a headache to sort them or pick through, since they’re crap anyway. If you have a few good shots among that trash, it shows up immediately. (This was during darkroom, a while back)

I can’t wait for the vacation block. There’s a bunch of stuff I want to do. I hope I do actually do them this time round, though.

I’m learning so much about timing, light, skies, compositions, cheap little tricks, “cheating” and stuff. Not to mention I’m trying to use the chance to try a new format (Medium, shot on a Mamiya rb67) and techniques (blasting light, light drawings, etc).

Chee Yong’s a brilliant mentor, although he does talk a little slow and takes up a lot of time, his stories/tips/techniques are incredible.

This gives me ideas for gear. Nothing I need right now, but what I’m likely to invest in in the future.

I used to want the next big Nikon body, like the recently announced d300. That’s not a priority anymore. Its not as though I’ll get vastly different shots with another body. Next time, I’ll just use my d50 and a rb67. Medium format gets you shots you’ll never get with 35mm or digital.

I also want a bunch of lights. (2-3 will suffice, with remote triggers the setup will cost a bomb already, but still be cheaper than anything else), and a really good tripod setup to go along with that.

I’ve exhibited some pretty weird behavior. Haven’t seen that part of me surface for a while.

who are you, to think that I have to meet some sky-high expectations you set without consulting me

I can’t stand people having expectations of me. I have this urge to spoil every single expectation they have. SURPRISE!

But that makes me look immature and irresponsible.

But then again, people having expectations means they think highly of me.

Why do I struggle with issues that seem like second nature to everybody, but plague me endlessly.

• All the “little bits” posts had “July” in their titles. I wonder why. I’ve fixed them though.
• School has been a crazy fun exciting sort of hectic, since I didn’t clear my modules last block I was effectively taking 4 subjects up till yesterday, when I cleared P1. I’m submitting Packaging today, so that should be done too.
• I’m doing a sort of experimental light-trail thing for my Landscape/Citiscape photography, more on that soon, will be shooting some test images tonight.
• My P1 has received a number of positive feedback and remarks. Makes me feel good.
• Been hanging out with some P1 people, we’re all domineering, have strong opinions/thoughts, are blunt/straightforward and get along pretty well.
• The above people are considering doing Sage. More on that, if they ever get down to anything.
• They’re cutting the power to my block for a few hours, to do some electrical work, at 2pm, so I’ve got an hour to finish my work.
• I don’t like creamy peanut butter. Gimme the chunks any day.

On a tour of one of his supermarkets, Kishore Biyani notes that shopping carts are getting stuck in the narrow aisles, wheat and lentils have spilled onto the floor, black spots cover the onions and it’s difficult to hear above the constant in-store announcements. He grins and congratulates the store manager.

It’s simply brilliant business sense. If you read the full article, he uses modern technology and methods for his back-end stuff, and his other ventures don’t have the same clutter. Genius, this Biyani.

Gates in China

Gates argued at the time that while it was terrible that people in China pirated so much software, if they were going to pirate anybody’s software he’d certainly prefer it be Microsoft’s.

Indeed, in China’s back alleys, Linux often costs more than Windows because it requires more disks. And Microsoft’s own prices have dropped so low it now sells a $3 package of Windows and Office to students.

When asked how he squares the company’s “alignment” in China with its leaders’ suppression of free speech on the Internet and what many consider to be their general disregard for human rights: “I don’t think I want to give an answer to that.”

A case of Double Standards?

Too Much of a Good Thing

Lauren Tyner was only 15 when, with her parents’ help, she decided to have breast reduction surgery. She played soccer, she rode horses, she was a natural leader – despite the disability of having a bra size of 36-HH.

Is it just me, or is that HUGE. I would love to have seen her, just to get an idea of that a HH is. (Not naked, mind you. Clothes would suffice.)

And I never knew there were boob reduction jobs. Interesting.

First attempt at this “little bits” post-type of thing.

Bebel Gilberto is having a concert in singapore. Pricey though. Doubt I’m going, unless money drops from the sky.

I’m thinking of going for the Oktoberfest dinner thing, this years’ has more dates, seems like the turnout was good last year.

I don’t like the way this theme styles certain objects, like <H4>s and there’s no italics! The <em> displays bold, I think. And it doesn’t play well with the YAPB photoblogging plugin. And I want some custom tags, like a giant quote kind of style, some nice <div> callout displays, and stuff.

I’m going to cut down on my perfectionism, which will in turn lead to greater output and less procrastination.

Roller-coaster ride of events. We never live in the present. It has just happened. 0.01 seconds ago was the present. Somehow everybody lives in the past. (remind me to write more about this next time)

The baybeats photo post layout was rather bad. Need to find another way of putting up such stuff.

Way too much work, way too little time, at least I’m sort of getting into the flow of things again.

Click on the thumbs, it opens up the lightbox gallery.

I should probably CC-license these, but for now, anyone can use them for anything, alright? Feel free to contact me for larger images.

And I can’t stand the small Wordpress thumbnails. How the hell do you make them bigger?

Links:

• Official Baybeats’ photo galleries (seems they were pretty fast about it this time round)
  • Day 1
  • Day 2
  • Day 3
• Monofone (myspace)
• Stentorian (myspace)
• Kjwan (myspace)