the home of david tran (well, his second home).
ok, so i found one of these on ebay the other day, and since i am a certified open water diver, i thought why not. i was also looking into a case for my k200d, but after some research it looked like that would be very expensive, and since diving may be a once a year (or less) thing for me, i thought better just go the cheap option (for now). well, it arrived today, and i've tested it out, in a bucket 
, and it did seem to keep the water out, so here's hoping it works out in the wild....
ok, well i watched black dynamite last night, never previously heard of it, so it was good, a completely fresh viewing. basically, it's a spoof on blaxploitation films of the 70's, with a bit of bruce lee style mixed in. i'm not going to spoil it, cos i think people should watch it fresh, and have some fun watching it....
well, all my cycling stuff has come together, and i've now got the whole package. my indoor trainer (which i won't be using indoors) came in yesterday, and my pedals last week, got some new shoes to go with the pedals earlier this week, and now i am looking like a pro. i managed to get the pedals on (despite the ridiculously narrow nut) and they seem reasonably tight, so i've been practising engaging and disengaging (i wanted to sound special) from the pedals using my new shoes with cleats....
so i saw these muscle mass scales on the 1 day site, and because i'm in a real health and fitness stage right now (ha!!), i decided to get them, only $30 bux or something with shipping. according to the scales i have about 16.7% body fat, 59.4% water, 79% muscle, and 7% bone. don't ask me what the icons mean, apart from male and female, i don't know....
ok, so i just caught up on community, and i'm all up to date now, while it's not the office, or even 30 rock, more like on a scrubs level, it's a funny show. and as the title suggests, my favourite character is senor chang (damn no unicode it should be the squiggly n), maybe i'm over-rating him, but i'm putting him up there as the best character on tv right now. who else is there?...
yeah, so we've all heard the avatar story by now, boy meets alien girl, boy falls in love with alien girl, boy loses alien girl, boy gets alien girl back. went to watch it at the imax, it was probably worth it to see what all the fuss was about, the 3d, and the cgi....
onto the second week of the malaysian trip, and after spending new year's eve in kuala lumpur, we had a flight out to kota kinabalu (kk) in sabah on malaysian borneo on new years day. while ozzy will blame our missing this flight on being hungover (or just drowsy), i like to blame alf (
) for making us be that little bit late 
(i have to admit mine the previous night was one of the smoothest i can remember having, not that i really remember any of them)....
ok, so it's time for the full briefing of the malaysian trip (the first week anyway), i'll mostly provide reviews and tips in this post, and then, over the next few weeks, as the pictures from the trip start going up on flickr, i'll post some updates here to keep everyone informed of the latest pictures. we'll start with kuala lumpur and i guess, air asia, the flight in was pretty stock standard, except that their seats don't recline (i mean, is there an extra fee to get reclining seats?), i paid extra for the exit row seats, but i think the leg room for the normal seats is fine (obviously there is more than you will need in the exit row), and you also don't have morons standing around your area for no good reason other than to be annoying. we had a flight delayed for three hours returning to kl from kota kinabalu (i suspect because they wanted to try and sell more seats, it was a pretty empty flight)....
i'll do a full wrap up next week when i get back, but for now, just a few quick notes with a couple of pictures to whet your appetite. started in kuala lumpur before heading up the west coast to penang to meet alf and ozzy. we moved on to langkawi for some beach time then, and got to ride a jet ski that went pretty fast, that was fun....
finally (por fin if you will) i'm getting back on the road (or in the air), and heading for malaysia for xmas and new years (and my birthday), so possibly the last post from me before the year is out. either way, no big deal, you'll see the pictures of the island/archipelago in about three weeks time popping up. alf and ozzy are already over there, so i'll catch up with them before nye, and then we'll have a grand old time in my first muslim state....
just looked at the front page of my web site the other day, and it really just looks like a product review site. anyway, just to get off topic a bit, i thought i'd post something a little different, something that has nothing to do with anything. and the picture is basically what i thought when i looked at my front page, and also, i like lolcats, the picture was taken from this lolcats page....
after a year of dealing with the piece of shit hp bluetooth mouse, i finally went and spent a bit (not a ridiculous amount, but it was the most expensive mouse i ever bought by far) and got me a real mouse. it's a logitech m555b, and it connected up straight away, and let's hope it doesn't have any of the connectivity issues that stupid hp one had. it even has that horizontal scrolling on the wheel (seems to have been a feature for a while), but it's the first i've ever seen of it, very useful when you're scrolling around the finder....
after having played 2k10 for the past two months, i think i can give a pretty thoughtful review of the game now. please keep in mind that i haven't played console games of any type for a long time (computer games either), i don't have anything to compare the game to. any way, i'm getting this out of the way right now, i can't say that i am very impressed by the game, right now, i'd give it a six (maybe even five) out of ten, and i'm going to list all my issues below, as well, i guess, what i did like, since i only played my player, i'm only going to review that section (i have patched it, but didn't start fresh, my player is a small forward), and maybe the slam dunk contest....
haven't done one of these for a while, guess i've just been really lazy, and it seems, the site has fallen apart due to that. alf notified me of an xml error with my rss (which i had noticed but assumed was just a network issue), white space was being inserted at the start of the documents for some reason, while i don't know why, i just moved the documents into the web directory, so they should be working now (we'll see after i post this). the other update i made cos i couldn't sleep this morning was fixing the search index for gallery items....
decided to get pes over fifa, not really sure why, read a few reviews and they said it was pretty close, and being somewhat used to pes, and having some friends that are most likely going to get pes based on past allegiances, i decided that it was the way to go. it is certainly a step up from the demo, i only played it a few times this morning against alf, but it was pretty fun, tried barcelona (easily the best), real madrid, and arsenal, managed to score a few goals, won one lost two (the third on penalties). i probably won't be playing it much for the time being, preferring nba 2k10 for now (until i max out my player at least)....
and the shopping spree continues, though i may have sold off that old spare k100d super (for a bargain might i add). my brother has his canon, and has a circular polarizer, so in a rage of envy i decided i would get me a circular polariser as well, more or less top of the line with this one. basically it is meant to remove reflections from windows, water, etc, and i believe can also see through haze (somewhat)....
i found out about these shoes after i got back from south america, but they didn't have any colour schemes that i liked or availability at the time. they've since been updating the colour schemes, and finally a pair that i thought were worth buying, plus the strength of the aussie dollar made it a no brainer haha. these are definitely the lightest shoes i've ever handled (lighter than hyperdunks cos they're not as big obviously), even though i've been rolling my ankles a lot lately, i'm still not willing to bump up to mid or high cuts, so let's hope that i can actually manage to play in these without injuring myself....
ha, so my third copy finally arrived from blurb today (15th of the 11-15 day shipping schedule ), and i was pleased with the way it was packaged, sealed tight, no creases this time. i updated several photos (making them lighter/brighter and more contrasty), changed the design a bit (no more full bleed pages), and replaced several pictures (that didn't work well) as well as adding some more different designs in. well, i was a little surprised to open the book up and notice that some pictures seemed to be darker than the previous book which was quite alarming considering they were already quite dark....
got a game that i've been waiting for since i got the ps3, and i've pretty much been playing it since last night. the controls are a bit annoying (there's just so many of them, four or five pages (or more) in the manual devoted to that), and the menu navigation is a bit annoying how it always rolls back to the centre option rather than just staying on where you move the cursor to. the playability is pretty good, though the computer does take over a bit too much (that's probably configurable)....
that's right, after more than three months, the whole set is up, just finished uploading my photos from san pedro de atacama, and then a couple from salta and buenos aires in my last days, on flickr, and i'll just give the link to the all my pictures of panoramio. it's been a bit of a drawn out process, but with about 800 pictures online (plus all the ones from the news items), it was always going to be that. anyway, i'm kind of happy to have them all up now, though it means i need to go out and take more photos to give me something to do ....
On my last day, I went out to have lunch with a local Pentax using friend in BA that I'd met the first time I was in BA. We went to a restaurant just near my hostel in the centre of town. To be perfectly honest, this steak was nothing special, size-wise it was smaller than most everything I'd tried in Argentina, and it was lacking a little in flavour. But then again, when grading steak in Argentina, the bar is set very high. We were actually trying to order a heap of different things, but the restaurant didn't seem to have anything but this. I also got the chance to use his DA*16-50 lens (silent focus), very cool, though I don't think it will draw me to the dark side of zooms again.
The statue in the centre of the plaza in Salta is of course of the national hero, General San Martin, one of the liberators of South America.
My second stint in Salta would prove to be at least the equal of the first, in terms of fun, a lot of similarities between the two visits, Roger Federer won a Grand Slam match (though this time it was the French Open final as opposed to the Australian open semi final), on the back of getting hammered at the hostal barbeque. Went to a couple of the same bars/clubs, and restaurants. And generally too lazy to get out and see anything in the area. This was taken in Salta's plaza (the building in the reflection is the cathedral) , one of the best in Argentina I think, not that I visited that many, would be good to go back and do that a bit better 
.
Hands down one of my favourite photos from the whole trip, too bad I waited till the end to start doing these "jumping in front of big scenery" pictures, better late than never I suppose. The only thing that could've improved it, a fill flash, I never think of these things at the time for some reason. Ok, so this was actually the seventh attempt, I thought the second was better, I just cut a bit out of the frame though. It's hard, you put the twelve second timer on, you run over to the ledge, and you try to time it right so that you're at the summit of your jump (I'm sure this is either going up or coming down ), and it doesn't help when the ground beneath you is starting to give way, you see the dust fly up, well, it was definitely loose under foot.
That's what made the hills so hard to climb, all the salt in the ground made the footing very loose, so it'd just crumble under foot, and you wouldn't get anywhere. It was also sharp and abrasive, I know I came away from this little adventure with a few cuts and scratches (with everything being salty, it's twice the penalty as well), it was well worth it though.
Hard to believe those rocks were joined together before I arrived in San Pedro, but as you can see, a bit of elbow grease, and the entrance to the Quebrada del Diablo was open for all. Fortunately no one saw me doing this, haha, I finally made it to this maze on my second last day in San Pedro, I worked out what the map was saying, and found it the second time, though I did ride about five minutes past it, it didn't cost me anything.
Near the hostel, I'd wanted to take a picture of the stars (perfect in San Pedro) and also one of the radio antennas nearby since I'd been there, finally decided to do it, and got this result.
Now that the sun has gone, we've got some cool colours coming up behind the mountains, pretty purples and pinks, as well as turquoise.
For my final panorama, you get a picture of Laguna Tebinquiche, with the big volcanoes of Chile as a backdrop. Nine shots taken handheld in portrait mode, quite a feat this one, the exposure from one side to the other was pretty different (and you may notice some issues) but I think it still looks good.
I tried to do something, but waiting for the water to become still so that we could get a decent reflection shot was beyond my, and the photographers patience, so we settled on a few happy snaps. Why I wore my backpack into the water I have no idea, I instantly regretted that decision.
Some more perfect reflections at our final stop for today, Laguna Tebinquiche, where we would get a chance to try some trick photos (I should probably give up on these, I never really get a good result).
Ok, I probably looked quite the fool doing this, but you can't argue with results, who else if going to pull a cart wheel in front of the active volcano, Lascar, and get double output thanks to a perfect reflection in the ojos de salar (80+m deep only about 30m in diameter). I know, I cheated, someone else took this picture, but it would've been difficult getting across there in 12 seconds, or even using a remote.
Yes, another reflection photo at Laguna Cejas, this one has the moon in it. If you think you're tired of reflection photos now, you haven't seen anything yet. This one, you could just about turn upside down and not be able to tell which way was up.
I know I posted this in the news item about San Pedro, but this is a really good photo (I think), if the water wasn't so shallow (or I was a better photographer), you could almost turn this photo upside down and no one would be able to tell which way was up.
Finally got me a moonrise, okay, it might not be the biggest one ever, but at least I have one now, we can work on better ones later.
The shadows are starting to creep over even the 5 000m+ mountains in the distance, so it's about to get cold. The flat top volcano on the right (just right of the normal shaped volcano) is Lascar, the most active volcano in northern Chile. Just thinking about it, that normal shaped volcano reminds me of the Transformers cartoons (from the 80's), where their space ship crashed.
Well, the sun had already dropped below the mountains at this point, and so the situation was asking for an hdr photo. This is the end result, pretty nice I think, except for the bad timing of that car driving through, the colour of the sky is interesting, almost a light green, desert skies at sunset are pretty cool. Oh, btw, that white stuff on the ground, that's all salt.
Just pondering my last week in South America quite obviously, nice backdrop with Licancabur, this was at the sunset in the Moon Valley.
Next on the Valley of the Moon tour, The Three Marias. I presume the name is just some random concoction someone came up with, it's basically three rocks standing together. This one is just off to the left of the three marias.
One of about 100 moon valleys around the world, I have no idea what the moon is like, maybe it is like this, maybe they call it that just because it's rocky and arid.
