In the essence of trying to be a better photog, this year I’m going to try and do one photo per week, here are weeks 3, 4 & 5. 2 photos are from dinner out at Red Dot Microbrewery at Dempsey Hill and the other is a view from my apartment building looking out towards Jurong Island. Please let me know what you think in the comments…

(Week 3)

Exposure: 0.3, Aperture: f/4.0, Focal Length: 17 mm, ISO Speed: 800

(Week 4)

Exposure: 1, Aperture: f/5.6, Focal Length: 64 mm, ISO Speed: 800

(Week 5)

Exposure: 20, Aperture: f/22.0, Focal Length: 33 mm, ISO Speed: 800

Anita and I last night went to the 2nd annual Big Night Out show at the Singapore Indoor Stadium to see Rise Against, Saosin & Muse. We had been looking forward to the show since it was first announced as we had tickets to see Rise Against in March 2009 in Sydney. We weren’t able to go as we we moving over to Singapore a few weeks earlier, a real dampener as we both really love Rise Against and when they were announced as part of the Big Night Out show we were quite excited that we would be able to see them.

We got to the Singapore Indoor Stadium after grabbing some tea around 7pm thinking that we would be able to walk straight into the general admission area as we’ve done at so many other shows, alas were we mistaken! The queue to get in was about 400 metres long winding 1/2 way around the bloody stadium! So we joined the end of the queue and patiently waited while Saosin started their set (It must have been really empty in there), around 45 minutes later, about 8pm we reached the doors and finally made our way through police checks and onto the floor. It was a pretty strange feeling being only 20 people back from the front considering we waited for that length of time outside. Some things Singapore just has no idea about, and organising large (if you call 6000 people large) public gatherings is one of them. It would have been great to see Saosin, while not being a massive fan it’s nice to see them doing well as I have fond memories of hanging out with them in Sydney when I worked for EMI.

Anyway, we were in and thats what mattered, Rise Against came on shortly after and played a pretty powerful set of tracks mainly from their last 2 albums, Appeal To Reason & The Sufferer & The Witness. The crowd reaction was a lot better than I was expecting with quite a few singing along, to the new album mainly. Unfortunately you could tell that they had just finished the Big Day Out tours in Australia as they did look a little bit out of it and the vocals suffered a little as a result. The middle of their set was punctuated with Hero of War and Swing Life Away, you can watch a couple of minutes of the latter on the video player below (filmed with my iPhone 3GS so excuse quality). A 45 minute set is never quite enough and while they played a lot of their most popular tracks there were at least another 10 or so that would have been really awesome for Neetles and I to hear, especially some older tracks. So, after years of being a fan, I finally got to see them and it’s only left me with wanting to see more, lets hope they tour the next album to Asia, or that we are back in Australia by then!

Muse were on later with a pretty large stage production and light show including some pretty interesting video walls. I’ve never really been a big Muse fan, there is just something about every song sounding really similar that really annoys me. It’s like they get into the studio and try to write the most epic songs ever, and for me it always seems a little contrived. However, seeing the crowd reaction I am definitely in the minority here with the crowd really coming alive for the headliners set, It was good, but I don’t think I would ever see them at their own show, and we snuck out before the encore to get a cab home.

A pretty good night in the end but just makes me miss the music opportunities in Australia just that much more…

2010 has gotten off to a pretty good start so far and now that we are nearing the end of January i’m starting to get into a bit more of a groove, work is going pretty well and there is lots to do there. I’ve also started a few things that i’ve been putting off for the past year or so, including a better fitness regime, finding a work/life balance and taking on some new projects.

One of those projects is the weekly photo project, where each week throughout the year I plan on learning a new photography technique, taking a whole bunch of bad photos and then posting one decent photo to my flickr account which will then in turn be reflected here.

I’m a couple of weeks behind so I took a couple of photos this afternoon.

(Week 1)

Canon 40D, 1/3200 @ ƒ5/6 , ISO 400, 35mm

(Week 2)

Canon 40D, 1/50 @ ƒ5/6 , ISO 400, 35mm

Both images were touched up in Lightroom 2

I found this little gem on YouTube last night and couldn’t stop watching it, I think I might have played too much Street Fighter 2 (Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right B, A, Start. anyone?) in my youth, but what else are you gonna do growing up in Singapore? not much room to kick a rugby ball around, plus Van Damme, Chuck Norris & Steven Segal were kick ass warriors in the 90’s!

What’s better than seeing Van Damme kick ass in Street Fighter 2? it’s better than the actual movie, and features an awesome MIDI soundtrack and original sound effects!

Spent a couple of hours this mornibg playing around with my iPhone and checkih out the latest MacThemes forum threads. In the end I coupled together a few different elements from around the forums and came up with a setup I’m pretty happy with, only to find out right afterwards that two new themes were released in Quab & Oletus.

Here’s my setup anyway, (view the full shot on flickr) just make sure that you jailbreak your iPhone and install WinterBoard & SSH for all complete UI control.

Icons: Classica 2 by Dustin
UI Theme: MatteUI
Lockscreen: Personal Tenuitas Mod

Happy New Year!

I thought that we would start off the new year with a bit of Kiwi comedy, we’ve been cranking out the Pulp Sport DVD’s over the Xmas break and I found this little gem, check it out!

Shamelessly pilfered off a friends facebook, it was too good not to share!

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, Craig. Seriously dude, stop throwing rocks.

Jesus H. Christ

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. And if you don’t like it, too bad. I’m the president.

Abraham Lincoln

It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway. Man, she was hot. I am going to be thinking about that ass for a long, long time.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are. But feel free to shoot yourself in the face. That is not a waste.

Kurt Cobain

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. No, not that one! That was the only thing keeping the commies out.

Ronald Reagan

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The married guys know what I’m talking about. Am I right, fellas?

Mahatma Gandhi

There never was a good war or bad peace. Except that one time when we freed ourselves from the British. That was awesome. Overall, I would say that was a good war.

Benjamin Franklin

We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Oh God, I think I see a spider crawling up my pant leg. Get it off. GET IT OFF!

Franklin D.Roosevelt

Let my people go! No? OK, what if we leave you all the fat chicks?

Moses

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction. But what do I know? I’m only Albert Fucking Einstein.

Albert Einstein

Hope you enjoyed them, and with that I am off to watch Avatar in 3D!

Merry Christmas & Best Wishes for a Happy New Year!

All the best from Anita and I, spending our first Christmas together, about to dig in and open all the pressies then off for a champagne lunch in town.

I’ve been using macs for quite a while now and one thing I love about the operating system is the wealth of well designed and useful software which is available. Windows has a large breadth of software available but since switching over in 2003 I’ve not had to go back to windows unless I am browser testing a website in Internet Explorer. For me, there is nothing that my mac can’t do, be it work or play.

I’ve compiled a list of my favourite applications, most of them I use on at least a weekly basis, and in no particular order.

Perian
A must have download for anyone who wants to consume video content on thier mac. Install it and let Quicktime open all your video files with ease.

Tweetie
Tweet much? Well if you haven’t already downloaded Tweetie for your iPhone or your mac then you are missing out. It’s a wonderfully designed application that features multiple accounts, independent compose windows, search trends, threaded dm’s, user details & bookmarklets which make it my Twitter application of choice. Best of all, they offer a free version (ad supported)

Billings
Since starting my own business (ChillyBin Web Design & Consultancy) earlier in the year Billings has been an essential piece of my daily routine. It looks after all my job estimates, client briefs, time tracking, invoicing and accounting. It’s a very powerful little tool for small business and something that I could not do without.

Things
I’ve been using the GTD method for a few years now to manage my tasks and Things is a neat little app for iPhone and mac that facilitates all my todo lists and syncs across both devices seamlessly. I no longer have to worry about forgetting anything either with ChillyBin or in my personal life. I’ve recently integrated it with Mail.app so I can send new items to it effortsly from my email.

Textmate
I’ve recently just upgraded to Textmate after running BBedit for a number of years. Textmate now looks after all my text editing across my systems, it opens, reads and edits any file I throw at it. Since I spend most of my day writing and editing XHTML & CSS this is one tool I could not do without, it also has a set of really strong bundles inbuilt which allow textmate to be extended easily.

Adium
I use chat for business and for pleasure and Adium is my multiple protocol application of choice, there are tons of community developed plugins, icons, message lists and contact lists themes available which makes this app a constant on any system I run.

Transmit
I love Transmit, it’s been my SFTP/FTP application since i first migrated to mac and it’s developed my the Panic team who really make some great software. I use this religiously to get web content around to both client and personal websites.

Transmission
I don’t tend to download much through bittorrent anymore but when I do it’s with Transmission. It also monitors a folder hooked up to Dropbox so I can download even when I’m out of the office or on my iPhone.

Speed Download 5
Multiple threaded download management application which I use to download and sort anything downloaded through the web, it also allows me to connect it up with my rapidshare account.

Adobe Creative Suite
Photoshop, Illustrator, & Dreamweaver are my tools of choice out of this suite which has been the main tool of any creative project I’ve undertaken.

Pixelmator
For those little image edits which I can’t be bothered opening up Photoshop for.

VMWare Fusion
Alas, there are still times we need to run windows software, especially when testing and checking a new website design across multiple browsers, helps with streaming and decoding any files specifically written for windows too (I’m looking at you WMV!) I highly recommend checking it out and the new Unity mode in v3 is fantastic.

Parachute
Backups are important, I use this little app in conjunction with Time Machine to keep backups of my hard disk content across on my 2TB NAS storage device.

1Password
Strong Password generator and managment application that keeps all my passwords synced, strong and secure. Helps when I am setting up new passwords and websites for clients as it allows me a quick and simple way to archive these very strong passwords and bring them up when I need them very quickly. Oh, and it syncs across to my iPhone too.

Balsamiq Mockups
Prototyping tool developed in Air which allows me to quickly send clients a basic mockup of their project quickly without having to worry about colours and/or opening up Photoshop at the first stage of a project. A real lifesaver!

Sequel Pro
Helps me manage online and offline database content for client websites.

Bowtie
iTunes notifier and last.fm scrobbler that sits alongside my dock and allows me to quickly see what track in playing in iTunes and either rate it or skip it, has a strong set of keyboard shortcuts too.

CandyBar
I use CandyBar to customise icons & docks across my systems with a little help from the amazing icon designers at macthemes2.net & deviantart.com.

Dropbox
I love my dropbox, it allows me to send files aroundthw web seamlessly and effortleessly. I can sync a new design file easily with a client which will then get downloaded to their dropbox folder on their system. I also use it to share large files over the net via email to clients or friends as I’ve got 2.5GB of storage to play with. I also sync my .torrent files here with Transmission.

iWork Suite
Pages, Numbers & Keynote are all really undervalued applications in my opinion and they take care of all proposals, briefs, spreadsheet and presentation tasks I throw at it. They also all open ad export files in PDF and the Microsoft Office file formats so you can share this with PC users too.

MainMenu
Set of system tools which allows me to clean and maintain my snow leopard installations and keep them running up to spec. I also use it to clean my browser and dns caches when editing and viewing website designs as well As repairing and corrupt file permissions.

iStat
Remote monitoring tool that allows me to check the status of any of my machines my iPhone.

Drive Genius 2
For anything that MainMenu can’t handle I load up Drive Genius, it also helps with defragmentation of my drives (yes, it happens even on a mac), repartitioning, shredding files, scanning & integrity checks.

iLife Suite
If you own a mac you will have at least used these applications, but I really couldn’t do without iMovie, iPhoto & Garageband.

UnRarX & The Unarchiver
For all your unarchiving needs.

It’s that time of the year again, the end so it’s time for my best-of compilation for 2009!

BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR:
Alexisonfire – Old Crows / Young Cardinals

Alexisonfire return with a fucking good record here gutted that i’ll miss their Sydney Soundwave shows early next year, honourable mentions have to go to Propaghandi’s Supporting Caste, Pearl Jam’s Backspacer & Every Time I Die’s New Junk Aesthetic as well.

MOST DISAPPOINTING ALBUM OF THE YEAR:
Killswitch Engage – Killswitch Engage

There were quite a few contenders for the most disappointing album of the year, but I went with Killswitch cause they just should have done so much better, this album was depressing and boring, other mentions to Placebo, Ben Folds, Sparklehorse & Black Label Society.

SONG OF THE YEAR:
Karnivool – Set Fire to the Hive

Hard to pick a definite winner here but was a really great album and this track really stood out to me, honourable mentions to Jamie T’s Sticks ‘n’ Stones, Matisyahu’s Darkness Into Light, Propagandi’s Human(e) Meat (The Flensing Of Sandor Katz) & Alice In Chains’ A Looking In View.

ARTIST OF THE YEAR:
Frank Turner

I only discovered Frank Turner in the latter part of the year and I love everything i’ve heard so far off his 3 albums, honourable mentions to The Bronx, Chimaira & Hatebreed.

TOUR OF THE YEAR:
Nine Inch Nails Wave Goodbye 1989 – 2009, Fort Canning Park, Singapore

Unfortunately this was the only live show that I saw this year, but If I was going to see only one show a year, Nine Inch Nails would definitely be at the top of my list, looking forward to Rise Against & Muse in Singapore next year though.

VIDEO OF THE YEAR:
Rammstein – Pussy

Hilarious!

STORY OF THE YEAR:
Nine Inch Nails Wave Goodbye Final Tour

BEST ALBUM ARTWORK:
Pearl Jam – Backspacer

FAVOURITE ALBUMS FOR THE YEAR:

• Sepultura – A-lex
• Mastodon – Crack The Sky
• Pearl Jam – Ten (Reissue)
• Pearl Jam – Backspacer
• Propagandhi – Spupporting Caste
• Chimaira – The Infection
• Earth Crisis – To The Death
• Hatebreed – For The Lions
• NOFX – Coaster
• Mos Def – The Ecstatic
• Alexisonfire – Old Crows / Young Cardinals
• Karnivool – Sound Awake
• Jamie T – Kings & Queens
• Frank Turner – Poetry Of The Deed
• Every Time I Die – New Junk Aesthetic
• Slayer – World Painted Blood
• Lamb of God – Wrath
• Flight of the Conchords – I Told You I Was Freaky

FAVOURITE SONGS FOR THE YEAR:

• Pearl Jam – Got Some
• Jamie T – Sticks ‘n’ Stones
• Lamb of God – Contractor
• Alexisonfire – Young Cardinals
• Chimaira – Try To Survive
• Karnivool – Set Fire to the Hive
• NOFX – Eddie, Bruce and Paul
• Alice in Chains – A Looking In View
• Matisyahu – Darkness Into Light
• Frank Turner – Reasons Not To Be An Idiot
• Propagandhi – Human(e) Meat (The Flensing of Sandor Katz)
• Flight of the Conchords – Sugarlumps

Check out the full list compiled from all last.fm scrobbles this year.