[ PHALKUNZ'S BLOG ]

I've Moved

2007-08-28T02:01:00.000+12:00

Hi guys, this is maybe the last post of mine on blogger. I've moved to wordpress with a new domain, http://phalkunz.com. See you all there!

I'm back

2007-08-22T20:55:00.000+12:00

Sorry for the disappearance. I've been busy for the last few weeks. It's not that I couldn't come online- I was just not in the mood for writing in my blog until some friends pushed me to come back again (it's all good). Well, what's new you ask? There are just a few things. First one is I've been busy. Why do I keep telling everyone that I've been busy? Hmm.. oh yeah because I just have been! The second thing is there was a rumor saying my dad passed away of heart attack. Who made this up and for what reason? I don't know but that was so ridiculous! Thirdly, one of my tooth went bad so I had to go to a dentist and the dentist ended up performing a root canal that cost me almost a grand. Gosh, I could have saved that money for a new laptop. Second last, I have been so attracted to the new iMac. I'm so in love with it. I think I'm gonna get one when I can afford it even though I wanna switch to Linux, to be specific, Ubuntu. Lastly, I'm gonna move to a new home. Don't get it wrong ok I don't mean a physical one. Actually, I'm just gonna to move to wordpress so hope i can get my wordpress up and running soon.

Alrighty, that's about it for now. Thanks for continuing to check my blog :)

Creativity Quote

2007-07-20T10:08:00.000+12:00

Creativity and ideas don't come on command, they seem to spring up when we least expect it.

by Mattias seen on ALA (A List Apart)

Metal Mushroom

2007-07-17T05:51:00.000+12:00

Menu Icons

2007-07-16T04:58:00.000+12:00

My old blog template was messed up. In fact, it was quite heavy to load as some people complained so I thought I better start again with this template and try to keep it as light and simple as possible. I've made a few changes to the new template now and I'll do more later coz I'm so not free at the moment. In addition, I've also drawn 3 menu icons as you can see below.

If you happen to like the icons, feel free to download and use them. if you want Photoshop versions of these icons, let me know.

A Bit of Steve Jobs and Apple History

2007-07-15T02:58:00.000+12:00

What an inspirational speech

Short yet good documentary about Apple

Internet Explorer is discriminating?

2007-07-12T21:53:00.000+12:00

For some stupid reason, IE doesn't render my blog at all. Not only does it not show my page correctly, it doesn't even show my blog at all. Oh come on IE, at least show me something so I can track the bug and fix it, it can't be that bad. I've tested my blog with firefox 2 (mac and windows version), Opera 9, and Safari and they all work fine except that stupid IE. I know most of the viewers use IE so for now I've just changed my template temporarily. Why don't people switch to other browsers? When IE comes with Windows, it doesn't mean it's the best application and you have to use it. Don't be afraid of change. I don't need to say why you should switch to some other web browser besides IE because this site (http://browsehappy.com/) explains it all.

Try Out My Cooking

2007-07-12T06:14:00.000+12:00

I never thought I would enjoy cooking this much but it's so much fun when I can experiment with something new and it turns out good (or it fails sometimes but it doesn't matter much).

Auckland City

2007-07-11T14:05:00.000+12:00

Censored

2007-07-08T17:41:00.000+12:00

Original photo.

Messy

2007-07-03T06:09:00.000+12:00

I realized that I haven't taken any photos with my dslr for like a month now. Here's a photo taken with my dslr after a long time.

Clean Mighty Mouse's Scroll Ball

2007-06-29T20:59:00.000+12:00

I love mighty mouse for the fact that it's simplistically beautiful and highly functional. But i guess there's no such thing as perfect. The drawback of mighty mouse is the scroll ball traps dirt and grease easily and after sometime it doesn't work at all when you scroll downward. I was trying to clean the dirt and stuff that was trapped inside the mouse by following official instruction from Apple but it didn't work at all. I've googled and found out that many people have the same problem. Some said the official instruction worked, some took a step further by applying alcohol to the ball, and other went to the extreme by disassembling it. Well, I've tried them all except the last option. I left it unused for months now and thought well I don't do anything about it I won't be able to use it anyways so I rather get it fixed or chuck it in the bin. I was in dilemma because if I was to take it apart then it had to break it because it has a ring that keep top part and second part of the mouse together and Apple attaches the ring to the mouse by gluing. If it used clips or things like that I would have done it ages ago. Yeah, finally it disassembled it and found out there were big chunks of dirt and lint on the wheels driven by the scroll ball and I was amazed by the simplicity of the design and yet it works like magic. But i had to glued them back together and it is the worst thing :( Ok, I have a question. Why don't they use clips (I wouldn't want screws though) instead of glue? Or do they encourage us to buy a new one every now and then?

The top part, the bottom part and the ring

The scroll ball compartment (there are 4 other wheels in it)

The wheels attached the compartment

The wheels driven by the scroll ball

Put them back after cleaning

It works now :)

Baby Snail

2007-06-20T22:14:00.000+12:00

I just picked this lil' guy (see another photo with my fingers so you can tell how small it is) from downstairs for a photo shoot.

Starry Starry Night

2007-06-19T21:05:00.001+12:00

I was fixing my pc and suddenly the electricity was out. I thought I must have done something wrong with the power plug but then I looked out the window everywhere is so dark. The electricity was cut off again (by again I mean this is not the first time. ) but i don't know it was just this area (northcote) or the whole North Shore city. Then I walked out of the apartment and looked up the sky and I could see the stars so clearly. So I thought it would be a good time to shoot the sky hehe. Well, I did. I swapped my camera lens to 50mm 1.8f because of all my lenses this one is the fastest one (means can take more light thus works well in low light condition), set the shutter speed to 30 sec, put the camera to self-timer mode and put the camera face up on the bench (I can't afford a tripod yet). It didn't turn out nice after all :(

Green On Red

2007-06-19T15:47:00.000+12:00

Insectz

2007-06-18T01:23:00.000+12:00

Click the image to view larger.

Daily Word On Desktop

2007-06-09T19:07:00.000+12:00

Mac + GeekTool + www.urbandictionary.com + ruby

Sparkling Earrings

2007-06-01T16:41:00.000+12:00

This another photo taken with my studio.

Page Icon (PixelArt)

2007-05-31T16:40:00.001+12:00

I've just drawn a blog icon with Pixen. Finally, pixelart has a place in my blog.

Get 'Em Analyzed

2007-05-31T01:16:00.000+12:00

Recently, Google's just introduced a new web-based tool called Analytics. What does it do? It collects statistic data about your web site and that statistic tells you things like how many hits your site's got, how many distinct visitors, where they are from, how they get to your site? what operator systems they're working on, what web browsers they use, what connection speeds they have, what their screen resolutions are, and many many more. What do you get out of this information anyways? Well, from that information you can design your site accordingly. For example, it helps you to decide on the width of your web pages by reading collected information on screen resolution. If the majority of the visitors use 1024x640 resolution, then design your site best for that resolution. To conclude, it is a great tool and again it is FREE.

Flash Ruby Programming Book

2007-05-30T03:00:00.000+12:00

I'm really amazed by the writing style of the author. Check it out. It's great and it's FREEEE.

Recent Flickr Photos with Javascript

2007-05-27T05:51:00.000+12:00

I've just written a javascript code to extract my recent photos' thumbnails from flickr. You can see the demo on the sidebar of this blog. Yeah finally I made it :) You're welcome to download the code to use/modify. To get it working in your blog, replace YOUR-KEY in the first line of code with your Google API key, url in Feed with with your flickr feed, and create a new html/javascript widget with the code. That's set!

I'm The Biggest Procrastinator But ...

2007-05-24T04:41:00.000+12:00

I'm addressing my procrastination and trying to manage it. I've been quite productive in terms of my thesis in the last few days. I knew I needed some help on doing this and found an article on how to stop procrastinating. If you realize that you always leave your important work that needs to get done behind and do other things instead, that article is for you.

Download/Save Unsavable Flickr Photos

2007-05-21T14:00:00.001+12:00

Has it ever happened to you when you tried to save a flickr photo but you ended up saving another blank image file called "spaceball.gif" instead? I don't exactly know what flickr is trying to do. Preventing people from downloading those photos? Maybe. What flickr does is it uses another transparent image to overlay the main image to block users from downloading the actual image. Is there a way to get around it? Yeah of course. It's no wonder that if you can download youtube videos, you must be able to save protected flickr photos somehow. There are a few ways you can do this. One approach is to screenshot and then use image editing application to crop the part that you want but believe me it's such a pain in the arse. Another one is to actually read the code and extract the real image url and the paste it to browser address bar but i'm sure you don't wanna do this. Ok enough of all that hassle. I've written a few lines of javascript code that can be plugged into Greasemokey to display an actual link to the image. The code is written as follows:


// ==UserScript==
// @name          SaveFlickrImg
// @namespace     http://phalkunz.blogspot.com
// @description   Displays a download link for an unsavable flickr photo
// @include       http://www.flickr.*/*
//
// ==/UserScript==

var imgsrc;
var img;
var imgParent;
var flag = false;

var imgs = document.images;
for (var i=0; i<imgs.length; i++) {
var src = imgs[i].getAttribute("class");
if (src=="reflect"){
 img = imgs[i];
 imgParent = img.parentNode;
 imgsrc=imgs[i].getAttribute("src");
 flag = true;
}
}

if (flag) {
var my_banner = document.createElement("div");
my_banner.innerHTML = '<div style="border-bottom: 1px solid #333333; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: small; background-color: #336699; color: #FFFFFF;>' +
   '<p style="margin:0px;padding: 5px;">' +
   '   <a href="' + imgsrc + '" style="color:#FFFFFF; font-weight:bold; font-size:10px;">main image link</a>' +
   '</p></div>';
imgParent.appendChild(my_banner);
}

Save that code as, for example, saveFlickrPhoto.user.js and install that file in greasemonkey. That's it. Go to that flickr photo that you couldn't download but this time it will show a link under the photo. That's it. I'm sure you know how to do it from there.

Reverse Lens = Macro

2007-05-11T22:14:00.000+12:00

I've been thinking of buying canon 100mm macro lens. This morning I was reading reviews and also looking at some sample photos taken by that lens on flick and then I found one guy's comment on one photo. He mentioned about reverse lens and a link to a reverse lens flickr photo groups. By the name of the technique I had an idea of doing it already so I started by detaching one lens of mine from my camera and held it the other way around to the camera and it worked. Thanks to those people out there and flickr as well. However, it is no substitute for lenses which are designed for macro photography because you have no control over focal length and aperture of the lens and the depth of field is too shallow (I tried with 18mm, 28mm and 70mm). At least it is something to experiment and play with and it can be used when you can't afford a macro lens. The above photo is a photo taken by my 50mm 1.8f (and here is another photo of the same subject taken from different perspective).

The Light of Knowledge

2007-05-10T15:52:00.000+12:00

I shot this photo like a month ago. Don't get it wrong it's NOT photoshoped. I did this by projecting my table lamp light through a camera lens onto a book. The picture of the light bulb is then printed onto the book. I'm quite proud that I discovered this by myself. This concept has been used for overhead projector but I only realized this after shooting that photo.

Pixel Art

2007-05-09T01:41:00.000+12:00

Some of you might know that apart from photography, graphic stuff is also my interest. Lately, I started to get interested in another form of graphic art. I've seen it many times on the web and magazines recently. It's not something new though, you saw this kinda graphic in old video games like Super Mario. I didn't know what it was called and was wondering what the heck people would call it until a few days back while looking through a graphic design magazine and I saw it again and so I scanned through the text and then I found out that it's called pixel art. This evening I was googling to see some pixel art works and I came across this website. The author of this site recommends a tool called GraphicGale for creating pixel graphics so I decided to download the program and gave it a try and after like an hour I had a picture (my canon camera) as below.
What is pixel art anyways? Literally, you create it by drawing pixel by pixel. As Mark (the author of the site above) says it is time consuming and often difficult. Well, I think that's what most arts are anyways. They requires a lot of patience and effort.

10 times zoom of the picture above

Related links:
- Isometric pixel art tutorial: http://rhysd.syntesis.org/tutorial/index.php
- Wax icon museum: http://www9.ocn.ne.jp/~iconwax/
- Flickr's pixel artist group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/the_pixel_artists/

Rolleicord III type 2

2007-05-07T21:58:00.000+12:00

I was thinking of buying Nikon FM2 a week ago. Why? I just thought I would own a durable film camera that I can use for my whole life and while digital cameras are much more convenient than film ones, the quality of film still cannot be replaced by digital yet. This morning I was suddenly reminded that there's a shop selling old cameras and stuff close to my place. So I decided to drop by and have a look whether they have the one I wanted. I went into the shop and I was so amazed by the old cameras, so many actually, some work and some do not. It turned out that they didn't have FM2 but then I got attracted to another one. It's Rolleicord, a medium-format twin lens reflex camera made in Germany. In the end, I decided to buy it with a roll of film. I haven't had time to test it out yet. I tested the aperture and exposure speed and they seem to work fine. Even if it doesn't work, I can still keep it. I know it's gonna be hard to use because it doesn't have exposure check so I'm thinking of using exposure meter of my digital camera hehe. I don't know which model of Rolleicord is it but according to this page, it's model III type 2 and the manufacture date is between 1952-1953. So it's much older than me. It's classic man ;) It's not a brand new one, so I didn't expect that it would include the case and manual but it does. Cool huh?

Why can't you understand?

2007-05-06T13:51:00.000+12:00

Have you ever asked yourself or other people why can't (s)he can't understand this or that? If so, you should read this article.

Loofa

2007-05-05T23:59:00.000+12:00

Scrub scrub scrub... hehehe

Where Fishes Live

2007-05-03T11:33:00.000+12:00

This was also taken on the goat island trip day. If you tilt your head down to the water, you can see blue maomaos swimming around but due to the low visibility of water I couldn't take any photos of them. I tried but it didn't work.

Freeze

2007-05-02T12:32:00.000+12:00

Play At The Beach

2007-05-01T00:25:00.000+12:00

The beach area near Goat Island where you would have to take the Glass bottom boat from.

Best viewed large.

Budget Studio

2007-04-30T04:33:00.000+12:00

I've just set up my very-budget conscious studio for taking portraits, you might not even call it a studio hehe. I can't afford professional lighting equipments, not even for the backdrop. All I can afford is one table lamp (and I borrowed one from Bex), a few meter squares of red cloth as a backdrop, toilet paper as a light diffuser, and cooking foil as a reflector.

And these are the photos I took using my studio. Click the thumbnail to enlarge.

Goat Island Trip

2007-04-29T18:34:00.000+12:00

Yesterday I was part of a group that went to goat island. This was organized by the Malaysian student association (UMSA). We couldn't actually get to the island itself due to the choppy water & high tide, we could only see it across from us at the shore. However, it was not bad after all because we had a chance to do other things instead like going to other beaches, dropping by to see kauri trees, going on a bush walk, and most importantly having a lecture given by Dr. Floor Anthoni on marine environment, ecology and conservation. Furthermore, we had a chance to see his small homemade sustainable aquarium.UMSA group photo.

Read more about marine conservation at seafriends.org.nz

Self-Portrait

2007-04-27T11:29:00.000+12:00

Lomography effect

2007-04-25T13:04:00.000+12:00

I was browsing for lomo camera yesterday and then I came across this post in which the author provides a lomography photoshop action. I tried it out and I was like "coooool". ok, you might wanna try it out, go to this post and download the action for your photoshop.

EF 50mm F/1.8 II

2007-04-23T19:15:00.000+12:00

This is my first prime lens ever.

Testshot:

Friendship Star

2007-04-23T03:29:00.000+12:00

The alternative title of this photo should be "South East Asian Star". Who are in the photo? Ok, start from the front most one and go clockwise direction, me, Wei Long, Desiree, Bex, and Melissa.

Malaysian Carnival

2007-04-22T01:41:00.000+12:00

There was a Malaysian carnival yesterday in front of Britomart. We had decided to go there early because the important shows and performance took place early but unfortunately we all woke up late and we got there about 2pm so we missed a lot of things including food :(

Malay wedding performance

Click the thumbnails to enlarge

Thumbnail photos' titles:
1: The crowd
2: Selamat Datang (welcome)
3: Queueing up to buy food
5: Performance

Gone

2007-04-21T02:32:00.000+12:00

If you have read this post you might be able to figure out what "incomplete" really means. There was a fern in that little vase but now it's gone (dead) again. By saying again, I mean it's not the first time I couldn't keep a plant alive. Well, realize that I can't take care all those kinda things. Anyways, I took this photo with my tokina 28-70mm lense, which I rarely use it, with iso 1600.

Unwantedly Grows

2007-04-19T16:06:00.000+12:00

Last Day of (Khmer) New Year

2007-04-17T06:39:00.000+12:00

Got 2gether with my gang again after awhile last night for some drinks and dinner (mainly roasted pig head)

Thy and Bong Ponlok danced to the music.

Stormy Weather

2007-04-12T14:13:00.001+12:00

Just played around with Photoshop (Curve tool) and came up with the image below. Oringinal image is here.

Better viewed large.

My New Toy (Canon IXY Digital 10)

2007-04-08T12:47:00.000+12:00

Yeah, I finally bought a new point and shoot camera yesterday. The reason why I decided to buy a P&S camera is because I can't take my DSLR with me all the time since it's too bulky. Ok here's a little review of mine.

Pros:
Body design (squarish - thaaat i like)
Easy to use
Vibrant colors
Small enough to take with you everywhere
Variety of built-in functions

Cons:
Doesn't work well in low light condition (while most people said it does)
With ISO 1600, photos are unusable for me
Sharpness is not that good

Here are some test shots. They're straight out of the camera except for some resizing. (Click to enlarge)

Installing Lightbox in Blogger 2

2007-04-06T11:22:00.000+12:00

Here I've just installed Lightbox in my blog. Got a tip from Gecko&Fly and also javascript libraries (javascript prototype framework and lightbox libraries) posted on his server that enables me to get Lightbox working here. And also thanks to Lokesh Dhakar (Lightbox developer) for making lightbox available for public use and Sam Stephenson (javascript prototype framework developer) for taking out the pain out of web developers' ass. Click on the picture below to see how it looks like.

Click on the image

Going SIMPLER

2007-04-04T22:03:00.000+12:00

The more sophisticated the product the simpler the visual identity. I don't know what it's like for everyone but adobe photoshop's like a software I can't live without. It is the best photo editing software ever, at least to me. The current version is CS3. Man, it's darn cool. Here are new features:

Smart Filters
Quick Selection and Refine Edge tools
Advanced compositing
Streamlined interface
Better raw image processing
Improved Adobe Bridge
Enhanced Vanishing Point
Enhanced 32-bit HDR support
Peak performance
Black-and-white conversion

Mr. Supa Slow

2007-03-31T01:13:00.000+12:00

Every time I see a snail (of course not the one without a shell) it reminds me of one of the old time stories, the race between a rabbit and a snail. Ya'll know who won the race, right?

Partly Dead

2007-03-29T22:18:00.000+12:00

Partly dead leaves can be more colorful than the good ones.

Old School

2007-03-24T13:55:00.000+12:00

These are my new oldschool t-shirts. The cheapest yet the most liked and worn ^^

Shared Lunch @ Work

2007-03-21T22:33:00.000+12:00

Share share share ...

Happy lunch huh?

"You stole my share grrrrr" said Joe

Taiwanese mafia

O'Week

2007-03-19T22:20:00.000+12:00

Leaving for retro bowling

Ice skating night

Pro iceskater... Nah

Da girls and Sam (Toga party)

Me and my bum bum

Me and Jen

Blown Away

2007-03-18T23:43:00.000+12:00

I've been away from blog world for so long this time. A lot of things have happened so far but I didn't have a chance to blog them up maybe because summer is a time to go out and have fun outside under the sun so I haven't been home most of the time. Well, the weather is getting cold and leaves started falling, it's a sign of autumn and then soon enough it will be replaced by winter. Sure enough, winter is a good time to stay at home most of the time thus it is a good to blog heaps again hehe.

By The River

2007-01-14T15:25:00.000+13:00

Adrienne

2007-01-09T22:16:00.000+13:00

It was favorite hehe. Something reminded me of it just now. It so reminded me of the old time hehe with friends back home. Well, someone needs to listen to it.

I've been thinking about you, my love
And all the crazy things that you put me through
Now I'm coming around, Throwing it back to you
Were you thinking of me when you kissed him
Could you taste me when you licked his skin
All the while I showerd you with trust and promises
What I'm needing now is some sweet revenge
To get back all that I lost then
I gave you all I had to give, but I could never reach you

Chorus :
Oh, Adrienne, I thought I knew you
Once again, you used me, used me
Adrienne, I should have left you
Long before you used me, Used me up

Spent my money, drove my car
I treated you like a shining star
But in my sky all burnt out you are
And I'll have the last laugh, when I see you walking with
some other guy
'Cause I know you're gonna end up all alone
So take these words, some good advice
All you've done's gonna come back twice
You never cared how much it hurt, I really need to tell you

Chorus

What I'm needing now is some sweet revenge
To get back all that I lost then.
I gave you all that I had to give, but I could never reach you

Chorus

Spiky Thingy

2007-01-08T18:32:00.000+13:00

Saw this baby hedgehog in the backyard.

Everybody Like To Be Cared & Heard

2007-01-07T00:41:00.000+13:00

I think, not just me, everyone wants to feel cared and heard all the time especially from the one you love. What good is love when you don't care about each other and importantly when you are away from each other. Take an hour each day to show the one you love that you care won't take all of your time and space. Saying you're busy is such a lame excuse. Even 10 minutes or so each day will do to show that you are really there for him, to show that you think about him every single day. Saying that you care alone is not enough because people care about actions not the words. Have you ever heard of a song called "more than words"? Anyone can say anything but doing it makes the impact. The same as friends. You can tell which one is your true friend only when you're in trouble as in for lovers when they are away from each other.

Quotes of the days:
- "You don't know what you've got until it's gone"
- "Everything has its limit"

Kmean Plouv

2007-01-07T00:14:00.000+13:00

I think this is my fav song at the moment coz maybe it suits my mood.

Smoke

2007-01-04T08:52:00.000+13:00

Camping

2007-01-02T17:45:00.000+13:00

Below are some of the photos taken during my camping trip with my friends.

Huka fall

Our tent

Me in front of the motel in Turangi

Flowers at the motel

Kayaking for the first time

Wellington cable car

Flowers in the bush

Wrap-up

2006-12-25T13:29:00.000+13:00

This year is coming to an end and soon the new year will soon begin. it's time to wrap things up. This year has been great even though the first semester I was in a depression mode and the last 2 months I've been having too many problems. However, I've been living my life to the fullest and learned so many things. This year I've been good and all I want for the new year is a nice fine and CARING lady and a good job. I also take this opportunity to show my gratitude to some people whom I find significant in this year. First of all, to my Cambodian mate Itt. He's a never-say-no friend. Thanks for being so helpful. And then thanks to bong sang for showing me how to be strong and positive. He's very confident and open-minded. When it comes to computer stuff, most of the questions can be answered by Kenno. Not just that, lately he could give me solutions to some life problems too and it worked. And then Kaly, you're so nice to me after all the mean things I've done to you. I can say that you're my best female friend ever. Being the slowest person in the world doesn't degrade your personality Girish. Thanks for the adivces you have given me. Well, to this girl Ada. Even though we've known each other for a month something but she's really been so helpful and caring to me. Thanks for helping me to solve some of the problems I had lately. Joseph, have I told you that you're the most fun person to hang out with? It's been really fun to hang out with you bro. Jolie Jolie I never thought you were such a clubbing person hehe and yeah thank you for sharing the fun with us and sorry for the inconveniences I've made. This one to Danung, thanks for making me feel special. That's really been nice of you. And to Man Moi for sharing your own experience. The last but not least, I'd like to thank my best friend Vireak. Thanks for keeping in touch and keeping our friendship. I wish you were here so that we could hang out again.

Alrighty, I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New!!!

This is my favorite Christmas song, "Last Christmas", for this year.

Cute White Stuffz

2006-12-23T12:58:00.000+13:00

Hottest of The Year

2006-12-13T22:22:00.000+13:00

It's the first time I'm blogging about celebrities. For these 2 ladies I couldn't help admiring them for the fact that they really take my breath away every time I see them tv ;) Maybe they're not the hottest for everyone but they already have my vote.

Hotty with a mean voice. [pic source]

She looks best in "Malena". [pic source]

Christmas Dinner Party

2006-12-11T22:10:00.000+13:00

Finally decided to join a Christmas dinner party with my colleagues from Bisco at Nick's house. We were supposed to get to the place earlier but Joe's idea was to take a shortcut but ended up taking more time as usual lolz. We started with some drink from juice to wine and followed by a big meal and finished by pavlova and more drink. Yesss finally I got to try pavlova after almost 4 years in New Zealand.

[Click to enlarge] Some of Bisco team - Danung (position?), Chris (researcher), Jolie (Graphic Design), and me

Nick's baby Loyal

Pavlova with ice-cream and strawberries

Random plant :)

Layers

2006-12-10T11:37:00.000+13:00

Another Rotorua Trip

2006-12-03T11:04:00.000+13:00

Waken up by a phone call from Itt, my Cambodian mate, he asked me to join the trip to Rotorau as we planned in a week before but I didn't feel like want to go at first because I was drunk the day before and other things as well but finally I was convinced . We six people were headed to Rotorua at about 10am. It was just a one day trip so it was quite late and I didn't think I would be fun. We arrived there and the first place we went to was a Lake, I don't know what it's called. Since it's short trip we couldn't do anything much. So we decided just to have paddle boat race. It was killing our legs but it was so fun hehe. And then we went to a park and there was a museum but we didn't go in anyway just walked around in the park. After that, we got to Polynesian spa but man there was a lot people there, tourists actually. The spa was crowded by people. Everyone of us was so hungry after that so we dropped by a Korean restaurant but the first idea was fast food. The food was really nice. It's maybe first best Korean restaurant I've ever been to or maybe I was just too hungry. And the last place was natural thermal area where they have boiling mud and it's smoking in the ground. After all it was such a fun trip. Actually there are so many things to do and places to say. So I want to go again but I gotta save some money first :)

Paddle boat (this one is for kids)

Pony ride

Museum

Forgot to read the stone so I don't know who is it

Just another rose garden

Natural thermal area

Bad Luck is The Beginning of Good Luck

2006-12-02T03:56:00.000+13:00

I was stressed out by my passport thingy for a few hours in the morning but then I got cheered up by my colleague Ada. Thanks to her for cheering me up and for the some inspirational advices :) and also for making sure that I didn't go back to think about that passport thingy again for the whole day. At lunch time, we all the colleagues excepts the boss went out for lunch in Vietnamese restaurant. And at dinner we went out together again this time we went to Chinese restaurant and the food was really nice I couldn't help gobbling the food hehe. The funniest thing was 2 of the guys looked so nervous because one is Indian guy he never wanted to tried anything new apart from curry and the other is Taiwanese, Joseph, he couldn't take spicy food and we ordered spicy ones and that was Ada's plan to make fun of Joe. That's kinda mean but I know he didn't mind. They were like they were gonna go for exam or something lolz. Oh just after the dinner, we got to see the Santa Parade in the area. We didn't know about that but we just came in the right time. After that, we went off to a pub for some drinks for a few hours more and the last thing was playing pool in the city. It's such a fun day but yeah there was a few things I that I realize now that I shouldn't have done. Sometimes you don't know what are you doing until you come back to yourself and think back to what you have done but well it's over now so I'll try not to do the same mistakes again. G'nite everyone.

DLD667

2006-11-30T02:58:00.000+13:00

Just wanna say this is the nite :) I just got home from drinking with my Cambodian dudes, Itt, bong Sang, and others. I know i should hit the bed now but nah it's worth bloggin' first aye. After along time we drank together and a week of being vegetarian, I ate meat like a wild dog. I planned to go vegetarian for 2 weeks actually but everything didn't seem encouraging because I had to eat subway everyday, vege delight, and there was no other choice :( After drinking like 3 liters of Jim Beam we were headed to the city for supper while some wanted to go to UpTown hehe but managed to go to Mandarin Seafood restaurant. The driver, Itt, drove like we were in a race or something, made a few handbrakes and I was like coool but they said I was scared maybe because I was focusing on something and it made me look like I was paranoid about the driving but no hehe. We drove back to the place we drank and I got my car driving back home. On the way, I wished I had 2 pieces of sticky tape that could hold my upper eyelids open but yeah finally i'm back home safe and blogging. We had a few arguments while we were drinking but it was good to talk things out and say sorry for the inconvenience we made. The best things was giving each other hugs after arguing and the sorrow and pain were washed away after all. Ok, I still have work tomorrow. It's time now so yeah good nite everyone, sweet dream!!!

Update

2006-11-26T15:00:00.000+13:00

Where to start? Umm... well the most visible thing is the hostel is so darn quiet and dead. I hardly see other people except my 4 flatmates and most of the time is Girishee. I just made another attempt to stop smoking again and try to cut down on drinking as well. I know it's not a good time of the year to take that actions but if we wanna do something the right time to do it is now, right now. Hopefully it works for the smoking but not for the drinking because lately I've been going out with my colleagues quite a lot and it's all about drinking.

It's like this all day long

Almost-empty carpark

Girshee greets me with Haka

For the closing of the post, I'd like to put this song on "Besame Mucho", means "kiss me a lot" by Andrea Bocelli. It's been my favorite song since the beginning of the second semester of this year.

New Place

2006-11-20T12:11:00.000+13:00

The picture below is my new bedroom. It doesn't look different from my previous though, just the position of the bed. I went through one night already and it was a sleepless night. I don't know whether it was because of a new place or the sound of snoring from both sides of the walls. One of my next is a girl and another one is a guy, of course the guy is much louder hehe. I used my ear-plugs but it couldn't help much heheh. I decided to chat to some friends (still had my ear-plugs on) and went back to bed around 3am and finally fell asleep after about half an hour.

Moved

2006-11-19T14:19:00.000+13:00

I've just moved out to a new apartment but not to somewhere far away. It's just a few blocks away from the old one. It took me the whole morning to move out and also clean the apartment since there were 5 people were staying but there were only 2 people did the cleaning I guess that explains a lot but the worst part is not about the cleaning and moving, it is because I got emotional just before moving out :( It would have been better if I moved to Cambodia but this case is like I moved from my second home to a new home. The reason because I have been staying there for 3 years now. And there's a lot of memory in it. Even now as I'm typing I started to feel uncomfortable again.

Just A Thought

2006-11-14T01:22:00.000+13:00

Let imagine this person loves you so much and you are two in a relationship. He sacrifices everything for you, his time and his energy. He loves no one but you, he thinks about you every minute and he prays for you. He spends his all his years waiting for no one or nothing but you and he is always be there when you need him or when you are down. But you know how it feels like for him if you cheat on him? I know you might not know that feeling because you are not a victim.

If you can't visualize it in your head, try the other way around. Close your eyes and imagine if you love this person so much. He means the world to you. You forget and forgive how bad he has done to you, you sincerely appreciate everything he does for you and you are about to risk everything for him and one day you find him cheating behind your back. How would you feel about it? Hurtful?

If you are about to play or have played this game with someone who loves you, please think about it again because in the end when your colorful shell cracks and falls down that's when everyone turns away, he/she is the only one who will embrace you with love and compassion till forever.

From My Window

2006-11-10T11:34:00.000+13:00

In response to Waz's post, I've just posted 3 photos (below) taken from my window.

Why Windows Sucks?

2006-11-07T15:37:00.000+13:00

I personally don't like Windows for some reasons. After using for a while it's getting slow and at one point it gets very frustrating. If you talk about graphic, it sucks and the worst thing is it crashes from time to time. Whenever you need to jump on the net, make sure you have anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software. However, it's not guaranteed that your computer is 100% safe from threats. The other day I was wondering what happen if I google "why windows sucks". I tried it and it came up with alot of items with that phrase or at least "windows sucks". Here are 2 of them which I found quite informative.
1. Why windows vista will suck
2. Why windows sucks

A New Display Rig

2006-10-31T16:20:00.000+13:00

I finally decided to buy a flat monitor for myself as a reward for working hard enough. It's 19" ViewSonic VA1912wb with 5 ms response time, one VGA port and one DVI port. The quality is pretty good. At the same time I also bought an apple keyboard too. I'm happy with my workspace now.

Disable Annoying Firefox Tooltips

2006-10-30T16:54:00.000+13:00

[Update: I've moved to a space now (http://phalkunz.com/). Please post your comment on my new blog. This post on my new blog is at http://phalkunz.com/2006/10/30/disable-annoying-firefox-tooltips/]

Drag-and-Drop is the beauty of the GUI but sometimes other thing gets in the way that makes it useless. The most annoying drag-and-drop I have ever come across is when I try to drag the address of a website (by dragging the icon) from the firefox address box and place it on the bookmark toolbar folder but before I drop it in the folder a tooltip with a message "drag and drop this icon to create a link to this page". It sounds good, right? The folder I wanna place a bookmark is under that tooltip. After I drop the link and I check the folder the link it's not even there because that tooltip block it from going in. I was like grrrrrrr. I think this happens to mac version only. But lucky enough, firefox provides a way to turn it off. Go type "about:config" in the address box and hit the enter. It shows a list of configurable feature, find "browser.chrome.toolbar_tips" item and double-click to turn it value to false. That's set.

[Update: I've moved to a space now (http://phalkunz.com/). Please post your comment on my new blog. This post on my new blog is at http://phalkunz.com/2006/10/30/disable-annoying-firefox-tooltips/]

HelloWorld in Cocoa

2006-10-26T14:00:00.000+13:00

This is my first Hello World application written in Cocoa framework. It was kinda complicated to get started with Cocoa framework because it has to follow MVC design pattern, which separate the presentation, controller, and the logic apart. It took me half an hour to write while other languages/frameworks take take me at most less than a minute but I guess it is good for developing large applications.

Spring Leaves

2006-10-17T15:35:00.000+13:00

Even though it's spring now, the weather was so gloomy for the last few days. It was raining and I missed the sunshine a lot. Auckland weather sucks aye... However today is such a beautiful day... This afternoon while I was waiting for a shuttle to get home, I was standing in the shade of some trees and when I looked up, the sky was blue and the tree leaves were shined through by the sunlight. "What a beautiful day!" I said.

Walking Tall

2006-10-15T23:39:00.000+13:00

Back to Life

2006-10-13T20:47:00.000+13:00

I've been away for so long enough till I don't really where to start (bloggin') again hehe. The thing is I've been so busy lately. Anyways, just before this I was playing around with SketchUp for the second time and I ended up drawing a face figure that I had sketched a long time ago. By the way, it's such a nice tool to try and comparing to 3D modeling tools SketchUp's approach is very different. Most of time, I used lines (or rectangles) to cut the faces of objects and then push/pull tool and believe it's very intuitive. You don't need knowledge in 3D modeling to start with it.

Let's tag

2006-09-26T23:22:00.000+12:00

I've been tagged by Hans to join the 7tubes game. I don't really know what it is though but here's the theme, list 7 songs that we have been listening to recently and tag other people. I clicked my iTunes' "Recently Played" smart list and here are the six songs from the list and one not from the list.

1. Breathing by Lifehouse
This song's in Lifehouse's first album but it keeps me coming back again and again.

2. Every Woman In The World - Air Supply
I got to know this song by a movie called slither.

3. Besame mucho - Andrea Bocelli
I stole this Guitarra Cafe cd from my dad. I played all the songs and liked most of 'em. but since I watched this movie (i can't remember the name), it made me like it more and more. The song is a featured song of the movie.

4. Poison - GTO OST
4 or 5 years back I watched this jap series with my friends back in Cambodia and something just reminded me about it. I jumped to YouTube.com and played it again.

5. Back to you - Bryan Adams
10 years ago, I played this songs again and again everyday and lately I started to bring it back.

6. Feel good inc. - Gorillaz
It was my last year favorite and it still rocks.

7. It don't matter - Donavon Frankenreiter
I know nothing about his guy and the song but I really like it.

I've done my part so here are the people I'll tag.
1. Kenno
2. Kalyan
3. Somonkol
4. Chanbopha

Label Chart

2006-09-21T22:11:00.001+12:00

Recently, my main interest seems to shift from photography to blog modification. I've been hanging out with my roommate Waz and all we talked about is blog mod. I've modified my About feature (button) so when we click it, it displays About information in the same page without redirecting to a different page but since it's not an obvious thing because I used the expand/collapse code with a few modification to enable the fading fx I didn't have a post about it. With this post, I'm blogging about a new mod which I called "label chart". It displays barchart for labels according to numbers of posts that have been tagged with. This idea is not my original idea though. I was amazed by this idea where they increase the font sizes of tags (called Label in blogger) depends on their popularities. First I saw this on Flickr I thought I was cool and thought I would make my own someday but then yesterday Waz introduced me to this post, it shows how to create that feature, which the author calls it Label Cloud. Just after that, I learned his code and without copied his code right away, I knew how to use <b:loop> tag in blogger markup language. Instead of making the same thing, I was looking for a different to represent the popularities of labels and then I thought of barchart and because it has been used for years for presentation of summary of numerical data thus most people are familiar with it. Finally, I made it with a few added lines of code. Even though I don't use the same presentation as used in Label Cloud, I still admire the idea.

Below is the code. The added lines are highlighted with yellow color. Click it to enlarge.

Abandoned

2006-09-18T22:08:00.000+12:00

Fern

2006-09-18T09:39:00.000+12:00

Western Spring

2006-09-13T23:20:00.000+12:00

Western Spring, Auckland, NZ

Expand/Collapse Code

2006-09-13T13:14:00.000+12:00

As I've been asked by a few friends of mine about Expand/Collapse, I just wrote a small tutorial of it even though you can find the code in page source of my old blog template it's not easy to follow because the code was lengthy and the function I wrote is not well structured I would say.

<html>
<head>
<script language="javascript">

// TODO: expand/collapse (show/hide) an element, specified by id,
// triggered by an element, specified by triggerID. triggerTxt is a text in trigger element.
function toggle(id, triggerId, triggerTxt){
e = document.getElementById(id);
trigger = document.getElementById(triggerId);

if (e.style.display == 'block' || e.style.display != 'none'){
e.style.display = 'none'
// instead of [+] you can also replace with an image as well
trigger.innerHTML = "[+] " + triggerTxt;
}
else
{
e.style.display = 'block'
// instead of [-] you can also replace with an image as well
trigger.innerHTML = "[-] " + triggerTxt;
}
}

</script>

</head>
<body>

<h3 id="trigger1" onclick="toggle('list1','trigger1','click here')">click here</h3>

<ul>

<div id="list1">
<li>Item 1</li>
<li>Item 2</li>
<li>Item 3</li>
</div>

<ul>

<script>toggle('list1','trigger1','click here')</script>

</body>

Get Drunk & Get Educated

2006-09-12T17:51:00.000+12:00

Different manufacturers use different ways to promote their products in terms of advertising, packaging, giveaway, etc. Tui has an interesting way to keep its consumers entertained while drinking by printing a quiz on bottom of each bottle cap. I never found it cool because it is about New Zealand history esp sport history. I mean it's boring because I never liked history papers. But until Saturday last week, when we were drinking, I picked up each and every cap coz someone wanted to answer the quiz. Yeah, mostly it's about sport history of New Zealand as usual but along the way I found these 2 questions quite interesting so then I would like to share. The first question is "How long does it take a sperm to swim 20cm?" and the second one is "What does a polyorchid man have at least three of?" Try to answer if you want. There are also answers provided. To see the answers, press Ctrl-a (for windows) or Command-a (for Mac). Enjoy!

1. One hour
2. Testicles

It's back!

2006-09-11T22:41:00.000+12:00

Yay! Finally, I managed to get my modification back and I decided to preserve blogger navigation bar.

Gone!!!

2006-09-11T14:48:00.000+12:00

I've just upgraded my blog to blogger beta so all the modifications I've made are all gone :( Anyways, I'll try to change it back again.

Be Socialized

2006-09-09T19:43:00.000+12:00

I think Hans is right. The most socialable feature of Blogger is "next blog" button that takes you to a random blog in the Blogger blogosphere and it makes users feel they are totally connected with others, they're not alone. I modified my blog template just to personalised it and I deliberately block the "next blog" button. I didn't realized how important that feature was untill I read Hans's post "could blogger beat wordpress?", introduced by a link in Waz post. Being aware of the importance of the "next blog" button is, I put up that feature back on.

By The Window

2006-09-07T18:08:00.000+12:00

Sitting by the window of my bedroom is a pteris fern and it is a present from Bex (even though I demanded her to buy it for me, I still called it a present).

Yellow Flowers

2006-09-06T22:12:00.000+12:00

Pic from the trip.

Expand / Collapse

2006-09-05T15:39:00.000+12:00

I am supposed to be reading an article on GIS for my research but I was spending my time writing a javascript function to expand and collapse blogroll in the sidebar in my blog instead. Have a look at the blogrolls! Click one of the blogroll titles (e.g. [+] Friendz Weblogs) to expand the list and click again to collapse it.

Configure Woosh Modem under Linux

2006-09-05T00:13:00.000+12:00

I've been tried 2 linux distros (Fedora and Kubuntu) in the last 2 days (well, just for the sake of trying them out) on my pc machine (i386) The first thing and most import thing of all is to get my internet connection up and running. I am using Woosh nz isp connected using wireless modem. I thought it would be hard to set it up because it's not widely used and the technical support is only available for Windows and Mac systems only. I was googling and there I found what I really needed. [1] To configure the modem in Fedora is so easy. Just go to Network Configuration, create new connection and choose xDSL Connection and then just type in your username and password, that's set. [2] For Kubuntu, you have to fire up Terminal. Type in pppoeconf, which at first looks quite uncomfy for me, and then you have to answer (type in) a few questions, key in the username and password. That's all set! Oh, to active the connection in Kubuntu, pon dsl-provider and to disconnection poff.

Walk Alone

2006-08-29T00:54:00.000+12:00

Pic from the trip.

Bad Programming

2006-08-26T02:17:00.000+12:00

As Vodafone has extended its free txt promotion, weekend here (New Zealand) is a good time to txt your friends without worrying about losing your phone credit. It's when people start to sharing jokes or even some nonsense stuff via txting. And at the same time, it is a good time to annoy your friends. The most annoying txt is when it's sent letter by letter and what they do is type it in letter by letter manually but with the existence of Python for mobile phone Serie 60 (and I'm sure they Python for other mobile devices as well) we can do it easily. Below is a few lines of code to automate that manual process.


import appuifw
import messaging

data = appuifw.query(u"Message: ", "text")
nbr = appuifw.query(u"Phone Number: ", "text")
txt =  unicode(data);

if appuifw.query(u"You sure wanna send?","query") == True:
  for i in txt:
     messaging.sms_send(nbr, i)
  appuifw.note(u"Messages sent", "info")

From this code and with a very lil knowledge of programming you can modify it to make it send word by word or a reversed message. Enjoy :) !

Through The Window

2006-08-24T13:07:00.000+12:00

This photo is not mine, this is bex's. I just like the color and composition of this photo so I decided to post and share it here. It's also from the trip.

Today's Roadtrip

2006-08-20T22:00:00.000+12:00

We had another roadtrip today accompanied by Itt, Sang, and Bex. We headed South Auckland to Mangatangi dam and Waihihi bay. There's nothing special about this trip actually. We made it because I were bored and didn't know what to do. During a drinking session last night, Itt suggested that we should go to these places. It started off with a sunny sky but ended with a gloomy weather. Oh it wasn't too bad though because everyone seemed to be happy after all and I enjoy taking photos in any lighting condition so yeah and another thing is today is my first day after 1 year that I haven't eaten Hamburger heheh. Each of us took quite a lot of photos, I won't post all the photos in this post but here are 3 from me ;)

One side of the dam

Anoter side of the dam

Waihihi bay

Stands Out

2006-08-18T01:35:00.000+12:00

Preparing For The Fall

2006-08-16T01:28:00.000+12:00

Today is a beautiful day, isn't it?
The sky is blue
The sun is shinning
But who knows what tomorrow will be like?
To be optimistic, the sun will shine again
To be pessimistic, it will be raining tomorrow
Or to be somewhere in between, you would say it will be cloudy tomorrow
It might be a bit cumbersome but it is worth preparing yourself with a raincoat or umbrella so you won't get wet if it rains.

Would you prepare to fall when it comes to relationship?
You never know how it goes in the future
We all know this saying "Time can change everything"
Eventhough it's not always true, it is most of the time true.
When you prepare yourself for the fall, it doesn't mean you don't trust your partner
You can trust the present self but you cannot trust the future self.
Prepare to fall so you won't get hurt badly.