thebemusedphotog.com

I just discovered SG Lifestyle. And if you’ve known this website for a long time…

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?!!”

But yeah, it’s great! Stumbled upon it when I was looking for the store directory for Plaza Sing. It has store directories for almost any shopping mall in sg, which is very helpful for me… Because I don’t have a lot of free time and I need to plan my shopping trips to cover all the stores I need to go, in the shortest amount of time.

I can finally stop cracking my brains for the shopping mall with the most number of make up shops, or shirt and pants stores. Now, I’ve got a search engine!

Woohoo!

Not quite…

The maps at StreetDirectory.Com are down because of legal suits, but I love their sense of humour…
I wanna see what they come up with next.

Dar and I went shopping yesterday, and ended up playing 2 Guitar Hero games at two different locations.

The first was at Sony Gallery at Wisma Atria. They had the Les Paul wireless guitar controller with GuitarHero III: Legends Of Rock. That experience, was far below expectation.

Ok… The Les Paul is cool as heck! And they even added a little weight so it feels sturdier. The graphics have improved so much from GH1. My character was a hot blonde with a way better figure. Unfortunately the wireless controller, despite all its hype, has a rather retarded reaction timing compared to the traditional cabled controller. So when you think you’ve got your rhythm down pat, the slow response on your monitor throws you off again. I guess Sony Playstation still hasn’t quite figured out their wireless controls. Maybe it’d be better played on a Wii.

The playing experience was also quite shitty in the Sony showroom. They insisted that we keep the volume down so as not to affect the other customers. WHAT?? How can anyone play Guitar Hero with the volume down? Those people must’ve never tried playing it before, cos you gotta hear the music to hit the rhythm.

And, we were drawing crowds with our playing! I spied a couple of parents observing us with their son begging them to get the GH3. I’m quite sure the game looks a lot more tame when a woman’s playing it. Before we started, no one was touching the Les Paul or noticing their PS3.

Oh, and it didn’t help that the sound mix on the huge-ass flat screen Sony was really bad so you get a lot of bass and not a lot of high end. With the volume down, you can hear a couple of bass notes here and there and nothing much else. Time to work on your own lousy TVs before you tell us to turn the volume down ya?

Never buying anything from that showroom. Ever. (Moral of story: Don’t piss off a lady GH player.)

The second time we played Guitar Hero was at PS, Best Denki. This one was Guitar Hero II and it had Sweet Child O’ Mine! One of my all time favourite songs.

The graphics for this one were a significant improvement over GH1, but a far cry from the GH3. Probably because of the new developers. But it had more of the all time classic favourites compared to GH3. (i.e. More stuff that I know and want to play.) And it was proof that the cabled controller still rules!

So what exactly do I want for christmas?? I love the songs from GH1, the one that got me hooked to the game. I love the songs of GH2, GH Encore has “18 & Life” and I love the graphics and the Les Paul from GH3.

GET ME ALL 4 OF THEM, SANTA!

I’m spending way too much time on Facebook…

Portable speakers for Sony Ericsson phones. Selling @ $55 in IP…

Sony Ericsson MPS-70

When’s your birthday when you really need it?

Went cycling @ Pulau Ubin with the dar dar two Saturdays ago.

It was Pedal Ubin, a free guided cycling tour on Ubin, on every first saturday of the month. If the dar never thought to drag me down for it, I would never have gone. After all, I’d never been to Ubin before, and I had no idea what it was like. Plus, waking up at 6am on a Saturday was just unthinkable.

I didn’t regret it.

Our first Ugly Picture of the day

Changi Village Jetty

The boat ride

Ubin is so cute and quaint! It’s kinda commercialized, with the renovated jetty and all the mountain bikes for rent. But unlike overly sanitized and nauseatingly artificial Sentosa, Ubin still retains a big part of its rustic charm and original infrastructure (or lack thereof). The moment I stepped on the island, I was in a different world. I thought I’d flown off to Thailand or Vietnam.

It’s the ultimate overseas travel on a tiny shoestring. $4 for the boat rides there and back, $6 for a bike rental, and a whole morning of exercise and ubin sightseeing.

On Pulau Ubin

The guides were very chatty and interesting. They brought us around the east of Ubin, introduced us to lots of plants, folklore, and animal calls. We went near Chek Jawa, tackling some rather steep slopes, but we got to see the quarry and smell the strongly scented tembusu flowers.

Scented Garden

The Beach

Sungei Ubin

Quarry

Me — Exhausted

It was an eventful trip. One of the girls fell down and scraped her knee. She was a real good sport about it too. There were 2 bike breakdowns, and half the group kinda got lost in the final leg of the journey. We weren’t lost cos Dar knew his way around the island. The guide was new to the east part of the island so she lead them the wrong way. Wasn’t for long though.

Felt a real sense of accomplishment after completing the entire trail. To top it all off, dar and I each got our own coconut drink. Cool and refreshing.

I Survived

I want to go again! Any takers?

I’ve always been very pleased with my Windows XP lappie.

I started with a Windows 98. And that was always a hassle to use, especially when you have tons of plug and play equipment and none of the drivers.

Then Windows came up with Vista. Which is just a bad idea. The new comp I got at the place which I spend a lot of my waking hours at (which is neither my home, my school, nor my starbucks) has vista installed on it and I can’t make it do simple tasks like burn a dvd. Cos none of the free & legal & readily available burning software online works on it. Heck, not even the expensive prorietary burning software, that came with the CPU, works on it.

So if this lappie of mine ever decides to break down… I’m going free. I’m going open source.

No Windows. Just Ubuntu.

Ubuntu, is one of the most popular and stable versions of Linux available on the market right now. Perfect for the Personal Home User. It’s a full operating system that works just as well as Windows. Maybe better.

You got the options to change how everything looks (Beryl does some cool 3D graphics stuff). It runs every type of program, open source. And if you need to operate some of your Windows proprietary software, just install WINE. It will allow your Windows software to run on Ubuntu.

And if you wanna do graphics rich stuff like video editing, music editing, and photo editing, which I do a lot (For Personal Hobbies), there’s Ubuntu Studio. I’m tempted to switch to it, cos it looks so pretty and it’s lightweight to run. Will look into it when this lappie starts to give up on me.

I speak only for myself, a personal home user, of course. I’m not sure how Ubuntu/Ubuntu Studio would be appropriate and suitable for professional settings. I’m sure there are options for offices, but I will not speak on those. I’m no advocate for them, simply because I don’t run my own company.

So, if any company chooses to take up Ubuntu or any other Linux systems for their offices, after this post is published… Please, it’s nothing to do with me.

…The little KLOVE widget on my desktop… Making positive and encouraging music available at the click of the mouse… Right in the middle of the workday…

I’m still waiting for it to be available for yahoo or something for my XP laptop. 

By an amazing twist of circumstances, I got off work 2 hrs earlier than expected, and went to catch Spiderman 3 on Monday!

Spiderman 3 Poster

My colleagues, and my good ol’ buddy Miss Ha told me that it was very draggy and long and boring. I was rather worried that it would be a disappointment. Like many other sequels…

For what it’s worth, all that bad review about the movie wasn’t enough to sway tons of people from watching it. We only managed to get third row seats. Everything else behind us was fully booked. Ah well… I guess it’s one of those shows that you need to see for yourself to convince yourself that it was bad show…

Click here for Spiderman 3 Trailer

Guess what?

I loved it!

I couldn’t really see where it was draggy. I was riveted to the screen for the entire 2 hours! The plot development, the way they established the new characters, and tied it together, it was a nicely planned story! And the effects were cool, as always.

I just have 2 gripes about it.

1. Why does Spidey always have his mask off? It defeats the whole purpose of being a masked superhero doesn’t it?
2. The way they let Harry discover the truth about his father was kinda sloppy. Someone just wanted to get that over and done with quickly. Quite a letdown, after all that build up and suspense from the 2 prequels.

But other than that, it was a good show…

TBP Rating: Worth a watch… Even if just to convince yourself that it’s bad or otherwise.

I have a music corner in the loft, where I have the guits, the amps and all the other little gadgets and gizmos… It was meant for practices and informal jam sessions… But lately it’s been getting pretty empty…

The classical was on permanent loan to Miss Ha so that she could practice and improve her guitar skills… The e guit fell apart after a failed attempt to intonate it properly, and is now at yk’s place, so that he can try to save it… The acoustic, the one i use the most, is in hospital.

I kid you not. It’s currently warded at SGH* and is awaiting a highly complicated operation to straighten its neck.

*SGH - Sinamex Guitar Hospital

I was told by some colleagues about this place and decided to give it a shot. If it can make my guit last longer and play better, why not?

The best thing about this place? Their sense of humour.

1. The name of the repair shop (SGH)…
2. The excerpt from their website
   “Besides looking after our loved ones (customers) that have guitars with special names like Timothy, Taylor, Simon & Patrick and Musicman, we extend our expertise and experience to all with any name… Although the medical costs we charge cannot be covered by Medisave*, we assure you that it will be affordable as this is our way of making this world a better place for guitars.”
3. When you bring your guitar in for repairs, they call it a “check in”

So my acoustic is in pretty good hands… Very expensive good hands at that…

But now, I don’t know what to call the music corner anymore. A music corner with a bunch of amps, stands, a bass, and no guitars, can’t really be called a music corner can it?

hmm….