h.jk

0115: Happy birthdays and the best prank played ever!

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:19:38 +0800

Have quite a couple of friends who had their birthdays yesterday, having it today, and coming soon in the next couple of days.

Also, I played the best prank on my friend when I changed his Facebook relationship status! WOOHOO!

Lastly, it's December! And the new site design is not up yet... maybe I'll get more free time in Sweden...

1330: Ran about 6 km today!

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 13:32:47 +0800

From Sixth Avenue (my parents dropped me there while sending my sister for piano lessons) and ran back with a detour towards the old Fire Station and opposite Bukit Batok Nature Reserve...

0335: oh noes...

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 03:37:28 +0800

I just skipped the month of October...

Really busy right now... still hoping to push my forever-been-pushing facelift for this website by the end of the year... ^_^

0005: Air-con, finally!

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:09:43 +0800

Finally, after months of sticking with the fan, my room finally got a brand new Daikin inverter air-con! Goodbye my 14-year-old Carrier!

In other news, went to the Motorshow today as well. Only one floor, the S$8 was paid to watch car stunts. Heheh...

1545: Nikon D90

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:01:31 +0800

Thought that I'll do some updates here... I got my Nikon D90 on Saturday at 1690 in cash and I've done 47 test shots - both day and night - as you can see in my Flickr photostream.

Likes:
- Undeniably good noise performance!
- 3" 920k screen!!!

Dislikes:
- None yet, but that's probably because I'm still experimenting with the camera controls.

I guess I'm ready for some normal shoots rather than test shots, watch out for it either on my Flickr photostream (general photography) or Facebook (friends' photos).

0155: Jun Kwang's Nikon D90 Fund!

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 02:19:33 +0800

A couple of days back, Nikon shocked-and-awed the world by releasing the world's first movie-capable Digital SLR camera. The D90 is highly unique not just in this aspect, but also the fact that it brings (most of) the image quality of its more expensive brothers down to a highly attractive, "advanced amateurs" price point.

The biggest attraction for me about the D90 is simply the movie recording capability. As Chase Jarvis puts it in his write-up (http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2008/08/chase-jarvis-raw-advance-testing-nikon.html):

It�s so cool that we�re seeing the merging of high quality still and video pictures into the same camera. Sure, for us pros, we�ve got the RED camera. But for everybody else? This is the future. People: this is an SLR that shoots killer video! ...It's going to be a powerful tool. You can control your own depth of field so beautifully using the manual focus ring, the audio capture is solid, the high ISO capabilities in video?! Way cool... Long lenses, fisheyes, zoom lenses...versatility.

Being an aspiring photographer and a "video-grapher" myself, I finally see in the Nikon D90 (no doubt the first before we eventually see a string of DSLRs with similar features) a strong set of features that appealed to me immediately at a reasonable price point. By merging the boundaries between a DSLR and a dedicated video camcorder, I really believe that this would be the camera that will escalate my interests and profession in both photography and cinematography.

So why am I reading this, you may ask? Well, if people can get rich with million-dollar homepages (http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/), I guess there's no harm doing a little "shameless" self-marketing through my friends on Facebook. The deal is this: all I'm asking for is a S$1 donation from you. For that S$1, I will be glad to take a photo and video for you using the Nikon D90, assuming if all goes to plan. The photo will be taken at the camera's highest resolution with RAW and jpeg provided. The video will be shot at 720p/24fps, the highest the D90 can go, with the length capped at 5 minutes due to camera constraints. I'll be willing to take any photo and video in Singapore, where I'm currently at, as long as it is not immoral or illegal.

If you're feeling really generous, I'm all for accepting donations at S$1 for every extra photo up to S$20 per person. I guess that is a reasonable limit as I don't want to end up taking like hundreds of photos for a single, really generous donor. All in all, I am looking at raising S$2000, which should be around the amount that the D90 kit version may cost when it reaches Singapore. However, I may at my own discretion change this amount to equal or slightly lesser than its actual retail price when we get a confirmed price. That also means I'm potentially looking at 2000 people donating S$1 each for now!

I'm not going to fix a firm deadline as to when I need to get the D90 yet because it largely depends on when it actually arrives in Singapore and how fast the donations are streaming in. Ideally, I'm looking at a October timeframe, which will give me about two months or so (with exams in between!) to honour my agreement as laid above before the end of the year.

The fact is I'll most probably be heading overseas for my student exchange early next year till June, so I guess it's in the best of our mutual interests to get the D90 as early as possible so that I can complete what I promised you, the potential donor, and take the camera on my studying trip. Of course, if the D90 is going to come late to Singapore, then it simply means I have to work a lot harder in a shorter amount of time to make things work.

Last but not least, this is *FOR REAL* ok! All of us have, at many times in our lives, wanting to purchase certain stuff and joked about getting your friends to donate to your "fund". Well, this time I'm walking my talk and I'm really looking for kind-hearted friends interested in furthering my passion in both photography and cinematography.

To make the donation to me, you can either donate via the Paypal button below or send me a Facebook message where we can further discuss the details.
Please do get the message out to your friends as well, thanks a lot for reading this lengthy post!

BTW, check out my Flickr photostream!

1535: 7.6 km in 45 minutes

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:36:27 +0800

Next to the AHM trainings I had in the army, this must be the longest distance I have ever ran continuously...

Google Maps link

0825: Start of MetamorphoSIS 2008!

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 08:26:49 +0800

Reminds me of a year ago...

0105:

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:06:09 +0800

0125: Happy birthday to me.

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:27:05 +0800

Happy birthday to me.

1450: Well, at least the birthdays are removed...

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:54:02 +0800

Didn't managed to get my new interface working in time but at least I've done away with the spam-friendly birthdays and fixed the css... Here's to a jolly 23rd birthday!

0050: July is here!

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:01:56 +0800

I have about two weeks if I am keeping to my promise of revamping my website my birthday... Things look bleak, but I shall see what I can do while toggling between this and my school stuff...

In brighter news today, my BSM Scandinavia pictures are finally up on flickr! View all of them here, or just browse through my favourite set of photos here.

In other ego-related news, please check out the SMU Challenge website, not because you're doing a charitable favour, but also because I scripted that web site entirely myself! (I did warn about the egoism angle) This is arguably the first public website that I have entire control and input over, so I hope I can use that as the first of my web development portfolio. Which reminds me of this personal web site of mine, arrgghhhh...

Anyways, in my parting words, what I can at least promise is to do away with the birthday component. It's attracting way too much spam... So there!

2340: Back.

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:48:18 +0800

The past 12 days in Scandinavia really felt like a dream as I was looking through the photos... The long days, the chilly weather, the company visits we did, time seemed to have passed so fast that the whole trip felt like just a passing memory of our own subconscious. Those were really the good days and I also made a lot of good friends who lived through the entire journey as I did. Hmm... getting sleepy now, thankfully jet lag not at work. Probably a few more updates soon...

0335: Free Internet access in Denmark again :D

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 03:42:38 +0800

Aha, got free Internet access here in our Danish hotel again. Tried their in-room LAN connection but everything was quite slow, but then that could be because of a small network configuration error that resulted in a non-working wireless adapter (I wonder how both are linked though). Anyways, we visited Christiana today and the Carlsberg Visitors Centre. In Christiana, we took quite a few photos of their unique architecture and graffiti paintings (they are really everywhere!), and it's quite interesting to see such a different place within Copenhagen. They are after all claiming themselves to be a free state. In Carlsberg Visitors Centre, I had two alcoholic drinks - some Gold Tuborg and a Sommer Wit from Jacobsen brand - and thankfully I managed to last till now... Hahaha. We're going to see Tivoli tomorrow, their amusement park, before we began with the business visits proper again on Monday. And then it's back to Singapore on Wednesday! @bounce That's all from me tonight, bye!

0325: Ikea hotel, Sweden!

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 03:36:30 +0800

Finally found free wireless Internet at the Ikea hotel, Sweden! @bounce The weather's has been very great so far, nice Sun with cool winds. The only exception was yesterday when it was cloudy and rained a little. Took so much pics that I will be upgrading to a flickr pro account (see my current one here

1355: o hais

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:00:12 +0800

it's june... leaving for scandinavia on the 7th. Hopefully that's when you'll see some action here.

1325: My blog's forth birthday!

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:45:12 +0800

Five years ago, I started on my little blog to detail a shirt-chasing process that ended up in a big failure. It was originally kept secret, but after that issue has blown past, and with the advent of the blogging culture, I put away my then-static website to convert this blog as my official website. Soon, from the defunct handX blog platform (which is really just reading text files off a directory), I embarked on PHP programming to shift it to a database back-end, complete with comments and eventually a "blog platform" named frsb.

Now in its fifth running year (four years have past, this is the start of the fifth, is this how you count things?), I begin to question the purpose of my blog. Strangely, it used to be easy to blog over here about my NS experiences and subsequently my daily life experiences when I ORDed. I used to think that my blogging interface was simple and yet usable, something that I thought I can live with for the years to come.

And yet, I think the main reason why you see a complete lack of updates here is really its staleness - the overused gradients at the top, bottom and right sidebar, an outdated, too-minimalistic design and (I have to say this) non-comforming HTML pages for the admin interface. About a year ago, I did played with my other MySqueaks project that will "convert" MySQL statements into a series of PHP codes through invoking class methods. I did it only till the installation part (standard XHTML with a bit of Web 2.0 look) but work stalled again... for a year.

This summer, I really aim to finish what I have left dangling for almost the past two years. I have a BSM Scandinavia summer module (will talk more about this later in due time), and two separate school projects which will involves a healthy dose of both PHP and Java web programming (since they are both based in each). This is probably a last stab at making something worthwhile from the years of experience I've accumulated since my C++ JC days to the start of my PHP programming on this website to my current relevant programming skills in school. I have to admit that my original plan was to get something up quickly by today, which had obviously failed. My next target would be my birthday, giving me ample time - I hope - to finish up this very personal project of mine. All I can say now is that the mock interface is done - complete with nice Ajax-y interface. I'm pretty much left with the integration of PHP codes to reignite this personal website of mine.

So there!

1110:

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:13:39 +0800

Happy April Fools!

1700:

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:04:15 +0800

boo...

1105: marathon nose, running like tap...

me@hjk.ikueb.com (Jun Kwang) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:05:57 +0800

just another minor update to this almost-dead blog of mine...