Birthday Wishes a New Distraction and Getting Edumacated
Posted by Stephen on
January 23, 2008
Sorry about the lack of updates. It’s been pretty…umm…busy around here. Let me fill you in…
Birthday Wishes…
Speaking of birthday wishes, Leo Chiang just celebrated his “fourth” annual 29th birthday. The funny thing is that “33″ is what he does at his day job and was also one of the episodes of Battlestar Galactica where he was overfeatured quite prominently. It looks like he had a really good time. Please note the NSFW warning 
Also on the January birthday wagon this month is Ed Lau. Ed thinks he’s getting old. He’s pondering getting tattoos and a motorcycle. I wonder when Leo will turn that ‘Stang into a Hog. Personally, I’m taking a different route dealing with the “old thing” this month.
Rock On!
OK, so I’ve been busy playing RockBand. I got it a few days ago and I’ve been going at it non-stop. I’m so addicted to the drums. I’ve been pounding on those things every night with the headphones on and I can’t remember having so much fun rocking out to my favourite tunes through the rock of ages. Since CES, I’ve been pre-meditating the purchase of this game. Now I’m going to need to get a projector because if playing GH3 on a Huge Ass Screen is fun, RockBand will be…twice as fun! It’s easily the best deal of any game out there right now. I mean, just look at all the stuff you get!
Getting Much More Edumacated…
This past Xmas, I gave myself a gift of some new camera hardware. A Nikon D200 and D80 made their way into my life. With all the hundreds of features contained in both cameras, I decided that taking a photography class wouldn’t be a bad idea. For the next ten thursdays, I’ll be taking a course with Vancouver Photo Workshops to improve my command of these two beasts. One of the problems with my picture taking skillz right now is that I tend to take too many pictures. You could call me a “Rapid Fire Whore” with the 5 FPS capabilities of the D200.
Processing so many pictures takes a ton of time and when I do find a good picture, I couldn’t explain to you how I got the shot. I have no real photography background so hopefully by bringing up my knowledge of the basics (White Balance, Shutter Speed, ISO) and how they work together, I’ll be able to take my photography to the next level and be more consistent in getting great shots more freqently without peeling off all my available frames. Not to mention, my D200 has no magic “Green Button” to get me out of trouble anymore.
It’s also time for me to get back to learning Mandarin. With COMPUTEX creeping up on us, I’m going to need to brush up on my language skillz.
Are any of you folks getting much more edumacated in 2008? 
Thanks for the bday wishes and pho!
We’ll have to do a Dot Com Rockband event
Happy belated on the blog!
As for the tats and motorcycle, I highly recommend it. Then we could organize a blogging biker rally, which would be a great excuse for me to get out on the road.
On the camera front, be sure to share your lessons here as much as possible as I haven’t signed up for a class yet and am still trying to learn my D40. I just received a recommendation to try out a Canon 500D filter to use for macro shots so I have that on the shopping list.
One last note, I see an ad for the Anthony Bourdain show on the Travel Channel right now. The other night I saw him in Vancouver. Did you happen to catch that? I saw JapaDog and a few other places up close.
Maybe in a “few” more years. By then, my skin should be shrivelled enough that the tattoos might still look normal when I’m in the home
Believe it or not, the biker rally ala “Wild Hogs” sounds rather tempting. Just as long as the bike is low and slow, I won’d feel the need to ride it fast and kill myself.
I’ll try to pass on what I learn, but I think a lot of it will have to be a go and do in order to put the pieces together. I guess I could post a few pictures from our field trips and make a few comments. On the Filter side, TAMRON makes a set of step up filters that will give you different magnifications and I think they are around 20 bucks on eBay. You should be able to get them at your local camera shop that sells TAMRON as well.
I didn’t know that Anthony Bourdain was in town. However, I know Ed took a look at the Japadog phenomenon last year. He even went back for seconds
Happy Birthday, dude.
Thanks but…shhhh… If no one mentions it, it never happened.
Rockband aye…you should get more people to join in!
-Mike