After several attempts of getting busy with my own mini-studio at home, work caught up on me and left my room cramped with a lot of things.  I need a refresher!

Off we went to Terengganu down southwest of KL to Redang Mutiara for a weekend getaway.  Actually, it’s my first beach trip again after two years of skipping summer because I’ve been moving between countries after the local summer season ends.

It’s always great to get a breather.  I managed to sleep on a hammock twice!  I just miss my province back in Negros.  I remember the times I sleep after siesta on our hammock at our backyard.  Sigh, I’m getting homesick…

I haven’t been posting on this blog for the past few days because (1) my Macbook was sent for a repair, and (2) I have been busy looking for stuff I’d use for a mini-studio that I’m setting up in my room. I’ve always enjoyed shooting photos with studio lights. I had a studio lights workshop middle of last year and I enjoyed learning a few things about the impact of lights and shadows on the subject.

I don’t have the luxury of renting a studio just for a practice photoshoot - and the fact that I’m in a foreign and conservative land, my chances are slim in finding a creative venue to learn.

So I went to Ikea to buy lamps and sheets that I can use for a DIY mini-studio. I didn’t buy those high-wattage spotlight systems because I’d like this to be a setup that even dummies can make. I used my room’s dresser as my work area.

I discovered that the mirror and glass frame of my dresser proved to be more of a problem than a bonus. I’d have to go out again and buy styrofoam sheets for a DIY light tent that I intend to build and some paper sheets as background. Oh, I also got myself a model kit of Eva 00 from XL Shop in Midvalley to be my model for my mini lighting studio. It took me over 4 days (or nights) to gather everything but I have to skip 2 nights in completing the setup because of lack of sleep. The supermarket and DIY shops is actually an hour drive from where I live so work on this was very slow - had been up until 2am for those 4 nights

Preliminary shots of EVA 00 - have to work on that background and probably use a DIY snoot.

I’ll pick up from where I left home tonight and see what I can make out of this little project.

A week or two ago, my Macbook’s internal fan started to whir noisily like a broken engine. I’ve never really thought it to be serious. It may just be temporary due to the temperature - Malaysia had been hot the past few days, except for unpredictable strong rains in the afternoon.

I’ve been busy using my Macbook for organizing loads of photos I took last February and March - jungle treks and watching the F1 race at Sepang - and have been also busy digging in to XCode 3.0 that I completely ignored the whirring noise. I just delayed bringing my Macbook for repair to avoid losing the momentum working on my photos and cracking code. I shouldn’t procastinate any longer though or else I’d face worse consequences if I leave my Mac unchecked - I realized.

I called VR Technology down the KLCC area and talked to their front desk clerk and explained my problem. She said they need my unit to stay with them for a day for check-up, and will take 3-5 business days for repair if required. I asked her if I can keep my Macbook while they order for parts in case it needed repair (it obviously needs one), and the sweet lady over said yes - as long as I bring the unit immediately when the parts come in. I said thanks to her, and thought what a good customer service they have - I had my battery replaced with them last February as part of the battery recall for late-2006 batch of Macbooks.

I planned my back-up schedule and promised myself to send my Mac to the service center by Wednesday. I’ll pick it up again on Thursday and hope the parts arrive by Monday (shipped from Singapore). They would have the whole week next week to treat my Mac.

I’m glad I’ve got APP last October as my Macbook just turned one last week. Ironic that it started acting up during its birthday, sigh! It’s be a lonely week without my ‘book. Parting with my Mac for about a week (!!) is like swimming in the open sea with no life vest on. Oh well…

UPDATE 12-Apr-2008: So I got my Macbook back in good condition. VR Technology is very accomodating to my needs to keep my Mac with me as much as I can. I sent it in on Wednesday, they diagnosed it and told me to pick the unit on Thursday while they wait for the parts. They called me Friday afternoon that the parts are now with them (I thought it would arrive the next week) but she just suggests to bring in my Macbook on Monday morning.

Monday came and I promptly dropped the Macbook to their office and at lunchtime they called me to pick it up…alas, I have to wait until tomorrow as I can’t leave the office before they close for the day. It was a painless repair of my Macbook’s internal fan and the service is very convenient for me. I give VR a thumbs-up with their service.

Since I’ve bought my Canon Powershot G9 I’ve been glad to have a portable and capable camera. I carry this most of the time now instead of lugging my Rebel XT. I don’t miss out opportunities to shoot something I stumble on any time, anywhere.

Here’s a sample shot from this camera. I was trying to impress my officemates of my G9 and gave a quick tutorial of long exposure at night. This isn’t set properly to get the details of the moon but I like how it turned out to make the moon like a sun.

When Aperture 2.0 was released, I was excited with the new features and glad that Apple breathe life into its Professional Photography Imaging application that has been waiting for this long-awaited upgrade. One of the new features that I like is tethering.

Tethering in photography allows you to remotely control your camera when connected thru USB/Firewire. Some of its use includes instant display of photo in the workstation after pressing the shutter (handy for illustration and when doing studio shoots and you need higher resolution displays to check the image quality), and intervalometer shooting. The latter is not supported in Aperture (yet?). You can already do this with Remote Camera DC that comes with the Canon software CD (I’m sure there’s an equivalent in Nikon cameras) and it also has the intervalometer shooting. It should, however, save you additional steps in your workflow to have your image in Aperture straight from the camera. Intervalometer shooting allows you to take shots in set intervals in a span of time - often used to create long-interval movies shrinked into minutes - sunrise to sunset in one minute (you get what I mean? ).

Until about two weeks ago, I was sad to know that I can’t have tethering with my Canon Rebel XT in Tiger despite having Aperture 2.0. Moving to Leopard, Aperture supports my camera at 10.5.2.

Ironically, Apple doesn’t quite have a good documentation on how to use tethering, but O’Reilly’s Digital Media Inside Aperture has an article on how simple to use it.

Here’s the simple steps.

1. Create a project, or select an existing one, that you want your new photos to go to after capturing remotely, or manually pressing the shutter in your camera.
2. Select File > Tether > Start Session…

   The Tether settings is just like the sidebar when you Import photos. You can customize import names, and have Add Metadata options.

   
   
   You can select ‘Show HUD’ or deselect it if you don’t want the HUD to show particularly when you manually press the shutter in the camera. You’d need to show the HUD in case you plan to remotely control the shutter (File > Tether > Show Tether HUD)

   

3. Pressing the shutter automatically downloads your image to the Project you selected.
   
   The selected project will show this icon in the Project sidebar

4. Press Stop Session from the Tether HUD or File > Tether > Stop Session…

Before I forget, for my Canon Rebel XT I need to set my Connection to PC Connection instead of the Printer/PTP to make this work. It’s the same requirement if you want to use Remote Camera DC.

Raymond Leblanc (1916-200 was the man who brought Herge’s Tintin and his adventures to life (that’s Leblanc and Herge below), continued on Asterix and founded Belvision “which animate comic strip characters by hand for television” in 1954.

I was able to read a few of these comic magazines and watched a few episodes of Tintin in animated tv series. The original proponents of the adventures of Tintin has come to end but they will be remembered with passion from Tintin followers.

The news has sparked my interest in reading the whole series of comic books about Tintin. It’s like my little known hobby of buying books of Calvin and Hobbes (which I already have one - and haven’t finished yet! Ugh!).

I’ve felt how cold winter is. I’ve also thought that the Philippines has the worst summer season…but last weekend, Malaysia’s hot summer proved me wrong.

I was sadly confined in Malaysia over the Holy Week and have to force myself to watch the F1 Malaysian GP over at Sepang International Circuit. I spent some 30 minutes under the burning sun to take closer shots of the race…and now I have sunburns! Argh!

Other than it’s prickly heat, Malaysia also has a crazy weather where it would suddenly rain in the afternoon after a hot clear sky. For the last five days it has been like that. Now I’m having a slight headache and fever from all this unpredictable rain.

Finally, I was able to post select photos from my shoot on last weekend’s race. Here are my takes - here, and here. It’s my first try of high speed motorsports and having only a Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO DG lens, I’m quite glad I took some great shots. I particularly learned the skill of panning on that 3-day race weekend.

Tomorrow’s the day! F1 starts the qualifying race for the second leg of the championship this weekend at Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia.

Oh boy, oh boy! I’m no F1 fan but it will be a test of skill for me for motorsports photography. I hope to get keeper shots on this. I have a 3-day pass and I have enough time I guess to learn how to shoot well. I hope my eardrums don’t break

I’ve been quite inactive in this part of my blog site - for inevitable reasons. Work has put a toll on my personal time. I can barely organize my thoughts every time I get home…I even have several sets of my photo library unprocessed (rating photos, adding metadata - keywords, comments, captions). I just dump everything into my Macbook without even looking back into it.

I’m finally picking up and hopefully I can add more useful content to this site. Although I may not have been actively blogging, I was actually busy doing outdoor recreation. I’ll probably write something about it in the next few days.

I found this theme from a fellow PhilMUG member - a Philippine Mac User Group forum - who is using it in his wordpress blog. I find it concise and simplistic. It is not that very attractive or gets attention, but I feel I want my blog to be this simple for the readers.

** F1 Race Weekend in Sepang **

Since I’m stuck in Malaysia for the Holy Week - I’m a Catholic - I pretty much don’t have a choice but to watch the F1 championship leg in Sepang this weekend. I’m no F1 fan but I bought tickets to get a chance to shoot. It would add to my collection - a test of how I would shoot fast (or super fast) sports! I’m sure I’d be excited to share my F1 experience - in a non-fanatic way.

I finally decided to take a plunge to upgrade to OS X Leopard.  So last Friday, I went over to Pavillion KL and visit Epi Centre.  I got myself a single license pack of 10.5.1 Leopard, and rushed home.
I have everything prepared so I went on to install Leopard on an external drive and ran Migration Assistant to transfer all my user settings from my old Tiger system.  It went almost flawless. The install took me over 4 hours - it could have been faster had I installed it on my internal drive.  I installed on an external drive as precautionary that if anything goes wrong I can always switch back to my old system.

First Impression

Everything worked well after installing the latest updates.  This new cat seems tamed enough for me that I decided to completely drop my Tiger system in my internal Macbook HDD the next day.  Leopard has a lot of new features that had me adjust a bit but the learning curve is quick.  I like the new interface particularly with the new panes in System Preferences. The subtle eye-candy changes was just a clear reminder that this is an entirely new cat.

There is a lot more under the hood that I have to discover with Leopard’s new features.  Time Machine for one is a welcome addition - the animation just blows me a way.  Navigating thru the timeline is like a scene in the first Matrix movie when Neo ‘zoomed’ into a roomful stack of weapons.  Quick Look is an easy way to preview any documents without opening the application - pressing Spacebar while navigating Finder’s browser pane was just right.

The Upgrade Itch

XCode 3 and the addition of the iPhone SDK is what I anticipated the most.  I’ve heard a lot of improvements and new tools available for developing applications for the Mac.  I’m starting out to explore development in a Mac.  Having been into Java development for quite some time now, I want new skills for a challenge.

I’ve planned the upgrade since Leopard’s public release last October, but I have been hesitant.  I have heard a lot of users having problems: slower than Tiger performance, kernel panics, etc.  What finally pushed me over was my decision to try out XCode.  I’ve seen a lot of articles on the web and I’m so impressed with the feature set of the new development IDE that I can only get to try those if I switch to Leopard.

Living day to day with Leopard

Using Leopard is not much different than Tiger.  You still do the basic stuff the same way with the old cat.  Switchers won’t worry much about getting noob-ed.

I’ve been using Spaces quite a lot.  I created 5 spaces to separate applications for web surfing (browsers and Yahoo Messenger), System Preferences, Photography Workflow (Aperture, iPhoto, ImageBrowser), Media (iTunes), and Development.  Clicking on applications on the Dock shows a slide-in/out animation when crossing difference spaces.

Final thoughts:

I can’t believe how smooth the upgrade was.  This is my first upgrade when I switched to a Mac last year.  It cost me a standard USD 129 for a single-user license, not like the USD 269 to USD 399 for a Vista Ultimate Upgrade or Full Version respectively.  The Migration Assistant really works without the need to reinstall every application and reconfigure Leopard the way I configured my Tiger system.  I’m glad I’m on a Mac.