Plans for a trip to Italy

We have been talking about going to Italy since the beginning of last year and soon the trip will come to past. We will no longer talk about going no more because we are going in about 18 days. HF has planned out the itineraries with much details. I'm just a sucker at it.

As I don't have the itineraries with me this moment and if my memory serves me right, we will land in Milan on November 17. Following that, we will be visiting:
2. Verona
3. Venice
4. Florence
5. Pisa
6. Naples
7. Pompei
8. Capri Islands (tentative)
9. Sorrento (tentative)
10. Rome
11. Vatican city

... and we will return to England on November 27th. Flight tickets were acquired at a bargain from Jet2.com and most of our accomodations are booked online at very reasonable prices from hostels.com and gtahotels.com. Tripadvisors.com is a very resourceful site for travellers like us and you should be using TripAdvisor.com as your reference for information wherever you're travelling.

This trip is going to be a little special as I have managed to save enough from my earnings from my part-time job. So, we are treating this trip to pamper ourselves to a taste of luxury in life.

We are trying to save up more as we're planning other trips some time early next year. Probably to Egypt or the rest of Europe with Spain as priority. I have thought of going to Mexico and explore some parts of South America, I don't know what HF thinks of this. Places to go in South America, in summary, includes:
a. Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
b. Sao Paolo, Brazil
c. Santiago, Chile
d. Valparaiso, Chile
e. The Grand Terrains of Feugo Island (Isla Grande de Tierra del Feugo), the tip of South America
f. Mexico

Ambitious? I don't think so. My father once told me when I was in my teen years that I will get my passport to go anywhere in the world as long as I work hard (in my studies, as I was a half-wit then). Little did he know that that has motivated me so much to want to accomplish many things later in life and I am on it. Slowly and surely, I know I will achieve many thinngs.

Break of dawn

Looking eastward to a multi-colored twilight skies of a budding sunrise to reconquer darkness on the 24th October 2006 at 07:06 hrs. This was shot from my balcony.


Details:
Shutter speed: 1/5s
Lens aperture: F/8
Focal lenght: 18mm
ISO speed: ISO-100
Exposure program: Manual
Exposure compensation: 0 step




Details:
Shutter speed: 8s
Lens aperture: F/8
Focal lenght: 50mm
ISO speed: ISO-100
Exposure program: Manual
Exposure compensation: 0 step

Blue Screen of Death

There has been no problems with regards to performance and usability of my new Dell laptop. However, today, in fact just a few minutes ago, something unusual happened that caused the blue screen of death, in which I thought was almost forgotten!

I have not added any hardwares or peripherals to this machine. It is totally unexpected that this kind of error should arise for a new machine. I wonder if Dell could do something about it? I didn't purchase their "insurance plans" for technical support because they're too expensive, and I only see it as their excuse for squeezing our pocket dry-er!

I tried looking for solutions to this problem by reading Microsoft's Knowledge Base site and other sites suggesting a resolution to the problem but ultimately and honestly, I wouldn't dare to do anything just yet.

Wish me luck!

Day at Chester Zoo

Sitting on a real camp set up log of what seem to be an anti-poaching activists. There's an old-style jeep in front of me and the rhino's shelter is to my left. Very cool!

Resting peacefully in its shelter, the rhino is saved from those merciless rhino horns/tusks hunters. This would be the first life rhino I've seen!

A portrait of an Asiatic (Indian) elephant who's trying to nibble something from the ground with its trunk nose. The ears of elephants gives away information on whereabouts their from -- larger eared elephants that has the shape of the African continent are, indeed, African elephants. Ears that shaped like the Indian continent are Indian/Asiatic elephants!

A ride on a life-sized baby elephant sculpture! To get on it would not be as easy as one would see.

HF and her colleague, Sylvia, who hails from Manchester! The path behind them is a long stretch of footpath sheltered by branches and leaves of tall trees! It is very pretty especially this fall season where leaves are falling off and the colors of autumn would never fail to elevate a unique sensation when walking through this path. HF describes it as romantic (??!)

Inside the monkey shelters when we noticed a sign that reads out "Monkey kitchen". Food for all monkey tenants are prepared here. Mandrills are one of our favorites! It's fun to observe their behaviors as they are so unpredictable.

Nothing will come into my way to shooting pictures on a lovely day! English weather's not that lovely especially this time of the year. There has been rain and sun over and again in the past hour. Here's my beautiful model!

The chimpanzees! The chimps are probably the only display we spent the longest time on observing. This chimp (each apparently has its own name but I'm not a chimp enough to tell the difference) was seen climbing and was up to something.

It has got something in its hands and was getting ready to 'teleport' itself to another place.

The jump! An awesome shot!

Malaysia's Orang Utan

Orang Utan is translated to "Jungle man" in Malay. There are many Orang Utan living in the East of Malaysia -- Sabah and Sarawak and Indonesia. They are endangered species. HF was terrified by the way they walk -- like an old man. LoL!! I didn't know the way old man walks is creepy.

Each one of these Orang Utan seem to have one of those things that they'd lick from it. If it's not food, I don't know what they are. But it is amazing to observe that they know how to use the stick as a tool to pick something from inside the red tube and take it back out to lick it clean. Now, that's intelligent!

Still feeding itself with... ants??!

This Orang Utan IS the biggest of them all in this group. Everyone says its fugly and scary! I was like "what did you expect? It's not your brother or sister nor a human! Did you forget that you're a zoo?!" Lol!

It was amazing to watch how one of these climbed down and walked towards the stream to take a quick sip of water when feeling thirsty.

HF dared me to climb (more like crawl!!) into this turtle shell when kids 1/3 of my size were slipping inside and out like an eel! So, This is me after a full-sized meal in a hard shell! It was fun!

HF shot of me shooting the lioness! Love this pic! I didn't even know it!

To the lions den!

Hello Your Majesty! The resulting shot from the picture above. Pretty! And this is the CLOSEST ever I've EVER gotten near a lion/ess! Her nose to my lens are only 1.5 (~45cm) feet away!!

We were running back and forth around the corner of this cage just to get a great shot like this with the lioness because she (lioness) was so actively running about.

At the sea lions display. We missed the exhibition show. They are real fast swimmers!

Comodo dragon!! It is sleeping, yet its forked tongue spears out every now and then! So close to it as though I'm standing just next to it!

Astrophotography with DPSS 5mW Green Laser Pointer

Just a couple of nights ago, I realized I could actually put the newly acquired DPSS 5 mW green laser pointer to good use. Since it is not a toy and I am not in a teaching position to be using any laser pointers in any presentations, I might as well use it with photography as I have much interests in both star-gazing and photography. (NOTE: Never point lasers at drivers or pilots or cyclists or anyone manning a vehicle or machine! You can be criminally liable for their mishaps that could result in loss of life (-ives)!

No lights were switched on and the room I was in was totally in darkness. The laser beams were captured with a 4-6 secs of exposure at f/5.6 with a Canon 350D. I was holding the pointer, hence the multiple streaky beams. Too bad they're not light sabres from Star Wars!

Because it is dangerous to look into laser beams directly, I wanted to take pictures of them just to look at the bright and powerful beams... to study laser behaviors too... for the heck of it.

Atfer much fooling around, I realized something. An idea. I thought to myself "why don't I just stop shooting the laser beams (I mean, how much more interesting can they get after twenty shots?), and start shooting the night skies?! Below are the results.

Intensity of the beam #1: Experimenting refractions and reflections of laser beams. In layman's term, I was making a laser show of my own!

Intensity of the beam #2: Got all excited with the artistic results when the beam was reflected off the mirror 4 times against another mirror.

Intensity of the beam #3: My excitement levels gradually diminishes as I began to realize how dangerous it could have been had I accidently beamed into my eyes! It could cause temporary blindness -- scotoma.

Intensity of the beam #4 and then an idea struck me.

Wielded the laser pointer onto the shaft of my Canon EF 70-300mm IS USM lens to act as guide. This picture is the first to illustrate my idea and I think I can say it was a success!

After much trial and errors, I have managed to re-adjust and re-positioned the laser pointer and began shooting some stars (and the constellations). The laser saves me from neck pains. No more squattings and tilted heads just to look through the viewfinder to shoot a particular area or star!

New lappie

It's been a week now since I got a new laptop from Dell.com. I decided to get it from Dell because, among other reasons, it was comparatively cheaper than retailed prices for the specs detailed below.

Inspiron 9400 Core 2 Duo Processor T5500 (1.66 GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)
17" Ultrasharp Widescreen TFT display
1024 MB SDRAM
80GB SATA HDD
8x DVD+/- RW
256 MB DDR ATI Mobility Raedon x1400 VGA

Weighs about 3.2 kg, which is reasonably light and convenient to be carried around.

Arrived boxed. Of course! What else would I have expected? Bagged in bubble-wraps?

Can't wait any longer to see the contents! It's been a long wait.

The best is always worth waiting!

I thought I got a 15.1" screen but, Viola! 17.1" widescreen. *sniggers!*

It's UK's keyboard layout, which I did not like very much as there are additional keys in odd places. Eg. between the Z-key and Left-shift-key, there's the Back-slash key; they Aprostrophe-key (") switched places with the "at" (@) key. If my pinky-fingers were short, I can bet to my last dollar that I wouldn't have reached the Return-key without moving my palm from rest. I complained to Dell about this in which, in turn, they refunded 20£ for the inconvenience. Cool! But I am still having this keyboard, which is apparently GLuED to the machine!

Dell Inspiron 9400.

... and the machine came to live!

VERDICT
The amount paid for this was 805£. I would have paid in excess of 1,200£ if purchased from retail stores like PC World or Currys. There has not been much problems since (I guess the only reason for this is that IT IS new!). I'm not complaining... besides the keyboard.

My rating: 8.5 / 10 !

Fever of Autumn

Sights of fall are already evident. I simply love the varied colors of the fall season.

The outside of the apartment where I live shows just that. It was a cool foggy yester-morning. 

iPhotoBooth snapshot

I was trying to make an impression of Syndrome, the villain from The Incredibles. This was as close as I could get.

White & Nerdy by Weird Al Yankovic

They see me mowin'
My front lawn
I know they're all thinking
I'm so White N' nerdy

Think I'm just too white n' nerdy
Think I'm just too white n' nerdy
Can't you see I'm white n' nerdy
Look at me I'm white n' nerdy!
I wanna roll with-
The gangsters
But so far they all think
I'm too white n' nerdy
Think I'm just too white n' nerdy
Think I'm just too white n' nerdy
I'm just too white n' nerdy
We really white n' nerdy

First in my class here at M.I.T.
Got skills I'm a
Champion of DND
MC Escher that's
My favorite MC
Keep your 40
I'll just have an Earl Grey tea
My rims never spin to the contrary
You'll find they're quite stationary
All of my action figures are cherry
I got Stephen Hawking in my library
My MySpace page is all totally pimped out
I got people begging for my top 8 spaces
Yo I got Pi out to a thousand places
Ain't got no grills but I still wear braces
I order all of my sandwiches with mayonnaise
I'm a whiz at minesweeper I can play for days
Once you see my sweet moves you're gonna stay amazed, my fingers movin' so fast I'll set the place ablaze
There's no killer rap I haven't run
A past gal well I'm number 1
I play with calculus just for fun
I ain't got a get but I gotta soldering gun
Happy Days is my favorite theme song
I can sure kick your butt in a game of ping pong
I'll ace any trivia quiz you bring on
I'm fluent in Java Script as well as Klingon

They see me roll on, my Segway!
I know in my heart they think I'm
white n' nerdy!
Think I'm just too white n' nerdy
Think I'm just too white n' nerdy
Can't you see I'm white n' nerdy
Look at me I'm white n' nerdy
I'd like to roll with-
The gangsters
Although it's apparent I'm too
White n' nerdy
Think I'm just too white n' nerdy
I'm just too white n' nerdy
How'd I get so white n' nerdy?

I've been browsing, inspectin'
X-men comics you know I collect 'em
The pens in my pocket
I must protect 'em
all my ergonomic keyboard
Shopping online for deals on some writable media
I edit Wikipedia
I memorized the Holy Grail
Really well
I can recite it right now have you
ROTFLOL
I got a business doing websites
When my friends need some code who do they call?
I do HTML do for them all
Even make a homepage for my dog!
Got myself a fanny pack
they were having a sale down at the GAP
Spend my nights with a roll of bubble wrap
POP POP! Hope no one sees me get freaky!

I'm nerdy in the extreme and whiter than sour cream
I was in AV club and Glee club and even the chess team!
Only question I ever thought was hard
Was do I like Kirk or do I like Piccard?
I spend every weekend
at the Renaissance Faire
I got my name on my underwear!

They see me strollin'
They laughin'
And rollin' their eyes 'cause
I'm so white n' nerdy
Just because I'm white n' nerdy
Just because I'm white n' nerdy
All because I'm white n' nerdy
Holy cow I'm white n' nerdy
I wanna bowl with-
the gangsters
but oh well it's obvious I'm
white n' nerdy
Think I'm just too white n' nerdy
Think I'm just too white n' nerdy
I'm just too white n' nerdy
Look at me I'm white n' nerdy!

"Can I get into the Paris Hilton?"

I can only say one word for this guy -- Genius!

He is absolutely hilarious and knocked me out when his right hand reached under his pants!

My desktop New Look

It's a widget software called Aston ver.1.9.2

All original desktop icons are underneath the Aston skin, which is competely customizable, and every GUI object are extremely user-friendly. It features a roll-over menu bar on its top and its sides and access to frequent use applications are so much more easier now! Totally cool!