Yes I am here now in Penang attending the Charge Up 2009 Conference and this time not as a participant but rather as one of the coaches for the Photography Stream. Every year Livewire Media organizes a conference for the AV folks and this year it is held at the Penang Christian Centre (PCC). There are 3 available streams for all conference delegates, video, audio and photography and all of these streams are taught by experts from the industry themselves.

Here is Choon Ean giving her opening speech about how she fractured her fibula while trying to take photos while paragliding. I won't say what that gesture was ;)



Ps. Victor Wong is our pastor who will be preaching during all the Power Up sessions.



Every day after the Power up sessions in the morning, we will all proceed to individual workshops. Here is Grace teaching the first workshop on exposure.





Ke Wynn who is our head honcho for the photography stream teaches about posing and portraiture as well as lighting.





Ke Wynn was awesome and he is really down to earth. Each time to constantly reminds the participants that you don't need great gear to take great photos. It takes great photographers to take great photos.

Of course during the course of the workshop, Ian decides to have some fun with Joseph's funky stuff.



Here are some of the participants being shot and shooting with a technique using video lights.



My group which I am helping out with on their practical shoot and trying to practice what they have learned in the earlier workshops.



Joseph assisting the rest with the video light and reflector.



And of course, a quick candid of our wonderful bag seller, Jonathan. Jonathan has the most outstanding portfolio that I have seen I am still trying to get him to share with me his thoughts and thinking process behind his shoots.



Ok, I got to get back to class and begin to capture more photos of the participants.

Actually, there isn't one today because I totally forgot about it. Quick one today, I am on my way to Penang for the Charge Up conference and am currently eating in Ipoh at the moment and blogging using my iPhone.

More updates to come!

Yes, this is just another rant but surprisingly when I typed in "Streamyx Sucks" in Google, I was rather surprised by the number of returns I got. Looks like I am not the only one complaining about their slow Streamyx speeds because I just can't access certain websites without constantly refreshing the site. praying that it will somehow work. Check out this site on what may be the cause of the slow speeds, but I am very very inclined to sign up with Packet One at the moment.

On another note, I recently subscribed to Maxis' 3G service and I am still rather dissapointed with it's slow download speeds. It is so slow that I constantly have to find a spot where there is a decent signal and most of the time I get bad connection speeds such as being downgraded to the EDGE line or the GPRS line. This is rather disturbing to me.

Over the past week I had a huge scare when I tried updating this blog and I also gotten a new 1TB hard disk thanks to munZ. I installed it into my PC at home and only realised that I removed the wrong SATA cable and now one of my older hard disks is disconnected. Once the new hard disks are formatted, I will attempt to reconnect back the other SATA cable as well as try to tidy up the mess that is inside my PC.

• New Pocket Wizards are out in the form of the MiniTT1 and the FlexTT5. At the moment, Canon users get it first as these new Pocket Wizards offer TTL technology to users (what Radio Poppers did for Nikon's TTL). Check out a copy of the press statement here.


• If you are unaware, WPPI is currently on at the moment in Las Vegas. Wished that I was there!


• Radio poppers have released new poppers which can fire away flashes and strobes at 1/8000 of a second. Talk about pure awesomeness!


• Check out the full teaser trailer of the upcoming Transformers 2 movie.


• The ChargeUp! 2009 conference is less than 2 weeks away!


• Turn off your lights for an hour for EarthHour. Everyone is going to combat global warming. What will you do?


• Here are sample images taken with Nikon's new 35mm f/1.8 DX lens.


• Wired.com reader's top 10 iPhone games list here.

Been looking at options to update my blog layout as well as a full redesign. Can't seem to find the time to sit down and look through all of the codings. Might need to setup another test blog before moving over.

Alright, maybe this wouldn't be so scary to some people but it was extremely scary to me. It caused me like 5 minutes of blurness and it definitely made my heart beat a little faster. Well to elaborate a little more on this scare was that I usually upgrade this blog (which runs on the Wordpress engine) via a plugin which was called "Automatic Upgrade". This time when I tried, it didn't work and I installed the new patch or the newer version via the manual way where I had to ftp to my site and then upgrade it.

Things went well on the ftp side of things.

On the blog front, it didn't go well at all. I started getting loads of *.php errors all over the admin panel and I decided to delete a few plugins until when I tried to log in to my site, it was just blank.

The admin panel didn't work.

The blog had a blank and white page.

Of course I panicked for a short period until I decided to calm down, delete some plugins and found out that my "wp-super-cache" plugin was the one causing the php errors. Anyway this site is back up again and thanks me being extremely paranoid, I deleted a whole lot of plugins. Ok to be perfectly honest, I deleted all my plugins. So I just spent the last 30 minutes downloading new plugins.

One of the cooler plugins I downloaded was the new "WPtouch iPhone Theme" which transform this blog into something that is iPhone friendly. If you have an iPhone and you happen to browse to this site, you would notice a nicer interface to read through the various posts here.

There are just so many cool WP Plugins around!

After enjoying a long weekend and actually playing golf again at the Bangi Equitorial resort after a long hiatus, I must say that I became faily tanned and realised that I may be alergic to the sunblock I bought. There were some interesting photos I took over the weekend on my Facebook profile, mainly taken with my iPhone and then uploaded them via Maxis 3G. Here are this week's Wednesday Clicks.

• Sick of your old camera equipment and you really feel like you would need the latest spanking new camera body or that new lens? Well, here is a good reality check for you.


• If you have recently upgraded to Adobe Lightroom 2 and was wondering what new feature that was in it, do check this tutorial out. Very nifty and simple especially if you are unfamiliar with layers.


•  Here is an interesting link in the event you feel as if you are having a mental block especially if you are a photographer. Something similar to breaking writer's block.

I can't wait for this weekend with another round of golf with my friends. I am leaving this week's Wednesday Clicks (ok, it is still Wednesday in Hawaii!) with a strip from one of my favourite comic strips.



Image source

I shot Bernard and Huay-Sien's wedding together with Ian under the WeddingStory banner and I finally am blogging about it. I can't believe how busy it is these past couple of months but I am glad for the recent Chinese New Year. Here are some of my shots from the wedding shoot.









The ceremony was held at St. Peter's in Bangsar while the luncheon was held at Le Meridien Kuala Lumpur.










This is one of my favourite shots of the day.





Shot the two images above using off-camera flash.













I got loads more of photos to upload but recent crappy internet speeds is prohibiting me from loading more photos and I seem to be having problems with Wordpress' flash uploader.

More photos can be found on the post I wrote on WeddingStory's Blog here.

Alright, this started out in Facebook when ShaolinTiger tagged me hence I decided to write 25 things about myself (don't worry, a Facebook version will also be available) and at the same time, hope to learn about you as well.

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

1. I was born in Malacca but lived all of my life in the PJ/KL area. I used to call Malacca my hometown but the real meaning of a home town is starting to make me think twice.


2. Blue is my favourite colour


3. I shoot with a Nikon camera all because the Nikon D40 was the camera I saw first and bought on an impulse buy at 1 Utama.


4. I love using my MacBook Pro especially when I am on the go and I love playing with the iPhone.


5. I have an iPod classic with 80Gb of memory space but all I do is watch videos on it.


6. I love eating chicken rice


7. I tried to carry the Thomas Cup when I was young but it was way too heavy for me. That was when Rashid Sidek won the cup in 1992.


8. Former first stringer Liverpool goalkeeper, Jerzy Dudek signed my Liverpool cap when I was at Anfield.


9. Bumped into Thierry Henry at NikeTown in downtown London.


10. I graduated as an engineer and am no longer working as an engineer.


11. I used to design video camcorders (mini DVs) at JVC.


12. I like to play badminton, futsal and slowly picking up golf at the moment. My swing is horrible though.


13. I love watching TV series such as CSI, Numb3rs, How I Met Your Mother, Two and A Half Men, House, Greys Anatomy, Prison Break, 24, Kitchen Nightmares, Hells Kitchen and many more!


14. I loved the Kitchen Nightmare series filmed in the UK where Gordon Ramsay transformed a failing restaurant around but the US series is also as great as the restaurant owners are a little more arrogant and not willing to listen to Gordon's advice.


15. Whenever I get the chance to sit down in front of a TV with Astro, the first channel I will select would be 411 and then 412 and 413 followed by 703, 701 and 707.


16. I follow a lot of photography blogs, I just counted 43 of them in my Google Reader.


17. My favourite holiday was when I went to the Czech Republic, it was totally awesome!


18. I want to really take good photographs and improve on my skills so I can actually put something into my new photoalbum and have something to show as my portfolio.


19. I am a total gadget freak except that GPS units don't really intrigue me enough.


20. I wish that Malaysia would change for the better in the near future.


21. I am totally overweight, I need to lose weight fast!


22. Although I may be lively at times but I always appreciate a nice and quiet day where I can waste my time sipping Starbucks coffee and watching TV series in bed.


23. I drink a lot of coffee every day.


24. I love my Taylor guitar although I haven't played it in a while now.


25. I am wondering what should I do with the snooker cue which I had gotten all the way from Sheffield.

Alright, these are the 25 things that came straight to my mind when trying to write this down. If you do read this blog and feel compelled to write 25 things about yourself, don't forget to link back to this site as I would love to know more about you.

Update: I had to include the last link into this week's Wednesday Clicks

I guess if there were any other posts here, this blog would then be called the Wednesday Clicks blog. Anyway, let me start off first with a little bit of what has been happening. I read a food review about Popeye's latest fast food chain here the other day and was extremely curious about the food. Usually I trust certain food reviews but me being a fast food junkie, I headed there last night and decided to try their fried chicken. My review about it? Well, the food is not going to lure me there as I really felt that it was just "so-so". Nothing spectacular about it and since it is located in the busy area of Taman Tun Dr. Ismail, I doubt that I would be there anytime soon.

Back to the clicks.

• Two stunning image galleries on the aeriel view of London by night as well as msnbc's image gallery.


• A lawyer and a journalist has a difference of opinion. Conspiracy theories anyone?


• Check out the amazing new movie trailers that were released during Superbowl weekend. My personal favourites were that of "Angels and Demons", "Transformers 2", "G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra", "Star Trek" and "Monsters versus Aliens".


• Are you finding that your iPhone backup takes longer than usual after updating to the latest 2.1.1 firmware?


• Just when you thought that Windows 7 was supposed to be an improved version of what Vista was supposed to be, Microsoft is making all the same mistakes again.


• The best of dumb questions and answers at Yahoo! Answers. Definitely worth a click!

More posts coming soon!