Done!

I started this project without much expectations, with only the desire to observe the limits of photography with a dSLR. I was brimming with excitement with my new dSLR camera then — though I wasn’t new to photography – but what better way to do that than to dive head-first into this project?

Fast forward a year later, as I hit the upload button on my final shot; hitting the red ‘X’ on Photoshop and then closing my Project 365 folder, I felt a rush of joy that accompanies the sense of liberation. An immense weight dragged off my back. Nothing was more gratifying than seeing the auto-generated completion counter on my photoblog showing a proud, ‘100% done!’ I blinked, for a moment, this is it?

Then the sadness sets in. The shoot-process-upload routine has become a ritual I perform every day to please the 365 gods I’ve devoted myself to for a whole year. Project 365 has become a part of my life. I wake up worrying about what to shoot; space out in lectures thinking of a setup and go to bed relieved that I have the day’s shot done and uploaded. Now a mere click puts all that behind in a blink of an eye.

This is going to take some getting used to, I thought.

Day 183/365: Reaching the halfway point.

Emoness aside, the project is by far, the lengthiest self-motivated long-term endeavour I’ve ever successfully completed in my life. That’s why it’s gonna deserve a good, hard look back on how I did it and the obstacles that plagued it’s entire duration.

Getting that shot

Taking my camera everywhere I go

When I started Project 365, I knew I had to bring my camera everywhere I go. Tugging my camera around during outings are okay, the real obstacle was when I had to inevitably bring it to campus — daily. The last thing I wanted was being labelled a show-off who just can’t help showing off his shiny new dSLR every single day. And let’s face it – a dSLR, even the tiny 1000D – isn’t as unobtrusive. The moment you yank it out, a good number of people within eyeshot would definitely look your way. There are times you’d wish to have a big banner above your ahead bearing the words, ‘I’m on Project 365! Suemeifyoucanttakeit.’

DSLRs are way more obtrusive compared to compacts.

So yes, I brought my camera with me to campus every single day for the past year. It spends most of the day tumbling around in my backpack, only seeing daylight when I’m with my close friends – who’re fully aware of my project – when I see a shot or feel comfortable enough to whip my camera out.

The creative spark

Maintaining a Project 365 stream requires a daily dose of creativity I didn’t have. While there are days chock full of activities and events that ends up in a post-processing nightmare, more often than not there were those boring and uninspiring days that beg of you to give up.

The first thing I’d do when the clock strikes – literally – at the eleventh-hour, is to quickly browse through Flickr’s Explore photos. Granted, not all Explore photos are great ones. Computer algorithms can only do so much to compile a collection of ‘good’ photos every day from the Flickr archive, but there are quite a few legitimately good shots out there daily that might give just that spark.

Then there’s the 100-steps challenge. The idea is to drag yourself and your camera outdoors, walk a hundred steps and start taking photos of anything at the end of your path. I don’t follow the hundred-steps rule that strictly, but I often find myself taking strolls in the garden snapping high and low so I can be done with the day’s photo. There are also days after classes where I take a detour somewhere for a short solo photowalk that can be very rewarding at times.

Danbo saves the day!

Somewhere in the 200’s into the project, I decided to get myself Danbo, an action figure from the manga, Yotsub&! I don’t think I’ve formally introduced Danbo yet, so here goes. In the manga, Danbo is actually a robot costume made of cardboard and was donned by Miura to entertain a curious Yotsuba. Despite appearing only very briefly (a single chapter, to be exact), the robot with geometrical features stole the hearts of many.

Day 334/365: Danbo getting cold feet.

There’s a reason why I thought Danbo would be helpful to my Project. I was intrigued by how expressive — or the lack thereof — Danbo can be. Tilt his head up, he can express anything from being dreamy to excitement. Swing his head back down, he’ll appear downright sad or just simply, afraid. And that sort of flexibility is especially useful when you have to shoot something daily. =)

The Workflow

A typical 365 shot you see posted takes an arm and a leg to produce. Taking the shot itself is just the beginning — the real headache starts in the digital darkroom. The photos go through rigorous polishing work in Lightroom, of which the best of the best are subjected to a stringent selection process before the last photo standing is delivered to you.

Seriously though, there are generally two types of shots I do in my 365 — snapshots and set-ups. Snapshots are usually quick takes of life as it flies by, like that quick moment as a child hands out titbits to a monkey; or candid photos of my friends in the labs. Set-ups are exactly what it means, ideas and subjects that are set-up in advance allowing me to explore different angles and variations in the process.

I use Lightroom for cataloguing and post-processing of my photos. Photos would normally go through adjustments such as white-balance, exposure correction, split toning and curves to name a few. Candidates for posting are then exported in full size and thrown into Photoshop, where sharpening, brushing and any other pixel-level editing are necessary.

The final shot for the day is then exported from Photoshop and uploaded to Flickr via the very useful Flickr Uploadr. While I throw the photo into Uploadr, I’ll do the write-up for the Photoblog post and grab the photo URL from Flickr as it finishes uploading. The moment I hit Publish, the photo would be up fresh on both Flickr and my photoblog.

Number Crunching

I love statistics. Numbers tell a story when presented. And a 365 report wouldn’t be complete without some solid numbers to show off.

I could’ve plotted the following graph off the back of my head:

It shows the time the day’s shot was taken and when it was uploaded. This graph could’ve roughly been my internet-surfing habits for the past year (especially the Postings plot).

While pretty self-explanatory, I like how the graph reflects my love of shooting during the golden hour. Seriously, who could resist taking photos when everything is cast in a shade of gold? The graph also shows evidence of a few (28 days, to be exact) shots that were taken after the day technically ended at midnight (0000-0200hrs). When life got too hectic, I gave myself a little leeway to end the day only when I retire to the sheets, not after the clock hits 12 midnight. If I’d spend a day and gone to bed without a shot, then only it’ll be a missed day.

Another interesting graph to look at is the comments-per-shot plot. I’d take the opportunity to explain why I cross-post my photos to Flickr and my Photoblog. Flickr is a massive photographic community that’s bound to bring recognition to your photos if they’re worthy of it. But not wanting to leave my friends / non-Flickr readers out of the fun, I created the photoblog.

So photos posted to both sites have distinctive sets of audiences. I’ve also found out that the volume of Flickr comments are understandably based mostly on the quality of the images; whereas Photoblog comments can be influenced by my write-up if I occasionally share some thoughts and updates, if not based on how good the photo is. The graph clearly shows how Flickr comments can in-proportionally spike due to Explores but with Photoblog comments hovering about the same average all throughout. Interesting.

I’m actually surprised to find out the type of shots I’ve been taking for the past year are rather healthily spread-out. I thought Nature and Campus would’ve snatched a good chunk of the pie. Of my arsenal of lenses (of two), I clearly show huge bias towards the nifty fifty. One reason that might even remotely affect this was that my kit lens was sentenced to a 61-day stint in the Canon ICU back in May.

The Last Words

I’ve said it on my final 365 post and I’ll say it again. What started out as a project with low-expectations became a fulfilling experience thanks to all of you — readers of my Photoblog, awesome Flickr contacts, fellow coursemates and fellow photographers that made Project 365 a blast. You guys are the catalysts to the completion of this project, no less.

I opened the door committing myself to this project last year without much certainty, it is without doubt that I emerged from the other end of the path a different person today. It’s amazing what a year of photography can do.

A project of a lifetime.

I’m now enjoying life after 365. So much so that I haven’t been shooting for the past week! Haha. While I’ve said that I won’t be continuing on another project 365, I figured that I should give it another round in the (distant) future. It was really tough at times, but it was well worth it and definitely deserves another try. =)

With that, I officially sign off this ultra-lengthy post of an equally lengthy project of a lifetime.

2010 — Even Danbo couldn’t believe it.

Anyway, first post of 2010!

Five years and five days ago, like a boy who had discovered how awesome cotton candy can be (for the record though, cotton candy was never my thing), I stumbled upon WordPress —  which was, at the time, a shiny new blogging engine still in its infancy. But that didn’t matter, for I deleted my HTML-hardcoded blog whose code I shamelessly copied and modified from some random blog — and never looked back.

My host then, Stafa, graciously installed my first copy of WordPress (version 1.2.1) via Fantastico — magically sprouting a Hello World entry telling me it’s my first post and that I could edit it and start blogging. My website just talked to me, I marveled.

Back then, WordPress’s default theme was bland, full-width’ed and a dull-green that shouted for a change. Then I found Kubrick. Yes — if Kubrick looks familiar to you, that’s because it is the very look you see every time you install a fresh copy of WordPress. From version 1.5 on, Kubrick became bundled along with WordPress as the default theme we all know now — in 2010, that might also shout at you - change me!

But five years ago, Kubrick was a game-changer.

One of my first mods of the Kubrick theme circa 2005

Rounded corners, appealing minimalism, subtle footer gradients, and with an easily customisable header image to boot, it wasn’t hard to see why Kubrick took the blogging world by storm then. Once I got Kubrick running on my shiny new WordPress installation, I started, with however limited knowledge I had of CSS, modifying it so that I had the most unique Kubrick theme on the net.

Fast-forward five years later, I’m on my own domain sporting a self-made theme I designed and coded from scratch — what you’re looking at right now. Thus it goes without saying that Kubrick was largely instrumental in sparking my personal endeavor in web-design. Even the tehCpeng.net version two theme I’m running now is based on the Kubrick framework — a last-minute design decision as I wanted the new theme to differ as much as possible from my previous works off the Hemingway framework.

Later on this year, WordPress will be retiring Kubrick as its default theme — the first time in five years. Needless to say, Kubrick is now relatively dated among a largely design-centric blogosphere it helped stir about in the first place.  Tina Daunt of The Huffington Post has a great piece on how Kubrick, a single blog theme revolutionised the blog design arena. I couldn’t agree more on Kubrick’s contribution on changing the face of the blogosphere into one that not only focuses on content, but also on design and aesthetics.

Reaching my fifth year in blogging on WordPress, I can’t help but to look back on the humble beginnings. As Kubrick retires as the default theme for WordPress, it will most likely be forgotten among the new generation of WordPress users with access to sleek and shiny modern themes widely available today. But blog designers around the world would never forget Kubrick’s former glory and how we were once inspired by this humble theme to make the web a much more beautiful place as it is today.

I had my reservations at first — would I be able to keep up, would I have the determination to not miss a single day, do I already take photos that are actually worthy of posting daily, etc. Then there are concerns that I haven’t yet fully mastered the potential of shooting with a dSLR.

Tilt-shift effect applied on a shot of Swinburne’s Kuching campus

It can be really demotivating when a whole set of photos doesn’t turn out to be up to your expectations. LCDs can only tell you so much. Its only when you download them all into your PC where you can view them in their full under/overexposed, out-of-focus glory. Of course, lessons are learnt and I certainly would not expect to be a decent photographer overnight, but the high rate of failures kept me from jumping into starting a Project 365 photoblog.

But the Photojojo’s article I stumbled upon directly addressed my concerns and lists a few extra benefits of starting such a project:

• Imagine being able to look back at any day of your year and recall what you did, who you met, what you learned… (Often we find it hard to remember what we did just yesterday or even last night, let alone a whole year ago!)
• Your year-long photo album will be an amazing way to document your travels and accomplishments, your haircuts and relationships. Time moves surprisingly fast.
• Taking a photo a day will make you a better photographer. Using your camera every day will help you learn its limits. You will get better at composing your shots, you’ll start to care about lighting, and you’ll become more creative with your photography when you’re forced to come up with something new every single day. #

While motivating, I still had concerns if I should find myself giving up halfway. Luckily the editors at Photojojo foresaw this and even mentioned there’ll definitely be days where people consider giving up and such. So they offered tips on how tackle that, too.

More miniature tilt-shift effect fakery =P

Upon finishing that article, I felt there is no reason I should not embark on this project. It’s a big commitment, yes. And I foresee the final exams season which I would obviously have minimal time with my camera let alone going online, but let the future decide for itself shall we?

So I decided to take that plunge.

I whipped up a quick and simple dark-coloured theme and slapped it onto a subdomain of tehCpeng.net — img.tehCpeng.net — which is the address of my spanking new photoblog. The sharp ones amongst you would already know that ‘img’ is short for ‘image’. I initially used that subdomain to point all my images (I still do), but I couldn’t think of a better name for the photoblog. ‘photography.tehcpeng.net’ was a little too long, ‘photoblog-’ is way too generic. So I settled with the short and sweet, ‘img’. =)

I’ve started off my Project 365 with a photo from the 1st of January (1/365), followed by a skip to 19th of January as 2/365. That makes the photo I’ll post later on today (crap it’s already after midnight!) 3/365. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of this later on.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to

img.tehCpeng.net

*shameless plug*

Work in Progress.

It was then when I realised I needed a single-columned theme. My blog posts needed space.

During the last exam season,  the ‘design ideas’ part of my brain started kicking into high gear. Something that never fails to happen every time I’m in the midst of exam stress. All sorts of ideas started flowing in and thus, resulted in Version Two today, a mishmash of most, if not all of the ideas that reached me in my routine morning shower.

And I fear, though I’d rather not acknowledge, that once I release this theme, something is gonna seem wrong about it and I’ll be brainstorming for new ideas to replace it before I even know it. But oh well. =)

So despite being just two months shy of tehCpeng.net Version One’s first birthday, I decided to rush Version Two out. I started working on the mockup on 30th December, 2008 — the day before I got my dSLR. The 500 pixel wide photos on my old theme didn’t do any justice to the photos I wanted to potray. So I took 6 days to complete the mockup before I started gobbling up another week for the coding.

While two weeks might sound like an eternity to design and code a website, the time I spent on Version Two was easily half of that I spent on Version One a year ago. =P

What’s New?

Everything.

Okay seriously, there a few changes you might want to know. I’ve:

1. Increased the width for the photos to 600 pixels and also made use of WordPress’s new image caption stylings.
2. Removed the sidebar and ditched most of its elements, retaining some at the footer.
3. Hidden some content at the footer for the sake of simplicity. These are accessible via the ‘more?’ link at the bottom. Try it!
4. Added gravatar support within the comments.

There also bits and pieces of shiny new stuff here and there that I’ll be leaving it to you to find out.

Notes.

As you might have noticed, my portfolio isn’t quite ready yet. I’m gonna postpone work on that while I iron out a few more quirks and bugs in the theme, which, if you look closely are still present as of now.

I’ve also haven’t really iron out browser compatitbility issues with the theme. As of now, I am fairly certain that everything should appear fine in at least Firefox 3, IE 8, Safari 3, Chrome 1.0 and Opera 9.6.

Enjoy!

—–

I can’t believe I pulled through last week. More so on the fact that I left my blog unattended for half-a-month. Half-a-godforsaken-month! By the blogosphere’s standards, fifteen days is an eternity.

But in the week before, eternity was seven days.

I did the impossible. I redesigned and coded a website in three days, complete with a presentation and reports on the fourth day. I had four bloody tests that week alone. I had to cover a nine mind-boggling chapters of Physics in two days, just so I wouldn’t fail all that badly. All that, with my parents overseas for the week.

The screenshot I posted before (in the previous post) of the IT website project I was working on, was how it looked like in its earlier stages. I took a very conservative approach in the design, with an all-too-typical two column layout coded with simple html and css. No flash, no Ajaxy stuff, no nothing. Plain, barebones. When Ms. Marlene looked through it for the first time with her lips pursed, it was clear she was anything but satisfied.

Her soaring expectations for our group required me to return to the drawing board for real and cook up something new. The deadline was just three days away.

With the help of iced coffee and lots of patience, I redesigned and recoded everything from scratch. Leaving no room for any pursed lips.

Luckily for me and my sanity, the redesign appealed to her.

I did plan to upload the website for you folks to play around with, but I hadn’t got the time to optimize the load times and do some serious bug-squashing. For believe me when I say the rushed work is plagued with bugs. But its amazing what you can achieve in three days.

Physics though, makes you realise how much can’t you achieve in a day. Covering 9 chapters in two days for a Physics test is a definite no-no. I had learn that the hard way. =(

Welp. If there’s anything good that came out of the week before, it would be Coldplay’s new album.

Viva la Vida just sounds so epic! I swear my laptop would shut on me if I ever double-click on that track again. Not to mention Strawberry Swing, a rather joyous take on the usual melancholic nature of Coldplay’s works. I swear I thought the instrument used in the intro of Strawberry Swing was the sape

With the finals coming up next week, it seems that time is and always has been, against us.

Oh well, Coldplay is here to cast me into oblivion.

Cue African guitar beats ala Strawberry Swing,

“It’s suuu-ch… It’s su-ch a perfect day.”

Now I emphasise that wannabe because in no way am I a full-fledged web designer/developer/coder. I may know a wee bit of Illustrator and Photoshop and bits of HTML/CSS stuff here and there but that’s nothing. Seriously, who doesn’t know how to use Photoshop these days?

That said, go easy on me okay?

Anyway, yes I’m bloody delighted cos for the past two weeks, my blog’s new design had been featured on not one, but eight bloody design showcase sites (and counting!). That might not seem like a lot to you, cos there are hundreds of these sites out there. But it sure as hell seems a lot to me.

CSSclip was the first CSS gallery to feature my design on it on the 31st of March.

It means a lot too, when you see something you work so hard for gain recognition among the web design community.

On that same day, Sharebrain showcased my blog on their web developers resource site, under a header which I still think my blog is unworthy to be placed on.

A ton of these websites exist out there to offer inspiration to web designers looking for well, inspiration, for their next project.

CSSelite, the more popular of the lot of CSS galleries, featured my blog’s new design on the 3rd of March.

Its that proud feeling that when you get featured on these very galleries that you used once upon a time for inspiration yourself. Seriously, I was once a frequent lurker of CSS galleries eyeing for inspiration when designing tehCpeng.net.

Having the chance to actually inspire others and give back to the community feels really great. =)

On 11th of April, a screenshot of my blog appeared on the front page of the CSS based gallery.

Daily slurp give me a slot on their daily ‘slurp’ galleries on the same day.

So did WP Cube, a WordPress powered design showcase gallery.

Remember those days when you race to get your artwork/essay/calligraphy/photo featured on your school’s yearbook? And the joy when they actually make it into the pages? You get the picture. =D

As seen on WP Zoom, a WordPress theme resource community.

W3C Sites, who brings web developers that follow W3C standards together, had my blog featured under their editor’s picks.

Edit (19/4/08): Been also featured on CMSShowcase, and We Love WP!

Being featured on so many sites at once only means one thing, there’ll be scores of web designers and developers dropping by!

..and if any you decide to take a peek at my messy and noobish code,
don’t laugh okay? =\

It all started in Sydney back in 2007. This year around, Earth Hour 2008 is to be practised all over the world in 24 cities after receiving endorsement and support internationally. But when I considered about participating and saw the list of major cities of the world pledging their support, I thought:

Heck, come back and talk to me about this when I own my own 50-storey tower. Aha! With me living in a penthouse on the 50th floor with a birds-eye view of Kuching, just by the waterfront. And a directors office on the 49th floor overlooking an army of 5,000 employees working their asses off to make sure my multi-million company rakes in billions of dollars.

Then with a flick of a switch on Earth Hour, I would turn all lights off the facade of my majestic skyscraper, inspiring thousands of Kuchingnites as they look up the new landmark in awe. Then they’d all return home and switch their lights off too. THAT’s what I call Earth Hour!

Ahem. Its daytime and I’m dreaming.

Of course, I proceeded to click that red ‘X’ on my browser.

But seriously, Kuala Lumpur isn’t even listed as one of the participating cities, what more Kuching? And what more a bloody average two-storey neighbourhood house in the suburbs?

If I were to switch my lights off, I’ll look like a dumbass in the neighbourhood when my house is the only one in the dark. My neighbours would be laughing and they’d ask me, “Ei bruther, you forgot to pay your SESCO bill ar?”

Then it struck me. Its not about 50-storey skyscrapers, or being a dumbass, or not paying the bills. Its about the difference one can make.

I thought turning the lights off for an hour in our tiny cosy house wouldn’t make any difference. But I was wrong. Look at Sydney, if everyone thought the same way, would there be 2.2million households and 2,100 businesses switching their lights off for an hour, saving 10.2% of juice in a single hour?

While Kuching or even Kuala Lumpur isn’t participating, well I can bloody participate in whatever small way, now can’t I? Its not about how much energy I can save by a flick of a switch for an hour, rather, Earth Hour is to spread awareness of the habit to save electricity and the limited resources of Earth.

More often than not, those who pledge to participate in Earth Hour 2008, also pledge to put their efforts into saving electricity whenever they can. Not only for an hour but for practise in their daily lives.

So don’t bother if the MBKS or DBKU participate in Earth Hour, just do your part.

Look, even our Wisma LHDN (formerly Wisma Ting Pek Khiing) had their ‘Earth Hour’ a while back when I took that photo above. (If you can’t see the building, it’s because all their lights are off and your monitor is too dark.) =P

So what do you do?

Easy, join me on 29th March 2008 and be part of a global initiative to spread environmental awareness by flicking your lights off for 60 minutes from 8pm / 2000 hours to 9pm / 2100 hours tomorrow!

There’ll be plenty to do during that one hour. Camp out and watch the stars (haven’t did that in awhile, haven’t you?). Head out for dinner, cos by the looks of it much of Kuching’s businesses wouldn’t be participating (no guarantees though, don’t come after me when the lights go off in your favourite Japanese restaurant =P). C’mon I’m sure you could live without the lights for awhile.

For me, I’d prolly be heading out. =P If not, perhaps it’s about damn time to admire the stars.

Earth Hour 2008. Its time to give back to mother nature. Do your part and spread the word!

P/s: Check out huiting’s post on their efforts on Earth Hour 2008. Good inspiration. =)

Edit: There’s an Earth Hour movement going on at Mybloggercon (a Malaysian Chinese blog community). Head on there and read what others have to say! They’re all in Mandrin though, save for my post. =P

Thank god for the enrolment day, which means Semester two is commencing! =D Funny how you always long for holidays when studying and long for classes while holidaying. And this is when I know perfectly well that i’ll be longing for the holidays as soon as I start the semester. The Irony.

Thankfully though, this holidays I had something to keep myself busy on (though not enough to keep the mushroom spores away). The result of which is what you’re looking at now. =)

Weee! Welcome to my blog’s spanking new home! xD

Finally, I have my very own domain! About damn time right? Oh, in case you haven’t yet know, this blog is named after my all-time favourite drink. XD And yeap, thats the answer for that mind-boggler I posted as a teaser on ember.stafa.us.

Camellia sinensis is the scientific name for that plant from which we get its leaves to make tea, that said, it’s extract essentially means simply, tea. H2O at minus 15 degrees is well, ice. Lactose, I admit it sucks but it symbolises milk. Anddd, sucrose is table sugar! I hear you shout ‘English!’ It’s pretty obvious now that you’re here and all but I’d still put it out for ya: mix tea, ice, milk, and sugar you’ll get ..drumroll please.. teh-C peng.

Wahaha, I hear you crying foul again. I know teh-C peng doesn’t use milk and sugar. Rather, it uses evaporated milk and gula melaka. But bear with me can? The latter are really processed products of the former. So technically, no harm substituting milk and sugar for the sake of this trivia. =P

I admit this is no teh-C peng, but rather coffee. Read why here. I’d say its teh-C panas. =P

Today is day my blog stood on its own legs, its own domain, its own hosting and its own spanking new look!

Of course, not forgetting its roots, I would like to thank my buddy back in Kuwait, Stafa, who kindly hosted my blog all these years without asking anything in return. Without your generosity I wouldn’t be blogging at all today. =D So here’s a big heartfelt thank you to you man!

I love these earphones, they effectively separate you from the bustling reality of life to savour humanity’s best creation — music.

So what’s exactly new on tehCpeng.net?

• We’ll begin with the most obvious — the new table-top themed look!
• Ajax commenting and comment editing capability
• Now comments you submit will appear instantly without the need to reload the page.
  And best of all, you’ll get to edit not only your comments, but also your ‘name’ and ‘URL’ field for errors. (try it out below!) =P
• New 500px wide pictures. Used to be sized at 450px. They’re now enlarged for your viewing pleasure. =)
• (hopefully) faster loading times with my blog now hosted locally (Malaysia)

What is old, then?

• The author. — No I don’t mean old old, but it’s still the same old me behind the keyboard, whether you like it or not. xD
• Its contents — Apart from the revamped About page (you should check it out sometime), every single bloody post, page and comment was transferred over from ember.stafa.us. So yes, this is essentially a blog shift. =D

Oh, and if anything looks broken or weird, I’ll be glad if you’d notify me. I haven’t been able to test the new layout on every single platform, only those that I have access to.

And while I’m at it, a huge shoutout to all of you out there still using IE6. If you can find the words ‘Internet Explorer 6′ north of this page, that’s you: Maybe its time for you to consider changing your browser to better ones (seriously) or even upgrading your browser to IE7 to fully experience tehCpeng.net.

Um okay, I could go on and on but check out these new pages that will hopefully complete an introduction to my new blog. =D
– About the site.
– In more detail.

That said, welcome!

Speakers up, please. Hear anything? =D

————-

I’ll be off to Kota Kinabalu for a week tonight. Gonna attend some kind of self-improvement course at the Nexus Karambunai Resort. Gotta love parents. =P

Ah soon, you guys save all the moviegoing till I come back okay?

I normally let tech-related news pass but this one is just too huge.

Because Microsoft Corp, the guys behind that program we call Word and OS we call Windows, had just made an offer to buy up Yahoo! Inc for a whopping 44.6 billion US of A dollars!

Okay. Hold on, take a deep breath. Absorb this: Microsoft buys Yahoo! for $44.6 Billion.

Now you have any idea how much money $44.6 Billion is? Remember that Bill Gates, (former) Chairman of Microsoft and also, the current richest dude in the world, is worth, drumroll please.. $56 Billion.

Get the picture on just how much money Microsoft is gambling here? All that, just to remain competitive to Google.

But what will we, the end-users, be expecting if the deal goes through? Windows Live Flickr, anyone? Yahoo Mail downgrading into the infamous Hotmail? I can only imagine, but I seriously hope Flickr is to stay though. =\

People and money. Tsk, tsk, tsk.