Marvin’s 21st Birthday

Sorry guys, I’m sick the last few days so excuse me for the delay. Not that you all are THAT interested in seeing how everyone got soaked! Hahaha..

Anyway..

Above is Marvin the big guy’s birthday.

I arrived early thinking the party starts at 7. Ended up helping Marvin clean up his pc of viruses. Also took the above picture. Both of them erm.., are dressing up for the event.

Since nobody was there anyway, the 3 of us went and grabbed those KFC’s and Dominos that was supposed to be served. Another photo moment.

Some pics of the food available. Funny thing was the BBQ pit was lighted and never used at all!

Racheal and Clement arrived almost in time with Tze Lun and Ivan + other kaki member near Bk Jalil.

Howard also arrived (from work I suppose). That explains the extreme overdressed guy standing next to the lady (Marvin’s GF).

As the party gained momentum, some groups were seated at the stone table while another was seated next to the main door. The stone table group main topic was about photography I think. Somehow the conversation always seem to head that way.

Perhaps it’s because Dwayne and Xi Wen were there in the group too.. haha.. Above is Xi Wen.

You can see him in action above.

All the couples were busy over at the Steamboat corner helping themselves to the food. Totally forgot about the existence of the paparazzi’s (which were good!). Got some nice moments such as the 3rd picture above (Jia Leong & GF).

It wasn’t exactly 12 yet but the cake is already out on the table with candles lit so I just take another picture. Somehow I dunno why but photographer with blogs seems attracted to cakes with candles.

They seem to be whispering a secret (not sure what) but we can clearly see Marvin rubbing his hands in glee.. Dirty fella.

We sang some songs and Marvin blew out the candles.. it’s all getting a bit normal at this part.

As with all birthday boy/girls who are dating, a kiss with their loved ones cannot be far.

But in Marvin’s case, since his enemies are aplenty, he’ll have to finish the secret blend of “friendship” cocktail before we let him go.

Marvin just couldn’t get the technique of picking-up-candles-with-your-mouth correct. Resulting in an ugly smear. But kinda cute. Notice the water stream.

Erm.. I dunno what to say about the disfigured cake.. HAHAHAA..

Then as couples get their cake and enjoying the moment.. we photographers know what’s coming up next. It’s just that tingling spider sense thingy. Hard to explain.

WATER WAR BEGINS!!

The guy sitting there is Wei How. He’s the main consultant and strategist. But not for long until someone realised that he’s too dry to be avoided.

A bigger tussel for the water hose ensures..

..and Wei How is left loosecanon. Thirsty for revenge.

An unlucky fellow.

Clement is soaking there for another reason. Partly all the dry people are hiding outside the house. Trembling in fear.

Too bad the hose is just long enough to soak them all.

Risking flu, they made a counter attack, rushed in and tried to grab the water hose..

But they weren’t successful.

Some girls are in hiding. Like the 2 above. Afraid of getting soaked but still wanting to get a good shot of their friends getting soaked.. How evil

:P

I tried getting some other shots done with all the water on the floor but the reflection were just too great for the TTL metering (for taking exposure based on the floor). Pictures got too dark. Thank god for laser rangefinders. Pity my little flash was ngam ngam able to take it.

Dwayne and Cher was lucky. Unlike me having to get close to the action (and avoiding being a casualty) for a good pic, they can just stand there and fire shots away. How envious.. aiks.

Ivan as usual always get his share of exitement.

Ceasefire declared as there were simply too many other targets to shoot at.

Among them were Sebastian. Even with his super duper Judo skills were no match for the water. Long live Bruce Lee. Be like water, man!

Finally some group pictures. First was the soaking wet gang.

Then above was the entire bunch of us.

PS:Not really all of us as there are simply too many of us and we cannot find a stand. So some of us took turns at taking the group picture.

High tech stuffs and low tech methods

First on the high tech stuffs.

Do you know why stars twingkle?
It’s due to atmospheric interference (read: air current) that bends star-light around.

Then how to telescopes take a good picture of the sky?
They can’t. Notice I said “good”.

Most of the star maps you see are the result of regular (1 giant piece of glass) optic based telescope pictures. But there are a few telescopes currently in action utilizing a lazer heated dot in the sky called a guide star to determine the amount of turbulence in the sky, then computers actively re-position the many mirrors (up to 155 pieces) to counter the effects of the twingkle. Clearer pictures will result from that.

Now below is a photo of just 1 such telescope in action. It’s always awe inspiring to see mankind shoot a laser up to the sky. Always reminds me of how far humans have come to shoot lasers up in the sky (am I repeating myself ?)

Pictured above is the Subaru telescope in Japan. The laser fires up the sodium layer on earth’s atmosphere at a height of 90km and creates an intense dot of light. This is the guide star.

Not bad huh..

Anyway the low tech method involve calculating the value of pi using frozen hotdogs. SERIOUS!

I’ve written that part as an article and it’s available HERE. Check it out. It’s what you guys can do at a BBQ party for nerds.

No presentation?

Still have not got Anand’s presentation schedule.

Dunno what is happening but I’ve been waiting like 1 whole weekend + 3 days for him to post it up! Now some say it might be like last SDM where he canceled the presentation.

Good news for some but I’m still worried. Without the presentation, what if he got the wrong understanding of out project?

Somemore I won’t be around this weekend. Need to go back hometown for grandparents’s birthday (date finally comfirmed) so won’t have internet connection to check OC. If he upload then our group’s turn on Monday then susah lor..

I dunno-lah. See how first la.

Just a rant.

Rubbish research

The rubbish in “rubbish” meant crap, not rubbish.

Now that I’ve got you all blured up, let’s start.
I’ve received 2 articles. Both are warnings. Both will make you yell “Rubbish!”

First one..

Optical Mouse May Cause Cancer

Hahah… look at that! Notice the “may” for it creates a loophole in case you want to flame the author, he/she can say it’s not proven yet!

Article (grammer and spelling mistake untouched):

The convinience of using optical mouse eventually coz dangerous side effect. After Three years from the first launch by microsoft, have been found thousand of cases – hands tissue coz by mouse radiation.

Optical Mouse works by release Electromagnetic high frequency to the lower surface under it. This frequency much more higher than the frequency use for handphone.
As it has been known that human hand and wrist contains lot of important nerve connected to brain.

According to WHO, the radiation from Optical Mouse is 5 times stonger than using handphone.

These radiation is even worse for those product with lower quality ( non branded mouse ), since they use weaker shield to protect customer wrist.
WHO, GreenPeace, and CNN have stopped the usage of Optical mouse in their whole office.

Meanwhile Microsoft and IBM have allocate 2 billion of US Dollar, in joint venture to make a safer pointing device.

Big Hardware Industries in China and Taiwan are trying to hide all fact related to this things. While in the market, most of optical mouse sold were coming from their product.

To avoid this, try to reduce using mouse. learn how to use hot key ( i.e. Ctrl-V, CTRL-C for paste and copy ) Use back your old model of mouse ( with the tracking ball).

After reading this, I can’t stop myself from laughing. Very obviously this is the worst research paper EVER! No researcher worth his salt would write “coz” for “because”. Likewise, the entire article is full of technobabble like “Electromagnetic HIGH frequency”.

Also citing stupid sources that don’t contain the mentioned reseach. Just chin chai throw in some names to make his paper seem more changgih. WHO got say radiation from mouse dangerous meh? Cheap mouse got weaker radiation shield built in! Walau meh… Star Wars meh! Then my Logitech can deflect phaser blasts!

Totally wacko article.

The second article I got is a news source. Same stupid reasoning. Could be the kind of people that would believe in the above aticle.

WiFi Hazardous to health

I just came across this news item which claimed that UK Schools were dismantling wireless networks for fear of health risks! From the original article:

“Parents and teachers are forcing some schools to dismantle wireless computer networks amid fears that they could damage children’s health.
More schools are putting transmitters in classrooms to give pupils wireless access from laptops to the school computer network and the internet. But many parents and some scientists fear that low levels of microwave radiation emitted by the transmitters could be harmful, causing loss of concentration, headaches, fatigue, memory and behavioural problems and possibly cancer in the long term. ”

Irfan Habib has this to say:

This is absurd! WiFi operates on the Radio band at 2.4 Ghz or 2.5 Ghz (on some versions), this puts WiFi on the Ultra High Frequency Spectrum (300Mhz to 3 Ghz) , this is the same spectrum which is used by television broadcasts, mobile phones, Bluetooth, and Two-Way Radios. If WiFi is hazardous to health, than why not ban TV channels and cell phones along with them??? TV certainly has been round for decades, have we seen any research which relates the mentioned illnesses to TV broadcast radiation, I certainly haven’t. Besides the Sun generates tons of high frequency radiation which bombards the planets around it, including the earth. I have seen research related to ultra violet radiation, which has magnitudes more frequency and shorter wavelength than UHF Radio, causing skin cancers, but nothing related to radio radiation.

I’m not saying that WiFi is “completely” safe, because frankly it is hard to prove that _anything_ is safe! But from the widespread use of the same frequency band over decades one can deduce that it is quite safe. Here is a quote from the WLAN health safety FAQ released by the WiFi alliance, in mid 2005:

“The safety of radio waves has been extensively studied for more than 50 years. This large and growing body of research has been regularly reviewed by numerous independent scientific expert panels, government agencies, standard-setting organizations and health authorities from around the world. These organizations have reached the same general scientific
conclusion: there is no established evidence of any adverse health effects from exposure to radio waves when present at or below the recommended limits applied to wireless communications systems. “

Well, that pretty much sums up everything. There ARE stupid AND crazy people out there!

Wii-mote not really that “geng”-lah

I know all the hype would do it’s part in guaranteeing Wii got enough coverage that it can sell off enough units to earn a profit before people started trashing the device or it’s gaming concept till people would stop, take a look and consider again before buying.

But then others might think that it their product are really that fantastic, well, they don’t have to worry!

However the problem is the Wii suffers from being overly innovative (is there such a thing?) and their Wii-mote (the candybar controller) are over hyped up that most users WANT their games to be able to use that motion detection feature for some action or another.

For example a simple game of pinball would usually require only 3 buttons (excluding tilt and bump). 1 for the pin and 2 for the flippers. Now come along Wii and now gamers want to use the Wii-mote to swing the flippers instead of pressing a button.

Get the point?

Now that might be cool for swish and hack games but the come on! Every single game?! Not all games require ample arm reflexes and movement to proceed forward!

Another disadvantage to the arm movement gamin concept is this: You need to STAND in order to play games comfortably (ironically). Yes it’s true. Have you ever tried slashing your enemy while sitting down? Or have you ever seen any Wii promotional pictures and videos showing people actually sitting on their couch when playing? No? So did I.

Actually I only wanted to stress on the sitting part but it seems there is another problem that even I have overlooked.

Check out THIS Engadget post. It reads how a dude playing a bowling game (using that familiar hand swing) actually tore off the cable (between the 2 controllers -left and right hand controller) while swinging it and then proceed to flick the controller right at his buddy’s TV screen!

Well, expect to see more cases like this in the future. I can already foresee the headline: “Dude chops off friends head accidentally using modified wii-mote that he welded to a real sword.”

Hahah.. that would be entertaining!