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Chinese New Year 2010

KP Yang — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:49:04 +0000

Happy Tiger Year 2010 虎年行大運

Very soon, we will be celebrating Chinese New Year in 7 days time. It is also very special this year because the First Day of Chinese New Year falls on the Valentine’s Day (Feb 14) as well.

I went to Chinatown few days ago just to experience the atmosphere of Chinese New Year preparation. Chinatown in Singapore is the best place to experience the atmosphere as the place is decorated with lots of lanterns and also lots of stalls are selling CNY related products.

Spring Flowers & Auspicious Food are Must Have

Chinese New Year also implies the arrival of spring. Therefore, many people like to decorate the house with some spring flowers. As I walked pass one of the temple at Chinatown, it places many pots of pink and red “Fake” spring flowers right outside the temple.

Even though it is fake, I still can’t help but to snap a few photos and I still like it as it brings out the feeling of Chinese New Year.

Spring Flower

Chinese also have lots of superstitious practices during chinese new year. One of them is to eat some auspicious food. I saw that at Chinatown too. They are actually sugar coated vegetables and fruits… In case if we do not know what those auspicious food means, the stall owner makes it simple for us. They write the name of auspicious food on a small red cardboard and you can pick whichever you like.

Auspicious Food during Chinese New Year

Latest Gadget from Apple – iPad

KP Yang — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:33:13 +0000

Apple iPad

Apple finally announced the long anticipated tablet PC, which they called it – iPad. Before it was released, many people or analyst anticipated this gadget might become the “Gadget of the Year in 2010″ and it has indeed created a Hype.

After looking through the features it offers now, I think the only feature that I like best is the Multi-Touch Capability. It has indeed brought a whole new way of user experience that fit nicely into our life.

Multi-Touch Capability is Just So Cool

Look at the following photo, as iPad is now offering you a 9.7 inch screen that you can now physically typed on a virtual keyboard like a real keyboard. This is cool user experience.

iPad Multi-Touch Keyboard

iPad also offers a new photo organizing feature called stack. I used a similar feature on Aperture and I like it a lots on Aperture. iPad now brings it to a new level, you can stack photos using your thumb and index finger. This is another Cool user experience…

Stacking Photos on iPhoto

For people who like gaming… as the iPad is now much larger compared to iPhone or iPod Touch, integrating with the accelerometer, you can hold it with your both hands like a steering wheel and start racing on it… Plus, you can use your thumb to control on the screen too.

This has no doubt added another level of coolness to user experience.

Gaming like a Steering Wheel

Finally, together with the iPad announcement, Apple also introduced a new store. That is iBook store. There is an iBook app in the iPad that you can purchase book and read it. Using the Multi-Touch technology, you can now flip books on the iPad screen just like you are flipping a book.

Apple has raised Multi-Touch technology to a new level. Typing on virtual keyboard, stacking photo, gaming and flipping iBook are 4 COOL user experience on the iPad that I like.

Have fun…

Flipping on iBook

Sky Sun and Cloud

KP Yang — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:38:17 +0000

Sky Sun and Cloud behind a Building Shade

I just bought a 2nd hand Sigma 20mm F1.8 len and I decided to buy a 82mm CPL filter to fit on the len. I went down to Cathay photo last Saturday to pick up a Tokina CPL. Right after buying the filter, I could not wait and I went to a coffee shop, opened it up and immediately trying to find some object to snap.

After fixing the filter, I walked along the street… and started snapping at some building, some people and also the sky.

Finally, I sorted the photos on Aperture, I found that I like the sky, sun and cloud in the photos.

Sky Sun & Cloud

Sky Sun and Cloud next to a Building Shade

Windows

Superband Concert Singapore 2010 縱貫線新加坡終點站

KP Yang — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:02:26 +0000

Superband Concert Singapore 2010 縱貫線新加坡終點站

I went to the Superband Concert Singapore 2010 (縱貫線新加坡終點站) last night at Singapore Indoor Stadium. Before going to the concert, I was wondering if it is possible bring in a camera or not. Luckily, I managed to pass through the security gate and again the dark indoor environment offer me a good opportunity to play with RAW format photography again.

Here are the photos I took at the concert and I am so happy that RAW format allowed me to adjust the exposure, highlight and shadow easily on Apple Apertures software.

Superband Train Arrive at Singapore Stop

The concert was supposed to start at 8pm, but it started at 8.30pm eventually. The singers arrived in an imaginative train called “縱貫線列車”. 羅大佑，李宗盛，張震岳，周華健 jumped out from the train and kick started the concert.

Superband Train Arrived at Singapore Stop 縱貫線列車到達新加坡站

2am Dessert Bar

KP Yang — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:44:55 +0000

Chocolate Dessert @ 2am Dessert Bar

Chocolate, strawberry, mousse, ice-cream, sorbet… Are you craving for dessert? You can have them nicely presented to you at 2am dessert bar at Holland Village.

I heard about this shop end of last year and I headed down to Holland Village on 2nd January to take a look. At the moment we reached there, it was packed and full house. We were told to wait because we did not make reservation.

2am Dessert Bar

My First Encounter with Apple Aperture

KP Yang — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:10:12 +0000

Apple Aperture Photography Software

I have been using Picasa, iPhoto, Adobe Bridge and Photoshop to organize, edit and touch up my photos so far. Until recently that I started to explore the RAW format photography and also started playing with the latest Aperture photography software created by Apple.

My experience on Aperture so far : Wow… it is simply amazing.

I like Aperture for 2 simple reasons now:

Easy and Quick Photo Management
Easy and Quick Image Processing

Aperture Photo Management

I can organize photos by project which is fairly similar to Album in Picasa or Event in iPhoto. But it has some added functionality that I like.

I can duplicate the photos and it automatically keeps the version for me without destroying my master copy.
I can stack all the different versions or similar photos together to keep the screen very neat and easy to find photos. Otherwise, if you create 10 versions per photos and you have 100 photos, glancing through 1000 photos is not a pleasant experience.

Aperture Image Processing Capability

Picasa & iPhoto are great software to start and it does offer some simple image processing capability. On the other hand… Photoshop is a powerful software to provide a spectacular image processing engine. However, duplicating the exact image processing to another photo is not an easy process to understand. Using its batch processing function is also quite a difficult task too.

I think Aperture fill in the gap in between. It offer the simple interface like Picasa or iPhoto for adjusting, editing, or touching up the photos. And it offers a great way to store the image processing settings as pre-set and I can simply click and apply the setting to other photos.

Sample Photos Before and After

I started playing with the color adjustment setting. The following photos show the original photo before processing by Aperture and edited photo after processing.

Aperture has made a huge difference.

Before Processing by Aperture

After Processing by Aperture

2010 New Plan : Going to Taipei

KP Yang — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:57:44 +0000

Taipei Hotels & Attractions

New year… new planning… A decision was made pretty last minutes to organize a family trip. [Drumroll] The destination selected is Taipei, Taiwan.

I have been busy spending time getting myself familiar with the Taipei key attraction points and planning for the upcoming Taipei trip itinerary. I was thinking of doing it more DIY and be able to tailor made our own itinerary based on our preference.

Google Map is Incredibly Good for Trip Planning

There are couples of websites that I visited to orientate myself to Taipei and its surrounding points of attraction, accommodation and of course, the night markets.

And there is one particular tool that I like the most and I find it being the most incredible tool that every DIY traveller must have.

That’s the Google Map.

I simply type in my targeted destination into Google Map search box. Click the “Search Map” button. Bravo, I can locate the destination using a thumbnail placemarker.

I continued this process, enter the destination one by one… finally I managed to create my own Taipei map with all the places that I have interest to visit.

I have categorized the placemarkers according to color:

Red : Places of Interest
Blue : Book Shops
Magenta : Accommodation
Green : Night Markets

Please upgrade your browser

View Taipei Attractions in a larger map

I have a problem Now!

There are just too many places on my map now that I do not have time to cover them all.

That is leading to my next task… I need to pick my final place to stay and final places to visit into a 4 full days visit in Taipei.

Asia Auto Saloon Race Queens

KP Yang — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:55:36 +0000

I am not a car fans, car is simply a mode of transport to me. I went to a car show 2 weeks ago. Unfortunately, my intention was not the cars, but just to take photos of the race queens as they are free models to try portrait shooting.

It was not very crowded luckily. Occasionally, I saw some crowd gathering around certain booth. Looking at the photo below, my observation tells me that 8 our 10 people there are actually busy taking photos of the girls… seldom have people looking at the cars.

Everyone focuses on the girls... not cars...

Race Queens at Asia Auto Saloon

Once I see a crowd, of course, I will join in the action as well, squeezed closer to the booth and all the race queens were always ready to pose for you to snap. I took close to 300+ photos there, unfortunately, I could not find many that I like in this photography trip.

Nonetheless, I still tried to select a few to show the Race Queens…. ;-)

KL PAC

KP Yang — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:37:11 +0000

Keep it simple, I visited KL PAC and I snapped some photos there. The part is a nice, quiet and a great escapee from the busy or noisy KL city. The park is also covered with greenery and some brick wall which I think was the ruin left behind from a old train workshop.

Definitely worth to visit in KL.

KL PAC (Kuala Lumpur Performing Art Center)

Dining at Sage The Gardens Kuala Lumpur

KP Yang — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:45:01 +0000

I went to KL last week during the mid-autumn festival… Then, I went for a dining adventure at Sage with family members. Before going, I have no idea what it is serving. I only heard that it is a French-Japanese fusion fine dining restaurant. The only things that I prepared were my camera to take photo and my mouth to eat and taste the food.

Sage at The Gardens, KL

Fresh Bread at Sage

Sage is located at the level 6 of The Gardens at Kuala Lumpur. It is not too difficult to find. Just need to take the elevator next to Isetan and it will take you right up there.

Before selecting your food, we were served with freshly baked bread to go with the some special green sauce.

It serves both ala-carte and also set menu as well. The set menu come with Appetizer, main course and dessert. One of the food that I like most is Foie Gras, or Goose Liver, you can find it at both Appetizer and main course. The food are fresh and I like their seafood in particular, scallop, cod fish and garoupa are nicely done. I like the seafood soup as well, though some people felt that it was too rich, but I just liked the richness as it indeed brought out the fragrance of the sea.

Finally we were served the dessert. Chocolate moose, strawberry, mango sorbet and grape in ice. I heard that the grade is super expensive and specially imported from Japan. If you have are going there, make sure you order that.