Hello World!!!

Man its been AGGEEESSS since I last made an entry…lots have happened and the reason I’m back is to announce that I’ve just purchased my very first DSLR…Nikon’s D90!

Its a pretty cool camera with more features an amateur like me can poke a stick at….it even has VIDEO…in 720p no less…
*drooling*

So I’ve uploaded some photos I took at Qinghua University in Beijing…it was a cold early wintery day today but I managed to get some nice colours with this camera…I’m loving it!

It almost feels weird writing entries again. Its like talking to a long lost friend and I don’t know where to begin.

Well upon reflect the month I had in Melbourne was great. After completing my GRE test the rest of the stay there was the most fun I’ve had there in years. I caught up with almost everyone I wanted to see and managed to explore the city a bit, something which I haven’t done since my early years there. I grew to appreciate the place more now and made my leaving that much harder.

I also managed to squeeze in a trip to Sydney visiting Steve and Sandy, two pals I haven’t see in ages (well Steve anyways). Sydney was awesome! Big thanks to Steve for letting me crash at his place and it was great to finally meet their respective partners. We had a lot of great food and drinks (mmmm German beer). Leaving Sydney was quite sad as I said farewell to 2 great texas holdem downloadenpoker freewarepoker kostenlos im internetpoker spiel downloadwww euro poker netpoker texas holden gratiscasino spiel pokerpoker regeln einfachpoker flash game,holdem poker game,poker gametexas holdem erkl?rungpoker the gameparty poker spielregelnonline poker deutscheuro poker gratistexas holdem poker setonline games kostenlos pokeronline poker bonus ohne einzahlungvc poker bonustexas holdem freewarebest poker gamepoker jetzt spielenonline poker dsfpoker dot netpoker spiel kostenlos downloadentexas holdem poker rulesholdem poker rulesonline poker kein downloadinternet spielestrategia pokerbonus senza deposito pokertornei di pokerpoker carte gratisscarica giochi pokertexas holdem poker downloadomaha h lstrp pokerpoker milanogiocare poker on linegioco poker scaricabilehollywood pokerpoker il giocostrip poker gratisgioca a poker onlinepoker texana onlineкомпютри втора употребаgiochi 7 card studpoker texas holdem onlinepoker alla texanatavoli da gioco pokertornei di poker gratisholdem poker italia,holdem poker,texas holdem poker regole friends and it hit me that I would be leaving Australia soon for quite a while. I wasn’t ready

to feel so emotional about it as I’ve been planning this for ages and having moved around as a kid I didn’t think I would feel so attached.

Looking back though, Melbourne is the place I have the most attachments. All my friends are there. My mum will mostly be spending time in Australia and I’ve grown to love the city. Moving to Beijing for now isn’t a drastic change but it will take some time to adapt. My mandarin is still subpar in terms of reading and writing and, as much as I hate to admit it, I’ve lost touch with a lot of the culture. I feel like a bit like the ethnically mixed child who’s not totally accepted by either side. As they say: Adapt or perish.

Luckily, with the internet (recently FACEBOOK) its so easy keeping in touch with friends. I look forward to hearing all the stories in Melbourne and I can’t wait to go back for a visit when I have time. Bye Bye Melbourne for now. SEE YA SOON!

here’s the pics…

1. Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come
2. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - And No More Shall We Part
   
3. Art Of Fighting - Skeletons
   
4. Wilco - She’s A Jar
   
5. The Verve - The Drugs Don’t Work
   
6. Portishead - Roads
   
7. The Postal Service - Nothing Better
   
8. Smashing Pumpkins - To Forgive
   
9. Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should Have Come Over
   
10. Bird York - In the Deep
    
11. Radiohead - Exit Music (For A Film)
    

Well this list was basically because I was talking to Luanne about depressing music. She reckons she’s into the downbeat tracks and I dared to challenge her that I had the most grief-stricken, cynical and self-loathing music collection in our group. So I decided to find the most depressing music I had handy and put it up for your “enjoyment”. Now this list isn’t definitive by any imagination as my access to music is limited in China and I’m missing the bulk of my collection. I also don’t want to make it sound like this is an lethargic exercise in coming up with songs that make me feel like shit. Far from it! I love every song on this list. They’re all beautiful and touching to me. A lot of the songs represent a period in my life when I found comfort in these downbeat tracks and actually most of them make me happy. But be warned. If you’re not into that sort of thing you may simply find the songs depressing.

1. Kasabian - Club Foot
2. Faye Wong - 脸
3. Radiohead - 2+2=5
4. Aphex Twin - Avril 14Th
   
5. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Scar Tissue
   
6. New Order - Ceremony
7. Portishead - All Mine
8. Travis - Big Chair
9. Emiliana Torrini - Heartstopper
10. Smashing Pumpkins - X.Y.U.

2007-05-04: 10 songs, 38.9 minutes, 59.6 MB

I can safely say this is one of the strangest top 10s I’ve put together in a while now. Hence, I named it “Schizophrenic”, because, it is just that. It is a collision of moods and themes, emotions and ideas all rolled into an unrelenting cacophonous compilation.

From the opening notes of the alt.rock.dance tune of Kasabian to the mood altering bliss of Chinese pop queen Faye Wong you will think you are on a mind bending journey to a dreamlike place. Your sweet nocturn is interrupted by a deliberate distortion and arithmetic antics of Radiohead with 2+2=5. Thankfully, all this noise this gives way to an elegant little piano ditty of Aphex Twin that flows into the summer road trip of Scar Tissue before rerouting to the haunting Ceremony by New Order. Your course takes a sharp turn into the bombastic brassy jazz sounds of Portishead, making you think you’re about to be blasted with big band joy until the layers of sound are stripped away to reveal a sinister, wanton voice of desire, pain and obsession! Barely escaping the clutches of a woman scorned, you are elevated again to pop heaven, riding high on the pulsating beats and heartfelt emotion of the Big Chair buy Travis. As the last notes of the song slowly take you back down to earth, you find yourself in a remote fishing village, listening to the flowing river, slowly creaking of waterwheels and Emiliana Torrini singing about heartbreak. As you wind down to the Icelandic songstress’s mellow tune, you think the journey is over, turning to leave. BUT NOT YET! In your way stands a monstrous figure of black and silver, bearing the insignia X.Y.U.. Into the eyes of the Jackal you stare, facing your final opponent before you can return to the safety of reality.

Beware. This journey may consume your very soul. It will make your food tasteless without the addition of an inhuman dosage of condiments and your Kenny G albums sound lifeless and bland. Beware.

I was wrong on both counts. The presentation I saw of Spider-man 3 was simply stunning. Not only was the picture quality flawless, the sound and huge screen really pulled me into the film.

I really hope they open up some digital cinemas in Melbourne cause it really does enhance the overall movie-going experience. It also gives the consumer an added incentive to actually goto the cinemas rather than watching DVD/HDDVD/BLURAY on their large widescreen TVs.

I really can’t go back to analogue now that I’ve seen digital cinema…

Unfortunately, as you can see, there were a lot of “streaking” from the overexposure of the direct sunlight. I began the repairing process with the Clone Stamp Tool, cloning the sky around the areas of streaking and then covering them with the cloned parts. You should always take care with this you’re usually zoomed right into the image and may forget to check whether your cloned areas match the rest of the image. Remember the sky is never a constant tone of blue…its more of a gradient. After cleaning up the general areas of the sky, I went into the harder to get bits buy turning down the opacity of the cloning stamp and decreasing the size to more accurately clone areas.

Now the tricky part begins. The sky was simple in that there are no detailed textures and remained relatively similar in colour tones. The parts of the streaking that goes over Yuen’s hat and clothes, however are more complicated to fix. Luckily for us, Photoshop has a great feature in its brush tool…COLOR MODE!

To begin, select the colour you wish to use to replace. As you can see from the image above, I used the eyedropper tool and selected an area of the grey hat. Next you simply switch to the paintbrush tool and select COLOR in the mode selection. Begin painting! You will noticed that the tones will adjust according to the image and return the same colour. However, due to the streaking, the problem areas are darker than it should be. To correct this, choose the DODGE tool (50% opacity) and carefully lighten the dark areas.

Finally I corrected the levels, adjusted the colour saturation and fixed the contrast…VOILA!

Please let me know what you think. If you have a better way to achieve the same results TELL ME!

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