As Rachel said in the my previous post comment, I neglected my blog again. I was too busy to blog. There is always something to do. You can visit Rachel’s blog about “our hazelnut cupcakes” posted on the 12th of August.

Okay I’ll be frank now, I was saying there’s always something to do. Besides assignments, there’s a new thing to be busy with recently. I bought a new PC!! Hell ya.. after so many years of laptop and gameless life, literally.

I built my system from scratch, for the first time, I picked every component myself and handbuild it, handbuild you know!! ya i know anybody can do it nowadays.. Unlike 8 years ago when I first had my PC.

Anyway, my PC arrived at my door piece by piece, actually only the first 2 pieces. The Antec 430W Power Supply Unit (PSU) arrived first and the latter was the casing. I was so happy to receive it and open packages, just like kids opening presents during Christmas, it’s just FUN.

(Note: Here comes the boring part)

I dislike people hotlinking files from my site. That’s why I stop doing it to others very long ago. Today I find this blogger linking a picture of my Logitech Mouse: here

Logitech MX3200 Laser Mouse

This is why I do watermarking on my photos. You won’t know when people use your photos out there in the spidy web without your consent.

While I’m at it, I found this cheesy website call Scrollwheel Cheese… eeeewwww.. check it out yourself, I have nothing more to add.

It’s been 4 days since the launch of the iPhone 3G. As announced, only Telstra, Optus and Vodafone made the cool gadget available. All the anticipation is over and reviews are flooding papers, magazines and Internet.

From what I’ve come across, its reviews have made me lost interest on the Iphone. It’s not yet the ideal smart phone as I imagined, beautifully designed but built impractically.

I’ve been using my Dopod D810/HTC P3600 for more than a year now and I’m very convinced that HTC produces the best smart phone in the market. I will list out some of the new features highlighted by the iPhone 3G compared to my current phone:

GPS:
One of the essentials when you’re on a trip with lots of driving to do. This US-funded service is made available for anyone to use for free, as long as you have the device to detect it. iPhone can do! With integrated GPS in the iPhone 3G let you have an idea where you are in Google maps. That means its useless if Google maps has yet visited your location. Driving without audible turn-by-turn instruction causes frustration. You wouldn’t want to drive and switch your attention onto the screens of your phone to know when to turn left or make a drift when possible.

Warning: Auto route recalculation not included! One wrong turn and your iPhone 3G is only as good as a conventional paper map. If you’re really driving using the Iphone 3G as a GPS unit, make sure you have a co-driver helping you to navigate with it. (What’s the difference by holding a map)

3G:
Having a smart phone in your palm means fast connectivity. With the iPhone 3G, Internet browsing using Apple’s Safari over the HSDPA network is faster than most phones out there. On top of that, if you’re hogging the wifi at your favourite hotspot, because it’s FOC, be concern that the iPhone will automatically switch the data connection to use HSDPA when the phone goes to sleep to save battery life. Means more data fees for your montly bill.

These 2 major features have impact the phone’s practicallity greatly. I rather stick to my old-yet-practical Dopod than hop to the prematurely built smart phone.

wow…. haha

I was so happy to sign it off when this package arrived at my door around 3 months ago. After so long I’ve waited, finally I owned my personal digital camera. For a fan of photography, Canon finally designed a chunk of titanium which has the features I’ve always wanted, at least in a compact camera.

Enough said of how I feel, I’ll show you the pictures taken from the Canon Digital IXUS 960IS.

The leaf is taken at macro mode, with a center weighted average setting.

and this too. Love this photo alot, no idea why, maybe it’s the mesmerising colour.

The color accent mode ain’t bad too. The camera allows you to select the desired color and walah! I decided to choose brown.

The above is taken with manual mode and all other settings by default, flash did not fire under daylight. Compare it with below:

With a switch to foliage mode, the 960IS changes to a preset configuration and fired the flash. Sweet, green looks greener now.

Holding it with a tripod on my desk, I took this picture without zooming in aiming at my Me to you bear.

Again, I took the picture at the same angle at the maximum optical 3.7x zoom.

I went beyond the optical zoom lens limit and zoomed in with the digital 9.3x zoom. I’m really amazed with Image Stabilizer (IS) by Canon, you have to use it for yourself to believe.

Lastly, and the most I can go, is 15x digital zoom. Reading the bear’s foot is not a problem at all.

This is the strong point for the IXUS series, the amazing IS makes zooming up to 15x pausible, even without a tripod.

Despite all the manual settings, the auto mode is almost perfect. This is a night shot taken at the highest point of Melbourne. Fantastic isn’t it? The crazy fast DIG!C III image processing on this 960IS really stunned me. I couldn’t capture a picture as magnificent as the above even with manual settings, perhaps maybe it’s me who lack of photography skills.

The night shot of this camera is adequately acceptable. As all other reviews pointed out, any ISO setting higher than 400 will have noticable noise. Unless you’re trying to capture a bullet shooting at you, don’t think you’ll ever use it though. =)