Our brain looks like the universe?

Well, when I said brain I meant the neurological pathways. Anyhow, I found this image to be extremely interesting.

Please click on the image below to enlarge it.

Neurological pathways of a mouse versus the evolution of the universe. Looks similar, right?

I know that I am not qualified to explain or provide any reasonable possibilities as to the meaning of this coincidence but it does make you wonder, doesnt it?

I’ve always believed that the universe that we inhabit is much like the structure of a cell. To which the existance of this universe is very much like an individual cell, of some sort, of a larger organism. If you ever had the pleasure of watching the short film, “Powers of Ten“, it is somewhat probable, dont you think?

That even as incomprehensibly big as the universe is, the micro/sub-atomic world is even bigger.

Kind of scary, dont you think?

Colour-gasmic shots of India

Note: The following photographs weren’t shot by me. Full credit for the following photographs belongs to Captain Suresh.

This was indeed a chance encounter and I was glad that I stumbled upon this set on Flickr.

Seeing the flickr photo sets of Captain Suresh has made me realize how beautiful India really is. I’ve fallen in love with the amazing colours, architecture as well as the interesting subjects just from his photographs alone.

I have never seen a set which made me feel this way and it made me realize just how much I would want to experience such a culture as well as photographing it. I guess India will indeed be in my list of places to photograph once I am adequately funded and ready for the trip in the near future.

Amazing set. Just utterly awe-inspiring. You can view the rest of his work here.

Source:
Captain Suresh’s Photos (Flickr)

Resistance Training for Photographic Expeditions

I have a confession to make. I am getting fat.

The reason as to why I am putting on weight is simple enough. I have not been exercising for the past 2 months.

However, today I managed to do some shoulder, abdominal and trap stretches. I got to say, this stretching business is fun. I mean, everytime I had to hold my stance for 20 secs, I could picture myself having this jitterry posture that is akin to being electrocuted.

I did some pulling exercises with an apparatus (row boat?) I got here and damn, do I feel good. After completing about 5 reps of 15 pulls each, I’ve achieved muscle failure and am having trouble typing this entry. After those pulls, I did a bit of shoulder and trap stretching to finish it all off. I’ll concentrate on my abs tomorrow morning and hopefully get myself ripped and stronger to initiate my photographic trips that I’ve always wanted to do.

Considering the fact that I will be expected to lug quite a substantial amount of equipment during hikes and trips, I have considered purchasing a weight vest to help with my core training. After doing some research, I have decided to get this one.

 

40lb XVest

It costs about USD$179.99 and has a support range up to 40 kilos. Looking at it, I think 20 kilos will be my max weight but I am looking to start off with about 10 kilos with it, just to acclimatize myself to the added weight. The overhead provided with it should prove useful should I truly want to knock myself out during training.

Given that I am expecting the camera equipment to weight in at approximately 10 kilos or so, I will definitely make use this vest for walks and jogs as part of my fitness regime. I’ll probably get this vest at the end of September, barring any unforseen circumstances that may occur during that period.

Well, getting ripped is one thing but getting ripped with a substantial reason is even better!

Ok, now it is time for more stretching!

Edit: My traps are sore. I better destroy my hamstrings and calfs in this case.

Further Reading:
Xvest

SomethingAwful, you’ve done it again! LOL!!

I’ve always been a fan of SomethingAwful ever since their inception so long ago. I still remember the time when Lowtax was asking the SA community if he should quit his day job to run SomethingAwful full time. Ah, the wonderful memories.

I miss JeffK.

However for today, we’ll be concentrating on this week’s Photoshop Phriday, which to me was one of the most hilarious one’s I have ever seen in my life!

What is Photoshop Phriday you ask?

As qouted from SomethingAwful,

In olden days many a Photoshop theme around the forums and Phriday were based on manipulating a single image in as many ways possible. This week we return to that grand tradition with a rather mundane image of two guys being extremely bored at an airport. Common sense would dictate nothing fun could come out of a scene with two guys napping and reading a paper, but common sense is generally nowhere to be found around these parts. The Something Awful Forum Goons took them on a fantastical journey of fun and excitement, danger and daring. Now my friends, it is your turn to go along for the ride!

This ‘was’ the original picture in which they were to ‘improve’.

Boring, ain’t it?

Here are some of my favourites that they ‘improved’ upon.

It starts out innocent enough…

 

From here on out, it just goes to hell!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Totally hilarious stuff! I was laughing my ass off as I saw what ’surprises’ they made from such a boring picture to start with! I must say, “Bravo! Bravo!” for such amazing Photoshop skills! Mad props! Mad props! For the rest of the pictures, please follow this link.

Hope you have as much fun as I did!

Source:
SomethingAwful Photoshop Phriday

The Best Nikon D2X review, EVAR!

This has got to be the best Nikon D2X review ever! Hell, it has got to be the best camera review of any brand or make for that matter!

D2x - the altf review

I can’t tell you how much I laughed while reading this review! Even as silly as the review got as it progressed, there were indeed some great words of wisdom in it as well. Read it, and you’ll never look at your littlebackcamera the same way again.

The Music of Lee Hyori (plus inane rambles)

I am still on a Lee Hyori high! To commemorate this great event, I present 10 mp3s from her solo albums, sTYLISH… E and Dark Angel.

Here’s a track list of what’s available for download.

sTYLISH… E (2003)
Track 04 - 10 MINUTES
Track 05 - Ice
Track 11 - Erase
Track 13 - Only One
Track 14 - Sorry (Ghost)

Dark Angel (2006)
Track 06 - “Winter Freshness”
Track 08 - “Stealing a Glance” [MARS Remix]
Track 09 - “Shall We Dance?”
Track 12 - “2 Faces” (3:36)
Track 13 - “Last Goodbye”

You can download them here.

I’ve always been a sucker for Korean ballads which is why as you can see, the majority of the songs I have chosen to upload are of those sorts.

In all honesty, it has been awhile since I last listened to Korean songs. I used to be such a fanboy of such music, seeing that in the year 2004-2005, when I was watching a lot of Korean dramas. I have to confess, I’ve always had a soft spot for all those sappy dramas. I guess the only reason as to why I stopped watching them was simply because they reminded me of painful events in my life.

Yet I have always been a self-destructive chap, always keen on wallowing in my own misery and ‘misfortunes’. It got to a point in which I claimed that in all forms of emotions, depression is the only honest emotion that can possibly exist in any person. I said this because in all other forms of emotions, those emotions are affected by other external emotions from others as to the form of their outcome. Yet being depress represents a completely isolated and separated mentality from everyone else. One when depress tends to wallow in it and studies every subtle sadness contained in it to such an extreme.

Every thought and every conclusion you make during that state is of your own and the answers to your problems are ultimately conceived by you alone, not by the interference of others. Kind of sad isn’t it? It does make it sound as if a person who’s depress craves to be more alone, even when it is actually the opposite.

Nowadays, I am a lot happier without all those elements that cause my depressive attitudes to occur. I decided that I had enough with being the poor guy who always loses out in the end, even though he’s an extremely nice guy, and just distanced myself completely from those old, sad thoughts.

In the end, I feel a little bored actually, having discarded all these depressive elements. It really surprised me as to how much time, in a day, that I actually wasted on entertaining such thoughts. In the end, all that time spent on it was never repaid nor did it truly bear any fruit.

I still believe in love, a perfect love. People call me silly and naïve for believing in such childish fantasies but I still want to continue on seeking the ‘one’. It doesn’t really matter how long it will take but I will find her. I hope that when that time happens, I will not repeat the past mistakes I made. Come to think of it, I was just being myself. Those actions were what ultimately led me to my ultimate demise.

It disappoints me but I will not give up! I will continue on with my improvements!

*Hmm!* * Hmm!*

Oh well, I shouldn’t think about this too much, I guess. It is kind of pointless to think of something that may or may not possibly happen in the immediate future, right? It is quite the same as in hoping for the moon to one day collide with the Pacific Ocean.

Whoopss!

I sidelined so much back there! Anyhow, download the songs and enjoy the tunes! That was indeed the main objective of this post, right?

“Bill Gates is punk head rock too!”

Well if a Japanese Punk band says so, then they must be right! I’ll let you be the judge of it yourself!

“Bullshit point and click.”

Download
Hoshi-Koshi - Bill Gates Song

The Hotness of Lee Hyori

Oh my god…

That is all.

 

 

Well, that isnt all actually.

This is how the story began…

I was digging through some of my very old MP3s from the years circa 1997-1999 and found this korean pop song, “FinKL - Happy“. You can download the song here.

Being a wee bit curious, I decided then to just give a whirl to see how much the music that I used to love as a kid would probably suck when listened against my self-professed level of maturity!

*Ahem*

However…

It soon dawned upon me that I was so happily addicted listening to such hardcore, manufactured, K-pop! I was so happy listening to it to a point that I was actually squirming about in my chair as I was entranced by it. After doing the dirty deed, I quickly surmised that I am truly a hardcore old-school guy at heart.

To be honest, I have not had so much fun listening to a K-pop song in such a long time. It had this element of genki-ness (energetic) and such a bubbly personality to it. Too bad they dont make K-pop music like this anymore. I miss pop songs that have that have these extremely upbeat and cutesy-wutesy sort of elements in them.

Anyway, seeing that it has been such a long time since I had actually listened to this song, I decided to check out the group Fin.K.L.’s history via WikiPedia. That soon led me to this Fin.K.L. fansite, Finklitis, in which I soon then saw the awesome hotness of Lee Hyori! =D~~~

This also concludes this pointless entry from me! Now, I am off to seek out the rest of their discography!

Now, where can I find more S.E.S. pictures?

The Royal London Circus Photographs

Viva Las Vegas!

I must apologize to those who came to this blog seeking images or information concerning the Royal London Circus.

Seeing this, I’ve decided to provide the link to the photographs I shot of the performance that night. I am still cataloging the images because I had shot about 200+ shots that night! It’ll definitely take sometime for me to get through that batch due to my relative inexperience and workflow.

With this, do please follow the link below to view them.

10th August 2006 - Royal London Circus Set (Work in Progress!)

I’ve not completed my editing and cataloging concerning this set due to ‘real-world’ duties. Anyhow, I’ll provide a write-up at a later date. So do please enjoy what’s currently up!

The Royal London Circus (Quick Write-Up)

As promised, here is a sample of the photographs I took of the Royal London Circus performance last night. It was majorly fun and I had a blast shooting all these photographs under such extreme conditions.

The sharpest photograph I shot. Thanks for helping me, 3 ponies!

I learnt a lot concerning my equipment and photography technique. So for those who are truly looking for a challenge, try circus photography. This has got to be the hardest shoot I’ve ever done in my life. It also showed me how limiting my current lenses are in these extremely variable lighting conditions.

I’ll provide a complete write-up once I complete cataloging the photographs I shot. To which I’ll be honest here, many arent that good. Do please look forward to my future updates! I got quite a lot to write actually, so I’ll probably do them in one big update at a later date.

Oh well, time to sleep first. It is 3:57AM in the morning and I got to stop this vampiric rest cycle I’ve been so acquainted with.

Edit: You can view the photographs here! 10th August 2006 - Royal London Circus Set (Work in Progress!)