My "England" really that bad mer?

I was browsing around my favourite Mass Order section of VRZone when I came across this interesting clock, Moshi Voice Control Alarm Clock. Interesting because you can give the clock instruction for various functions, like asking for time and temperature, set time and alarm, turn on the night light, all without touching the clock.

I thought it was pretty cool, like those futuristic movies where the computer greets you when you wake up, tell you the day, time and weather, that I decided to get one. But it turn out to be frustratingly funny rather than cool.

What do I mean? Check out what happen when I tried to show off to Lilian the new toy.

Vincent: Hello Moshi
Moshi: Welcome, command please
Vincent: Set time
Moshi: Tell me the correct time
Vincent: 9.30am
Moshi: The time is now set to 9.13am

Hmm, maybe I wasn't clear enough. So I try agan.

Vincent: Hello Moshi
Moshi: Welcome, command please
Vincent: Set time
Moshi: Tell me the correct time
Vincent: 9.30am
Moshi: The time is now set to 9.13pm

At this point, Lilian burst out laughing... Feeling embrassed, I was determine to set it right.

Vincent: Hello Moshi
Moshi: ... (ignored me)
Vincent: HELLO MOSHI
Moshi: Welcome, command please
Vincent: Set time
Moshi: Tell me the correct time
Vincent: 9.31am
Moshi: The time is now set to 9.31pm

By now Lilian was rolling on the bed laughing non-stop.

Vincent: HELLO MOSHI
Moshi: Welcome, command please
Vincent: SET TIME
Moshi: Tell me the correct time
Vincent: 9.31 A-M!
Moshi: The time is now set to 5.31am

I gave up and set the time manually with the buttons...

To Flash or not to Flash?

Met up with my NPCB friends yesterday at Werner's Oven yesterday for Debra's gathering (before her wedding next week). Found the food strongly flavoured (read salty) to my liking so not gonna talk about food.

Instead, gonna touch on abit on shooting indoors at night. Now I'm no expert myself so if you would like to share and contribute your ideas and knowledge, feel free to do so in the comments box. Yesterday's set up is similar to shooting during wedding dinners as well.

Above are two photos of Xavier with our beautiful bride to be. The first photo is shot with the on camera flash (the pop up flash on your DSLR or the flash on the point and shoot cameras) and the second is shot with flash.

Which photo would you prefer to keep? It definitely the second photo for me as it looks more natural. The on camera flash has made the first photo too harsh and flat. Which is why I always try to shoot without flash.

So point 1, try to shoot without flash. How do you do that? If you are shooting from a compact with no manual controls, sorry there is nothing much you can do unless you have one of those powerful compacts (like the Canon S90 which has a F2.0 aperture and better ISO noise control). If you have one of those cameras with manual control, try to use higher ISOs (800 and above, depending on your tolerance for ISO noise), open up your aperture to the max (the smallest F-stop number your lens can open up to), and a reasonable shutter speed (the slowest shutter speed your hands can hold steady and still capture the subject).

Most DSLRs can control the ISO noise pretty well so should be a problem. For me, its better to get a slightly grainy shot without on camera flash then a clear shot with with on camera flash. As for fast lens, you do not have to break your piggy bank to get one (although fast lenses are generally more expensive than their slower peers). You could get a fast prime lens (like the Canon 5000 F1.8) and still enjoy low light photography. As for shutter speed, I try to get at least a speed of 1/25secs with shooting people indoor. Anything lesser than that its a hit or miss for me (a fair number of shots would be blur, blame it on my shaky hands).

With the above, you should be able to get pretty cool indoor night shots. But this setting cannot handle all situation, especially group shots, because the large aperture has a shallow depth of field which will cause some people in the group shots to be blurry.

Point 2) Group shots. This is why you always see wedding photographers using those big flash heads. These flash are needed to provide enough flash power to reach and lit everyone. But the idea is to compliment the surrounding lightand not to overpower it (like my shot above). This is what they call a fill-in flash. Anyway its a big topic by itself so if you wish to learn more about it, check out Stobist. I am still very green to strobes and still learning...

Baby Xavier vs Mini Godzilla (GTR) - Part II

Following the biting incident, I decided to bring out my Mini Godzilla to train Xavier. The previous time in "Baby Xavier vs Mini Godzilla (GTR)", he couldn't crawl yet so Mini Godzilla had the advantage.

So with the ability to crawl, how does he fare? I must say he is pretty fast. Many a times when I lost contact with my car (partly due to his body blocking my radio signal), he was able to catch hold of it. I wonder if I could use this in the baby crawling competition, because if I could, Xavier got a pretty good chance of winning.

Two Hours Shopping, ONE Hour Parking

Does my title make sense to you? It sure doesn't to me. But that's what happen yesterday.

We decide to do some Christmas shopping yesterday. And given that I'm running out of holes on my belt and my trusty Dr Martens work shoe seems to be finally coming apart, I needed some normal shopping on top of Christmas shopping.

Decided to head down to Takashimaya since they usually have great offers before Christmas. Lilian checked the SG Parking app on iphone and since Taka's per entry is just $0.70 higher than Wisma, we decided to just park at Taka for convenience.

BUT this convenience turned into a nightmare. We were trapped in this carpark jam at level 6 for ONE freaking #*%?>! hour. When I saw the jam I thought its just the normal carpark queue. Then it started to feel like the wedding dinner carpark jam. That quickly became the worst carpark jam I have ever been stuck in.

For the whole ONE hour, my car could only inch every few minutes. Add that to a stubborn Xavier crying to be latched to sleep, I could feel my face turning black to a point I refuse to let any other cars cut into my front (and there are heaps of ugly Singaporeans).

So after ONE freaking hour in the great carpark jam of Takashimaya, we were finally freed... Only to hit the CTE jam next...