Author: ckkoay

Technophile, Bookworm, Movie Nerd, Music Lover, Gadget Enthusiast...
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Historical Penang

 

Cheah Si Sek Tek Tong, originally uploaded by CeeKay’s Pix.

Georgetown is probably one of the most historically interesting city in Malaysia. Though I was born there, I had never truly visited the historical heart of the city, until lately.

On July 8, 2008 Penang and Melaka were given World Heritage Site status by UNESCO because of their “remarkable examples of historic colonial towns on the Straits of Malacca that demonstrate a succession of historical and cultural influences arising from their former function as trading ports linking East and West”.

When I was in Penang last week, I saw for myself why this island truly deserved this international recognition. I’ve tried to capture and reproduce the mood and atmosphere of the place through these pictures but nothing can really substitute the particular buzz of the place as much as being there in person.

Do check out the rest of the picture set at my Flickr page.

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Penang Botanical Gardens

mebeli

Red Ant, originally uploaded by CeeKay’s Pix.

I’ve visited the Penang Botanical Gardens this morning and took some really interesting shots. Nothing really drives home the existence of a parallel micro universe of insects going about their daily routines better than the view coming through the camera’s viewfinder.

As joggers jog and people walk, these critters were working very hard cutting down leaves, transporting food to their hives, eating and collecting flower syrup.

After this morning’s excursion, I shall never look at a tropical garden park quite the same anymore.

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New Macro Lens

Bougainvila, originally uploaded by CeeKay’s Pix.

Finally, I bought a Tamron AF 90mm f/2.8 Di 1:1 macro lens today! After months of deliberating, the choice was down to 2, namely the Tamron and the Nikkor AF-S 105mm f/2.8G ED IF VR.

Both are really superb lens not only for taking extreme close-ups but also as a prime fixed length lens for everyday shooting. Reading online reviews and forums didn’t help as people who bought the Tamron, swore by it and likewise for those who bought the Nikkor too.

What pushed me to the Tamron was basically the price. I paid RM 1420 for this lens in Click N’ Snap in Komtar, Penang. They were also kind enough to throw in a free UV lens protector after I told them that another shop around the corner was selling at RM 1350. When asked about the RM 12xx price tag that everyone was talking about in the forums, I was informed that Tamron had raised the price of their lenses 2 months ago.

Compare this price with the asking price of RM 26xx for the Nikkor, getting the Tamron was really a no brainer!

First impressions of the 90mm were generally very good.

It takes really sharp and well saturated photos. The bokeh is very pretty. Unlike other reviewers, I didn’t find the autofocus to be too slow but if you want it to be faster, use manual focus instead.

If I have to nitpick to find a single fault with this lens, I can only point to one: build quality of the AF/MF slider (which has a “rough” snap whenever one switches from auto focus to manual focus).

I am going to take more photos later today and I shall post the more interesting ones on Flickr.

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Babies

Chayan and Grandma, originally uploaded by CeeKay’s Pix.

Babies are designed to tug at your heart strings. They are the most manipulative (but cute), calculative (but cute) and cunning (but cute) little beings that will always get what they want.

Their inability to verbally articulate their desires are complemented by 2 powerful ways of expressions:-
1. Their seemingly effortless mastery of the ear drum crushing cries
2. Their well timed and often well executed disarmingly charming smiles

This Chinese New Year, Cheryl and I met with a lot of babies. Some were big, some were small while others were hairy and others were bald. But all in all, we had a ball will all the babies running in the halls.

Yes, officially, I love babies now…

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Upgrading to WordPress 2.7

I haven’t been blogging a lot lately simply because the web provider that my blog is hosted on is also hosting some malicious web codes (according to Google anyway if you use their Chrome web browser).

Anyway, I though that the problem could be with my website so I tried to upgrade my WordPress engine to the latest one. Lo and behold, I realized that I was really sitting in the docks while the versions rolled on by! The latest incarnation was the slick WordPress 2.7 while I was still running on a really arcane version.

Googling around, I found this very interesting site that will be very helpful in case of future upgrades. It contains a little plugin that you can access from your admin Dashboard that will automatically do the upgrade for you.

I filezilla’ed the small plug in over and the followed the steps. The upgrade was completed in less than 5 minutes.

Sweet 😉

What are you waiting for? Head on down to Luke Gedeon’s site