playing around with pottery

We've been taking pottery classes for some time and the time has come to reap the fruits of our 'labor'; finally we get our chance to fool around at the wheel ;)

Last week the basic ceramic bowls were already created and left to harden slightly. Now it's time to, ahem, refine the shapes.
Before transformation - a set of sorry looking bowls.

Some random picture inserted here :x

Finally, our completed babies - a marked improvement

Earlier we 'sent' a few items for glazing and this is the finished product. Nice teacup set. Not-so-nice plate set.
Still a long way to go, towards mastering the art of pottery. sigh.

vintage pentax MX camera

we were spring cleaning the house 2 days ago when my dad discovered this camera in a dusty corner.
it's a pentax MX analog camera and i think it could be more than 20 years old - that makes it qualify as vintage rite? :)

it was in a very sorry state - all rusty and moldy from years of neglect. luckily my dad knows someone who is able to restore the camera back to working condition...

as we grow older and wiser, we eventually learn to appreciate the value of things such as this old camera. 5 years back i would have asked my dad to dump it in the rubbish heap..

fun with gimp

ever since I saw the pictures of a friend taken using Lomo Fisheye 2, I've been itching to get my hands on it... sadly it's easily not available here. sniff sniff

out of curiosity i looked up a couple of tutorials on how to achieve the fisheye effect. it needs much more tweaking than this but i think i can live with it (below) for now.

this is the original image.
Using the ellipse select tool, i selected a circular shape and pasted it onto a new layer.
After that i applied the Filter -> Distorts -> IWarp effect - selected a small radius to distort, and then kept clicking repeatedly until the head and shoulders appear to be bulging out.

To make the edges appear rounded, I used the Filter -> Distorts -> Lens Distortion tool. Depending on the effect you want to achieve, you can either apply this to the upper floating layer for a more obvious look, or the original layer for a subtle effect. I find that I like the effect best at these settings: Main -5.6, Edge 84, Zoom 9, Brighten 68.

I'm still not satisfied, but I guess practice makes perfect. Now if only I had that much time to spare ... @_@

rainy day

One rainy afternoon. Wish I had a nice cup of coffee next to me right now...

photo given the soft glow treatment with my bestie of the moment - GIMP

the lamp post, the building, and the clouds

Sunny day in georgetown. I happened to look up and saw the inviting blue sky - the next thing I knew, I was whipping out my trusty little camera... :">

both shots of the sky are taken from the hip, in front of the Mini / Auto Bavaria showroom.

I enhanced both pictures using GIMP - nothing much, just increased the color balance for colors blue and red.

I liked the way the advertorials were painted directly on the building (below) so I captured one shot. Given my current fixation on Lomo, I did a bit of enhancement using the Lomo tool with the "Light Blue" effect.

and finally, a macro - reflection of a car in a desk plaque.

fun with lomo

Recently I started taking an interest in lomo effects so I downloaded this nifty GIMP plugin from elsamuko. You can get the plugin here.

There are some great color selections, vintage being one of my favorites.

I came across a page where another lomo plugin creator, mF made this suggestion to create a strong Lomo effect:
vignetting softness=1, Contrast=30, Saturation=30, Double Vignetting=TRUE
Pretty sharp results eh :)

This is the effect of another color - Old Red

and finally, this is the original photo (bleh). By the way, it's a 1/144 scale model of Gundam Arios, from the anime series Gundam 00 :)

kamunting fish farm

Decided to make a trip to Kulim a few weeks back to try out the food at Kamunting Fish Farm. From what i've heard, they offer freshwater dishes at relatively cheap prices and this seemed a nice way to spend a weekend :)

The restaurant itself is basically a giant floating concoction of planks built upon floating tanks, with attap leaves covering the roof.

Among all the dishes that we ordered, my favorite was the 'sar bee hu' or '3 flavored fish' (cap:direct translation)

Conclusion: overall I think the meal was quite reasonable in terms of pricing (around rm85 for 5 persons, with 2 good-sized fish dishes, 1 tofu dish, and 1 veggy dish.
But I guess I won't be going for a repeat visit since it's not that remarkable once the novelty wears off...

lunch break

originally planned to have lunch at red house, but then we saw this new place that looked interesting on the way there... 8 marks out of 10 for ambience, and 3 marks out of 10 for food :)


ramly burger, repackaged.


nasi kandar that cost more than rm5


see what i mean about nice ambience?




















... closeup shot of the waterproof table...