What is the 1 thing you did this year that will define 2009 for you?
2009 for many including myself, will be the loss of Michael Jackson. But for me, it will be remembered more for the painful loss of my dad. I hope he is enjoying himself moonwalking away with Michael up there. With the recent natural disasters that happened – in Taiwan, Padang, Phillipines, India, lost count, it sure is getting crowded up there.

What about you? What did you do or experience that will mark the year 2009 for you?

Not to be confused with Rest in Peace, RIP here refers to a video data file that is copied from a CD, DVD or Blu-ray Disc. A ripped file can be played on a PC or standalone players like the Playstation 3 or a multi-format media file player like WDTV, etc.

Its worth getting excited over this because it is possible to get very sharp videos with excellent audio from BRRIPs or BRDRIPs – even better than from an original DVD.

Difference between BRRIP and BRDRIP is explained here.

Where to find BRRIP or BRDRIPs?

It is not possible to find latest movies (eg. those still showing in cinemas) in BRRIP or BRRIP format because the movie must be released in Blu-Ray format because there can be a ripped version, makes sense right? So if you want quality, you must have patience and the wait is well worth it.

Not leaving things undone until it’s too late.

People talk about living life to the fullest – live it once, live it to the fullest. But the emphasis is always self-centered. Its all about doing or trying things out for yourself – like bungee jumping, going on a backpacking holiday, etc.

Its hardly about doing things for your loved ones around you – who will be mourning you when you are gone and vice versa, of course. Why not think about your loved ones again and think of what you want to do for them in this lifetime (theirs and yours) before its too late?

Tell your loved ones you love them and do it not as a lip service

Hug or kiss the people you love if you feel like it, no one’s gonna reject your hug unless he/she is a stranger

Forgive and forget quickly any misgivings of your loved ones, don’t harbor grudges – they are not worth a cent

Treat everyday as its your last day on earth, say each goodbye with earnest and sincerity

Cos when you leave it till it’s too late, you may never get to do it in your lifetime

Do you have any estranged relationships that were once close and dear to you, whether with God or human? Maybe its still not too late to mend it.

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Enough said.

Find out for yourself. :p

Ju, I think you may have more time to blog now that you are desk-bound. Hope to read your new blog soon.

This supersedes the previous post.
The usual applies, if you need another person to make it 2 diners, remember to call me. Provided I am the one eating the free 50%
Click on thumbnail for the FULL PICTURE.

Love is like a building.

Before marriage, the relationship is like the construction of a new building. During this stage, should there be any fundamental flaw, serious problems may arise after the building is completed, for eg. a shaky or slanting building.

During construction, there will always be new problems cropping up like soil issues, lack of materials, costs exceeding budget, site accidents, etc – these are like lovers’ tiffs which occur once a while, some more frequent or ferocious than others.  Some tiffs can be resolved, like construction issues, but some can simply not be resolved and the project is called off.

If the relationship breaks down before marriage, the half constructed building is left abandoned. In future, if things patches up, the construction picks up again and there is a chance that the building may see the light of the day.

Marriage is like a completed building. In the honeymoon stage, things are just sweet. Similarly, a building gets new furnishing, everything looks new and at its best (probably this would be the best it will look in the entire lifespan of the building).

The completion of building does not mean that problems will end, it just mark the start of a new set of problems, for eg. burst pipes, water leakage, etc. In a marriage, new set of problems arises – from living together, finances, in-laws, children, etc. It takes effort to maintain and renew the marriage, just like any building. Badly maintained buildings just look dead while well maintained buildings maintain its lustre – the amount of effort put in = state of the building/marriage.

Renewal of marriage wows is akin to a building undergoing refurbishment and everything looks good and new again but the structure remains unchanged.

Should there be fundamental flaw not addressed in the initial stage , it may come back and haunt the marriage. In the case of the building, fundamental flaw could lead to building safety issues, etc. Some flaws could still be repaired, in more severe ones, it may be technically impossible to repair – it could even lead to the collapse of the building.

When a marriage breaks down, both parties leave the relationship – some amicably, some with bitterness. In the case of the building, the occupants leave the building and the building is left in an abandoned state or torn down by the authorities.

Do you think this is a good analogy? I am going to lobby for MCYS and BCA to merge….since they are duplicating work and wasting taxpayers’ money.

For some reasons, I have not been posting for a while and Adobe Lightroom is one of them.
Lightroom is a cool software that I have been spending plenty of time, during the last month or so, intensively learning to use it (after I got my new camera a Panasonic LX3 – a camera which I reckon takes the best photos for a currently available point and shoot camera). It has been a long time since I actually finish reading an entire book, but because of this program, I diligently finished the entire thick book – although it actually took me 6 weeks to finish the book – just so that I can understand all the functions of this program.

This program allows you to manage all your photos, tweak them, create a slideshow, print them in whatever layout you want as well as to create a web gallery of your images for you to upload online and show off to the world both your photography and web skills. The only thing this program can’t do is have sex with you, I’m sorry.

Since it is said that a picture says a thousand words, so I am going to say 2 thousand words by posting 2 pictures here, one straight from camera, another touched by Lightroom using one of the millions of develop presets available for download from the internet.

There are millions of possibilities to tweak each photo, it is entirely up to you how you want your photo to look, presets make things easier for you by pre-setting (thats why its called presets) the various settings such that when you apply them to your picture, you get the effect that each preset is intended for (for eg. black and white, old film effects, HDR-ish effects, etc). You can even create a signature look for all your photos by apply to all your images by creating your own preset. In my example, I used a preset that supposedly creates a “lomo” effect.
You can find the program here.

Too cheap to buy an external harddisk but wants to backup your photos? Try these free online storage.

Shutterfly
“Our picture storage is free and unlimited. We never delete photos.”

Snapfish (SG)
Upload, share or order. Receive them within 2 working days (Singapore).

Flickr
Formerly Yahoo! photos. Easy to use.

Photobucket
Allows you to link your pictures to forum posts.

Picasaweb by Google
Limited online storage capacity (for free accounts) but easy to use Picasa image editor & face detection capability.

Webshots

Picnik
Allows you to connect to popular photo storage websites to edit your photos stored in your online account.

There are probably many more others out there, but do you really have that many photos?

Muziic is to music what Youtube is to videos. Countless songs for you to listen for free without having to download the mp3 file into your drive. Only gripe is that the categorization of songs under each genre is at the mercy of users who uploaded the music – it can be rather puzzling.

Download of the Muziic player is required.

]]> http://merubi.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/m-is-for-muziic/feed/ 0 merubi http://www.muziic.com/images/downloadheader.jpg Muziic http://merubi.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/l-is-for-laurence-kim/ http://merubi.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/l-is-for-laurence-kim/#comments Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:17:05 +0000 merubi http://merubi.wordpress.com/?p=262 ]]>

This photographer takes nice portraits, especially of children.

His blog includes a lot of his photo works as well as some photography & image editing tips.

Worth a visit if you are learning photography.

http://www.laurencekimblog.com