| Macro Photo Fun |
[2007-07-14 21:47] |
I went to La Mesa Ecopark with a group of people from Pinoy Photography to get a chance to learn about macro (close-up) photography. Plus, it was a great opportunity to test my new Canon 400D with a 50mm prime lens. Using an extension tube I borrowed, I was able to take stunning pics, to say the least. But the hard part is... you have to move the camera back and forth to achieve good focus manually.
( Pictures ^^ )
Photobucket Link:
Macro Fun
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[2007-07-14 21:38] |
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July 7: Despite an exam in Oncology on Tuesday, we still had the nerve to climb Mt. Arayat in Pampanta. Fortunately, we didn't encounter any member of the NPA. Unfortunately, the hawking "tour guides" charge exorbitant fees enough to drive the average tourist away.
( Pictures ^^ )
Photobucket Link:
Mt. Arayat
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| Tarak Ridge |
[2007-05-06 14:39] |
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We went by bus last May 2 for a 2 day climb of Tarak Ridge in the Mariveles Mountains of Bataan.
( Pictures ^^ )
We got back to Balanga City around 2:00 pm where we had lunch at Denbell's. We arrived in Manila around 5:30 pm. The bus station was near the LRT 2 Recto station which I used to get home. Photobucket Link:
Tarak Ridge
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| Hiking 102 |
[2007-03-28 15:24] |
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In a totally unprecedented move yesterday, we climbed Mt. Talamitam in Nasugbu, Batangas and went to the beach afterwards... all in 1 day. And this was after we couldn't decide on where to go in the morning. The plan was conceptualized around 10 minutes before we left.
( Pictures ^^ )
Climbing mountatins is fulfilling afterall... especially when you get to relax at the beach afterwards. Selected pictures are available at my photobucket album. You'll get to see a lot more interesting pics there.
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| Hiking 101 |
[2007-01-03 12:56] |
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We went to Mt. Kalisungan in Calauan, Laguna for a one day hike yesterday. I'm not really a mountain climber/outdoor person but I tagged along for the adventure, I guess.
( Pictures ^^ )
After the experience, I think I'm going to wait a while before going on my next hiking trip.
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| Day 1 |
[2006-05-09 23:58] |
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It had been an unusually tiring day.
07:00 - I had been forced to wake up way earlier than usual so that I could bring the family to the airport.
09:30 - We arrive in NAIA Terminal 1, which I last saw when I was like 7 years old. I noticed there were far more people leaving the country than arriving. There was practically no traffic on the arrivals side. After hastily bringing down stuff (to comply with a 2 minute unloading time limit), I set off for UP Manila.
10:30 - I had to park outside of the College because the guard wouldn't let me in. I then had a P30 parking ticket shoved in my face.
11:00 - We then proceeded to map the area around UPCM, taking pictures of the shops, restaurants and places.
11:45 - We enjoyed the nice view of the city as seen from the rooftop of Astral. Also, we got scorched by the noon sun.
13:00 - Ate a full lunch at Karate Kid. This was after walking for the last 2 hours.
14:00 - Copied todays pictures to a flash drive. Played with google maps a bit...
16:00 - Arrived home only to leave again moments later. The maids are going on a vacation...
17:30 - I'm officially alone for a while.
18:45 - I arrive home again... like it's a big deal. I then proceeded to make an ocular inspection of the house, taking a mental note of the things present.
20:00 - Had a small cream chicken dinner.
20:30 - Talked on the phone for the latest FO projeact updates.
21:45 - Tried to reinforce security on some run-down sliding door... and failed.
22:30 - Took a nice, refreshing bath.
22:45 - Checked e-mail, chat.
23:20 - Began writing for LJ.
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| Minor Update |
[2006-03-15 21:19] |
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I'd like to thank AD for giving me this opportunity to arrange Valse de Oz. It took a while because I was waiting for the right mood ^^. Strangely, I never get tired of listening to it
I think the real reason this came out so well is because I'm kind of depressed over various things... like our research project. I feel that they will totally kill us when they find out that we sort of failed.
On the upside, I enjoyed watching Hostel today. I assure you... it's not for the faint hearted. Also, my experience was sort of ruined by the fact that I know too much anatomy as some scenes depicted were quite impossible in real life, I believe. But, I think that's the point of the movie anyway.
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| Video Rave |
[2006-02-02 17:52] |
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While shooting our promotional video (for the harana project), I came across an accidental shot which became the defining point of the thing. Maybe I was just lucky at that time.
( View Picture )
I'm just glad I was given the chance to get back into the video editing field as well as abuse a DVD camcorder we borrowed. Unfortunately, each 8cm dvd-rw can only hold 30 mins of raw footage. On the upside, I swear the quality is just too good to be true.
Warning: technical discussion ahead. Ignore this part.
I have discovered a plugin which can import Avisynth files and place them in the Adobe Premiere timeline. This means you can pre-process video outside of Premiere and have the frames served directly into Premiere. With this system, I was able to deinterlace the source footage quite well without having to depend on Premiere's ugly deinterlacer. (Remember DVD footage is almost always interlaced.)
Unfortunately, normal movie export didn't seem to work correctly for some reason. I had to use another frameserver to export and use VirtualDub to encode to both xvid and x264.
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| Christmas Break Recap |
[2005-12-31 22:28] |
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Hmm, I somehow feel that I've wasted the break. Then again, I got some much needed rest.
- Dec. 24 - Played the keyboard for the Christmas Eve mass
- Dec. 25 - Christmas Day at our relative's house in Fairview
- Dec. 26 - Ordinary day at home downloading and watching anime
- Dec. 27 - Lunch at Rockwell ^^
- Dec. 28 - Ordinary day at home downloading and watching anime
- Dec. 29 - DotA all afternoon at Pipeline with the DotA boys
- Dec. 30 - Ordinary day at home downloading and watching anime
- Dec. 31 - Played the keyboard for the New Year's Eve mass
Latest Aquisitions (for record purposes only)
- 44 years worth of Billboard Top 100 singles for mom (handpicked)
- 38 episodes of Yu Yu Hakusho
- 3 Studio Ghibli films: Umi ga Kikoeru, Omohide Poro Poro and Howl's Moving Castle
- Studio Ghibli Symphonic and Howl's Moving Castle Symphonic
- Full Metal Alchemist Movie
- Xenosaga 3 Trailer
- Monster, Blood+, Snow Queen episodes
I did not lift a single page of trans, Berne nor Wheater in the past 2 weeks.
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| OMG! An Update |
[2005-12-23 23:07] |
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Wow. So much has happened over the past month that I have completely forgotten all about them by now. What I do know... is that I got colds because I didn't get to sleep for three nights (not consecutively) this past week.
Long days:
- Dec 15-16 - All nighter to help make lanterns (yes, plural)
- Dec 17-18 - All nighter playing DotA after carolling
- Dec 20-21 - All nighter because the session ended too late and I had a mass to attend at 5am
I finally got to watch the Full Metal Alchemist movie today. This time, I had to stick with a relatively more decent video but with horrible subtitle timing. I mean... there was even a 15 minute segment with wrong subtitles. Luckily, I used what little Japanese I knew to hang on to some phrases. I'll probably watch it again after I get a better version.
Yes. Roy has angst. But so do many of the other characters. At least, the plot didn't disappoint me in terms of philosophical value. Although, I found it quite weird that they attempted to merge concepts such as: Spear of Longinus, Thule Organization and Nazi party quite unsuccessfully. Finally... something that can rival the Da Vinci Code (no offense ^^). Ok, spoiling ends now.
For the pirates, download at your own risk.
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| MPO Concert |
[2005-11-22 23:54] |
Program:
- Igorot Rhapsody by Angel Peña
- Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in Em Op.64
- Dvorak's Symphony No.9 in Em Op.95 (From the New World)
The Igorot Rhapsody was quite unique in its usage of dissonany harmonies intertwined with a simple pentatonic melodic line. It was also surprising to see traditional Filipino instruments mingled with a western-styled orchestra. While boring for some, I found the piece quite interesting because it deviated from the classical style.
I believe the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto was the highlight of the concert. The soloist was none other than Chino (aka. "John-Lennon-haired-violinist-boy-from-our-Pisay-days-and-favorite-of-Dr.-Miranda"). There, get it? Anyway, I was really surprised to see his face on the poster for the concert. While he made no mistakes in playing the notes, there were instances where the orchestra had to catch up with his increased playing speed. In the end, he played 3 encores, each followed with incessant applause.
As for the New World Symphony, I only liked the 3rd movement. The rest of the time, I was just really watching the conductor, Maestro Yatco, silence the Timpani at times.
The concert was really for Maestro Oscar Yatco who celebrated his 75th birthday today. Unfortunately, there was only one concert by the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra this season. Nevertheless, it was so spectacular that it made me forget that we have a Neurology final exam tomorrow.
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| DVD? No, Coaster... |
[2005-10-28 23:23] |
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I burned 2 coaster DVDs today... consecutively. Immediately, I suspected that the burner might be dying (which is unlikely because it's less than 6 months old) of overuse. Then, I checked the media code of the blanks: ah, there's the problem. And I had a stock of 10 of these just *waiting* to get thrown away, too.
The thing is, I picked out those blanks because I burned on them quite successfully a few months back. But then, the discs had a different media code. Which means... these are fakes. I swear the last batch were fakes too, which just happened to work nicely. ^^ Strangely, it reminded me of the time I burned 2 coaster CDs on 2 different PCs at the same time.
I'm getting tired of searching for resources for our RRL (research). So, nothing really happened these past few days.
I only started burning stuff today because I had about 44 MB of HD space left. :|
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| Just Another Ordinary Day |
[2005-10-22 23:24] |
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I spent the wee hours of the morning watching movies at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) user15's place. Also in the last 36 hours, I have consumed more junk food than I have for the entire year. Strange, really. Maybe I just wanted to try out something different for a change.
Since I had a 10am practice for the mass tomorrow, I hurried home. However, I just had to stop by McDonalds and get Sausage McMuffin (with fries, even) for breakfast. I arrived at my destination early, to my surprise. Within minutes, I was playing with such passion (for a practice session) even closing my eyes sometimes. Maybe I was just half-awake.
To celebrate, our family went on an "eat-all-you-can" spree at Zensho. The food wasn't as nice as I had expected. Nevertheless, we ordered like crazy ^^. Maybe I was just half-awake then.
Afterwards, I was stuck at a table drinking Frappucino in a pathetic attempt to wake up while they scoured National Bookstore for some things.
I spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping soundly in my room waiting for the piano tuner who couldn't make it because his motorcycle broke down.
For the night, I updated myself on the latest computer hardware. I'm considering an Athlon 64 3000+ upgrade with a socket 939 board on nForce4 with 512 DDR400 ram on dual channel for next year to finally let this 4.6-year old pc rest.
Disclaimer: This entry did not make sense at all.
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| Tokimeki Memorial on Piano Trio |
[2005-10-21 18:17] |
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I finally finshed the mini arrangement (more of "case study", really) I started 3 days ago. I can't believe that this 1-minute segment *actually* required days of tweaking... Can't wait to do more once I have the piano tuned.
Click ^^
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| Busy Week |
[2005-10-20 21:55] |
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( Tuesday )
( Wednesday )
( Thursday )
The week isn't over yet, but I have tasks queued until next week. I haven't even noticed that we have about 2 weeks left of vacation.
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| MBB-wannabes |
[2005-10-17 23:58] |
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We had a sort of "crash course" in DNA extraction and PCR techniques at the NIH today together with other thesis students from UP Manila. Fortunately, I didn't have to handle the stool samples... yet. I concentrated more on the preparation of the samples for PCR. The good doctor kindly allowed me to prepare 12 actual samples containing human DNA for their IL-1 Polymorphism study.
Of course, we all thought that we were doing well. That is, until we attempted to do Gel Electrophoresis on a set (which he prepared). It took 20 mins to figure out that the AVR was broken. It took another 30 minutes to perform the actual procedure. After we were done, it took another 15 minutes to find out that they plugged the Gel Dock (where you view the results) on 110V instead of 220V.
We finally saw the mess that *was* our hard work. No DNA. Some of the bands were a mess. The gel was probably to blame. So, a second run was done to verify the results. The gel was good this time... but there were still no DNA bands on any of the samples. The ladder came out nicely. But, there was a single faint band on the negative control column... which can only mean trouble.
At the end of the day, I found out that Molecular Biology demands Obsessive-compulsiveness (if there is such a word)...
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| Anilao |
[2005-10-16 18:04] |
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I just came back from a 2 day refreshing vacation in a resort in Anilao, Batangas. No phone. No contact with the outside world. It was just the sun, the sea and my friends. Didn't even pay anything. We were sponsored by the good doctor who owns the resort anyway.
The strange thing about this is that I decided to go on the trip 10 hours before we set off. It was just what I needed: a change of scenery.
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