Chicken Rice

Tembeling Road

ISO 3200, 50mm, f/2.2, 1/15 sec.

Test Drive D90

The D90, Nikon's latest amateur DSLR. This gizmo is great.. wouldn't bother with getting the D300 anymore since the image processing and quality is practically the same, if not better (and for S$1000 more? no way). The D3? Out of my (pocket) league.

Funny thing though, color comparisons with the images between this and my D40 made me realize that - I prefer the output of the D40.. Although in high ISOs, the D90 delivers great images. Plus now, I can autofocus with my 50mm 1.8f/d lens. What's more the D90 has Live View and a great 3.0" screen. And did I mention the D90 can already record movies?

For now, I still need to play with the color modes. One thing's for sure - The D90 is gonna kick some serious SLR butt.

Mushroom Toys

Ryan's:

Eng's:

Celes':

ISO 3200

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ISO 3200 images are generally noisy and unusable. So what makes these images still printable? :D

..And Christmas For All

A lot of stuff has happened this year.. It was definitely a roller coaster ride.. extreme highs, extreme lows.. but in the end it was a great year, so, in the words of Nols,

Merry fuckin-metalli-christmas-death-magnetic-new-fuckin-year!!!

Enzoti Takes an Early Vacation :)

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Jograd Farewell

the MM Hagibis, fr left to right (Munky "web god" Abella, Jorel "the preferred 3d artist" Martinez, Jograd, Ryan "to the left" Gallinera, Eng "autobot maker" Cadavero)

The Dog in the Manger

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I stumbled upon this old fable and it strikes a chord.

A Dog looking out for its afternoon nap jumped into the Manger of an Ox and lay there cosily upon the straw. But soon the Ox, returning from its afternoon work, came up to the Manger and wanted to eat some of the straw. The Dog in a rage, being awakened from its slumber, stood up and barked at the Ox, and whenever it came near attempted to bite it. At last the Ox had to give up the hope of getting at the straw, and went away muttering:

"Ah, people often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves."

Sounds familiar?

This is a variant of that Filipino genetic anomaly called -

crab mentality. :p

3D Walkthru in Progress

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Here's a shopping mall we are currently working on, to be built somewhere in Europe. For the first time I made full use of Vray Sun, which is quite easy to use. Also used extensive After Effects for the screenshots (these were lifted from the rendered frame sequences)..

Will be posting the walkthru when it's done. :D

AUTODESK3DSMAXSUCKS

But I guess everyone knows this already.

If you wanna know why, talk to me personally. It sucks so bad I don't even have the energy to blog about why it does. If I were you skip this stupid upgrade and stick to Max 9 instead.

Just take it from me -

It SUCKS.

My Apocalypse! I Kick You in The Nutss!!

South Park Metallica

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ei!! what don't kill ya make ya more strong! -eric cartman

Enzo's First F1

It was a night of many firsts: it was the first ever F1 Grand Prix night race in Singapore, and also Enzo's first F1 Grand Prix experience :)

Death Magnetic

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..kicks ass!!

..here are my reasons why, track by track:

1. That Was Just Your Life starts off like Battery + noticeable difference in James' vocals apparent.. he's back to growling rather than singing + infectious groove all throughout the song + some middle riffs reminiscent of The Four Horsemen + Yes! Kirk's doing a solo again!

2. The End of the Line catchy riff at the beginning + great riff shift at 1:00.. enters a Master of Puppets / Creeping Death style structure + there goes Kirk again.. unleashed + the guitar and drum punches are back + song enters a Load-style section but what the heck.. + only two songs so far and that's it.. this record already rocks!

(by this time, it's safe to max out the volume!)

3. Broken, Beat & Scarred this wouldve probably been a song off the Justice album.. + great riffs , great lyrics + best James vocals in this song

4. The Day that Never Comes by now, I'm a bit deaf.! time for a slower track..without the sissy attitude of Load and St. Anger.. and this One-type fits well + this is a definitive Metallica slow song of old.. not as good as Fade to Black or Sanitarium but close.. perhaps after 50 playbacks, it will become a classic +"love is a four-letter word"?

5. All Nightmare Long interesting Middle eastern intro.. then transcends to one of the album's great riffs + this one is pure thrash.. reminiscent of Whiplash and Ride the Lightning + my favorite track in the album!!

6. Cyanide this has been my the subject of my LSS for the past few days + it gets better and better

7. Unforgiven III WTF.. ill pass this one for the title. + anyway still sounds ok. no hints from the horn intro of the first Unforgiven-s + well.. not the best track in the album.. but Ride the Lightning had Escape right?

8. The Judas Kiss after a meh song, a redeeming one! + this is the album's version of Leper Messiah

9. Suicide and Redemption the 10 minute instrumental song is back!

10. My Apocalypse .. and so is the sonic end song like Dyer's Eve or Damage Inc. + pure pure pure Metallica

all in all.. album is fast awesome and listenable for another 3 years.. on a daily basis.. and best played LOUDDD..

Footallica

Long Haired Blog

Nice blog

Enzo Turns 7

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Happy Birthday Enzo!!

Good Luck Kelly!

Mushroom Kelly says goodbye..

Cyanide and Happiness

1. Cyanide..

The new Metallica single "The Day That Never Comes" is due out any hour soon, but I heard em play a new song off the Death Magnetic album, "Cyanide". Wow.. Sept. 12 for the release of the new album.. can't wait! :D

Hmm.. it could mean the new album might, just might, kick ass.. It sounds closer to Justice, without the softness of the last 3 albums with Newsted, and without the meh-ness of St. Anger. . But the drum tracks, guitars and solos, vocals and the bass lines are all solid, old school stuff. Damn, they really are into going back to their roots.

One thing they can never reverse though is.. impending baldness?

.. and 2. Happiness.

Photo of the Day

Caught a glimpse of this photo in flickr, and I kinda like its composition. It was even published on my birthday. :)

Coraline

There is still nothing, not even advanced 3D animation techniques, that will hold a candle to traditional stuff such as stop motion animation.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight (2008)

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This is by far the BEST Batman movie in my books. Storyline is solid, the plot and subplots twist like fine opera. The most cerebral of all the Batman movies. Very little fun here, but a lot of excitement.

It wasn't called "dark" for nothing. The PG-13 rating in the film should read: DON'T bring any kid below 13. There are too many graphic scenes, though not as grotesque as those weird horror movies. It is the nature of the Joker character, the pure evil persona that will haunt you. Ironically Gotham here is mostly shot in daylight, yet the mood of the story is the darkest ever in the franchise.


Heath Ledger's performance was electrifying.. I won't be surprised if he gets an award for his role here. He upstages everyone, despite the fact that Bale, Caine, Oldman and even Eckhart gave great performances too. He really makes a terrifying Joker. The music score only darkened the mood further, with all those creepy sirens blaring whenever he is around.

It reaches a satisfying climax with a "social experiment". A test that blurs the boundaries of morality and self preservation. A defining moment which explains why Batman IS the superhero in the film and not anyone else.


I could go on and on why this is my favorite Batman movie for now, but I won't spoil the fine details for those who haven't watched it. Just go go go, see it, twice, thrice, but remember not to linger with it. It is meant to give nightmares. It is not "Spiderman" nor "Iron Man". More like "A Clockwork Orange".

The Joker puts it plainly: "Hit me!"

And this movie did.

Another Attempt..

.. of winning me, the old fan, back. Of me, getting to buy their latest album (I skipped St. Anger). From the demos I've heard so far, it's still gonna be a disappointment. We will never ever get to hear James Hetfield and the gang rock again. Ever. Again. Face it, Cliff is dead, Jason left.

At least, they brought back their pre-Load logo. Plus the concept art for the next album is quite interesting.. a magnetic coffin. I heard they were gonna package it like a coffin too. I just hope I don't bury it after listening to it.

For now i'll keep this as a wallpaper.

MM Gets a Tag!!!

www.mushroommultimedia.com gets a

(drumroll)

Super pick of the world?? A bit blechhh.. but hey, it's still something! :D

3D Rant II

Here's an update -

The renegade 3D file that opens in 30 minutes just bloated to bizarre proportions. Cannot merge or save selected geometry because it maintains that same large file size even if it only contains 1 spline or 1 camera. I tried running the gc() utility (garbage collector) which used to work on 3ds Max 7 for bloated files.

Didn't work.

Installed the new Max 2009 just in case it could actually fix the problem.

Ended up waiting for 1 hour, and the file refuses to give in. To give you an idea of the extent of the project, the image below is only 10% of the stuff we are working on:


Our suspicion for the file bloat was when we started importing Cad files. The client gave us an update, we merged the new plan into the scene. It occurred with everyone in the team who's involved in the project, and most of them were doing portions of the whole development while I handled the overall site. Previous to this 3D quagmire I had thousands of trees and a poly count of millions, and I can still edit those quite ok. But so many revisions have already been incorporated. So now, I'm in a 3D hellhole.

Against my will I have SOS'd in Autodesk's AREA to see if there is a remedy to it.

Oh well.. Best (or worst) way to deal with this waiting thing is to have a cigarette while the computers are busy loading and saving. :p

..or blog. Something which I haven't been doing for some time.. :D

3D Rant!!!

If it wasn't bad enough that you can't open a previous version of a 3D file in newer max versions, here comes the latest monster - 3DS Max 2008.

If you are planning to upgrade, stick to 3DS Max 9.0. This 2008 version s*cks big time, and is causing me sleepless nights and nervous breakdowns. Deadline is fast approaching and the new version isn't performing optimally like the previous versions.

Hell.. Waaaaa

Arnis Comes to Singapore

They don't call this Filipino martial art deadly and "lightning" for nothing.