Got friggin busy or say got so lazy to blog upon my usual daily stuffs since there was nothing important to talk ’bout myself.  Last thanksgiving day, it was so cold outside, I was totally wearing warm outfits.

That’s me, my computer, cozy room and my comfort chair.

My hair kindda okay here, at least for me, not grown so longer. Still in ThanksGiving season.

I’m kindda person who doesn’t really like to grow his hair longer. I don’t know how people could grow such a long hair, which for me is almost impossible. The longer my hair grow, sooner I start feeling sick, . I used to have long hair back in those college days but not anymore. I don’t have anybody to show my hairdo or impress with my hairdo. These days, I don’t care much about grooming hair. It should be short,trimmed and smart looking. Everytime, I cut my hair, I feel so light, so confident, relaxed and full of energy.

What Was I thinking? I dunno but sure enough I was not liking my hair.  That’s not even my hat. It’s my brother’s hat. I was just trying to judge myself how would I look without obvious hairs(or was that me showing off something else??).

Finally, I cut my hair today. This is a series of my profiles.

umm.. tomorrow, I’m gonna go to work with this hair cut(my favorite). So, every time, my Hair grows, I make it look like this.

Somewhat short in back and comparatively little longer in front which I’m into. Before,I  tried all short and that looked awful(checking the pics below on post ‘Last year’, I can easily see myself how I got the grandpa look).  Someday, I would shave my head and take pics of that too. not real soon though. I wish I had sideburn like Elvis’s.  But, I’m happy with what I’m and how I’m. That’s the bottom line.

Thanks to Be for sending me these pictures. It was one of those good times that I’ve spent on Santa Cruz Adult School when I knew nothing about lifestyle and people here. Thanks to my teacher Peggy Miles who was kind enough to tell me each and every bit that I didn’t know about. She is truly a wonder woman.

Lets see, if I could remember all of my friends name. Actually, I spent barely 3-4 months out there and it was so hard for me to remember all friends name. From Left : Aamir, Be, Myself, Joy, Andrea, Peggy(my teacher), Juan and Lori.. Whew.. strange, the girls on first row, sitting and bending..ummm. I don’t remember their names.. ah..may be we didn’t talk that much. may be.. or may be names were so hard for me to remember.

You guys rock.  Here, I don’t see all my friends in photograph but whatever, I really enjoyed their company.

Oh yeah, now I remember, it was some sort of holiday and that day, there were no class, just some partying around. Did we dance? umm no.. I forgot. but I’ve not forgotten it was one of the coldest day in December, 2007.

It was one of good old days,..last year.

Today, I went to Richmond, somewhere in Oakland,CA. The purpose was meditation and Dharma practice. I, along with my family crew, had wisdom words and blessings from Venerable Rinpoche Anam Thubten.

I’m very glad I spent my day listening on his Speech. Other than that, we took off for some sight-seeing as soon as we left from his teaching. Up in the hill, I couldn’t resist taking some snapshots. The weather was calm but not appropriate for photography. It was direct mid-day sunlight and after some moment turned out to be so cloudy. Definitely no no condition for photography but used all my skills to make it look good. There are some family photographs that I’ve planned to make ‘em Mounted and decorate. They actually turned out real good.

The pictures below are some of the images that I took and slightly manipulated with the help of photoshop.(You can click them to see ‘em in Larger View)

This(above) is Richmond Bridge. I dunno myself but my Aunt Said so.

This is the farthest shot pulled closer by my FZ28’s 18x optical zoom. Its golden gate bridge.

The same shot of golden gate bridge without any zoom-in. Do you see golden gate in this picture above??

This is the shot from the same spot but different angle,..different scene.

All right, this is the picture of a tree. I tried to give it a poetic touch.

Who else, me, myself,..mistah photographer, not professional one yet but once I sell any single photograph of my collection, I’ll declare myself Pro. lol

Take care.

You must be staring with wide open eyes after what you’ve quick-scanned my post’s headline. That’s because, I wrote Elvis Presley is alive. This is true because, he still lives in millions of his fan’s heart. Dead or alive, doesn’t really matter.

Coming to the point, the main concern is not to arouse contradiction and mystery. The only point of this post is that Elvis Presley can be found singing/dancing in every corner of the cities, countries. You name it, you’ll find him everywhere. Elvis Tribute Artists(aka ETA) are those people who live every moment as Elvis the King. These people are huge fan of Elvis Presley and trying to fill that gap between Elvis and his fans. Elvis might not be physically existing but his songs and legendary movies won’t be forgotten till the doomsday.

Talking about ETA, I was amazed to see almost the carbon copy of King. Believe it or not, I’ve seen hundreds of them over the news, online and papers, but no one is close to what Shawn Klush has to offer.

Shawn Klush

He was interviewed on medias several times. I found one which is below:

To read his interview on what made him to be Elvis impersonator, click here

Last week, I got my Panasonic DMC-FZ28 camera. It’s very robust and capable camera for entry-level photographer like me. Price is also well-set. When I purchased, it was just $399 as compared to high-end brother of this camera. The price has come down drastically due to holiday and sale season.

I dared to resurrect my old photography skill with this new camera. It took a while to figure out how it works. Lots of experiment and playing around is slowly harnessing my old photography skill once again. At first, when I took sample shots, I was utterly dissatisfied as the output wasn’t as I expected. But, even the best tools can’t help you if you don’t have skill, that’s what we say in Nepalese proverb “Coconut in Monkey’s hand”. Ooops at first, I was being monkey, but not anymore.

When I ordered Panasonic FZ28, it didn’t have a bag to fit itself in. Now, I purchased decent Tripod, decent bag for itself, two extra batteries, 16 GB SDHC card for high-def video recording and two 8 GB SDHC for photography and digital images.

It’ll be repetitive to talk about it’s features, but briefly, it’s one hellava camera with 18x optical zoom, Image Stabilization processor, Leica Lens, auto focus. etc. One terrific feature on this digital camera is it can zoom in and out in High-def quality while video recording. For rest of it’s features, hail Google.

If one is planning to depend upon it’s Automatic settings to shoot the photos, then he/she won’t be fully utilizing it. Learn some photography and put your hands on it. I tried it’s Intelligent Automatic mode to take photos, it’s okay 50 percent but another 50 percent was disasters. Over-exposure,under exposure was the major problem. But once you control the shoot yourself in manual mode, nobody can win you.

The followings are the some photos that I took recently with this camera. (CLICK ON THESE IMAGES TO VIEW IN FULL SIZE)

October 11,2008. Time: 08:35 PM

Shutter Speed: 1/80 seconds
Aperture: f8.0(It is the lowest aperture settings of this camera)
18x full optical zoom
To get this picture, it took me 5-6 shots. Some shots were over exposed and looked liked a daylight, some looked like eclipse, some looked like bulbs at night. I minimized the shutter speed to maintain the exposure and decreased the Aperture as well to maintain the balance. Moon was as shiny as silver. So, I had to make my camera to pick up the light not more that What I wanted. So, this was the result. I’m very happy with this. I then applied Photoshop filter to give it more profound and attractive pale moon look.

This was the evening moon. I just played around with shutter speed and the result was okay.

This is again a shot of the far moon from my apartment’s balcony. Really magnificent view. I enjoy watching moon shine from there.

This is my brother’s car. He wanted to sell it. So, I took it and put it on the craigslist. There was queue of inquirers the next day.

There is nothing special about this photo but I thought to put it in here because, this picture was taken, when I got my hand first on this camera and took the shot of camera’s box. The shot which was taken nearly 8-9 feet away from the subject and still that much of clarity. It’s tele-macro rocks.

Thanks

Have some glass of water ready!!!

Yesterday, I searched online for an hour and I ordered 22 Inch Widescreen Acer monitor with blazingly fast 2 ms response time, then I bought sennheiser headphones but guess what It’s frigging wireless, it’s pretty expensive one(there are $20 cheap wireless non-branded every here and there).. ahh.. then, I bought myself latest Geforce 9600GT DDR3 PCIe card(for all those graphic intensive works). I needed some more RAM for  my self-assembled PC so, I ordered 2 x 1 GB Kingston PC2 5300 memory cards. I also bought foldable plastic keyboards and wireless Mouse/Keyboards to stay away from those jungles of wires and rests are some household stuffs..  Phew.. I’m spending a lot these days. As written before, I still have to buy Canon HG10 and then I’m done for a year. I ordered it but I found somewhere a lot cheaper than that. So, I cancelled old one  but to that new store, it was out-of-stock. I’ve given them my email, once it’s on stock, I’ll jump on it.  Just waiting.

These days, I’m occupied with Online Shopping. Online shopping is giving me so much options than the real life shopping. If I went to a store, I’m just limited with their products and I’m usually left with no more choices except wandering here and there, .. that’s heck of a trouble. Unless something comes up, I’ve decided not to buy anything here in store but online.

Some of the reasons that I think real shopping doesn’t suit me:

1. Waste of time(windows shopping,walk past stores, spend heck of a time then finally switch to the same place I had seen first and make purchase there. Why would I needed to buy there? well… many times, that’s what I felt)

2. Waste of Gas(I don’t have car yet, but If I had, it’s total waste of gas for driving) I though pay for bus fares. Who would count the motion sickness , that I sometimes face. Watever, my point is about the waste of energy.

3. Unavailability of the products. That happened to me, I called store guy over the phone, one of those Dukes told me they had it on the stock, when I went there, They didn’t have. You wouldn’t believe How was my reaction. I was cursing myself first for being so jerk.

4. Crazy people: Believe it or not, You’ll face many times such people who don’t know what they are selling. I hate to find myself in such situations.

5. Expensive: Herein Santa Cruz, if I buy a thing, it’ll cost me a lot because, they’ll include their shipping cost/rental charges and blah blah. But if I buy it directly from the location of manufacturers, it’ll cost me lot lot cheaper. So, I avoid real shopping except for groceries.

Why I love online shopping:

1. Varieties of choices: I’m not limited to only one manufacturer’s products. Virtually, I can check a product from different manufacturers at one place, i.e at my browser..

2. Reviews: I’ve formed a habit of reading reviews first and then making purchases. Online shopping helps me to read what other people say about the products. That’s one of the wonderful thing not to overlook. This has helped me to get quality products. Sometimes I read  about negative notion, what you see may not be the what you get but before that, make sure what you are paying for and how much you are paying for. So, that ‘HOW MUCH’ matters a lot. Filthy products look good on those web pages, but check out how much you are paying for. Don’t expect to get for what you’ve not paid for.

3. Ease of payments: The only requirement is one has to have credit card. Most of the credit card victims are computer illiterate. No offense, I actually meant to someone technologically not inclined. I suggest everyone to search on how credit card works, what to do if credit cards get stolen and How to check regularly one’s account status.  Everyday, I check online whats going on my bank account, I’ve setup a thing or two in such that when anything happens to my account like some expenses or any charge up, I’m sent email alerts instantaneously. On this regard, I’m very much watchful. I pay my credit card due online. That’s time effective. And, when I see this many benefits, I stand zero second to use it online.

4. Saves Time and Gas: I’ve no more words on this, it definitely saves time and gas. That’s the bottomline.

5. Shipping cost: Shipping cost is nominal as compared to the cost of traveling back and forth. I still remember the incident when I went with my friend to get one computer part at Sunnyvale’s FRY’s Electronic store. It was always 1 hour go and 1 hour come journey.  It nearly cost me around $115 for the part but my friend has to burn some $25 worth gas. So, it was about $140 expenses plus the cost of travelling and the time spent. I came back, checked it out on their site, and found out: that particular product, they were giving free ground shipping. uhhh..

6. Fun: You know what, Its so pleasurable to unbox the things even if you know it has something in it that you already knew of.  I really love unwrapping things, it’s so much fun. That’s why I love gift.. unwrapping gifts to check out what’s in it is so much fun. And, online shopping usually get me wrapped gift-like boxes.

7. Surprise: If you know it’s your father’s birthday, give him surprise. Make it to the same shipping address except his name printed on it. He’ll be so surprised. That’s what I did. There are so many online shopping sites which give you option for gift wrapping and wonder words they’ll put for you on your demand. Cool hah??

8. I just couldn’t remember other good things but as soon as I remember, I’ll update it

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How to play Safe:

If you are not that tech-savvy, most of the time, you’ll be in trouble. Make sure, the site where you are putting your credit card and personal informations is fully encrypted. Check if there is LOCK icon lying on the browser’s task bar on lower right. And make sure, ‘https’ is there instead of ‘http’ on web addressbar location.  Rest is search for the site’s review on Internet. Use your logic and common sense, you’ll be safe.

The only thing that sucks is waiting for the things to get arrived. blyahhhhhhhhhhh

I’m not much involved into social network activities but evidently into one or two. I was checking what my friends are upto this afternoon on hi5 and I suddenly noticed a change in someone’s profile. It was bizarre looking thumbnail but after clicking it and zooming in, I figured out, one Nepalese Girl had posed deviously like..like a pornstar. Thought, her testosterone level at her age is normal and definitely it was a shot during the peak of her frenzy testosterone level.

I saw that her profile was followed by a decent looking old man. I was shocked with what he had written there.

At first, I thought it’s a fake picture. Might be someone put somebody’s picture to defame him. I couldn’t believe that and followed that hi5 profile too. I found he is actually a 66 years old man with decent background. But character-wise, he is a demented, sex-hungry predator lurking/sniffing teens around the net. If possible, they would sex with them without any regrets. I’m so confirmed about this because,after watching couple of shows by CHRIS Hansen’s on MSNBC channel , I was left with the impression that some of the old people wants to have sex with teens or child.

These demented pedophiles live in the same societies where you and I live. They’ve reputations in society but deep within the dark corner of their selves, they’ve desire for unnatural and socially explicit behaviors.

Girls, be very wary of people of these kind.

I broke my old digicam, so, there is nothing that I can take pictures of now on. That camera wasn’t good enough for quality shots. But somehow I was living up with it. Certainly, it’s not working now but thankful to it that it served its purpose to some extent but never sufficed my dream for quality shots. So, I was darn busy to think about this stuff like how to get new one.

But I really needed my camera back to take picture and videos and for real soon. I had enough of taking grainy videos and ‘wait’ for light and only day moments to take great pictures. One thing I learned that I don’t want to become a fool jumping over the megapixel myth. This megapixel thing is really making consumers be fooled. But what really counts is the powerful lens to take the shiny and brilliant shots. Forget about those megapixel bullshits. Definitely, it’ll count on printing large size but what is there to see if quality is not maintained.

Have you ever noticed some degraded pictures/videos of illumines celebrities on Internet taken by amateurs by their cheap cameras? These are the same celebrities who are most often seen as glorious charming character in movies but on those camera shots, they really looked awful. So,my point is it really matters which camera you use.

I’ve thought/researched a lot and so far, I’ve found and planned to invest on camera costing around $799(I’m getting at discounted rate from somewhere else though). This is a huge money for average earner like me but considering the arena filled with professional videographer and photographers, this is just the entry level object.Whatever it’s a big thing for me.

I’m talking about  CANON HG10 40 GIG harddrive based High-Def camcorder cum digital still cam. As I went researching on this model, battery life is really disappointing but I managed to make my mind spending some extra bucks on extra batteries. That way, I won’t be short of shooting time. There is a new model of this series but with what I’ve read reviews on it, I resorted myself back to this last years winner.

Tommorrow, I’m gonna buy this thing. As planned, I’ll have to make another purchases soon after this cos, I will be needing carriage bag,tripod,extra batterys, lens protector, blah blah… so, the money I’d be spending will go further.

And, I’m really excited to get it on my hand, play with it and upload the brilliant pictures and videos on my blogs.

I’m waiting for the day to review my NDS and I’ve already set my mind to review many games for NDS too. I’m tired of seeing those sickest grainy videos all over the youtube when I searched for NDS. And, NDS videos are getting way much hits very quickly. It’s for me to utilize some free times. Hope HG10 will live up to it’s remarks.