Old passion reborn

I've been reconsidering cycling for quite sometime now. I'm not really sure why but the most appealing factor of cycling is to promote a healthy life style. I used to crank the old Shimano road bike that weighted almost 11kg everyday back in my student years.

I also read some local mountain bikers blogs and watched some thrilling off-road cycling videos over the Youtube. The sense of freedom in hilly uncharted jungle trail sparked my adrenaline, well almost. Since then, I knew that I need to get one of those mountain bike or most popular word is MTB bike. There is no way a road bike could jump off the dirt & mud.

When deciding which brand to buy, I remembered that my brother-in-law bought a hardtail Merida bike recently. I thought to myself, what a heck, any bike will do. So Merida it is.

2009 Full of challenges

I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year of 2009. Some said that this is going to be a tough and challenging year.

A Ride To Kuantan (13 December - 14 December 2008)

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It's been a while since my last bike convoys with my Eleganet buddies. So tomorrow we will set of for a little adventure trip to Kuantan riding our Modenas Elegan bike. I estimate the whole journey will take at least 644km. I hope my bike could cope with top speed abuse in this trip.


For a record, for a single rider, the Elegan 150 stock standard could reach the maximum speed at 135km/h but with a pillion it will drop to 120km/h.

It's my birthday

It's my 32nd birthday today, since the fuel, food price even the bus fare is sky rocketed so I decided not to celebrate. Besides, since Obi (Dahyatul Qalbi - in photo) arrived in our live, we've been very busy. Having Obi is like managing a twin kids, twice the weight plus prone to fall (he's started to stands and climbs the stairs)


I used to organized a small party among my family, threat my folks with a dine as a token of my grateful for raising me. But this this year, no thanks to Malaysia economy, my financial is really tight. So to reminds me of this birthday, I create myself a birthday card. Cost me nothing accept a few shots of me with Obi. Ohh thanks to my wife for the lovely shirt.

Olympic 2008 - The Race is On

Beijing China Abre Olimpicos 8.08.2008 Olympic Games Opening, originally uploaded by Informando.

Did you catch the opening ceremony of Olympic 2008? It was one of the most spectacular Olympic opening ceremony I ever seen. If only I was there. What a sight.

Defensive Riding Class

It seems like I'm getting busy with Eleganeers member this last few weeks. Even though it is just for a sip of late night coffee after some bowling game or simply hang out at our regular late night stall. And as for today, we had a unique agenda, out of ordinary, a "Defensive Riding" class. We've been riding Elegan for a year and a half now but this is our only opportunity to properly learn how to ride safely alone, with pillion or during convoy.


The class were held at one of the lecture hall in HUKM at Bandar Tun Razak lasted about 3 hours. It's really educative even for us (old people). Started with a set of questionare about which side are you in, the safe or the dangerous rider on road. Some how most of us fall in the middle, which is very realistic. Followed with some freak accident video clip like this:



And other tips including a proper riding gear and how to keep alert or paranoid with "if" questions on each vehicle or object while riding on road.

Of course I had another purpose why did I attend this class. To study further on how my SB 600 speed lite behave in a large room. I tried bounce, direct and other stuff. Like the group photo above, I use aperture priority set to F/4.5 plus the build in flash.

I did not satisfy with all photo taken using the bouncing flash to the ceiling technique. So maybe next time I really need to focus on using bounce on card technique instead of ceiling.

Eleganeers / Bikers Bowl Night

We organized a friendly bowling match among our members last Friday. It's my 1st bowling game in almost 4 years time and I'm totally suck that night.


Since I was one of the player that night, I did not totally covering the whole action. Anyway this is my chance to try out the comic effect using Photoshop CS3 and post it on Issuu.com. Check this out.

Get your own - Open publication

Malaysia International Landscape & Garden Festival 2008

Last Friday I manage to set a side a time for my photography activity which is very rare now a days due to hectic life as a family man. So I decided to go to Laman 2008 festival. This festival were also hosted on 2006 if I can recall it back. The event took place at Perdana Lake Garden.

My friends once visited the same event during night time and I find the decoration lighting at park is more colourful at night. So when I was checking on their official website I found that the venue is huge. Can I see all the exhibit, I wonder?


And here is my own online publication hosted on Issuu.com

Comic art effect

While browsing my old snapshot, I realize that everything look the same (at least to my eye). So I thought why not apply some effect on those kind of snapshots. Then I saw an application called Comic Life from Plasq. Basically the application creates comic borders, pages, and some dialogue balloons automatically from their template. All you have to do is just add the photo that you want. The best way to create a set of comic is when you had some series of photo of any even. Be inspired, be creative.

The only thing that it can't do is to change your photo into a comic drawing automatically. Awwwh, otherwise it would be perfect. But no worries, you can rely on some ready made automated photoshop action to do this. If you Google it, lots of photoshop solution out there but the one that I like is this one: The Comic Art Effect, well explained, step by step but the important thing is the free photoshop action.

After i change the photo to the comic look alike, I simply add in a PDF document and upload to Issuu.com. And now I had publish my first online comic, kewl yahh.

JIJOI JPEG

JIJOI is my nickname during my childhood. But when I entered university, no one call me by that name anymore. Then Shazman suddenly called me that during our journey to MDeC mimicking a radio ads, "Dapatkan produk terbaru dari Jijoi JPEG". Sound catchy & funny at the same time.

And today all the sudden, my colleague design that logo. Wohahahaha

What should I do with this logo guys? I don't have any company or website. This blog uses the Blogger one, no need to replace. Maybe I should start a new series of my own comic series and embed the logo there.

Sound interesting, let start with a cover. How about this one:You guys got nothing better to do ehhh.