Well I’m not really moving my home but I am moving my blog. WordPress, as much as I love its interface, does have its limitation especially since I’m using its free hosting. So I’ve decided to port over to blogger instead. So if you’re looking for me (if for some miraculous reason I actually have anyone following this rarely updated blog) come find me at nigelsbrain.blogspot.com. See ya there
Yes, this is really becoming a habit. I only update my blog like after 6 months but well I have been extremely busy and I seriously don’t have the mental capacity to actually write about anything after coming back from work. However, things have tapered off right after that big as event my company had which was called GoMobile 2008.
So now I SHOULD be able to blog a bit more consistently though I still have a lot of other things to do. One of those major things is actually the revamp of the magazine I’m currently the editor of which is Mobile World (remember to pick up your copy at the nearest bookstore or newsstand :D). There have been some changes in the look of the mag since I’ve taken over but I’m really looking forward to doing more with the mag and hopefully bringing it to another level. Well all I can say is stay tuned for developments there and if you’re not reader, why not pick it up and give me your thoughts and opinions. I’m always open to suggestions.
Also since starting this full 9-5 job I’ve managed to bring some semblance of order to this life of mine. I’m still picking up some of pieces of my 1 and a half years of freelancing like some financial issues and my screwed up body clock but hey if I had to do it again I would. Life for me is about lessons and well I wouldn’t have learned anything if I didn’t try freelancing full time.
Anyway time to get back to work and remember to post your recommendation for the mag.
Yes, its been ages since I’ve actually posted anything and all those promises I made about changing, well lets just say they never really came through. Six months since my last post, which was not much of a post anyway, I’ve once again undergone some major changes in my life. I’ve decided to quit being a lazy ass and have actually gone and got a proper 9-5 job. Yes this one and a half year experiment into the world of freelancing is finally over and what have I learnt from it?
Well quite a lot actually and the sad realisation that I might not be ready or maybe not even cut out for doing things on my own. I had so many plans; grow my freelance writing biz, maybe start a site hopefully make some money, blog, actually finish some sort of higher education course etc. and did actually do them. Well sort of but all of them in a half hearted matter. To make matters even worse due to the complacency I had during this entire period of ‘working on my own’ I found that I was becoming less and less financially prudent. I haven’t exactly been very good with the money which has resulted in me being well less financially well off than I originally was. Yes I was earning a good deal but at the same time, I was wasting money on stuff just to kill my boredom. On top of that I wasn’t even doing most of my jobs properly which saw me slowly cutting of one job by one until I was only doing bare minimal stuff.
So I finally decided some time last week that enough was enough. I was damaging my life as it is. Before I could ruin any rep I built up in the industry (which I suspected I was close to doing) I decided that a total change was needed. I found myself a new job with a set of challenges that I was looking forward to facing. I believe that if you don’t use your brain, its bound to rot and that was exactly what was happening to me. With this new job, hopefully I will succeed in stemming this rot that has already permeated a good part of my mind.
This post is more of a rant but you’ll soon be seeing a more coherent post on what I plan to do with my life and hopefully this blog will be filled again soon.
Nah its nothing serious. Just a small cut on my hand. Was intending to cook some Indo Mee when it happened. I didn’t know that a vase was stored in the same place where the pots and pans were kept so as I was taking the pot out the vase fell and my pinky was cut when it broke IN MY HANDS. The cut was pretty deep and I was bleeding profusely. Thank goodness I kept a first aid kit our I would have bleeded all over the floor and my girlfriend would not have been pleased bleeding and making a mess on the floor.
Since there was no iodine a little help from my vile bottle of Korean rice wine helped clean up the wound, painfully I might add. I finally manage to find a use for that vile bottle of alcohol besides it being an object to scare fellow drinkers. Anyway just to gross you guys out I posted a picture of my cut finger and the bottle of Korean rice wine (that you should never buy unless you like to drink paint thinner).
Food, glorious food. If there is one thing about me that most of my friends would agree about, it would be raging appetite. I love to eat and am pretty much willing to experiment eating most foods that go beyond the scope of what you would call normal. Not that I actively search for stuff like that but I’ve always wondered what stuff would taste like. Chalk it up to putting too much stuff into my mouth while I was a kid (at least this time those stuff are actually edible). So far I’ve eaten (among other things) crocodile, bat, monkey, snake, scorpion, grasshoppers and unknowingly, dog.
Now, before you dog lovers out there start flaming me for doing such horrible stuff let me explain myself. I said I unknowingly ate dog. This happened when I was about 11 and had gone over to a friends place to basically hog his Super NES. As it was getting late, I told my mum I’d be staying for dinner. It was the holidays and after a long day of video gaming and playing basketball I was famished. That being said I tucked into this nice looking stew that my friends mum took out and was delighted cause it tasted like pork and kinda look like pork. So there I was eating away, happily digging into that delicious porky like meat when my friend’s uncle came down. By then my face had this satisfied look of someone enjoying his meal, when suddenly I heard my friend’s uncle say “Mmmmmm dog meat. My favourite”. At first I thought he was joking until he started talking about which dog from the farm they cooked.
You could just imagine the look on my face then. My friend, (the bastard that he was) was giggling away and told me that the meat was actually dog and I had tucked in before they could say anything. Now the weird thing was that I didn’t immediately go bonkers and swore (I was 11 and at a friends place, swearing was an invitation to a good whacking from my mom back then, no matter the reason). Instead I straightened that look of horror on my face, pushed the dog meat by to the side of my plate and ate veges for the rest of the dinner. Of course being calm on the outside didn’t mean I was calm on the inside. You see the big problem was I had dogs of my own. 3 of them in fact and one of them was a mean little bugger called Duke.
You know that belief that when you eat dog, another dog would know. Well believe me its true. I never told my parents about the dog eating incident when I came back (and I never did until only a couple of years ago) so they were non the wiser. It was a different story with my dogs though. The two more docile ones just shied away from me when I went to feed them, which wasn’t so bad. Duke on the other hand almost bit my fingers off when I tried to feed him. And for the next two weeks, I couldn’t go anywhere near the dogs without them either avoiding me or Duke trying to bite me. Ever since then, I’ve made sure to ask what meat is being served before tucking in. I’ve gone on to eat worst stuff like insects, bats and such but never again dog.
So let this be a lesson, if it taste like pork, it might be pork, but it also might not. So always ASK what is it you’re eating before tucking in.
It’s that time of the year again when PC Fair is running. I was just there yesterday and found myself stuck in a massive jam just trying to get into the KLCC area. I was pretty pissed when I found the KLCC parking chocked full and after doing some twists and turn, decided to park over at Mandarin Oriental, which made a big RM14 hole into my wallet (sob, sob). Anyway, I wasn’t really there to check out any deals and such, thought the Intel deal for Core 2 Duo PCs was pretty tempting. Thankfully I already have a Core 2 Duo based PC (perks of being a tech journo) and I didn’t even look twice. I was actually there to ahem, check out the promoters of PC Fair.
As most of you all who are frequent PC Fair yearly (all three of them), I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with the sight of skimpy and sexily dressed promoters in the various booths that pepper Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre. Ok, I’ll sound kinda of hypocritical if I said that it was a good example of the exploitation of women, since I kinda enjoyed some of the sights as well (yes if my girlfriend reads this I am a dead man). However, that is sometimes, one of the draws of PC Fair, the deals and the babes. And so there I was, covering the promoters of PC Fair III 2007. Considering that LYN the site I work for is populated mostly by raging, hot blooded males, it’s more than natural for me to go to PC Fair, not to cover the tech (since most of the forumers there would know the whole place inside out even before I reach the place) but the girls themselves.
Not let me tell you, I’m no photographer. In fact I suck at taking pictures. As such I brought in the assistance of a buddy of mine who so happened needed to head to PC Fair to settle some stuff to take pictures with me. As you can see from the pix we took, things didn’t turn out that great. If you want to see better pictures, I suggest you check out LYN forummer travis_cfk’s photos which were way better than mine and my friends. And if you’re wondering which of the girls I took, its the one with the Samsung Cop girls, which were pretty overexposed.
I’ve never been able to take any good pictures no matter how hard I try. It seems the only thing I’m (partially) good at is writing. If you’re looking to see better photography skills, you ought to take a look at what my sis can do. Her eye for artistic photography details easily beat me hands down. And she is able to do it without knowing all the technical aspects like exposure rate, ISO settings and such. Instead she takes photos on her gut feel and after some test shots. Me and a cousin of ours did try to give her a crash course on the more technical aspects of photography but all that info just shot past her, and she still managed to take good pictures. If you don’t believe how good my sis is, you could see for yourself the pictures she took on her online gallery here at deviantart (and for all you male readers, do not drool at my sis self potraits. I will hunt you down should you think dirty thoughts).
So on one hand you have a brother that can’t do photography for nuts and you have his sister who has an eye for stuff like that. Well at least I have my writing, oh wait she’s even catching up with me on that as well. “SIGH” some people have all the luck. Anyway… after this long rant, you now know I suck at photography and my sis rules. Well IT IS 5 am in the morning and I think I need to sleep so enjoy the (bad) pix I took as well as my sis’ photography gallery.
Yes my exams are over. Finally… hopefully I pass one of my papers though I’m sure i screwed up another. I’ve found this past 4 months that working and studying is really, really, really difficult. Just trying to think of studying and working at the same time gave me massive headaches. Ah… to only focus on a single tasks. Originally I thought, well how hard could it be. Well I found out how hard it was. On top of my work with LYN and my other freelance gigs, I really couldn’t cram things more into my brain. The worst part was shifting gears into study mode. It’s really hard when one minute you’re thinking of what to write for your next article or review and the next you’re trying to remember marketing terms and theory. It was a bit easier doing news pieces since those didn’t really require much thinking but when it came to reviewing stuff and trying to remember my marketing theory, well lets say sometimes I got certain acronyms mixed. OMG I hope I didn’t put in any IT acronyms into my exam.
Anyway things should go back to normal now. I can fully focus on my work over at LYN and even ramp up my reviews (which were honestly being left aside). Will be updating more often as well.
Unless you’ve been living in a hole, or have no interest in TV programs, you’d know that due to the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike over in the US, your beloved TV shows like Heroes, House etc… will be pretty much coming to a premature end soon. For most of the general populace here in Malaysia who watch their telly series the normal way (yes that is actually watching an actual Telly and not the PC monitor), this won’t really affect them much since we get our television series at least one season late. However, for those of us who so nicely get our Telly series online, we’d better be prepared for a dry spell.
As some of you may already know quite a bit of the Telly series over in the US have closed down production due to the strike as there are no scripts to film. My fave show Heroes was cut from 26 episodes to a mere 11 episodes for season which really suck as it seems the recent developments would have been much nicer should the whole series stretch to 26 episodes. However as much as I’d like to complain about greedy writers and such, I won’t for the very reason that I understand what some of those writers are going through. Hell I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t seeing that I’m a ‘struggling’ writer as well. So WGA good luck in getting those concessions you need, you have my support here. At least this ought to free up my time to do something more productive like blogging, reading and actually starting on my nascent novel.
However, if you just can’t stand to see your torrent client inactive, there’s still tons of other stuff for you to download. You shouldn’t just narrow your focus to just Telly series only. Search back and you’ll find tons of interesting shows that you can watch. The chief among them I’d like you all to at least consider are some documentaries ala informative shows. Before you roll your eyes and prepare sleep, just read on. I’m not talking about those documentaries about the animal kingdom and what nots (though I do find those entertaining as well) but stuff that border closer to reality shows but keep that teensy bit of a documentary streak in them.
A good example would be the show/documentary Mythbusters. Mythbusters is a series that follow two former special effects experts Adam and Jamie as they go around trying to prove or disprove general myths and legends like if a wooden cannon really existed or if you fill helium in a air raft, would it float. Most of the time I find this show entertaining because of the amount of fun the two guys go through in order to prove or disprove the myth, most usually ending in some sort of big explosion. Mythbuster is in its 82nd episode so you have a whole bunch of older ones to go through (downloading might be slow due to the age of some of the episodes). And in case you still need me to spoon feed you guys on other shows to get here is a list of them. (I’ve found some videos on Youtube that ought to give you a preview of some of the shows)
Mythbusters Preview:
Top Gear:
Some of you might already have this in your list of “to get” videos but if you don’t I highly recommend Top Gear. If you’re a petrol heads (read car crazy nutter) Top Gear is a must watch. One its hilarious, two they really know how to film cars, three Jeremy Clarkson is an idiot (but still hilarious) and four well its just plain hilarious need I say more.
Human Weapon:
This show is kind of new and showcases the various martial arts in the world. If you’re an action junky, Human Weapon is most likely going to float your boat. It has two guys with martial arts background traversing into various countries to discover and learn their martial arts and at the end of the show fight with an expert in that martial art. The shows interesting as it looks at the history of some of this martial arts as well as showcasing the technical aspects of the various moves. I wouldn’t say that you can learn them by watching them on the telly but it at least allows you to understand how they work. Hey even Malaysia is in the silat episode though I almost laughed when they gave a brief rundown on silat in our history (no insult to the martial arts but well you’d have to watch the show to understand).
Rise of the Video Game: This documentary is relatively new and to date only two episodes but its does take look at how every geeks favourite passtime rose from war to the money making power house that it is today. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any preview videos so you’ll have to take my word for it.
That’s just a few of the shows I’d recommend you watching if there are not television series to watch and Mythbusters alone might be enough to last you throughout the WGA strike. And if you’ve already watch them well, it just goes to show how much free time you have on your hands. If that’s the case, read a book get some fresh air, EXERCISE. I mean sitting in front of the screen watching telly shows isn’t exactly the healthiest thing to do. It’s one reason my gut is so big these days.
Arghhhhhh 3 more days and my exams start. Granted its only two papers but still I’m already starting to sweat bullets. Its been 4 years since I actually sat for an exam and its not helping that what I’ve been studying seems to go through my brain like a sieve. I wonder what made me take up studying again, and while I’m working too damnit. Hopefully the last three months of studying will pull through and I pass. If not, well more money will be spent again and I’ll have to redo the papers next years. Yeah and then I’ll be twice as stress since I’ll be doing four papers instead of 2 if I fail and repeat next year. Grrrr oh well back to studying.
No this is no post about the current political climate of out country though it kind of sums up the prevailing attitude (among others) of our “beloved” administrators. This is more about me. I see this becoming a trend. One post than another one… 2 months down the line, which pretty much sums up my attitude in general recently. Yes I haven’t changed much since my last post and all the promises I made to myself were never fulfilled. I wonder if I can ever get out of this rut I’ve place myself into. With work, study and money problems all rolled into one, coupled with my prevalent attitude, its a wonder I’m not out on the street begging for my keep.
I’m finding it hard to become the upright, responsible and hardworking person my parents have always envisioned me to be. Ironically enough, my parents are one of the most responsible and hardworking people you’d meet and yet moi, their only son, is the bum he is. I really have to stop this as my current attitude its self destructive. It’s not that I haven’t noticed it before but I really woke up to my current situation when a friend of mine was kind enough to give me a good nagging over my performance. Its one thing to notice things yourself but when other people start noticing it to, well lets just say its high time to make a change.
So yes, I’m making new promises, to do lists etc… and I hope I keep to it… for good this time.
In Nigel's Brain 