My god, I feel like I’m 70 years old now with a crooked back. Going to see a physiotherapy this arvo. Hope he’ll somehow ease up the muscle cramps/tensions so I can drive safely home and get myself a good night’s sleep.

Some of many reasons to do so:

• I can save up my annual leave for something else better since going out for holidays during these crazy peak seasons ain’t worth it.
• I can concentrate on my work without a hint of disturbance/ distraction from my fellow colleagues. Well if I’m really that good, I wouldn’t be blogging right now -___-”
• I own the office for a short time!
• I can blast my music loud and whenever I want.
• I can practically stripped naked and do silly walks in the office without anyone seeing me.

Okay, the last reason is just a figure of speech. Not that I actually did it.

Enough time wasted to think what to write next. Back to work.

Post production for the photos are edited in Adobe Photoshop CS4 under video mode. I didn’t have Adobe Premiere but the Photoshop CS4 seems to support timelapse and able to perform simple video editing. Final product is rendered with VirtualDub with Xvid compression. Motion blur is added post production. I have yet to full grasp the concepts to perform the perfect motion blur. Let’s hope I can make it happen on the next timelapse photoshoot

1. I used my Samsung Galaxy S2 camera and took a 360 degrees of snapshots of my office.
2. Stitch them together with Photoshop using Photomerge automation.
3. Created a Quicktime VR video with Pano2QTVR

This is also my first time mucking around with panning a timelapse shot. It was awful; my timing is so off and my cheapo tripod is clunky hence the not-so-smooth panning.

FPS gamer + photography + tiring day = pyscho mode

…because I get to eat the cooked food and keep the rest! Muahaha

Well, at the same I learnt some cooking skills (and secrets!) from the chefs

Learning from those bitter experiences, I’ve grown up. I’ve learned to uphold the good old saying, “If you want to do it, do it yourself” and have decided to invest my time, my finance and my own effort to get things done (of course I have to watch out my budget and monetary constraints unless trading dirt and old clothes are expensive commodity out there now). I’ll pay and I’ve paid my own training and equipment. That’s that!

So how does it feel? Satisfied, yes. A dent in my pocket, definitely a yes but it was worth it. Knowledge is priceless and they can’t take it away from you, unlike a company mobile phone; it’s not like I’m entitled to one anyways. ; )

One of many frustrations we IT professionals have to face is miscommunication or misinformation. The outcome has a ripple effect; small insignificant misiplaced information will tend to produce a big crack in the project. It gets worse if the crack starts from the begining of the project life cycle. And yours truly have the honour to experience such eventful moments once too often. There’s this scenario with a recent project I was dealing with may not sound like a huge project that cost a lot of money but nevertheless, time was wasted.

It goes like this. According to the manager after a meeting with the sales team, they wanted a button (manager’s favourite term for anything that is clickable which sends you off to somewhere) that is attached to marketing emails which allow potential clients to download it onto the desktop like an application icon. Double clicking it will then trigger a web browser and navigate itself to a specific CMS website. The manager stated specifically, the button must have the company’s logo in it. In an IT nutshell, it’s a URL shortcut with a customised icon.

Sounds pretty simple enough huh, except a few critical areas he’s not aware of. As email technology advances, a lot of unfavourable things catch up as well. Virus, trojans, spam, you name it are used to attack users via emails. Attaching a URL shortcut is one of them. Antivirus/Spyware/Malware/Spam filters are very edgy and alert on these attachments and very likely they will be filtered as spam or blocked. Next bright idea (and also unfavourable) is attaching an executable file. That will definitely sound the alarm louder. Another problem is different OSes the clients are using. In the manager’s ideal world, M$ Windows is assumed the OS clients engaged with (loved it when a debate ensures with a ‘What’s the percentage of insert-operating-system-here that our clients are using?). Okay, let’s ‘assume’ every client is a Windows freak, what’s a quick workaround solution? Zipped it up, he said and pray the anti-virus will not find it.

Personally, I do not agree to such attachments (regardless a zipped or non-zipped executables/URL shortcut) but then again, I’m just a small voice in the organisation that only listens to themselves. A better solution was suggested: Tell the clients to bookmark the URL site, for goodness sake. It’s not rocket science to teach but it’s possible. It’s better than opening an email, download the attachment, unzip the executable file/URL shortcut onto the desktop and doubleclick the file. Simple keyboard shortcuts vs dozen steps instructions. Geez.

Having discover that I was totally against the idea of such attachments, the idea was apparently put off and quietly delegated to another person without my knowledge. Note: This incident happened within the period of two weeks. The graphic designer was assigned to this (I don’t know why) and the bitter cycle of trying out customised icons with an executable file via emails happens again. I caught the wind of it when the dude was trying to test it out by sending the attachment to my email via a zipped file!

During one lunch hour, a sales team personnel joined us and from the casual chitchat, we popped the question of the little project the manager brought up. That 2 minutes conversation cleared up a lot of things and it was a totally ‘OMFGWTF’ moment. What the sales team wanted is not an application/URL shortcut/executable file with a customised icon to be downloaded from emails onto the desktop. What the sales team really wanted is a GIF or JPEG of a web banner with a company logo in it so they can send these images to partner clients to use, say embedding the banner as a weblink in their website.

I’m not pinning blame to anyone (though subtlely I do lean against the management), but the point of this scenario is we could have save the time and effort if the needs of the person who requested it, is properly verified and confirmed. Man, epic fail.

I am ”pleased” that iPhone4 has arrived for the “devoted” and “deserving” staff members in the office. With it, we shall have plenty of business/sales coming in and make tons of money. Behold, the powerful aura of Apple products!

Sigh…

As the official photographer for the company, I am obliged tol answer any requests from the higher ups, should it be inhouse or offsite jobs. Today marks the last offsite video and photoshoot for this year and today it is my third visit at Holmesglen TAFE. Our subject is the process of making pastries. What sort of pastry, I do not know; me ain’t privy to such information. All I need to do is to show up and shoot on the fly.

Now I’m waiting for the rest of the crew and the chef himself to arrive. Guess I’m a little too early.

Mr X work from home until 1pm then on A/L time rest of day

Sounds like a full day annual leave to me.

One day, we jokingly muttered, “Boy, it is so easy (and cheap) to murder him. All we need to do is to buy a pizza and shove a slice down into his throat”.

Okay. It is a lame joke but I really wanted to blog this.

You’ll see him strolling happily into our department, greets us, invades to my teammate’s table and grabs a piece of tissue. He’ll blow his nose with a loud “pfffft” and walks away. Sometimes you may hear a “thank you” echoed in the corridor.

I had myself a nice lamb rump and at the end of the lunch, the big boss said if the power was still out, we could call it the day. Excitingly we headed back to office and when we were about to get into our respective cars…*pop* the power came back on! 

We were so close! If we’d cut our chat 5 minutes short and left, we could’ve escaped from the claws of the big boss.

Alas, back to work, yer dweebs.

In the office we have a car stacker that holds two cars on each platform and we, at times share the same level. The car stacker is a little space constrained, therefore when two cars are parked side by side, we barely have enough room to move in/out of the platform hence the office made a rule that one of us has to park facing in while the other facing out. I am the former and I always make sure there is some space left on the driver side so that the other occupier is able to get out as well.

This morning, this Fatass found the opportunity to inform tell order me to park my car closer to the corner of the platform next time and the tone wasn’t that friendly. And ohhh, that confrontation ended with a very cold “Thank you….”.

From that conversation I presumed either she was:

Speculation A: showing off her big, wide new Toyota that invades more space than my puny second hand.
Speculation B: having trouble to reverse her car in (à la poor parking skills)
Speculation C: can’t get her uber fat backside out of the car.

My take? I’m for C.

And behold, today is Monday morning and everyone is at work by 8.30am! Surprise surprise.

Like the saying goes, “When the cat is away, the mice will come out to play”

Today I feel a little miserable. When misery comes, it is time to fantasize.