1. Spend more time with my son
2. Refine my photography workflow to include social media & blogging
3. Sign up and train at a gym twice a week
4. Bangkok International Motorshow in March
5. Visit Fujian again in December for the World Liang Conference

Limiting my goals to 5 for now will be sufficient. If the Mayans are wrong, I do hope that I’ll focus more time on things that are important to me.

Happy New Year,
SH Neoh

1. Getting 20 wedding coverage this year

Comment: I’ve managed to covered 10 paid weddings and 5 events. Much of are not bloged about yet


2. Master multi DUT testing on the new testing platform

Comment: Done 4 & 8 DUT testing in Advantest & Teradyne testers.

3. To have a baby, finally!!!

Comment: Isn’t baby Wu cute?


4. Beat Irene in CityVille, a Facebook game that hits 2M active players in 20 days.

Comment: A game that I still playing since I won her. I’m already at Lvl 100 to date


5. Visiting Tokyo again

Comment: Changed to a US company expecting can fly to US. Wait long long

6. Launching of iPad2

Comment: Launched, but I bought a Samsung Galaxy S2 instead.


7. Getting a 2nd camera (most probably the new D700s)

Comment: Nikon slows down it’s R&D due to the Japan & Thailand double disaster.


8. Sepang GT in July

Comment: Clash with my work. But managed to bring Irene to Taiwan instead.


9. Malaysian General Election

Comment: There’s BERSIH 2.0 rally, so it’s not totally a dissapointing year


10. Bonus

Comment: Quite a good sum…althought didn’t get 2 months like previous company, I still get 1/2 the amount.

Summary:
Getting 6/10 is not a bad score. Considering I’ve replaced those expectations with something else. Let’s have a better 2012 ahead.

During this period, I’ve a baby boy (finally a father, yeah!) And need to juggle my social activities and my photography passion.

It’s getting to this point I feel like I need to let go n focus on the things that are important in life.

Wouldn’t it be good that I can give life a hard reboot?

Woolloomooloo is the first Australian Cuisine restaurant in Penang. What are the specialties of Australian Cuisine, personally I have no idea.

When we reached the entrance of the restaurant, we were greeted by a friendly staff that opened the door for us. As we were seated, the staff handed us the menu while we took the opportunity to check with him whether the promotion is valid for today. It’s a laminated A4 size menu with the food on 1 side and the drinks at the back. I was rather impressed with how the menu is structured which does not overload customers with too many options. The price for the main course is between RM20-RM40 which is about the range of restaurant prices, while the drinks are priced between RM5-RM10, which to me is slightly on the expensive side.

We checked with the staff on how we can entitle for the buy 1 free 1 promotion. Politely he explained to us that we can order any choices from the main course and will entitle for 1 of the 3 meals in the promotion: Polenta Fried Chicken, Woolloomooloo Beef Burger, Classic Fish & Chip. We can sign up for a free membership card which will have 10% discount on food and beverages during non-promotion period.

After looking through the menu, I’ve decided to order Smoked Salmon Linguine and have the free Fish and Chips. Because of the price of the drinks, we decided to order 1 drink instead of 2. So I’ve ordered a Chocolate Milkshake. I usually like to order soup whenever I go for a western restaurant because sometimes, food takes quite a while to be served. After some hesitation, as the price of the soup stated in the menu RM9, I’ve decided to order 1. What surprises me right then was the staff told us that the soup is FREE. We can use the coupon which will entitle a free soup without any minimum order required. Basically, anyone can walk in to the restaurant to order a bowl of soup without even need to pay a single cent to walk out from there.

In less than 10 minutes, while I was filling up the membership form, the drink was served. I was expecting the milkshake to be served in a normal glass until I was surprised by the tower size glass top with whipping crème. So I was wrong, the drinks are value for the price. At RM8.50, the chocolate milkshake is one of the best that I’ve tasted so far. Every sip of it, you can really taste the thick chocolate and milk evenly. Thumbs up for the drinks! As we only ordered 1 drink, they served us a glass of refillable warm water too.

While waiting for the food to be served, I was admiring the design and ambience of the restaurant. Nice, bright and cosy. The ambience is just nice for dining and the place also has wifi and power plug at the wall which is rather convenient for people to bring their laptop to online from there. In less than 5 minutes, they served us the soup. This is authentic mushroom soup. We can get every bite of the mushroom as well as the scallop. Again, another thumbs up for the soup.

In another 10 minutes, the main course was served. It was very much faster than we have expected. The moment the dishes are placed on our table, hubby commented that my linguine smells very delicious. The portion was just nice. I can see the thick parmesan cheese powder on top of the pasta. Creamy and delicious. Yummy! And the best was I can see slices of smoked salmon lying on top of the pasta. I’ve never seen such big slices of smoked salmon on any pasta before. I’ve order smoked salmon pasta before on other restaurant and usually they only come with 5 thin pieces of the fish.

Hubby’s fish and chips are not bad too. They managed the oil well without seeing too much oil on the fried fish. And the portion was just nice as well and it won’t make you overeating. Overall, there’s nothing to complain on the food as well. I’ll definitely come back and try other dishes.

We were more than satisfied with the service and food of the restaurant so far. The best part of the dinner was when hubby paid the bill. To our disbelief, this is the bill of our dinner tonight:

Next thing came to my mind, how could this restaurant survives??!!!

I really recommend you to try out this restaurant that has actually made my day. I’m giving the rating:
Service: 4.5/5
Food: 4.5/5
Ambience: 4/5
Price: 4.5/5 (It’s really value for money although the price is slightly high)

Address:
21G Persiaran Bayan Indah Bayan Bay, 11900 Penang, Malaysia.

Opening Hours:
Tue – Fri: 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
                6:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Sat – Sun: 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
                6:00 pm – 3:00 pm

You can find them on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Woolloomooloo-Queensbay

While I was doing housekeeping on my main operation drives, I found that it’s almost filled up 100%!!! After deleting a lot of my documents/RAW files, it’s still running at 90%, and then I found this.

Check out my debut video tutorial I’ve done with Debut. (pun intended)

1. PLAYBACK MENU

Display mode – focus point (basic) & highlights (detailed)
While shooting group shot, I’ll check if the subjects are being focused. During intervals, I’ll try to preview if the shots are blown/clipped.

2. SHOOTING MENU

Image quality (RAW) – Compressed 14 bit
Shooting 70% weddings and 30% events, I’m ought to move from JPEG to RAW. Using compressed 14-bit allows me to retrieve 2EV from the white gowns and not to over consume memory space.
Set Picture Control – D2X Mode II (Nikon Asia)
This optional Picture Control is suited to images that will be extensively processed or retouched.
Active D-Lighting – Normal
D-Lighting is another “mild” way of compressing the dynamic range without making my photos look HDR-ish.
Change file naming from DSC to NSH
Some of you may change it in Lightroom during import, but I prefer to do it on shoot.

3. SETUP MENU

LCD Brightness (-1)
USB (MSC) – prefered in forum, faster and less problematic
Copyright information (ON)

4. CUSTOM SETTING MENU

a19 AF-ON for MB-D10 (AE/AF lock)
I think the AF-ON is my least use button on the camera. By customizing it to be AE/AF lock, it’ll allow me to lock exposure values on the vertical grip.
b1 ISO sensitivity step value (1EV)
I don’t understand why cameras have sub-ISO. I prefer to jump in 1EV steps, and fine tune using my Aperture/Shutter.
b4 Easy exposure compensation (RESET)
How many times have you dial down your exposure indoors, and when you’re out in the gardens the following day, all your images turns out dark? This is something new I learn while writing this article. This setting RESETs the camera to 0EV compensation.
d1 Beep (OFF)
I focus with my eyes, not my ears. So…off it is
d2 Viewfinder grid display (ON)
Rules of thirds anyone? Yay…I’ll be able to make sure the buildings are straight with the grids.
f1 Multi selector center button – Playback mode – Zoom on/off – (Medium magnification)
To zoom in the photos during preview is usually a hassle with the magnifier butter. By using this, I’ll be able to zoom to 50% to check on focus/sharpness.
f4 Assign FUNC. button – FUNC. button press (AE/AF lock)
Yup, I lock both the AE/AF together. I can’t do without either.
f9 No memory card? -(LOCK)
Naah. I will not go on shooting all day and came home remembering I forgot my memory card.

5. SETUP “MY MENU”

c3 – Self-timer delay (10s)
e3 – Flash cntrl for built-in flash (TTL)
b4 – Easy exposure compensation (RESET)
You would have a different set of custom settings in this folder. These are a few items that I access quite frequent, and I don’t want to fiddle with the menus too deep to get it done.

These are the settings that I’ve been picking up while on the field. Well I hope you liked my custom settings, and go and give it a try.

Signing off,
Neoh Soon Hueng
Your passionate photographer

Let me start by stating I do not hate the fact that digital photography has made nearly limitless photo taking possible. There are many positive aspect of digital photography, as compared to film photography, not the least of which is the ability to quickly see results and thus learn from our own mistakes while experimenting with the medium.

What I want to warn new and old photographers about today is the pitfalls that come with seemingly cheap, nearly limitless storage that digital photography affords. What is often looked at as a boon for the medium has a downside not often discussed or appreciated.

To read more…visit [Digital Photography School]

Syncing your Facebook Events with your Google Calendar. It is an easy process that will take ten minutes tops. Here is the step by step process:

First: Go to your Facebook account and click Events in the left pane. Scroll all the way to the bottom and you’ll see three links: Past Events, Birthdays and Export.

Next: I’m going to show Birthdays only, but if you want all events, just click Export and skip this step. Click Birthdays. Scroll all the way to the bottom again and click Export Birthdays. A link will pop up.

Finally Copy the link and go into your Google Calendar. In Other Calendars in the bottom left, select Add, then Add by URL. Paste the link you copied into the box.

Voila! You’re all set. The Calendar will appear in your Other Calendars as Friends’ Birthdays. If you are on your Android device and go into your Calendar application -> Settings -> Calendars, it should be listed. If the box is ticked, then that means it’s syncing to your Android device. Now you won’t have to worry about visiting Facebook when you’re worried about missing someone’s birthday you may have forgotten.