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Proud to be a child of God, a faithful son (I hope lol) a trying to be hardworking student, a part-time worker, a nerf/milsim enthusiast, a crafting and music lover and an awesome friend. to you :) Hope you have an enjoyable time reading about my life, as much as I have fun living it! |
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I am a university student who loves chocolate! Coffee is my best buddy when it comes to taking on my finals. I have a tendency to want to try and do so many different things at once and as a result, I've found my hobbies to be as such!
Nerfing is one of them, but aside from that, I also love arts and craft. I have my own startup, Thumbforlego at: where I sell my works! 
I love to do all sorts of crafting, so you will see me uploading posts of my leathercrafts, thumbdrives, replica guns, nerf gun modifications and gundam models! I'm fortunate enough to be blessed by really supportive parents and given the chance to explore many, many parts of the world and try out a plethora of activities. This is also how I discovered my love for film photography, videography and piano. 
The film photo above is unedited! My family loves cold countries xD. We managed to catch the northern lights twice! 
I've also gotten the chance to experience many of nature's wonders 
And my most freezing experience to date: riding a husky ski sled into the sunset (It was -38 to -40 degrees celsius and the huskies were pretty fast.) 
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Why 36000feetabove? This is the altitude that commercial planes cruise at and I have always loved the view up in the sky, being amongst the sea of clouds. :) Personally, my favourite favourite food has got to be airplane buns! Does anyone else feel the same way?! With a slice of butter and looking out of the window, I have yet to find an experience that can beat that. 
After tomorrow, before today
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Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Hi! I've moved over to https://36000feetabove.blog/ :)
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
The last time I blogged was just about 2 months ago. I'd like to say that I got "caught up with life" but I learned this thing whereby there's not really such thing as procrastination in life, but rather how important something is to you and how badly you want it. And so, based on that revelation that I got, it means that blogging took a backseat in my life. I first started blogging because I wanted to let others know what happened in my life and my thoughts. That's pretty much like vlogging now. Then a bulk of it was about "tutorials" on these crafts that I embark on and the biggest portion of reasoning was just that I wanted to instil this spirit of thanksgiving in me. I wanted to find something interesting in the week and thank God for it, but I got preoccupied with doing my own thing that I forgot to give thanks.So restarting this super cranky blogging/writing engine of mine, I'm pretty sure my writing wouldn't be as oiled up and warmed up, but here goes! On a kinda related sidenote, PSA: please do not rev your car engine during cold starts. You'll spoil the engine. I've seen way too many Singaporeans drive off the moment they start their car. Easter weekend just passed and I missed 2 church sundays in a row! Which isn't a good thing, although the saving grace is that I went for saturday service instead. Reason being I went for a photoventure! I went to photograph places in Singapore that may not be around in the next 50 years. Which I am very sure of and saddened. I got lucky enough to take photos of the Mountbatten housing blocks which are already demolished and also lucky enough to have met such a great bunch of people taking photos together! 
Credits to Charles Yee
 Got to go out and shoot more photos! As it is great practice and it challenges you to always try new angles and how to tell a story! I think that given the immense amount of new content there is on social media today, we become lazy partakers of information and stop thinking. "What is the significance of this photo?" "How is the composition of the photo?" These two questions IMO are yearning for more recognition today. Previous week, I went to the Jurong Fishery Port where stupid me bringing ISO200 film, was really pushing the film to capture these images and luckily, I brought my digital along too! It was quite an eye-opener, to see a different side of Singapore, a side that is untouched and soon to be pushed into a renovation. JFP has been left untouched ever since it was built so being armed with two cameras and my not-so-trusty Havaianas slippers, I stood out of the way of the men at work and captured these images.    as for the ISO200 film, I was greatly rewarded with these!   
was really hoping this would turn out, with the swirl bokeh but nope. :( more practice! Was hoping for something like the photo below. Both were taken with the same roll of film!
 I felt that the Jurong Fishery Port trip to be really fruitful in capturing the lives of the people there! It was a great learning experience and they are of such great sports as long as you do not get in the way of them working. Which is the right thing to do as we should not actually hinder the process there. I was really hoping that I would get better, more familiar in using the Helios 50mm but I currently seem to be going nowhere?! I still do not know how I get the swirls. I know it is the ratio of the distance of the subject and the background to the camera but I just don't seem to be able to really see the swirl that clearly when photographing?? Not to mention every setting has a different ratio. I really have no idea how people do it, but just gotta practice! I'll blog about my photography experience last sunday on another occasion! Will find the time to do so. Man, I am so so glad to have found such great friends to go out and take photos with! Monday, February 06, 2017
It's been the longest time since I've been toying with this idea of doing this to my car: crystals on the roof. and so far, it looks pretty good I would say! This blog has quite a lot of craft works here and there and to add on a new section, it would be crystals on a car roof! It's definitely a first for me, hence the long deliberation but I felt that certain sense of satisfaction when I stamped the hot steam iron onto the roof. It is meant to simulate the stars in the sky and even though in the day it sparkles not as much as when it is on your clothes, it still looks good and may be a tad distracting. Having said that, I've driven with it for some time and personally do not find it distracting. In the night however, the roof really blends in nicely with the night sky and it really gives it that starry sky look that I am trying to achieve. After all my effort thus far, it boils down to the last part, which is the ironing on of the Swarovski crystals. Yup, all of them are Swarovski crystals! Partly because I like the shine of them and have been using them on separate occasions which great success. Currently working off my memory on which crystals I used, and can only recall the sizes, which are sizes 6, 10 and 12. I shall walk you through all the steps of my crafting adventure (craftventure?) and tell you my impressions of it thus far! Note though, that it is still incomplete. Need to buy more crystals!
THE BUILD.
Here is how my "workstation" looks like. I've been dying to get a proper workbench in the study room but have yet to go about doing so. Currently, my workbench is also filled with plastic bits from the many lego keychain thumbdrives that I've been making over the week. Yknow how there is always this semi-organized mess when you do art and crafts, then you clear it at the end of the project because #productivity. Unless OCD strikes you in that way. I am perpetually doing craftwork so the mess will be long lived. I have a pair of tweezers to use just to pick up troublesome crystals. If not 90% of the time I am working with my trusty fingers. I have an image of the milky way to have a sense of direction on how I want my crystals to go. eg. some parts have more whites and some parts with blacker crystals. etc. Although honestly, after they all go on the roof, you can't really tell the spatial differences but you can tell the difference in tones of white, therefore giving it some depth. I have the crystals grouped together so as to keep things simple. The white mat you see is just a transfer sheet on top of my more portable cutting mat.
You place the crystals where you want, not the mirror image, and lay them out nicely on the transfer sheet after peeling off the sticky layer. Therefore, you are working on the layer which isn't sticky. In this case, I measured that I would need approximately 6 transfer papers to cover the small roof of my car. The paper is about a4 size. Since you can always reuse the sticky paper, I figured that I only required 6 รท 4 = 1.5When you are ready, just place the sticky portion right back on top and press evenly throughout to make sure all the crystals stick to it! After which, carefully transfer the crystals to a flat board, like my cutting mat to transfer them to the car to be ready to be stuck to the roof.
Introduction to the crystals! Or rather, a really brief one, has me using 3 different sizes of crystals, as mentioned; 6, 10, 12. 10 and 12 are used as the "main" crystals to bring out that starry sky, whereas 6 is meant to give that little tinch of colour and variation to the whole piece. I do have two different colours of white and smoke as the main crystals and a light pink (i will get the proper colour notations at a later date) as the highlights. I
 So here is a quick pic of how the crystals look on the transfer paper. I stuck it to the roof of my car with masking tape which wasn't so much of a good idea as that left the roof with sticky marks after using the iron. Apparently when I use the heated iron to activate the glue on the backings of the crystals, I ended up activating those on the masking tape too and hence the glue transferred on the roof. No worries! As repeatedly sticking a masking tape to take off the sticky portion saved the day. Pretty much like how you remove those sticky marks on other surfaces. The roof also has this bulge in the middle, hence when taken from that angle, it makes it look like the crystals are really clustered in the lower middle portion when it actually isn't the case. I started off with a milky way picture and I ended up with this. Even though it looks nothing like the milky way pic (LOL) I am still pretty pleased with my first and daring try of sticking crystals to the roof! Also, I realized that if you hot press it down for a long period of time, at the start, the transfer paper begins to wrinkle and shrink a bit. The surface also becomes very hot to touch, but by applying pressure and holding it there, you let the crystal really sit nicely into the fabric of the roof thus allowing it to bond nicely to the surface. I would say that a lot of force is required, which gets the arms in a good workout as just a bit less of force used, and I noticed that the crystals did not adhere as well and some began to fall off. Nevertheless, you can always go back with a second round to try letting the crystals stick on the roof. One way of telling whether or not the crystals have stuck on, is first noticing whether they have left the really crimped transfer sheet. Then, the second step would be to use the hot iron on the crystals itself and press it down firmly so that it sits really nicely. As skipping the second step might lead you to having falling off crystals as the glue has yet to bond or worse, since the crystals can get very hot under the iron, they do feel a bit like fireballs falling out from the sky when they hit your skin. Not like I've seen fireballs in the sky. 
Overall, I am really pleased with the result thus far! More pleased than my A level results. And doing this so far really pushed my confidence level up, wanting to do more in the future! The next step would be to set aside time and money to buy the remaining crystals, new transfer paper and finish up the roof. Afterwhich, I am expecting it to look a whole lot better as it would be more encompassing with the entire roof covered instead of just the middle portion! Like when something is covered end to end, it tends to look more grand that having it done with an empty border around.
TO BE CONTINUED! Friday, January 27, 2017
Singapore Motorshow jsut passed about a week or two ago and it was my first time ever going in! Despite being always so close to the event, i just never went inside before and it was so different from what I would have expected. I expected it to be much more packed, abit like how the IT fair is like, but it turned out to be more like this!
Wow now the photo looks so much darker than when i was editing. I realized that well maybe those crystal clear sharp images would look better for car photos....?
I think the crispy sharp image looks better than trying to achieve that "film look" like what i do in my usual photos.
Surely I am used to taking scenery and people, portraits, so when I pressed the shutter button pointing at a car....it just felt kinda weird! Unsure is probably a more apt word to use here. When taking sceneries and portraits, I will have an idea as to how to take the photo. Which comprises of the composition of the photo; what i want inside the photo, and the angle of the shot to make things look more attractive, or to play out some leading lines, etc.
Suddenly when I point the camera at the car the first thought that shoots to the head is
"what angle to take it from?"
then a few thoughts follow
"Do I focus on the car or the girl?"
"From which angle do I take the car from?"
And after an evening of snapping only a couple of photographs while spending most of the time molesting the cars, I still am not confident on taking photographs of cars!
It's like no matter how you take photo of it, they kind of still look the same to me. And whether to take the back of the car, or straight up front, or from a certain angle... In the following two photographs, you can see how i tried to photograph the girl but miss out the car, but when I include the girl AND the car, the shot seems so far away?! So maybe we are supposed to pick either and just focus on that? The below photos also show the difference between having a crystal clear image and one that has more of that film characteristic to it! You pick your favourite.
 
Still prefer the crystal clear photos! Like something just seems "off" about the photo. Maybe it's because everything in the car show is meant to be nice and shiny and perfect and dulling it just kills off the look? After pondering about car photography over the week, on one of the occasions of friend meetups, I was quite disappointed that I couldn't really get the shots in the motorshow and hence decided to try it out on my car. Below, I tried one more film look shot with my car, what ya think!
 I think this "film" shot works out because of the single lighting and the background. Also, while editing the photos, I scared my mum into thinking I just repainted my car! I sent her this image below and she got a scare :P Many people believed it too! Hehehe. Jokes aside, I think that the orange actually looks pretty good on the car?? It has that certain liveliness to it! It feels brighter.  I think that car photography is interesting! Which angle really pulls out that look of the car. Whether to make it look menacing like a Lamborghini Aventador or a more fun/cute car like the Daihatsu Copen. It's a different style of photography definitely. As compared to architecture or scenery or portraits. So it's a new thing to learn!! One thing I do know is that there's always supercars parking at Millenia walk outdoor carpark, so that is a popular spot for car photographers in Singapore. I really really wish the government can remove those bans on car modifications and then we can really see the car modification scene bloom! It'll be so interesting to see, just like how you have car meetups in japan! Added some videos as to how the scene is like for car modification overseas! First one is in Japan, the second one is SEMA in America! Sunday, January 22, 2017
So today I shall review the Everyday Backpack while reeling in from the insomnia I am currently facing. Well, a backpack with such a title would have large shoes to fill. First off, the Everyday Backpack started off on Kickstarter, and that was where it caught my eye! It is thoughtfully designed by Peak Designs, who pride themselves in creating quality camera accessories. So this would give a comfortable reason to believe that this bag was created primarily for camera gear. However, the modularity of the compartments in the bag and the thoughtfulness of the design of the bag such as the external straps to fasten down a bulky item like a drone, or in my case, a steadicam, as well as the dedicated laptop compartment makes this bag a joy for me to use on a daily basis. I've been using so many bags now and my go to bags are usually bags from Hazard 4, a tactical brand that builds extremely hardy bags. These expensive, good quality bags feature molle webbings at the front and sides (those straps you see sewn onto military bags), that gives me the modularity that I am looking for, thereby adding pouches according to wherever I deem would greatly simplify my commute or photo takings. it was basically my everyday, anything and everything go to bag. Hence, I was satisfied with the Hazard 4 bag. Therefore it was really difficult for the everyday backpack to prove itself that it would be a loving companion for my item storage. So what does the Everyday Backpack have to compete against for attention? The Hazard 4 bag... 1. is extremely hardy (i mistreat my bags), 2. holds a lot A LOT of items while having side straps to compact the bag, 3. has a dedicated laptop sleeve that fits my 15" Macbook, 4. provides endless ways for me to mount what I need on the bag because of the molle system, 5. even has a waterbag compartment, 5.5 straps to tie down the drinking tube that makes it super useful when hiking 6. standard side straps for greater stability when hiking 7. hard case for spectacles/sunglasses/shades/anything fragile (my heart) 8. huge capacity, so much so that I can even fit my sport shoes inside with my gym attire. +socks. 9. yes that is a number lock you see on the right. 10. Added hooks so that i can hang anything extra on the sides.   I have no proper digital/film photos of the Hazard 4 bag as it is stuck to the back of me most of the time. The moment I received the bag, I flew to Norway and had ALL my camera inside the bag, or strapped to my bag. Which in my opinion was really impressive! Everything was so easily organized into the well thought-out pouches that they designed and i was thoroughly impressed! Taking reference from Razer's "By gamers, for gamers" tagline, I would be so so pleased to say that this bag was created for photographers, by photographers. The first thing that impressed me right out of the nice shipping packaging was the build quality of the metal buckle. Really hardy and sturdy, more that what i have expected while watching the online live video that they had with the Kickstarter backers to familiarize ourselves with their creation and to offer any feedback too. To simply matters and prevent subpar product photos of the everyday backpack from my smartphone, here is a video that fills you in on the many features of the bag! I do film photography on a pretty often basis and blow up my wallet over that, however because I do digital photos too and have a 15" macbook to carry around, it can become very cumbersome, especially to find a bag that can suit the bizarre needs of such. There is always this thing that I always need to bring out my Sony A7ii, Pentax camera for coloured film shots and the Ricoh GR1 for B&W street photos. Sometimes at the end of the day, the cameras don't even see the harsh sunlight. I'd like to show you how I categorized all my items in the bag and list out the items that was inside my daily carry. For the record, I am back in Singapore and still using the bag on a normal basis and bought the 20L backpack. What bought me over, was the modularity of the compartments which I often use and the large laptop compartment that comfortably hugs my 15" Macbook. Who doesn't like hugs?! Photos below taken with my Samsung S7 edge at the airport. First off, the right side of the bag.  The left pouches inside are made of a really soft fabric and the mouths of the opening lined with an elastic band which helps tremendously. Also, there is an external layer of fabric covering everything for some added protection! That way, also, when you insert things in from the top of the bag, they would not get caught up with the items there. Which can get messy if cables start getting caught and tangled amongst your things. The top pockets are filled with 1 extra Sony battery, 1 roll of film and a 9v battery for the rode mic. The below compartments are filled with another 3 sony batteries and a pen and marker just in case. As you can already see inside the bag, there is a medium sized tripod separated easily by the foldable modular separators that they gave. On to the right side!  Here, the highest pocket holds my usb c dongles because well idk what was Apple thinking when they came out with the new Macbook and take away the SD card slot and then not provide/sell a dongle for it when it's the lifeline of any photographer. And well isn't the Macbook optimized for media people? The other pocket with the black cable holds the GoPro charging cord and my earpiece for editing videos in public. And lastly a portable WD 2TB hard drive to store the extremely big video and photo raw files churned out by the Sony.  For the main section of the bag, lets start from the top! You can see a yellow bag that holds the Macbook charger, Samsung charger and more usb chargers for the GoPro and portable battery. Still has loads of space for more. Impressive. The middle section holds the portable charger whether for phone or gopro, a GoPro Hero 5 Black, a Lume Cube for lighting and a cold shoe adapter to mount all of them to my Sony if need be. (not a bright idea. pun unintended). On the bottom most section, it holds my Pentax Spotmatic film camera with a Custom SLR air strap attached to it. I must mention that it is a snug squeeze with the strap on. For the portable charger, i am using a XiaoMi one, although I highly recommend an Anker brand as only theirs matches the discharge rate of a GoPro. Meaning, while charging and recording, your GoPro does not lose battery life.  Using the 2016 Macbook Pro and it fits very very comfortably inside the laptop sleeve as shown above. Although sometimes it gets caught on the smaller pocket, as shown in the next photograph. No biggie. As stated by the video, you can fill up the entire bag and slot in the laptop and it will still fit. Whereas some bags i've tried has your laptop latching on to the contents of your bag. 
There is a small pocket for you to keep your valuables and still have easy access to them, without having to worry about misplacing your belongings or having too many things to hold in your hand. Over here, I kept a box of SD cards so that I can swap easily if need be and a pack of poker cards to keep the sociable part of me satisfied.
So therefore, all the items in the bag would include:
1. 15"Macbook Pro
2. Hard case for SD cards
3. A deck of poker cards
4. Medium sized tripod
5. Macbook charger
6. Phone charger
7. USB head charger
8. Travel adaptors for electrical plugs
10. Lume Cube
12. Pentax Spotmatic
13. 3x extra Sony batteries
14. 1 roll of coloured film as backup
15. Pair of marker and pen
16. 9v battery for the Rode mic.
17. 2 usb c dongles
18. Gopro charging cable
19. Glow headphones
20. Western Digital 2TB Hard Disk (Formatted for Mac)
Twenty items! All inside that one bag. and the occasional steadicam strapped for carrying when i am not using it. Is it overkill, yes it is but that's how I've always done it this way. TEAM OVERKILL!!! Jon Olsson quote. Surely, back in Singapore, I am carry much lesser stuff and more suited based on my day-to-day usage but it is still pretty similar. Throw out the chargers and I can nest the Sony A7ii nicely in the top section so as to free up my hands if need be.
On top of the crazy amount of stuff you can put into the bag, it also has a water resistant surface hence you would not see me scurrying for shelter when there is a storm as I would have with the Hazard 4 bag. I have yet to abuse the bag hence I cannot comment much on the durability. However gut feeling tells me the Hazard 4 bag will win the durability seat in parliament.
Modularity wise... I would say that they are pretty on par with one another in a sense that they have different strong/weak points. It's just a balance thing. Like a zero sum game. The Everyday Backpack has things more organized and neatly tucked away as compared to the Hazard 4 but the latter definitely holds more than the 20L variant of the bag. Peak Designs carries a 30L bag but as I worry that I'll look like a tortoise, I stood by the 20L. Which also suited my needs better. I love the modularity of the everyday backpack and how it fits so well with my camera lenses! Even though I am using smaller sized vintage lenses as compared to the big bulky ones they have in the market now, I have no qualms of them slipping around that compartment as everything is very secure. The sides being able to butterfly out all the way also allows me to easily reach for my cameras and lenses when taking photos without me needing to put down the bag. Although I would feel much safer to put the bag down and swap lenses.
Running. Hmmm... I certainly have no plans to run with the Everyday Backpack. Or hike with it. It does not have padded shoulder straps like the Hazard 4 does, but the lack of paddings also means a much sleeker looking backpack comfortable enough for a train ride home after a day. I like the material that they use on the exterior, making it water resistant and has a nice clean look to it. I bought this bag with the vision in mind that I can use it when I am working in future. It looks nice, presentable and just different from the usual backpack, which is what I like.
Indeed the Everyday Backpack does live up to its name as the everyday backpack!
At least for my lifestyle!
It was indeed tough shoes to fill but I am really pleased to have found a bag that is so well suited for my needs. The buckles, the pouches and all, you can tell that a lot of meticulous thinking went into it, which I greatly appreciate.
They do have smaller variants like the tote bag. However that had problems accepting a 15" laptop. I believe that this backpack will work out for other lifestyles too, whether you hit the gym or go hiking with it. Although if I go hiking, I would very much prefer to stick to the Hazard 4 bag.
The Everyday Backpack has since replaced the Hazard 4 bag as my go to bag. However for sports and recreation, I would very much prefer to fall back on the Hazard 4.
For the record, I've been using the Hazard 4 backpack for over 2 years and I am still loving the bag and find it almost impossible to find another bag that can suit its capabilities. The Everyday Backpack just has a different approach to it. It's like comparing a sports car to an SUV. Both have different roles, but they are both really, really. Good products.
If there are any Peak Design employees reading this, I love your packaging so much I kept it and am going to get it made into a HUGE pouch.
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