13 June 2006
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sila |
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Family Pics
After we checked out of our hotel in Amsterdam, we went to the train station and caught the train to Brussels. It was a 2.5-3 hour train ride and I'd love to say that I took beautiful pictures of the passing scenery. We went through Rotterdam and several other cities in the Netherlands before crossing into Belgium. Unfortunately, I was so zonked out I slept most of the way. So...suffice it to say we took the train from Amsterdam to Brussels, and from there we caught a plane to Malaga, Spain.
12 June 2006
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Family Pics
The next leg of our European adventure started out by taking a train from Surrey to Gatwick Airport where we were catching a plane to Amsterdam. Now, before anybody gets overexcited about Amsterdam, we were only there for less than 24 hours (1 night) and so we did not get the full Amsterdam experience. Yes, no bike riding along the canals, no canal tours by boat, and we didn't make it to Anne Frank's house even! And no, we did not make it to the Red Light District... I think this means we must go back to Amsterdam and spend a little more time there!
11 June 2006
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Family Pics
To continue our European adventure, Mei took a day off work and we went gallivanting around England while poor Colin had to work. We went to Stonehenge and Salisbury. Stonehenge was about a 1.5-2 hour drive from Surrey, and due to being tired and our body clocks being screwed up, we didn't leave until mid-morning. But it was worth it.
11 June 2006
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Hisham |
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Movie Review, Rants
Last Tuesday, I finally saw X-Men The Last Stand. But I’m not going to do a full review on the movie itself. The following two paragraph will summarize what I thought about it.
Despite the misgivings of having Brett Ratner directing the third X-Men movie, and reports of behind the scene shenanigans that caused Bryan Singer to leave in the first place, I really enjoyed The Last Stand. Sure there were some plot holes and unbalanced screen time for characters, but they delivered what they promised: super-powered mutants beating the crap out of each other in creative ways onscreen. And I’m sure if the writers and director were given ample time without any studio politics involved, they would have given us something much more glorious than what we got.
In any case, I because of the amount of details in this movie: a totally spot on Beast with amazing acrobatic moves in combat; visually spectacular telekinesis an order of magnitude better than anything we've ever seen before; two Fastball Specials; Iceman icing up briefly; a great Juggernaught vs Shadowcat battle; Ian McKellen as Magneto; Multiple Man in action; even a glimpse of the Stepford Cuckoos in the background at the X-Mansion... I’ll say that the movie is at least on par with the previous two movies.
Now the spoilers begin.
10 June 2006
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Family Pics
Recently, Vin and I went on a 16-day vacation to Europe. We went to a few countries, visited with many friends and for the first time ever, I travelled around the European continent. Prior to this, I had only been in London for 2 weeks in the winter of 1997.
We started our vacation by flying to Gatwick where we were picked up by Mei Chin (my bestestestestest friend in the whole wide world) and Colin. We were to spend the first part of our trip hanging out with Mei and Colin at their place in England.
*grumble* this is the 2nd time I'm doing this entry. My stupid computer froze and IE died when I was completely done with this entry. All was lost. :(
06 June 2006
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Hisham |
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Family Pics
Last weekend, we were back in Sitiawan to attend a couple of kenduris. On Monday, Irfan's grandparents decided to take us to Teluk Batik and Lumut. It was great, but the weather was hot and there were too many people about thanks to the school holidays.
05 June 2006
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Hisham |
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ACS Memories
What I miss most about Sitiawan can be summed up thusly:
I miss watching movies (at the big screen and home theatre) and discussing them from a geek's point of view.
I miss cycling to Teluk Batik and walking back on foot because of a flat bicycle tyre.
I miss going on adventures in and around the mangrove swamps of Kampung Acheh, looking at mudskippers and paddling rented canoes and avoiding water snakes.
I miss camping out at the sandy beaches of Pangkor's Coral Bay, taking the ferry to and from the island and lying on the sand at night to count shooting stars.
I miss camping out behind the District Scout House at the mangrove swamps of Kampung Sitiawan, getting up early at dawn to cycle around Sitiawan before everyone wakes up and walking in the middle of the night to the nearby cafe to buy
air sirap when thirsty.
I miss a really good friend with whom I shared all these experiences, the only person who never left Sitiawan since school.
Rest In Peace, Ming Fang ol' buddy. Hope to see you in another lifetime.
01 June 2006
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Hisham |
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Rants
You know what I like best about working with the technological resources we have now?
It's the interconnectivity and flexibility, as well as the sheer amount of things you can make at home or at the office where before you had to outsource to another company. E-mail, instant messaging, direct file transfers, VOIP... they're all indispensable tools for any type of work. With a notebook and a wireless connection, you have your files and all the knowledge in the world (well, not quite) at the tip of your hands.
Yesterday, I wasn't in the office. I was at home. But I was talking to at least 4 other people at work via
Skype and cellular phone on speaker mode. Out of the 5 people involved only two of us were in the same room. Even with telephones, I can't see this happening in a company with a small setup like ours if this was ten years ago.
Last month we were in a conference call with a person from Denmark via
VOIP for software application training.
And yeah, I'm pretty much aware of the fact that young punks who would this 10 years from now (if this site still exists) would be laughing at how crippled we are with our tools compared to what they would have in the future.
Unless they're all technologically reverted back to the stone age... by natural or unnatural means.
In which case we're
all pretty much screwed.
29 May 2006
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Hisham |
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Artwork, Comics
Some time last August, I drew Peter with Panter Classic.
Here he is once again, this time with the new armored costume Tony came up with for him while MJ and he works as a New Avenger. It has bulletproof armour, enhanced computer-display visors and those extra pincer limbs not shown in the illustration below.
I like the design, though because Tony came up with colour scheme, the outfit is red and yellow.
Kinda looks a bit like Shiro's costume.
28 May 2006
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Hisham |
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Artwork, Star Wars
It's time for another round of SWAG's Member Theme Art Contest!!!!! Well, actually it's my first submission, and it's only the second topic ever. The topic is Time To Abandon Ship! and I wanted to do a free-for-all (during the pencilling I decided to pit Wookiees against Imperial stormtroopers). The guy abandoning ship is the one in the back, not involved in the brawl.
It took me the entire length of the movie Regarding Henry on TV for me to digitally pencil, ink and colour this piece. Apologies for the shoddy colouring, by the way.
Click on the thumbnail to see the full image, or if you're game for an even larger image, head on down to where it's at on deviantArt.
26 May 2006
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Hisham |
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Recent News
For the last month or so, the late afternoons, before the onset of dusk, is usually time for heavy rainstorms. They're so heavy that sometimes, the hills in front of the apartment on the other side of Pandan Indah are totally obscured. Lightning tear across the sky. Thunder shakes the windows.
Each time it hits, there would come a time during the storm when the lightning and thunder would coincide, which indicated that they were extremely close. This could be very disconcerting up here on the tenth floor.
But today something new occurred. Not only there was an extremely bright flash of lighting coinciding with a loud thunderclap. The event also producted a strong electromagnetic field which caused my computer CRT monitor's colour to go all purple.
Fortunately, a quick usage of the monitor's degauss function immediatedly rectified the problem. Thankfully the computer wasn't damaged in any way.
22 May 2006
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Hisham |
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Artwork
A late entry to this week's Illustration Friday is my version of the current topic: Sorry. Once I read the topic, this image popped in my mind and it'll bug me to death if I didn't realize it. Well, enough gabbing; let the illustration tell its story.
21 May 2006
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Hisham |
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Family Pics
Ain's good friend from Univerity Malaya, Jalilah, got married last Saturday.
It was, of course, another Family Trip to parts unknown; this time to FELDA Lepar Hilir 1 in the state of Pahang to the east. Since the car's suspension was repaired a couple of days earlier, I felt confident in making the trip without having the car losing its tyres halfway there. So, at 1030 hours on that day, we left the house for Pahang. We didn't take the new East Coast Highway, cause I miss driving on the old Federal main road east through Karak, Mentakab, Temerloh and Maran, which have better roads now and less traffic thanks to the new highway.
It was quite a feat, trying to locate the bride's home via the map that was on the invitation card. And who would have thought PMG meant "Pusat Mengumpul Getah" (Rubber Collection Centre).
17 May 2006
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Hisham |
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Hishgraphics.com
Now thanks to Pivot's
Rotator v1.0 extension, the weblog's banner up at the top of the page randomly rotates through a bunch of images I made up just for the occasion. More images will be uploaded for quantity's sake. Refresh the page, or just read the entries to see it in action.
15 May 2006
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Hisham |
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Family Pics
Because Irfan's Cik Emma missed having her blood drained out of her body, we took a drive to nearby Cheras Leisure Mall where a blood donation drive was underway last Saturday. Cik Su F, a-visiting from MIAT, was along for the ride.
There was a great number of people in line signing up for the blood donation. As Cik Su F covered Emma's six, Irfan, Ain and I traipsed around the mall window shopping.
14 May 2006
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Hisham |
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Artwork
The topic of this week's
Illustration Friday is represented by two individuals, a father and a daughter, who each has the gift to see either of the topic subjects: angels and devils.
Anyone care to guess who they are?
11 May 2006
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Hisham |
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Role Playing Games, Trawling The Net
Here's a great tool I discovered by way of
Midnight Flights:
A Newspaper Snippet Generator.
Just fill in the fields with some words and letters. Stretch your brain a bit to come up with some interesting text.
And voila:
You could either play with this for hours coming up with weird newspaper stories for no particular reason, or for role playing gamers who play in contemporary or near-contemporary settings (
d20 Modern / various
GURPS /
Call of Cthulhu /
World of Darkness, among others)... you now have a tool to create awesome, authentic-looking images of newspapers as visual game aid.
10 May 2006
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Hisham |
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Hishgraphics.com, Star Wars
I noticed that like the old comments style, the blockquote style for this website is just a bunch of indented paragraphs. So, to ensure the blockquotes are easily seen, I've added a bunch of lines to the css file, causing anything in blockquotes to resemble:
Click here to watch the Robot Chicken representation of how Palpatine reacted to Vader after the first Death Star blew up.
Hilarious.
A quote from my recent post from this thread in the Holonet Forums.
09 May 2006
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Hisham |
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Role Playing Games
A free sample (see final paragraph for download link) of the
Noumenon RPG from
Abstract Nova is online with some intriguing write-up of the Sarcophagi and the Silhouette Rouge, a primer into the
Noumenon game millieux, as well as the rudimentaries of the game mechanics which of all things involves
dominoes!
And no, none of the vignettes which I wrote are in here.
(I wasn't involved in the illustrations at all.)Here's a sample text from the free download:
Rebirth
The Sarcophagi are creatures born of mystery and devoid of past. They have been resurrected from flawed and meaningless lives into a new existence. Memory and history are lost to them; their old lives cast aside like a cocoon that has been outgrown. Once the Sarcophagi were human, but now they are something else. Their compound eyes see the world differently. Their four arms manipulate reality in new ways. A chitinous exoskeleton protects their fragile souls.
The Sarcophagi are insects that walk as men.
The Sarcophagi are explorers. They wander the Silhouette Rouge, seeking to divine its truths. Only by doing so, can they escape this place and progress to whatever destiny awaits them.
Menagerie
The Sarcophagi are not alone. Strange, wayward souls haunt the Silhouette Rouge. Known simply as the Others, each of these entities is unique. Some understand the mystery of the Silhouette Rouge, while some are as unknowing as the Sarcophagi.
The Others have been here for a very long time.
I really hope I'll be able to run this someday, when I get the old crew back together... or muster a new crew somehow. Watch out for the full release of
Noumenon in June.
Right click and save here (720 MB) to download the freebie in PDF format.
