Rainy Metro Manila

It's only the fourth day of June and it's already raining heavily (video below). Not sure if it's the same in other regions but definitely rainy season has begun. So don't let the weather ruin your day! Make sure you have your jacket, rain coat or umbrella with you all the time. Be safe! :-)

Printable Stationery

Hello friends! Yesterday, Naldo inspired me to design writing papers. So I did and thought that I'd share them with you.

You are welcome to print them for your personal use. However they may not be sold in any form. Also, the stationeries below are formatted to fit A4 size papers. :-)

Be sincere and say magic words in your letters. And don't forget to seal them with a kiss. Happy writing!

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Smiley Moon

We just want to share what we saw tonight. The crescent moon had one very visible star above it. So it kinda looked like a one-eyed smiley. These shots were taken around 7:30 tonight using a Nikon D90 18-105 mm lens. We wish we had something better to catch this awesomeness. Anyway, have a great night everyone!

This awesome occurrence is called planetary occultation. The what-we-thought-was-a-star was actually the planet Venus.

It is said that this is the first of the four major planet occultations this year. The first three will be of Planet Venus and the fourth will be of planet Mars. For the prediction or the occultation "schedule", please check http://www.lunar-occultations.com/iota/planets/planets.htm

Thank you!

City Island

City Island is a Raymond De Felitta film about a prison guard (played by Mr. Andy Garcia), his family, their individual secrets and a prisoner brought to their home to witness it all.

The story is touching but not cheesy. The plot is reasonably real and witty. The characters are all interesting. It's a great family movie. We encourage you to watch it. May you learn from City Island and may it make you laugh as much as we did. (wink!)

FYI: Mr. Felitta's other works are "Two Family House", "Cafe Society", and "The Thing About My Folks". :-)

DSLR's Factory DEFECTS To Watch Out For

We're in the digital world but not everyone knows 100 percent about DSLRs. Thank goodness for the internet, the numerous blogs and product reviews, we are somehow guided on what brand we ought to get.

Whether it's Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, or whatever brand is out there in the market, we want to have a camera that will work according to our preferences. Choosing which brand to get can be confusing but eventually you'll be able to rest your mind on a particular DSLR.

And once you do, you head out to the store. You have the box opened to make sure nothing inside is broken. You check the body and the lens for scratches. You switch the camera on. Even though there's a lot of buttons you don't understand yet, you easily figure out how to auto-focus. You start clicking and taking photos of this and that. You view your shots on the monitor, and you see how good the photo quality is. To a first timer, the product testing ends there.

Unfortunately, some factory defects are not about scratches or button malfunction. Some defects are almost unnoticeable. An example would be what is called a defective pixel. In layman's term, these are tiny red, green, blue, white or black dots or "+" that appear on the photos. You'll know it's them because they'll be in the same position of all photos you've taken. Sometimes the greater the ISO, the bigger they get and the more of them appear.

The photo was purposely cropped to show the defective pixels. Please click the photos to see a larger view.

To know more about defective pixels, please go to:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defective_pixel (Wikipedia explains it all.)

Another factory defect you have to watch out for is blur or double image. When you check the photos on the camera's monitor, you'll see the pictures are okay. But when you view it on your computer or when you have the photos printed, the photos suddenly appear blurred. You then start to think that maybe you're hands were just shaky the time you took the shots. So you place the camera on a tripod or a table and time a 2 second shot. You check the images and you find the blur is still there.

The example is exaggerated but just to show. :-)

Some people can ignore the defective pixels since they're very tiny and there's always Photoshop to fix it. The blur problem on the other hand is something one can not ignore. If this happens to you, send the camera back asap and get a replacement.

To easily see the mentioned defects, you can check the images you've taken on your computer or just have one photo printed- whichever works for you. Please make sure you do this within the 7 days replacement period. Getting a good brand new camera that really works is still better than free repair.

That's all we can share right now. Thank you and hope we've helped you a bit. Good luck and have fun with your new DSLR!

Happy Easter Everyone!

Instead of the usual egg hunting...
What we had was egg racing.
Happy Easter! Happy Spring!
May this video keep you smiling!

How To Train Your Dragon

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON by Dreamworks is a must-see movie! It's about a young Viking wanting to hunt dragons but ends up befriending them instead. Yeah--- very simple plot! But it's really funny. The dialogue is so real. The voice cast did a great job. The animation is rockin' awesome! We loved it! It's a bit early to say this but it might become our favorite movie this year.

We think you'll appreciate this movie more if you play Monster Hunter. By the way, we're NOT comparing or saying someone copied what or whatever negative thing there is for you to say. A few of the dragons in the movie reminded us of the monsters in Monster Hunter. Another reason why we enjoyed it a lot. That's just it period. Check this out:

Night Fury from the movie(top) and Naruga Kuruga/Nargacuga from Monster Hunter(bottom)

Deadly Nadder from the movie(top) and blue Yian kut ku from Monster Hunter(bottom)

Monstrous Nightmare from the movie (top) and Crimson Fatalis from Monster Hunter (bottom)

There's one more but it's a spoiler. So that's it for tonight. Please do watch the movie and have fun!

For details, the movie's cool website is http://www.howtotrainyourdragon.com/

Smart Bro- good or bad?

Smart Bro (formerly known Smart Wifi) stands for Smart Broadband and is a wireless service offered by Smart Broadband Inc., a subsidiary of Smart Communications.

We won't be complaining here. What we're gonna do is tell you our experience with them. Please take time to read everything. Then you assess for yourself if you want to have Smart Bro or not.

What we have is the "999 unlimited plan". Having the internet connection installed was really easy. It so happened that the building we lived in that time didn't require us anything. We just had to call the Smart hotline and within that week they sent their installers.

Internet-speed-wise, it was okay. It wasn't 2Mbps but it was fast enough for us to watch movies in YouTube and we're not really very patient people. Sometimes it has it's bad days but which company doesn't.

After a year we moved to another building. So we went to their wireless center, applied and paid for relocation. While applying for relocation, we made sure we gave them the following info: that we have already deployed the antenna ourselves, our new address and our preferred days of re-installation. They told us to wait for 7 days which we did and that someone will call.

After a week, no one did. We called their hotline. Smart said they'll forward the issue so we have to wait 24 hours and that someone will call.

After a day, nothing happened. So we called the hotline again. This time Smart said they don't have a record of our application and they can't really solve the issue because they don't have the means and that we have to go to the wireless center about it.

We went to their center again and they said they'll give it priority since we have waited long enough already.

After 3 days, technicians sent us a message asking if we already have permission from the building to have the Smart Bro antenna installed. They also told us via SMS that if we don't they can't.

Our mistake was that we relied on our experience the first time we had it installed wherein no building pass was required. We didn't even bother finding out because the new building is of the same company as the previous one and it's just right across.

When we were applying for relocation, the person we spoke to could have brought that up. We think that's vital information that every customer must know.

Anyway, the building pass was a hassle so we decided not to have Smart Bro anymore. We called their hotline and we were informed that we should do termination on paper.

We weren't able to cancel it right away and Smart continued to bill us. Just to end the nightmare, we paid a month worth of un-installed internet.

During the application for termination, they told us they'll send technicians to get the antenna. We told them that we don't have time during the weekdays so it had to be on a weekend. We also made sure they had our new address. Good thing we did because we saw in their computer they still have the old one. The agent from the wireless center we spoke to said he'll call us.

Two days later, we got a message from Smart customer care saying their installer is scheduled to pullout the smart bro antenna on March 19, 2010 - a Friday!

Today(Friday), while waiting for them we got another message from their installer asking us where our new address is and another message from a Smart agent informing us that their installer came and that the guard from the previous building informed them that we moved out a year ago.

That's our experience. So what do you think is Smart Bro customer service good or bad?

FYI we are now using Globe. Their customer service is great and the internet is way faster. The 3 days worth of download with Smart is only overnight download with Globe. However we think the connection speed varies on location. Our suggestion is for you to try the companies' (Globe, Smart, Sun or what-have-you) prepaid service first for you to check how good the connection is in your area.

Thank you for reading! Have a great day!

Ape Academy (PSP)

GAME PLAY: The player must work up from junior class to senior class by playing mini games and meeting the criteria for each class. In each class, there are 9 mini games to complete. Failing to meet the criteria rewards you with an X, while meeting the criteria rewards you an O. You then have to form a line consisting 3 straight Os horizontally, vertically or diagonally similar to the game Tic-Tac-Toe. Each level has a certain number of lines required to move to the next class.

How do we like this game? We like it. It's funny. It's cute. Some of the mini-games can be a little annoying because it doesn't really give a detailed instruction on the controls. But you don't have to be a genius to play this. Even without the instruction, it's pretty easy to figure after 1 to 2 tries. We like the variations of the mini games. It is definitely more fun to play compared to the usual card games. Graphics-wise, it's very "cartoony" which we think suits the game play.

Ape Academy is not exactly a must-play. But if you can try it, then that would be nice. :-)

Kamen Rider Den-O Hana Figure

Yay! Shirl got a new doll! She's Hana from Kamen Rider Den-O.

Manufacturer: Banpresto

Material: PVC (can't really afford resin yet)

Height: 18 cm.