Nikon Malaysia is organizing a huge event at Mid Valley MegaMall from Oct 14-18. I’ll be speaking on Oct 18, 7:30pm on “Let There Be Light: The Art of Strobing”. Very excited to share my latest work and experience working with remote flash. I’ll be showing some yet-to-be released images and walk you through my execution and thought process in creating the shots.

Rumours have it that D3s would be on display. Well, your guess is as good as mine. Jimin Lai is talking about Photojournalism & Kelvin Chan speaks on American Landscape. There’s free sensor cleaning facility as well. Hope to meet some of you cool people there. Cheers!

This has to be one of the best days for Malaysian wedding photographers. Shen, Jenny and I combined to win first, second and third place at the latest WPPI print competition! WOW! Here are the winning entries:

“Father’s Prayer” by Shen, 1st place Wedding Photojournalism

“Torch Bearers” by Louis, 2nd place Non-Wedding Photojournalism

“Mandy & Matt” by Jenny Sun, 3rd place Bride & Groom Together

This is such a fantastic news and encouragement for our photographers. Winning is nice. Winning together is so much nicer! Many also won Accolades of Excellence Awards in the same print competition: Kenneth Tan, Clement Lee, Malcolm Foo, Andy Chin, Qippy. Jasmine and I were jumping up and down for you all!

I am even prouder of your humility and gratitude. I appreciate the thank you notes…hey, don’t give me too much credit. You worked for it and you deserved it. Blessings everyone! Malaysia Boleh!

I am not known for being patient. Modern workplace demands us to be effecient & fast. To be forcibly held back really pushes patience to the limit. But how else are we going to learn patience? Sometimes, a delay can be a divine intervention as well. A few things have happened in the last few weeks:

1. I got rid of my website and run a blogsite now. I will be adding a few galleries to the blogsite in the weeks to come.

2. The entire site is moved to a VPS. It is noticeably faster and more responsive.

3. We experienced some outages in the last few days because the tech guys were configuring a few things on the server to comply with Pick Pic, our online proofing and shopping cart system. The system is 100% back online now. Quite a number of you tried to register for our workshops online and you ran right smack into the migration problems we had. We’ve contacted you individually today and you can complete the registration & payment process now.

The guys at Integricity were responsive the needs of the site. I am so grateful for that…especially the nocturnal bunch who worked on the issues way past midnight. Can’t imagine doing this without their help.

Now, it is full steam ahead for the online education portal. We have already extended our working hours to make this a reality. Just stay tune

In the next 48 hours, my friends at Integricity will be migrating my website to a Virtual Private Server (VPS). So what does this mean to my loyal visitors & clients?

1. Faster loading – instead of sharing a server with 1000 websites, I have my own VPS dedicated for the site
2. Responsive – if you use our shopping cart you will enjoy faster response because the processing power of the server is dedicated for our own use.

If none of this happen after the migration, then we’ll egg Integricity’s office! YAY!

I am really excited about this and the new online education website that I will be introducing very, very soon. I can’t say more…just ecstatic with this project that it can bless and help many photographers in our region.

Conducted a trial run of WIMAX (by Redtone) at my office this morning. Out of 3 bars (3 being strongest), the modem picked up 1 bar at my office in Likas Square. Downloading speed varied between 20kb/s to 70kb/s. Played a couple of Vimeo videos smoothly. Uploading speed was surprising fast at 80kb/s to 110kb/s. Overall, it was way more pleasant than Streamyx’s 1Mbps line.

When we moved the modem about 10 feet away from the office entrance, right next to our router, the modem failed to register a connection. It was disappointing. I was told that WIMAX works best if you could place the modem next to a window. So if like me, you have an office in the middle of a building WIMAX connectivity will suffer, a fact/myth which I find absurd! At the end, I found out that I can’t use WIMAX at the office. *SIGH*

DIGI’s broadband roll out was audacious and promising compared to its mediocre competitors out there. Judging from it simultaneous launch in Penang and KK, the company must have done its homework. Broadband in Kota Kinabalu is just woeful. If DIGI delivers as advertised, Maxis, Celcom & TM will lose a lot of business. Initial feedback on DIGI broadband has been very encouraging. Unfortunately it is not available in the Likas Bay area yet. I’ve filled out a service request form online to lobby for DIGI. If you live in this area, I suggest that you do the same so that we can finally enjoy decent broadband connection in the 21st century.

My search from Screamyx replacement continues.