That's the question which I ask my wife and my mother sometimes. Case in point :-

So there I was reading the morning papers, WZ was playing outside in the yard with Grandpa when there came a loud BOOM sound from outside. I rushed out to see what happened then I see two guys walking from a Maroon Land Cruiser, and looking up towards a tree in front of my house. One of them was holding a rifle. I don't know what they were shooting.. probably crows, but they left as suddenly as they came.

Not suddenly enough though... The problem with shooting crows is that, even though you're firing UPWARDS, dude.. remember.. your bullets have to come down somewhere eventually!

Well, now that I have a macro lens, I can shoot really small things really up close and not crop. Like this shot of the Mini SD card + reader.

So much detail until you can see the insertation marks (click to see the larger version)

Now I just need to constantly remind myself.. my collection is complete, I don't need anything else, and the box is full anyway.

When I bought my Sony A350, my friend kept telling me about the dark dark path of purchasing accessories which I was bound to travel down.

I told him that unlike him I wasn't using the camera to get some extra cash so I'll only buy things that I need. Like all the stuff I got after I got the camera.

When I made up my mind to buy the A350, I already knew what other extra lenses I would get. The first was the 50mm lens which I recently received, I needed this cause.... my wife likes the blur effect and she seems to feel that it makes pictures nicer. So who am I to say otherwise. The other lens I knew I would get was something wide to shoot scenery with, and I would be planning to get this lens only when my next overseas vacation has been planned.. and considering that we have WZ to worry about now that might be a while...

What I DID NOT plan for was that the macro capabilities of the lenses which I have didn't satisfy me. What I ALSO DID NOT plan for was how fast I sped down to Pudu Plaza when I heard that a shop there had a lens available.

I didn't initially plan to get a macro lens but hey.. it's cool since now I can take close up shots that show off how dusty a glossy surface can get.

Or just get up REAAAAAALLL close to something.

So.. everything is still good... I don't have a problem or a lust for glass.

Nothing much to say about the game other than if you feel like kicking back and running a few laps around a circuit on a lawn mower or scooter bikes, this is the Wii game to get. I'd like to talk about using the plastic shell that came with the game.

It surprised me.

After the horrible horrible experience with Ridge Racer on the PS3 I was really worried about how terrible the control would be, but.. it really surprised me. From the get go, I started the game, selected the beginner level and I was off, no calibration, no sensitivity tweaking, nothing! And I was driving with a plastic in my hands. And I was surprised how well it worked.

Nothing beats the exact, responsiveness of an actual joystick. But so far (haven't left 50cc yet) even when racing online, I haven't had the feeling that the wheel is punishing me for using it.

Oh.. here's a video for all of you to see how well the wheel works.

For all of you wondering how I did the video recording to be synchronized? I had my video camera focusing on the wheel and the Pinnacle Video Transfer unit hooked to the TV. I started the recording on both ends then I yelled 1,2,3, MARK! and made a circuit selection at the same time, so that became the sync point for the video. Of course there's bound to be some margin of error since it's such a crude way of doing it.

As to how I overlaid the videos? The process is a bit complicated to be repeated here but the tools used were. AVISynth, FFMPEG and VirtualDub. I'm gonna need some sort of a REAL video editor if I'm gonna do complex stuff like this again. :P

On a side note, after seeing me play without the shell once. WZ now will hold remote controls horizontally between his hands occasionally. ;)

ps. Why did I use YouTube instead of Soapbox? Cause I felt this video needed public exposure. But for comparison's sake, here's the SAME video uploaded to Soapbox.

Main difference here is that each service uses different levels of compression. With the one using a higher level of compression able to deliver the video quicker but suffers with image quality with the other having the reverse trade offs.