MLai - Reflecting my Life

Mirrors Edge 2 and The Rocks Markets by Moonlight

miltonlai — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 04:52:05 +0000

Yesterday afternoon / evening, after work, I headed into Circular Quay on the way to the Rocks to meet up with the parkour guys and snap up a few more shots armed with the 50mm. The Rocks Markets by Moonlight is on every Friday evening this month and last night, Paris Wells and the Potbelleez performed. After that, a nice walk along the harbour where I snapped a few shots of the guys I was with. Photos:

Cheers

Written by Milton Lai

Mirrors Edge

miltonlai — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:57:55 +0000

So today and tomorrow, EA games hosted a launch party for Mirrors Edge outside Customs House in Circular Quay. The parkour guys (all from around Australia) were hired to perform each day, and several promotional pieces over the last few weeks. More about the parkour inspired game at http://mirrorsedge.com.au

So I took out both the fisheye and the wide angle with me. The stage was set up already and the performance was kept to a small scale. I would’ve preferred to have seen some work around Circular Quay. It was more of a documenting day. The photos:

Not having fisheye shots all the time is slightly more pleasing to the eye. Finally I can get some rest before tomorrow.

Cheers

Written by Milton Lai

Long week…

miltonlai — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:48:38 +0000

Monday night was a late night after going out to dinner for a friends birthday.

Last night ended up being another night out catching up with a mate of mine over dinner… and today… left work early and shot for … about 6 hours. Met up with the parkour guys at UNSW and had a great session I would say. Used the fisheye the whole day today which is a change and I’m not 100% if its good or bad, but impressed with the overall images. I do have to say that some of them are a bit soft and not as sharp as I’d like them to be.

Cheers

Written by Milton Lai

New / Old Toy

miltonlai — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:15:26 +0000

Bought the D200 off my brother on the weekend and just in time for some high shutter action. I think I was a bit too trigger happy and shot quite a few in burst, and the results are below.
Week and weekend was a bit slow. Work is back to its usual self, but now with proper deadlines.

I’ve been wanting and finally have what I’ve viewed as quite a necessary rule in working on projects where deadlines should be set and should be adhered to. We’ve lacked that a bit here, but things are progressing which is good, and its keeping me going.

The weekend involved a good rest day for my body before a good long session at Pyrmont. Photos are from after class and although most aren’t deemed as parkour, they are somewhat relevant to your preparation and only tackling certain movements when ready.

Lets hope the gifs work as well…

Cheers

Written by Milton Lai

Sculptures by the Sea

miltonlai — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:14:21 +0000

Not that I’ve got any photos to show for the trip on saturday - left home at about 5pm, so the light conditions weren’t the best - and my friend was shooting that day - showing him the in’s and out’s of photography. I did take just the one shot:

Maybe my mate has a few photos to show, I did see a few which looked pretty good. Come to think of it, possibly they should make fisherman as a sculpture.. I think it’d look pretty cool.

The rest of the weekend was just kicking back. Didn’t turn up to parkour class, but rather found some interesting areas around home and a few things I need to work towards. Currently working at home, I’ve got some sort of allergy with my eyes. Didn’t feel right to drive to work today, but its been a good day of programming at home.

Written by Milton Lai

Few Parkour photos after class this week

miltonlai — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:11:12 +0000

Good class this week. Not sore, which is a good / bad thing but at the moment its good - at least I can walk this week. Weekend involved the beach, sleeping in and parkour. Just a few shots of the guys after class.

The instructors having a meeting after class to discuss how better to improve the classes:

Everyone is always willing to give a hand - considering the cold, cold water below..

The difference in height when aiming for a precision and an arm jump:

Written by Milton Lai

Laptop won’t wake from hibernation

miltonlai — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:48:43 +0000

Just had a reencounter with a laptop from about a year ago with the same problem. It’s a Sony VIAO VGN-C25G/B. The problem is that the computer will not wake from hibernation. It gets past the bios, but no further. One thing to note is that this laptop has always gone without a battery, so I’m not sure if that is a crucial factor in this or not. It is running Vista Home Premium.

The solution, or workaround - depending upon how you want to look at it, is to take out both sets of memory and only insert one stick. Basically to change the amount of memory in the system. Swapping the memory will not make any difference. You will need to force the bios to realise there is a change in the amount of memory which then causes the following error message to appear:

Your computer can’t come out of hibernation

Status: 0xc0000411

Info: A fatal error occured processing the restoration data.

File: \hiberfil.sys

After this message, you are prompted to hit the enter key to continue. Vista will startup just fine. Properly shutdown the machine and then reinsert all the memory and everything should be fine again. The owner of the laptop will be taking it to Sony this afternoon regardless to hopefully find out that there is a patch of some sort to remove this issue.

Written by Milton Lai

Parkour Training Classes

miltonlai — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 09:10:46 +0000

Turned up to classes today for the first time in a while to actually participate. This is just all a part of my new plan to get back into shape and focus a bit more on parkour and parkour related photography.

A few quick shots of what happened after class.

Quite a scorcher today. Body is aching a bit too much to be able to do anything right now.. and possible not even for the rest of the week. It was a good session.

Written by Milton Lai

Endless weeks

miltonlai — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:59:06 +0000

Currently sitting at Le Montage here in Leichhardt/Lilyfield on their free wifi. Well before I start talking about these endless weeks, I’ll run through whats happened since I got back from my trip.
My first week back was… not the worst thing in the world. I ended up leaving work a bit earlier than usual because driving at about 6pm or so was kind of dangerous considering how tired I was. I’ve been placed on a few projects to get me back into gear. Of course these projects have stretched on a bit, not my fault necessarily but rather having to deal with other people and awaiting responses on testing and correct information.
I’ve been developing my own IDE for our “Dynamic” forms that we have at work, which I also developed. It allows me to simply drag and drop and align widgets on a window and calculate all the necessary information and create me insert statements to stick into the database. On top of that, I’ve written a procedure which creates another procedure once run. With the dynamic nature of these tables, to run a report on the particular table, you would normally need to statically name each attribute. Here I would rerun my procedure which will recreate the procedure with all the correct attributes negating the need to change any existing stored procedures when the table structure changes. I’ve also been writing a few stored procedures to move data around because new databases needed to be set up.
With all my photos, I’ve been trying to write my own slideshow application - suggested by Kenny - who just got a summer internship with Google! So I’ve been trying, but its been a bit buggy, so I’m nearly there to show you all my photos. I’ve finished the design of my album / coffee table book and its been printed and distributed… only 5 copies were printed… I’ll have the images up as soon as I get my slideshow app going. I’ll give it another 2 weeks or so, since I’ve been a bit busy.
I’ve been training a lot more - in fitness and parkour. Its been going quite well. Supposed to be meeting up with Kenny every tuesday - not for the past 2 - been busy and hard a car accident… Otherwise, since daylight savings kicked in early, I can get home and still go for a run and its still a great temperature.
So since I’ve gotten back… this is the 6th wedding - 5 which I’ve worked at… I don’t feel as though I’ve had much of a break as yet… At least the follow few weeks it’ll be just a single wedding for the weekend and I can end up having a day to myself. Cousins wedding yesterday, so it was one which I could actually turn up to and enjoy. Some how I ended up with a few responsibilities like working the video and taking a few photographs here and there… but overall, it was a great wedding - relaxing - not the waking up at 5:30 this morning though.
Car accident - in short, a guy rear-ended me. He was a nice guy, spoke to him, he wanted to sort it out privately… most people recommend against that, but he returned my phone calls and sms’s. I got a few quotes for the damage - $1500 as a starting quote - he gave me a cheque on friday for that amount and hopefully thats as much as its going to cost. Most people don’t end up trusting others - saying people may run away and refuse to pay… but I think that there are some kind hearted people out there and so I guess my first accident wasn’t so bad. At the end of the day, he has to pay one way or another, and so I’ll run by whatever he suggests.
Oh - I got glasses - I need them for seeing in the distance - like driving… at night…
This week - full driving license and possibly make these projects end so I can move onto others.
In a few weeks I should have a bit more spare time on my hands.

Written by Milton Lai

Few quick photos of Parkour in France

miltonlai — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 09:06:48 +0000

A lot has been happening in the last week - change of internet providers, voip, getting glasses, work and photos. This weekend, just got back from a wedding - had another one yesterday. So it really has been a long week, and possibly this week might be a quieter one I hope. I was working on these yesterday and just thought I’d put them up. These photos were taken in Evry and Lisses in France - the birthplace of Parkour. The traceur in it is Rhys James - a parkour practitioner here in Sydney, who I consider one of the best practictioners here in Sydney. check out http://www.sydneyparkour.com/ and http://www.parkour.asn.au/ for more information.

Written by Milton Lai