AntMcl's Blawg

Normal vs HDR

I only discovered that Photoshop CS5 has a built-in effect for turning normal photos into HDR. It’s technically cheating, but it gives the desired effect and looks awesome to my eyes. 

THOUGHTS: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

I’ll spoil this review in my first sentence: it’s the best film I’ve seen all year. I’d been aware of Larsson’s trilogy of novels, and also aware of the Swedish films, but never read or seen them respectively. In fact, it wasn’t a film that I would have chosen to see, if I hadn’t been invited to go watch it. 

So I went into the cinema having done no ‘preparation’, and I was pretty blown away. Usually, crime/thriller films send me to sleep very swiftly; they all follow the same formula. However, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo doesn’t. Sure, the protagonist (portrayed by Daniel Craig) is a detective-like character investigating the mysterious disappearance of a girl, he hunts around for clues which eventually lead him to the killer, but there’s something about the film that makes it alltogether different from your typical Poirot-esque drama. 

One of the things that stood out most for me was the attention to detail paid to the backgrounds of the main characters; a decent portion of the film is devoted to introducing the lifestyle and personality of both main characters Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) and Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara). It’s refreshing to see the person behind the detective, rather than simply seeing their ‘calculating’ side. 

The quality of acting was also impressive - Craig fits the gritty nature of the film well, but also can show his soft side well (very 007 indeed). Mara also did the same. One of the other things I noticed was the theme of a split personality, not in a schizophrenic way, but in the way that behind a seemingly friendly and conventional exterior there can often lie a darker, more sinister side to a person. 

I recommend you go see this film, even if you haven’t read the book it’s a damn good film. I’m adding the book to my reading list, and it’ll be interesting to see how it compares. 

on IMDB

What’s in your bag? (December 2011)

…in the style of The Verge.

BIG THINGS

Acer Aspire One (early 2011)

A great little netbook, the Aspire One covers all of my basic on-the-go computing needs. It’s extremely thin and light, and pretty fast for such modest specs. It runs Windows 7 Starter and Ubuntu 11.04. 

Fujifilm S1700

A great value bridge camera, with an awesome 15x zoom and 720p HD video recording. It also takes some pretty amazing macro shots. I love it. 

Google Nexus S

My new primary phone, as of Christmas Day 2011. It runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and is one damn fast phone. Mainly used for messaging, on-the-fly tweeting, web browsing, and also makes the occasional phone call. 

Apple iPod touch

It’s a sort of backup device, and has my entire music collection stored on it. It’s slow and battered, but I keep it around as an old faithful. 

LITTLE THINGS

Bose On-Ear headphones

They offer very good sound quality, are very comfortable, and best of all, they fold up neatly (pictured) to easily fit in a bag without any problems. 

Pocket Boom

This weird device can turn something like a table or chair into an amplifier; you plug one end into the 3.5mm headphone jack on your device and the other ‘limpet’ end sticks onto the object, thus essentially turning it into a giant speaker. Pretty cool to show off to people, although I don’t use it that much. 

Buffalo Ministation 300GB portable hard drive

Basically, I’ve stopped using USB pen drives. 

Microsoft Arc Mouse

Comfortable, cool-looking, and extremely portable. The perfect netbook and desktop mouse. 

HSBC Key

Basically a layer of security to login to my online banking, which I do from a variety of different computers/devices, hence I carry it around all the time. 

Cables (not pictured)

There’s a lot of them, from chargers to data cables. 

Technology Chronology: Phones

Someone on Twitter pointed out to me that the recently acquired Nexus S is the fourth phone I’ve owned in 2011, so I’ve decided to put together a list of every single phone I’ve owned in my relatively short life, starting at the beginning:

NOKIA 3310

My first phone. Everyone had one, and it cost a ridiculous amount of money, but was awesome when it was released. 

NOKIA 2600

It was pretty much a newer version of the 3310 but with something amazing: a colour screen.

Sony Ericsson P1

It was sort of a weird half smartphone half candybar phone with a really nice camera. I really liked it. 

MOTOROLA V3

I still love the design of this thing. 

Motorola L6

I went for yet another super thin Motorola, this time the L6. It’s not that much thicker than an iPhone 4, and this was five years ago. 

Motorola L7

Got bored of the L6 so picked up one of these instead. It didn’t last that long in my pocket. 

MOTOROLA V3 (BLACK)

Erm, yeah, I bought another one. This time in black. 

SONY ERICSSON C702

It was pretty much a Bond phone, waterproof and packing a ton of features. I also got an unlimited internet data plan with this; it basically started my love of smartphones. 

APPLE iPHONE 3G

Yep, I actually bought one of these when I was in Indonesia for a couple of months. It was a nice phone, and I still prefer this design to the newer 4/4S. 

BLACKBERRY CURVE 8900

I sold that iPhone at the end of my stay in Indonesia and got this when I returned home. I loved it, but it had its flaws. 

BLACKBERRY BOLD 9000

Simply put, this was one of the best phones I’ve ever owned. 

HTC HERO

I jumped on the Android bangwagon with the Hero. This was the phone that got me into Android, and I’ve been using the OS ever since. 

HTC LEGEND

The Hero was underpowered and I had no Orange reception in my house, so I cancelled my contract within the first month of owning the Hero and snapped up the newly released Legend on Vodafone. I absolutely adored this phone, and kept it for a whole year; it was that good. 

HTC INCREDIBLE S

I got my hands on the IS exactly a year to the day I picked up my Legend. To be honest, I was hyped up about this phone, but it disappointed. It had too many bugs, crashed a lot, and I felt HTC was going in the wrong direction with design. 

PALM PIXI PLUS

For a brief week or two, I actually got bored of Android (specifically HTC Sense) and picked up a Pixi Plus right after HP axed WebOS. I loved it, right up until the moment the screen broke. I can see why HP axed both Palm and WebOS. 

GOOGLE NEXUS S

Only been using my Nexus S for about a day at the time of writing, but I already love it, especially as it’s now running ICS :)