new header! :D

I’ve changed my banner for 2010. Still the simple platform with the silhouette art I learned last year. 😀 Although I changed the red brake lights to xenon bluish white head lights art, which makes it look good, for a change. I think it doesn’t look aggressive since I didn’t follow the Burnout paradise color scheme. :D:D:D:D I used the Trueno this time, after using the Nismo Skyline for quite some time.

Yay~! It’s Christmas!

Indeed! I’ve changed my head this time with simple Christmas theme. This is because I saw wordpress having a snow feature on their blogs until January 4, 2010. 😀 When I activated my snow feature, I can’t see the snow since most of my blog is white. Now I changed it with Christmas theme and it looks nice.

I haven’t thought of a wishlist although pessimistic, I won’t be able to get them anyway. XD But I will still make one, it’s just a wish list.

Man, I’m starting to smell this Christmas breeze!! Love is in the air~! Romance is everywhere! Although bibingka ang other Christmas season food is not yet around. 😀

I’m so dyying to see my barkada. The TRUE barkada I have right now. I remember what my Philo Professor said today that the small group of people are the ones who are in the true barkada and with that I’m very happy that it is very apparent in this barkada of mine. Despite being away from each other for most of the year (though only two of us in the barkada are the only ones that are not studying in UP. :D), we are still intact as if we are family. We still contact each other when problems come or we just want to see each other, watch a movie, eat somewhere nice and take our big smiles home. And now, before we spend Christmas with our families, we are so excited to see each other again.

Ateneo stuff? Well, I’m trying my best to make new friends this time though it’s harder than I thought. But I don’t care really. 😀 Someone else has to comply if you’re doing your part well. 😀

Q-steer Photoshoot – Improvised White BG Studio. :D

I’ve been crazy about the silly light box but even though there are tutorials about its simple construction, I cannot put my money into it. I do have the camera and the light but not the peripherals to concentrate the light to the subject. 😀 However, I received a brighter lamp and tested this kind of photoshoot using scratch papers. 😀 The result is a semi-dark or a bit underexposed despite setting the camera to Aperture-priority and then setting the exposure to +1. The resulting photos were bluish since it’s dark time already and the only thing lighting up the subjects is the bright study lamp. Despite these instances, I brought up another paper facing the camera side to focus the light to the center. After shooting the pictures, I edited them using Adobe Photoshop, adjusting the color balance, brightness and contrast. Here are the results:

Looks nice, for me. 😀

Gallery:

New Gran Turismo PSP Screenshots, New Gran Turismo PSP Package

More screenshots were released from PSP IGN of Gran Turismo PSP. And they also released the news about the release of the Gran Turismo Package for the US Release:
Here are the details:

-A Mystic Silver PSP-3000 unit

-Gran Turismo UMD

-Gran Turismo Car Voucher – An exclusive car download, White version of the Corvette ZR-1 for GTPSP

-PSN movie voucher

-2GB Memory Stick

-Sony Music Voucher for US residents.

When I saw the image of the package above, I was saddened because it didn’t have the good looks of the GT Package that will be released in Japan:

As you can see, it might be a plain Piano Black 3000 system, but the sides are grey, the PSP Ring at the back is also in grey finish and the L-R Buttons are smoked Grey as well. And at the front, the PSP sports a semi-opaque GT Logo. Just how cool and far better is that compared to the US release? But still, I hope they can still change the unit. Or else, I would really wait for the Japanese version. 😀

here are some of the screenshots:

Fiddle with Samurize~!

yup, I finally started fiddling with the famous system monitoring program, Samurize. 😀 This is actually my first work, inspired by aircrafts as well as Nissan GT-R’s LCD screen instruments. 😀 It is named Aircraft Instrument Panel (of course. :p).

If you’re into Samurize, you can try this design of mine by visiting my newly opened deviantart account.

PSPGo! and Gran Turismo PSP

E3 2009  – Sony has just announced the new PSP Go! Together with the re-unveiling of the long gone game that’s suppose to go along with the release of the first PSP, the Gran Turismo. 😀 Now, the PSP Go! boasts new features such as….umm…bluetooth. a rearrangement of analog stick to the middle, 16GB internal flash memory, no UMD, external Micro Memory Stick slot….. and that’s it.

Let me talk about Gran Turismo then! I’ve been a big fan of the Gran Turismo series despite the lack of the Sony game consoles. 😀 I do have one console which is the PSP and it’s kind of dying but I don’t think it’ll die. 😀 The Gran Turismo for PSP was announced together with the release of the first PSP system back in 2004.  It was then stopped for a time because of Polyphony’s focus on the PS3 system and GT5. Now, with the release of a new PSP system, Polyphony kept their words in the rumors and now they have this beautiful game to be released together with the new PSP Go!.

There will be, according to Polyphony, more than 800 cars in the game, 35 tracks with 60 layout variations…

I do hope they have the Nurburgring here. 😀

this is the view when playing the game. 😀 I saw a footage of the gameplay and it was sooo GT4-ish or GT-5-ish in handling physics. 😀 So nice. Not bad for a limited characteristic game console, the PSP. They were able to squeeze out proper graphics for this game. 😀

For you fans, it’ll be released on October 1. Together with the new PSP Go! 😀 Yep, this year. I can’t wait!!!

Photos courtesy of IGN

Gran Turismo PSP E3 Trailer here

The New Dell Latitude 2100

I stumbled over this new Dell laptop and I cannot believe how good it is(well, for me). It might look big but it is just a 10.1 inch laptop. It sports a lot of features including the Intel Atom Processor 1.66GHz N270 and 512MB ram for $399. For the Philippine Peso, it goes around PhP 18K. For me, that’s not bad for a Dell Laptop. I always consider Dell Laptops very expensive but this is somewhat cheaper than I thought. The PhP18K price is the base model. For that price, you have a Microsoft Windows XP SP3 installed, 16GB SSD, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950. Although I’m worried about the hard disk, I forgot that this laptop is designed for school use. It even has indicators for you teacher whether you’re doing something else nasty. You can have the option to upgrade the 16GB SSD all the way up to 250GB and more once the warranty goes off. Of course, additional upgrades may bring up the price but it will go on the same bracket (I hope) as the ones in the market already like Asus EEE Pc and Samsung’s.

For me, it’s a good one, especially it’s configured for school use. If I had the money, I’d buy one so I don’t have to bring this bulky 14 inch laptop of mine everyday at school. 😀 Of course, it’s a new laptop and so we shall see if it really plays as a good contender to the lappy’s of today.

and what’s nice? it comes in different colors. 😀

For the Specifications and Features page of this product, click here.

Image is courtesy of Engadget.

Shell-Ferrari Model Cars with real Engine sounds

Yup, I have them all~! Here’s the new set of model cars recently released by Shell. 😀

Holy Week

Ah, yes. Holy Week. I decided to go with my Mom’s decision for me to go to a retreat but before that I went to give few reminders for the Grad Assessors. After that, I prepared myself for a 3-day retreat.

It was my first time in Laguna Hills and the place really gave me a good impression after stepping down from the van. The retreat really helped me to realize more things, get a right decision to most confusions I had for the past few days. I guess God was really doing his job. Even though I have numerous headaches and worries about a lot of stuff like not waking up early, I was able to, weirdly, overcome those.  I was reading a book during the entire retreat period, though I’m not yet done but I can say it is a great book. The book was “Man the Saint” by Jesus Urteaga. Erwin suggested me to read that book. I realized a lot more about different people regarding my religion after reading few pages. I’ve also learned more but I cannot put those into words right now. Maybe when I’m done with the book.

Few things though, I was able to come up with a decision to one of my confusions in life. Yup, maybe you can say that it’s rubbish but it means a lot to me. It was the very first girl I fell in love with, though she’s not now. I tried talking to her before just to regain the friendship but I guess I left a very big ditch that cannot be patched anymore. I guess I really made a big mistake, that’s why I’m trying to get the bricks back to rebuild the wall. But I think my efforts aren’t going anywhere. So I think I have to do the U-turn. Um, I see no point talking to her now since she’s not following any of the advices I gave, which makes me think that I’m a pretty useless friend. Lets me think also that her words before might be sugarcoated. Hay, I guess I really have to move on. I feel useless and besides, I’ve done all I can to retain the friendship but I guess her side is the one not complying. I guess one word can describe it, bitterness. 😀 Hhahah! Just a joke. MOViNG ON~!

The retreat was very nice but the most memorable part of the retreat was when one of our tires were torn after entering the South Luzon Expressway. The cops or the highway security were making fun of us, I guess, just because we were having fun lifting the van. 😀 And there was one instance where a wind blew the van and since the foundation of the jack was pretty much unstable, the jack went off, dropping the drumbrake on the ground. Yep, the wheel was already removed. But with a bit of thinking with most of us from Management courses and few in engineering courses, and a great help from a cop by giving us a wooden which took him minutes to get, we were able to lift the van. But we saw that the spare tire was also torn. Good thing, Gab, who was one of us at the center and happened to pass by was able to give us a ride to purchase a new tire. It was fun. It was my first time to get my hands filthy dirty on the road for real. 😀

After that, we went back to Lauan and I was fetched by my family to go to the Easter Vigil at UA&P. After the vigil, we ate dinner with my older brother’s godparents and their family and went home afterwards.

For the realizations, I still can’t put them into words but any habits involving physical attributes, maybe I can say some. I can now wake up by myself though I still have to work on it so that I can wake up early. I now have to balance my eating times as well as get everything organized. That retreat was really a big help, it even made me take a bath in cold water which I usually don’t like. 😀

Q-steer plans after midterms.

I want to fiddle again with my cars in the garage but this time I want to go deeper. 😀 A friend of mine gave me two new cars, a Nissan Skyline Coupe V36 and Mazda RX-7 Spirit R:

He gave it to me with a request to make at least one of them be a snap-on-snap-off body for Q-steer. I inspected both cars if I can do the job but it seems to be a big problem for the V36 since there’s a lot of space at the front. For the Rx-7, however, it may be possible so I tried opening the body and realized that the front skirt or splitter is on the chassis insteat of the body. Rawr.

It seems to be a great challenge. I think I will take the modification one notch up. I’ll try to mingle with putty and other molding stuff to get the body to the Q-steer Chassis. Hehehe~!

I will also try to fiddle with the circuit board which include the soldering of LED’s and other electronics stuff. I’ve had workshop skills training from my course and I guess you’ll just need basic soldering skills. 😀 Hope everything goes well in the project.