Jim Kem.com

P.S – I might be getting a little ahead of myself by instantly declaring my distaste for Wordpress and renouncing my allegiance to it right after trying out the live demo of habari. I’m recklessly spontaneous like that.

The main reason? I just can’t stand the Wordpress interface. I especially dislike Wordpress’ entry publishing page aside from the rest of the horid interface. Honestly, if it were not for the inspired “Tiger Admin Interface” plugin (which makes the Wordpress interface look a little like OS X’s), I’d go bonkers. It’s just too cluttered and, sorry for this, crude and primitive. In general, productivity in Wordpress’ interface is like trying to manhandle a buffalo up a flight of emergency spiral staircase. In contrast, Habari’s admin interface is like slipping, and most probably falling, when you run on spilled axel grease. It’s not hard, it’s even smooth!

I’ve come a long way from my old “900mhz AMD Athlon Desktop Windows machine+ 17inch CRT monitor resting on a stereotypical computer table with a keyboard tray and 15 slots for CDs” setup. This is my new setup as of July 2008.

15” Powerbook G4, Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse, Pentax K10D DSLR (used to take the pic) and Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 2.0 speakers.

Sweet.

I bought these speakers a couple of days ago. Since I surely cannot type much about it before I start to rave about its awesomeness, I’m not going to. Instead, I’m just going to say that I think it’s utterly utterly mind-blowingly amazing! I cannot fault its sound quality. It’s a 2.o system but the bass is deep and full-bodied, its pricey but I’d still pay triple that figure for sound quality this good, the color matches my Powerbook perfectly…perfection, perfection, perfection. These are the last word 2.0 computer speakers.

A fellow reviewer of these speakers put it quite nicely:

“These things, for lack of a better word, rock. In fact, they sound so good we can’t refer to them as PC speakers, because it would almost be insulting.” – LIVEdigitally [1/1/2005]

Despite my firm loyalty to Wordpress, I am seriously considering constructing the newer version of this blog with Habari (www.habariproject.org). I’ve been following its progress quite closely as of late and I’m very excited about the potential of this new open-source blogging CMS. But right now, its still in its early development stage and I’ll probably decide to wait until its further releases to create my new blog – with a dot com and a multitude of pictures from my new Pentax K10D! This camera, paired with a most venerable laptop – my PowerBook G4 combined with the RAW editing supremacy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’s Adobe Camera RAW will make one great photographic kit.

I have been using my new K10D for about two weeks now and so far, I cannot find fault in it. Its jpegs and RAW files are beautiful (especially when post-processed with Adobe Lightroom!)with minimal noise at high ISOs and virtually none at lower sensitivities. The body is very pro-spec with rock solid build quality and weather-proofing, the viewfinder is large and bright, the image stabilization is excellent and the handling is absolutely superb. And no I am not being biased. I cannot sufficiently praise this camera, even during the two weeks that I’ve had it with me. That said, it comes as no surprise that it was hailed as a Camera Of The Year Finalist…..for TWO years!

(Back to the subject of this blog’s future)Unfortunately, I still don’t think I’d want to move my database of blog posts from this blog’s server to the new one. I want a clean slate to dirty up. Its been fun using wordpress, and in the end I just might decide to install Wordpress 2.5 instead of Habari. But right now, Habari’s the one I’m leaning towards. The one thing I will miss the most is my Endeavor theme for this blog. I am by no means a coder and am quite proud of what I have achieved with the design and feel of this blog. I hope that the folks at Habari will be able to get a newer version out soon and maybe add support for Wordpress Themes so that I can install Endeavor. But even then it might not work since I’m running this blog on Wordpress 1.5 and they might only support themes from newer versions of Wordpress. I’m itching to get back into the blogsphere and post more photos. Till then, cheerio.

I realise I have said it on occasions to numerous to mention but this time I’m pretty darn, almost, certainly, quite, 70-30, very sure about it. I’ve been procrastinating for far too long that semi-lazy nature has exhausted itself. My intention was to open my own dot com when I get a steady internet connection which would allow me to access it and update it with some semblance of frequency, which I already do. Typically, I’ll get all wide-eyed with ambition and grandeur that I’ll forget how or when I’ll get around to setting it up and working on it.

I have a working mock-up of the page. In my head, that is. But its good stuff, really. Yessireebob. Here’s how I picture it, so put your thinking caps on and sip your creative juices to visualise my description which, if anything, is vague. First of all, when you type in www.jimkem.com, you will come to a flash page which is very straightforward and there will be multiple links: the first will take you to my blog which I wish to call *“chronicle”, the second will take you to an ‘about’ page which I will also squeeze a contact form into, the third is a link to my flickr photostream and the last will take you to another flash page which will showcase my print/pay-me-money worthy pictures, which is why I intend to use flash. You know, for that ‘oooh!’ reaction, or whatever. My blog will draw inspiration from the layout of sites such as New York Times and IHT but if I find that its just too laborious to complete or that I don’t have the technical whiz, I suppose the current Endeavor theme of this blog will have to suffice. Believe me, if you knew the ideas I have in store (which, I say again, might not materialise in its entirety), you’d be aching to get started on it too.

Typically, there are some problems. I haven’t made up my mind on a web host yet. Although, I am seriously considering MesraHosting.net, mostly because of the price. Secondly, I have no prowess with Flash and will require the noble services of a third party to help me.

I won’t be moving this blog to a new server although this blog will still remain here for no reason but no further postings will occur, of course. I really wanna start fresh on this new blog.

*I decided to use the word ‘chronicle’ as apposed to blog because I intend to design it looking like a newspaper, detailing the events and lives of things and people around me instead of a me-me-me-site.

I doubt there is anyone actually reading this blog anymore since I myself abandoned it so very long ago. I miss this blog already. It would really be a shame to loose it though, having put so much effort into coding and setting up this blog.

The last time this blog has heard of me, I was living in Penang and was still schooling – that was an entire era apart from where I am now. The last this blog has heard of me, I didn’t have so much as a decent internet connection and was using a five year old desktop pc, which is pretty much hated by the way. Things have improved for me now as I have a Mac, a monthly salary and am about to have an internet connection (broadband, no less). I am now living in KL working in a Mac Centre in Lot 10, Bukit Bintang.
I’m typing this now on a MacBook Air. Awesome.

Its been a very long time since I’ve made the last entry, what, about two months I reckon. Mind you, I can’t check by adding a new tab to firefox and checking the main page of my blog for the precise second the last entry was made. And for that, I sincerely apologize. And just to let you know, I don’t have an internet connection yet, and I’m accessing the net through a rather sketchy method which quite likely will get me into a heap of trouble sometime soon. I can only stay online for so long on this “sketchy” connection so I only use it occasionally (when I miss the net too much to simply wait for that f****** connection to finally show up). The only other way I’ve been able to go online and stay connected longer than 3-5 minutes is by asking, rather pathetically, my father to let me borrow his laptop for a while (a very short while, on a good day) and stand outside the front door where a reliable connection is available from a very generous neighbour, but sadly it isn’t powerful enough to reach my PC in the living room. Darn!

So going online is going to become a real rarity from now on, unless of course I happen to trip over a working laptop with wifi enabled during my daily evening jog along the beach. But I don’t need to tell you how far off the chances are of that happening. Hmm….what else? Oh yes, I’ve spent most of the mid-term holidays in my beloved and deeply missed city of Kuala Lumpur which was made a load more fun thanks to my Uncle Hyzein who was, at the time, waiting to start his new job and so me and him had ample time to go walking and loitering around KL. I had a really good time there, spending it largely at Mid Valley Megamall, Sungei Wang Plaza and KLCC. I also managed to drag my buddy Amirul Ruslan out of a college class and to KLCC for a screening of Ocean’s Thirteen. That night, I arrived back at my grandparent’s place at around 10.35pm, a new personal record! I did take quite a number of pictures, which I have yet to upload, since my trust in Flickr has been shaken. I also bought a ridiculous number of unnecessary magazines(which is funny since mostly all magazines aren’t that much of a necessity), 8 to be exact and also a new pair of headphones for my Zen V Plus(Creative EP-630), much credit would go to my Uncle Hyzein for his generous donation(thanks very much, again!). It a huge leap in sound quality compared to the currently superfluous EP-somenumber that came standard when I bought the V Plus.

These past couple of weeks after the mid-term break have been rather hectic for me and there isn’t any doubt in my mind that its going to get any better at least until my SPM exams are over. I’m slowly being sucked into the black hole of stress, depression and anxiety that should naturally present itself before a semi-life-defining moment slash exams such as my SPMs. Which means that I’ll have to study far more than I have been from now on in preparation before mid November. This sucks, but its only momentarily. At least I have the assurance that it’ll all be over once it has passed, after which I plan to move to KL to finally start my own life, just hope I’m up to it, financially. On a lighter note, the iPhone is arriving tomorrow! Yay! Its a day I’ve been waiting for for a really long time, since the rumours started about Apple developing a phone in late 2004, and since there’s an 80% chance of me buying it sometime next year, whether or not I’ll have the financial means. Perhaps by then I should decide that a less than legal approach is called for. But I will have it, I assure you. Me thinks I’ll post something here about the iPhone once it launches tomorrow, if the circumstances are favorable, based on the limited amount of info I can gather about it online from now until then and with the pre-released rumors and intelligence leaks I’ve dug up since the rumors began. This blog is not nearly as active as I would like it to be but I plan a big relaunch of this blog by early next year, a new design layout, much, much more content (cause by then I’ll probably have a broadband connection) and I also plan to move this blog to a new, much more feature rich server. MediaTemple’s offerings look very tempting but expensive, though that doesn’t worry me too much. So from there on, the title JimKemDotCom can finally be justified with the URL of the same name, except the DotCom part won’t be part of the domian name. www.jimkem.com – Love it! Can’t wait!

Wow, I don’t quite believe it but I suppose the numbers don’t lie as I’ve just found out I haven’t logged into my Last.FM account in about 5 months. That’s quite a while there. So I ask myself why and soon realized the two very simple explanation, one of which is that since I’ve reformatted my computer only to have a system file corrupt again and again (damn you fastfat.sys) I’ve yet to install the Last.FM scrobbling software. The other reason would be since I’ve bought my Creative Zen V Plus, which accounts for 95% of my music listening nowadays, I hardly found much purpose for using the iTunes-last.fm combination and since back then the wireless network that emits around my building which I use only comes on ever so rarely; now it’s a lot more often. There..simple ain’t it?

Anyway, I’m officially back on the Last.FM wagon as of today. I’ve downloaded the software, downloaded new songs and imported the songs from my Zen V Plus back onto my PC and loaded it up on iTunes. Good to be back.

Well, my friend posted about this same thing on her VOX blog and I figured it’d be an interesting piece. But instead about just telling you what is my dream job, I’ll tell you what I plan to work as right after I finish school and as I progress up the ladder. Why? Because I can…Since, well, lately I’ve been thinking about what I’ll be going to be doing for the next 5 to 10 years. I’ve got a whole plan layed out in chronological order, but not very specifically. At least I took the time to think about it, unlike much of the people attending my less-than-satisfactory school’s senior class. I just hope I don’t jinx the entire plan.

Okay then, I after my SPM examinations I plan to get myself a DSRL and a couple of lenses. Either by some less-than-legal means or if I’m in a good mood, I’ll either apply for a loan, get a credit card (altho, I don’t I can do that at 18) or work a few months for the money. Then move down to Kuala Lumpur and try desperately to find a job as a freelance photographer (so remember people, if in mid 2008 you’ll need someone to take pictures of just about anything, I’m your guy, I’ll be contactable thru this blog, if its still up) while maintaining a steady income by working a day job (preferably at a nearby Apple Centre). While that’s going along just fine, I’ll start networking myself as a photographer and will naturally start to build my portfolio. From there I’ll use that portfolio (hopefully by then it’ll be filled with the most brilliant photography both of us will ever see, or not) to impress during my university application interview and after college I just hope that my previous working experience and my college qualifications can land me a decent job somewhere. That said, my dream job, which is actually three jobs, is being the Head Photographer slash Art Director slash contributing editor of some uber cool publication such as Stuff, T3 or maybe even for FHM and/or NewMan…ahem . That way, I could boss around the other photographers and they can’t question my photography prowess as an Art Director; then start criticizing some of the work of editors around the building, getting on everyone’s nerves. Really obnoxious! And maybe later on I’ll publish a book showcasing my work such as done by photographers by the likes of Lee Frost and Jerry Aurum.