From the monthly archives: September 2008

Photoshop Express

By On · 4 Comments · In Uncategorized
Yesterday I got an email from Photoshop.com, I was originally only had a beta account, but now it seems the site is up properly and i can know start using it for my online editing means. I’m a fan of Adobe products, and even more so Photoshop which I use for practically all my editing means. I don’t know how i could live without this wonderful product. They have integrated so much into it, which has become unbelievable. 

Popping into the website I’m first greated by a nice greyish black background. The style of the website is very much ajax, follows the Adobe products latest icons, simple clean and easy navigation. Plus it is now using their new logo, which I hadn’t realised until a while back when I was recreating my blog layout. The Photoshop Express logo, uses something like a chat bubble. Actually I’m a bit confused as to which logo it is. At some points it’s the chat bubble then suddenly it’s the Adobe Photoshop box.

 

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So this is what my account looks like after signing in. From there you can upload photos straight from the computer. 

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You can even connect straight to some of the other popular photo sharing sites, like Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and Photobucket. Then once you are connected, the photos you edit are automatically edited on anyone of the online photo applications. Quite easy to add photos too just drag and drop.  et’s take a look at the editing capabilities. Just like on the real Photoshop there are layers on the sidepanel. The editing features are all on each photo under photo options. 

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You can even do colour swap for one area. Take a look at the shirt at the bottom.

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While viewing your pictures, you have choice as either a slideview, thumbnails or even with full details.

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However I don’t like the fact there is no text editor on Photoshop express. It would’ve been real handy to have one section that allows you to add text to your images. 

Altogether, I’ll say that while I’m happy that photoshop is now online, but i think it should’ve stocked up a bit more on it’s features. The last editor that I had enjoyed using at times was Picnik. I still think it has more promise though when it comes to editing. 

 

 

Do Not Use Western Union

By On · 14 Comments · In Uncategorized
Here’s another thing I would like to share. See a few months back I purchased a few phones from Singapore because they were apparently cheaper by a mile compared to the prices you can get at low yat. What happened was this. I purcashed all the phones for say round S$1650 and i wanted to make the payment to the other party via Maybank2u Telegraphic Transfer, which is safe, fast and trustworthy. But my counterpart wanted it done via Western Union because it is fast – like on the day the sender does the transaction the receiver will get it in day.  Now for countries like Singapore, Britain.. basically any other currency that has a better foreign exchange rate than your country, the service transaction to send money to that country is higher. Hence, where they say it is cheaper and better to use Western Union is soooo lying!! I had a wonderful surprise where I had to send about RM4000 which is the exact amount i need to pay for the phones.  Little did i know.. this does not INCLUDE the service transaction..which is RM250. Meaning i had to pay RM4250… no way! Yeah Western Union is cheaper, faster, and more secure if you are sending from a country with a stronger dollar then yours. Arrghhh so which means i had to spend more on the service transaction…  Whatever it is I’ve learnt my lesson, I’m sticking with Maybank which in my opinion is still a lot cheaper. The transaction fee is around RM10 and should be either one day to three working days. Blehhhhhhh. See!
Bank fee: There is a RM10 (ten ringgit) fee for Foreign TT transactions to all countries, including Singapore. This fee is not refundable. - Maybank
So as long as I’m in Malaysia, I’m not using Western Union. Even if it is fast, it robs me of more money. So  I’m sticking with Maybank. 

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Yeah it may sound unfair, but I’ve never used Western Union and to receive sucha big shock on the transaction fees when someone keeps praising it.. Just didn’t do it for me.

The Writing Purpose

By On · 228 Comments · In Blog It
It’s been a while since I blogged about my own thoughts for a while. I have come to a realisation, that while I can be indecisive at times, i enjoy doing and being a part of many things. I’m seriously a jack of all trades and master of none. Not something to proud of and barely anything that one can call achievable. I dabble here and there in different things but I concentrate a lot on my time as a performer. However I’ve always preferred if i was good at just one thing love it and that’s it.  Rambling on. I’ll focus on the purpose of this post.  See I’ve got a number of blogs now. But there are two in particular that I’m concentrating on a lot now. One being of course aronil.com and another my latest one linoralow.com. I’ve spent a fair amount of time with blogging communities (not a lot to the point i’m online all day but close enough) and even on a face to face value not just virtually. Some of the bloggers then beceom good friends of mine. However i barely get to do just that much as I’m always busy now… yeah time for yourself gets a lot different.  At one point I thought i got the whole business of what and why i blog down pat. There are number of reasons why I would blog, but what is the core purpose of my blog? Will it be a benefit to myself? Especially when there are tons of marketing and making money ways on the net. Or will it be a benefit for the people who read my blog. I don’t believe that you can have the best of both worlds when you blog. Blogging takes time and you need to garner just about the right amount of attention to your blog to even consider it succesful. What i mean by successful is when you have 100s if not 1000s of unique visitors on a daily basis. It is when people will just naturally go to your blog to read up because they wanna know whats happening or if they are busybody they wanna know whats going on with you. You will have a number of comments but good quality ones where you can discuss something with others.  Yeah all that… At one point i figured I would keep it at that, I’ll just blog about everything on me, on what I see on a daily basis. Then you start to realise that’s not possible either. Because as a blogger, (to be seriously cheesy) – ‘with some sort of power, comes great responsibility’. I’m not kidding because when you blog, your privacy and your personality is on a big  open platform for the world to decipher and see. Sure not everyone would bother much about your blog – doens’t matter if they can find it or not. But what you say on your blog even if it is just your personal diary…. it matters. Huh.. have you noticed there is an irony in that? A blog as a personal diary – how can it be personal when it’s open for the world to see. It is like putting down your thoughts on black and white which people can find and quote / paraphrase /cite you from. I can’t exactly write about all i experience in life, because it will affect others around me. For example i may mention that not all my loved ones enjoy being written about for others to read. I’ve gotten into a number of arguments with specifically one of them. Can’t blame them either.  I guess my point, is what is the purpose of me having anything online? Which is probably why, one will see less of the posts where I blab on about silly things. I mean seriously SILLY things, and I’m going to focus more on the things that I enjoy and would like to share. I’e no longer considered much about my stats. I used to be all panicky if my stats for my site, dropped.. now.. well what can i say. Different intentions.. different feelings and cares.  To me the point of blogging, is about sharing. But sharing what? I’ve now come to a point where I should consider what I share… Aronil.com is still about the things that make me smile. It will just now concentrate more the artistic side of things. Like graphic designing, websites, drawings, paintings, the tools of web 2.0.. stuff like that. While Linoralow.com will be my performing arts blog and will cater more on movies, entertainment and events. It’s just easier to categorise things and while it’s fine to shove everything on one blog, but i just dislike when it loses it’s focus. So with those two blogs – hopefully figured out.. that’s my writing purpose.

Asian Icons

By On · 513 Comments · In Uncategorized
I was going around looking again for some icons. Asian looking icons to be specific, and I found a bunch of sites that just got me whooping for joy. I’m right now in a very now your asian phase and trying to get that embedded in my own style of art.. I’m trying to anyways. So let me share my findings when i went typing out asian icons or chinese icons or something. 

Yoritstuki

I love these Icons. It’s done by Hybrid Works and he has done an amazing job with these japanese icons. I mean just look at the bansai and the green tea icon! These icons also come with a desktop wallpaper.   

 

Sakura 

Another set created by Hybrid Works. The link for the picture below goes straight to his actual website, from there look under icons on the sidepanel.

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Kidaubis

Kidaubis is created by kidcomic.net.   

Kidaubis

     

Samurai Icons

There are 16 icons here brought to you be customize.org. Lovely work and you can find some other neat icons there too.   

Samurai

Samurai Icons

There are 16 icons here brought to you be customize.org. Lovely work and you can find some other neat icons there too.   

Silver Phoenix

By On · 448 Comments · In Blog It
I don’t always make it known to people – my chinese name. But there is something one can be very proud of with one’s chinese name. All parents would always make sure that they give their children a good name. Preferrably a name that people can’t make fun of – they can hope anyway. In a way like the Red Indians, Chinese are the same too when they give names that have a specific meaning. You know like how you read or watch in some movies, they have the Red Indian tribes that would name say their daughter..soemthing like Tiger Lily or Flower petal (I’m assuming these are names that represent beauty for the girls).  So think of it that way too with the Chinese names. Like my chinese name is Yin Foong, not including my surname which is Low. It’s interesting when I was younger I never liked my asian heritage as much as I do now. Sad in a way too. In school I would be forced to learn how to write Mandarin, at least I knew how to write my own chinese name. Which looks like so…   

silverphoenix

Yin (the first chinese character) in it’s literal translation in Mandarin anyway means silver. And the Foong (other two Chinese characters mean phoenix). There’s a big difference to how you would write phoenix. You can either be relating it to the male phoenix, or the female phoenix, or naming it as the lengendary phoenix. See the middle chinese character (?) represents the phoenix. While the last character (?) represents the gender or rather what kind of phoenix you are referring too. At least that’s how i understand it base on the sites i’m reading.  So in this sense mine would mean the female legendary phoenix. :) Bit of background :) on the terms phoenix 
 
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This is the word that translates as “Legendary Phoenix” in Chinese. This refers to the bird that according to Chinese folklore, rose from the fiery ashes. The phoenix and dragon are by far the most famous creatures in Chinese mythology.

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This is the simplest way to write “Phoenix” in Chinese. Because dragon is usually expressed as a single character, when you see “dragon andphoenix” written in Chinese, you’ll often see this single-character version. Please note, this is also the male element of phoenix, so it also means “malephoenix bird”.

 
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This is another simple way to write “Phoenix” in Chinese. This is the specifically female element of phoenix, so this is how you write “femalephoenix“. This character is sometimes used to represent the female empress (many times in history, China was ruled by a woman, in much the same way queens came to power in Europe).  Note that the emperor is always represented as a dragon (not the male version of phoenix). If you see yourself as a strong woman, this might be scroll for you to express “woman power” or “powerful woman” in a cool way.

Yeah so anyway, I thought it would be cool, to just share that piece of information on my Chinese name bwhahahaa. Plus I found this cool site that translates your name into chinese characters here at Chinese-tools. Then you can take those characters and have them on a image like so.    silver-phoenix-womanphoenix-silver-phoenix Ok ok i give kudos to my parents, because i really do think the name is pretty cool. How often can you tell people that your real name really is Silver Phoenix as stated on your ID card. Even if the bird is a myth, it’s probably one of the coolest mythological creatures, which has always fought on the side of good – according to fantast novels anyway..and Harry Potter… and Narnia.. and Fushigi Yuugi and so on so forth :)