Turning the page, starting a business, looking to the future.

I am way overdue for a journal entry though I've never been one to embrace the whole blogging thing.

Anyway, I have moved to Singapore. Recently I received the green light to forge ahead and start a product design business. It'll be focused on high quality electronics for the home. We've got two products currently existing only as specs but planning to have a working prototype and fabs ready to go this time next year.

I probably won't have much for my dA account for the next year since my Nikon P5700 died. Its really done more for me as a way to touch base with waxghost. The Nikon P50 I have is really just something to take happy snaps. Lately its been really letting me down with it's autofocus. It seems to look good on the LCD but most of the pictures come out horribly blurred.

That said I am really enjoying its video capability, something that is not a main feature. Surprisingly for such an IP-bitch like Nikon and for something aimed at the budget end of the market it does good video: 640x480 at 30fps in a non-proprietary .avi container. So instead of dA, it's my YouTube account that's been getting my love as of late. I'll even be putting up video of the grasshopper which is my latest submission here.

Windows Movie Maker for Vista is clunky and limited but does a fine job for a quick YouTube effort. I'm looking into a legal copy of either Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere for when I can afford a HD-capable HDD vidcam. Since the Flip Mino started making a buzz with its budget performance for the aspiring YouTube director, I'm anticipating things to improve for the consumer at large when it comes to convenient, feature-packed digital vidcams that are affordable.

I took some friends to dinner at the Esplanade. There are some hawker stalls there and one of them: "Old Padang Satay" do some great satay. The teh tarik is good but the ice kacang and chendol are shit. I am amazed at how much Singapore has changed. There were at least 3 venues with live music, something unheard of 10 years ago in this country. A recent first in Singapore is that its popular enough that some lucky guys can actually quit their day jobs and live off being a house band. There didn't used to be this support for local musicians or music. Very good state of affairs indeed.

Something deviants here will like is that there are tons of art installations around the Esplanade, even the underground tunnel connecting it to the public transport. Again, 10 years ago, this stuff never existed.

When I'm not doing research for the business I'm playing games. I'm currently going through Half Life Episode Two. Brilliant storytelling, beautiful graphics, quite addictive. I finished Portal just before it. My god that is one of the best game concepts I have ever had the pleasure of playing. I finished it and now want more. Excellent brain food.
I'm also finishing off the bonus campaign in The Frozen Throne. The one with Rexxar. I'm playing the Warcraft III series purely for lore. I don't care too much about the game itself, I just think of it as an interactive cartoon with RTS elements. I just decided I liked the lore of WoW so much I was going to do some background reading. So I've been visiting WoWWiki alot too.

Its made me think alot about wishing I had the ability to take the Half-Life 2 engine and doing a Machinima of the storylines in the Warcraft III series. Garry's Mod definitely gives to tools but not the talent to create character models and provide voices. Though one could just do an audio rip from the WCIII files and apply them directly. That would be kick ass. That would also be a lot of work.

Ah well