A little too much information, perhaps?

I chanced across a website and this is what it chugged out...
14 March 1971
Your date of conception was on or about 21 June 1970 which was a Sunday.

You were born on a Sunday
under the astrological sign Pisces.
Your Life path number is 8.

Your fortune cookie reads:
Plan for many pleasures ahead.

Life Path Compatibility:
You are most compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 2, 4, 8, 11 & 22.
You should get along well with those with the Life Path number 6.
You may or may not get along well with those with the Life Path numbers 1 & 5.
You are least compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 3, 7 & 9.

The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2441024.5.
The golden number for 1971 is 15.
The epact number for 1971 is 3.
The year 1971 was not a leap year.

Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 1/27/1971 and ending 2/14/1972.
You were born in the Chinese year of the Pig.

Your Native American Zodiac sign is Wolf; your plant is Plantain.

You were born in the Egyptian month of Pachons, the first month of the season of Shomu (Harvest).

Your date of birth on the Hebrew calendar is 17 AdarI 5731.
Or if you were born after sundown then the date is 18 AdarI 5731.

The Mayan Calendar long count date of your birthday is 12.17.17.11.0 which is
12 baktun 17 katun 17 tun 11 uinal 0 kin

The Hijra (Islamic Calendar) date of your birth is Sunday, 16 Muharram 1391 (1391-1-16).

The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 11 April 1971.
The date of Orthodox Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 18 April 1971.
The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 24 February 1971.
The date of Whitsun (Pentecost Sunday) in the year of your birth was Sunday 30 May 1971.
The date of Whisuntide in the year of your birth was Sunday 6 June 1971.
The date of Rosh Hashanah in the year of your birth was Tuesday, 21 September 1971.
The date of Passover in the year of your birth was Sunday, 11 April 1971.
The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 23 February 1971.

As of 11/27/2007 9:05:08 PM EST
You are 36 years old.
You are 440 months old.
You are 1,915 weeks old.
You are 13,407 days old.
You are 321,789 hours old.
You are 19,307,345 minutes old.
You are 1,158,440,708 seconds old.

Celebrities who share your birthday:
Taylor Hanson (1983) Kirby Puckett (1961) Billy Crystal (1947)
Michael Caine (1933) Quincy Jones (1933) Frank Borman (1928)
Hank Ketcham (1920) Les Brown (1912) Albert Einstein (1879)

Top songs of 1971
Joy to the World by Three Dog Night Maggie May by Rod Stewart
It's Too Late by Carole King One Bad Apple by Osmonds
How Can You Mend a Broken Heart by Bee Gees Knock Three Times by Dawn
Brand New Key by Melanie Go Away Little Girl by Donny Osmond
Family Affair by Sly & the Family Stone Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves by Cher

Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 5.24735812133072 years old. (You're still chasing cats!)

Your lucky day is Thursday.
Your lucky number is 3 & 7.
Your ruling planet(s) is Jupiter & Neptune.
Your lucky dates are 1st, 10th, 19th, 28th.
Your opposition sign is Virgo.
Your opposition number(s) is 5.

Today is not one of your lucky days!

There are 108 days till your next birthday
on which your cake will have 37 candles.

Those 37 candles produce 37 BTUs,
or 9,324 calories of heat (that's only 9.3240 food Calories!) .
You can boil 4.23 US ounces of water with that many candles.


In 1971 there were approximately 3.7 million births in the US.
In 1971 the US population was approximately 203,302,031 people, 57.4 persons per square mile.
In 1971 in the US there were approximately 2,158,802 marriages (10.6%) and 708,000 divorces (3.5%)
In 1971 in the US there were approximately 1,921,000 deaths (9.5 per 1000)
In the US a new person is born approximately every 8 seconds.
In the US one person dies approximately every 12 seconds.

In 1971 the population of Australia was approximately 13,198,380.
In 1971 there were approximately 276,361 births in Australia.
In 1971 in Australia there were approximately 117,637 marriages and 12,947 divorces.
In 1971 in Australia there were approximately 110,650 deaths.


Your birthstone is Aquamarine

The Mystical properties of Aquamarine

Aquamarine is often used to experience love and mercy. It is said to help ease depression and grief.
Some lists consider these stones to be your birthstone. (Birthstone lists come from Jewelers, Tibet, Ayurvedic Indian medicine, and other sources)

Jade, Rock Crystal, Bloodstone

Your birth tree is

Lime Tree, the Doubt
Accepts what life dishes out in a composed way, hates fighting, stress and labour, tends to laziness and idleness, soft and relenting, makes sacrifices for friends, many talents but not tenacious enough to make them blossom, often wailing and complaining, very jealous, loyal.



There are 28 days till Christmas 2007!
There are 41 days till Orthodox Christmas!

The moon's phase on the day you were
born was waning gibbous.

Farewell, Father.

This is for my father, Wang Yu Yung.

He was born on May 29, 1934 and died peacefully with my mother at his side on 28 October 2007 in China.

A man who was a role model to me
I followed in his footsteps as best I could
Always giving always loving
His family most important to him

Working hard to provide for us
as best as he could
We all enjoyed the fruit
of his labour

I never for once thought that he would go
for so soon it seemed
Time not enough, never enough
Go freely for it was your wish
To be able in death to experience
The freedom which you so deserve

Never shall we forget you
and all your good deeds
for many lives have you touched
and many more have you provided for
as the old saying goes

"Give the man a fish and he eats for a day,
Teach him how to fish and he eats every day."
Neither fire nor wind, birth or death
can destroy our good deeds.

In loving memory of my father,
Wang Yu Yung
29/05/1934 ~ 28/10/2007

The Click 5!!!

Yesh!!! They were at our station (Power98FM) today. They played LIVE in the studio!!!

As I was the only Tech dude in the office today, it fell upon me to fix up the mics and do the audio checks. The studio's designed for 3 guests and 1 DJ (that was the mic assignment) so there was some testing to do to see if we could fit the 5 band members and 2 contest winners.

Well, it worked out pretty well. I've got a recording of the song Jenny which they sang live off-air.

That was pretty cool.

Anyway, here's a picture of the whole gang with Harry (Our DJ who hosts the Double Xpresso lunch-hour show).



This is me with Ben Romans...



And this is their lead...Kyle Patrick...

Words that attract spam...

I spent a good 10 minutes deleting idiotic spam from my Tag Board.

Why?

Simply because I've got keywords such as p*rn and ad*lt m*vies in my blog. Geez. I honestly wonder why they even bother. It's not like as if I'm hooked on to it. I was just mentioning the fact that some Korean actresses looked like drag queens.

In any case, an interesting topic popped up @ work today.

It was about ladies, short skirts and legs. To be honest, I'm a legs, neck and shoulders guy. Lemme see a lady in a dress which exposes all three and well...

You get the idea.

It's a pity that not many local women dress up in clothes which expose all three at the same time. By expose, I don't mean show EVERYTHING...just a hint of what to expect would be great. Too much skin isn't necessarily a good thing either.

Sometimes I do wonder though, if there's something that you're after for very long remains unobtainable, would you persist or give up hope, cease and desist? I've been wondering if I should continue the persistance which after a whle may seem pesky...ah, to strike that balance...

Nostalgia...

This picture was taken in Vancouver in 1991...I just dug it up and scanned it and boy does it bring back memories...

Sleeping in the VW Golf cabrio @ Whistler in autumn and freezing out butt off...(it was like -5°C then. And that jacket...I loved that jacket. It was like CAN$49.99 when I bought it.



This one was taken in 1994 while I was already in Perth and SY was just visiting and checking out the school before she went there as well.

Anyway, I miss that jacket and have no idea where it's gone. :( Well, it has been more than 10 years I guess but still...I think I can still squeeze into it heh.



This shot was taken in 1991...when I was still pretty new to photography really. One of those priceless film shots taken with a Yashica FM2 camera (which was a fully mechanical, manual SLR - my first). Anyway, it's super nostalgic to me. I was there studying and she came to visit...awww so sweet. And we've only been dating for 2½ years too! :P

The Birthday Bash...

Alright, so I haven't updated in a week or so. I had to leave Daughtry up there cause he was giving me more hits!!! HAHAHA!

In any case, we had a ball of a time at Go India restaurant. It was an FM club outing. We also celebrated 2 birthdays. And a first at SAFRA Radio! Boi turns 21!!! Talk about young! He's like the 'baby' of the company although he hates being called that.

Well, that's because us old farts hate being old...that's why we're all young at heart! hahaha!

Well, all the best for the birthday boy and girl! :D

Here's the BD boi...



And the birthday girl girl...isn't she just sooooo sweet!?

DAUGHTRY!

Chris Daughtry and Brian Craddock!!! Woohoooo!!!
They were the in-studio guests on Harry's Double Expresso.

Sony-BMG brought them in and man...the groupies in us turned out at full force.

Okay, so they're not as tall as I expected but they're both way cool dudes.

Was great and we had a helluva time taking pictures with them ahaha!

Anyway, since they had a pretty long day ahead, they didn't stay here for too long.

In any case, it was pretty fun meeting them.

A Clear Night

It's such a beautiful sight. After a cloudy weekend (it's M's fault. He left for China today) it's CLEAR!!!!

I instantly whipped out my C90, mounted the camera onto it prime focus and voila! A nice shot of the moon.

Yes, it was sharpened a little because the original shot had the moon slightly soft. That's probably because of the 7 year old optics which to be honest, weren't maintained very well.

Still, it was a sight to see. Pity I didn't have the time to do shots of Jupiter as well because through the eyepieces, tonight gave a good showing of the planet along with its 4 biggest moons. Callisto, Io, Europa and Ganymede.



Well, I think the shot of the moon alone was well worth the trouble of packing and unpacking the gear. Heh.

And yes, the images are shot by me in Singapore and they're my copyright HAHAHA!

42 minutes past Midnight

This was what it was like at Seletar Reservoir 42 minutes past midnight. It was on the 16th September 2007.

A rather still night with no wind. Clouds hung overhead giving the surroundings a surrealistic glow from the reflection of streetlights.

A couple finds solitude for themselves and escape from the daily grind of city life.

Sick...

My mouth is dry, my head's spinning and my hands are clammy. This to top off with the fact that I'm running a temperature. Damn I hate having a fever.

Backyard astronomy's a good way of feeding mosquitos. We covered more mileage than I'd care to remember driving from Seletar to Tuas to Sungei Buloh and finally to Pasir Ris...all in that sequence!

At the end, I blame M for bringing the rainclouds where ever he goes HAHAHA!

Oh well, I have to be optimistic about this coming weekend though. Might even do some sky tracking in order to get some nice wide shots.

Lets hope I get well by then.

Face Booked

Man...since I got an account on facebook.com, I've been swamped by pokes, beer and God knows what else.

There's been very little happening these couple of days apart from the excitement of horizontal lightning, telescopes and earthquakes...

Okay, so it was a pretty big deal that we felt the tremors here as well but frankly speaking, it wasn't quite what I expected. After all, I've experienced tremors along the west coast of North America before and those were quite something else.

In any case, I won't be living anywhere close to a fault line anytime soon.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for clear skies tonight. Hopefully then I can photograph some nice Messier objects such as M31 or M42.

Polar alignment's still a headache for me though and I believe that M's big ass Celestron's gonna be hogged by his 350D. Still, one can always try.

One wonders what of the local trees that people have spotted with growths on the trunk that look like The Monkey God and the Elephant God. It's probably just a coincidence but since when should we start worshipping trees? It's a strange world that we live in I guess.

Shake it shake it baby!

Yup, some of us here at D-E-P-O-T R-D felt the tremors.

Apparently, our local tremors were caused by a 7.8 (according to USGS as of 8:47am) / 7.9 (according to NEA.gov.sg as of 8:47am) earthquake that happened at 7:49:01am local time in SOUTHERN SUMATERA, approximately 550km SW of Singapore and 90km SW of Sungai Penuh, Sumatra, Indonesia.

The 883Jia DJs felt it while they were still on-air and announced it as it happened. Quite drama yah?

Anyway, I didn't really feel anything much but it could be because of my rather central (in the building) location. They were closer to the edges of the building so they might have felt it more.

Oh well...

If you want more updates, check out NEA's Earthquake Monitoring webpage
or
the USGS Worldwide Earthquake info centre

Maybe they should stop doing the "jogek" for a while there...

Okay okay...not nice to make fun of disaster but have to make light of it lor...otherwise everyone so sad. :P

In The News...

Got a call today...was kinda half asleep when I answered...

"Yo Boz! I saw your photo in the papers!" - Older Sis
"Is it?" - Me
"Yar! You're the Vincent Wang that shot the lightning right?" - Older Sis
"Guess so...not that many Vincent Wangs living on the 12th floor in Bt Batok" - Me
"Niiiiiiiice!" - Older Sis
"Thanks!" -Me
"You got newspapers or not?" - Older Sis
"No lei" - Me
"Okay I cut out for you to frame up." - Older Sis
"Thanks!" - Me
"Click"

So I got up still a little stoned to check out the Stomp! site...

hmm...1200+ views...not bad..get good exposure in Stomp! lei...

So later on when I came into the office I check out the papers...Yup...there it is. The cover photo for Stomp! on today's paper.

Looks like recently I've been involved a lot more in the Media...lending my voice for commercials and spots in Power98, photos posted in the newspapers and on the online portal etc...I kinda enjoy it.

Okay okay...it's attention seeking but then again, it's also fun. Heh :)

STOMPed...

Well, if you guys happen to be visiting the STOMP website, you can see the pictures that I've taken previously of the cloud formation and lightning.

They've been posted here

Now I feel like a typical local "Kaypo" but I do feel that sights such as these should be shared.

It's Showing its Age...

Yup...the 10D is 4½ years old now...and it's showing its age.

Just two days ago, I tried taking a long exposure photo of the lightning (see previous post) storm and the number of hot pixels that popped up are definitely more than when I first bought the camera.



I guess it's kinda protesting against the abuse that it's gone through. I suppose once I save enough for the new 40D. At least it's got "Liveview" which should help in getting a more accurate focus while shooting either prime focus or through eyepiece projection.



Orion's 120mm ST OTA is a 600mm f/5 and is going for under 1K at Astro, but after reading about it, I'm beginning to wonder if a shorter but faster 600mm is a good alternative to my current 1000mm f/11 mirror...

Or should I get a NexStar??? The Orion accepts 2" eyepieces which is a BIG bonus cause I wear eyeglasses...

The difference between the new generation C90 (M's Scope) compared to my old C90 is quite obvious. The new C90 is a 1200mm f/13.3 which appears very dark even though the magnification is better...

Maybe I should continue with the C90 first because it's a pretty decent all-rounder and M's already got the monster NexStar 8SE...

Argh...decisions decisions...

Big Ass Scope

M collected his big ass Telescope yesterday...and today he flew off to Manila.





At least he loaned me his C90 to mess around with along with the NexImage CCD. Haven't had a chance to try them out yet though.



Compare that with my own very old C90 side by side and you'd notice some differences; such as...

1) on mine, the darn focusing ring is on the tube itself...so whenever I try to focus, the whole scope would move...a big no-no if you're trying to spot Jupiter or Saturn...

2) I don't have the 90° dual-view thingy. which means that I have to rely on a star dianganol.

3) Mine's an 1000mm f/11 as compared to his 1200mm f/13 so it's a little bit brighter.

Anyway, he's coming back on the 14th so we're gonna go hang out somewhere n do some stargazing.

Storm on a Starry Night...

The raw power of nature...The picture above was taken at about 6.40pm and you can see the storm clouds brewing. Equally impressive is the super long shadow cast by the clouds from the setting sun. It was just a beautiful sight.



An aeroplane passing by the storm. Obviously the storm's quite a distance away. Probably hitting Johor Bahru and further north to perhaps Senai. In any case, the plane still looks puny!



Horizontal lightning was spotted from my front door and I decided to capture some images. This is what the storm front looks like when lit by the lightning from within...you can also see stars in the sky which made it an even more interesting experience.



This is a 100% crop of the above image...no resizing was done.

Truely a magnificent sight.

Mistaken

People often mistake acts of concern or goodwill (especially from the opposite sex) as a sign of affection (so I've said before).

However, having said that, it's only fair that the party not be kept in the dark about it or be led on. J recently had made this mistake with his ex and when she ignored him, he was utterly depressed.

It's no surprise that he feels that way since he still does have strong feelings towards her. I guess sometimes, women enjoy the attention for a while and then once that initial buzz of it wears off, it becomes tedious.

Guys just have to know when to quit.

Of course, there are times when persistence pays off but it seldom happens if ever at all. Persistence can sometimes become an irritant actually.

It's happened to me in the distant past so I guess you could say that I've got a certain amount of experience with this.

Besides, it doesn't pay to have a crush on someone who's self-centered and in need of temporary attention. You'll just end up being ignored when the person finds a new playmate or interest.

I guess there are people out there whom don't know how to put in a nice way that they want some time to themselves but rather choose to ignore as the easier way out. Humans are always looking for the easy way out. Otherwise, John F. Kennedy wouldn't have had to say, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard... because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and others too." at the Rice University Address on September 12, 1962 (full transcript here).

Escapism

There are some people that I know that would make Houdini look like an amateur.

Of course they would have their reasons for it. However, it's the fact that it occurs without knowing when it'll happen that gets a little on the nerves.

Otherwise it wouldn't be called disappearing I suppose.

How effective is the Internet in searching someone up? Not very if the person suffers from technophobia I'm afraid. There are quite a few people I know of that are certifiable technophobes. It's a little strange though because first of all, they're my age and secondly, how can anyone truly survive in this country being a technophobe?

It is good to know though that there are senior citizens out there that try to embrace technology with open arms. Even though oftentimes it's a pain to teach them about it, one just has to be patient of the fact that:

A) Because they think they're old, they automatically have bad memories...(but they can remember what you did wrong two months ago)

B) Because they think they're old, they say that it's more difficult for them to learn new things (well, lets just put it down to experience-induced stubbornness).

Imagine that we have this so-called aging population (that's according to a government census), think of the sheer numbers of hair-tearing moments that will occur when our population reaches the average age of 50...dang, we'd have a whole bunch of bald-spotted 20-somethings then wouldn't we?

Oh well...

The World will miss a Great Tenor

Luciano Pavarotti...

One of the greatest tenors of our time and an opera legend has died. He was 71 years old. BBC News has more.

If ever a movie were to be made of his later life (say past 40s), I think the perfect actor to portray him would be actor John Rhys-Davies don't you agree?

They both bear a striking resemblance to each other.

Don't you agree?