KSImage: Bird with My Favorite Color's Feather

I took this picture during one of my visit to Jurong Bird Park. I am not sure what kind of bird is this but its feather color is very nice... one of my favorite color. Furthermore, its feather color match the color of the rocks.
(c) KSImage

Life: My Photo Image Gallery Blog

I posted quite numbers of my photo image pictures in the beginning of this blog and don't do that anymore since then but I still have quite number of pictures to share, so I decided to create another blog just to dedicate it to all pictures I have taken since I owned digital cameras. Only selected pictures will be posted in this blog.

If you interested to see my photo image collections, visit this blog: http://ksimage.blogspot.com

Well, there will be no 'Me' in the pictures. It will only consists picture of objects. I don't like be in picture because I will not look good in it, not photogenic... looks even uglier...

Hope you will enjoy it...

FYI: Twin Red Pandas (Tai & Pip)

Source: bbc.co.uk website Daily in Pictures 19-Jun-2008

FYI: Young Snow Leopard Cub in Zurich Zoo (Indeever)

Source: bbc.co.uk website Daily in pictures 20-Jun-2008

Sports: Rafael Nadal - Definitely King of Clay Court

After convincingly winning his 4th Grand Slam title, all in French Open and clay court, Rafael Nadal - World No.2 in ATP Tour ranking - is definitely King of Clay Court. He crushed Roger Federer (currently World No.1) 6-1 6-3 6-0 in an almost perfect performance. Roger Federer still can't find way to beat Rafael Nadal, even after employed clay-specialist coach, and now have been beaten in 8 of 9 matches between them on clay. Only this French Open title still keep Roger Federer out of a perfect tennis career.

Rafael Nadal is a very kind and humble guy - never see him loose temper during the match - and also a very hard working and tough player, never give up until last point and always be able to make incredible comeback when left behind quite far in scoring... patiently collect point-by-point to win the set. 

Rafael Nadal's trademark is biting every trophy he won, see the picture!

He still have quite long way to overtake Roger Federer, who still shows the best of him in most of the tournaments he participate. He needs to prove himself in other surface and the next challenge is Wimbledon which he almost win last year after exhausted 5 sets match with Roger Federer. Still he has to keep his pace and not let Novak Djokovic (World No.3) pass him. Fortunately he still be able to hold Djokovic after 2 wins, both in semifinal, in clay court this year.

My wife is Rafael Nadal's big fan and can't miss any of his match!

Sports: Ana Ivanovic - She is No.1 now

After the retirement of former No.1, Justine Henin, the defeat of Maria Sharapova in 4th round, important match with Jelena Jankovic in semifinal, Ana Ivanovic wins French Open to capture her first grand slam title - after failed in two previous grand slam finals last year French Open and this year Australian Open - and subsequently for certain she will become the world women tennis No.1.

Ana Ivanovic convincingly beats Dinara Safina in the final 6-4 6-3. Credit to much improve and stunning performance of Dinara Safina for her way to the final by beating Maria Sharapova, Elena Dementieva, and Svetlana Kuznetsova.

So, my prediction in my previous article about Ana Ivanovic in no nonsense and turn to reality in only two-and-half months! And, with her young 20-years old age, she has very bright future ahead.

Congratulation Ana Ivanovic... go and get the rest of the grand slam titles!!

Freeware: GMail Drive Shell Extension

If you are looking for free online storage, consider GMail Drive shell extension. By using this useful utility, you will be able to make use the generous GMail storage size (6.7GB, as of this article written) to keep any file sizes not more than max. GMail attachment size (currently 20MB).

GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google Gmail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to. So, it will very convenience to use because you already familiar with Windows Explorer and its functionality.

For detail you can visit this website and download the setup file and install it when you think it is useful for you.

FYI: Little Clawed Otters (cute)

Source: mypaper online, 3-Jun-2008

Life: Memory of Living in Choa Chu Kang

I went to Choa Chu Kang's Lot 1 Shoppers' Mall last week with one objective... having lunch in my favorite Japanese food stall there where I haven't been there quite long already, but only to face disappointment. Lot 1 Shoppers' Mall is under renovation and expansion including the basement Food Junction (it moves to 4th floor) and as result, some of the food stall were closed including my favorite food stall, Sumo Japanese Cuisine. It is special for me because it is where I started my appetite on the Japanese sushi & sashimi, especially the raw salmon... so sweet & tasty (even bears like salmon!). Since I am quite particular on food, I order almost the same meal each time I ate there, so they will know automatically what I am going to order... So sad that it is no more there, probably it has been closed quite sometime already... because can't compete with those established Japanese restaurant chains and rising rental. The front stall which sell my favorite bubble tea, nasi lemak, and fried banana, also has not been there anymore...

Five years ago, I live in Choa Chu Kang area, Northvale condo specifically for three years... it was my first time living in condominium in Singapore, thanks to the affordable rental cost at that time due to property downturn. The condo is very near to MRT station, bus station, and mall. So, I enjoy living there so much. Since the mall is just across the street, I can go there anytime to eat, window shopping, watch movie, and visit library.

Well... like people always says, the consistent thing in this world is change, so there it goes. I am not sure whether I will still go to Choa Chu Kang since I have lost the 'link'.

Japanese Drama: Takako Matsu

Takako Matsu is absolutely my favourite Japanese actress. She is very cute... just look at the picture and you will agree with me.

First time I watch Takako Matsu is in Love Generation where she plays an interesting role as a girl who just being dumped when she meet her unexpected true love, played by Takuya Kimura. Takako Matsu and Takuya Kimura forms a perfect pair in that drama. And, the partnership continue to the Hero, another interesting drama.

I just finished watch her latest drama, Yakusha Damashii (a.k.a At the Soul of an Actor), a very touching story about relationship of an orphan lady who get used to live alone, an old and selfish theatre actor who also live alone in his older days, and two little children who abandoned by their mother. A bit plain story in the beginning episodes but getting more interesting along the way, especially when the interactive between characters start take place. In my view, she acted very well in this drama.

She is also has singing career, but I haven't found any song of her that I favourite so far... well I will keep searching. But honestly, I love to see her in drama as actress rather than her as a singer, so I am looking forward to her next drama.

Japanese Drama: I Watched Them Before

Before Korean Drama spread their wings to the world and conquer my interest with their trademark and sweet love story plus beautiful love songs OST, I used to watched Japanese Drama. Japanese Drama has their own characteristic... well... love still part of the story, but in my view, the dialogs and conversations is the most interesting part because sometimes it is quite philosophical, deep meanings, and surprising. I envy the sound of  maturity of those conversations and I learn a lot from it.

In term of story line, the Japanese Drama that I watched, was quite different to Korean Drama. While Korean Drama most of the time exploited to much on the fate, destiny, complex past life affairs, cinderella-like love story, and complicated love web, Japanese Drama seems not exploit those kind of story line, it shows more on the personal relationship issues, personal characteristic, change of heart, change the way of thinking, and sometimes even try to step into unfamiliar and controversial zone. So, even though the love is not the central of story, they still interested to be watched.

I watched Great Teacher Onizuka, Forbidden Love, Love Generation, and Hero. The first two have Nanako Matsushima as lead actress, while the last two have Takako Matsu as lead actress. Both are pretty.... but I like Takako Matsu more, she has great chemistry with Takuya Kimura in those drama. Nowadays, once and a while I still love to watch those drama and probably would like to watch some other more once I feel boring of Korean Drama.

FYI: A Rare Breed (Tapir)

Source: Today Online, 2-May-2008

FYI: Happy Birthday, Spam

Source: Today Online, 2-May-2008

FYI: Giant Squid

Source: Today Online, 30-April-2008

Korean Drama: Chae Rim

I've written about several Korean actress in my previous articles, but it is not complete without this actress. Yeah... she is Chae Rim. Not the prettiest but very cute and her trademark smile is one of her main attractiveness, a smile that can make people happy. She look young and pretty with her straight short or long hair, but can look that old and ugly with her curly hair.

No matter what, she is still special to me because she is the lead actress in the first Korean Drama that I ever watched, All About Eve. Her acting role in that drama as a nice and pity girl has catch people heart and make her easily to remember.

Chae Rim has quite long and successful career as an actress. She starts acting when she was 15 years old and has been involved in many drama. In most of her drama that I have watched, she got role as a girl who experienced beautiful love life and have a happy ending, but quite pity that it was not applicable in her real life. She has quite short 3-years marriage life... but don't worry, she still very young and still has so much time to find her true and everlasting love and live happily ever and after.

FYI: Monster Big Fish - Mississippi Paddlefish

Source: National Geographic on World's "Monster" Fish

Music: Michael Learns To Rock

Michael Learns To Rock (MLTR) is my favourite band in the 90's and still valid even until now. They started well-known through their 1st hit single, The Actor, which was featured in MTV channel where I can still remember how they looked like especially the costume and hair! The band name was a bit strange and unusual but probably it was the one that might make people curious to know about it and pay attention.

I like almost all of MLTR songs, all such beautiful love songs. Songs like Sleeping Child, 25 Minutes, Breaking My Heart, I'm Gonna Be Around, Out Of The Blue, Paint My Love, That's Why, and You Took My Heart Away are always be in my music playlist. But among those, 25 Minutes is my most favourite one.

They started with 4-members group band but then one member left the band for a solo career in 2000. The lead singer, Jascha Richter, is the one who wrote most of popular MLTR songs.

Music: Queen

QUEEN was my next favorite band. They are one of most well-known British band after Beatles era. It was during my senior high school time, in the 80's. I like most of their songs. They were among the first band which using modern sound effect in their recordings which quite distinct at that period of time. And their music not just pure rock, it's what I called sweet rock because it quite colorful, rich of melodies, and full of variances.

Songs like Bohemian Rhapsody, We Will Rock You, and We Are The Champion are their signature and most popular songs during that time and still nice to hear those songs nowadays, especially Bohemian Rhapsody which very strongly associated with their success. And, We Are The Champion, become one of a 'must' song to sing to celebrate a winning.

It's a pity that their lead singer, Freddy Mercury, died due to AIDS which was quite shocking. One of his song recorded before he died, Too Much Loves Will Kill You, probably a warning message to other people not to follow his path.

Sports: Ana Ivanovic

She is one of the talented young tennis player, currently No.2 in WTA Tour ranking, and in my view, it just a matter of time for her to win any of GrandSlam title and even capture the No.1 spot from Justine Henin.

She plays beautiful tennis, pretty, feminine, and won titles, such a rare combination that I have never seen since Chris Everet era.

The picture was taken from her Official website.

Visit this link to see more of her pictures.

FYI: Tears for Porpoise

Source: my paper online, 27-Mar-2008, page A12

Music: Air Supply

Air Supply was my first favourite group band because they have many beautiful love songs.

It was interesting on how I knew this group band. It back to the early 80's when I was still living in Bontang, a new small town in East Kalimantan, follow my parents who worked there. One day, on my way back home from Youth Center, I spotted spoilt cassette tape on the road side. Curious, I took it and brought it back home and then I moved the tape to another casing and then played it... the first song that it played was American Heart. I immediately like most of the songs so I wonder which singer or group band had these nice songs. That time, information was scarce and internet still not exists, not even PC. TV was still in very early stage, so no way I can find the information.

It is only when I moved back to Palembang, my hometown, for my high school, that I had chance to look for information. I went through the music shops and browse through till I finally found out that it was Air Supply. And, I found that they had many more nice love songs... Among them, Lost In Love, Even The Nights Are Better, All Out Of Love, and Without You are my favourite ones.

FYI: Mr President's Expensive Arowana

Source: Today Online, 15-Mar-2008

FYI: Cute Baby Polar Bear (Flocke)

Source: bbc.co.uk website Daily in pictures 25-Feb-2008

Want to follow its journal, visit this website.

Music: Free Online Music (Imeem.com)

Want to listen to free music online? Log on to imeem.com, register, search for your favourite songs which already uploaded by other members, then keep them in your playlist, that's it! Finally you can play them all either in sequence or random playing. You even be able to embed the playlist to your own website, similar to what that I have now in this blog.

Well, the question is whether it is legal or nor legal. So far, I haven't heard any negative news about it. Imeem.com concept is to share songs uploaded by its registered members. Since I am not sure of the legality of this concept, for the time being I will not upload any songs and just enjoy the free songs uploaded by other members. Some of my favourite songs are only available in 30 sec sample since none of the members uploaded the full track yet, well probably this is the way of this provider make money by selling the full track.

If you too lazy to go through those steps, just enjoy my favourite song in 4 different playlists which I categorized into the language of the songs, English, Korean, Indo/Malay, and Chinese. So, just log on to my blog any time you want to listen to those songs, you are fully welcome...

Korean Drama: How Do I Know It

I know and started to attached to Korean Drama only after I moved to Singapore in 2002. That time, I come to Singapore to find job after got granted Singapore Permanent Resident. I rented room in Orchard area where I started to watch Singapore TV program on TV set provided by landlord in the living room. The first Korean Drama that I watched is All About Eve, I immediately like the story line and theme songs.

Well, like most of the TV Drama, they really know how to cut or end one episode so you are become curious and can't wait to see the next episode. This makes you attached and addicted to it.

Freeware: 7-Zip

Eventhough since Windows XP, Microsoft has built-in zip utility into its Windows Explorer (i.e. by right-click on any file or folder, then select 'Send To', then choose 'Compressed (zipped) Folder'), I still found this 7-Zip utility very useful, easy to use, and it can open quite number of most common compression format, e.g. zip, arj, rar, rpm, cab, etc. If you still using Windows 2000 or even Windows 98, you will find this utility very useful.

7-Zip is open source software and it's totally free for using for both personal and commercial use.

You might known WinZip very well as compression utility, but it is not free for commercial use (well, you can use its evaluation version forever though, no expiry, just annoying confirmation everytime you run it). So, you can't use it in office, because it is illegal.

You can download it here.

FYI: Odd Couple

Source: Today Online, 31-Jan-2008.

Korean Drama: Where to Watch & Get Information

If you have fast broadband internet connection and you can't wait to watch the Korean Drama being aired in your TV Station, turn to this website. It has quite numbers of streaming video, not only Korean Drama but also Japanese & Taiwanese Drama & Movie. Thanks to this website, I managed to finish Coffee Prince (with English subtitle) before it is aired in MediaCorpTV Channel U. The one in MobTV doesn't have English subtitle.
But, don't expect all video will be streamed fast enough, some very slow. Lucky for Coffee Prince, almost all of the streaming video are quite fast probably because of the hosting still quite new and still has enough bandwidth to serve the requests.

For complete Korean Drama information, log on to KoreanDrama.org which has quite complete database of almost all Korean Drama, Actors & Actresses, and links to listen/download its OST or watch the video.

Freeware: CutePDF Writer

Need to create pdf file but don't have Adobe Acrobat? Don't worry, you can create pdf file very easily using CutePDF Writer, and it is FREE for private & commercial use. You can download this utility here.

CutePDF Writer basically a printer driver, similar to your deskjet or laserjet printer, which print any document that you print from any application to a pdf document. So, after you successfully install this utility, open document that you want to convert to pdf, print it and choose CutePDF or CuteWriter and the destination printer, it will then prompt you the filename where you want to save your pdf file. That's it! You get your desired pdf file.... very easy, right?

Freeware: pdftk (the pdf toolkit)

Today I need to merge 2 pdf files and I don't have Adobe Acrobat to do that. There are quite numbers of tools available to be downloaded from internet but it is not free, it is either shareware or trial version. Finally I found this useful FREE tool: pdftk (the pdf toolkit) which can be downloaded from this website: http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/

It runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Solaris. In Windows, it works under DOS, so you need to open DOS prompt by typing 'cmd' or 'command' in Start->Run... Under DOS prompt, to merge documents, e.g. filename1.pdf and filename2.pdf to a file namely mergefile.pdf, type this command: pdftk filename1.pdf filename2.pdf cat output mergefile.pdf. Please make sure all files (including the pdftk.exe) in under same folder.