Mamma Mia ... again ... ughs

Took a walk over to Ikano PowerCentre just to catch the roadshow to "Mamma Mia! The Musical" today 'cos I missed the one yesterday at 1 Utama. The crowd was large (est. 500 maybe?) and mostly adult females ... screaming adult aunties ... not a pretty sight and sound. They were mostly screaming for free tix to the event which isn't even beginning until 17th of December! What's even more amazing is that it seems that many of the tickets are sold out for the show.

Anyways heres a clip from the roadshow featuring the female cast leads singing ABBA tunes (which are getting pretty grating 'cos my neighbour has been playing them over-and-over). The angle is pretty bad but I did manage to get a behind-the-scenes look at the roadshow crew dancing along!!

Best part of the event was this elderly couple vying to get free tix to the event. Kudos to them for being amazingly sporting to dance TWICE to the delight of the cast members and the public.

I won't be going for the musical anyways ... first thing is I'm not interested (storywise and music wise ... sudah jelak la) and secondly its running at Istana Budaya - a place which I find is absolutely the WORST for musical productions due to extremely poor AV conditions. At most, I'd prob sneak in for rehearsals when the time comes heh heh!

Header image change

Was getting bored of the original header image on this blog which was simply done and needed a lot of tweaking. Somehow I never got that 'organic' feeling to work properly so I decided to create a new one. Its better but still not perfect ... still like it a lot though since it looks more realistic and more towards the look I'm targeting.

This header image was done in Paint Shop Pro and simplified from the steps shown here. Instead of using a vanishing point filter, I just used the text warp / deform option in the text tool. I also added two extra layers - one behind to create over-spray and one right on top to add grain and texture back into the sprayed areas. Lastly, an erase tool was used to create blank areas and flaws in spray distribution for effect. Only problem? Need to find a way to get the letters to overlap in the right order (real graffiti usually overlaps from left to right)

How old is your email account?

Random thoughts into a post ... just how old are your email accounts. I have 13 email accounts (free, ISP, etc) and just found out the oldest one is from Hotmail. I got it waaay back when it was still plain old Hotmail (just before Microsoft bought it up) and it just got past its 11th year anniversary!! Whats more surprising is I still have mails all the way back from 1997 ... talk about a time-trip. Amazing how it has grown from the original 2MB mailbox right up to the current 5GB.

What's safe to eat nowadays?

With the increasing concerns of melamine contamination in food/edible products, I began to wonder what are the actual products that are safe for consumption and what has been withdrawn from the market. A quick search on Google came up with the following health authority websites with latest postings on the melamine incident including which products are safe and which are not. These are focused mainly on South East Asian - Australasian authorities due to the higher number of imports but apply to anywhere in the world that sells the same products (note that a product might be manufactured in many locations but carry the same name/packaging)

• Malaysian Food Safety & Quality Division (BKMM) - English / Malay [LINK]
• Singaporean Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority - English [LINK]
• Indonesian Badan Pengawas Obat & Makanan - English / Indonesian [LINK]
• Korean Food and Drug Administration - Korean [LINK]
• New Zealand Food Safety Authority - English [LINK]

There are many other FDA sites but these are the ones that seem to be still actively testing and releasing news about the contamination. Latest products include Cadbury chocolates, Bairong biscuits (those sold in Watsons and Tesco) and Dutch Lady milks from China manufacturers.