I’ve been following the Ancient Aliens documentary from the History Channel. 10 episodes in total , fantastic series, very informative, very interesting and things they talked about actually make sense. With the increased sightings of aliens and UFOs this year I don’t doubt that the aliens do have a connection to the 2012 apocalypse theories. I believe there are aliens that are living underground/undersea on Earth itself, and there are other aliens that live in the outerspace. Will aliens reveal themselves end of next year and are we going to have an intercosmic war between different alien races (including humans)? I’m very excited to hopefully be able to witness that, but on the other hand, it’s terrifying when I realize that there’s a possibility that I only have a little more than a year to live my current life. That made me think about quite a few things. What matters the most to me in my current life? I think it is happiness, and that’s it. What makes me really happy? There are a couple top ones:

• Getting an extremely successful shot of an extremely beautiful landscape - this is really hard, it happened only a few times in my life
• Getting genuine compliment/admiration from someone about something that I’ve worked hard for - work, photographs, music, other projects…
• Being alone at a remote location with an out-of-this-world landscape under the best weather - I can be there for hours, probably just sitting still, breathing in the freshest air, checking out the natural formations that’s been there hundreds of thousands of years before human even existed, or the tiniest flower that emerges from the driest soil wondering how it could even be there. Ultimate satisfaction.
• Listening to my favorite classical music, paying attention to every single notes, and the relation between one note to another, or one bar to another. Songs from Mozart almost always make me feel great, as well as some songs from Beethoveen, Vivaldi, Tomaso Albinoni, some Bach… and anything from Baroque.
• Eating simple but awesome tasting food. When I like a certain taste I can eat them again and again forever. First thing that comes to mind is Hong Kong style milk tea. Next I guess has to be sugar cookies or peanut better cookies.
• Seeing a cute smile from my girlfriend, or being treated nicely in an unexpected way. Just a smile will melt my heart and make my day 10 times better.

That actually summarize it, not a lot of them, I guess I’m really simple. Before I die, I hope to be able to experience each of the above once again.

On another note, I’ve finished restoring my Apple IIe! The retr0bright gel really worked, magically. Love it so much, looks so new! I’ve even played Choplifter on it (game that I loved the most and remembered the most). I want to play LodeRunner on it soon, but I still have to buy the Super Serial Card so that I can load games onto it via PC. I couldn’t believe the joystick worked 100% as well. There are a few keys on the machine that are either half or complete dead. I can fix two of them but the open/closed apple keys seem to be completely malfunctioned. If I see a great deal I’ll buy a spare machine just so I can swap the parts around. This computer will gain a permanent place in my house, but as for location it has yet to be determined, lol.

According to plan, I’ve started learning the iPhone SDK, the biggest goal for this one week holiday. Bought a couple books, so far there’s this one called Beginning iOS4 Application Development that interests me the most. Full color, easy to read, THICK (covers tons of topics), and written by an Asian - I find it usually easier to understand when books are written by Asians, I guess that’s because the thinking process for all Asians is indeed very similar. So far I’m a bit stunned by the amount of new concepts and frameworks presented by the iOS 4 SDK - the syntax for Objective C is quite awkward, adding on top the fairly complex Model-View-Controller architecture. Luckily I got Snow Leopard installed successfully, and my Apple Developer account registered and XCode latest version installed. I really like the book for the fact that it’s REALLY freshly out of the oven - iOS4 SDK, Apple’s latest SDK. I got a couple other books that talk about SDK 3, I’ll probably return those and get a refund. And I’m trying to get used to the Mac. The Mac’s been here since 3 years back but I rarely touched it other than the times that I had to run Ivory piano on it while doing my music. The more I use it the more I’m liking it. Great, clean, simple UI…quick response time…everything just works. The one thing I’ve yet to get used to is the keyboard, specifically the key orientation and hot keys. I’m a bit worried that as soon as I get used to the Mac keystrokes I’ll forget the ones for the PC..lol. So far I’m feeling really great learning it, it’s fun and cool. Can’t wait to start writing my own app.

I got the rest of the patio tiles cut and installed, trying to make it look professional by making sure that they align properly and also wrap nicely around the wooden poles and corners. It was tiring as my handsaw was so crappy (probably older than I am) and some teeth were missing. I cut my finger as well, even though it wasn’t too deep. The result is pretty amazing! Can’t wait to head out more and maybe do some barbeque there!

Today is the worst day ever. Work for the entire morning from 9:30 to 3:30 nonstop. Didn’t even have a chance to take breakfast. Had a headache, and almost a heartattack due to the nature of the task. It’s still not over, have to work on that stuff more tomorrow, I suppose. Life sucks..sometimes.

Good thing I bought these Eon Balcony and Deck Tiles at the Canadian Tire today. They aren’t cheap but they certainly look good! I was planning on doing some barbeque at the patio or maybe just hang out more often maybe to work or to relax, the original cheapass vinyl flooring just wouldn’t do it - it collects so much dust/dirt since due to the coarse surface, and it also looks really dated. I seldom want to get out just because of the dirt on the floor, I can imagine with the new flooring I can spend more time out there! I got 80% of them installed, but the last row of the tiles couldn’t be installed without chopping off a portion of them in order to fit. I’ll be doing that tomorrow.

On another note, I’m having fun posting pictures to my flickr account and posting them to award contests to not only get more views, but to receive more comments and have more exposure to the pros - maybe one day some pros will contact me and hire me as a protographer for the National Geographics! I know I’m dreaming. But it’s fun to see comments and suggestions from people and friends.

I’m on call tonight midnight-4am… no time to take a nap now I guess I’ll just tough it out…

Paperkraft.net kindly posted my work on their site! How happy/lucky I am, consider the popularity of the site. Hopefully more people can see my work, especially all of Miyazaki’s fans! I got to start making my Totoro papercraft soon… got it printed but still haven’t started cutting.

Click here to see my complete set of Howl’s Moving Castle papercraft on flickr.

Finally, after ~3 weeks (~100 hours) of hard work, my paper craft is completed! woooo! It looks super cool (IMO) and I couldn’t stop looking at it, checking out all the details…etc. Spent an hour taking some nice photographers for it last night, set up 3 Ikea desk lamps, with some black cardboard for the background. It’s got tons of moving parts like the turrets, the mouth/tongue, the gears, the door/entrace at the back, and the “eyeballs”. The paper craft is very fragile and therefore it’s kind of scary when moving it around.. I think I need a clear acrylic or glass display case to store it, probably need to custom make one due to the awkward dimensions.. going to be pricey for sure, that is if I am able to find someone to make it for me… I’m going to re-watch Howl’s Moving Castle very soon, as the first time I watched it I wasn’t paying full attention and therefore wasn’t able to fully understand the story. I love you Hayao Miyazaki!!!!!