stranded

no thanks to typhoon frank (we didn’t know that they started calling them by their international names now), we were stuck here at our home this weekend. the good thing is we can’t be forced to go to work 😉 but the bad thing is we couldn’t go anywhere either. 😦

so what did we do being stranded at home on a weekend? go on a dvd marathon… what else? 😉



nothing like cozying up on a sofa with your loved one. having home-cooked spaghetti (yum 🙂) and grilled bread. watching a couple of good movies while having a steady cool breeze coming through the window. home dates, in some ways, actually turn out to be better (and cheaper. 😀)

taking a break from the movies, i took out our dslr wanting to take a few shots. unfortunately, i was only able to snap off a couple because it started to rain again. with the wind blowing hard, i didn’t want to get our new toy wet (actually nabasa na nga ng onti. pero onting-onti lang naman).



so i went back inside and took photos of my wife instead. silly me. insisting on going outside when i had the best subject right inside our house. 😉



now it’s time to take advantage of the cool weather and take a nap. hopefully, when we wake up, the skies will be much clearer.

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now that’s fast…

we saw this game on tv just the other night and was amazed to learn that the best player in the world for sport stacking happens to be a filipino! intrigued, we immediately searched the net and was even more amazed on what we found.



talk about eye-hand coordination. that is ridiculously fast! steven purugganan is so fast he currently holds all the world records for individual events. we’ve shown you the cycle (video above), here are the other two records (3-3-3 and 3-6-3):




steven even set a new record for the 3-6-3 when he guested on the early show.



iba talaga ang pinoy. 🙂

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where are the so-called nba experts now?

“not tonight.”

those were the exact words that came out of kobe bryant as he was trash-talking with courtside celtics fans during the first quarter of game 6 of the 2008 nba finals. that was probably what the nba experts were thinking at the very same moment also. you see, entering this finals, practically ALL the nba experts predicted a lakers championship. 9 out of 10 columnists of a prominent sports site predicted the lakers will win. on another site, they put up a multiple choice question for visitors to answer regarding who will win this series and the choices were:

• lakers in 5 games
• lakers in 6 games
• lakers in 7 games
• celtics in 7 games

utter disrespect for the celtics. we all know now what happened. not only did the celtics win the championship… they destroyed the lakers.

so to the so-called nba experts, to quote kg in his post-game interview, “what you gonna say now?” 🙂



while they, the experts, were unified in predicting a lakers win, we, the samsung (and ex-samsung) nba fanatics, were in agreement as well… in agreement that the celtics will be the champs. sure, i was kinda off with my playoff predictions but i was spot on with my finals prediction: celtics in six (or quite possibly in five). 🙂



let’s review what the “experts” said would be the keys that made them decide it would be an easy lakers victory:

1) the lakers offense is better than the celtics defense. first of all, that ain’t true. secondly, the lakers will need to play defense too… and their defense is porous. if leon powe can dribble almost the length of the court for an uncontested two-handed jam off a baseline throw-in… that’s not how you play defense. remember, in sports, offense wins games but defense wins championships.

2) the lakers “bench mob” will overpower the celtics bench. this one i really did not understand. is farmar, vujacic, walton & turiaf really that much better than brown, powe, posey, cassell/house? talent-wise: no. experience-wise: it’s a mismatch.

3) phil jackson will school doc rivers. coaching is not all x and o’s. motivation and encouragement is a big part of it. this is where doc excel at… even more than phil.

4) the lakers has kobe bryant. so? 😆



even though the series lasted six games, the celtics practically dominated it. the swing game was game 4 where they overcame a 24-point deficit to beat the lakers and go up the series 3-1. that game took the heart out of the lakers. they evaded elimination in game 5 but that only set them up for a date with the very loud celtics fans for game 6… and what a game 6 it turned out to be (at least for celtics fans. 😀).

it was the biggest winning margin in a clincher. 39 points. the lakers showed that they were a team without a heart as they checked out of the game as early as the second quarter. they just gave up and it didn’t help that the celtics were determined to finish them off. records were set that game as the celtics dismantled the lakers.

• most steals in finals game: 18 (celtics)
• most 3-pointers in a finals game: 7 (ray allen tied with scottie pippen)
• most 3-pointers in a series: 22 (ray allen)
• most games played in the playoffs: 26 (celtics)

it was the perfect culmination to the greatest single-season turnaround in nba history. just last year, the celtics were te lowest-ranked nba team and this year, they’re the champs. incredible. 🙂

what happens next season? will the celtics repeat? will the lakers rebound? who knows? i’ll think about that come november. in the meantime, olympic basketball is just around the corner. that too would be exciting to watch. 😉

photos courtesy of cnnsi.com and msn.foxsports.com

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5 minute photo session

with a new toy at hand, it was only a matter of time before we tried it out and played with it. not even close in finishing reading the manual, we have been experimenting with our d40 from time to time. then yesterday, i went out and tried conducting a similar exercise i did once before with our point-and-shoot. the problem is, it didn’t last long cause it started to rain five minutes into the photo session. ok lang, there will be plenty of opportunities next time. 🙂

here’s some of the shots i was able to take. most of these were taken at “A” mode (aperture priority) while some were taken in “M” mode (full manual). i didn’t use any flash (pop up nor a speedlight) nor any lens filters (wala pa kami nun eh 😆). except for the last photo, no post processing were done also. we liked how the shots turned out… we hope you’ll like them too.

enjoy. 🙂




trying out shallow depth-of-field to have considerable bokeh. we like these kinds of shots as it helps in emphasizing the subject matter in a photo. this is very hard to do with our point-and-shoot… now we can do easily with out d40. 🙂



when shooting, i always try to look for patterns. it creates interest in a photo. patterns can be a bit random (top) or straighforward (bottom).



i wanted to shoot clouds but unfortunately, the clouds were getting dark due to the impending rain. but still managed to get a couple of cool clouds shots. 😉


it was really getting dark but before i went back inside, i took this shot. i converted it to black & white for a more dramatic impact. 🙂

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we have a new toy

from a samsung cellphone to our trusty compact panasonic point-and-shoot… we have now upgraded to our very first dslr! woohooOoO! 😀

many thanks to bob for trekking the jungles of hidalgo just to get us our nikon d40. bait mo talaga, bob. 🙂

the first question we’ll probably get is why get a d40? why not a d40x? well, the answer is simple. the extra 5k it would need to get a d40x is not justifiable for us if the only thing we’ll get is extra 4 megapixels. we’d rather keep the cash and get accessories instead. another thing, the d40x is a discontinued model and has been replaced by the d60.

ok, so why not get a d60 instead? for the same reason we chose not to get the d40x. lamang nga lang ang d60 because of the vr kit lens. but still, the price difference vs the added features is still not reasonable for us.

the d80 would’ve been the wiser choice but we’re not as rich as some of our friends (dba nga, vhlad? 😉) so we stuck with d40… and we’re happy with it. 🙂

so expect better photos in the future… in the meantime, basa muna kami ng manual. 😀

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we were supposed to get a light bulb…

…but ended up getting these…



with a smile like that, who needs a light bulb? 🙂

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