My New Ride

VW Golf GTI MkV SE

After lusting for this car I finally managed to acquire a Tornado Red version. Having accumulated many accolades of being Car/Automobile of the Year internationally since it's launch in 2004 the MkV is a favorite amongst people seeking performance and practicality. I have the top of the range 2.0 TFSI engine mated to a super quick DSG gearbox with paddle shift. It has 200 bhp under its bonnet with a whopping 206lb ft of torque from just 1800RPM and easily upgradeable to 250 bhp! This is the car that gives me a smile a mile feeling! Check this review:

New Phone Again, Nokia E71

Replaced my HTC Touch with this svelte & professional looking Nokia E71. I am very pleased with it and is the best Nokia so far. Initially I thought I will have problem adapting to this rather small qwerty keypad but it's so much easier to use than the touch screen ones. Have all the connections that I ever need and battery life is fantastic. Easy to configure email and I love the calender in portrait mode. Lots of theme that we can download. I can isync with my contacts & calender( you'll be glad you have this if you loose your hp) and works great with Nokia's multimedia transfer for Mac. Has built in GPS and Nokia map is fine but I have installed Garmin XT and the A-GPS picks up positions very fast. Feels really good in the hand and the metal casing is wonderful, no wonder this is top editor's choice in Cnet.

Sigma 30mm F/1.4

Read a many good reviews about this lens. This is my first Sigma and so impressed with the built quality. The combination of this lens and my 50D makes it possible to shoot without a flash . IQ is sharp wide open and BOKEH is smooth. The image is taken at f1.4 at ISO1250. View more here, http://picasaweb.google.com/borneoeye/Sigma30mmF14#

Mini Review 50D.

After more than a month with my new 50D I am happy to announced that I am pleased with the upgrade. For a better and longer review please click on the link above. 

I have been very happy with my previous 30D but nevertheless it was time to upgrade and when the 50D was announced,I jump at it. There's a huge debate now going on about noise and IQ of the 50D compared to the 40D. I feel expectations are too high for every replacement model, that newer technology in it have improved by leaps and bounds. They will be disappointed with their new equipment and complain a lot about it if they don't perform to their unrealistic expectations. Personally, I don't care too much about shooting high ISO,I hardly go over 800ISO and at that level of course it beats the 30D and at 15mp I can blow it big or cropped generously. The 3in LCD with increase resolution is great for a quick review. Included is Micro Focus Adjustments for individual lens and I don't have to worry about getting sending lens for calibration. Those few improvements alone is enough reasons for me to upgrade.

Here are some samples, please visit album here

Push E-mail.

My primary means of communication is through sms,e-mail and calls. This is applicable to a majority of us, we'd rather sms,e-mail and lastly resort to calls if we need instantaneous response. I can easily do sms and calls on my mobile phone but usually have to be near my Macbook or any PC terminal at the office or at home to check email. Even though we can check our emails nowadays on our mobile phone it's not as user friendly as sms. You can configure your phone to check your inbox at set intervals from every 5 mins or every hour and pulls e-mails from your inbox into your phone and notify you just like a new sms. Don't we wish we can get our emails straight to our mobile phone as soon as it arrives in our inbox without us checking, like a BlackBerry. Well now we can if you are using a Windows smart phone and subscribe to any of the paid or free push email providers. I have tried mobipush.com whereby I have configured it push email from my Google inbox. Caveat emptor, you have to pay for data every time you get an email push to you, hey nothing is free nowadays. What you have to do is find a data plan that works out to be rates that would be similar to an outgoing sms. So if you have lots of emails and wishes to respond to them on your mobile as well,I'd suggest you go for the data unlimited plan. After trying mobipush I find it to be unreliable, sometimes emails don't get push to my mobile so I switch to mail2web LIVE. the difference is that you have to to subscribe to a new webmail and configure your other emails to forward to this mail2web address. As soon as it goes into your inbox it will push it to your mobile,so far it has been reliable,I get emails faster than my inbox and best of all it's free. It's great because all my mode of communication can be on 1 single mobile device. There a few things lacking because I don't use active sync, MS outlook and I am using a Macbook so I cannot sync my calendar and contacts. Well The iPhone 3G do have similar offerings and that could be ny next Gadjet!

New Lens!

In order to complete my range of lenses, I needed a wide angle lens. So after reading all the reviews I decided to go for this Tokina and I am very happy with it. Great solidly built lens and IQ is better than I expected,will post pictures once I have the time to go out on a full outing with it. Now I have 12-200mm in 3 great lenses. other accessories I have added to my inventory includes a Cleon remote trigger, a remote flash trigger and finally a Dry-Cabinet to store all my precious equipment.

New Gadjet

I am not a big fan of Windows Mobile Devices but what the heck! I needed a PDA but at the same time don't want something big and bulky, and the HTC touch is almost perfect. Yes I got the white one too. There are lots of review on this sleek looking PDA phone and it's one of the smallest in the market. The coolest thing about this is the touch-flo user interface. Almost as good as iphone with lots of software for it. I have Mapking installed and with my BT GPS it's a nifty little gadjet. It has wi-fi but no 3G but so what,I am on the DiGi network and it's not 3G. I have been exploring and hacking it as I go. I am not too fond of softkeys but there are options that makes typing sms just as easy as with hardkeys. So far it'slot sof fun and it's fast with 128 mb of RAM.