http://guttervomit.com life's a beta. Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:51:10 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Philippines’ love affair with fireworks reached its summit in late 2005 when the La Mancha group organized the first World Pyro Olympics at the then-unfinished Mall of Asia. Five days of evening performances from each of the eight participating countries, showcasing some of the fanciest fireworks you’ll likely ever ... http://guttervomit.com/2010/02/22/there-will-be-fireworks/ I don't usually write about technology much anymore these days, but the Internet is currently ablaze with opinions on Apple's new iPad announcement several hours ago. A lot of these opinions are just echo-chamber drivel, i.e., but I wanted to share some thoughts on one of the foremost complaints about ... http://guttervomit.com/2010/01/28/an-unpopular-opinion-about-the-ipad/ Capturing flash motion is a favorite photography subgenre of mine, probably because it's notoriously easy to pull off once you've got your camera settings sorted. On my D90, I shoot with an 85mm lens open at f/2.5, ISO 200. I like the 85mm for this because it's very light compared ... http://guttervomit.com/2010/01/14/shooting-motion/ I'm deathly afraid of approaching strangers. I have been since I was a child, and it's the kind of fear that is magnified even more when approaching strangers with a camera in my hands. This is, as you probably expect, problematic for any one interested in photography, because this fear ... http://guttervomit.com/2010/01/10/shooting-strangers/ I have recently been having these wildly vivid dreams where I am a young Dark Knight, at that point where he is still learning his craft. Last night's dream was so deliciously Freudian that I had to write it down. The collection of words below were originally posted on twitter/helloluis ... http://guttervomit.com/2010/01/08/bat-dreams/ 2009 was a great year for music, and I had a hell of a time whittling down a list of over 2 dozen tracks to a tighter top 10. I’ve even managed to rank them this time, by way of iTunes’ play-count column. (In other words, these are sorted by ... http://guttervomit.com/2009/12/18/top-10-favorite-tracks-of-2009/ When you are walking around by yourself in a non-English-speaking country, signs with recognizable words tend to jump out at you, like fireworks. Everything else is gibberish, so even simple phrases like “Please here” (sic) and “Don’t worry, price” (wtf) deserve to be looked at and pondered. You don’t know ... http://guttervomit.com/2009/11/11/daejeon-part-three-beer-currency-and-sweat-glands/ The Chungnam National University Hospital is one of 6 major hospitals in Daejeon City, Korea. I’m sitting in the lobby lounge, mostly in the dark. Less than two hours ago, this place was bustling with chatter; patients streamed to and from the reception desks, doctors bellowed into cellphones and glowered ... http://guttervomit.com/2009/11/10/daejeon-part-two/ About 6 hours into my South Korean sojourn and I want nothing more than to be back in Manila. In Eastwood city, specifically, on my box bed surrounded by pillows and my generous duvet. We're somewhere over the ocean, somewhere. The overhead panels are marking our progress on a colorful ... http://guttervomit.com/2009/11/04/daejeon-part-one/ Almost two years ago, I wrote a piece on the coming Mayan eschaton, i.e., how the world was presumably going to end on the 21st of December, 2012. Well, they’ve gone and made a movie about it so it’s not really all that compelling a topic anymore. However, my interest ... http://guttervomit.com/2009/10/28/red-cow-no-10/