Google Analytics is addictive. When you have it installed, you check it everyday to see how many visitors you are getting everyday. The charts, the map distribution, all those visuals make it so fun to use.

I have Google Analytics running on Magic Ketchup (my portfolio site), this blog, and Chloroville, my comic site. Magic Ketchup is getting about 20 hits per day, probably from different job hunting companies. It’s ok, it hasn’t been updated for 3 years. Chloroville is getting about 20 distinct hits per day, horrible performance when compared to this blog which I now rarely update but getting about 200 hits per day.

Is my comic really that lame? Please cheer me up and visit my comic site more often. It has recently gone through a simple facelift and it is looking much better. Give it a try!

At last year’s company Christmas party I took a lot of photos of my coworkers and they all praised my photography skill. I told them it was not my skill but the choice of camera lens that made the photos stand out. I learned from Canon’s website that macro lens (one that is supposed for taking close-up photos of small objects such as insects) is an excellent choice for portrait photos.

With digital cameras, you can immediately show people what you have just taken, and if the photos turn out good, people will say, “Wow, that’s a great photo! Thanks!” I guess that’s how I get addicted to taking portrait photos with my macro lens.

The one I used at the Christmas party was Canon Macro Lens EF 100mm. The major draw back of that lens is that it takes a very close-up image. (The lens itself is wonderful if you are really taking close-up objects.) Let’s say you are sitting at a typical dinning table and you want to take a photo of someone sitting opposite of you. If you use the 100mm macro lens, you will only get a cropped face. Unless you lean way, way back, you won’t be able to get the person’s full face. The background is perfectly blurred, which is good, but girls/women will get particularly frustrated if your camera sees all the pimples and blackheads on their face.

Above: a photo of my coworker Ryan. I used the Canon Macro Lens EF 100mm. The office was large enough for me to stand back a few feet to capture his upper body.

Today I got my new Canon Marco Lens EF-S 60mm lens and I am ecstatic. This lens is actually perfect for taking portrait photos and you don’t have to walk a few feet away to capture the full face of the person.
Here are some tests:

A portrait, no cropping at all. (pardon his puzzled look)

A close-up image. Sharp focus and a very nice blurred out background.

????????A mid-range distant subject (my cat, Fa, annoyed)

WordPress 2.5 brings a lot of new features to the table and one of the interesting things is avatar icon for the comments that you made. Originally I thought I could create a small database of avatar icons for readers to pick, but smarter people have come up with a much better solution - Gravatar.com.

First create an account at Gravatar.com with a valid email, then log in, and pick an image on your hard drive and upload it. That will become your avatar icon, and whenever you make a comment on any WordPress blogs with the same email address that you registered at Gravatar.com, your icon will appear in that person’s blog comment section. Very cool!

A very creative 3D billboard! I have to take some photos of it before it’s gone! It is installed next to the Toronto Don Valley Parkway. The shredded cheese is yellow foam, I guess? They never get blown away!

I am jealous of people who consistently devote a bit of their day to write something for their blog. I write whenever I am not lazy. My recent discovery of painters who can create a small painting daily astounded even me more.

Not only they can deliver, their works are excellent. I believe painting is their full time job; if you are a fast writer, you probably can get a few-paragraph long blog entry done in half an hour, but if you are a realist painter, I doubt you can get a masterpiece done in an hour.

I discovered Jon Bernard Koch’s work through eBay. He puts most of his paintings (mostly very small paintings with a size of 5″x7″) there for auction and I think it has been a very successful business for him. His work is genuine, which topic is nearly always of still life.

I bought his “White Genoa Fig” painting on eBay and put it beside my bed. I wanted another one for the other side of the bed but I couldn’t wait for him to eventually paint my favorite fruit and put it up for auction, so I contacted him for a commission work and he gladly accepted. I had never done such thing in my life, because as a graphic designer/illustrator myself, it seemed to me that I was the one who would receive projects but not give out projects to other; but his work casino roulette spielroulette online kostenlosswiss casino onlineeurovip casino netgeld gewinnebest casino onlineroulette systemeonline roulette spielbaccarat onlineinternet casino gamblingonline casino combestes online casinotop online kasinoonline casino costa ricacasino bonus codecraps spielkostenlos roulette spielencasino austria onlinewww slotsroulette online gratisechtes kasinocasino online pokerkeno online spielewww casino net comonline casino bonus ohne einzahlungcasino roulette spiel,roulette pc spiel,roulette spielonline casino playbaccarat systemonline casino kostenlosonline casino texasroulette lerneninternet online casinoonline casino testeinarmiger banditcasino online mit bonusroulette online gamesonline spiel automatenall slots casinoonline casino mit bonus,online casino bonus ohne einzahlung,online casino bonuskasino spielenslots gratiscasino spiele kostenloscasino online comparty casinoeuropa casino bonus codeonline slotmaschinecasino compoker im internetpoker spielen lernenpoker spielen berlin was so amazing to me that I had to ask.

You can visit his site for his portfolio.