Notebook Obsession and Rhodia Love

Rhodia notebooks and pads

For some reason, I can’t seem to find Hilroy-type notebooks in Taiwan⁴. I use these types of spiral notebooks to do my math exercises. I couldn’t really find equivalent ones. This means that I have to check out different types of notebooks for that sole purpose. This is good and bad. It’s made me consider using Moleskines for class notebooks³, something that I had been thinking about. Moleskines are expensive. Even in Canada, they were expensive. They are also expensive in Taiwan, but thanks to ESLite’s 15% student discount, it’s not that bad¹.

101 Blowing Up

This is my favorite shot of the NYE at the Last Minute 2008. I’ve included this shot in the Taipei 101 On Fire 2008 Series.

I tried playing with it in Photoshop, but I didn’t get any good results. The shutter speed wasn’t long enough to capture any star details. Also, the fireworks washed them out.

Shutter: 1/30
Aperture: f/5.0
ISO 280
Focal Length: 55mm

Taipei 101 On Fire 2008

This was one of the best shots of the night.

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Photos taken during the first few minutes of 2008 in Taipei, Taiwan, Asia. I was camped out at the top of the Sunworld Dynasty Hotel in Taipei. I only realized later that I could have gone up the ladder and gotten an even better and steadier view. These were taken with a tripod, but it was a little shaky since I was near the top of banana tree. I didn’t have enough time to setup, so most of the shots are taken on automatic. Ideally I would have taken continual shots with a custom ISO setting. Some of the shots had a higher ISO than I would have liked and have a significant amount of noise.

Taken with a Nikon D200 and a 18-200VR lens on the 1st of January 2008. You can see the shots taken at the party here.

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