Author: bt

Finished this book this weekend. Took me less than a week to finish, which is a first. Loved all these history books.
The first book I read from this author was one called The Last Apocalypse, which was about medieval europe around 1000AD when just about everyone was thinking the end of the world was near.

This latest book I read is about the Third Crusade circa, well… 1180AD more or less. At least this book tries to be neutral in depicting the fight between christians and muslims for Jerusalem. He highlights the plus and minus sides of the two main characters King Richard the Lionheart & the muslim sultan Saladin.

What’s irritating are the quotes from the troubadours… they’re the propagandist of the era…

But then again, I usually take a few weeks to finish a book but this one was in a few days, and that says something.

Misunderestimated the amount of film I would need in Shanghai, and I only have 4 rolls of 400TX, HP5+ and FP4+ Black and White films left this morning. Made a trip to Shanghai Railway station and bought 3 rolls of Ilford FP4+ ISO125 and 2 rolls of Ilford HP5+ ISO400 film.
Ilford FP4+: 20RMB/each
Ilford HP5+: 21RMB/each

Since most of the time my shots are in the daytime and outdoor, I guess I dont need a whole cabinet full of HP5+ film. Usually I keep a lot of Kodak 400TX and Ilford HP5+ since most of the time I’m shooting night time using available light pushing the film to EI800 or EI1600 at least. My shooting style with b&w has changed a little when I’m in Shanghai.

Ever since my short term move to Shanghai, I’ve been spending some time in the gym doing some running. I still dont like gyms, but in Shanghai at night you have no choice.. the cyclists don’t use brakes, the cars fight for the title “king of the road” and the parks (at least the ones with barricades) are closed at 5pm. Oh… and people walk backwards on footpaths so your chance of colliding with something while running is quite high.
Just to keep the run interesting, I picked up a Polar S625X (check out http://www.polar.fi and look for the model under “Running” category) on my way through Hong Kong back to Shanghai yesterday. The only shop that I found that sells this model is a large sports shop called Gigasports in Harbour City Kowloon, and a few branches of City Chain around Kowloon. Gigasports got my business since they gave me 15% off the sticker price.

Continue reading “Getting Fit: Polar S625X”

Finally.. managed to squeeze a daytrip to Hong Kong on my way back to Shanghai from Manila for business trip. This one is a little too long… 10 hours stop over in Hong Kong! I’m sure I can do everything I wanted to with less time. This is what I did today in Kowloon alone:1. Scout for Heart Rate Monitors… and of course to buy them at the lowest believable price
2. Buy magazines (other than time & newsweek its impossible to find english language magazines in Shanghai!)
3. Pack a variety of sandwichs from Pret-a-Manger for suffering wife in Shanghai
4. Eat wonton noodle
5. Buy my 5.11 Tactical pants from Mongkok
6. Window shopping at Tin Cheung camera shop in case they have exotic used lenses on sale

All that in 10 hours… by the way, stored my luggage and notebook at the left luggage counter at the airport (cheaper than the left luggage at HK Station) so that I can move quickly.

Been some time since I posted anything on this site, and what’s new, other than being one of the millions of people that managed to download google Earth these few days after its released.
First impression? I got it running on a Dell D600 notebook (Pentium M 1.3MHz) and its fast enough. I used it to search addresses in the US (some cities come with 3D buildings that look like its a Phong shaded preview on most 3D rendering programs, but not available on most suburb maps).

Did a search of a location in Paris but the satellite pictures are not that detailed for anywhere outside of the US. I’m not sure if this is becuase its Google Earth and not one of the premium or pro versions which you have to pay annual fee.

A quick search of a location in Shanghai gave the same detail as Paris. Blurry map that’s not detailed enough to look for an address, but ok for “flying around” as what the Google Earth site advertised.

Address search works very well in the US, but unfortunately not so well in Western Europe (I’m assuming it should be better for the UK rather than the rest of Europe) and the rest of the world.

As of the time of writing, Google Earth downloads have been halted. Its a fun freeware to fool around in, and for some it might be a useful tool… no wonder its clogging Google’s server bandwidth…

My 3 year old 2G iPod is no longer the only one in the family… the new iPod is a pink mini, bought over the internet in Singapore’s online store (just so that we can engrave something behind it). The downside of now being able to exchange for another colour far pales in comparison to the coolness of having a personalized iPod. Just in case you’re wondering, no, its not for me, its for the wife, and she’s the one that chose the colour.
If I do get a new one, it will be a normal iPod or an iPod Photo. Planning to use it to store digital images on the move. In the mean time, the old iPod still runs up to 4 hours per charge and I have a feeling I might hack the cover and replace the battery with a “compatible” version once the battery life falls below 2hrs/charge. The first and generation iPods with sharp and perspex looking casing still looks better than the new ones with rounded edges, IMHO.

Got this phone from Zircon some weeks back. I think its a Singaporean or Malaysian company and they design their own phone inhouse. Its not that bad a phone. Comes with a 1.3Mpix camera (which is not that great but good enough if you need to snap that picture of a price tag, etc) loaded with Windows CE.NET (not such a big fan of Windows CE). Most of the software either comes from Microsoft itself or is designed by the same company that made the phone. The user experience is so-so, some of the software just don’t act the same. Some software behave better if you dont want to take out the stylus and prefer to use the directional keypads, etc. But its bearable.
But what’s not bearable is that the guys that came out with the phone has set up a forum with the idea to support users, etc but most of the posting there are either non answered after weeks or months or just plainly ignored.

For me I’m not using the phone anymore today. The last few days I noticed that the screen began to look a little more interlaced than usual and one day it just turned all white. If you leave it for a few days it becomes normal again. With this kind of behaviour I just can’t bring it back for warranty repair if I can’t reproduce it all the time. I’m not going to go back to the repair centre every week. Anyways, I still have about 10 more months before the warranty runs out.

Just a short announcement. I’ll be off to Shanghai for at least 3 months starting a week from today (Next Sunday). Its for work, but be sure I’ll try and squeeze in some personal stuff in there as well. Especially the stuff I wanted to do but didn’t get to during my last stay there in 2001-2003.