Category: General

Got my invitation to Gmail last night. Too bad most of the account names I want has been taken (after a few months of its introduction, account names with first names are probably all taken already). So had to stick with dufffader(at)gmail(dot)com.
What do I think so far? Loved the instant reply function. THere’s also keyboard shortcuts (like ‘r’ for reply) but I’ve not used it yet although I have enabled it. TOo used to the usual mouse clicks. Will try and make full use of it and maybe I’ll have som comments about it soon. 1Gb is sweet!

Going to spend this whole week at home recovering from an eye infection. While walking on the streets the last weekend, some bug flew into my eye and although I got it out (or at least that’s what I thought) something remained inside or maybe it could be because of me rubbing my eyes too much. Anyways, the next day I’ve got swollen/red eyes… was surprised when the doctor game me a whole week off, thought it’ll just take a day or two to recover and then I’ll be back in the office already. 2 days have past and though its not as swollen as it was before, I still look funny with 1 red eye. Too bad then, stay out of the office and continue doing what I woud do as if I was on holiday! Doctor’s orders…

Was in singapore last weekend. Bought a 52-67mm step up ring from Cathay Photo since they have it in stock. Another thing that was in stock was a 77mm 010 B+W UV filter. That’s the MRC version. The last week when I emailed them it was supposed to be out of stock, but its in already this week. The service there is quite alright as well. The original quoted price was $10 more than what I got on email, but even without bringing a copy over, the manager of the store gave me that price after some explanation. Continue reading “Shopping in Singapore”

Sent in the car for servicing today, and other than the usual servicing routine, I made it known to the mechanic that sometimes the car just refuses to start. IT could be either the starter or the battery.
The battery in my car is not more than a few months old (had to call in AAM’s mobile mechanic to replace it when it didn’t start one work-day morning) so I suspected that it was the starter.

Guess what…. the story I hear is that the mobile mechanics usually carry stocks of the battery with them, in case someone like me call them up. What is suppose to happen is the acid + metal combination in the battery (lead-acid type… not sure about gel yet) has to be freshly combined (shelf life: 3 months) or the life of the battery will less than optimal. Interesting. So at least that taught me one thing… when you run out of battery, jumpstart the car and bring it to whichever shop you trust the most and get them to put in a freshly combined battery. Seems that most mechanic shops in Kuala Lumpur can mix and charge batteries so that they’re “fresh”…

Now… in the end it turned out my starter was worn out (battery is still ok)… but it was repaired finally….

Not been updating the design on my website for some time. The new front cover uploaded yesterday is a leaf from my apartment balcony. Thought the effect was quite nice. Its a macro shot with f3.5 and with the background lighted up with the D70’s built in flash unit.
Other than that, I’ve been trying to update the design of the gallery which I’ve wanted to do for the last few months but have been slacking. The headers and footers of all the pages in there has been updated to show consistent design all thru the site. Unfortunately I’ve still not solved the problem with the permissions for the gallery that causes the albums to load with some gibberish on the header when you load it for the first time. For some reason refreshing it solves the problem. Will look more into this later on when the designs are compelted.

Got to go back to Manila after leaving that place 4 years back. Did a 3 day trip starting from this Monday. The beer there is still cheap and the food full of meat for every dish. Shopping list this time didn’t include any new gadgets. First thing I did when I arrived in Makati is to go to the supermarket and get as much dried mangoes as I can carry. Visited the sports shop over there, hoping to get some cheap t-shirt to replenish my wardrobe but there’s nothing interesting.
That was a blessing in disguise though, becuase I had some Pesos left to buy a few packs of deep fried pork skin (they call it Checarron, not sure if my spelling is correct).

So beer everynight with my old friends there, and working the next day with a headache… that’s what Manila is all about!

Bought a Sandisk Ultra II 512Mb CF Card in Taipei today. Cost about 3300NT$ and should be about 100US$. Thought it was a good price and a good addition for the D70.
Prices for blank DVDs are quite reasonable too… about 30-40 cents each. that’s for a no-brand DVD-R. I think DVD+R is cheaper but wasn’t really looking out for it.

Thanks to a seminar organized by the company, I got flights into Singapore for this weekend. Spent some time after the office matters were completed to look for Linksys Singapore to repair my wifi router (power adaptor faulty) and then lounging at Peninsula Plaza to look at the camera shops there and hoping that I’ll find the lenses that I want in one of the used camera shops around there. Continue reading “Singapore for the weekend”

I’ve been working on another beta page for the last few months but can never get the willpower to finish it.
In this page I intend to put all the stuff I own (not too much since I dont upgrade for fun regularly). I’ve got something like 20% of it but the most important one of course. D70 is up next, then my PDA and after that my lovely B&O phone. But for now, they’re at http://nangka.org/gadgets

Another day to test out my new D70.
Noticed that the file names of the pictures are starting with “_DSCXXXX” instead of the usual “DSC_XXXX”. Googled a little and realised that its because I’m using a Adobe RGB colour profile instead of the sRGB setting on the camera. PRefer to use Adobe RGB since I dont usually print the picture out without any postprocessing in Photoshop or other graphics applications. Never trust the post processing capabilities of a camera.

Tried again to use an always faulty SanDisk 256Mb CF card on the D70. The pictures looked alright on the camera but when I take it out of the camera and use my CF card adapter to copy the pictures to the PC I always get a messed up file. It shows the right picture size but the picture always looked a little messed up, garbled actually. But it worked well when I connect the camera directly to the PC. I think I can conclude that its got to do with the pin connections on the CF and the CFcardreader. How and why I dont know yet, but got to be sure to use the D70 next time to transfer picture when using that particular card. All my other 128Mb cards are ok.