Network Attached Storage Plan

I plan to build a Network Attached Storage (NAS) system for my home. It should be easy enough to connect to all the gadgets in the house and compatible for future gadget upgrades (a macbook perhaps?) and reliable enough to hold thousands of precious digital data; mainly pictures, work data and medias. Most importantly, it should be able to last, not fail and keep the data intact for at least 5 years (or longer).

I have this great and easy to use home network in mind, where any computer could save a back-up of their hard drive in one location, which will make file sharing easy. A Tv or multiple TV could access the network drive and we could watch downloaded movies straight from the NAS without having to conect any computer at all. Same goes for music, as long as I have a wireless system, it's all good. Pictures taken from iPads, iPhones and cameras could be stored immediately onto the NAS, and viewed on the TV, also immediately.

I think the NAS is the answer for the question I have for many years now. I asked photographers and Torrenters alike, how do you keep/manage your data? I also was looking for a proper back-up system for my computer in case one of these two things happens causing loss of data:
1) Hard disk failure and erased itself
2) Break-ins and the stealing of computers
I had these two incidents occured to me within the span of 6 months. I've lost quite a lot of data, especially pictures that I've taken. Fortunately some a retrievable from the internet and for some they are gone forever without a trace, forever irretrieveable =(

I know that there is a flaw of putting your eggs into just one basket. Backing up ALL your data onto a NAS is still risky. So I decided to go for a NAS that has TWO hard drives. Where one will be the first line of back-up and the second hard drive will be an exact mirror image of the first. This is just incase the first one fails, I still have a second back up.

Adding a second hard drive will increase the cost of the whole system by a couple hundred of Ringgit, but I believe the cost of disk space is very less compared to the cost of data lost. I mean, even if you lose just ONE single image of, say your grandparents, it's the only one you have in this whole world, then it would cause such a grievance to lose it, right? I would know.

Now the chances of losing all your data is 25% with two hard drives.

To have higher confidence in having your data intact, I believe, would be saving multiple copies of it on multiple mediums of storage. This includes CD-ROMs, external hard drives, USB sticks, flash memories and saving them in The Clouds (Dropbox or Box).

These are what I am doing anyway. Now, with the NAS I am adding another storage medium for my data. So basically, NAS's first purpose is not to back-up data, but to have a Network for media for the whole house.

Facebook in trying the be The Big Brother

Facebook is being a tattle-tale lately. Just like a bratty sibling who knew the naughty things you did and just waiting the right time to blakmail you to the parents.

I just found out that Facebook saves all our search histories. Yes, that means all that honest-to-God searches in Facebook about "Swimming in Jello" and even that Ex or Crush of your that you have un-friended (Gasps!).

Yes, it is all there, documented and hidden in your Activity Log. I've just checked mine and it does feel embarassing (even to myself) when I look back at those lists of people stalking that I do on sleepless nights and boring days.

Good thing is that the search is only Private to you, but who knows when Facebook will decide to release it to Public. Another good thing is that the search history could be deleted and you could erase all evidence. Yay!

Here's the link on the How-To: http://thestir.cafemom.com/technology/149843/facebook_saves_all_your_creepy?next=11#comments

As for me, this knowledge shall deter me from Facebook stalking people again. I am quite sad about it, but I guess I have to find other more useful activities.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Currents War

This would be a quick one for today.

Growing up, I've always admired Thomas Alva Edison for being the inventor of the light bulb and other stuff. He was sort of an inspiration for me and that famous quote of his was a gem:

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Little did I know about the other guy, Nikola Tesla. Because you see, that was the time before the internet existed (did I just sounded like an old person just now?), most of the encyclopedia I've read did not covered about how awesome that Tesla guy was.

Only recently that I learned to love and admire that guy, when I was working on an idea related to one of my engineering project, something to do about transmitting energy wirelessly. And all I had to say is; my-mind-was-blown.

There is not enough adjectives to describe how superbly amazing this guy is. Fortunately for everyone, Matthew Inman from The Oatmeal did a very neat comic about how amazing, talented, genius, bizarre, intelligent and badass Nikola Tesla was. He is now the epitome of a true engineer/inventor. Sorry Thomas Edison, you have just been demoted.

Taken from here. Thank you Matthew Inman =)

 It is a shame that the world is run by greedy capitalists. And also it is a shame that history is written by those who won the war or the one who has more money (that is you Edison). I do hope that one day we'll be able to peruse many of Tesla's invention in our daily lives one day, soon. I know wireless charging is in the works.

New Template

Kicking the new template around.

I am trying to implement a minimalist (sort of) and energetic concept. Also experimenting with complimentary colour pairs.

Which explains the bright orange background piercing your corneas, some dark blues and getting rid of irrelevant boxes and keeping to just one post on the main page.

I am trying to save readers from wasting their time going through my blog.

Let me know what you think of this new layout?

Bloggin from the Ipad.

Hello,
My post today is brought to you by the letter "I" and "B". "I" is for the IPAD and "B" is for BLOGGER.com.

A review.
I'm posting this manually via blogger.com because I can't find a (free) blogging app just yet. There's a lot of effort needed to post something on blogger.

One, you can't use the 'compose' mode, so need to fork out some effort to remember some html codes. So i have to keep it simple.

Second, to post a picture on blogger needs even more work. The 'upload photo from folder' doesn't work, so i had to use the URL link instead. This means, i had to upload a photo from the ipad to a server, like photobucket or dropbox, copy the link and paste it in blogger.

The above is a picture of a hot and cold glasses of water taken using Photobooth app using thermal camera mode, which i think doesn't really work, or just need to be calibrated. But i don,t think there's actually a thermal sensor in the ipad, or does it?

What would be nice is to be able to post a 'real time' photo directly into blogger. Like the many twitter apps available.

Thirdly, landscape mode only works for a certain 'height' of the browser. Once your entry goes below the virtual keyboard, you can't see what you're typing. Scrolling doesn't help because it,ll keep scrolling back up. I also can't scroll in the editing box!

So guys, if you know any good blogging app for the ipad that's free, please let me know. I,m in dire need of a blogging app. Otherwise, i have to write to the blogger team about this.

21_A Picture of Something That Makes You Happy (and some rant about the new Ipad)

This is the toughest entry so far...

I don't know what picture to put... there's so many or there's none.

I wanted to put a picture of my family. Of course I feel happy looking at their faces, but sometimes it makes me feel sad, especially when I'm home sick.

I refuse to put a picture of any gadget here because these things only brings happiness (and an ego boost) for 6 months tops before the rumors of the next spanking new and improved version surfaces in the web.

*u can skip this rant part and scroll to picture.

Oh, by the by, rumor has it ipad2 is launching in stores officially this Friday. They're so mean for making me wait for so many Fridays! I feel like Rebecca Black is laughing at me everytime Friday comes and there's no news of the Ipad2 launch in Asia. Disappointment. But this is the last Friday in April, and Apple has mentioned '..coming to Asia countries in April' but they never say what date! People are predicting most likely on a Friday. 4 Fridays has passed and one more left. This April has the most Fridays ever! This must be it. If it's not THIS Friday, then they're soooo mean. I've been waiting like hell. Everytime a Friday passes without news my heart felt like it's being wrunged to the max like a wet laundry being wrung before putting them on the drying line. Macam diperah-perah! It's true when they say 'penantian itu satu penyiksaan'. *drama gile.*

But if it is really this Friday, I'm torn between waiting in line for one or watch Will and Kate's wedding ceremony while the crowd disperses . Should I line up or should I sit down? I already put down my name and booked one for me, but I don't trust that guy will keep if for me, since I haven't given any down payment. And I also signed up for email notification when Apple releases them into the wild in Msia. I also can book online. But where's the fun in that?? Waiting for hours with hundreds of people is the best part (this must be the crazy talk). The anticipation and excitement that grows with every step you take closing the gap between you and the shiny.

Just talking about it makes me feel so excited!!! I'm bouncing off the walls. Funny how one can be so 'high' without taking any drugs.

I might have mentioned Fridays so many times... Rebecca Black, didn't mean to take your spot!

Sorry, I have averted from the main subject.

*land here

Let me see... I'm trying to find a picture that puts a smile on my face every time I look at it.

Mmm.. maybe this is it =)

When I noticed there's new green shoots coming out from your plant, there's a sense of accomplishment and a silent but firm approval from Mother Nature that you're doing something right, even if everything else around you is wrong. And in that few silent seconds, you smile without realising it =))

Grow my little plant and be well!

Synching and BackUp plans

For mobile workers who happen to:

• stores important data on a USB stick thingy
• has many workstations (lab, library, computer lab, home office)
• has their work stored in more than one computer (laptop, desktop, computer lab, etc)
• is always on the go

Then please consider these two softwares.

1. SyncToy
   SyncToy helps a lot in terms of keeping my folders up to date. I mainly do my work on my desktop computer at home and before I go to the lab, I will transfer the work Folder into my USB thingy and access and update my documents from there. Before I go back home, I'll repeat this routine again.
   
   Install SyncToy to your computers and you will be able to sync datas in both your USB flash drive and the folder inside your computer by just the press of a button. I've set my SyncToy to sync whatever files that was just added, recently edited or updated on either folder so you don't have to transfer them manually or copy the whole folder again (which takes a long time to wait). There are a few sync options to choose from if you wish to do something different.
   
   
2. Dropbox
   I can be absent minded sometimes. I would sync my USB the night before and planned everything that I wanted to do in the lab the next day, and only to find that I've forgotten to put my USB drive in my backpack. Facepalm!
   Dropbox works like a virtual USB storage online.It gives users 2GB free and you can drop any files into your 'box' and access that file from another computer even if it's halfway around the world, but you must have internet connection. Now, whenever I'm done, I'll save my a copy of my latest work into my Dropbox as a safe measure.
   It's also useful as a back up for image files if you go travelling or just a back up for safe keeping. (you'll never know when you need it).
   
   
3. Or something else. SugarSync.
   This is similar to #2, but it gives 5GB free to users. I haven't tried this one yet.

Have a go and see if your productivity and efficiency improves. No harm done, they're all free.

Tips to manage FB distraction

Well, the FB 'puasa' didn't go as well as I thought it would be (I was expecting like a one week hiatus), I only managed to keep it up for 48 hours.

And it took about 24 hrs for someone to notice I was 'absent' from FB.

From my 'very brief' experience of deactivating...

Deactivating your FB doesn't really prevents you from signing into FB. FB did take a lot of effort to deter its users from deactivating, there's actually 6 steps to deactivate. But it only took a mere one click of a button (sign in) to join back the social network and voila, everything went back to normal.

What happens when you deactivate FB? All it did was take you virtually off the FB map (people cannot search you or write on your wall - my guess lah)  and your email won't be as congested as it was before.

If you do not wish to deactivate your FB account and save the emotional war from waging within you, then maybe you could consider some tips to manage distractions from FB:

1. Many complain that they get a lot of email notifications from FB and it's really distracting. What I did was redirect all FB mails to Gmail and set up filters and labels. It is easier to have the setting done properly so that your REAL emails won't be overlooked or hidden in between FB notifications. Now all notifications goes to my Gmail and straight into a folder labelled facebook. What I will do is select all 'unread' messages and delete them (weekly or monthly) or just ignore that folder altogether. Here's how to set up filters.
2. You spend too much time scrolling through the News Feed Wall. There is something about the endless trickles of messages that keeps you waiting for more. These kind of walls are great in a way that it feels like you're listening to what your friends have to 'say' and you can chit-chat with them if you feel like it. But most of the time the writings on the wall are just noises that are supposed to be ignored (eg: Warna apakah dirimu antara 25 warna-warna gula-gula?). You can actually control the number of news feed postings and also block a person's feed from showing up (without de-friending them). There is actually an option for this at the bottom of the News Feed page. 250 is a good number to start with.
   
   
3. Keep your circle of friends small. Okay, who has 5000 friends in real life (or 300) and kept in touch with ALL of them? Keep it real. If you count the actual number of friends you actually interact with it might only be 20 (minus work colleagues, your parents and siblings on FB). Yes it's good to keep in touch with pre-school friends or a person you only met once 5 years ago, but draw a limit to it.
   
   
4. Stop playing games on FB. I'm not a fan of virtual farming or running an oriental restaurant online. I don't see the point of doing so. But some people are addicted to it. I know it's hard to kick the habit, but step by step detach yourself from the time stealing games. Go on, press 'Delete' and 'Yes'.
   
5. Be selective in posting and commenting. You don't have share every single thoughts on FB. And you don't have to comment on all you friends' posts. There are times that you feel like you wanted to share with the world about how crooked your fingers looked like, or you had the best teh tarik for the day (everyday). And there's the eternal itch to respond to every friends posts even it it's just 'LOL.' or 'er...?'. You know you are better than that. Please don't get trapped in that lame-ness. (well, unless you're lonely and have nothing better to do than engage in pointless comment ping-pong match)
   
   
6. Be more disciplined. Set yourself a limit and respect that limit. That limit could be like; check FB only 3 times a day (morning, noon and night). Do not click 'Older posts' on the News Feed, take a deep breath and just let it go. Stop stalking other people or that new hot crush of yours. Spend only 10 minutes on FB each time. Just make up a rule and keep to it.

I shared 6 tips that I tried and tested before and it did worked for me when I was working in the office. My productivity at work improved with these 5 tips implemented. Now that my daily routine has changed, I have to admit that these set of tips needs to be 'upgraded' to suit my new schedule, hence the deactivation ('extreme' I know, but I haven't gone to the most 'extreme-mest' yet - deleting my account!).

There are other good ideas shared on the web on how to curb this need-to-know-about-others-anxiety. Just try googling it up ;)

As of now, I am off that map again after rationalising with myself that I'm not missing on a lot of things and people, I believe I can go on for much longer this time around. Let's see, maybe 1 week?

I received firm support and also good news from friends who are also following my action to be off FB. Hope we won't suffer severe withdrawal symptoms :P . Good luck to us!

(ps: it has been 4 days since I deactivated FB again)
(pps: now hooked on Twitter pulak, but it's less distracting that FB, not yet.)

FB - Deactivate!

When I start my day every morning in front of a computer, I will start my usual rounds of site hopping. Check emails. Check the papers, mainstream and alternative. Hop through blogs and other sites related to gadgets, productivity and pop culture.

But there is one site that's always got me hooked even if i tell myself " I'm just gonna glance at it for 5 minutes and start my work." but ends up wasting few hours going through older posts, videos and links, posting comments, sifting through pictures (even the badly taken ones) and refreshing it every 5 minutes to check latest updates. That biggest time waster is facebook, and I'm guilty of over indulging it. I can't control myself.

FB is the last thing I check before retiring to bed and the first thing I'd log onto when I wake up. Sounds quite sad for a life, eh? I'm just addicted in wanting to know what other's 'have  in their mind'. I just have to read everything. And maybe what's worst is that sometimes when I think, I'm thinking in FB format. Witty one-liner. Crazy.

I do realise that it's also bad for my productivity and out of the hundreds of posts on the wall, maybe only 5% is worthy of being called 'useful and informative'. The rest are just rubbish and unnecessarily I became a human spam filter.

• I am tired of reading other's posting intimate or gross or mushy lovey dovey stuff that is not supposed to be shared with in public.
• I am tired of reading statuses that are pretentious, too ambiguous and trying to fish for attention.
• I am sick of reading people posting things that's TMI (Too Much Information) that you don't need to know. Sometimes gross things are shared. Eeww...
• I am tired of people trying to sell stuff on FB. Hand bag, Kasut, Botol susu, tudung, ubat, etc.
• I couldn't care less about what you ate for last night's dinner. or all the 360 degree angles of your baby, your cat, your car, your own face. 1 - 5 pictures are considered ok, but 40 from the same event on the same day is just too much.
• I also have this weird feeling that someone is stalking me via FB. Creepy. And normally my gut feeling is always right.

I know FB has done a lot of good my connecting me with family and friends, but sometimes it just gets out of hands. Therefore, in the name of productivity, I've deactivated my account (see how to here) and see how long I can tahan without FB.

Before fully deactivating my account, FB is playing psychological game with me, how devious! It says my high school mates will miss me (I've actually only in contact with only 3-4 of them only), close friends will miss me (although they have my email and phone number), a balloon will also miss me (wth?).

I don't know how long i'll be on this FB hiatus and how many posts I will be missing and how out of touch I'll be from my friends. I'm gonna carry out this social experiment carefully and live one day at a time just like when i did my free from caffeine experiment. (For that one I lasted 2 weeks)

Bye-bye FB (for now).

ps: I already deactivated my account about 1 hr ago and I feel quite liberated.
pps: this post was actually written on 31st Oct 2010; 2:15pm.

Sambungan "Jinxed?"

I told you guys last week that I planned to send my broken hard disk to this recovery company to try retrieve the data. Up until this morning, my optimism was still high and believe it can be recovered. But came the quotation in the afternoon, I started to rethink my optimism.

Guess how much they quoted me?

Guess.

Guess again.

Nope. Guess again.

I'll help you. The cost is enough to buy a pretty good laptop.

RM3950. Friggin' 4 thousand ringgit!!!! And they couldn't guarantee that I'll get 100% of my hard disk content back. Depends on the extend of the damage, they said.

When the numbers finally sank down into my head, I've already gone into acceptance mode. Accepting the fact that I'll have to forget about all the contents in the hard disk once and for all. Everything wiped clean. I'm taking this as a sign.

I told my boss about it, and he said whether it's really crucial or not to get all the data back? Well, the company's gonna be paying it anyways (that is if upper management approved my request).

If you were me, would you save your company RM4k, or just go for it. Here's a list of things that's inside to make the decision easier (kot):

• All my engineering data that I've collected from the last 2 projects (that's 3 years worth of data). If not hard disk not saved, all proof for engineering decisions will be lost. Well, I can trace back to the emails sent, but it's a hassle. But will have missing pieces.
  
• All my engineering data from my current project. If hard disk not saved, I might have to redo measurements again or make a sad face whenever manager brings up questions about the numbers.
• All technical documents, reference documents that I've collected and compiled for the past 3 years will be gone. If not saved, I have to scourge the WWW to find them again.
• All technical documents that I've written (original copies), be it for the department's references and for technical conferences are gone. If not saved, still ok. I can download from the server.
• Proofs of payments, such as monthly car loan, bills paid through online gone. If not saved, if there will be a time if i get into trouble with bank or services, I have these to back me up saying "Hey, here I've paid, see?"
• Special folder containing my researchs and proposals. If not saved, I have to write it again (just 20 pages) and find back all the papers on WWW.
• ebooks on photography, motivation, self-improvements, toastmasters.
  
• My Pictures. There's a few folders I didn't backup, including family trip to Bukit Merah, Team Building, trip to KL, gathering with friends... if not saved, hmm... all gone foreverlah.

These are just the major ones, there's some more stuffs on it that I can't remember. Well, you get the gist of it.

Now paranoid and scared that everything on the computer has a mind of it's own and decided to wipe itself clean as an act of gaining independence, I have started to strategically organised a back up regime

1. Data on hard disk. Burn DVD. 2 copies. And another back up on external hard disk. (3 back ups!)
2. Blogger entries --> How to back-up blogger entries

I hope you all do the same too. I hope no one you will ever feel so regretful, frustrated, hopeless and depressed like me ever again T_T

Jinxed?

I don't know whether it's just me or Murphy's Law is trying to prove a point, but since my last post about the importance of backing up your files stored in any kind of memory material, things started to go wrong.

I also starting to wonder if I have strong magnetic field emanating from my body, causing hard disk and flash drives to lose their contents... hmm, possible? no? but both occurences happened in a short period of time. what are the chances? right?

First my 4GB Kingston flash drive started acting up. Fortunately the first signs were noticed, and I followed my instinct to back up the files before the flash drive decided to zero down it's own memory size. 4GB gone just like that.

Note:
If you notice that saved folders and files unable to open, and files extensions/icons are funny or not normally what it used to be, better back it up.

Yesterday was the worst disaster. My laptop hard disk suddenly failed on me. No symptoms and no indications were given before hand. I came to work and turn on the laptop, and it stuck in the boot up cycle. The whole hard disk corrupted and crashed in just one split second. 120GB gone just like that. Didn't managed to back-up anything... all my collected datas, documents, pictures, songs and softwares vanished in one minute.

Note:
Must do a regular back-up every now and then. Anticipate worst case failure because these things are unreliable.

I'm still cool about this though. I believe I can still retrieve all my hard disk contents back when I send the hard disk for inspection. Apparently there's a company here specialising just in this field - retrieving lost data from corrupted disks. Must be making good business. I hope they will make a good job.. if not, I'm definitely gonna be depressed.

It's Complicated

The word "It's Complicated" really hangs rather strongly to our global culture and technology today. It is there in our process. It is there running 'the place'. It is there holding our technology together. It is even there to define our 'relationship status'.

Sometimes I might think that we just like to make simple things unnecessarily complicated, and I'm starting to feel scared thinking about it. "Why am I scared?" you may ask... and I shall explain.

Have you ever thought about the end of the internet? I do. The thought comes every time there's a power failure at home and there's no way to connect to the internet. This might come from a selfish point of view, but when the unfortunate day comes when everything (the internet) ends, I wonder and worry that the next human generation might not be able to retrieve all our blog posts and all our pictures that we posted in the internet. All memories of human kind living in the millenium age all gone and all lost in the virtual world called the World Wide Web, forever.

Human beings are a brilliant creation. We are able to think and create systems and machines that makes work easier for us. Going back to the simple lever systems, then the torque and gears and now we have a complicated system of metal and cylinders that moves collectively what we call now a car! Amazing. God knows what's in store for us in the future... flying cars? I don't know.

The same technological evolution happens for everything around us. Cave stones carvings becomes moving pictures, numbers evolved into complex mathematical formulas, communication through smoke and scroll of letters grew up to become telephony system and emails. The list goes on...

The camera obscura was the very first camera invented. Here's a website that shares a short history, the inventor and how you can make your own camera obscura in your bedroom. Compared to the pocket sized digicam we have now, you'll need at least a degree in these fields -> mechanical engineering, electrical engineering or software engineering just to create one camera. I'm not even sure one person alone with ALL the mentioned 3 degrees could create a digicam from scratch in one lifetime. Like I said, it's complicated.

Say that you've found yourself stranded in a land somewhat like History Channel's Life after People kind of situation. No electricity, and you've found a roll of film and a memory card.

The photographic film that can be easily processed if you know what chemicals to use, add in a little bit of McGyver's knowledge you'll have your pictures back. But the memory card.. pointless to try and extract anything from it in no electrical supply condition.

My point is, old technology is reproduceable. On the other hand, our atomic age technology makes is impossible to create things from scratch on your own. Just to read a thumb sized memory card, you'll need electricity, you need to find a way to produce semiconductor just to make a chip (making a semiconductor is not just boiling sand into liquid), this is only ONE piece of the puzzle of a highly complicated system that is called the computer.

Personally, our ancestors are the bigger genius. They're the ones who originally initiated the ideas for all the gadgets that we hold in our hands right now. I say this because the things that they came out with back in those olden days can still be reproduced today without much process and hassle.

Therefore with that said, maybe it's a good idea to back-up everything that I've ever saved on all my semiconductor devices and everything I've ever posted on the internet and start to make hard copies on paper and try to preserve it for the sake of my future children to see. Just in case the internet doesn't work because there's a problem with the electrical supply and telecommunication lines ;)

Photobook review

Here's one thing that I'm excited to share with all you people out there, especially photo enthusiasts. Now there is an alternative way of printing your beautiful pictures for display, rather than printing 4R size photos and slot them into generic photo album with tacky design covers, we now can print it on a shiny glossy paper and bind it nicely into a book. We can also arrange the pictures the way we like it, 4R, 3R, 8R, square, oval... you name it. It's like your very own published magazine, how wonderful is that??

It was my mum's birthday last month and I decided to give her a photobook as a gift. Coincidentally Photobook was having a special offer, 40% off that month, which was really good bargain. The service was quite fast (considerably for Malaysian standard), I've submitted the files on 31 March midnight and it arrived in front of my doorstep 7 days after.

Here's the verdict:

I decided to go with the debossed hardcover book with 40 pages. The linen hardcover that binds the book looks very good and keeps the pages intact. I don't think the pages will easily comes off with that kind of binding.

Also the cover material gives it a 'professional' look (at least for a layman like me). And the front cover pic seems to be embedded inside the cover. Let's hope that doesn't peel off easily too. Haha! Oh ya, the theme for my first photobook was babies. It's a collection of baby pictures of us adik-beradik (siblings) from all different years. All 6 of us.

The content was hundreds of baby photos (I'm not sure if there's a limit to the number of photos) on 40 pages of thick and smooth silk paper (to be precise it's 148gms silk). As you can see below, the book spine holds the pages properly.

The best thing about this book is that it gives your total control on how you want to arrange the pictures in each pages. This can be done by using the software that I've downloaded from the site. Big, small, rectangular, oval, diamond shaped borders, you name it. It's up to you honestly. Below is an example of the pages inside the book.

It took me 4 intensive and very focused days (and nights) to scourer through a dozen of albums just to find the right pictures, scanning them (fortunately the scanner is brilliant enough to be able to scan 6 pics at the same time and saving it as 6 different files), editing and restoring old, dull and damaged photos using Photoshop (now I have created a customised set of action for automation that's quite reliable for batch processing) and arranging them into the book. Phew.. that's a lot of mumbo jumbo.

So, here's a good tip...
Honestly if you ask me, it would be easier to just create a photobook with photos that are already in digital format, you can cut 75% of the process I've mentioned above and just focus on the photo arrangements. Which will eventually be the final outcome of your book.

I know a lot of wedding photographers includes this kind of photobook in their service, but why just limit it to just weddings?? You can create a book about your travels, your family, even your cat, anything! And why let other people do it for you when you yourself can design your own book. Get that creative juices flowing!

Go on to Photobook, have a look and try it out for yourself.

(ps: Photobook didn't paid me a cent for this promo, I'm just a customer who's happy with the service provided).

Women Engineers

There was an Engineer's Week last month and earlier this month there was Women's Day (8 March). 50 years or so ago, these two things don't seem to fit each other. In the past, it is beyond imagination during that women are seen dabbling into the Engineering field where it was mainly dominated by men.

But now, thanks to the advent of technology and the feminism movement, Women and Engineering goes hand in hand together nowadays =)

I thank technology because it makes computer aided design and simulations possible. Therefore I can sit in an air-conditioned room doing simulations upon simulations without getting my hands greasy and grimy. I thank the feminist movement, our foremothers who fought for women's right and equality. Therefore I can get a good education and get a good job without worrying too much about gender bias. (i say 'too much' because it's still not 100% bias free).

However, it's still a man's world out there. For example, in my department, I think I can say that only 1/4 of the total engineers in the group are women. Does the same trends follow in other fields such as politics, law, business and management, big fancy restaurants and hotel kitchens? Where the girls at?

Kamera Ku

If you ask me, I'm not much of a photographer myself. I don't take pictures for art or have any intention of selling any pictures. But I do like to take pictures for the sake of memories. And I also like to spend my monies on shiny little things.

I've had this idea in my head for some time now and I was thinking of chronolizing the cameras in my life. (Hmm, it looks like someone had nothing much to do on her free time). I decided to split the time line into three different eras:

1) The Film era:

OMG! This is possibly the most sentimental era for an 80's kid.

From left to right:
a) Canon SLR:
I believe this is my first brush with a professional camera as far as I could remember. I might be 8-10 years old back then. It's my dad's and I used to play with this camera when he's not around. He has 3 different kind of lenses and two of them are prime lenses, which I think are cute (??). Classic kan?

b) Olympus Automatic Camera:
This is the first camera that I bought with my own money, well, actually my own scholarship money. And the first item I bought from ebay too. It was £35.00. Had so many good memories travelling around Europe with this one.

Can you believe that not too long ago we are using films in cameras? and had to ration our film usage down to maximum of 36 snaps per film?? LOL! Sometimes one roll can last months! I remembered using 6 rolls of film for my two weeks Spain trip last time. And I thought that was crazy...

2) The Digital Era:

This is when it all started

From left to right:
a) Sony Cyber Shot DSC:
When it comes to shiny gadgets, I'm a sucker. The Sony Cyber shot was my first digital camera and it cost me a whopping £250.00. That was my one month salary working as a cleaner. I was sooooo ecstatic when it arrived in the mail. Kira habis canggih la masa ni. LOL. But the memory capacity was only 16MB (back then that was considered a lot already). I had to travel around with the film camera as a back up. Actually, no. The digital camera was the back-up. But a nasi lemak by the sea side accident happened and I found out that sending it for repair might be a stupid option because it's cheaper to buy a new one at the PC Fair.

b) Nikon Coolpix 3200:
No, I didn't bought a drawn out picture of a camera, silly. lol. It's just a depiction of how it looked like because I sold it off to my cousin. The coolpix was smaller than cybershot and it was easier for storage. So I brought it everywhere and kept it close to me at all times (paparazzi in-training). I used this camera to take a lot of pictures in Cardiff. Good times.

c) Panasonic Lumix FX-01:
Perhaps the best P&S camera ever bought (it has Leica lens!). Again, sold it off, hence the paper camera. Once I got back to Malaysia, I used my own money (very proud to say) to buy this little shiny thing. I love how vivid the pictures are and the many setting it has, especially the shutter delay option. It's first touch to the next level. I had this camera for about 1 year only. But if people ask me for advice what camera they should buy, I'd tell them go for Lumix with Leica lens :)

(of all the things, I'm proud of my drawing skills).

3) The Professional Camera Era:

What I'm using right now.

From left to right:
a) Canon 400D:
Nothing glamorous... orang lain ade HD recording capability and live view as such.. mine does no special tricks, just plain straight forward; click and snap. I bought this on purpose for my India trip. Really excited back then, and still excited now. I feel like holding this camera is like a license to 'poyo', especially at weddings :P Just walk right up in front of the stage and when people sees you with this big hunk of plastic and glass, they'll just give you way and space without questions asked. I like, thank you very much. 2 years on.. I'm still learning how to use it.

b) Nokia XpressMusic 5800:
Unfortunately, I can't always lug around a 0.5kg camera kit everywhere I go. Being the trigger happy person that I am, I still need a gear for a quick and swift shooting (read: not referring to a pistol or any firearms). This handphone does just that and is a fine piece of gadget that packs a (punch) whole lot of other gadgets inside it. Neat and cool. With enough light, I can take a decent picture with. No complaints.

There you go, a list of cameras. I hope this has been entertaining to you as it was for me, reminiscing the beautiful memories of the past. And for the future, I hope to take more nice pictures and I hope to share it with you cyber lots. Until next time, ciao.

CPL

I told you I'll bump this post again on my own sweet time. So here it is, read along and prepare to be bored. (You're welcome, it's my pleasure :D)

From this old post: 50mm & CPL

A polariser is a nifty little thing to put in front of your lens. It reduce the amount of glare and reflection off objects that goes into the camera lens. SLR nerds calls 'em CPL, short for Circular Polariser Filter (filter? aik.. so 'L' tu apa benda?). Alright, I think that's enough technical mumbo-jumbo for today.

I went to Penaga (nun dekat Kepala Batas nun) to proof this point to my fellow readers (Ready... now YAWN!).

55mm, F/10, 1/80 sec.

Here's a picture of some lovely fishermen's boats tied to poles under the mid-day afternoon sun. See? The bright skies reflection is everywhere and it made the whole picture looks too bright for my taste. If you've noticed, the sky is almost the same colour with my blog's background. Too much light. Photoshop can't help much to save the lost details in over exposed areas.

So I put on the 'sunglasses' (itu CPL-lah) for my lens. There you go.

55mm, F/10, 1/80 sec.

Oh, what's this? Did the clouds came to my aid and covered the sun for me? No, it's just the filter doing what it does best, filtering light rays... duh! Both pictures, first and second, are taken with the same camera settings and the only different thing is that there's a polariser attached when taking the second picture below. See how much difference it made?

Although it's looks a little bit under exposed, but the details are there and can be saved with a little tweaking in photoshop like this one...

CPL edited picture.

Okay guys, don't get over excited about this one... I cheated.. I just pressed the 'Auto Correct' button. Yes, I admit I'm being lazy here. Didn't do much justice to it. But don't you agree that the CPL edited picture looks better than the one below? I did the same thing with the non-CPL version and just pressed 'Auto Correct' again...

Non-CPL edited. Auto correct.

Ouch! Does this one looked like it is being burned alive? Harsh, harsh lights... almost blinding.

By now, you should understand the concept of what a polarising filter does and it's benefit. There's actually some more story that I haven't shared yet. And that is, you could control the amount of reflected light entering your lens using the filter. Wow, isnt's this really exciting??!!!

Wait, this is not the end yet... I felt bad for cheating earlier... here's a proper edited version of CPL picture (the second one, if you've lost track). You might want to beg to differ and disagree by saying 'Where got difference?!". Then, I'd say "Sure got one...! Look closely".

Isn't this better? I hope you agree.

There's a few layers of white shades (white colour have shades?) in the sky, the water looks okay-ish, I guess and the boats are fairly exposed.

So, what's the take away from all this story? Well, by now you should know that it is quite obviou - Never to come again and visit the blog of a amateur photographer and newbie camera enthusiast because they will bore you to death with pointless posts about how great their new gadgets are.

Related links:
1. Wikipedia
2. Camera Filters

"Are we done yet?". No, your torture session is not yet over. After showing you guys pictures of the same boring old boats over and over again for 5 times. And as if that was not enough, I'm asking you now to watch the clip below of people from the 80's where youngsters wear mismatching bright coloured outfits, short shorts, tight tights and big feathery hair-do. Until we have the new up to date version of FAME to come out, this will suffice for now.

And now, we are done.

Touch me

CNET reviews these phones (link)

No matter how I try to fight back the oncoming wave and believe that mobile phones should stick to a conventional design for phones, I feel that there's a soft spot that's starting to grow in my heart for these new touch sensitive screen phones.

They are one of today's fashion's 'IN' thing. Shiny, sleek, smooth, have minimalistic design and not to forget, Sexy...

Biggest player is, of course, Apple with the ever popular iPhone. Which changed how we look at phones.
The next alternatives are Samsung and LG.
Coming into the 'IN' party room is Nokia.
But what about Motorola, question mark.

The technology for these touch screen pads are evolving so fast. 10years ago it was a grey screen with black letters (Palm PDA) and you had to memorize pen strokes for each alphabet. Now, you can define your own strokes and the phone will have to learn to adapt to your handwriting, no matter how ugly it is. (don't you just love engineers doing these things?)

The touch screen had to come along to our world, just because someone said, "What if, 6 months down the road after you came out with a new phone, you suddenly had an idea to add another great application? You can't just add another button on the phone, it's already out in the market." So the idea was, to have that additional button on a LCD screen which can be added on just by upgrading your phone's software. I still don't know what particular extra button that will be in dire need in the near future. A button for 'change to stealth mode when stalking/camouflage' perhaps? Oh! Maybe something like that starwars movie, 3Dprojection-like phone calls (Princess Leia's message to Obi Wan Kenobi).

However there are a few concerns with these type of phones, a few of them being:
- The LCD screen is the heart of the phone (for the user, at least). If the screen gone bonkers, you can't make any calls or send messages out. Maybe receiving calls would be a problem as well.

- You can't type messages under the table to save yourself (ie, bored to death _____ insert event here). Maybe the most you could type is - hafhoafadnm.

- sleek and shiny means slippery. Argh! Don't drop it!!!

All things aside, it's still strikingly alluring.

I. can't. help. but. submit. myself.to.the.force.
Noooooo!
(i'm sticking to my 1 month rule before buying big budget gadget).

Jamil aka Hiyoshi must be sniggering by now.

Alert! Alert!

I've been getting a virus alerts, which mention something about trojan virus everytime I land on my blog. Did you readers happen to get this kind of alert when you land here? Yes, I am asking you 5-6 people who's reading this blog.

I suspect that maybe the template itself is sending out virus. Maybe, there's a secret undercover link that allows the virus to pass through from a source. I don't know.

So, I've taken some precaution measures. Hence the blank layout.

Things will go back to normal when I found out the root cause.

So sorry for the inconvenience caused if your computer happens to catch this virus. Honestly, I didn't intend to attack anyone (i.e. silent stalkers) or being diabolical about starting a virtual epidermic.

Cappucino

I will try to make my own cappucino.



Now need to find something that could make milk froth.

Moving on

Goodbye old blog.... no more familiar page that'll greet me and make me feel all warm, safe and fuzzy.

Hello new blog. Will try to get used with your face (I think it's a little bit cluttered).

Let me know what you think. This page will be improved.