No Lightroom Gel

With almost everything in life, I believe at love at first sight. No, I wasn't talking about Anita here although truth be told it was like that. I was talking about my photography here.

I always had to try and use a camera before I buy it. And the same goes with my photography work post capture. I had been using Lightroom since version 1 but was never completely happy with it.

When Apple Aperture came into the picture, I gave that a go but in found the first iteration of that software very sluggish and almost unusable. I persevered Lightroom. Grudgingly.

Then came the later versions of Aperture and I never looked back. I loved the white balance control and the skin tones I was getting from it. I couldn't even replicate it consistently in Photoshop. And it was blazingly fast.

Imagine my disappointment when Apple decided to discontinue the development of Aperture and concentrate on a more consumer orientated product instead - Apple Photo. It hasn't have half the control of the old Aperture.

So, I had a choice to make. Shall I relearn and tolerate Lightroom. Or shall I cross my fingers and toes, stick to Aperture and pray that whatever support left that Apple put in on maintaining Aperture would carry me through. Or better still, Apple might change their minds and reinvest in what was otherwise a superb software.

In the meantime, I have decided to stick to Aperture. I had tried my level best in the last couple of weeks to tweak my workflow, but it looked that there was too much hassle for the change. Hopefully I would be able to get a third party RAW converted to my future cameras while I learn to use Lightroom. But that's not going to be any time soon.

Saturday Night and Homework

The boys really don't have much of a choice. Anita and I would be out all day tomorrow, so the boys had to do their homework tonight. Looking forward to free time tomorrow, they duly obliged. But now, they had to finish them. And there were a lot ..... Good night!

Saturday Walk

It wasn't much of a Saturday today. I spent yesterday night sorting out my slides and despite cancelling the clinic this morning, I was in hospital all morning sorting out the few patients I had to see in the morning.

I didn't make the faculty lunch in time and got to the conference venue just before my session started.

Once my session was done, it was time to unwind. But it was raining cats and dogs outside. And the traffic? Atrocious!

Settling down for dinnerTime to orderThe main lobby was transformedNow, that's one giant monkeyThe main Bukit Bintang entranceAfter the rain stopped, I decided to take Anita out for dinner. For some reason, I felt like having Arab food. Off to Pavilion. Bad move! Bukit Bintang was packed and I only managed to park at Fahrenheit, walking across to Pavilion for our dinner, having a peek at the CNY decorations which were already being erected.

I wasn't really in the mood for photography at the time. Food was foremost on my mind, plus bed later ....

Midnight Oil

It had been a while since I had to prepare lectures and my luck was in. I had two in the next week. One this weekend and another way next week.

Good thing was I had no on calls until after the talks and I have cancelled my Saturday clinic so that I could attend the sessions before my talk at the event.

So, still had to do their finishing touches on the talks and it looked like I would have to retire soon. I still have the clinic to run tomorrow morning. Hopefully that would be lighter and I don't have any admissions in the afternoon.

New Toll Arrangement

The queue at the toll booth on my way to work yesterday was longer than usual. The fact that I had a couple of clinic s that day - the morning at Park City and the afternoon back in Subang - meant that I was in a slight rush in the morning.

It turned out that the NPE - New Pantai Expressway - had gotten rid of cash paying booth. All the road user had to use electronic payment - Touch and Go - to pass through. Those who hasn't, would have to purchase them at some of the lanes. Hence the long queue.

I didn't have any problem since I had always been using the SmarTag. But I was caught in the wait.

The situation got a bit better this morning, probably because everybody had wise update to the fact. The added advantage for such system was the top-up booth were opened 24 hours. Made the job of topping-up the card that much easier.