Show Offs

Yes, it was a known fact that we Malaysians like to show off. We like to iild the tallest, make the biggest, but still traffic congestion was still a bind and flash floods a constant thorn. But I digress.

Yesterday afternoon, I strolled around Low Yat , and as usual, I parked at KLCC and walk my way across on the walkway towards Pavilion. A nice relaxing walk actually, and I get plenty of photo ops to go along with it. In front of Lot 10, there was a group of boys with pogo sticks - a proper metallic ones and they really launched themselves in the air. I was not sure if it was an impromptu thing, but doing it at a busy - one of the busiest in town - was never a good idea …..

Further down, there was a huge group of motorcyclist about to converge in front of Pavilion. Most of them were from Kelantan, as there was the small matter of the Malaysia Cup Finals between Kelantan and Armed Forces the same very night, followed by the Malaysia MotoGP the next day. Perfect excuse for a weekend trip down to KL.

And there were at least 100 high-power motorcycles on display ….. and the noise they made …….

The SpyderCube

I have always struggled to get the perfect white balance when shooting using my digital camera. I thought shooting RAW would make things better. But all it did was slow down my workflow, and for the last couple of years, I almost exclusively shoot jpeg, even on my 7D. When it came to the X100 and the X-Pro1, jpeg was definitely the choice for me due to the superior on camera Jpeg engine Fuji had developed. The noise level from the camera coming straight off the camera was definitely better than what I could develop manually in Adobe Bridge, not to mention the almost perfect skin colour rendition.

But when it came to still life and studio lighting, getting the perfect colour maybe possible, usually using a grey card. The SpyderCube made this process much easier though. I shot the 7D in RAW, took the first frame with the cube on sight, and just cut and paste the white balance setting on the subsequent frames in my Aperture. Convenient indeed. And I was impressed with the results. Obviously helped by the new lightbox I had just purchased ......

Another worthy investment to be honest. I actually bought a studio set from Datacolor which contained the SpyderCube, Spyder4Elite and well as printer print colour analyser. I have yet to use the print analyser as yet. Indeed to investor a proper printer first however ......

Paper Trails

Idlan missed his monthly haircut by a couple of weeks with the events going on at home - Mum and Gramma being admitted into hospital and all. So, he definitely need a haircut as Irfan been telling him that one can hide their pencils into his hair!

So, off we went to the hairdresser, but his favourite cutter was away today - his Uncle Truno. He said OK to anyone else as long as they were male. Now. Should I be worried, or he still has plenty to learn about the ways of the world?

He Needs His Haircut

Idlan missed his monthly haircut by a couple of weeks with the events going on at home - Mum and Gramma being admitted into hospital and all. So, he definitely need a haircut as Irfan been telling him that one can hide their pencils into his hair!

So, off we went to the hairdresser, but his favourite cutter was away today - his Uncle Truno. He said OK to anyone else as long as they were male. Now. Should I be worried, or he still has plenty to learn about the ways of the world?

Hmm! Which One?

I was at Low Yat earlier this afternoon and had he chance to take a close look at the latest Samsung offering, the Note 2. A modest gunfire and clearly DiGi was pushing the product pretty strongly. They offered a 3 year package, where you take home the device for RM1399, plus a RM600 bill advanced payment. You would then had to pay RM88 for the data alone - 5Gb - monthly which is slightly more expensive than the current DiGi package I was grandfathered in. And the thought of having tonne tied down for a couple of years on a contract alone made me cringe.

It was a hard sell that the promoter made, but I was keener on the software than the hardware. I was trying to test the Jelly Bean, but the promoter kept on telling me about the magical thing the device could do. I could do those task better on a 7 inch tablet, but those were yet to run the new operating system except the Nexus 7.

And the problem with the Nexus 7 was the fact that it was wifi only. I want my tablet to be cellular.

One of my colleague - @palmdoc - carry the Tab 7.0 with him, and it looked quite handy. I held on to see what the Nexus 7 going to be like, and maybe a bit longer to see whether the iPad Mini would materialise. iPhone 5 was yet to interest me as I find the 4S more than adequate. I just wanted a 7 inch device I could carry in my labcoat, for me to access emails and various other app on a screen larger than my iPhone. The Note is big, but a 7 inch device would fare better. And I prefer to have an Android device along, just for the variation.

So, at the current rate, it looked like it was going to be the Nexus 7 as I have a debt wifi coverage at work. Hmmmm .... dilemma.