Archive for November, 2006

School Exams

Published by
James
at 12:20 HKT Nov 30, 2006 in Education. 0 Comments

This year in Primary 6, Alec has about 6 or 7 exams either in school exams or open exams. Since Alec is our only child, the closest to a brother or sister to him would be his cousins as well as his cousins-once-removed (my cousins offspring) who attend different schools. While I grew up in a big house with almost all my cousins living together and gave us lots of opportunities to see each other, Alec seldom sees his cousins in the past 2 years. This is because everyone has been bombarded with exams after exams after exams.

Alec had his last exams early October. My cousins’ offspring had their exams late October. My sisters’ offspring has just finished off their exams. Alec’s next exam is coming up next week….. This goes round and round, on and on until July. And if Alec were to be accepted to the affiliated Secondary School, there will be conjunction courses during the summer holidays as the Primary School teaches in Cantonese and the affiliated Secondary School teaches in English.

Thanks again to our brilliant minded government officials.

PITA PC

Published by
James
at 11:41 HKT Nov 30, 2006 in Computing. 2 Comments

Just how is it possible that a brand new computer works until either some software or hardware problem came up even after it has been rectified more strange problems would start cropping up even after a complete OS, drivers, and applications re-installation?

Even since my last complete system reinstallation, things just don’t seem entirely right. Mostly very minor things that I can live with. My latest problem is with the Unionway Cantonese Chinese Input system. It is a free demoware so long as you restright from using it for commercial purposes and keep reinstalling every 60 days. I chose Unionway because it can recognise quite straight forword Romanization of Cantonese as oppose to adhering to some official combination which makes no sense. I would have bought it over 10 years ago if it didn’t cost US$199! A couple of days ago, Avast antivirus reported a Trojan within one of the .dll files being used by Unionway. I uninstalled it, scanned and removed the infacted file, downloaded a new copy of Unionway and had it installed many times. I still get the same virus report!

I then started looking for other Cantonese IME freeware on the net and found Red Dragonfly by the Hong Kong University. One dumb IME. Just how does the Romanization “CAK” fit the word “測” is beyond me! My usual romanization would have started with “CHAK” and then maybe “CHAAK” if not found with “CHAK”. RDF took neither.

I then found this Cantonese IME. It works under WindO$ XP’s own language input system. Although it’s operation is still not as smooth as Unionway but it would have to do for now.

Photo Tata

Published by
James
at 12:09 HKT Nov 29, 2006 in Arts&Crafts. 2 Comments

Ever since digital SLR became widely accepted there has been many discussions on the pros and cons of shooting in RAW vs JPG format.

A RAW format file of a digital photo can have its photo attributes such as exposure, white balance, amount of in-camera sharpening or contrast etc reverted or readjusted after a photo has been shot; whereas a JPG format digital photo file is stuck with its photo attributes like a regular slide film. There is, however, a wide misconception that a RAW file can be adjusted to no limits. This is simply physically impossible. A photo shot at a certainly exposure value is always different from a photo shot at a different exposure value in RAW format and then having the exposure value readjusted to compensate for the difference afterwords no matter how sophisticated the camera or RAW file converter application is. That is because the actual amount of light fall on to the digital photo sensor has already been fixed at the point the photo being taken. One may be able to get away with 1 or 2 EV difference but that’s about it. It is just an easy and self-explanatory way to correct the exposure of the digital photo, not any time reversal voodoo magic.

That said, white balance on a RAW file however might have a greater degree of post shot adjustment than exposure since the “juggling” of the amount of each individual color within the photo sensor is essentially the same on camera or off camera. Yet, a color correction filter in front of the lens during the shot is still a relatively more noise free way than any digital white balance on or off camera.

When I first started using digital SLR camera, I also shot a lot in RAW format. That was because the Auto White Balance function on earlier digital cameras did not produce as ideal a white balance as one would expect from such an expensive piece of equipment. That has always boggled me since even today, the Auto White Balance function on my Nikon D2X SLR camera is still inferior to that on my Nikon Coolpix S10 Point and Shoot camera! In fact, the AWB function on the S10 is so good that it turned some moody tungsten situations into boring daylight! It would have been nice if the AWB function on my digital SLRs have such a good auto white balance starting point the S10 gives that can be tuned on camera to “dial in” the wanted mood.

Since I started photography with manual cameras and film, I have a pretty good grasp on the exposure of a given situation especially under open daylight. When I shoot with the all manual Rolleicord camera outdoors with slide film, I often shoot without a light meter and solely rely on the Sunny 16 Rule. Auto everything is convenient for speedy snapshots but not entirely necessary for static shots. One can always bracket the exposure to one’s heart’s content. Besides, even with RAW file, people bracket or extract different exposures from the same RAW file to be combined later for HDR (high dynamic range) photos. So the bracketed shots are not all a waste.

Nowadays, with a good size on camera LCD display with color coded histograms for reference, one should be able to dial-in the correct adjustment settings within just a few shots. Yet the amount of file conversion time and harddisk space can greatly be reduced by shooting JPG if one had the right on camera settings to begin with. So, in the past year or so, I have been shooting JPG mainly.

One may argue that JPG is final. Then again, so is film. One could still adjust JPG files a great deal with a good post processing application and techniques if one knew what to do. To be honest, I was stuck with a few sets of photos shot in RAW that I had trouble color correcting them due to the fact that I was new with that camera and I was too tardy with studying the on camera settings. I am currently more comfortable with adjusting a JPG file than a RAW file. Don’t know why that is.

As with the image quality such as sharpness, the difference between the two formats is essentially indecipherable to me with such a high resolution photo to be resized for monitor display on the Web or even 8×10 printing. One doesn’t need to convince others to use one digital photo file format over another. Just use which ever one you are most comfortable with.

Environmental Friendly Levy

Published by
James
at 14:46 HKT Nov 28, 2006 in Health. 2 Comments

I used to get new plastic bags for all my market/supermarket purchases and I saved them for bagging daily household garbages. I had tons of them saved up over the years and when I stopped asking for new bags early this year, only in the past few days that I have used up all the saved plastic bags. This however does not solve the problem of using too many plastic bags. Instead of keep saving them for future use, I have only deferred the usage. I have been using the exact same number of plastic bags everyday even after I have started using reusable shopping bags in lure of getting new plastic bags. Now that I have used up all the saved up plastic bags, I am trying to think of a new way to manage my household garbage in order to not getting any more plastic bags; but what am I to do?

The local Government is looking into putting a new tax or a levy on plastic bags as a method to curb the usage of plastic bags which is quickly filling up our garbage landfills. Just how does a levy make it more environmental friendly is beyond me.

To those who could or would go without plastic bags, they would stop or use less without question. To those who must get new plastic bags on every purchase, even if they had to pay for the bags they simply would. An extra cost would either be ignored or would be passed on to the next levelon the chain of economy. So in turn, everyone pays more and plastic bags would still be used. This levy certainly does not help me at all in finding a new way to manage my household garbage.

In order to stop using plastic, there must be a replacement - a replacement that is just as good or at least almost as good but much more environmental friendly than plastic.

A TV program last night addressed such an issue. It reviewed that we do have environment friendly bags at about 30% higher wholesale price than regular plastic bags rendering them unpopular among shop owners.

Should there be a levy on plastic bags, in order to really help the environment, the levy should be taxed on regular plastic bags only and not on environmental friendly bags, and that the levy should be so high that makes the regular plastic bags cost as much as the environmental friendly ones if not more. The levy however, must be put back into environmental research for more and better environmental friend product as well as better recycling measures so we could lower the costs of using environmental friendly products or methods. Not just pocketing the levy and imagine a good deed has been done.

Unfortunately, we only have lazy boneheads as head government officials thinking that money would solve all problems!

The Village People

Published by
James
at 23:50 HKT Nov 24, 2006 in Concerts, Music, AudioVisual and Entertainment. 0 Comments

The Village People - Macho Man

and Gloria Gaynor.

We went to their concert last night. The problem with this kind of concert is that drinks were not allowed in the concert hall. It should have been an outdoor seatless event. Some audiences must have been in their 70s or more so naturally, if you take out the foreigners, it was not an “excited” crowd at all. With David being there made it an even more miserable sceen. Actually, we hardly saw him as he must have been sitting while everyone rushed to the front and stood there all around him. I wonder if he saw anything but people’s butts.

The Cool and the Gang was supposed to be there as well but I think it was due to the poor ticket sales they’ve decided to drop them in the end without prior notice. Loudspeakers were not enough and not positioned well enough to give a full sound for the audience on the sides. The 8 o’clock concert did not start until 8:30pm. The Village People were then late for their flight and left without an encore and even missed one of their major song - Go West despite our my rumbling, cheering, and yelling for it! I suggest any future concert goers to buy a CD or a DVD rather than paying so much for a poorly sounded and poorly organized concert, especially for those miserable downer audiences. It’s a rock/disco concert not a theatrical musical play for crying out loud!

If they keep up with this kind of concert format for this type of performers, concerts would become the next dying breed after cinema movies.

BTW, this is to the recorded female announcer, the word is “beverages” not “beverlages”. Playing the recording over and over again for more than 45 minutes before each and every concert isn’t going to make it sound any better.

More photos here.

Hey, Mr. Stutter Lee!

Published by
James
at 0:14 HKT Nov 18, 2006 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

DON”T PATRONIZE THE PEOPLE! Your IQ is not high enough.

Even if you truly didn’t know your dad was in on the purchase of your telecom like you said you didn’t, he would have had known you were selling it, alright!!!

Jane Zhang’s New CD Album

Published by
James
at 0:38 HKT Nov 16, 2006 in AudioVisual. 0 Comments

The One.

There are actually two versions of this CD. One is just a regular CD, another is a limit edition CD + DVD with a nice cartoon book drawn by some Japanese artist which I don’t know of, and a nice booklet about the songs. The DVD has a MV and a documentary on the production of the English songs on the DVD where were done in Chicago, USA. The MV looks like a Chinese production since the quality of the MV is quite bad. However, the audio quality of the CD and Jane’s performance is top notch!

Highly recommended.

Stale Blog

Published by
James
at 22:21 HKT Nov 15, 2006 in Computing. 0 Comments

It would appeared that yet another one of my linked blog, FV’s New Models II, had become stale all of a sudden since early August this year.

I wish the author well.

Affection

Published by
James
at 16:26 HKT Nov 13, 2006 in Family and Thoughts. 0 Comments

Often times, when there is an on-going quarrel between kids and parents, kids turn to outsiders for comfort. It is precisely during these situations where kids are most venerable to being turned bad.

Parents, especially older generations’ local parents, my own included, are often too arrogant and have too much pride in them to show their affection for their kids. When disagreement breaks out between kids and parents, even after the parents might have realized that they themselves might be the ones at fault, they would not admit it to their kids, let alone apologize to them. The kids with their anger and disbelieve that their parents would turn their backs on them would then seek outsiders’ help where there would be words or acts of understanding, kindness, and affection which all their parents do not have for them.

Crooks do this best and that’s how kids turn bad ’cause they’d listen to people who shows affection to them. Isn’t that the trick then? The question is though, if crooks could do it, why can’t you - the parents?!!

On the other end of the spectrum, a family member once asked, “We are their parents, if we don’t spoil them who will?”

Nobody.

We are their parents, if we don’t show our affection and care, who will? We shouldn’t simply avoid doing so and let others at the same time. Not the maid, not their grandparents, not their friends, and certainly not anyone else. Especially when we, the parents, don’t; yet we simply must. However, we as parents shouldn’t spoil our kids either! Otherwise even if they do not turn bad, they might turn into brats.

Tired Car

Published by
James
at 15:51 HKT Nov 13, 2006 in Vehicles. 2 Comments

It’s almost 5-1/2 years old now. It’s been 1-1/2 years and over 13000 Km since the maintenance service before last, and I didn’t do any checking, only oil changing service during my last visit to the service centre about 3 months ago.

Earlier appeared and still current symptoms :
Car starts only after a few seconds pause at the alternator on key turning position.
Radiator leaking coolant.
Engine gasket leaking engine oil
Power-steering oil cup lid leaking power-steering fluid.

New symptoms since Saturday afternoon :
Power-steering weak when the radiator coolant level is low even after topping off power-steering fluid (go figure this one).

All these on top of having just had the air-con coil replaced since the refrigerant had completely leaked away rendering “zerocool” air from the air-con. The mechanic (not BMW this time to save some money) had washed my entire engine compartment for easy spotting any leakage and had asked me to keep an eye on it so we could figure out what needs to be fixed or replaced. It is only then after one week since I had the air-con coil replaced that I have discovered the leaking point on the radiator with the same fluid stain pattern in the engine compartment as it was before the coil replacement. Since I have just discovered that topping off the coolant level keeps the power-steering working properly, that should save me from having to replace the power-steering pump blindingly only to end up not being necessary.

Will just keep an eye on the coolant level for now.