一生為奴 的 麗妃.
More photos here.
Less
More
Archive for April, 2007
I have been using the OMIZ OMB055+ headset for a while, and I find the volume too low on busy streets even at max setting. Also, it seems that it doesn’t cut ambient noise very well and my voice was heard to be too low on the other end. So I went and tried out the Plantronics Discovery 665.
In a nutshell:
Pros
Clear speaker with very slightly louder sound than the OMIZ
Slightly louder microphone sound to be heard by the other end
Nice craftsmanship
Cons
Ambient noise is even more clear
Apparently there is no VOX function so ambient noise can be heard by the other end when I stop speaking, which is not the case with the OMIZ
Without VOX and even more clear ambient noise, the 655 simply does not worth the price for the upgrade unless one base ones judgment solely on prestige.
I walked away.
The search continues.
Don’t kid yourself. Despite your diligent effort, you can’t sing. Ever. Your MV is a nightly agony. Stick to acting.
It has been almost 10 years since the modern digital cameras has been in the market. Like their film counterparts, some people remain indulging themselves with so called “color of the lenses”. That is, a certain color character is captured on films or on the digital sensors for a certain given lens.
The fact of the matter is, even if one is so obsessed with that camera lens color, films have their own color characteristics, digital sensors have their own color characteristics, digital camera firmware have their own color characteristics, printer lenses have their own color characteristics, printers have their own color characteristic, editing softwares, monitors, printers all needed to be color profiled, but even then, monitors have their limitations in reproducing the entire gamut of the color profile. How does one get a reference as to the exact color of each particular camera lens then? Even if we look through the lens with our naked eyes, human eyes have different perceptions making us see the same color differently anyway.
The classic example would be the obsession of the color of Leica camera lenses. Now that Leica themselves have their own brand of (Panasonic made) digital cameras, traditional Leica M model lenses can now be used on their M8 digital camera bodies, which is every die-hard Leica fan ever dreamt for getting that “Leica lens color” on a digitally captured file. But are we truly getting that Leica lens color? Ever since the Leica M8 digital camera has been in production, it has been plagued with several bugs. Anyone of the bugs or all of them could have resulted in affecting the image quality. One and the only one of the solutions thus far that has been implemented by Leica is to use a special filter on the front on a Leica lens. Immediately, this alters the original quality/color of the Leica lens. Leica is apparently giving away 2 of these filters in any choice of sizes for their M8 camera owners free of charge. But for 3 lens or more owners, they would need to buy extra filters.
Just a few days ago, Leica introduce a new firmware to fix a bug where there is color shift in the corners of an image when the filter is being used. This makes the concept of the color of Leica lens interesting. Assuming the digital sensor of an M8 mimics the color of a certain film that made Leica die-hard fans so fond of, whichever one of the many films that might have been, perhaps the out of production Kodachrome and more specifically the ASA 25 version, add the color of the filter and then add the color of the new firmware….. can we possibly end up with anything that is even remotely similar to what it could have been caputured on film - whichever film that might have been to begin with? To be reproduced on any computer monitor?! Under any type of ambient light?!!!
So then just what is that lens color, generally speaking, and how does one go about capturing and reproducing it anyway?
Just before the Chinese New Year, mom had an acute kidney failure. Upon diagnoses, it was actually a chronic kidney failure that turned acute. It is something that’s genetic - Immunoglobulin A Nephropathy (IgA in short). Basically a protein prevents the body from filtering out waste water. One of the treatment for prevention is high fluid intake, which I have kept telling mom to drink more water over the decades and which she refused to do all these time. Don’t need a specialist to add them up.
Well, now that it has become a daily thing with twice a week of a 5 hour kidney dialysis, she also need to skip green vegetables, potatoes, citrus fruits, mushrooms… among other things. Low sodium, low potassium, and low phosphorus and careful measurement of about 1L of daily fluid in take. Which equates to pretty well a whole lot of very little bit of a limited number of anything that could eat.
To get back to the main theme, the dish.
Mushrooms - for dad. Salmon, as fish is part of the allowed diet and that is something one does not find in a Chinese market, so they would not have cooked salmon enough to become boring. Linguine, something thicker and just more substance than Cappelinni that I used to make. So…
mushrooms,
salmon,
Linguine,
Parmesan cheese flakes,
basil - minced,
garlic - sliced,
lemon - juice,
sea salt,
black pepper,
white pepper,
olive oil.
Put the mushrooms in a dry hot pot in high heat and just let the water out, evaporated and brown the mushroom a bit then stir in a pinch of sea salt, some black pepper to taste and a dash of olive oil (or butter if you like but not for mom though). Take the mushrooms out of the pot for later use.
Skin the salmon and remove all gray meat from the salmon. Put about 1/2 cm of olive oil in a non-stick frying pan in medium low heat. Put the salmon in the pan and sprinkle some sea salt, white pepper, a generous splash of lemon juice, and then sprinkle some basil on top. Let it simmer until the side has startted turning white and slowly rise to the middle before flipping them around. After flipping, add some more (less this time) sea salt, white pepper, and basil but no more lemon juice as the oil already has some. As the white starts to rise toward the middle of the side of the salmon but not quite all the way, while the middle is still a bit pink, take the salmon out of the pan and drain all the excess oil from the salmon. Separate the Salmon along the threads of the meat and remove the bones so that the chunk of meat become slices. Keep the oil in the pan for later use. If cooked just right, there should be a gradient shade of light orange in the middle to pink on the side of the slices of salmon.
While doing the salmon, bring a pot of water to boil, add some sea salt, and put the Linguine in. I measure one hand grip full of Linginni for every 2 servings. Boil until just not more hardness to the bite and drain quickly. Bring a frying pan to medium low heat and add some olive oil with slices of garlic. Quickly put the Linguine into the frying pan and stir. Add the oil from the salmon pan, some sea salt and cheese flakes to taste but not salty as the salmon and the mushroom will be slightly more salty than the Linguine. Stir in the salmon and mushroom and then sprinkle some more basil to serve.
An Adobe Photoshop tutorial and plug-in site.
As usual, a few of us gathered for a dinner near the Hong Kong Rugby 7s weekend. Other than Mr. Steve Housser, there is no other guests from the school this time around, so we decided to have a small group quiet dinner instead. Being a Monday night, originally, we were going to take a stroll up to SOHO and pick out a restaurant; however, the weather report in the morning said there would be a thunderstorm in the evening. So we changed the plan and made reservation at a restaurant nearby the Causeway Bay MTR station instead so that we wouldn’t get too wet. Although in the end, the thunderstorm came early in the afternoon and it was relatively dry by the evening, we all enjoyed the nice food and had a good chat.
We would like to thank Steve for all the souvenirs, and thank Edmund for recommending a great restaurant and delicious food.
More photos here.
For the longest time, I have been using the free version of Neat Image on the Mac to de-noise high ISO images of my small photos posted for Web viewing. After shooting several wedding banquets, plus one more set of wedding banquet photos about to be post-processed, I had decided to purchase a de-noise software.
I downloaded the trial version of Imagenomic’s Noiseware Pro Plug-in along with their Prtraiture Plug-in as well as their RealGrain Plug-in and played with them for a few days just to see how another de-noise program stacks up to Neat Image, and decided I liked Noiseware a lot better than Neat Image. So I made the plunge on 31/03 and made a purchase for the entire Professional Plug-in suite which includes all three programs at a discounted price. Upon entering the data for the purchase, I saw an entry for a coupon code, so I held back on the data entry and tried to Google any possible coupon codes on the Web; and sure enough, I found a 20% off discount coupon code at LuckyOliver, among other 10% off coupon codes or expired coupon codes from other sites. Fortunately (for me), the one at LuckyOliver’s espired that very same day of 31/03 so I quicky copied their coupon code and hurried it back to Imagenomic to finish off my purchase. It took a few hour overnight for the confirmation and the activation codes to come through but I got the 20% off discount!
Noiseware is a lot easier to use than Neat Image and works better all round, IMO. Manual profiling is also much easier and unlike Neat Image, Noiseware can select multiple areas across the image even including detail areas. Whereas Neat Image can only do manual profiling on detailess and featureless areas of any given image. Detail preservation is also much easily done and made more easily understandable than Neat Image.
Portraiture, like the name implies, it’s for portraits. It deals specifically with skintones for highlighting, toning, as well as softhening. Just like the photos done on Playboy, Maxim, or HIM magazine.
RealGrain is a real gem on it’s own. Basically it puts film grain back onto any digital images similating several Agfa, Fuji, Ilford, and Kodak films. It can even convert color photos into respective film’s black and white tone. Of all the color to b&w conversion methods and free plug-in’s I have used over the years, RealGrain does the most pleasing job than all. Contrast and brightness treaking is also a cinch.
Overall, I am very please with the package.
A street photography site by HP.
The interface might look interesting but actually bloody stupid and painfully slow.
WhaUSay?!