Newbie

3 Camera components affect exposure:

Aperture
The iris in the lens that can be adjusted in size to control how much light enters through the lens. Aperture size is represented by f-numbers. Higher the f-number, smaller aperture size.

Shutter Speed
How long the shutter remains open. Slower the shutter speed, more light soaks up sensor.

ISO (International Standards Organization) Rating
Indicate light sensitivity of image sensor. Higher ISO number, greater light sensitivity and less light is required to expose the image.

Focal Length:

• Lens with focal length equivalency of less than 35mm = wide angle lens.
• Lens with focal length equivalency of less than 50mm produces the most natural view. The subject will be the same size/distance as you see it.
• A focal length up to 85mm = telephoto lens

Filters
http://www.tiffen.com/
http://www.cokin.com/

Study Week

Still Remember Altantuya Shaariibuu??

Dr. M never stop to amuse me.
This time, the arrow is directed at the going-to-be successor of the current premier - Najib.

Somehow, I think Det (Dr. M's pen name) is trying break the "RAHMAN" circle:
R - Rahman
A - Abdul Razak
H - Hussein Onn
M - Mahathir
A - Abdullah Badawi
N - Najib?

But, I totally agree with Dr M. Why? Aside from the reasons stated by Dr M himself, here is my point of view:

• Razak, his father was the mastermind behind the May 13, 1969 racial riots which was aimed to overthrow Tunku Abdul Rahman. This is followed by the launch of the Malaysian New Economy Policy (MNEP), which marks the rise of the Malay capitalist. Last but not least, he initiated the change of education media from English to Bahasa Malaysia which had set many Malaysians far from being successful worldwide. Short-sighted he may be, he lacked of foresight as well, and people say "Like father, like son".
• He is the great-grandfather of the keris-hoisting culture. Back in 1987, he defended special Malay privileges in a speech where he vowed to bathe the keris with Chinese blood. Defending the Malay's special rights is not wrong, but playing the racist card in a multiracial society is a no-no.
• Somehow as the Minister of Defense, he is careless to give a decent explanation of how the C4 got out of the Defense Ministry, finding its way to blow up some Mongolian model.

Somehow, I just don't trust people who can cast national unity aside, least to support those who might simply blast a C4 at you. Now, I wonder why Pak Lah identified Najib as his successor despite all those controversies. Do you smell something cooking? Citizens of Bolehland, would you entrust the country's fate in his hand?

闭门打狗

Really got to hand it to this iron man. The way he do things is as if he is the premier of Bolehland, not some old fart who came up with catchy slogans, then dozed off in domestic/international conferences, busied marrying himself to the ex-wife of his brother-in-law within less than a year after his wife died, always listen obediently to his Son-in-Law, and launched corridors here, there and everywhere.

When your subordinate screwed up, no matter it is unintended or not , it is only the right thing to correct them and have the courage to apologize. What's there to fear? You've got balls, Uncle Lim. *salute

The March 8 outcome would be a different story, if only the person "barely" clinging to the post now had the guts to do what needs to be done, viz:

• Shut the dogs up when "bocor" and "monyet" were used to insult MPs in the Parliament. (Sexist)
• Curb corruption full-heartedly or at least clean up his own closet with the AP Queen and Zakaria Palace first on the list.
• Rebuke when some minister hoisted, unsheathed and kissed the Malay dagger in political meeting. (Racist)
• Slap off the idea of legalizing illegal racing by some Big Head of Mat Rempit graduated from Oxford University. (Sheer stupidity)
• Abort to send some "sus barbatus" to the space and fly kites with tax payers money and claim it as OUR DREAM.

After suffering the blow for more than a month, the BNers are still confusely discussing, wondering, guessing and pointing fingers as to why they had lost in the GE 2008. Haven't I just enlighten them? And mind that what i had mentioned above is just the tip of the iceberg: Judicial crisis, murder of Mongolian model, plunge in universities rating, increase in umemployment rate, sky-rocketing crime rate, inflation...

Action do speak louder than words, not sloganeering. Work with me, not for me...pft.

Aren't I scared of being sued like Rocky Bru or Jeff Ooi or Raja Petra Kamarudin?

Nah, I can easily shake it off with the quote of the century,"It looks like me, sounds like me, but it's not me."

As the adage goes, sometimes you just need to "Close the door and beat the dog".

Java

Made two cups of Nescafe the other night, only to realise that you have left that very morning...

The little room seemed so empty without your presence, and the tranquility of the night turned into forlorn solitude...

I downed the javas and endeavored to turn in early. Instead, I lay with my eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling while the incessant roaring of hustling vehicles along the expressway violated my ear drums. It must be the caffeine...

Apparition (Warning: Graphic Content)

Was eating with my lunch buddies, Gibson and Kiat An, and the topic of discussion today is: Ghost - always the all time favourite for anyone during a chat session and everyone has always some "encounter" to share...

One from Gibson is the ghostly figure in Michael and Victor's MTV (光良品冠：掌心).

This is what triggered the entire conversation. And I went to Youtube and did a search on "Pontianak" and was chagrin that there is a considerable amount of footage published. Uncontented with the video clips, I digged deeper so as to understand this infamous Malay folklore and came across the SPI (Singapore Paranormal Investigators) website with paramount info and accounts suffice to quench my curiosity. Below is one of the story I shared with the gang during lunch today.

Highway Nightmare - 8 September 1997
This is an interesting version of an old urban legend. At least I though it was interesting. Along the North-South highway in Malaysia, there are various spots marked with sign alerting drivers of crosswind. The dual carriageway is one of the world's most advance expressway and hence, when designing it, one would assume that the planners would not have built it with crosswind sections. The expressway is open for 24 hours and thousands of vehicles use it everyday. However, there is hardly anyone who has seen the wind indicator marking the presence of such claimed crosswind. I found out later that these sections are actually black spots for 'mystery accidents'. As all these sections are neither winding nor slippery, the authorities could not find any explanation of those accidents. A study revealed that those areas are either cemetery sites of the local tribe before the highway was built, or they were the so-called 'dark' areas by the local tribes. Therefore, those crosswind warnings were put up just to warn drivers so that they are more alert and careful as they were driving along those stretches, especially at night since the highway is not lighted. None of the accidents are, however, worth mentioning here. No one has ever reported seeing a ghost or spirit driving them away from their senses or any sort of unexplained phenomena happening there.

Nevertheless, there is an incident that happened on the highway that has caught the attention of a lot of people. This incident does not happen along any of those crosswind sections but, instead, near the tunnel on the northern section of the highway. Before approaching the tunnel, drivers will go through highly areas with the hill on one side and a sharp cliff on the other. The sharp bends caused the authorities to put the speed limit down to 80kmph (110kmph for most of the highway). This story went public the first time when someone called in to the radio during a ghost story programme. What make this story even more interesting are the several calls later from witnesses and relatives to verify that the story is true. The incident happened on a Malay couple with a small baby. They were driving along the expressway on a late night. It must have been past 2am then and there aren't many private cars at those hours. As they got near the tunnel, their car broke down. Perhaps it is the hilly road, which put a lot of stress on the car, that caused the car to broke down more than anything else. The man stopped his car along the emergency lane and got off the car to see if there was anything he could do. His wife was sitting at the back of the car with their baby then. He got off the car, opened up the engine and apparently was doing something there. The wife just waited in the car with their baby since she is the type of people who has the slightest idea about cars. As the engine cover was turned up, the lady could not see what her husband was doing in front.

Then, there was no noise at all. She started to get worried. Perhaps more worried about not being able to get out of there than if there would be anything wrong with her husband. Then the baby started crying. She carried her up and tried to calm her down. However, the baby kept crying and crying. Afterwards, she noticed two police cars drove by. They slowed down as they past her. As she thought they would stop, the police cars suddenly sped off. Then she heard a shrieking break of the police cars ahead. Apparently, the police stopped their cars under the lights of the tunnel about 100 metres ahead. Then, she started hearing the policemen shouting at her. They shouted at her and asked her to get out of the car and run towards them. She got panic upon hearing that. Then, worry about her baby's and her own safety, she grabbed her baby, got out of the car and started running as fast as she could towards the policemen. As she was running, they kept shouting at her to hurry and asked her not to look back. As she almost got to where the policemen were, she suddenly thought of her husband. She turn her head back to take a look while continued running. To her horror, she saw three 'pontianak' with lots of blood on their mouth. She saw one of them holding her husband's head and licking off the dripping blood while two others were busy sucking the blood from the man's body. Two policemen, fearing that she may stop running upon seeing that, rushed to her and dragged her into one of the police car. They shot off as fast as they could after that. Seven policemen witnessed this incident. When the police got there, the man was lying there headless and 'bloodless'. The police, after interviewing the widow and the seven policemen who witnessed the incident, decided to close the case.

The next account was a personal encounter of my hometown friend who was studying in one of the JCs in Singapore few years back. He was fortunate to lease a room with unimaginable cheap rent, the catch is, he had to share the room with the owner's son, who happened to be a JC student as well. So there was this double decker in the room and my friend was occupying the lower deck. One night while my friend is asleep, the bed started to quiver. My friend was startled by the judder but was afraid to move an inch. The alarm clock on the study desk showed half past two in the morning. Although the tremor is subtle at the beginning, the magnitude eventually step-up and the double decker started to shudder vigorously. Now, he was pretty sure that someone or something on the upper deck was causing the shake, but wondered why his roommate was oblivious to the tremor as though he did not feel anything. An image from the notorius movie Ju-On flashed through his mind - remember the bloody woman under the blanket?

Too frightened by the paranormal activity, he took a peek at the mirror hanging on the wall at the end of the bed to check what's going on at the upper deck and from the reflection...guess what?


His roommate was busy shagging on the upper deck. Wtf.

I M Possible

Yes, you have changed your destiny with your own hands!

After all the attempts which were crumpled, trampled, crushed and shattered to sheer rubbles, you continued the fight in which you believed so strongly.

I witnessed your persistence and preseverance along the journey, and, I recognised your strength and determination. And, I want you to know that you are never alone.

You have shown me that nothing is impossible in this world if you never give up easily.

Finally, this is your triumph.

Congratulations!

It's time to jubilate and rejoice, shall we?:)

Watched a documentary on how Singapore has evolved from mangrove to metropolis within 4 decades and continue to reinvent itself as one of the four Dragons in Asia.

No factories, natural resources, scarce land and manpower, Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister then wept when he stood affront a live telecast to announce the expulsion of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965. Look at the little red dot now: it sure has implemented laudable move after move to reach to where it is today. Some of the few salient achievements captured through the show are as follows:

• The government initiated numerous world class organizations and companies which are competent in the global commerce arena and continue to flourish without any aids from the regime itself. One good example is the Singapore Airlines (SIA) – one of the most profitable aviation companies in the world.
• It established the home ownership policy which was later adopted by the British who was the colonial master back in the English East India Company era.

This reminds me of this song:

There was a time when people said

That Singapore won't make it

But we did

There was a time when troubles

Seemed too much for us to take

But we did

We built a nationStrong and free

Reaching out together

For peace and harmony

Pondering the progress back in Bolehland for more than five decades, I would say that the quality and mind set of the leaders really make a difference. Please step up and speed up, my beloved tanah air, before the petroleum is depleted.

Fun facts:

Do you know that the "SI" was added in between the "y and the "a" of Malaya to form MalaySIa when Singapore joined Malaya?

Good News

After weeks of effort, finally we obtained satisfactory results and presented it to my sup today. Hope that he is happy with it. Nonetheless, we are still trying our luck to hit the jackpot by re-setup the test bench and repeating the experiment. 精益求精.

I received great news last week. My old buddy back in Sungai Petani has finally completed his chemotherapy and the outcome is very promising. Now, he will only need to go for periodic checkups for a period of up to 5 years. Think I willl ask him to write a book on his fight against cancer.

As for my Bells palsy back in March, the bell is not ringing anymore.

See, I can twitch my mouth to the right.

And twitch my mouth to the left.

And, I can smooch as hard as I can...hehe.

Nothing in this world is worth to make you commit suicide, even least for not getting good grades for Bahasa Malaysia

This post was inspired when I read the news of a girl who committed suicide after scolded by her parents for doing badly in BM test from gnap’s blog and comment.

The memory of attending tuition for Bahasa Malaysia during my primary and secondary school days are still vivid in my mind after more than a decade. I still remembered the first day when I went to Cikgu Samin’s house for BM tuition during Standard 5, I was trembling in fear. The first task was to construct sentences based on 10 vocabularies which made me stared blankly at the exercise book, as for a Chong Hwa primary schoolboy back in those days, I did not know what those words meant although they are simple common vocabs. Check dictionary la, some would suggest. Yes, of course that’s the logical thing to do. The thing is –I did not know how to check the dictionary. Yes, boys at my age in those days ran and bounced blithely in the rubber estate, hunt parrots, net fishes and played colorful glass marbles all day long. Who would sit still just to check a word from the dictionary? Pft. And so, I timidly asked this little guy beside me, Arthur Ang, on how to utilize the Kamus Dewan.

That was a start and slowly I built up my vocab and grammar and wrote better and better in BM over my mother tongue. Heck, I was even more well-learned in BM than the Mohd Rashid, Azizi bin Apom and Sharidah bt Kassim in my class altogether. I did so well in BM in the UPSR, but due to a “B” for my Chinese essay, I had to endure the transition class (Peralihan), a one year class to prepare the students from non-malay schools to adapt to the sudden change in education media – as if I am no brighter than the students from Malay schools to understand Newton’s Law or the Faraday theorem, or I needed more than average time to solve my maths problems. Thanks to the father of May 13, Abdul Razak who single-handedly altered the education media from English to BM.

And so, I continued to take tuitions for PMR and SPM because the tatabahasa (grammar) of BM is like a function of time, it changes in time by a bunch of old Dumbledore look-alikes in the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka as if they themselves could not really understand their own language either. At one time, I attended 2 -3 BM tuitions at once and different tutors posed different views. Really felt mind-fucked in those days. And I used to think that BM is a sophisticated language to master which in fact it is. Because, I really don’t understand why would I need to learn and excel in a redundant language which will not be useful to me in future. Why would I need to learn about force as in daya, copper as in kuprum, refraction as in pembiasan?

And what’s with the pronunciation? Bahasa baku? You don’t see that the British requires other people to speak English in a particular slang or pronounce as in the dictionary, do you?

During my college years in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, all syllabuses in the first 4 years were all taught in BM with BM notes and textbook written by local lecturers. Again, I was wondering why would they take the trouble to translate from international references to teach? Isn’t it more efficient, effective and beneficial to train our undergrads in a language used world wide? I do not need to scheme a coup or riot to overthrow the Prime Minister to understand this simple fact. Thanks again to Najib’s father’s short vision.

In the end, the local government universities produce ten of thousands of undergrads handicapped in English. However, the major casualties are those who were sheltered under the NEP umbrella. When engineering degree holders are supposed to graduate as an engineer, most of them became factory workers, technicians or worst still, jobless. What do they obtain from the NEP? More of NEP! The government recruits them into retraining programs and provides financial aids.

After more than a decade after SPM, now I am thinking back. If I were to relive those days in school, I wouldn’t spend a single cent on BM tuition. Not to say I am totally against the national language. I personally think that BM is just a tool to unite all races and to accentuate our identity as Malaysians, but not substantial enough to play such important role in academia. Most certainly, it is not worth it to make me claim my own life just because I fail my BM, and of course, not a reason for me to screw my kids if they did badly in BM.

On a different note for students out there, if you put an end to your life after one gaffe, you lose a chance of a lifetime to correct the mistake and be better.

Treasure life.

Get the taste of being a scientist

I was working like mad after my previous vacation in Penang. Practically for the last whole week, I have been sitting in front of the PC, tuning 16 parameters just to get the correct reponse which met the precise requirement by my sup. Finally I got the result on Sunday and sent it to him only to find out that the denominator of my transfer function is wrong. WTF! One week's effort all down the drain.

So I am back to square one today. Morale is a bit low, but I am still driving myself to progress forward. Hope that I can go to Salt Lake City by this Oct with the sweat and pain I put in and endured.

Alas, I know what it's like to be a researcher. Steps to be an excellent researcher:

1. First, read lots and lots of papers from the guru or gosu*. Here, you are required to think critically while absorbing their power.
2. Next, to piece up the jigsaw puzzle so that you can form a big picture of your research scope. Here, you need to play around and juggle with the knowledge absorbed and think creatively to come up with a million dollar idea.
3. Implementation. You need to develop the software and hardware environment for your experiment. The steps here are: Run experiment -> debug software -> rerun experiment -> debug hardware -> run experiment -> debug... (Analytical skills required here.)
4. Once the setup is ready, you can start your experiment:) The steps here are: Run experiment -> tune parameters -> rerun experiment -> tune parameters -> run experiment -> tune...

Well, hopefully all these endeavours will pay off eventually:) Cheers, to a better future.

*gosu = 高手, expert or professional.