There are still a few beautiful places in Singapore

Took a short stroll at Lower Pierce Reservoir on Friday, a slight mist/haze (it's kinda hard to tell the difference these days..) covered the far bank of the reservoir, giving the sunset a little extra dash of magic :)

Was even lucky enough to catch sight of a white bellied sea-eagle circling over the reservoir! Albeit all I had was a blurry shot with my 18-55mm lens that was clearly unsuitable for the job. (Digitally zoomed and cropped as much as possible) 

Am I (Are we) spending too much energy on what's unimportant and missing out on what truly is? Do i really need my steady day job to be happy? That being said, how I wish I could afford this expensive big fat telephoto lens (and of course the skill) to capture the majestic eagle in it's full glory. After all I'm only human.

Back to Usual Work

And a really hectic few weeks had passed with me preparing materials, teaching and arranging for other speakers, in a class of secondary school student an introduction signal processing. It was also my first ever attempt in teaching a class of students (other than 2) with completely zero programming experience how to program in Python.

While exhausting, I had a great time with the students and I definitely think that I could do a far better job in teaching. Perhaps I will make available my teaching materials here after some tidying up.

Rewarded myself, and my dear, with a relaxing weekend together for walk in an old, to-be-torn-down estate in Toa Payoh, with one of the last few sand pit playgrounds and the assembly of my first RC airplane!

Mailboxes, a photo by moodoki on Flickr.

Dragon!, a photo by moodoki on Flickr.

My New Toy, a photo by moodoki on Flickr.

An Engineer's Rant

I had been furious this month, and accompanying it came some cynical laughter at certain failures. (I know I shouldn't laugh. I'm reflecting on it..)

Slow down, do more, walk further.

Doing too much in a rush today could just mean that you'll have to rush more in the future.

Quality should come from within, not as an external requirement. Knowing the quality evaluation process, we can always package crap in an air-tight container for the QA to prod, but when exposed to the real world, it would probably blow up in your face.

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Random rants I hope project managers will take seriously :s Or perhaps this is the wrong 'big picture'.

Midnight Blue

Midnight Blue, a photo by moodoki on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
The Southern Cross with Centaurus arching over it. Rarely in Singapore do I see so such clear skies.. Even so, the city is so bightly lit at night that we don't see much stars anymore..

Code jamming

So the qualifiers of the 2013 Google codejam is over. And I managed to qualify! It's both a humbling and nostalgic experience for me.

I started to learn how to program as I was greatly drawn by computer games and thought I wanted to create one or two of my own, but soon realized that its much more than knowing how to code. I couldn't create nice art, and hardest of all, a novel idea for a game.. Not to mention my then only basic skills at programming in QBASIC.

What actually got me seriously coding was joining the National Olympiad in Informatics(NOI) when I was in secondary school, where I first learnt of numerous algorithms. Honed my skills in C/C++ and manage to get myself a bronze medal on my 2nd year of joining. It was great fun, but I didn't find any opportunity to join more after that.. Until I learnt of Google codejam :)

After more than 10 years of not doing competitive programming, I guess my skills had became rather rusty, despite the need to code as my daily job. I really do think competitive programming is a far more demanding tasks as compared to typical software/algorithm development in a day job.

I qualified, but not with great results. Time to prepare and sharpen my skills. Round 1A in 12 days!

TextMode

Text Mode Love

It's strange. Computing power is cheap, I love to work on photos, I work with 3D rendering and computer graphics and I do research on computer vision. Yet, the interface that I love to work on most is still the text based interface.

A few days ago, I crawled out of my cave and found that Google has a wonderful command line data tool called googlecl that allows you to access Blogger, Calendar, Docs, and many other Google services from the command line! I promptly downloaded it, only to discover (a pleasant surprise) that it's in the macports port list! (It's also in Ubuntu's apt repository). So everything is just an 'apt-get install googlecl' or a 'port install googlecl' away:)

Together with markdown, now I can make my posts from the command line as well
:)

And here's the first post from the command line, and perhaps future posts as
well :) But, I'll still have to figure out the best way to embed images from
flickr :s

Jellyfish @ S.E.A Aquarium Sentosa

S.E.A Jellyfish, a set on Flickr.

Beautiful, delicate creatures aren't they? Poisonous too!

Sea Nettles: (Chrysaora fuscescens)

Moon Sea Jellies: (or Aurelia aurita)

Filmstrips

Filmstrips, originally uploaded by moodoki.

Via Flickr:
Taken at the [Outside]In exhibit at the ArtScience Museum, Singapore.

Everyone shoots with their iPhones nowadays... I wonder who still uses a 'real' camera, let alone film.. But they are beautiful right??

Reaching up

Reaching up, originally uploaded by moodoki.

Via Flickr:
It was said that the original plans for the garden was much bigger.. I wonder if the trees would have been bigger and taller...

Works in Progress

Works in Progress, originally uploaded by moodoki.

Via Flickr:
Working out a proper film workflow

First scans after getting a relatively cheap scanner capable of scanning film, Epson Perfection V330 :)
While setting up a darkroom to do traditional prints is kinda prohibitively expensive, developing my own films and scanning them is the next best thing.
Films seem to have a higher dynamic range than my scanner though.
HDR film scanning? Hmm..

Film Once More

Just had a roll of black and white film processed at a shop... Despite the advances in digital imaging technology, I still think that film still gave a different feel somehow. And there's fun in processing your own film as well! :)

So.. I went out and got myself some basic darkroom equipment and chemicals. Dark bag, developer, fixer and daylight developing tank just for starters... And time to relearn processing after a roll or so :D

A month or so with the EOS-M and things to say

So I bought the EOS-M.. despite numerous negative reviews out there, especially on the slow auto-focus speed. Is it really that bad? I had been using it for some time. Yes.. auto focus is slower than my DSLR with USM lenses, but its perfectly fine. (Sometime I feel that its faster than the autofocus on Nikon DSLRs)

Initially, I was disappointed, when I was testing the autofocus in my room. I wasn't really taking any pictures, just trying to get it to focus on random items. It was SLOW.. really slow. But I after taking it out for a real world test, it's not bad at all. And touch to focus helps a lot too, rather than focusing and re-framing method that we often employ. So it seems the 'slow autofocus' problem only seems to be bothering people who doesn't own the camera or had not use the camera to take any pictures.

Cons? I wish manual focus had some kind of help, maybe like the focus peaking feature found in some other cameras, also, it seems to a lot of turning to adjust a tiny bit of focus :/

Lego Hobbit

Lego Hobbit, a set on Flickr.

First scene of The Hobbit rendered in Lego:)


Bilbo Baggins
Chilling out at his hole


Gandalf Visits
.. and frightening Bilbo


Gandalf Leaves...
.. or does he?


And Gandalf's Back


Etches the rune
There's going to be a feast tonight!

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And also a first attempt with a second off-axis flash, trying to do different lighting setups:) A little rough around the edges though.. Pardon my strange lighting. Still figuring out how do I do this..

A New Year

The world didn't end.. what a shame.. A new year had started with and a bunch of new things to try :)

1. Firmware hacking on my EOS 40D (see MagicLantern )
2. A Frankenstein camera of sorts (see FCam )? Most of the hardware are here now.. 
• why? reasons will come in a future post :)
3. A new camera, the EOS-M
4. Flash photography, I have 2 of them (external SpeedLights) now :)
5. Take more photos

And these will count as my New Year Resolutions