Meaningless Musings

I miss pie.

2010-03-14T15:40:00.006+08:00

Today is Pi Day, and it looks like I'm gonna miss it. ;_;

Nothing more to see here, move along.

Christmas Accommodation

2010-01-15T05:17:00.006+08:00

It is customary for my university halls to indiscriminately kick everybody out during Christmas term break. Most fortunately, my coursemates in Raleigh Park nearby offered me a place to stay over the holidays.

It doesn't look like much, but for an entire month, this was my bedroom, study room, dining room, and (of course) living room.

Holidays are such fun.

Fun with DSLR Photography

2010-01-10T08:07:00.010+08:00

Back before the holidays, I had the privilege of having my own DSLR to play with, even if it's actually just a one-week loan from my uni's Photography Society.

The camera is a Nikon D200, which ranks at the low-end among Nikon's high-end range of DSLRs. Released in 2005, it's also a little old, nevertheless it looked, felt and weighed like a sturdy piece of machinery. And of course, using it was an absolute blast. There's nothing quite like the characteristic, almost addictive "ch-kak!" of its shutter noise*, knowing that the very best of optical and electronic engineering are working hard at my disposal to provide images of quality no mere point-and-shoot camera could physically achieve.

* I should also add that it's completely natural, unlike the gimmicky kind that every single point-and-shoot/phone camera on the planet feebly emulates using their cheap speakers.

Compared to my Panasonic Lumix, the transition is akin to going from a Proton Saga to a Mercedes*. Mmm, classy.

* An SLR McLaren, perhaps? ;)

Anyway, here's an interesting experience I had during my time spent with this thing. While walking around the campus lake taking photos of the scenery and wildlife, I stopped in the middle of a short stone bridge over the lake to look around, when a squirrel emerged from the woods nearby. At first I wanted to move in for some closer shots, but I didn't need to -- turns out the squirrel was investigating me! It even voluntarily came within half a meter of my feet.

Photographing the squirrel was no easy task. Not only was it twitching and zipping around, the sheer weight of the camera alone made it difficult to hold still during exposure. No, the lens had no vibration reduction. But the camera's 5 frames/second shooting rate did give me a fighting chance.

Eventually, everything went right for just once, resulting in the following shot. In fact out of over 300 pictures I've taken with this camera in a week (and discarding about 80% of them), this is my #1 favourite.

Granted, it still ends up getting 0wned by this picture, but I guess it's not bad for someone who has never changed a DSLR lens before. :P

Christmas in Birmingham

2009-12-26T07:12:00.004+08:00

Sitting in a Holiday Inn hotel room watching TV. That's what my roommate and I have been doing for almost the entire length of Christmas day. Even lunch consisted of a combination of food packed from Nottingham and pastries we grabbed from a very crowded Tesco the day before. Dinner however, was...ironic, to say the least.

Back in Malaysia, Christmas isn't that big a deal so you'd still find most of the essential facilities e.g. restaurants and shopping centres open. Unlike here, where the city essentially turns into a ghost town other than the odd Asian or two (e.g. us) roaming the streets. Anyway, back home I would've celebrated Christmas by following relatives out to some Italian restaurant and stuffing myself with Western food.

But here in the West, nothing was open. Nothing except a handful of shops in Chinatown. And among these shops was a Malaysian restaurant (literally named "Malaysian Delight") where I had my Christmas dinner of this year. Where I stuffed myself with...this stuff.

Merry Christmas everyone!

on Windows 7 and its pricing

2009-11-25T06:44:00.003+08:00

Microsoft has been giving me reasons to improve my opinion of it lately, firstly and most profoundly with Windows 7. Having painstakingly procured (hint: involving a 30kbps SFTP connection all the way back home...oh the pain!) and tested it on an Asus Eee PC, I have to say it is a huge step in the right direction. It's essentially a leaner, quicker, friendlier Vista, with the same bells and whistles but an order of magnitude easier to actually use to one's benefit.

The single best improvement of all has to be the taskbar. Even though its concept hasn't changed since the days of Windows 95, it has now been given a makeover that's revolutionary, yet intuitive enough to pick up again within minutes. I'm almost certain it was designed with heavy multitaskers like myself in mind - it just works so darn well, apart from the anemic Intel Atom processor only just managing to keep up with all my tasks. I intend to finally retire Windows XP as my desktop's main OS and replace it with this one as soon as I get home.

It's good enough in fact, that I was considering forking out part of my student (read: miniscule) budget to get a copy for myself. On the other hand, it was available to me at a student (read: cheap) price of £30, as I was told by a fine gentleman in a certain IRC chatroom. So, the deal was looking pretty sweet.

But if the sweetness of a deal is inversely proportional to the price of the item being sold, then this deal just got divided by zero.

Apparently, Microsoft thinks so highly of us geeks in the scientific academia that they created the MSDNAA (Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance) which offers to students pretty much their entire line of current software products, including Windows 7, for a very special price. And it wasn't too long ago that my university announced via mass e-mail spammage that the program was open to students in the School of Computer Science and Faculty of Engineering (that's me!). For those of you who speed-read through the last two paragraphs (and to drive the point home for those of you who didn't :P), try taking a guess what this very special price is.

University life kicks ass.

on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

2009-10-20T04:52:00.007+08:00

Being a mere student on a constantly tight budget, it's not very often that I consider purchasing an original copy of any PC game, especially when there are much ahem cheaper alternatives around.

But MW2 was one of them. After the awesomeness that was the first Call of Duty, and then Modern Warfare ('All Ghillied Up' anyone?), MW2 certainly looked promising based on the video previews of its single player campaign alone. Also, now that I've grown bored of Counter-Strike: Source I did feel like taking up a new serious, realistic multiplayer FPS. If you watch the video below and feel your heart rate go up then you know what I mean.

(N.B. Team Fortress 2, although loads of fun, is not realistic.)

Yet, the end of the video highlights one of several potential problems brought up by this official announcement. The summary:
1. No server listing, instead you get a matchmaking system not unlike those in console games. (Though honestly I don't see any reason console games shouldn't have server lists too.)
2. No dedicated servers, meaning a much higher chance of running into amateur admins and general chaos. Think Halo Trial.
3. No mod support.

I won't jump to conclusions and claim that MW2 multiplayer is completely botched, but I for one do not want to have my immersion broken by a "Host Migration" event every 10 minutes.

So, bad move by Infinity Ward? Seems likely, but I'll just have to wait and see.

Awesome Penguin Sighting

2009-10-19T21:47:00.003+08:00

Now that I'm reasonably settled into life in a university half a world away from home, I'll do my best to catch up on some notable events of the past few weeks. This is about the flight here.

The aircraft was a Boeing 747-400 operated by Malaysia Airlines. Despite a capacity that earned it its Jumbo Jet moniker, the flight was "100% full" according to the check-in attendant. Also, we fellow travellers (in this case my mum and her former classmate) were split up, myself ending up in between 2 European gentlemen.

Now once upon a time, I managed to play one PC game for about 12 hours from the beginning until the final cinematic of the single player campaign, pausing only for meal breaks and the occasional calls of nature. That game was Halo: Combat Evolved (and while I'm on that subject, screw Microsoft for completely ditching the PC platform with their Halo series. Some example they're setting for their Games for Windows initiative.) But that doesn't top this flight, which took 13 hours.

To give you an idea of how long that is, I'll just list out all the stuff/content I went through during the flight:

Lunch - Marbled beef. Yum.
2 House episodes - Typical stuff featuring Dr. House being a hilarious bastard, semi-accurate medical jargon, and drama.
Michael Jackson: Unmaksed - Not the book, just a documentary about the life and illustrious career of a legend.
All in-seat magazines
1 Reader's Digest issue
The Sniper (神枪手) - Boring. Nonlinear storytelling bordering on confusing. Villain's psychotic hallucinations kinda cool. Actual sniping goes against every shooter game I've ever played. As for what little special effects there were: Come on, The Matrix was released ten years ago!
The Big Bang Theory (2 eps) - Is it bad that I can understand the tall guy? :(
Dinner - Garoupa fish
The Incredibles - Interrupted halfway by the landing, but I already know it's fully awesome because it's made by Pixar. :D

Needless to say, the in-flight entertainment (and the fact that it was activated for Economy class) was a real lifesaver. Which brings me to my last point about the flight that deserves special mention:

It was powered by Linux!!!

Hard Disk Dissection

2009-09-13T08:16:00.005+08:00

Just a little something I did a few days before I left...

In one final, ultimate display of summer holiday-induced boredom, I took out my former gaming desktop (now my dad's word processor and Internet browser)'s 9 year old, 10GB hard disk, and dismantled it. Then I plugged it into my current gaming desktop and turned it on to see how long it could last exposed to our beautiful Malaysian weather. Best of all, my trusty video camera captured the entire grueling ordeal. Enjoy!

Hard Drive 2

Signing back in from UK!

2009-09-12T08:21:00.000+08:00

We're done vacationing in London, and now spending another week with yet another one of my mum's acquaintances in the relatively quiet little town of Buxton, Derbyshire. For those of you in Malaysia, think Fraser's Hill or Cameron Highlands.

Needless to say, my camera has been through some proper usage once again ever since, well, college. I've set Picasa to keep in sync with the online album below, so whatever new photos, captions or tags I assign using Picasa (including geo-tagging, which I might try out soon) will be in here too.

London

By the way, there are a few panoramic photos in there that were created using Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE). Before this I used to use AutoStitch and it worked fine for me, but ICE is simply faster and more user-friendly. Sorry AutoStitch folks, but you got pwned.

Leaving for UK

2009-09-07T12:33:00.003+08:00

I'm sitting in the plush cushion seats of the KLIA airport lounge with my mum and a friend of hers, enjoying a light meal, savoring what will be my last hour on Malaysian soil for a long while.

For the next 2 weeks, we'll be touring around London and Derbyshire. When that's done, I'll be staying at Nottingham University's home campus for the next 5 months as part of my student exchange program.

I'll be missing a lot of things. Parents, relatives, friends, piano, gaming desktop...but I have the Internet to thank to help bridge the distance gap considerably. Skype and MSN for friends and family, and as for my home computer, SSH and Remote Desktop. If other people's past experiences are anything to go by, those 5 months will go by in a flash, and I won't want to come back in the end. Hopefully you guys won't miss me in the meantime, as I'll be keeping this blog updated with my experiences in the foreign land.

This is yours truly, signing off from Malaysia.

Diploma Conferment Ceremony

2009-09-03T20:43:00.008+08:00

I don't think I've mentioned the results of my ATCL Piano Recital exam from last December yet. Well, I passed. :) Not a very high grade, just passed. But I'm glad all the same, knowing that an entire year of preparation and all those monetary expenses were not in vain.

Being a diploma holder does have a couple of perks. Firstly, I'm eligible to affix the ATCL title behind my name. Also, I get to attend this formal ceremony at the Sheraton Subang Hotel ballroom to receive the diploma itself. And by formal, I mean really formal, with the fancy academic robes and square hats, processions and presentations of scrolls...to finish off, all of us graduates did the traditional "hat toss", complete with a professional photographer to capture the moment.

At the risk of sounding cliché, I wanna thank my mom for the financial and moral support. And of course, a special thank you to Miss Euney, my piano teacher for being my mentor all these years and making this personal achievement possible.

Next stop, BEng/MEng (Honours) Electronic and Computer Engineering! (either one, I haven't decided)

I hate Google Maps

2009-08-25T15:01:00.002+08:00

for what they did to dear old Klang Valley. Not too long ago it was just a typical urban landscape...

then one fine day, BAM!

A polluted, browned-out mess. It's not any more high-res than the previous one, either. Thankfully I'm not in charge of any of these mapping operations, because if I were I'd at least have a few salaries (if not jobs) cut over this.

And that concludes our meaningless muse of the day.

Of The Star Newspaper and Probes

2009-07-22T19:30:00.008+08:00

I've been noticing recently that a local newspaper of mine has become rather fond of the word "probe". Just take a look at the search results of their national news RSS feed.

As you can see, "probe" has been appearing in their article headers every day (except one) since July 11th, 11 days ago. Out of those days, 6 of them had such articles occurring twice.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Scrolling down and keeping track of the item counter at the bottom right corner shows that there are roughly 150 matching articles since Jan 1st 2009. Today is the 203rd day of the year. Dividing 150 by 203 gives us an average daily "probe" rate of 0.739. By comparison, a similar search done on Reuters' Top News yields a total of only 26 articles since the beginning of this year.

Somebody needs to introduce the writers/editors of The Star to the concept of a thesaurus.

On the other hand, if this is some sort of subliminal messaging related to a certain plant search/evaluator probe, then I wouldn't mind seeing it more often.

Trip's Cancelled

2009-06-04T17:34:00.009+08:00

I was checking IMDB and the Singapore cinema websites like I have every day for the past week, and found out yesterday that they updated the Singapore release date of Up from today, June 4th, all the way to September 3rd. WTF? I even linked to IMDB in my previous post because it said June 4th at the time. Now I get to wait 3 friggin' months just like everyone else.

That's right everybody. Just laugh your collective ass off while I sulk at home with absolutely nothing to do this weekend.

Up Lifts Off!

2009-05-29T14:17:00.000+08:00

Well, it's afternoon here. That means it's officially May 29th for the US of A (± a couple of hours), and Up begins its world tour. It will be 3 long months before it reaches here, which I'm not at all keen on waiting for, so here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to Singapore, baby.

Yep, it just so happens that my parents have their own business to mind there, so when they travel down south next weekend I'll be tagging along, bringing my favorite cousin brother Ian with me.

On the RT front, the movie has predictably picked up 2 negative reviews versus 50 positive, dropping the rating to 96%. That's before another 49 positives came in, bumping it up to 98%, on par with the stellar Finding Nemo of 2003. We have another winner on our hands, folks.

Look out, Singapore!

Optical Storage Abuse

2009-05-26T10:00:00.005+08:00

Some of my university coursework involves the use of various computer software e.g. designing a printed circuit board or programming a calculator. In addition to the technical report (a.k.a. paperwork), I have to show my software work. My only option is the same as everyone else's: burn it into a CD and attach it to the paperwork.

I hate it whenever I have to do that, because out of the 700MB a CD-R can contain, the amount used has never exceeded 700kB -- a miserable 0.1% of its capacity. In my course and year alone, there are at least 100 other students who have to do the same coursework. Our landfills are filling up, and here we are spending 100 CDs to store data that won't even fill up 1.

What's more, if you ever find yourself in urgent need of a recordable CD but don't have one, you get the privilege of purchasing it from our very own convenience store for RM1 a piece.

The university already has a great network infrastructure in place, complete with facilities such as student e-mails, personal storage space, library database, course material repositories etc. It certainly has the capacity to handle an 8MB e-mail sent to every single one of its 2700 students. So why isn't it used for us to submit coursework software is beyond me.

On the bright side, we are one step closer to making WALL-E a true story. :D

Random Thoughts

2009-05-25T22:44:00.007+08:00

Whee, an update! For a while, I thought of giving a lame excuse by saying I've been sitting for exams this whole month, even though it's only 4 papers and I've just been lazy.

So yeah, exams are over, I'm in the middle of a long holiday (read: 3 friggin' months), and I'm getting bored. Conditions seem ripe for yet another 3D graphics project.

The latest Team Fortress 2 update sucks. I want to work for my new weapons like I always have instead of randomly getting stuff I've already earned, thank you very much.

Star Trek kicked ass. That makes 1 down, roughly 8 to go in what looks like it's gonna be a movie spree to remember, especially if it's in the company of old friends. ;)
Speaking of movies...

In 4 days' time, Pixar's next great adventure, Up, will be released halfway across the world. RT has already received 25 critical reviews from various early screenings, and its rating still stands at 100%. It reaches local cinemas on 20th August (read: 3 friggin' months) which is way too long a wait for me, so I'm planning to get an early screening of my own. No, I'm not going to defile it with some crappy camera recording. Just stay tuned ok? :)

The Calculator

2009-05-01T00:28:00.005+08:00

It started out about 5 weeks ago. We have just learned the ropes of using the PIC Microcontroller, which is basically a little circuit board with some nifty gadgets like buttons, LEDs, a 2-digit OLED display, an ADC, an Ethernet port, and a Parallel ATA-like 40-pin input/output port. The best thing about it? You can program it in C. The possibilities are limitless - hook it up to the right hardware, and this thing can guide missiles for you.

No sooner had the concept of hardware interrupts just sank into our minds, we were given our year end project. The idea is to assemble a piece of hardware consisting of a 2-line LCD and a 16-button keypad. It will be connected to the PIC's I/O port via wires, and - this is the fun part - we have to program the whole thing to function as a calculator.

So, after we were separated into pairs, we got to work. The hardware assembly was a lot like the electronic projects back in high school's Living Skills (the same subject that tried to teach me how to sew and choose matching clothes...ugh), but that was 6 years ago. I spent a lot of time just thinking where to start. My soldering skills were as rusty as a 700 year old trash compactor robot.

I gotta admit, my team mate ended up saving my rear end back there, as it turns out he was pretty good with electronic hardware. After discussing his plans with me (which I vaguely agreed with), within a week he had everything soldered into place...veroboard, ICs, capacitors, resistors, wires and all. I drilled insulating holes into the veroboard, double-checked his circuit, and we were good to go.

It was time. Carefully, we connected the hardware assembly to the external power supply and the PIC's I/O ports. I took the hardware testing codes provided by the lecturer, programmed it into the PIC's memory, and let it run. Instantly, the display came to life, and conveyed a simple message to 2 overjoyed electronic engineers-to-be: "Welcome!"

It was an inspiring moment. It was certainly something, to see the usually abstract, intangible lines of computer programming leap out into a real time, real world application like this. I could already see the final product: a full-fledged scientific calculator, complete with a 2-line display, shift key, parentheses, precedence rules, and scientific functions like trigonometry, logarithms, exponents...like I said, the possibilities are limitless. Well, unless you happen to be my team mate who doesn't know jack about programming. Friend, welcome to my domain. ;)

Fast forward several weeks of painstaking programming and testing, the due date has finally arrived. We were to demonstrate our calculator and its functions to the lecturer. Here's a little showcase:

To give you an idea of the code's complexity, the program parses the user's input as a string, converting it into Reverse Polish notation using a shunting yard algorithm even before the actual number crunching begins. The calculator part itself takes up about 500 lines of code. Integrating everything into the specialized hardware requires even more codes to handle interrupt signals from the keypad, determine which key was pressed from the 4-bit input signal, control the LCD and display numbers via the 10-bit output port etc., bringing it up to a grand total of 800 lines.

It's probably more complex than last year's A-Level Computing final year project, and certainly even more fun. That's saying a lot, considering that university coursework is never fun. Heck, I even came close to ditching a few other coursework reports because I'd rather just program this calculator.

Sadly, once the due date came, we had to pass up the entire piece of hardware. It all belongs to the university now. All I'm left with is a command line version which I've been porting over the last few days. From now on, it will replace the clunky default Windows calculator that I've grown oh so tired of. Take that Microsoft! :P

Here's a little tribute to certain former A-Level classmates of mine.

Samsung SSD Awesomeness

2009-04-24T18:22:00.002+08:00

The hard drive is both the main data repository and the main data bottleneck in your computer. It is far superseded in speed by the processor and RAM, and is the reason why you still spend precious time waiting for the computer to start up, programs/games to load, files to copy etc.

Looming on the horizon are solid state drives, or SSDs. With no moving parts, they are capable of much higher data transfer rates while being noise free and more power efficient. For now, its popularity is limited by drawbacks such as relatively low capacity and high cost.

Meanwhile, a bunch of jokers built a beast of a machine featuring not one, not two, but TWENTY FREAKING FOUR of these SSDs (graciously sponsored by Samsung) connected in a RAID configuration. The result? No more bottleneck. On command, vast amounts of data course through its circuits in nary a blink of an eye. This is the future of everyday computing, brought to the present day at an exorbitant cost of roughly RM 32,000.

Your jaw will drop to the same floor that you just rolled on laughing your @$$ off.

An AusPIcious Ocassion

2009-03-14T13:59:00.001+08:00

Here I am, sitting before my computer, randomly surfing, just waiting for the clock to count to that special time of the year.

3.1415926
March 14, 1:59:26 PM
Pi day.

Sitting on the table next to me is, what else but, a pie. Not an extravagant one, just a simple apple pie slice I grabbed from the bakery down the street, but a pie it is nonetheless. In a few minutes, this pie shall cease to be, having been converted into superfluous sustenance in commemoration of this ancient mathematical relic that continues to complicate formulas all over the world.

OM NOM NOM

Wishing everyone a Happy Pi Day!

WALL•E at the Oscars

2009-02-25T20:00:00.008+08:00

I'm proud to announce that the little yellow robot who won my heart about half a year ago, has now also won himself an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Furthermore, this was out of 6 nominations - a feat matched by only one other animated film, which is Beauty and the Beast (1991). Hearty congratulations to everyone who had their names immortalized in the end credits.

What a well-deserved win it was for this film too. WALL•E is, in many ways, a masterpiece for the ages. It pays homage to silent films, a certain musical, and sci-fi classics of decades past, seamlessly melding them all together in the ultra-modern medium of computer animation.

As a result, it boldly forgoes traditional dialogue, choosing to (over)compensate in every other aspect. Its characters communicate to audiences as well as each other using body language, clever pantomime, and expertly synthesized sound bites. Its music brims with compositional genius and emotional evocativeness. It strives to mimic every movement and property of real film cameras, from the prominent usage of depth of field to the occasional barrel distortion - cinematographic prowess that can evoke moments of intimacy even in the vast emptiness of space. And of course, the scenes and vistas it paints are some of the most awe-inspiring in all of animation.

It doesn't stop there. Subtly embedded in the film are social, political, environmental, and even biblical references as humans overindulge in consumerism, pollute Earth beyond the limits of habitability, recklessly abandon their home planet, and finally condemn themselves to social and physical devolution onboard an interstellar Ark that regularly sends sleek, white, supersonic doves to evaluate Earth's toxic flood. Not to mention the obscure but nonetheless perceptible allegory of Adam and uhh, well, Eve. ;)

Yet, everything in the last three paragraphs are merely means of conveying the director's intended centerpiece: a heartwarming story about love so pure and innocent that it triumphs over all, even the rigid programming of a robot.

I'm hardly alone in the appreciation of this film. People from around the world have spent months dissecting it into all of its aspects, and discussing each one to great length and depth. Others have been inspired to compose their own literary works and artistic renderings, some of them becoming masterpieces in their own right. The passion-driven efforts of these people currently occupy an entire full-fledged forum, dedicated to this one film. Not many standalone films (i.e. not series/sequels), much less animated ones, are capable of doing that. Have I mentioned that 96% of film critics approve of it?

All in all, this is a film well worthy of a shot at the revered Best Picture award. Sadly, that didn't happen. To be honest, the fact that it didn't win more awards on Oscar night is pretty sad too. Based on everything I've said thus far, I even have reason to doubt the Academy's credibility now, despite its public perception as the most prestigious award in film. But in the end it's no big deal; like I said, WALL•E won my heart, and that's really all that matters.

First 3D model in years

2009-02-11T21:26:00.000+08:00

I like how sheer boredom sometimes coaxes me into doing relatively interesting things. Just like how the past 3 weeks of semester end holidays coaxed me into reviving my long-dormant interest in 3D modelling. Suddenly, nearly every waking hour of those 3 weeks was spent on this little project - something I could only afford to do because I was so friggin' bored.

Anyway, here is the final result. There are several flaws and kinks that I didn't have time to iron out since I get so little practice in this hobby, so hurry up and enjoy it as much as you can before you notice them! :P

Photo Rotation Shootout

2009-02-06T13:33:00.001+08:00

At long last, I've had the time to find out once and for all how our favourite programs treat our beloved photographs. First, the list of programs:

1. Windows Photo Gallery (WPG) - The default Vista photo viewer/editor
2. Vista Explorer - Right clicking a photo and selecting "Rotate" in Vista
3. Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (WPV) - The default XP photo viewer/editor
4. XP Explorer - Right clicking a photo and selecting "Rotate" in XP
5. Picasa 3.0.0 - Google's photo management/editing program. Comes with a separate Picasa Photo Viewer.
6. Lossless JPEG Toolbox 2.7.3.0 (LJT) and
7. JPEG Lossless Rotator 6.2 (JLR) - 2 specialized JPEG editors
8. GIMP 2.6.0 - The poor man's Adobe Photoshop

Here's what is tested:
1. Lossless rotation
JPEG is an inherently lossy compression format, but it is possible to rotate pictures in a lossless manner. We'll see which programs do this and which do not. Pictures are tested in GIMP using an Image Subtraction method as described here.

2. Exif Orientation Tag
Whenever a photo is rotated, its Exif tag should be updated to reflect the new orientation. We'll also see how our programs handle this. Exif tags are read using JLR's built-in tag reader.

Allow me to introduce the test photo itself:

The Petronas Twin Towers, straight out of a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX30 in its unrotated, properly tagged state.

Testing method
For each program being tested:

Make a copy of the test photo
Use the program to rotate it once, 90° anti-clockwise
Exif orientation tag is read to see if it is updated correctly
Photo is rotated 90° clockwise again
Image Subtraction test is performed between original test photo and its rotated copy. If rotation was lossless, then every pixel should be exactly the same.

Results

The Test folder after everything was done

Program	Lossless	Tag Updated
WPG	Yes	Yes
Vista Explorer	Yes	Yes
WPV	Yes	Yes?
XP Explorer	Yes	Yes?
Picasa	Yes	Yes?
LJT	Yes	Yes
JLR	Yes	Yes
GIMP	No	Yes

Analysis
The results are pleasantly surprising, to say the least. Pretty much all programs tested here perform lossless rotation. GIMP is an acceptable exception because it's a general purpose image editor, not photo editor. Having said that, it can probably be augmented with lossless editing capabilities using plug-ins.

This is the image subtraction result of GIMP's own rotated photo.
Remember: White = image degradation

It is also noted that all the programs do update the tags, but somewhat differently. Normally the tag should change from "Left/bottom (rotated 90 CW)" to "Left/top (Normal)", but WPV and XP Explorer simply remove the orientation tag, whereas Picasa rewrites it with an enigmatic "0". However, both cases still produce correct results in photo viewers, both Exif-aware and otherwise.

Picasa, on the other hand, had problems reading some of the updated tags. Despite the promising results in the table, Picasa insists that the outputs of XP Explorer, Vista Explorer, LJT and JLR are still in need of rotating. Oddly enough, Picasa's separate Photo Viewer (and the rest of the viewers including WPG, WPV and JLR) do not have this problem.

Picasa screenshot after the 1st round of rotations

Another important note: Just for fun, I tried loading these photos back onto the camera and see if it could read them. None of them could be read. The camera simply displayed a black screen, as if the image was corrupted.

Conclusion
Fears that rotating your photos result in degradation are pretty much unfounded now. Users of Picasa may want to avoid rotating photos with other tools to prevent confusing Picasa itself. One last thing: The photos on the camera memory are digital negatives, don't screw with them.

*gets back to his life*

The Next Post

2009-01-09T11:04:00.002+08:00

Remember when I said in the next post, I will compare a few methods of getting photos from your camera into your picture archive, with emphasis on image quality and Exif tag integrity?

I lied.

For some reason, I had the nerve to write that only a few days before my first semester end exam. Now that I've just scraped through my first paper with 4 more to go over the next 10 days, I have to take a study break from this whole photo fiasco too.

I'm not expecting anybody to anticipate it anyway. If I'm wrong, then sorry! :P

Rotating Photos

2009-01-04T13:19:00.000+08:00

Did you know that each time you rotate a photo, you run the risk of permanently degrading its quality?

Don't panic; all those years of memories in your picture archive aren't ~~too~~ screwed. As long as you didn't, say, rotate the same pictures over and over again, there are no practical implications.

It's quite a bit worse, though, if you rotate your pictures directly within the camera's memory card. You really should preserve those photos as "digital negatives that are not to be screwed around with", and perform your rotations/touch-ups on a copied batch instead.

However, despite the lossy nature of JPEG, it is possible to rotate your photos with zero quality loss, termed "lossless rotation". Some programs can do this, but most don't, and unfortunately Windows Photo Gallery falls into the latter, resulting in image degradation with each rotate.

Another factor to complicate things is the Exif tags. Depending on the program used, you can risk changing important data (e.g. Date Picture Taken), or lose some or even all of that data. You don't want to revisit your memories later and have no clue when did the rotated pictures take place, now do you?

Of particular importance to us now is the Exif Rotation Tag. You see, digital cameras are smart but lazy things. They can detect which way is up when you take a photo, but aren't willing to do the actual processing to rotate a photo before storing it. Instead, they just save it as normal, and embed a little tag to tell which way in the picture is up. Most programs recognize this tag, but some don't, and unfortunately Windows Photo Gallery (WPG) falls into the latter, ending up displaying the photos as unrotated anyway.

When you do rotate a photo using WPG, the rotation tag is not touched, potentially confusing other Exif-aware programs. Hence, rotating photos directly on the camera using WPG results in the camera itself displaying the rotated pictures incorrectly. Another problem of not adhering to the digital negative rule.

In the next post, I will compare a few methods of getting photos from your camera into your picture archive, with emphasis on image quality and Exif tag integrity. Stay tuned.

2008: A Personal Review

2009-01-02T12:12:00.021+08:00

All too soon, another year slips away. Taking its place is yet another year of triumphs and tribulations, already looming over me. Below is a recollection of events that were significant to me in commemoration of the recently past year.

In 2008, I:

Played my games "The Way They Were Meant To Be Played".

Witnessed the birth of a new Saga

grew fond of its attractive cousin

and paid a visit to the whole family.

Learned to drive, passing the first time with no bribery whatsoever.
(pic almost unrelated)

Moved house.

Painstakingly wrote my most complex computer program yet, leaving absolutely no time to study for the final trial exams.

Failed 50% of my subjects for the first time.

Graduated from A-Levels with flying colours

topped it off with my first prom night

and a memorable trip to an island paradise.

Graduated from piano classes once and for all, with high hopes of earning a diploma.

Began my university studies, and experienced life at its most independent yet.

Lastly, and most significantly:

WALL•E

Nearly 5 months since the day I first watched it (soon followed by a second cinema viewing), and I still can't get enough of it.

A heart-warming and heart-wrenching story. Played by cute yet complex characters who don't even say a single full sentence. Accompanied by a soundtrack brimming with compositional genius and emotional evocativeness. Delivered through superb computer graphics and animation that is fluent, natural, almost effortless (albeit not unrivalled). These are just a few aspects of a movie that is so epic, yet so full of minute details, hidden surprises, and tender moments, I've actually had sleepless nights just thinking about it all.

It's quite possibly the most awesome thing I've had the privilege to experience ever, let alone in Year 2008.

That's all, 2008. It's been fun! Although I will forget you as I get caught up in the intricacies of the new year, this log will always remind me of the very best of you. Farewell.

Orange Boxes

2008-12-16T18:37:00.002+08:00

Guess what caught my eye the moment I opened my university e-mail inbox today.

ANNOUNCEMENT
ORANGE BOXES IN TISCRA COMPUTER LAB

Oh my goodness, seriously!? The sheer fun and awesomeness that is Valve's Orange Box, in the computer labs?

Well, see for yourself.

Oh. Riiiiiiiiiiiight. I guess life goes on then.

Trinity ATCL Piano Diploma Exam

2008-12-15T16:24:00.004+08:00

One year of preparation, countless hours of practice and thousands in expenses, it all comes down to this.

One player. One examiner. Four grueling piano pieces played over 40 minutes at one chance for unprecedented accomplishment.

And it couldn't have gone better!

I emerged from Room 301 of the One World Hotel, smiling away with enormous elation and relief. My piano teacher was waiting outside, no doubt anxious to hear how it went. She wasn't disappointed. Neither was my mum, as the 3 of us talked about it in the waiting room (number 314). People were looking at my absurdly wide grin, but I couldn't put on any other expression if I tried.

With all this satisfaction and confidence, I am certain that I can at least pass the exam. Maybe even score a Distinction, if Lady Luck is smiling down on me and all the 9 (±1) planets are perfectly aligned and I have an angel on my shoulder and Mother Mary comes to me singing words of wisdom and so on. Nevertheless, I'm not ruling out any eventualities, including the worst.

In any case, I'm just glad that this burden has been taken off my shoulders. All this effort that I have put into this exam for the past year, I can now divert to other parts of my life.

A new chapter begins.

No doubt some of you will be interested in what did I play. For those of you, here are some excerpts from the video recording of my dress rehearsal: (Yes I did a dress rehearsal for this exam)
Bach's Prelude in D - The first of my exam pieces.
Beethoven's Sonata Pathétique, 1st movement - I like to call this the "pièce de résistance" thanks to its sheer technical difficulty.

Enjoy!

Random Bunch of Pictures

2008-12-03T23:48:00.004+08:00

I’ll be sitting for my Trinity ATCL Piano Diploma exam in 8 days’ time. Been extremely busy polishing up my 40-minute solo performance, so no time to ramble incoherently as I usually do.

In the meantime, here are some pictures to adorn the front page while I’m away.

Do you know what cat is this? It’s a copycat!

My cousin brother and his intravenous morphine dispenser.

Panasonic 103 inch plasma HDTV. For people who burn money to cook their meals.

A picture of Wall Street that I photoshopped out of sheer boredom. Related pic here.

This e-mail made my day.

2008-11-22T23:55:00.000+08:00

So I was sorting through my unread university e-mails, and came across this particular one.

Apparently, one of the bus seats has been slashed with a knife, so all students are reminded of the shuttle bus rules, and to behave in such a way that corresponds to their age.

And then I saw the attachment.

It would appear that some joker took a picture with a lousy, noisy phone camera and, for some reason, converted it into BMP format a.k.a 8 honking megabytes of raw, uncompressed picture data. (maximum fidelity perhaps?) Then, said joker proceeded to attach said picture to an e-mail and broadcast it to thousands of students, instantly generating gigabytes of extraneous data running amok in the university's mail servers.

That same picture would've weighed a miniscule 303kB as a JPG file. What the #@$%. Sometimes I wish geeks are destined to inherit Earth one day.

A Tasty Revenge

2008-11-12T10:36:00.003+08:00

In an extraordinary act of kindness, our Circuits and Fields lecturer cancelled his 2 hour class, leaving me 3 whole hours between the time I wake up and my first lecture. That's when I decided to take my revenge.

Revenge never tasted so good.

Free Marketing

2008-11-11T00:35:00.004+08:00

There's definitely something worth facepalming in the screenshot below, even though the dateline effectively declares me a slowpoke.

Random Snippets of C Code

2008-11-10T20:55:00.005+08:00

int main(void)
{
   if (you_still_want_me)
   {
     count = randnum(1,100);

     while (count > 0)
     {
       tie_a_yellow_ribbon_round_the_old_oak_tree();
       count = count - 1;
     }
   }

   return 0;
}

...

int randnum(int min, int max)
   return 100;

...

int count_ribbons(void)
   return bus_driver_please_look_for_me();

...

int main(void)
{
   ribbons_seen = count_ribbons();

   if (ribbons_seen == 0)
   {
     get_on_the_bus();
     forget_about_us();
     put_the_blame_on_me();
   }

   return 0;
}

Dear IT Department,

2008-11-10T19:35:00.002+08:00

Hi. I'm Wayne, a 1st Year Electronic and Computer Engineering student at the university for which you provide all IT-related equipment and services.

First off, I can't adequately express my gratitude for upgrading the main computer lab earlier this year. I mean, wow! A 2.83GHz Intel E8300, 4GB of RAM, and a copy of Windows Vista Enterprise for each of the 100 computers in this lab! An excellent usage of university funds, considering that all anyone has ever done with them is to surf the web, type documents and run C programs hardly 20 lines long.

While you're at it, why don't you throw in some Nvidia Quadro workstation graphics for good measure? Nah, just kidding. In fact, you guys had the collective wisdom to top off all that impressive hardware with, what else, but the awesome Intel Integrated Graphics! These things are seriously awesome! When I used Flip 3D with just one window open, it actually started a slide show for me! I tried doing that using my humble laptop with about 7 windows open, including Google Earth and a Skype webcam conversation, and still it looked nothing like a slide show. Oh well, I guess that's what you get from a budget laptop... :(

0wnage, except where Pi approximations are involved.

One thing that really bugs me though, is the lack of HDD Sheriff. Lack of what, you ask?

Well, HDD Sheriff is a combination of hardware and software that, once installed and activated on a computer, will reverse any and all changes to its hard disk upon reboot. Perfect for computer labs as it allows students to screw with the computers any way they like; all that's required to fix everything is a single reboot.

Since you asked, I guess you guys don't have HDD Sheriff. That's okay, I am totally capable of living with:

Slower and slower performance as computers accumulate temporary files and other junk
Student-installed custom applications (Foxit Reader? What's wrong with Adobe Reader?)
Programs that consistently crash when started (Ahh I see what's wrong with Adobe Reader...)
Booting up Ubuntu from a USB drive and totally circumventing all the above problems! :D (something HDD Sheriff would have disabled by the way.)

One of these OSes does not belong.

Still, it shouldn't be too bad as long as you re-image (i.e. reformat) the computers on a regular basis. Things return to full speed after such operations, at least for a while. Oh look what's this, Firefox 2.0! The web browser phased out by the entire Internet over five #$%@ing months ago! In that case I sure can trust everything else on this computer to be just as up to date! (read: Vista security holes)

Keep up the excellent work you guys. I sure can depend on the IT Department to provide the best IT facilities for my parents' hard earned cash.

Yours sincerely,
Wayne

/sarcasm

Punctuality

2008-10-28T20:02:00.009+08:00

Formula Student is a student design competition where students design, build, and market a race car. The term "race car" is a misnomer here though, since the most action the final product will see are just time trials - there will be no actual circuit racing.

Anyway, somehow I found myself on my university's Formula Student team. This summarizes the e-mail regarding our next supposed meeting:

Tuesday 28th October 2008 6PM, Room DB38

So there I was earlier today in front of DB38, in the process of receiving a sucker punch as I read this handwritten message pasted on the locked doors:

Room F1A09, 5-6PM

When I was done cursing it, I decided to take the bus home. The buses arrive every hour on the hour, so it should be at the stop right now. Turned out that it wasn't, since there were many other students waiting there. So we waited.

15 minutes later...

I decided to walk home. It's only, oh say, 2km away?

15 minutes later...

Exactly halfway to my destination, that frigging bus passes by on its way to the university. Sure hope the driver sees what I'm doing and realizes the inconvenience he's causing.

10 minutes later...

That frigging bus passes by on its way to my house! I'm sweating all over. I should have waited for that frigging bus.

When I got home...

Got an e-mail about that botched Formula Student meeting. The summary:

Oh wow we're liek bringing forward the meeting but I'm pretty sure everyone's gonna get this message even though it's only less than 2 hours before the meeting lulz kthxbai

Distractions

2008-10-21T18:56:00.003+08:00

Web surfing is such an effective way to distract yourself. For example, I start off my sessions by dissecting four My Yahoo! web pages full of RSS-fed content, which easily kills 15 minutes of my time. If that's not enough, then there's always the local tech enthusiast forum. As with all other forums, by the time you're up to date with one thread, 10 other threads have new stuff to be read. It's a vicious and deadly cycle (to your time anyway).

If all else fails, then there's this. Enough said.

Now, imagine doing these on a powerful workstation. Sporting a 2.83GHz Intel E8300 and 4GB of RAM, this thing ain't no slouch. Throw in a sleek 19-inch widescreen LCD barely 2 feet from your face displaying Vista Enterprise in all its glorious Aero Glass lustre *cough* *cough* excuse me *hack* *cough* and you got yourself a formidable time-killing, attention-hogging machine.

Now, imagine a room with literally a hundred of these workstations. Getting the picture? No? Try refreshing the page, it should be just below this paragraph.

Now, imagine there are a hundred students sitting at said workstations, their mice going clickety-clack as they surf the web, allowing their attentions to be obsessively hogged, their time brutally slaughtered, right in the middle of a lecture. As for the lecturer, he just drones on and on about the subject at hand, obviously not giving a rodent's rear end whether any of his 100 students are paying attention or not.

I'm quite sure you've done a lot of imagining by now. Guess what? I live your imaginations, twice a week. I can hardly imagine how will I fare in the upcoming Computer Engineering progress test.

My Thoughts on the Financial Crisis

2008-10-16T19:20:00.000+08:00

Yeah, that's all.

*Thanks to Chuck Onyiliogwu of Flickr for the photo.

Do you want to move or copy files from this zone?

2008-10-13T11:42:00.000+08:00

Whenever you try to drag and drop files between computers on a LAN, you'll get this nice little dialog box:

For you slowpokes out there, let me explain. There are 2 ways of interpreting this dialog box:

1. "Do you, or do you not, want to move/copy files from this zone?" asks Internet Explorer.

-or-

2. "Do you want to:
a) move, or
b) copy
files from this zone?" asks Internet Explorer.

The latter of which would force you to give a Yes/No answer, hence insulting your intelligence as well as forcing you to insult your own intelligence. Clever huh?

Unfortunately, I have a gut feeling that the vast majority of users who come across this would think of No. 2 first. Intelligences will be insulted.

Honestly, how hard could it be to differentiate between moving or copying files, and display the appropriate dialog box for each case? More honestly, why should it even exist? You don't see it when right-click-pasting or Ctrl-V-ing.

And since when did Internet Explorer have anything to do with transferring files over a LAN?

Oh well, it's no big deal. That was way back in Windows XP. Surely in Vista, being 5 years in the making and all, dragging and dropping files over networks must be easy as pie, right?

How about a pie full of blackbirds baked alive?

I suck in the kitchen.

2008-10-07T11:22:00.000+08:00

It was teatime, and I thought, why not cook something to eat? It's now the second week of university (and me living away from home), and I haven't spent more than 5 consecutive minutes in the kitchen. Besides, classes were over so there were no time constraints...

10 minutes later, my sandwich was almost ready. The bread was buttered, the tomato sliced, now for the final piece: fried egg. I placed the frying pan on the induction cooker (the gas was empty), turned it on, and got an "Error" message. Heck if I know why, but I swapped the frying pan with some other random pot, and it worked. In went the oil and egg.

Only it wasn't just some other random pot. It was a non-non-stick pot a.k.a. a Stick Pot.

All subsequent attempts to flip the egg ended up scrambling the whole thing. Some of it got burnt too. The fact that the pot gets more than hot enough within seconds did not help. In the end the egg turned out mostly fine, in fact it went better with my sandwich now that I've scrambled it by accident.

I shall name this...the Accidentally Scrambled Egg Sandwich™.

All too soon, the sandwich was finished. Then came the washing up part.

eww.

Overall, it took me a grossly disproportionate amount of work just to prepare one sandwich.

Dinner had to be prepared by myself as well. But with pre-cooked chicken from home and plenty of fruits ready to cut and consume, it wasn't so bad. I only accidentally cooked enough rice to feed 3 people. :D

Compaq CQ40-125AX Review

2008-10-02T17:58:00.004+08:00

University has begun. I am forced to spend the weekdays far away from home, away from my personal computer. Yet moving my bulky, pricey, power hungry gaming PC and its myriad of peripherals to the distant, crammed, possibly unsafe off-campus accommodation is out of the question. So, what ever in the world was I to do? Bring a laptop. And this is my new laptop.

Let's have a little technical tour. This laptop has a modest AMD Turion X2 2.0GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, 250GB hard disk, 14 inch wide screen, DVD burner, card reader, WiFi, Bluetooth, microphone and webcam, all at a price tag of RM2,180.

Pretty common stuff. But 2 of its features made it stand out of the price list, the first being ATI HD3450 graphics. You should have figured out at the first paragraph that I am into PC games. Sure, it won't run Crysis, but it will run Team Fortress 2 so I'm fine with it. Anything but Intel's mobile graphics chips which are total, utter crap as far as games are concerned.

The other feature? HDMI output. I shall just let this picture do all the talking:

Wall-E in HD 1080p, anyone?

Basically, I got a laptop that could meet my homework, surfing, gaming, and watching-HD-stuff-on-a-HDTV needs. Which is good.

And now, the bad. Firstly, the laptop’s front cover is black in colour, and extremely glossy. Like a piano. However, a vast majority of pianos in this world can be operated without touching its sleek exterior, leaving behind your oily fingerprints glistening for all to see. In that regard, this laptop is not like a piano.

eww.

Secondly, battery life. Thanks mostly to its (relatively) inefficient AMD CPU and its power hungry graphics chip, this thing gulps down power like it's going out of style. Average laptop battery lifespans stand between 3-4 hours now. Mine lasts a grand total of 2.0 bloody hours, and that's under draconian power saving conditions i.e. web surfing only, minimum screen brightness, no USB devices, and the CPU throttled back to a mere 50%.

The driver support by HP is absolutely horrible. Again, one picture says it all.

I spent days getting all my hardware to work you fools

This laptop was one of the cheaper ones in the price list, and while it does what it's meant to do quite nicely, it comes along with a whole slew of nuisances that I will have no choice but to put up with.

The lesson learned? You get what you paid for. Plain and simple.