Brown Shrike Whiskers

Bird Whiskers

I didn't know this before; I just found out recently - some birds have 'whiskers'. I only came to know about this about a week ago while looking at some photographs of Brown Shrikes that I have taken with my new superzoom digital camera. These 'whiskers' are not visible from afar, viewed unaided with the naked eye; and neither was it visible with pictures taken with my 5x zoom low-end digital camera (what I have been using previously).

And so far, I have found out that Lineated Barbet, a rather common bird in my neighbourhood, have 'whiskers' too.

Rictal bristles, I think that's what ornithologists call them.

An Avian Visitor - A Male Pied Triller

A male Pied Triller paid me a visit some 11 days ago. To a greenhorn birder like me, I was naturally excited as this is a once in a blue moon affair.

Canon Powershot SX530 HS - My New Birding Camera

It was suppose to take 3 days but it finally arrived, some 9 days later. What happened Superbuy.my? You had me worried there for a couple of days. Better late than never I suppose.

Yes, I have finally bought myself a new superzoom bridge camera - a Canon Powershot SX530 HS (SX530HS) with 50x optical zoom. Warranty periods is for 1 year from Canon Malaysia - got my email confirmation last week to prove it. I will be using this camera largely for birding and wildlife photography. Long overdue I think.

My Opinion

Having used this camera over the last couple of days, I must say that I am very pleased with my decision. Compared with my previous low-end camera, focusing and the image quality is definitely much better. I am surprised to find such fine details of a pigeon (and other birds too in fact; picture quality is subject to my shaky hands) captured with this camera. Just look at the picture below to see what I mean (do click to enlarge). Except for some cropping, there were no other editing done to this picture. It blew me away the first time I saw it. This camera is making birding and photography fun again! Previously, the only way for me to get such fine details was to hold my subject at arms length. I know because I photographed my rooster that way once. And no I was not tormenting it; I was just trying to photograph its injured eye.

Selection Process

The SX530HS is not my first choice actually. To be honest, it was not even my second.

Turmeric Flowers - Take Two

I always get excited when any of my turmeric plants produces flowers. I like them as I think they are dazzlingly beautiful.

I had two separate blooms last year from two separate plants in two separate pots - one in May and the other in December. Here are some pictures of my turmeric flowers taken during those two months. Armed with a better camera, and hopefully with some improvement in my photography skills, these pictures are definitely much better compared to the ones I took 2 years ago.

Close-up

But first, a close-up view on the crest of a turmeric flower that I took in May 2015. I just love those tinge of pink at the very top. Each flower is different though; sometimes there is no pink tinge.

I didn't take note but I believe this is from a 4 or 5 day old bloom.

An Almost Detailed Account

Here are some pictures that was taken on December 2015. Not shown are wilted flowers (who wants to look at them anyway?) - a process that will begin some 7 days later after blooming.

Customized gdata For PicasaWeb Uploads

Without going into details, I briefly mentioned that I added a few new functions into the class GDataService and PhotoService in order to get the interfacing between 'Google GData Photo API' and RavenPlus working with Google OAuth2 authentication.

Here are the technical details, plus the Python code.

As this is a rather long post, I have broken it down into two parts. In this post, I will only discuss the changes that I have made to the gdata library. In a future blog post, I will show how I used this customised gdata library for uploading pictures to Google's PicasaWeb from RavenPlus.

Some Background Information

Since Python is an object-oriented programming language, the most obvious way to customised gdata is via 'inheritance'. I tried and failed because of some local private variables being referenced in the base class from my derived class. Like I have said before, I am no expert in Python. In desperation, I used what seems to be the easiest way out: I made local copies of what's needed from gdata and customised them to fit my requirements. The important thing here is it works.

Easy Come, Easy Go

I have been on a lookout for a super-zoom digital camera over the last couple of months now. Choices are rather limited in the local Malaysian online market. Nevertheless, I have narrowed my choice down to either a Nikon Coolpix or a Canon Powershot within the RM 900 to RM 1,300 range with at least 40x zoom. To be honest, I kept delaying my purchase, hoping for a big bargain to come my way one fine sunny day.

Santa Came Early

I was overjoyed when I saw the above in my Facebook news-feed on the evening of 24th August from Lazada Malaysia. The validity for this discount e-voucher is between the 25th and 28th August 2016 - no problem there - and I have to make the purchase via the Lazada mobile app running on a smartphone - no problem there either.

The best price that I could find for a Canon Powershot SX 540 HS was RM 1,360 on Lazada Malaysia. With a RM 200 discount, I only pay RM 1,160 - an almost 15% discount there, don't think I can find this bargain anywhere else online or offline.

Checkout Problems

Unfortunately I had problems; problems during my online payment via Maybank2U online banking during checkout - the login prompt did not appear, I got an error message instead.

And the worse part when I tried again: the Lazada's online system said that I have 'redeemed' my RM 200 discount e-voucher. Huh??! I can't even login to my Maybank2U account, damn it.

Digitally Recording The 2016 Olympics For Later Viewing

Thank you KWorld for manufacturing and selling such an economical TV tuner for PC - the PCI Analog TV Card Lite PVR-TV7134SE. It may not be the best but it gets the job done with acceptable quality; better than my old VCR in my opinion.

Thank you Alvery Lee for creating Virtualdub. It might not perfect but I post-process my captured videos anyway.

Thank you to the team at Avidemux for allowing me to edit my captured video while keeping video and audio in sync.

Thank you Morritz Kammerer for writing V2CRS. Otherwise, I would not be able to schedule my TV captures with Virtualdub.

Thank you ME (the owner of this blog) for coming up with the idea for easily enabling Virtualdub filters when scheduling TV captures in V2CRS.

Record, Record, Record

The Rio 2016 Olympics is happening on the other side of the world from where I live. Athletes are busy competing while I am sleeping; I am some 11 hours ahead in the Far East. So the only way for me to enjoy the games is by scheduling to record the games, which is aired 'live' on my local free-to-air TV channels, and to watch them later during the day at my leisure.

I find the Men's Rugby Sevens to be my favourite game so far: fast, exiting and with lots of action where beefy men sprints across the field. What yours? What is you favourite game in this years Olympics?

My Friendly Neighbourhood Monitor Lizard

Measuring about a foot and a half in length (from head to the end of its tail), this juvenile Water Monitor Lizard is making itself comfortable in my backyard. It first came to my attention about 2 months ago when I saw this cold-blooded reptile basking under the morning sun, warming its body up for the day.

GimpGuru's Tutorial For Smart Sharpen - Streamlined

There is this great tutorial by GimpGuru for sharpening pictures without amplifying the inherent noises. However, the first time when I followed his instructions, I fumbled: I didn't get my sharpened picture; I got confused instead.

But with some perseverance, I succeeded in the end.

I thought of streamlining his tutorial as I know that I will be using it often. But a day later, I found an even better tutorial/technique, '"Smart" Sharpening, Redux', also from GimpGuru. I particularly like the ability in this second technique in adjusting and observing the sharpening level, WYSIWYG-style, by merely sliding the "Opacity" slider left or right in the "Levels" dialog window.

In case if you are wondering, I fumbled on the second tutorial too the first time round - I got confused just like the first.

Tutorial - Made Simple

Below are my simplified instructions for the second method by GimpGuru. Have fun! I am using GIMP version 2.6.9, by the way.

The Cheapest Internet Data Plan That I Could Find

As parents to school-going children, my wife and I are entitled to one 1BestariNet Yes ID each. Each of these Yes IDs is internet ready but data is capped at 200 MB. 400 MB from these two IDs is just about right for our needs, and I have been using these two IDs for over the last year or so, for free. My WiMAX modem is actually a "Yes Buzz 4G Cloud" phone by Samsung, a gift that was given to my family as our first digital camera actually.

Unfortunately, somebody decided to revise the 1BestariNet programme recently. Beginning July 2016, no data is allocated to our 1BestariNet Yes IDs anymore. From now on I will have to purchase my own internet data. Only one thing to do now: time to go shopping.

Back To Basics

I find shopping for the ideal internet plan to be cumbersome. Telcos tend to offer products that look similar but differentiated by some minor add-on that makes an apple-to-apple comparison impossible. The end result for me: confusion.

To simplify things, what I did was to go back to basics: I just look at my requirements, my needs.

What do I need? - Internet data Do I need voice calls - No Do I need SMS - No Do I need free media streaming services? - No Cloud storage? - No Data roll over to the following month? - Maybe

And this is what I could find that matches what I want: a data add-on product from Yes (again?) to my 1BestariNet Yes ID:

4 Giga Bytes of Internet data valid for 30 days for RM 31.80 (including GST tax)

The cheapest option that I could find; no voice, no SMS (which isn't a concern to me); just plain internet broadband data all 4GB of it for RM 31.80. There is no additional hardware to buy since what I have is adequate. I would have gone for a much cheaper/lower-data-allocation option that is closer to my usage pattern but 4 GB is the minimal on offer. Beggars can't be choosers, they say.