Raptor Migration Over Ipoh

Something extraordinary happened at 3:50 PM 8th October 2018. I accidentally caught sight of a small flock of about 10 eagle-like birds when I glanced out towards my Northern bedroom window. In the past, the norm was to have no more than 3 birds at any one time. "This is unusual", I thought to myself. And so, I attempted to photography them.

Having failed to capture any decent shots, I looked around and waited hoping for this flock to return. Nothing happened. I looked out on the Southern side of my bedroom window and I got excited when I saw, which I thought initially was the same flock. After taking a few shots, I then noticed that there were actually more birds in the sky than what I saw earlier. A thought then popped into my mind: Raptor Migration!!

My 100th Image On Dreamstime

After 19 months, I have finally made my 100th image upload to the microstock site Dreamstime. The date to mark on the calendar: September 16th, 2018. Lots of challenges initially but I seem to be getting the hang of it now. But still, there is a lot to learn.

Welcome Back Brown Shrike

It has become somewhat of an annual ritual for me. Come September of every year, I will wait patiently for the return of the Brown Shrikes. Two years ago in 2016, they were first spotted for the season on 16th September. In 2014, it was on 22nd September. This year it was 14th September.

GIMP Scripts For Dealing With Blue And Green Fringe

My Canon Powershot SX530 HS suffers from bad Purple, Blue and Green chromatic aberration when taking pictures in high contrast area. I use Darla's Purple Fringe script for GIMP to deal with Purple chromatic aberration - some limitations but that's the best solution that I can find.

I could not find any GIMP scripts for dealing with Blue and Green chromatic aberration. So I did the next best thing: I rolled my own.

The code for the scripts are below. Once installed, it will appear under the "Script-Fu / Enhance /" menu. And one more thing: the same limitations apply as with Darla's Purple Fringe script.

My Contribution To The 2018 MY Garden Birdwatch Survey

The yearly MY Garden Birdwatch Survey was held this year on the 2nd and 3rd June, 2018. About 2 weeks earlier than usual when compared to previous years, as far as I could recall.

I did my counting at my home, as usual, on 2nd June 2018, time 7:30 A.M. Yes early in the morning as I was afraid I might forget. You will find my count results below.

Upgrading My Android x86

I have had my Android x86 version 4.3 installed in my VirtualBox since April 2014. With software upgrades being released by the day, I think its about time I have this operating system upgraded to a more recent release.

Version 7.1 r2

Version 7.1 r2 looks like a good bet, out since May 2018.

But after spending something like two hours downloading the installation ISO image, it looks like it wouldn't work with 512 MB RAM in VirtualBox - that's all I could afford in my 1GB RAM computer. There is lots of disk activity alright; it doesn't seem to stop. After waiting for something like 20 minutes and not seeing the home or setup screen, I gave up.

Installation was a breeze though. It zip right through in about a minute.

Raynox DCR-250 - Adding Value To My Canon Powershot SX530 HS Camera

This Raynox DCR-250 clip-on lens - there's only one way of describing it: Amazing. No that's an understatement, make that Super Amazing. To show you what I mean, just looks at this picture that I have taken with my Canon Powershot SX530 HS in macro mode, uncropped but scaled down to fit in this page:

The subject, a Wasp Moth, barely fills 1/9th of the frame. Not much details to look at I must say. Cropping doesn't help much either.

Now compare the picture above with the following picture below. The same camera but with the Raynox lens attached, again uncropped but scaled down to fit in this page:

See why I am so excited with this lens now? A magnifying glass for my camera with the insect now filling about half the frame. The fine details, the furry bits around the insect, even the flower's pollen on the insect's feelers can be captured with my low-end prosumer point-and-shoot camera. A perfect value-add accessory to my camera.

Attaching My ProocamSXC67 Filter Adapter

I bought this ProocamSXC67 filter adapter a few days ago for my Canon Powershot SX530 HS. The price: about a third of Canon's FA-DC67A. A much more budget friendly alternative, that's for sure.

Now mounting it on my camera: that's proves to be a bit of a challenge. Much force is needed to twist the adapter into place, but will this cause any irreparable damage to the lens optics?

I had a look at my Canon's Powershot SX530 HS manual. Sad to say, it is of not much help.

ProocamSXC67 - A Cheaper Alternative To Canon's FA-DC67A

I love it when I get a great bargain.

The official Canon filter adapter FA-DC67A for my SX530 HS costs something like RM120 here in Malaysia. No doubt, it must be of high quality and reliability. But it's a bit way off my budget.

So off I when searching for a third-party alternative at Lazada Malaysia. And this is the cheapest that I could find, and eventually bought: the Proocam SXC67 adapter. A piece of metal ring (well it felt and sounded metallic) with 67mm diameter that costs me RM34.44. It would have been around RM40, but I got it off the recent Lazada 2018 Raya sale, and hence the cheaper price. Quite sturdy and well built in my opinion.

Good Old XVID

There is this problem that I have with my 7 year old Panasonic Viera LCD TV - it just can't play certain MP4 movies. The video and audio CODECs (usually H264 for video and AAC for audio) are all compatible with what the TV supports, but it just won't play.

The problem, after much digging, is that this particular Panasonic TV model only supports playing video files that are in certain video standard resolution - 360p or 720p resolution, for example. It took me many attempts, but one workaround is to convert the video CODEC into XVID/DIVX. The size of the output file may be larger, but hey, it works.

I use ffmpeg to do the audio and video codec conversion. And this is the command that I use: