Paddyfield Pipit

I have never seen this bird, a Paddyfield Pipit, around my house before. But they can be seem at about a hundred meters away from my home in the Jalan Sultan Abdul Jalil football field. A bit strange I think.

A rather timid bird in my opinion. Not really easy to photograph them as they get rather edgy when I stop and point my camera at them. Matters are made much worse now these days as the field is now fenced up and secured under lock and key. While the bird favourite usual spot is in the middle of the field. See my problem here? Not even my superzoom at maximum 250 mm focal length can save me here. The bird in the picture above (with some cropping) was about 30 feet away from me when it was taken. Not the best picture I know.

Shooting Stock Video With My Canon Powershot SX530HS

Soft at the telephoto end, chromatic aberration at high contrast areas and sensor noise. These are the reasons why I bought my Canon EOS 800D/T7i. But little did I know that my Canon Powershot SX530 HS takes excellent videos. So much so that three of my stock video footage were accepted by Dreamstime without much editing, shot at 1080p:

• Man Removing Concrete Forms From Ceiling
• Male Pink-necked Green Pigeon Preening
• Timber falling of a broken pallet in mid-air

My 'New' Refurbished Lenovo PC

I did say that I was going to get one. And I did. May 13th 2019 to be precise.

My 'new' Lenovo Thinkcentre M70e PC, configured with 4GB RAM, 500GB hard disk and an Intel Core2Duo processor running at 3.16GHz. Also included is a legal copy of Microsoft Windows 7 Pro license, a keyboard (by HP) and an optical mouse (no brand). In total, I paid RM250 including shipping. A good bargain I think since similar configured PCs cost about a RM100 to RM200 more by other sellers.

Fixing The Power On/Off Button

I think I have to start planning for a replacement mobile device. It could either be a smartphone or a tablet. It doesn't matter which as I only use it for reading e-books and for transferring pictures from my camera to my PC - no calls.

I have already replaced the screen on my smartphone once but symptoms of pending trouble is brewing again. A dark halo has appeared on the edge of the screen, like last time, for quite sometime now. Quite clearly, some circuitry has gone bad on the phone and its not worth maintaining anymore.

My Contribution To The 2019 MY Garden Birdwatch Survey

The annual MY Garden Birdwatch Survey was held this year on the 8th and 9th June, 2019. I did my counting at my home, as usual, on the morning of 8th June 2019, time 8:30 A.M. I normally do at least 2 counts and pick what I consider to be the best to better reflect the diversity of birds in my neighbourhood. But not this year though.

Python Script To Upload Pictures To Google Photos

I was working on this Python script to upload pictures to Google Photos. Then I found out later that I couldn't get a permanent URL for my uploaded pictures - the Google Photo API doesn't provide one. And I subsequently I stopped working on it.

This little script is of no use to me. Hopefully, somebody will find some use for it. It's a waste to just throw it away since I spent quite some time working on it. "One man's junk is another man's treasure" they say.

PC Downstairs Conked

Over the last 2 months, I think the Gods must be angry with me. It's either that or the stars and planets are not align to my favour.

Health wise I haven't been doing quite well since the beginning of April 2019. Friends said I have 'vertigo' when I described my symptom to them.

Then my WiMax modem go bricked in mid-April.

And now, the computer downstairs that my children uses just died. Problems with the motherboard I was told by the store technician. And they will not fix it. Too old they say. A sound advice in my opinion. This Foxconn motherboard PC has not been reliable from the start. Two new power boxes, one new RAM module plus other various booting up issues - these are some of the problems that I have faced during the last 10 years. Summing up, I think the total cost of ownership would have been cheaper if I had bought a branded PC from a Dell, Lenovo or HP from the start. Yes, more reliable too.

Bricked - Samsung SWD-V100

This Samsung SWD-V100 feature phone that I have since 2013 - which I use to access the Internet as it has a built in Wimax modem to the YES network - it has more or less died. Bricked! It will power-on all right but will get stuck in the Samsung logo screen. I have tried everything that I knew off in trying to revive it (taking out the battery for a couple of hours, for example) but nothing works.

The problem started, by the way, because of low battery level indication. I should have charge it up right away, but instead I shut it down to conserve the battery. Huge mistake.

Fastening A String To My Third Party Lens Caps

When I received my recent DSLR camera purchase, I was quite disappointed when I realised that Canon only provided a standalone lens cap that comes with no attachment cord. I wonder why as after all, the lens cap from my Canon Powershot does come with one. My recent lens purchase, the Canon EF 50mm lens, comes with no attached cord either. A piece of string for attaching the lens cap to the camera strap or body, I don't think they are that expensive. They are pretty handy in preventing lens cap from going missing.

Caps From China

Luckily there are third party lens caps for sale online. And I bought two (because of the different lens sizes that I have) from two separate online merchants in China. One for my Canon EF-S 18-55mm kit lens and another for my Canon EF 50mm prime lens. The build quality is pretty good and sturdy in my opinion. No complains there. But then that attachment cords for both caps. Why can't they provide a better one rather that giving me essentially just a piece of plain old string. The worse part - the given strings is a bit insufficient at just 13" in length. I did make do for awhile by employing the "pedigree cow hitch" and "overhand loop" knots, but because of me accidentally tugging at them quite often, the "pedigree cow hitch" knot eventually came loose yesterday.

Discounts And Bargain Hunting For My 50mm Canon Lens

I hope this will become the norm. Discounts. I talking about bargain and discounts when shopping online, especially at Lazada Malaysia.

You see, I just bought myself a Canon 50mm F/1.8 STM lens at a very good bargain price during the "Lazada Malaysia's 7th Anniversary sale". This purchase includes a 1-year warranty and a RM50 rebate from Canon Malaysian. Added to that, Lazada also gave me a 5% rebate for topping up my Lazada wallet. So in effect, the amount that is coming out of my pocket is around RM364. That's a 27% discount there! My lucky day I guess - Santa came early for me this year.