Goodbye Avast

This is a follow-up to my previous post.

I did a virus definition update to Avast 2 days ago. I didn't use my computer after that and had is shutdown subsequently. No problems detected, everything fine here.

Turned on my computer yesterday morning, surfed the net as I usually do, and BOOM! a blank screen and a reboot after using my computer for something like 10 minutes. This problem repeated itself 3 more times as the day progressed. Practically, I couldn't do anything with all these reboots. I tried disabling the Avast service too, but that didn't help either. The computer bombed out some 15 or 20 minutes later after reboot.

My Own Broadband Subscription - Finally

I first talked about it 3 years ago. But then things went back to normal about a month later. I got my 200 MB quota per login account back and I subsequently did nothing. Lucky me.

WiMax Shutdown

Fast forward to 1st October 2019.

I tried to login as usual on that day. But things got stuck at the 'searching for network' stage. The reason, I were to find out later, was that Yes has shutdown their WiMax network - for good. No notice, nothing from Yes to none paying subscribers. Not even a Facebook post or a Tweet from their official page. A bit unfair I think.

Push comes to shove here. There is only one thing to do - subscribe to my very own broadband plan.

Mysterious Reboots

I had this problem last month. My PC was misbehaving and will mysteriously 'die' sometimes while using it midway (usually while web browsing - it doesn't matter which browser). All I would get is just a blank black screens and nothing moves. I did get the blue-screen-of-death but not often.

Once it halted while booting - it didn't go beyond the WinXP logo. And at another time, it suddenly rebooted while I was trying to login in.

Brown Shrike Spotted 2019

They are back from the cold - Brown Shrike. I spotted one this morning in my garden.

A bit late I think compared to last year. I wonder if it has anything to do with the haze that is blanketing the country and region currently. The haze is so bad this year that I feel irritated while breathing. Rain, rain - we need rain to put out the fire at the neighbouring country some 800 miles away.

Proocam 49mm To 58mm Step-up Ring

The Raynox DCR-250 clip-on lens that I own, it can only be mounted onto a camera that has lens thread size of between 52mm and 67mm.

My Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM lens on my Canon EOS 800d/T7i though, only has a thread size of 49mm.

So how am I going to mount my Raynox clip-on lens onto my Canon 50mm lens? Get myself a step-up ring of course. And that is exactly what I did 2 months ago - I bought myself a Proocam 49mm to 58mm step-up ring. A Proocam by the way since I am happy with my last purchase for my point-and-shoot camera. The price too is quite reasonable at RM20 since they were having a promotion at that time.

My Stock Video Workflow

I just started shooting stock video recently, and I must say I am enjoying it. I think I am a fool if I were to ignore stock videos as the payout is much higher when compared to stock photos. As far as I could gather, we are talking about tens of dollars here for stock video sales against cents for stock photos. But still, the content matters.

Workflow

This is what I do before uploading my videos to Dreamstime. My workflow if you will.

Dreamstime prefers Quicktime .MOV container files compressed using Photo Jpeg. So this is what I aim to achieve here.

Software used

Avidemux, VirtualDub2, MPEG_Streamclip (I also installed KL QuickTimeAlternative 1.18 as I do not have the necessary QuickTime software for creating Photo JPegs in a .MOV file) and FileZilla.

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.