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.