Had a chance to take some nice flowers downstairs and a butterfly outside our house. Had a hard time chasing those butterflies as they are so fast but some photos look decent enough for sharing here...


Flowers thats like 8 storeys below... making use of 48x smart zoom here.


Taking a short break, but the wings never stop flapping


Flap flap flap.


Eh.. how come so many plants but got no flowers..


I'm not only yellow and dark brown.. there's shades of orange too..

Instead of chasing after butterflies with a net like in those movies, I'm chasing after them with my H1 today. Halt! And I'll shoot!

Tagged: singapore butterfly flowers nature dsc h1

Q: What do you see at 525am at the void deck of a quiet singapore town?

This was what I saw this morning... at 5.25am

(pic quality might be poor cause I didn't have the tripod and I was taking all the photos using night shot wahha...)


Two little police car parking near the void deck....

Hm.. wonder what's happening at 5.25am.... someone's fight? robbery?


Oh! now we have two more bikes plus a fire engine! Cool! Do excuse the blur-ness of the photo... taken using my dear brother's shoulder


and with the fire engine comes... the firemen!!! not sure if they look handsome haha... too dark to see their faces


and more firemen...

What on earth is happening.. and what's that smell??!!!! eekk!!!!!


Now i get it!!!!

Burnt dustbin!!!!!

haha... sometimes... when things are too peaceful... tiny incident can make life a tiny bit more exciting... and it's not only me who went kapo-ing yah... haha... there are lots of people hanging around in their night clothes too ... what a sight...

However... it can certainly be worrying to have a fire at dawn... imagine it's a big fire... and it occured in the middle of the night... maybe it true... we should always be alert and know how to react to various events that happened around us...

This is a photoblog of my story at the moment. It does not really contain meaningful pictures of myself but the pictures I took reflects what I feel today.


The aloe vera flower at its not so glorious end.

Today marks the end of my honeymoon period of my career and start to justify my pay, well, at least justify half of it. It's practicum time.


The Hyundai Getz 1.1M, a small yet modern and efficient car. And my very first one too.

It's a brand new start to life so I had a brand new car to go along with it. Still not used to the quietness as I rely on the engine growl in the past to judge when to shift gears. Just like I need to get use to the new environment in school, and the environment need to get use to me too. The school uses fingerprints for staff room access and the system still denies my fingers at times.


There's a fruit downstairs! I thought my dad was the only one growing plants that bear fruits (chilli to be specific), but lo and behold. What's this by the way?

At the end of the day, I hope that at the end of this 10 weeks my efforts will bear fruits and I will not leave NIE with the same regrets I had when I left NUS.

Tagged: singapore getz flowers fruits dsc h1

Really, these days parents don't teach their children or they teach the wrong things. I'm so worried that would I be one of them in the future. Just remember a young couple yesterday spoiling their daughter by letting her enjoy those 20 cents rides found in kopitiam when she demands it. "This is the last time lah" said her mother, but it never was to be the last.

Then there was once I saw a boy, who seems to be 7-8 years old at IKEA who throw his tantrum at the kids section. He was kicking around and lying flat on the floor refusing to leave. But none of them as startling as this case.

"Well," she said, "we have a bit of a situation. You see, my nine year old son found your camera, and we wanted to show him to do the right thing, so we called, but now he's been using it for a week and he really loves it and we can't bear to take it from him."

I listened, not sure where she was going with this.

"And he was recently diagnosed with diabetes, and he's now convinced he has bad luck, and finding the camera was good luck, and so we can't tell him that he has to give it up. Also we had to spend a lot of money to get a charger and a memory card."

It started to dawn on me that she had no intention of returning the camera.

Tonight's moon is low and comparatively bigger. Also, its the half moon type that can see more surface details of the moon.


It took some practice for me to blend this 2 together.. one shot for building, one shot for moon.


15 seconds star. Seems a bit dull and dark compared to the 30sec version


30 seconds star. The original looks a bit orange due to scatter light from those orange lamps. This is "black" balanced to make the sky look darker.

Light pollution in Singapore means we can only see a few brighter stars. Wonder how would a clear night without light pollution be like. I could only wonder.

Tagged: singapore star moon dsc h1

Singaporeans must be very optimistic about the unexhaustible source of talents available in Singapore. Just look at all the talent search in Singapore.

We have 2 Singapore Idols, 1 Project Superstar, 1 Campus Super Star, 1 Super Host, 1 Star Idol, 1 Anugerah, 1 Vasantham star, 1 Super Band.

I think we need to submit this to Guinness records for the number of spin-offs and the highest talent ratio in the world.

Happy Valentine's Day to Everyone!
Well, at least those florist are happy.

Updated: Just came back from IMM and saw another similar project running there. This time is a star search for Suria. Wow, Singapore is very very talented indeed.

Tagged: singapore

The western folks have 12 days of Christmas but we have 15 Days of CNY. Today is the last day of CNY so here's to 拜年 to those whom I never get to do so.


Mandarin oranges always go in pairs. It symbolizes gold, especially in Cantonese where it's pronounciation is the same as gold. So relatives and friends will pass "gold" to each other.


Upon closer inspection, the "gold" has wrinkles and many spots. And is that dust on the skin?

No CNY is complete without some healthy brain exercise - Mahjong. Arguably the most intriguing game to grace humanity thus far. A game of chance, strategy, memory, cooperation, skills and deception.



Managed to get a net winnings of about $21 this year to add to my ang pow money.

CNY became more than just an occasion to visit your relatives once a year. It became the one and only time I actually gamble.

That's all for family traditions and see you all next year!

Tagged: singapore cny oranges mahjong dsc h1

Today, I made some observations that could be so simple and trivial that most people wouldn't give a damn on my discoveries. Today, I found evidence of rotation motion between the physical ground and the observable sky. More on that later, for now just enjoy these photos. I just love the clear sky after rain.


Sunset view outside kitchen. All photos taken with H1.


Starry starry night.


Another H1 Moon, this one is almost full, it's the 13th of the month.


Stars at full telephoto, 15 sec exposure. It looks like short lines


100% Crop of the stars at full telephoto, and the evidence for rotation mentioned above.

Okay, here's the discovery. Look at it. It's raining stars. At first I was puzzled, why are my stars not sharp, could it be vibration? It couldn't be because I'm using a tripod and I did not even extend the legs at all! The effects look like motion blur and indeed it is. 15 secs is more than sufficient to make that observation. In fact, I tried to estimate the angular displacement of the stars in 15 sec, it got to be somewhere around 0 degrees 3 minutes and 45 seconds.

Making use of the angle of view formula found in wikipedia and the specifications of the H1. I estimate that the angle of view of H1 at full telephoto is about 8 degrees. So the stars would have travelled about 16 pixels over the course of 15 seconds exposure. Which is reasonably good estimation given that the stars moved about 30 pixels in reality. Cool! Maybe I could use this as a teaching material in the future, who knows.

Tagged: singapore stars dsc h1 moon sunsets photos

Our mathematics microteaching just concluded recently and it ended with a bang, quite literally. The order for microteaching was arranged according to topics and working on A Maths syllabus means it will only be our turn on the last day and this friend of my, HX, who blew everyone away with his microteaching was the last presenter in the list.

We have seen many concrete manipulative (or educational toys) used by peers in earlier E Maths topics since it is easier to relate those topics to real life and that really got me worried for my Binomial Theorem. I thought, "what could I do to bring in concrete manipulative for Binomial Theorem?!" I concluded that it is next to impossible since some A Maths topics are much more abstract compared to E Maths.

And true enough, for those of us doing A Maths, we were helpless to bring in manipulatives. Remainder and Factor Theorem, Circular Measures and Matrices were some of the A Maths topics we dealt with. Then it came to HX's differentiation, the mother of all things abstract also known as Calculus. The mammoth mathematics created by Sir Issac Newton himself who selfishly claim all glory.

A guitar and a simple equation: f = sqrt(T/p) / 2L was all he needed.

He differentiated it and demonstrated the change in frequency if we adjusted the length (L), tension (T) and density (p) of the guitar strings. The sheer simplicity in the demonstration would make students fall in love with calculus. To borrow from mathematician lingo, it was straight out of the book!

HX had a first class honours in Physics and top his cohort in NUS during his time. Completed a full marathon and a capable badminton player, he plays the piano and loves his Physics. He can be found working on Physics problems, like proving the normal distribution is a natural consequence of statistical mechanics, during lectures.

Tagged: singapore teaching physics maths teacher education

Taken with the DSC H1, a macro view of the flower.

Apparently, the tube-like aloe vera flower would "open" up a bit as time passes and it does not attract birds like chilli plants do. Never seen a bird working on it yet. For your info, these flowers are quite small, about 2cm in length at most, and grow so tall up that I took these photos blindly (means I raise camera overhead to shoot it and pray that the composition is good since I can't see what I'm doing).

There are reasons for doing so...
1.) The pot is too heavy for me to shift it down so I can take a decent shot at comfortable height.
2.) I run a risk falling down 12 storeys if I climb up a chair and lose my balance while taking photos.

Tagged: singapore flower macro dsc h1

Taken at full telephoto with a H1 right outside my house. Can you spot that the lady seated near the net actually have a bird with her? The ball is in the air, can you find it?

Finally, I see some people making use of the beach volleyball court. But no bikini babes. Afterall, we are in the heartlands. Wonder what could a 1.7x telephoto lens do to make the image larger. Don't think it will be that significant since it will only be 2.89 times bigger in terms of area. If only the telephoto lens is cheaper in Singapore, currently it's just more expensive than the States.

Tagged: singapore clementi beach volleyball dsc h1

Taken with K700i.

Just happened to stop next to this car at the traffic light. Luckily for the driver the car was only slightly dented at the side. But always remember to drive safely.

Tagged: singapore accident k700i

Star light star bright right outside my house window at 2am in the morning auto-resized by Flickr


Star light star bright right outside my house window at 2am in the morning resized using DIMIN Image Viewer.

Notice the differences? The stars are brighter in the 2nd photo. Guess it could be either poor algorithm or high compression by Flickr when you let them do the job for you. Anyway, this is not a post to whine about why you should always do stuff yourself if you want it to be done right. Its for sucre who once wanted to take photos of stars. I couldn't do it right last time and I guess that's because my focus is out. (Must use manual focus cos sky so black got nothing for camera to focus on)

Not as starry as expected in this Singapore night sky. In fact, I am having doubts on how many of those bright spots are stars and how many are actually man-made satellites.

Tagged: singapore stars dsc h1

食材
白果一碗(去壳)
薏米一杯(清洗)
腐竹半包
糖冬瓜一碗
鹌鹑蛋煮熟30粒(去壳)



1. 将薏米放入锅中，加入3公升的水煮滚后用文火把薏米煮熟。
2. 当薏米爆开后，可把其它材料一起放入锅中煮多五分钟。也可加入适量冰糖随意调其甜味。
3. 白果薏米冷热皆可用，消暑解热。
4. 若无鹌鹑蛋也可放入适量的鸡蛋。煮好后可打些鸡蛋花。
5. 若无时间看火，也可把所有食材加入3公升水的电子锅中自动煮熟，隔夜即可食用。

Ingredients
A bowl of peeled ginkgo nuts.
Hard boiled quail eggs (30, peeled)
A cup of barley (washed)
A bowl of sweet melon strips
Half a packet of bean stick

Procedures
Put barley in pot with about 3l of water bring to boil and simmer. After barley have expanded (or popped like pop corns) put in melon strips, gingko nuts, bean stick and hard boil eggs. Add rock sugar and stir to suit your taste for sweetness. Let it cook for another 5mins. Can be served hot or chilled. Alternatively, put all ingredients in an automatic electric cooker and let it cook overnight.

Tagged: singapore recipe dessert dsc h1

Crescent moon taken on Friday night


The moon behind the tree. This shot makes the moon looks bigger due to the foreshortening effects of the 12x zoom I guess


The new moon only shows herself for a short period of time. It begins to disappear from view after 15minutes.

More moons shot. This time it comes in 3 different flavours. The textbook shot, the moon with leaves artistic shot and sucre's favourite starry shots.

Tagged: singapore moon dsc h1

My Digital Camera Partner


And all the other accessories

Why would you need another CF/SD/MMC/MS/xD/<fill in the blanks> card for you digital still camera when you have this partner. It's portable, it's cheaper ($240 for 80gb, $3 per gb) and you won't have to shuffle around cards to copy to your PC anymore. This is the reason why I never end up with an iPod Photo.

I may had bought this way back in Sept 05 but it did not fulfill its role as a digital camera partner until Dec 05. Almost 1/2 year later, I still find this device cool and useful. In fact, I used it to quick copy project files from project mates by plugging their thumbdrive there too. Definitely a recommended item for everyone who needs it.

Tagged: singapore portable storage dsc h1

Top: Wide angle; Bottom: Telephoto. Duh

I had always wondered what does 12x optical zoom (or 36-432mm equivalent) means and I had taken photos with and without zoom to compare with my eyes, just like the ones above.

Finally, I took some time off to do an estimated comparison to find out what it really means in layman terms by cropping and comparing.


100% crop of the windows at wide angle. Image size = 18x29 pixels


100% crop of the same windows at telephoto (12x). Image size = 204x340

A simple punch in calculator will mean that the telephoto is 11.3 times wider and 11.7 times taller than the wide angle version. This is remarkably close to 12 times (given the large margin of error by simply doing rectangular selection and cropping to it in this poorly performed test. Not forgetting the less than level image taken with hand). So in other words, 12x zoom really means making your image appear 12 times larger in length or breadth (or 144 times larger in area)

Which brings me back to the smart zoom of up to 48x in VGA mode (640x480) in H1. The 5M mode is 2592x1944, or 4.05 times larger in length and breadth compared to VGA. That's why smart zoom can offer up to 48x in VGA mode since it is almost the same as cropping from the 5M version.

Maybe next time when I'm free i can explore the solid angle of view captured by this camera (in comes remote sensing knowledge). Well, at least found some use of undergraduate physics in my everyday life.

Tagged: singapore dsc h1 physics

The Aloe Vera Flower taken with DSC H1

My dad just reach a new level in his gardening skills with the following achievements.

1.) Manage to expand the aloe vera plants from one pot to six pots now.
2.) Manage to get the aloe vera flower finally.

Now we were unaware that the aloe vera flower existed since it managed to "reproduce" without the flowers after all these years and were surprised to find one sticking out with "buds" like above. Dad and I were anticipating for the day when the flowers "bloom" but apparently, that's the "flower" in its full glory according to the images from wikipedia. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for a mini miracle.

Tagged: singapore flowers dsc h1 aloe vera

The Golden ratio of two quantities a and b is (a+b)/a = a/b where a is the larger value and b the smaller. This quantity have many interesting mathematical properties and aesthetics value. It's a pretty number to have and to design things after it. In simple sense, if you have a rod of length A and you cut it into 2 pieces of length B and C, then A:B = B:C where A>B>C.

What golden ratio may mean to you is that if your height is 1.62m, ideally your legs (lower body till waist I guess) should be 1m long for that balance between symmetry and asymmetry. Or if your face is 16.2cm long, your eyes should ideally be placed at 10cm above the base etc. Even the rule of thirds in photography follows the golden ratio approximately as the golden ratio would have divided a frame in 62% and 38% compared to 33% and 66% with the rule.

If I remembered this ratio when I'm painting my house, I would definitely had applied it somewhere. I have slightly short legs as my ratio is 1.74, what's yours?

Tagged: singapore golden ratio