Saturday, 29 October 2011

Reverting Science and Mathematics to Sains dan Matematik

I started my schooling life as a Malaysian having all my subjects taught in Malay except for English. Many years after leaving school, I heard that Sains dan Matematik had been revised to be taught in English. Today, browsing through my news feeds, I found out that it's back to Malay for these subjects again. I'm at a lost as to why our leaders could shift from one language over another just like that? Education is really important.

Lately, I've noticed that many important Malay words were forgotten and simply replaced by Malay-ed English. One such recent one was our annual Bajet. I was taught that it really was Belanjawan during my school days. Sigh...

Sunday, 23 October 2011

How Lightbox filters enhanced the dull grey sky...

When it comes to social photo sharing apps like Lightbox and picplz (the only two that I use interchangeably these days), it's plenty easy to enhance the sky. The original picture featured a dull grey sky...

Plunk it through the Redscale filter and I got a burning evening sky:

Put it through the Ansel filter and the outcome a better contrast B&W image:

Saturday, 15 October 2011

picplz "Quickie" Smartphone Unsharp Mask Takes The Lead Over Lightbox

I've been comparing both picplz and Lightbox for quite awhile now and am still at it albeit a little slower these days as the novelty began to wear off. Make no mistake, I still love to snap a thing or two here and there but due to busy work schedule, the interest waned a little.

Today, I stumbled upon this "Enhanced Definition" filter in picplz and would like to share it with everyone here. The photo was first processed with another great app called Pixlr-o-matic from Autodesk before I put it through picplz. The one below was untouched by any picplz filter while the one at the bottom got its definition enhanced. You be the judge:



As far as I'm concerned, picplz helped sharpen my blurry photo. Have not encountered any other app with such a sharpening tool. Hence picplz 2, Lightbox 1.

Monday, 10 October 2011

The Moon Ring

Saw this earlier just now... apparently bringer of bad weather but at this moment, it remains a sight to behold:
Moon #4 - The Moon Ring

Wednesday, 5 October 2011

Cloaking Device Unveiled

While the iPhone 5 rumour has been flushed down the toilet, something hiding underwater was discovered before the Klingons found us! Scientists have unveiled a cloaking device that works only underwater at the moment utilising the mirage principle with aid from nanotubes. Figure that out!? O.o



via Engadget.

Saturday, 24 September 2011

Lightbox draws with picplz - In-App Cropping

As Lightbox gets updated, a few features had been added and cropping within the app is one of them. Was meaning to post this for quite some time now but when I had the time, Blogger did not. So today is the day for this. :)
There is 1:1, 4:3, 3:4, 16:9 and unrestricted cropping.

Besides that, you can also rotate and flip the photos.

Lightbox 1 picplz 1.

Sunday, 18 September 2011

Philosophy Buck

Invented this phrase while trying to convince my friend that a supposedly ugly photo is indeed pleasant looking:

Sometimes, the ugliest photo brings the happiest moments.

Maybe not grammatically correct but oooh, I like it! XD

Monday, 5 September 2011

Is it legal to snap a photo of the cinema before the show starts?

picplz 1 Lightbox 0 - Photo uploads from desktop

I know picplz and Lightbox are both mobile photo sharing apps where their primary task is to share photos taken by mobile phones but I like to upload photos taken with my digital camera, too. I would prefer to upload to flickr but I'm stuck with the 200 photo limit because I'm just too stingy to go for the pro account. Then there's Picasa but that one's got a 1GB limit... or something like that and yup, too stingy to pay for more space.

picplz and Lightbox are the only ones at this moment where I can upload photos and hot link to this blog (because if I upload photos to this blog directly, it also eats into the 1GB limit that it shares with Picasa) with no visible space limitation.

Oh yeah, previously I also upload to twitpic but then there was some controversial stuff there so I stopped that. Then there was yfrog but both twitpic and yfrog don't got no filters to play with. :P

Now comes to the point of this post - I can't find any options in Lightbox for me to upload photos from my desktop. I can only upload through the Android app. picplz allows me to upload through its desktop web page so it wins this round over Lightbox. picplz 1, Lightbox 0.

Here's my latest upload to picplz (enhanced with my favourite Russian Toy Camera filter), mistakenly taken with my non-mobile phone camera:

Saturday, 3 September 2011

Big Eyes Panda and Monkey

Here's a rather eerie photo taken almost midnight through the transparent roller shutter of a shop in Mid Valley:
Put the photo through the filters of both Lightbox and picplz. Ended up using Lightbox's Testino filter.

Thursday, 1 September 2011

Light up my pic boxes, please

I'm in a dilemma now. I've got both Lightbox and picplz apps in my Android phone and don't know where to share my photos! At the moment, both have some unique filters that the other doesn't have. I like Lightbox's Lomo, Ansel and the new Testino filters, and picplz's Russian Toy Camera and C-41 filters. picplz also has a Enhanced Definition filter that seems to sharpen the photo to greater detail.

I'm going to use both for now and here is the same photo using Lightbox's Ansel filter and picplz's Russian Toy Camera, respectively:

Tuesday, 30 August 2011

Selamat Hari Raya!

Have a great Hari Raya celebration, my Muslim friends!

Viva's Arabian Nights (?) decor with Lightbox Testino filter:

KLCC decor (again!) with picplz Cross Process filter:

Monday, 29 August 2011

Star Trek Raya

Selamat Hari Raya from the engineering team of starship KLCC-01...

Ground Force Buck

At last, folks! The time has come for me to reveal to you all...
THE BUCK MOBILE! ;)
SWOOOOOOOOOOooooossshhhhh!!!

Sunday, 21 August 2011

The Public Phone

When was the last time you took notice of a public phone? I wouldn't have if I had not actually saw a lady putting coins into one and used it to call someone!

Do you think it's a good thing that these still exist? I personally think so! Never knew when your mobile will run out of batteries right? Or it could be one of those unfortunate days...