Category: My Good Life

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For the Geeks Photography

SanDisk ExpressCard Reader for CompactFlash Cards – Speed Tested Here, And It Is Fast

SanDisk ExpressCard Reader for CF Cards

“Come to think about it, what you are holding is quite a rare thing.  I have not heard of a ExpressCard reader for CF cards,” said one photography friend of mine.  To recap, I have tested the new SanDisk Extreme Pro here.  I love what the new card can do.  That got some of my photography friends excited as well.  But the top question from the crowd was: Hypothetically speaking, if we had the 64GB SanDisk Extreme Pro card, how long would it take to download the photos?  On a USB 2.0 connection like mine, the answer is 3 hours.

When I am on my overseas holiday, I always back up my photos daily onto my old laptop (and I make another backup on another external hard disk).  Transferring photos via the USB 2.0 seems like a pain, at least to me.  Even as I delete off unwanted photos during the shooting session, I may still end up with 4GB worth of materials.  That is 12 minutes of photo download, from the memory card to my laptop, using my laptop’s precious battery power.  But that is only for a holiday trip.  I can imagine for the professional event or sport photographers, they would have shot a lot more photos a day, required to transfer a lot more photos a day into the computer for processing.  Any time saving for these professionals could mean a lot.  In fact, I once covered a media event.  And I ended up with tons of photos that evening.

So, just how fast is the SanDisk ExpressCard Reader?  To cut a long story short, by my testing, this reader reduces the download time by 70%.

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One day SanDisk called me and asked if I am interested to test out the new ExpressCard Reader for CF cards.  I said yes in a heartbeat, excited about the opportunity to touch and feel this loaned unit.  When the excitement subsided, there was one minor logistic challenge – I don’t have a laptop that has an ExpressCard slot!

Panic, and I began making contacts with my friends and asked if I could borrow their laptops for a timed experiment.  Interestingly, while not all laptops in this world has an ExpressCard slot, quite a few do – both Windows OS and Mac OS.  In fact more than I have anticipated.  So, a big thank you to my friends who have responded and especially those who are so keen to loan me their laptops for testing on something they have no idea what it is all about.  You guys rock!

Although my sister’s [pretty high end] Fujitsu laptop is about 2 years old, it does have an ExpressCard slot.  In fact, Fujitsu began shipping that technology since mid 2005.  I am not technologically inclined and hence, it took me a while to correctly install the necessary software (or driver) and got the test going (and to correctly find the slot!).  Remember, only install the driver from the CD provided once you attach your card reader into your laptop preferably with a CF card inserted. Your Windows OS may tell you that your card reader is ready to be used.  But in fact, the speed can be so slow that it is not usable (6 times slower than USB 2.0 in my case when I incorrectly installed the driver).

For my simple test, I use 40 real life photos in 14-bit RAW format.  That sums up to about 500MB worth of photos.  I preformed the test on both the new SanDisk Extreme Pro (90MB/s) as well as my old SanDisk Extreme IV (45MB/s).  The result is the same.  Upload of photos (i.e. write speed) via the card reader took 20 seconds.  Download of photos (i.e. read speed) took 26 seconds.  For comparison, download via USB 2.0 took 86 seconds.  To extrapolate, a 16GB worth of photos would take less than a quarter of an hour to download using this card reader.  That may seem long, but imagine the alternative option I am currently having (and how precious laptop battery power is).  If download time can be cut by 70%, that is awesome.

So who needs this?

Professional photographers or enthusiasts who have a laptop that supports ExpressCard, consider the time saving (and power saving for the laptop on battery), it is certainly a worthwhile investment.

Note: SanDisk proposes that I should use either a MacBook Pro with ExpressCard slot or Sony VAIO VGNCR220E for testing.  Unfortunately, I am unable to secure any of these two types of laptop at the time of testing.

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Diary

Composition of Bleeding Heart And The Thread Of Fate

I wonder if painters explain their works under normal circumstances, or let the viewers, big time critics to figure out what the artworks really mean, the inspiration that was behind the drawings.  Like Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam”.  Did he explain to the then media that the blob behind the painting of God is indeed a brain?  Or someone simply figured it out?  It would be so flattering if someone in the future ‘figures out’ my works.  For now, back to reality, some of you may wonder how I compose the drawing “Bleeding Heart and the Thread of Fate”.  If you have not seen the drawing, I hope you have a look at it before reading further.

Bleeding heart, and the thread of fate

Center to this drawing – both theme-wise and location-wise – is what you see above: a bleeding heart and a 8-shaped thread cut opened in two places.  I deliberately leave the heart hollow, and broken.  Like I wrote in the previous entry, the Chinese title is 《心中滴血紅線斷》.  That is a big drop of dripping blood you are seeing.  The thread, again, is the ‘red thread’.  In Chinese, it is the thread that binds the married couple, a thread of fate that brings the couples together in the first place.

The main subject of this drawing is a girl, with a broken heart (please refer to original drawing).  You can see a teardrop from her eye, her shoulders, and her upper body.  There are two hands by her side (check out the palm lines).  Some form of support, some form of care from her friends and family.  There are two more hands side by side with opened palms right underneath the bleeding heart.  Again, it is a form of support.  What an abstract pair of hands you may ask.  If you look closer, from the shoulders of the girl, tracing along her sides with patterns marked by the fingers, all the way to the finger patterns and the gap between the two palms at the bottom – this forms a butterfly.  I wish to convey a sense of femininity to this drawing.  Also to bring forth the concept of something so beautiful, yet temporal, time bound (butterflies don’t live long).

Previously, I mentioned that there are four faces revealed by rotation.  To help you to visualize, I have extracted the bits for each face.

Face 1 and 2

Face #1 should be obvious.  That is our main subject.  Face #2 requires a bit of imagination.  Can you see the two lines of tear from the girl’s eye?

Face 3 and 4

Face #3 and #4 look like distorted figures, which I have intended to in order to signify the pain of a broken heart.  There is a face, shoulders, one eye (while another one hidden in the shadow), a nose, and an opened mouth with teeth.

OK.  That is all I have.  I hope you find this write-up interesting.  Thanks for reading!

Related Entry: The Original Drawing

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Diary

Working Title: Bleeding Heart And The Thread of Fate

My new doodle inspired by broken hearts

This, could be quite a significant piece of drawing.  One that pivots my art direction.  It is the first time I explore different perspectives by rotation.  You should be able to see four faces (by rotation), and a subject with at least four different objects.  Why ‘at least’?  This kind of abstract art, I won’t be surprised if you see more than what I intended this drawing to be.

Believe it or not, the first title that came up to my mind while I was conceptualizing this drawing was a Chinese title I created called 《心中滴血紅線斷》.  It is a combination of two concepts: the dripping blood inside a heart and the cutting of a red thread.  The former is a graphical way to describe heartache.  The latter, in Chinese, ‘red thread’ signifies the thread of fate that ties the couples into marriage.  A broken one with a bleeding heart, I am sure you can figure out the rest.

From time to time, I have friends from either sexes – though more females than males – who  confide in me their not-too-successful love stories.  Loving someone, could be a painful process.  Undeniably so.  But I reckon it is better to feel what is love than not knowing what love is at all.  Another common theme I have learned (and shared) is that relationship goes deeper than finding out if couples are right for each other.  At times, when timing is not right, though a couple is compatible in all fronts, it is just not meant to be.  It is hard to swallow, it is even harder to move on.  Interestingly, all whom didn’t quite believe me when I said, “the right one could be just round the corner, and hence don’t give up!”  The next moment, he or she found someone, some got married, and seldom contact me no more.  I am happy for them of course.  It is good to play a small role in someone’s life journey, however brief it is.

So tell me, how do you interpret this drawing?  I may write about its composition in the next post.

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Diary

Working Title: Make-Up

My drawing called "Make-Up"

The working title of this drawing of mine is “Make-Up”, inspired by what you will see in just a bit.  This drawing does not have the complexity in terms of meaning like that big turtle drawing.  So, please don’t think too hard on this one.  If you have the bandwidth, try to decipher that puzzle of mine instead.  No one has figured the answer yet!  Shocking.  I may give out more hints in like … a month down the road.

In this drawing, you see a woman staring into an eye – can you see the eyebrow above the eye? – and there are three make-up brushes used for the girl in the mirror (the bigger face).  So I suppose when a girl looks into a mirror, the reflection on her eyes is the girl herself?  Anyway, the three brushes are eye shadow brush, blending brush, and powder brush.  This may sound Greek to you if you are a guy.  If you are a lady, these are your daily, essential tools, I suppose.

Out of nowhere, Cynthia has this renaissance ignited interest in make-up.  Partially my fault in pointing her to the direction of YouTube.  These days, she is glued to not only TV, but only YouTube.  Oh my.  I have a daily passive dose of make-up jargon and techniques by hearing the video.  The positive side of this is I too get to stare at those very pretty girls behind the video.  I mean, these are really good looking people showing their fans on how to apply make-up and more.  Gulp!

At times I look into the statistics of these popular YouTube contributors.  Each video can easily be viewed in the region of a million times, commented and rated in excess of ten thousands.  Woah!  A scene quite rarely seen in the blogging world (at least the world I know of).  Making videos seem to enjoy the highest number of comments per minute of attention.  And if you want the highest number of comments per characters you type, I would say Facebook or Twitter.  Humbling speaking.  Some comments can even be longer than the status update or tweet itself.  Now, why continue to blog?  Hmmm.

Back to this drawing of mine, I hope you enjoy staring at it.  I often stick my most recent drawing onto the wall for temporary display.  This morning Cynthia got a shock when she woke up to this drawing.  So did I.  Pretty scary piece of drawing the more I look at it.  Oh well, I hope I am improving and heading somewhere.

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Diary

See If You Can Solve This Puzzle … Kekeke

A puzzle, created by me, for you!

If you read Dan Brown, especially his latest work, this puzzle of mine should be cake.  Your job is to replace the question marks with letters.  Once you solve this, it would be great if you could drop a “I got it” comment here without sharing the answer.  And I would love to hear what do you think of the puzzle.  Too simple?  Too hard?  Something can be improved?  Etc.  How would you know if you got the answer?  When you get it, you get it.  Trust me.  It is that obvious.

After I have created this drawing, I tested it out on Cynthia.  OK.  It wasn’t that cake for Cynthia and I made some minor adjustment to the drawing.  Time to take out your pen and paper and work this one out!  Have fun.

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Diary

Composition Of “A God That Sleeps”

This one is for you, Alex.  The only person I know who is curious about the composition of my drawing “A God That Sleeps”.  For those of you who have no clue on what I am talking about, please refer to my previous entry first.

*     *     *     *     *

An elephant, a whale, a turtle, and a volcano

The driver for the theme of a sleeping God is natural disaster, represented by the volcano in the center of the drawing.  Behind the volcano is an elephant.  You may not see its ears – though I did struggle to fit those into the picture and have decided against it – you should however see the trunk, the tusks, and the back (and the tail too!).  Upside down is a whale.  Elephant is the largest land animal now living; whale is the largest mammal living in sea.  Together they represent the land and the sea; the legacy of our world.  Initially, I wanted to draw the sky and the sea but have chosen the animals instead.

I am much affected by the recent news on the environmental impact due to climate change.  And that is the disaster I am trying to depict.  Later, I have added a sea turtle (the head is on the right with the eyes that have the same style as the elephant) that largely encompasses the entire drawing, for a few reasons.  First, it fits the theme of the animals and the volcano.  Second, turtle lives in both land and sea so the engulfment of the other two animals seem appropriate.  Third, I remember seeing ancient drawings that depict our ‘flat’ world as a turtle (I could be wrong!).

Man and God

Within the perimeter of the volcano is a sleeping God and a man.  Only the face of God is shown, with eyes closed.  When I compose this, I have Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” in mind (on the ceiling of Sistine Chapel).  Instead of God creates man in his own image, I deliberate choose a contradiction that the two do not resemble one another, that man looks nothing like God (and God looks awfully like us!).  Also, I have recent read the latest fiction written by Piers Anthony from the Immortality series.  That reminds me of the storyline of how the Incarnations collaborate and overthrow the Office of Good – a.k.a. God – for God no longer responses to us.  Hence this composition of man attempting to awaken the sleeping God.

Another point of interest to note is that when I compose this face of God together with the elephant and the whale, I had in mind the stretching arms of God (depicted by the elephant’s trunk and the whale’s tail) as though God puts his arms behind his head, sleeping.

A woman

How can a drawing with a man and without a woman?  I love balance.  And I have deliberately space out the heads onto each one-third section of the drawing.  On the left, the turtle and the whale; in the middle, the man and God; and on the right, the woman and the elephant.

In the old days, mankind invented many ways to interact with God, to please God, and to tame God’s wrath.  And I have in mind the sacrifice of the virgin into a volcano for this purpose.  I have also decided on the 7 strands of hair.  According to the Bible, the number 7 signifies completeness, perfection.  She is not just any virgin, but a perfect one.

Can God be awaken in time before the volcano destroys the world?  No one knows.  Every entity in this drawing are waiting.

Buttons

Like Alex has rightfully pointed out, buttons and zips have become a ‘trademark’ of mine.  I am obsessed with putting this ‘kinetic’ interaction into my drawings, urging the viewers to unlock the mystery within.

I have resisted writing how I compose this drawing because it may read silly (and long!).  Some may think that I am a lunatic.  But for the few curious ones, well, the composition is not at all random.  Now that I have probably said all that I should, I better … zip!  Thanks for your interest.

I love this zip!

Related Blog Entry: Making Of “A God That Sleeps” (And The 9 Years Of Togetherness) – for the original drawing.

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Diary

Making Of “A God That Sleeps” (And The 9 Years Of Togetherness)

Another doodle of mine

I wish I could draw or make music for a living.  But reality is not as such.  My recent passion is to doodle.  Simple composition, when I first started.  Now, the drawing is getting more and more complicated.  I wonder why.

Just when I was done with taking photos of this drawing, past midnight, Cynthia returned from her business functions, planted a kiss onto my lips, and said, “Happy anniversary!”.  9 years.  And she continues to put up with my bizarre new passions spawning out from nowhere.  I too wonder why.

Ever since I have started or rediscovered doodling, some readers have inquired how I create these drawings.  Many have the impression that a lot of digital touch ups are done at the computer.  In fact, a lot of time is spent thinking about the composition.  I would stare into space, intensively, as I envision the different ways to articulate my thoughts.  One time, I was in the zone while brushing my teeth.  All of a sudden, Cynthia appeared from nowhere wanting to tell me something.  I screamed, got shocked out of my socks.  She in turn was shocked at my shock.  Such intensity I have when I think about the composition, that can take days, or weeks.

A lot of time, too, is spent on drafting the drawing on pieces of paper.  Until I am confident, I draw it for real, using whiteboard marker.  Unlike oil painting, I can’t make any mistake.  Pretty breathtaking towards the end of the drawing.

The working title of this drawing is “A God That Sleeps”.  Below are the photos taken during the drawing stages of (1) shaping, (2) detailing, and (3) decoration.  As you can see, computer touch ups are minimal.  By the way, if I was to remember that by the time this post is published, it is our anniversary, I would have drawn something more appropriate for the occasion.  Oh well, I will have to think of something else then.

Related Blog Entry: For those of you who are interest in what the composition means, please click here.

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For the Geeks Photography

SanDisk Extreme Pro, In Fire And Ice We Trust

SanDisk Extreme Pro ... 90MB/s!

I love photography.  And it is not everyday news that you wake up one day discovering that the product you use has a new model is double as good.  I am a proud user of SanDisk’s Extreme IV CompactFlash cards for my Nikon D700.  It was their top of the line product trusted by the professional photographers.  Then comes this new Extreme Pro.  The maximum capacity has doubled to a jaw dropping 64GB.  The read and write speeds have been boosted up to 90MB/sec, double of my Extreme IV cards.  That is shocking, on paper at least.  But how does the card perform?  Well, here is a little test I have done on a lovely Sunday morning.

Simple Test Setup

The three memory cards on the tests are (1) SanDisk Extreme Pro (90MB/sec), (2) SanDisk Extreme IV (45MB/sec), and (3) Lexar Professional (300x speed).  SanDisk cannot test with their competitors’ products, but I can.  To be fair, all my cards – including this new review unit from SanDisk – are pretty respectable, in terms of performance, reliability, and durability.  SanDisk has provided me with some testing procedures.  But I prefer to test it under a real life scenario.  So, below is my setup.

If you take single shots, it does not matter too much if you memory card is fast or not too fast.  Though once, a friend called me up and asked, “You told me to shoot in RAW but it is just too slow to take one photo!”  I wanted to pull a fast one on him and tease him that his is not a Nikon, like I have advised him to buy.  Instead, I told him that his memory card maybe too slow.

In this test, I put my camera on continuous shooting mode.  I chose a slow 3 frames per second for my Nikon D700.  Simply because any higher it would be difficult for me to count the shots.  I switched off as much post processing of the photos as possible in order to put extra emphasis on the memory card performance (and in real life too, I switch them off for high speed shooting).  Of course, no image review.  Who would care about image review in sport shooting scenario?  During each test, I shot 40 photos.  And I shot in 14-bit RAW, which is higher than the rather common 12-bit RAW format.  I resisted shooting in RAW+JPG because (1) I seldom do that and (2) converting RAW to JPG takes time and may alter the result.  RAW is good.  It is what I shoot.

To recap: 3 memory cards, 40 shots, 14-bit RAW, 480MB of data, one camera.

Test Results

Lexar Professional (300x speed) – On paper, this card has a similar speed the Extreme VI that I own.  The entire 40 shots took 22 seconds to complete the transfer from the camera buffer into the memory card.  However, after 30 shots, my camera slowed down and the frame rates dropped way below 3 frames per second.  That is disappointing of course, although I was not surprised.

SanDisk Extreme IV (45MB/sec) – My bread-and-butter, these are the cards that I am happy to spend money on.  40 shots took 21 seconds to complete the transfer with no slow down to my frame rate. An additional 8 seconds to complete the process (40 shots should take about 13 seconds to complete using 3 frames per second setting).

SanDisk Extreme Pro (90MB/sec) – Less than 15 seconds was what it took to transfer all 40 photos (total of 480MB).  In fact, the write speed of the card no longer seems to be a limiting factor (the entire shot of 40 photos took more than 13 seconds to complete).  For the testing of this particular card, I have increased my number of shots to 100, almost instantaneously, all the shots are stored.

Afterthought: For my 12.1 megapixel full frame camera, it seems that SanDisk Extreme Pro is all I need.  I could of course up the frame rate from 3 to 8 per second (which I may if I can find a suited theme for my next photo shot).  One participant at the media event has maxed out his Nikon D3 camera buffer in continuous shooting mode and it takes 130 shots to do that, with this Extreme Pro card.  I doubt if I would be that extreme.

Who Needs This?

Although my test centers towards speed, SanDisk Extreme Pro has lots to offer too.  The card works in an extreme temperature range of -25°C to 85°C (hence the picture and the title if you get the drift).  It is designed to be durable for humidity and accidental drops too.  In terms of reliability, it uses a wear leveling technology to spread the data across different blocks of memory so as to maximize the lifetime of the card.

For those of you who have to have the largest capability available (e.g. sport photography and underwater photography), the 64GB version is too good to be true.

And for those who want to tap onto the potential of a higher speed, your camera needs to be able to utilize the UDMA 6 technology.  My contact in Nikon has informed me that all their high-end cameras – D3x, D3, D700, and D300s – are able to support UDMA 6.  It appears that Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 50D are able to support that too, though I have no means to verify.  As the image size getting bigger and more photographs elect to use their dSLR cameras to film HD videos, write speed of a memory card becomes a crucial attribute.

If you own a high end camera(s), you really need a memory card of a similar caliber to match.  For more information on technical specifications and pricing and etc., please click here.

PS. I have not tested on the download speed as the card has gone beyond USB 2.0 speed.  But I reckon the speed would be amazing, judging at what I have seen so far.

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Diary

The Vegetarian

The Vegetarian

The title of this doodle is “The Vegetarian”.  Yes.  One day I may look like that.

Recently, I have become a social meat eater.  But why?  Nothing as dramatic as quiting alcohol since January 2008.  Of which, I still owe you a why.  And I will.  Meanwhile, why give up on meat?

A simple answer would be: romancing with a different lifestyle.  To be frank, I have little feeling towards another chicken dies because I want one of its legs for my lunch.  Though now that my dietary doesn’t necessarily require the killing of say a chicken, it seems like a good thing to do.  I am more intrigued by the studies that say meat takes much longer time to digest compares to vegetables.  Or in one of the talks, the exact words used was “meat rots longer inside our stomachs”.  Gross, I know.  But maybe there is an ounce of truth in it.  Maybe we don’t need to eat meat to live.

I do eat vegetarian meals from time to time.  Catholics abstain from eating meat on the Fridays of Lent.  Or to follow the older tradition, the entire 40 days of Lent.  My Chinese heritage encourages me to abstain from eating meat during key occasions, such as the first meal of the Chinese New Year.  Even when I am outside Hong Kong, I still follow that tradition till today.  It was hard, especially when I was studying overseas.  No one around me seemed to understand.  But I know if I do follow, my parents would be happy.  Even when I am thousands of miles away from them.

What on earth is a “social meat eater”?  If I am on my own, I would stick to vegetarian diet, provided that I can find it.  If I am with my friend, I would order vegetarian dishes if it is not too much of a trouble.  Otherwise, my next choice would be seafood.  I probably wouldn’t feel bad eating meat with my friends.  Because this decision of mine is neither based on religion nor on the basis of health.  It is a lifestyle choice.

Now, how do I feel eating vegetarian dishes most of the time?  Initially, I felt unfulfilled, to be honest.  I got hungry very often.  Normally I would get depressed.  Like during the days when I have to stick to non-meat dishes (such as Lent).  This time round, unknown to me, I do feel happy not eating meat.  More than one week has passed and I think my body begins to adapt to the lack of meat diet.  I eat fruits when I feel hungry at night.  I choose brown rice when it is available.  Back to how I feel.  In fact, I feel great, happy.  Seems more agile.  Less lethargic.  Maybe because my body doesn’t need to work so hard to digest the food, I don’t know.  All of a sudden, I feel like doing more exercise.  What a transformation!

The next thing I wish to do is to work out a nutrition table.  If I am going to be a serious vegetarian, or social meat eater, I need to make sure that all my daily nutrition intake is taken care of.

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For the Geeks

Latest Nokia Application Review – Part 1 of 2

N97 on Nightstand, photographed this morning

For the second time this year, Nokia has passed me some credits to try out applications of my choice at their OVI Store.  This is exciting of course.   Although some I would have bought anyway, it is good to test out others that I would have missed.   The size of the store has grown quite significantly over the last few months, especially in the gaming section.  Many of the real good applications and games come free of charge.   Part 1 of this review focuses on standard applications.  Part 2 will focus on games.  Some of the games are so fun that kept me going night after night.   Stay tuned for that.

On the standard application front, more similar – either competing or complementary – applications start to emerge.  It is interesting to see how some applications are sluggish and unappealing while a similar one with very similar functionality is blazing fast, looking stylish and professional.   Same Nokia Symbian operating system, very different in performance.  And it is also good to see applications continue to push the frontier of what a Nokia phone can do.

I use a N97 to test out some of the noteworthy applications.   If you or your friend owns a Nokia phone or intend to own one, I hope you enjoy reading this part 1 review as much as I writing it.

To continue reading, please click here.  For more articles on this particular phone model, you may also wish to check out the “Experiencing Nokia N97” page.