Monthly Archive for November, 2007

Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud

Published
by
acroamatic
on Thursday, 15 November 2007
in Personal
. 9 Comments


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It still hasn’t really sunk in that I will be flying to New Zealand for a family holiday this evening. We will be travelling around the south island. It will probably hit me when I’m driving away from Christchurch International Airport.

We’ll be taking in lots of scenery, probably do some standard touristy things like a jet boat ride, see some Lord of the Rings locations, visit the Cadbury factory, taste wine and beer and… there are lots of things my parents have earmarked in their extremely detailed travel itinerary spreadsheet. Of all the possibilities, I am most excited about gazing at stars. Perhaps I will get a shot to rival my blog header image, which I took in Central Australia in 2002.

(People often ask me how I took that photo. The short answer is that I aimed the camera towards the celestial south pole and left the shutter open for about two hours. The stars and the earth’s rotation did the rest. That short answer usually requires a more detailed explanation. =P )

Oh, and if I have the time, maybe I’ll check out this world-famous toilet on the second floor of the Sofitel at Queenstown. (Victor, I am quite sure you will comment on this.)

Our driving route is shown on the map above.

See you all in a couple of weeks! =)

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Bump

Published
by
acroamatic
on Monday, 5 November 2007
in Personal
. 2 Comments

Yesterday, the COSDU bunch in Singapore played host to two visitors from Malaysia. Michelle and Hobart were in town over the weekend. We planned to meet some time ago, but I couldn’t contact Alison.

I tried calling and SMSing but no response. This was after an initial email.

The strangest thing - the bunch of us bumped into her on our way to lunch. I guess we have our dilly-dallying ways to thank for this chance meeting. Put a few COSDUans together, and we’ll spend ages thinking of where to go, start walking, stop again to continue thinking, start walking… and so forth. If we hadn’t gone through this start-stop habit, we might have missed Alison.

After lunch and dessert, everyone left one by one, leaving Hobart and I to our own devices. Since he hadn’t heard of Botak Jones, I decided that he should try it. After all, the boy can really eat.

We made our way to Botak Jones Toa Payoh. Hobart proceeded to polish off the U-Crazy-What?!, much to my amazement.

Anyway, while we were eating, I spotted my relatives in the queue. Nothing unusual there. I think they end up there on most Sunday evenings. My cousin, an ex-schoolmate of mine from Ngee Ann, was there too.

After dinner, I was going over to say hi to them when I spotted another Ngee Ann (and University of Melbourne) school mate, seated just in front of my relatives. I hadn’t seen Xiuhui since she left for her two-year work-play thing in the UK.

It was a most extraordinary day of bumping into friends.

But it still can’t beat the time I bumped into a bunch of CJC friends in 2001. I was in a train, standing in front of the door. At the next station, the door opened and my friends came in through that door.

Quite run-of-the-mill, you say?

Well, you see, we were in the Metropolitana di Roma, getting around while on holiday, thousands of miles away from home!

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Geotagging photos

Published
by
acroamatic
on Sunday, 4 November 2007
in Tech
. 2 Comments

Geotagging Trial (by acroamatic)

I’ve always thought that photo geotagging - attaching coordinates (latitude and longitude data) to photos - is a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, most cameras on the market do not possess an integrated GPS solution. Since I am going for a holiday in New Zealand later this month, I figured now would be a good time to explore geotagging.

So, I bought a GisTEQ Phototrackr recently.

Suffice to say, it seems to work quite well.

There is one concern. Phototrackr software is supposed to display GPS time, so that users can synchronize their cameras’ date/time information to it. GPS time is approximately equal to Universal Coordinated Time (UTC). This is important as it is the method by which the software matches photos to locations, no matter where you are in the world.

However, GPS time displayed in the software on my desktop is local time. When I am in New Zealand, do I set my camera to Singapore time, New Zealand time or GPS time? Hmm…

UPDATE BenSpark wrote a substantial review of the GiSTEQ Phototrackr.

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The Mothers’ Lexicon

Published
by
acroamatic
on Saturday, 3 November 2007
in Fun
. 0 Comments

Chevelle shared this video via e-mail. It’s a hoot! Some of these phrases are culturally specific but overall, a lot of these would have been uttered by mums worldwide at some point in time.

I think my mum has covered only a quarter of this list with me, at very most.

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Fantasyland

Published
by
acroamatic
on Friday, 2 November 2007
in Singaporeana
. 7 Comments

Sunset from Braddell Road

“Congestion taxes on vehicles plying on busy roads are a routine course of action in Singapore. The maximum time to reach any corner of Singapore is 20 minutes as traffic is not allowed to flood the roads,” he added.

City influx shocks Singapore panel via Mr Brown.

When was the last time the Founding Father travelled by public transport? Or in a car without police escort? Didn’t I just spend an hour getting to work this morning? Here I was thinking that Bishan is the center of Singapore, the place nearest to every other corner.

Next thing he’s going to tell us is that there are no beggars in Fantasyland Singapore.

Or has he done that already?

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