Games: Pokemon Go

Last time, when Pokemon was mentioned, it is identical with children's game and identical with its iconic character, Pikachu. With the release of Pokemon Go, that kind of relation change tremendously. Pokemon Go is a phenomenal new game which based on Augmented Reality (AR) concept, it requires the Gamers to walk to the PokeStop and PokeGym and read the map to locate such places. The Gamers' profile suddenly change, from mostly children to young adults till adults, even elderly! What a great surprise! And it change people's behaviour, from lazily playing games at home, to walk more and visit places to catch Pokemons!

I am one of the Pokemon Go's gamers, or trainer in Pokemon's term. Last time, I was very seldom playing games, now play Pokemon Go every day. It is quite fun, whether it is to collect many kind of Pokemons, or train the Pokemons at PokeGym. I also realized that Pokemon not only Pikachu, so many other kind of Pokemons actually... he he.

Since Pikachu is very identical as Pokemon, it is the most searched and wanted when playing this game. It is very rare appear at every places, only some places that has its appearance quite often, but not as often as some others.

This Pokemon Go game is still happening and hot now, you can still see so many people with this game on their smartphone's screen when you go places. I will share some experiences playing this game in some next articles in this blog, so stay tune! :-)

By the way, these are my current favourite Pokemons:

Sure, firstly is Pikachu! :-)

Cute Eevee, it has three names: Rainer (evolves into Vaporeon), Sparky (evolves into Jolteon), and Pyro (evolves into Flareon)

Funny Meowth... especially its angry expression and sound when you try to catch it!

Growlithe

Digital World: Drone Anyone?

Drone technology, especially for consumer side, has getting more matured since it started captured interest of many people roughly two years ago.

Talking about drone, DJI Phantom easily recalled from people's mind due to its reliability and quality of product, they are considered market leader nowadays. Serious air photography and video most likely choose DJI Phantom as their preferred equipment. They are be able to maintain considered premium price for drone until now since not much competitor in this particular market. Sure quite many China's unknown drone brand play in cheap price drone market but they are considered 'toys' instead of for serious usage of drone.

The immediate competitor just enter the market, who else... it's from Xiaomi who is well-known for their affordable but great smartphone products. It called Mi Drone, with its 4K capability, it priced half price of comparable DJI Phantom. It still need to see how the market will react to this, quite interesting to follow.

I did have some interest on this drone, but not at that serious level to get something like DJI Phantom or Mi Drone. Their build is quite big and not something that you will bring during travel unless you are really want to take some serious documentation of your travel. For me, I need drone that can easily bring for travelling but capable enough to do good documentation, and affordable!

Well, there surely some alternatives. One of them, that lately in news due to its getting quite big additional funding for development, is drone namely Hover Camera that being developed by Zero Zero Robotics. The company claims users can “grab, throw, and catch” the drone without damaging it. It hovers when released from grip, and by a connection to an app the drone will follow you around as you walk or move indoors and out. Simple in its function but not its creation, the Hover takes 4K video, panorama, and 13-megapixel still images. Its safety, portability, and new kind of form factor make it unique. It will be made of fibre carbon frame and measures about 7 inches square and 1 inch thick, weighing about 8 ounces (227 grams). When not in use, the drone folds to roughly the size of a VHS video cassette.

Honestly, I myself very interested to this drone since it covers what I need, the only issue is the price which said it might cost around $600 which is not cheap. Well, let's see when it officially enter the market. Watch the video below, I believe you will interested as well... 

Hover Camera - Introducing the self-flying camera anyone can use 

Digital World: Redmi Note 3

Finally, I have decided to upgrade by old Redmi Note 4G (4G version of Redmi Note) to Redmi Note 3. I skipped Redmi Note 2 because it doesn't offer much improvement compare to Redmi Note 4G. The main reason to upgrade now is that after two years of using, the internal storage started to reach minimum available space, even after moving the contents to MicroSD, this make updating apps quite troublesome because need to clear space every time need to update. Thanks so far to great temp file and cache cleaner apps from Mi Tools.

Redmi Note 3 that I bought has 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage and running Android version 5, and it supports dual simcard. It has no dedicated MicroSD card slot, but one of the simcard tray has dual functions, can be used as MicroSD card slot, but off course by doing that, you can only use single simcard. So, either you use two simcard or one simcard + MicroSD. Not sure what the reason, probably to comply with latest Xiaomi policy to get rid of MicroSD card which according to them will slowdown mobile phone performance. Probably to save some space also to make it slimmer and lighter. Yes, Redmi Note 3 is slimmer and lighter.

Redmi Note 3 has fingerprint support, so it becomes much more easier to unlock the phone. Used to use the pattern unlock, but now I love this fingerprint unlock feature.

Its 4050mAh battery size makes it lasts for the full day normal usage. It's only that due to metal body, the battery is now built-in, not changeable.

It also has improved screen quality (5.5" Full HD) and camera quality (16MP f/2, 0.1s Phase Detection Autofocus). For taking selfie with front camera, the fingerprint sensor functions as shutter.

Ah yes, one more, it has InfraRed sensor and Remote Control apps respectively, so throw away your collections of remote control, with just one smartphone you can control you TV, AC, etc. Cool additional feature.

Lastly, Xiaomi still be able to maintain its much affordable great quality smartphone. Its existence has given great lift up of China cheap product image. Cheap not necessary low quality. Kudos to the effort!

iOSApps: Steller

Steller is an apps to combine photos, videos, and text into stories. Steller is initially an iOS-based Apps, but now already has its Android-based apps as well but only running on Android 5 and above.

Steller becomes trending at the moment among Instagram users to also using Steller to create stories based on their photos portfolio. I am among those Instagram users who also hooked by Steller.

Creating a story is quite simple in Steller. Choose photos and videos to be included into the story, then choose which template to be used, then add the text into it to tell the audience about the picture or video. For each page, there are several alternatives of layout to be used. After all done, you can preview it first before publish it.

Here is an example from my Steller account. It can be embed into websites page. Loading might take a while.

Life: NatGeo Channel

One of my favourite TV channel is National Geographic Channel, and its website respectively. It always my dream to be able to travel to the amazing beauty places is every each corner of the world, but, I am not a billionaire who can forget about the money problem to fund the travel... he he he...

By watching the channel and/or visiting its website, I can enjoy the efforts of the contributors capturing the great moments of nature and animals behaviour. Imagine how much time spent and hard work done in even sometimes in bad climate or dangerous environment, just to be able to produce a short movie or some great photos.

I have list of places that I wish that I be able to visit in my life and capture their beauty with my own camera... among those are: Mount Fuji taken from various places in Japan, Yosemite National Park, New Zealand landscape, every inch of Iceland, Northern Light and landscape in Norway, Pokhara Nepal, and of course, China...

Herewith some videos from NatGeo websites which I just browse and watch...

Six Photographers Reveal Yellowstone Like You’ve Never Seen It

Photographer Captures Stunning Arctic Wildlife

Time-Lapse: Lose Yourself in the Night Sky

Brilliant Time-Lapse of Alaska’s Northern Lights

 Spellbinding Time-Lapses of an African Desert

Digital World: Time Lapse Video using Yi Camera

Having photography as a hobby, not all photographers has interest in time lapse which is part of the photography itself. What is time lapse? Time lapse is the photographic technique of taking a sequence of frames at set intervals to record changes that take place slowly over time. When the frames are shown at normal speed the action seems much faster.

Basically, besides needs to have quite good photography knowledge, time lapse also needs patience because of the amount of time needed to taking the pictures and then compile them together into time lapse. As for the equipment itself, it will really "burn it out" with the constant capturing the images for a quite long period of time, from just hours up to days. For high quality time lapse plus for night scenery, it will take long exposure shot per frame that make it even harder work to do for the camera.

Yi Camera

Well, for just hobby purpose and for documentation purpose only which the quality not that important, the small action camera like Yi Camera, is more that enough to produce acceptable result. It small, light, and can produce time lapse video directly from the device using its latest firmware update. Initially no such video time lapse feature, so need to capture frame by frame then compile the using software, such as GoPro Studio which can be download for free, just need to make sure the file names are in sequence. But, it is become much easier after having the time lapse feature in its latest firmwares. All you need is to set the interval, which I always use 2 seconds, then just start capturing, as simple as that.

Yi Camera Video Time-Lapse feature

The quality of the video for day capture is good, but for night, not that good (noise) due to high ISO limitation. But, overall is acceptable for such device.

Whenever I am doing photography travelling, I always do video time lapse documentation of sunrise and/or sunset using this Yi Camera. Using gorilla pod is advisable because you can attach Yi Camera in any place easily, such as fences, poles, and tree branches.

Herewith some time lapses that I have produced using Yi Camera when it still need to be captured frame by frame then compiled them using GoPro Studio. 

For the complete time lapse, please go to my YouTube channel: KS TimeLapse.

Digital World: My Xiaomi Gadgets

Since it's international expansion about two years ago, Xiaomi has become one of the world well known smartphone manufacturer. It well design and built smartphones with much cheaper price from other established manufacturers, very well accepted in the market. The bad reputation of cheap China smartphone gets major fix by the existence of Xiaomi smartphones... a good quality smartphones not necessary expensive.

I was one of the customers that jump into the frenzy buying Xiaomi smartphones when it was officially sold online in Singapore. So excited waiting for the online buy launching of Redmi Note and so happy when be able to get it purchased which many others don't get it.

My first Xiaomi smartphone was 1st generation Redmi Note with dual SIMcard and only support 3G network. That time, tandem with my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 as my main smartphone, I use it only when travelling overseas and used local SIMcard which that time still majority in normal size. Then, when my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 got sudden death, I decided to replace it with Redmi Note 4G which support 4G network but only single SIMcard for the model sold internationally. After two years of usage, I still quite happy using them eventhough the limitation of 8GB internal storage starts kicking the roof, so quite limited apps can be installed and need regular maintenance to release some space or otherwise I not be able to do apps update. Lucky the latest MIUI provides good tools (App Name: Security, feature: Cleaner) to clear apps cache and temporary files, plus diligently move images and videos (from apps usually) from internal storage to micro sdcard, both smartphones still works fine, eventhough some performance lagging might happens which is quite normal since the build up of apps data, limited storage and RAM. Two next generations of Redmi Note already in the market (2 and 3), but I still OK using the current Redmi Notes for another year, maybe.

The second Xiaomi product that I purchased was Mi Powerbank 10000mAh, another excellent quality product with very cheap price. I can be used to charge my iPad Mini as well. 

The third product was MiBand, which I used it for about 1 year before the strap spoilt and I stop using it. Anyway, I got replacement when Singapore Steps Challenge provides free devices for early participants.

The fourth product was Yi Camera, another great product from Xiaomi. The quality of image and video not much different compare to GoPro with much much cheaper price. Very useful when travelling for documentation, to do selfie photos and videos, and more importantly recording timelapse of sunrise and sunset moments. The only annoying issue is sometimes the wifi connection to the camera very lagging when downloading the images/videos to smartphone. I always keep the firmware updated, but it still happens till now. Not a major issue for me though... 

The latest product that I purchased last week was Mi Powerbank 20000mAh, which is not as cheap as its lower capacity powerbank (in term of price/mAh ratio). I really need it as power backup for my MacBook during travelling. Not any powerbank can be used to charge MacBook which needs more powerful charging. This powerbank, using the provided charge cable plus its original MicroUSB - USB-C converter, works excellently charging my MacBook. According to Xiaomi, it should be able to charge the MacBook 1.2 times. Fair enough!

Eventhough lately Xiaomi starts facing tough competition from others china smartphone manufacturers, I still believe it will still exist many more years to come as long as it be able to persistently develop new innovated products with very affordable price.

Hmm... finally, what Xiaomi product will I buy next?? MiDrone probably... ha ha...

Digital World: Free Web and Email Hosting

You might be already purchased domain name for your own purpose but still thinking of the cheapest way to get a web and email hosting for your domain. There was one time that Google Apps for Domain provided for free, it was when the service just started in 2006, where you can subscribe for free for enough amount of email addresses that you can create, enough storage size, and homepage that you can develop. As early users, you can request for more email addresses quota. Now, Google Apps for Domain is no more for free, too bad.

So, what is alternative available out there now?

After done some searching through Google, this is recommended alternative that you can consider to use. For web hosting, 5GBFree provides 5GB storage space absolutely free and ad-free, but off course, there are two limitations: 20GB bandwidth and no email hosting provided. The first limitation should be OK for non-high traffic website, for personal website it should be sufficient enough. But, no email hosting provided is quite troublesome. Don't worry, there is another solution of free email hosting, subscribe to Zoho Mail which is totally free for 25 email addresses, 5GB mailbox storage each.

If you have done create account for both services, what you need to do is to keep using your current domain park NameServers (Don't use 5GBFree NameServers because it has no MX records), you just need to pointing the necessary A Records to 5GBFree IP Address. Then pointing MX Records to Zoho Mail. Refer to the setup guide from each service for detail.

That's it! You get your absolutely free web and email hosting! 

FYI, for web developing purpose, you can use either of two most popular CMS tools out there: Joomla or Wordpress, that you can easily install into 5GBFree hosting through its cPanel.

FYI: Bear, Lion, and Tiger Friendship

Source: Daily Mail, UK

It might not be seen in the jungle for sure, but the friendship between three deadly predators in the wild, a bear (named Baloo), a lion (named Leon), and a tiger (named Shere Khan) really something quite amazing. They were rescued 15-years years ago during a police drugs raid in Atlanta, Georgia, the little family were only cubs at the time at barely two months old.

Leon the Lion, Baloo the Bear, and Shere Khan the Tiger

For us, it is something to show that no matter how different we are to each other, a spirit of friendship from innocently childhood and away from those selfishness and hateful of the world, we can live in peace side by side.

Japanese Drama: Love That Makes You Cry

Honestly, for the pass 2 years, I was very seldom watching Japanese Drama, the main reason is very lack of kind of drama that showing the real life story, most of the are fantasy story adopting from manga, that I quite lazy to watch.

For the past few weeks, I am watching a drama called "Love That Makes You Cry" (Itsuka Kono Koi wo Omoidashite Kitto Naite Shimau), a nice story about real life that I always be able to enjoy of Japanese Drama. 

Synopsis:

"Love That Makes You Cry" follows the story of love, friendship and growth of six young men and women who move from countryside to the big city of Tokyo, each with their own dreams and aspirations. Among them is Sugihara Oto and Soda Ren. After her mother died, Oto was raised by adoptive parents in Hokkaido. Although she has given up on having any high hopes or big dreams for her future, she still remains positive and faces life with optimistic attitude. One day, she finds out the fact that her adoptive parents are planning to marry her to the wealthy man in town in order to solve their financial debt. Soda Ren was raised by his grandfather in Fukushima. Ren works hard on one job after another in order to earn the money to buy back his grandfather's land so that they can start farming again. By chance, Oto and Ren meet in Hokkaido and they decide to move to Tokyo to find new life to change their fate and future. However, as soon as they arrive Tokyo, they get separated in the crowds... -- Fuji TV

The drama still going on as I wrote this blog, so I don't know yet what will be the ending. Beside the story itself, the theme song is a very nice song. Below is the MV of the theme song "Ashita E No Tegami" by Aoi Teshima.

Aoi Teshima - Ashita E No Tegami (2016 Ver.) (2016)

The main actress is Arimura Kasumi, a young actress, which I believe might become one of the well-known Japanese actress years to come. She is cute and pretty. As usual, herewith some pictures of her that I selected from internet.

Korean Drama: Sung Yu-ri (member of Fin.K.L)

Sung Yu-ri is one of my favourite Korean artist. She was a member of the now-defunct K-pop group Fin.K.L. Among the Fin.K.L members, she is the only one who considered quite successful being an actress. Just realise that her last drama was "The Secret of Birth" in 2013, none after that except one movie "Summer Snow" in 2015. But, seems she is going to have new drama in 2016, I will surely wait for that.

Talking about Fin.K.L, their song "True Love" is the main theme song of the very first Korean Drama that I ever watched, "All About Eve". For nostalgic purpose, herewith the Music Video that I can find in YouTube.

Fin.K.L. - True Love MV (All About Eve - 이브 의 모든것)

And, below is one of Fin.K.L MV of their most favourite song, "Forever Love". I love this song, they are still very young, and Sung Yu-ri sooooo damn cute! ha ha...

Fin.K.L. - Forever Love MV (영원한 사랑)

Well, enough about Fin.K.L., now herewith some selected Sung Yu-ri photos those I can find in internet, hope you like it... :-)

If you a fans of her, you can follow her official Facebook account or Instagram account.

Life: My Photography Hobby

I have long interest of photography, started when digital camera gained popularity. My first digital camera was Sony DSC-T300, a compact camera. Then Olympus C-750UZ, an ultra zoom camera, followed by Canon SX30-IS, and finally Fujifilm X10. It was then just a simple hobby, just point and shot photography without thinking of that complicated setting available in the camera, just use Auto mode all the time... he he he.

Sony DSC-T300

Olympus C-750 UZ

Canon SX30-IS

Fujifilm X10

It was only 4 years ago that I started getting serious with this photography hobby. Nikon D7000 was my choice. It is a mid level DSLR camera with APS-C sensor. A very good camera for nature landscape photography which is my main interest. Then my photography travel started and Bali is the first place to visit. I use this DSLR camera for about 2 years and learn about photography more seriously, learn about the basic of photography that I have ignored previously. Well, photography is something that you need to learn from time to time in order for you to be able to take better and better photos.

Nikon D7000

Finally, after gaining more knowledge of photography technics and also more experience by intensive practising, I move to full frame DSLR about two year ago. Still using Nikon brand, it is the entry level full frame, Nikon D610. With two lenses, AF-S NIKKOR 16-35mm f/4G ED VR and AF-S NIKKOR 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR, it is enough for my photography interest, Nature Landscape and Travel Photography.

Nikon D610

The main issue of DSLR is its weight. Bring along the camera, the lenses, filters, and tripod is quite challenging due to their weight. Travelling with that heavy equipment surely not that convenience, but the experience of seeing the beauty of nature and the satisfaction of capturing nice photos, surely eliminates that concern.

Mirrorless camera technology is getting matured, they have evolved in a rapid pace to challenge the traditional DSLR camera. In 2 or 3 years down the road, mirrorless will gain even more momentum, especially if full frame sensor has perfectly fit in into mirrorless body and the price getting cheaper. Its lighter weight is one of the main advantage.

It was only last year, I decided to jump into mirrorless camera as well. The release of Fujifilm X-T10, a younger brother of the widely well recognised Fujifilm X-T1, one of the best in its class. I use this camera also as pocket camera to replace my Fujifilm X10.

Fujifilm X-T10

In my next blogs, I will also write about photography related content, some photography basic knowledge, technics, and also photography travels. Stay tuned then... :-)

Life: Let's Start Blogging Again

Well... it has been 2 years since my last blog. Busy with life must be a valid reason, ha ha...

Now, I am starting blogging again. This is the first in 2016, promise that there will be more blogs posted throughout the year and in future... :-)

There so much changes in the past 2 years, technology evolving fast, life has been conquered digitally, can't imagine now living without smartphone, instant messaging, and social media. WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram is our daily close friends nowadays. Smartphone has become the most power tool, almost everything can be done, find, explore, process using this small equipment. E-Commerce is everywhere now, online shopping has become daily activity, even in third world countries. I still consider myself lucky be able to experience it all in my life... and I might still witness much more advancement in digital technology in years to come.

That's it for now... I am still warming up... see you in next blogs.