A Trip Down the Great Ocean Road

For my 32nd birthday, Nadia and I took a day tour down the Great Ocean Road, which is a "273km stretch of road along the South Eastern coast of Australia between the Victorian cities of Torquay and Warrnambool".

From Great Ocean Road


After some research, and a visit to the Melbourne Visitor Centre at Federation Square, we decided to go with AAT Kings's 'Great Ocean Road with Helicopter Ride' tour. This 12-hour tour leaves from Melbourne at 8am; stops at Bells Beach, Torquay, Apollo Bay, Port Campbell, The Twelve Apostles, and a few other places in between; and gets back to Melbourne a little before 8pm. It includes a lunch stop at Apollo Bay and a Helicopter Ride around the Twelve Apostles.

From Great Ocean Road


The day started out slightly overcast and, by the time we got to Apollo Bay, it was windy and it had started to rain. That wasn't a major problem -- though it made taking pictures a little more complicated! -- and we had a great time nonetheless.

The scenery were brilliant -- though we're told it's better in summer -- and the helicopter ride was spectacular. I took a video of the chopper ride and will post it up here once I've edited it.

From Great Ocean Road


What made the trip particularly enjoyable was our driver, Les, who gave an excellent tour commentary and joked and chatted with us at our rest and photo stops. Overall, I was most impressed with AAT Kings and would recommend them to anyone else who wants to go on a tour around Australia.

I've uploaded some photos from this trip to my Picasa Web Albums page. Take a look and let us know what you think.

[Also see: Official Great Ocean Road website]

Impressed With Shehzad Roy

I've never been a big fan of Shehzad Roy's music but I've always appreciated what he's done: the music he's made has generally been good, his collaboration with Sukhbir was fun, he was instrumental in getting Bryan Adams to perform in Pakistan, and his Zindagi Trust non-profit is making a real difference. [Official website]

I am, however, seriously impressed with his latest album, Qismat Apnay Haat Mein, which he launched in Karachi's Juvenile Jail last month. Roy is still fun, funny, and interesting but boy has he matured. And some of his new stuff is good, hard-hitting, and brilliantly political.

Take, for example, the first single from that album, 'Laga Reh'. Rarely do you get such a enjoyable, sarcastic, in-your-face, and yet immensely motivating song all in one. Here's the video:

And the album's title track -- which has also been uploaded to YouTube -- actually has the phrase "I'm allergic to bullshit" in it! :)

Of course, the entire album isn't political -- only four of the songs are -- but it's awesome that he's doing something like this and I highly recommend you go buy the album. (Though I have to admit I only like about half of the album myself!)

Digital Camera: More Research & Then a Purchase!

After conducting a second round of research and deciding that I really wanted an ultracompact (so some of the cheaper, chunkier, but feature-equivalent compacts dropped out of the running) I narrowed my list of digital cameras choices down to these three:

1. Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS3

Priced at $270, this camera has an 8.1MP 3x zoom lens, records 30fps VGA video (and also 848x480 widescreen video) in QuickTime, and has optical image stabilization, face detection, audio photo tagging, and an AV-out port. [CNET review]

I liked everything about this camera except that it records video in QuickTime, which is not a native Windows video format. This is an issue because my resource-strapped Windows XP laptop doesn't handle QuickTime very well. So, in order to edit videos recorded from this camera, I would first have to convert them to AVI (the native Windows video format) and all that would do is add is an extra step to the process.

2. Pentax Optio M50

Priced at $270, this has an 8MP 5x zoom lens, records 30fps VGA video in AVI, and has digital image stabilization, face detection, smile detection, and an AV-out port.

Though this camera lacks optical image stabilization, I almost liked it more than the Panasonic because it records video in AVI and the 5x optical zoom and smile detection feature are nice bonuses. However I wasn't able to find a good review of it online so I was a little unsure about getting it.

3. Canon IXUS 80IS

Priced at $320, this has an 8MP 3x zoom lens, records 30fps VGA video in AVI, and has optical image stabilization, face detection, face tracking, automatic red-eye correction, audio photo tagging, a speaker, and an AV-out port. [CNET review (with video), CNET Australia review, detailed Photography Blog review, technical Photo Review Australia review]

This was the most feature-rich camera of the lot and was also my favourite. However, it cost an extra $50 and that was an issue.

The Decision: Go for the Best

Fortunately, Nadia convinced me to go for the best -- this camera is her birthday present to me, after all (thanks a billion!) -- and convincing me turned out to be pretty easy so, as of yesterday evening, I own a Canon IXUS 80IS camera!

It looks like this and is about the size of a pack of playing cards:

Canon IXUS 80IS Brown (Front)
[Source: Canon website]

I've been playing around with it since I got it and it's really quite fantastic.

Also, the extra $50 cost turned out to be a non-issue because Canon is running a promotion that gives your four free movie tickets (priced at about $15 each) if you get the IXUS 80IS. Yaay!

Accessories & Warranty

Naturally, the first thing I did after buying the camera was to get some accessories for it.

I got three freebies from Ted's Camera Store (which is a great store, by the way):

  • a 2GB Lexar SDHC memory card
  • a Transcend USB memory card reader (for the computer)
  • a Ted's-branded memory card storage hard case

I then bought three more:

Finally, I bought a 3-year extended warranty from Ted's.

What Next?

Like I said, I've been playing with the camera since I got it (well, since its battery got fully charged) and it's a lot of fun. Its features are awesome and easy to use and I am now preparing for my first video blog post :) I'll post some photos and at least one video from it over the next few days.

Thanks, once again, to Nadia for this moste awesomest birthday present. 'Tis wonderful, indeed :)

Umar Saif & Distributed Web Caching in Pakistan

One of my seniors from undergrad alma mater, the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), is working on a project that implements a distributed web caching system in order to increase download speeds in developing countries.

Mason Inman explains in an article in the MIT Technology Review:
Internet access is growing steadily in developing nations, but limited infrastructure means that at times connections can still be painfully slow. A major bottleneck for these countries is the need to force a lot of traffic through international links, which typically have relatively low bandwidth.

Now computer scientists in Pakistan are building a system to boost download speeds in the developing world by letting people effectively share their bandwidth. Software chops up popular pages and media files, allowing users to grab them from each other, building a grassroots Internet cache.

Sounds like a good system (the article goes into detail about how it works) and here's hoping it's a great success.

Dolly Parton's Cover of 'Shine'

While surfing the 'net for stuff for Collective Soul stuff I found something really interesting: Dolly Parton covered 'Shine' in 2002 and won a Grammy Award for it!

Here's what Rolling Stone had to say about what happened:
Nobody was more surprised to find out that Dolly Parton had covered Collective Soul 's anthemic breakout 1994 single "Shine" than the Atlanta band's frontman Ed Roland. "My phone rang early one morning and one of my friends said, 'Dolly Parton just sang your song on TV!'" he recalls fondly. "Apparently she told the TV host that she was doing it as a gift for her husband Carl Dean, who really loved the song."

She's done a pretty good job, too. Here's the original 'Shine':





And here's Parton's cover version:





Not bad, eh? :)

Bands That Have Influenced Me

After writing my previous post I got to thinking about what it means to have a bunch of "all-time favourite bands" and my conclusion was: bands that helped develop and define my taste in music (both listening and performing).

According to a research study that we discussed in my MBA Consumer Behaviour class, people's overall musical taste correlates most to the music that was at the top of the charts when they were around 21 years old. I turned 21 in 1997 but, given that bands often take a few years to get really big, my favourite bands should be the ones that were big during the mid- to late-'90s. As you'll see below, that's actually pretty accurate.

Here is my (updated) list of all-time favourite bands/musicians (let's just call them "artists", shall we?):

  • U2

  • Dire Straits

  • Peter Gabriel

  • REM

  • Sting

  • The Police

  • Collective Soul

  • Toad the Wet Sprocket

  • Linkin Park

  • Garbage

  • Pearl Jam

  • Def Leppard

  • Goo Goo Dolls

  • Better Than Ezra

  • Matchbox Twenty

  • Sheryl Crow

  • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

  • Melissa Etheridge

  • The Cranberries

  • Vital Signs

  • A-Ha

  • The Corrs

  • Bryan Adams

  • Madonna

  • Deep Forest

  • Enigma

  • Moby


That's a pretty long and reasonably diverse list, isn't it? And I've probably missed a couple as well.

As you'll notice from the list, most of these artists were really popular in the mid- to late-'90s -- though some were on their first album while others were on their fifth. The only two new artists in there are Moby and Linking Park and the two that disbanded before the 90's -- i.e. The Police and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers -- both released best-of albums during that time.

Did I gain any new insight about myself while compiling this list? Not really. Still, it was a fun list to put together and it might tell you a thing or two about me (though I'm not entire sure what!).

Collective Soul - Afterwords

One of my all-time favourite bands, Collective Soul, released a new album a few months ago (called 'Afterwords') and I only just found out.

This is what happens when you are overly absorbed in something (like, say, an MBA) and, when you get some free time, only listen to mainstream music. Terrible, isn't it? I am such a bad fan.

Fortunately, now that I am up to speed, some album buying shall ensue. Meanwhile, there's always Collective Soul's MySpace page to keep me happy.

Photos in the Cloud: Picasa Web Albums

So, after trying out both Flickr and Picasa, I decided to go with Picasa Web Albums for my photos-in-the-cloud solution. Yes, that is yet another bit of my life that I am entrusting to Google. And, yes, I'm fine with that.

Why did I go with Picasa? Because Flickr, though really awesome, only lets me make three albums (or 'Sets') in its free version while Picasa lets me make as many as I want.

I do have a 1GB web space limit with Picasa but that's more than enough for my purposes. Heck, I'm using only 22MB at this time! And once I get a digital camera, take lots more photos, and find that I need more space -- though that won't be for a while because I don't take that many photos -- I can always buy some from Google. Quite cheaply, too. And it'll be shared with my Gmail space, which is awesome. My videos, meanwhile, will go on YouTube so I'm good there as well. And my audio is on SkyDrive so that's not an issue either.

Of course, I could have gone with something like SmugMug, which has no limits on web space or number of albums, and I could have installed an open source photo gallery on insanityWORKS.org, which can then be fully customized, but I didn't. That's because I quite like Picasa's web implementation (it's easy to use and I love it's geo-tagging capabilities) and I really like the Picasa 2 software that you install locally (both its photo organization abilities and its easy-to-use image editing features).

So, behold: my Public Gallery on Picasa Web Albums.

Digital Camera: Second Round of Research

After setting a mostly arbitrary budget of "under $200" for a compact digital camera that can also record video, in my previous blog post on this topic I made a list of cameras that seemed to fit the bill. Since then I have done a second round of research, this time focusing less on price and more on my overall camera requirements (both photo and video related).

Video Blogging Requirements

I started off by doing lots of research on the web and found these two useful resources:

Different blogs suggested different brands of digital cameras for video recording, by the way, so they weren't all that much help. Of course, most of the video bloggers I know use camcorders or webcams anyway (while Robert Scoble uses a Nokia N95) so I wasn't expecting much from these sources in the first place.

Digital Camera Guides and Reviews

I then looked at review sites and camera buying guides:

  • Yahoo! Shopping has a great article from Digital Trends' David Elrich on buying digital cameras called 'Digital Cameras: Buying Made Simple'. This is very useful in assessing basic camera requirements.
  • CNET has an excellent 'Digital Camera Buying Guide' that also talks about recording video on digital cameras.
  • CNET's digital camera finder suggested a few cameras that would suit my requirements, though most of the top ten -- all of which were Sony or Canon cameras, by the way -- had a price tag of over $200.
  • That said, two of the CNET Editors' 'Best 5 Digital Cameras' (i.e. best overall) are in the sub-$200 range and most their 'Best Compact Digital Cameras' (most of which are, again, Canon and Sony cameras) cost around $200. (Can you tell I love CNET? Teh ossim.)

Local Retailers

Next I checked out a few Aussie retailer websites:

Then, I went both a Ted's outlet and a JB Hi-Fi camera store -- they're a few shops apart on Elizabeth Street in the Melbourne CBD (#235 and #261, respectively) -- and got these recommendations:

  • Ted's salesperson: Your budget should be a little over $200. Get a Panasonic Lumix FS3 for $267 (8.1MP, good lens, 640x480 30fps video) and, if you don't like it, you can always utilize our 14 day exchange guarantee to return it and get another one instead. [Official page]
  • JB Hi-Fi salesperson: Under $200 is fine since you probably won't notice a marked difference till you go over $300. Get a Panasonic Lumix LS80 for $148 (8.1MP, decent lens, 640x480 30fps video) and we'll throw in a 3GB high-speed memory card for free. [Official page]

This confused me at first because, after reading all those CNET reviews, I was expecting to be pitched a Canon or a Sony which both shops had plenty of. Then I realized how silly it was of me to think that. Of course they wouldn't pitch those: those brands probably give them the lowest margins and are mainly there to draw-in customers who are then pitched all these other brands that make the shop more money.

Still, this wasn't bad for a quick trip to each store: I learnt quite a bit and also picked up their latest catalogues so I have all the latest brick-and-mortal retailer prices for comparison.

Personal Suggestions

Finally, I got suggestions from a number of different people -- thanks, everyone! -- all of which were most useful though no I talked to had used digital cameras for video recording before. Oh well. I did get some good tips from Yahoo! Answers, though.

Next: Word-of-Mouth, Hands-On, then Purchase

Next up, I'll be hitting online digital camera forums to see what's being said about all these makes and models by the people who actually bought them and use them. 

I'll focus on the four brands that have come up most often in my research -- i.e. Canon, Sony, Panasonic, and Casio -- though I will look at others such as Pentax and Fuji which came up a number of times as well. I'm hoping this will help me narrow my final list down to 3-4 specific cameras.

Once that's done, it's back to the stores for some hands-on time. I'll try each one out to see what the results are like and, once I've thought about it some more, I'll go ahead and buy one. I'll probably buy it from Ted's since I really like their 14-day exchange guarantee.

Oh, and then I'll blog about all that too :)

Final Thoughts

Some final thoughts about my general preferences:

  • I'd much prefer a really compact camera (sometimes called a slim or ultracompact camera) to a regular compact camera. I'd love to have something that'll fit comfortably into the pocket of my jeans or jacket and I can take with me pretty much everywhere.
  • I'd rather not buy a Panasonic since that records video in QuickTime and I don't like QuickTime because it's a resource hog and generally makes life on my crappy old computer much more complicated.
  • If I have to choose between two similarly-priced cameras, I'll go for the one that takes great photos and average video over the one that's only above-average in both.
  • I need to factor in the cost of a carrying case, batteries, a big memory card (4-8GB), and a small tripod.

I Finally Get to Use Yahoo! Pipes

I've been wanting to find a use for Yahoo! Pipes for a while now but I guess I'm rather unimaginative. Today, though, I removed the RSS application I was using on Facebook and entered my blog's RSS feed directly to my Wall (thanks to Friend of a Squid who alerted me to this nifty bit of functionality).

Unfortunately, Facebook only lets you add one feed to your Wall in that manner. I, on the other hand, have two blogs. What to do? Well, combine the blog feeds, of course! How to do that? Why, through Yahoo! Pipes, of course!

So that's what I did -- you can see the Pipe's output here -- and I now have both my blogs on my Facebook wall. Woo hoo!

Free Tibet?!

With all the China-bashing and Tibet-praising that's been going on in the media over the last few months -- what part of not politicising the Olympics do they not get, I wonder -- it was great to listen to Brian Dunning's recent Skeptoid podcast titled 'Should Tibet be Free?'.

Dunning probably knew he was going to get bashed regardless of what he said but I'm really glad he said all of it anyway. Too many people are going around shouting "Free Tibet" without knowing the history or the details of the situation and it's really easy to take the moral (or "we are more civilized") high ground on something that, at first glance, seems very cut and dried but, once you start examining critically, ends up being much more complex.

[Note: This bears repeating: Watch Dunning's 'Here be Dragons: an Introduction to Critical Thinking' video. Teh awesome.]

Help Needed: Suggestions for a Digital Camera

Before coming to Australia, I bought myself a mobile phone that would also double as a digital camera. This was a Sony Ericsson K750i and it had a 2.0 megapixel camera that could both take pictures and record video. I knew I wasn't getting much of a camera but I wasn't planning to do much more than upload pictures to my blog/website or e-mail photos to friends and family back home so it was sufficient.

The K750i's phone capabilities are still pretty much what I want them to be -- it stores all my contacts, syncs well with my laptop, has great reception and battery life, and so on -- but now I really want to upgrade to a proper digital camera.

My Basic Requirements

Fortunately, there are lots of good, cheap digital cameras out there that'll do the trick for me. My three basic requirements are:

  1. A resolution of at least 5 megapixels (MP); preferably over 7MP and ideally closer to 8MP
  2. The ability to record decent-quality video with audio (suitable for basic video blogging)
  3. A price tag of less than $200; preferably closer to $150 if I need to expand its memory, buy a stand/tripod, or get a good cover for it

Lots of Camera Options

Unfortunately, too many cameras fit this bill. Here's a list I compiled from some quick research on the 'net:

Make/Model Photo (MP) Video (px, fps) Price ($)
Canon PowerShot A470 7.1 640x480 20fps 150
Canon PowerShot A580 7.1 640x480 20fps 200
Sony CyberShot S730 7.2 320x240 30fps video 180
Samsung S760 7.2 640x480/320x240 30/15fps 160
Samsung L100 8.2 640x480/320x240 30/15fps 160 (online)
Olympus FE-340 8.0 640x480/320x240 30/15fps 200 (online)
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS850 8.1 640x480/320x240 30/10fps 190
Fuji FinePix F480 8.2 320x240 30fps 180 (online)
Fuji FinePix J10 8.2 640x480/320x240 30fps 180
Kodak EasyShare C813 8.2 640×480 15fps, 320×240 30fps 130
Kodak EasyShare M863 8.2 640×480 15fps, 320×240 30fps 180
Pentax Optio E40 8.1 640×480/320x240 30fps or 15fps w/sound 130
Pentax Optio E50 8.1 640×480/320x240 30fps or 15fps w/sound 180
Pentax Optio S10 10.0 640×480/320x240 30fps 180 (online)
Casio Exilim EX-Z9 8.1 848x480/640×480 30fps, 320×240 15fps 180 (online)
Casio Exilim EX-Z80 8.1 848x480/640×480 30fps, 320×240 15fps 200 (online)

Yeah. That's a lot.

Mobile Phone Options

And it's not just cameras that I need to look at since a couple of mobile phones, not only cover my requirements, but are awesome in many other ways:

Make/Model Photo (MP) Video Price ($)
Nokia N95 5.0 640x480 30fpx 150 up front + 2-25 monthly
Sony Ericsson K850i 5.0 (not specified) 150 up front + 2-25 monthly
Sony Ericss
on C905		 8.1 (not specified) (coming soon)

So I'm a little spoilt for choice.

Oh, and to make things more complicated: some of the cameras have quirks that are potential deal breakers. For example, some have limits to how long your video file can be (e.g. you can record only 10 minutes at a time), others need to reduce their frame rate if you're going to record audio along with your video (e.g. 30 to 15fps), and one or two may not be available in Australia at the listed price.

What Now?

So, what now? Well, after this preliminary round of research, I'll move on to doing in-depth research on each of those models. This will involve reading reviews, making more detailed comparisons, finding out exact prices and availability, and so on.

I'll also check online to see what other people -- particularly video bloggers -- are using and what they recommend. For example, which is better: a higher video resolution or a higher frame rate (or is there no simple answer to that)? And what frame rate is sufficient (whatever that means)? I'll also compare videos made with different resolutions at different frame rates to see how they vary.

Finally, I'll ask for advice, which is why I've written this blog post. So, does anyone have any advice for me? Any brand preferences, any previous experience with any of these products, any general suggestions? Should I forget the phones and focus on just the cameras (which is what I'm leaning towards anyway)? Any and all suggestions are welcome and thanks in advance for all your help!

New Stuff, Good Times

Over the last few months Nadia and I have slowly started to upgrade our lifestyle from 'international student' to what I would call 'student-plus' (since it'll take us a whole year to get to the 'young professional' stage).

What does a student-plus lifestyle include? Well, among other things:

  • A faster Internet connection (streaming video, yaay!)
  • A DVD player and a video store membership (YAAY!)
  • An MP3 player (for me, since Nadia already has one)
  • New furniture including a bed, mattress, sofa, and some shelves
  • A vacuum cleaner and a room lamp
  • Generally more time and money for entertainment and relaxation (i.e. using all the stuff we just bought)

Here's a picture of our new sofa (technically a chaise) from Fantastic Furniture:

Our new chaise

Cool, isn't it? Did you notice the little bean-bag foot-rest in front of it? :) Oh, and that swirly-patterned thing along the back wall is our old mattress which is waiting to be gotten rid of.

And here's my MP3 player, an iriver E100, which is awesome and is exactly what I needed and wanted:

iriver E100

Yes, life is good.

Looking Forward

We still have a few more things to get, though: like a digital camera (more about this in another blog post), a cable TV connection, and an Audible subscription. We also have a few more things to do: like taking a short vacation somewhere near by (which we hope to do next month), watching a play or attending a concert (if something exciting comes long), and hanging out with friends more often.

Of course, what I want to get most of all is new laptops for both of us (specifically, tablet PCs) but those cost a lot of money so they'll have to wait for another few months. Such is life. Still, we're loving what we have now (e.g. we're half-way through the one and only season of Joss Whedon's awesome TV series Firefly!) and, with the exception of me complaining about my laptop all the time, we're having a really good time.

Moving Photos to the Cloud

Having moved all of my e-mail to Gmail, I am now ready for my next move-stuff-into-the-cloud project.

This time I'm moving all of my photos to either Flickr (where I already have a small presence) or Picasa (which I haven't yet installed on my current laptop). I don't know which I'll end up going with but I'll start by giving both a try and seeing how things go.

I'll keep y'all posted on what I'm up to.