Elephant never forget!

Elephant never forget!
And that is why it was chosen for the icon of a note-taking software, the  Evernote.
I think I am safe to say that elephants do forget eventually, just that they have a much superior memory as compared to other animals. Anyway, before I gone too far into animal facts, lets get back to the main subject of this post.

I begin to use Evernote few weeks ago for note taking (mostly for information from the internet), saving website addresses (in place of bookmarking which only accessible through the computer you bookmarked them - very frustrating sometime), and making to-do list. One very convenient feature about Evernote is that it provide you with an account. Once logged in, you can synchronize your notes created from different computers (in my case, between the one at home and at the office). So you can access your notes, whenever and wherever, for as long as you have access to the internet. Hmm how can we live without the internet if more and more things like this get into our life?

When I started it, my initial plan wasn't actually to get a note taking software. I was figuring how to make a To-Do check list along with the Google Calender (GC). As you know (if you are a GC user) the GC only reminds us about the upcoming events. So, how about the things needed to be done? Depends on your mum? or your wife? Of cause they are often kind enough to keep 'reminding' you about the things you needed to do, by telling you when to eat, when to take both, etc... but... you know what I mean. We are talking about the To-Do list, not those to-do list (although I must agree that they are important too, in fact, the most vital things to do in life)... okay, lets get back to the main track of the post.

As I am looking for a way to create a To-Do list along side the GC, I found that GC has a feature which allows us to add gadget in it. One of the gadget is the Evernote gadget. (to learn how http://www.vikitech.com/563/easily-add-evernote-gadget-to-your-gmail-and-google-calendar)   
Once I added the Evernote in my GC, now I can keep track of my to-do list which I created in the Evernote program. Their combination is a perfect solution for people like me who has bad memory!
Now, as long as I can access the internet, and provided that I didn't forget my Evernote log in identity, I'll have the superb memory just like elephant :)


       

Persimmon (柿子)

I still remember that when I was little, I once asked my mum "why you never bought the new-year fruit?" after I saw persimmon in our neighbor's house. Back then I don't know the name of the fruit and so I called it new-year fruit because it is available when near the Chinese New Year. My mum said it is too expensive when compared to other common fruits like apple or orange. So it worth more to have two apples or oranges than only one persimmon for the same price.
Perhaps my mum has planted in me the thought that I should go for persimmon when the price is comparable to  other fruits. Of cause, we should never overlook the influence parents could have on their children. Even for some small matter which we don't think it may bother anyone, but it could still have the potential to shape the way the children perceive the world, even in their later life.

In Japan, the season of persimmon is around the end of autumn. And that is when the Jusco near the dormitory we are staying starts to sell the fruit in a large quantity with very affordable price. 99 yen each to be precise. The conversion rate to RM of cause will make it seems expensive. But when considering the salary of Japanese, it is like RM1 each.
Btw, by far I am referring to the smaller specie one shown in the photo. As for the larger one, I've never seen it at Jusco. It's a souvenir my wife received from her colleague who recently went outstation and bought it at the place of the business trip. According to her colleague, the fruit isn't available else where. So this is a very rare opportunity to taste such a big persimmon.
As you may see, it is about the size of a big apple. But what really make it so irresistible to me are the sweet taste and the crunchy bite. By 'and' I really mean it like in a math's definition - the two conditions 'sweet' and 'crunchy' must be present for the 'irresistible' to be true. We can easily find a sweet persimmon even among the the smaller specie one, but the bite never feel like the apple-liked crunch. It is only with the big persimmon that I learnt that the fruit can be crunchy as well. And to me, the crunchy feeling is way better than the Apple's one because the hardness is just nice.

Mushroom & Statue - Mt. Maruyama

Yesterday went to the reserved forest of Mt. Maruyama, Sapporo. The main purpose is to photography one of my favorite photography subject - mushroom. 

The first time I photography mushroom after owning a macro lens was during my trip at Oirase.
To shoot mushroom, tripod is a must because it usually grow in shaded places which required very low shutter speed - mostly shot at 0.8 second in this series, thus handheld is impossible.
Also, I usually overexposed it by +1 or +1.5 so that the mushroom looks growing.
To make it interesting, approach from law angle so that you are showing its under side of the cap, which should looks growing glowing with back-lighting and a little of overexposed. How I wish my camera has a swivel LCD to make the task easier.
I didn't shoot any top-down picture because it looks dull to me.

Since there weren't much mushroom to shoot, I then started to find these (below) statues to be interesting. 

When you started to pay attention, you'll notice that they have very different kinds of expression.
This one looks jolly to me.

This one looks calm and a little serious.

This looks calm and joyful.

 So as this one.

Calm and humble.

A typical cunning, evil, foxy smiling.

This too, calm and joyful.

Calm and innocent.

Calm and joyful.

There are scattering along the way up to the hilltop of Mt. Maruyama. 

Perhaps counting them will make the way up less tiring when you have something to keep you from thinking about how tire you are. But what if you become tire of counting? Because there are literary more than hundred of them!  

 

My bicycle, parked near the entrance to the walkway up the hill.

Swan - Scientific Writing Assistant

Came across a software called SWAN - Scientific Writing Assistant, which was created to help writers with the content of scientific writing. Eventually I downloaded it and tried it out. This is how it work:
1. Go to this website to download a zipped folder http://cs.uef.fi/swan/download.html

2. After the download, extract it and these are the content:

3. For window users, double click the "Launch_SWAN_(Windows).bat" file and a DOS window (below) will pop open which indicates that your window is launching theSWAN

 4. This is how the welcome message looks like during the 1st launch, you can choose to disable it.

 5. There are tree options, I've chosen "Quick start" for my trial. You simply click on the one you preferred for your evaluation and it will bring you to the next step.

 6. Now, open the file where you keep your manuscript. In my case, I opened a Microsoft Word document. Then all you need to do is simply copy and past the content of your manuscript into the respective column in SWAN.
For "Quick start" option, you only needed the "Title", "Abstract", "Introduction", and "Conclusion" sections.

 7. Then click the "Start Evaluation" button.

 A small window will pops out which shows you the evaluation progress.

 8. In the evaluation results, it gives comments on each of the four sections. The Green (+) sign denotes positive comments, whereas the Red (-) sign indicates areas you 'may' want to take a look and reconsider about your text.
It also provide some statistic about the length and the voice of your sentences. It'll warn you when a passive sentence is found.   

It'll also highlights your words with different colours, to indicate the different word categories found in your text, e.g. imprecise words, judgemental words, transition words, and words in the passive sentences.

In general, I am quite happy with the guidelines given - It'll remind you what are the good things to include in your text and what to avoid. However, a software is still a software, it have advised me to include 'future work' in the conclusion section when the last sentence of my conclusion says 'In addition, further work is required..." - It failed to perceive the meaning of the sentence when different word is used to convey the same message.
   

Video Editing - Sony Vegas

I recently edited a video about the last family trip around Hokkaido. 
(It's literally a family trip because we rarely have a trip that both my parents and sibling are traveling together. I really can't recall when was the last one before this trip - probably when my parents brought us to the Penang beach during my childhood before my sister was born?)


Here is my workflow stages:
1. Review/select footage and in port into Sony Vegas Project file (Edit footage frame rate to match the intended frame rate)
2. Trimming to make it as short as 2 min (but sometime this is hard)
3. Decide/Edit on aspect ratio
4. Color grading (probably I am a very 'visual' person, I enjoy this part the most)
5. Create visual/sound effects (e.g. film burn, film effect, tv-simulation, etc.)
6. Score/musics (I hate this part, but a video is without soul if without it, so I have no choice)
7. Titles/wordings 


For this particular project, I started it two weeks ago. The final result is totally different than what I thought it would be at the beginning (old film style). Because after the stage 1, I felt that the old film style will not goes well with the flow and the contents. 
During stage 2, I have to divide the Sony Vegas project into two smaller project files, because the computer capacity couldn't handle the huge memory demand - more than 4 GB. 
(This is weird as my window 7 is a 64bit version and it has 8 GB ram capacity. Anyway, my experience with my pc tells me that for as long as I reduced the project file to below 4 GB, I will have no problem in previewing and rendering.)
Stages 3 to 5 were done in two separate project files. Then I render the results to a 1920x1080 videos with the intended frame rate, wmv format to reduce file size. 
For stage 6 and stage 7, I created another project file and put together all the video parts rendered in the previous step. This include the time lapse clips which were rendered from other project file in mov format for better quality.
Stage 6 is the most hardest part to me. For a Hollywood movie, they have a composer to create the score/music. If this is a paid project, I will not hesitate to hire someone for the task. But since this is a non-profit, personal project, I got to handle it myself. The most efficient way for me to do it is to find some nice movie soundtrack that match the video (or to fine tune a little bit of the scenes to match the music). Though this is painful sometime, but the outcome is really rewarding when you have the music that brings the video to life! 


Screenshot of Sony Vegas Project:
During stage 2

During stage 7

Screengrabs:

Here is the video:





Some notes about footage shootings:
This wasn't really a well prepared project. I did have in mind that I wanted to record somethings about the trip because it is a very rare chance for the whole family to travel together, especially to this far. However, since I was the one who did the trip planning, managing transportation and accommodations, driving, I really can't commit to seriously shooting the footage. No tripod or other support most of the time, because that will be very inconvenient for me when I need to handle other stuff at the same time. Therefore, I relied mostly on my 16-35mm lens to make handshake not so apparent. 
My mindset was that if what I shoot is adequate, then I will edit a video, and if it's not, I will just make a photo slideshow. 
It turns out that I did shot quite a big amount of footage, but they are a little  about this and that events, so I decided to edit a montage video. This explains why there is no connection between most of the scenes. 
One scene however should have been included - sushi, since most of the time we are dinning at sushi restaurant, and that Hokkaido sushi is considered the best in Japan. Probably because I am not a fan of sushi, so it turns out that I didn't shoot any footage about it. 
The bear shot wasn't by me, it was by my brother using a camcorder while I was driving. The time I took out my camera and get the setting right, the bear already gone.